No Reason To Die Read Free Page A

could think of nowhere military nearby.
    ‘So where did you walk from?’ he asked casually.
    ‘Hangridge,’ replied the boy, and then seemed to realise that he’d divulged information he had not intended to. ‘But I’m not bloody going back there, so don’t even think about it,’ he continued, so emphatically that for just a moment he sounded almost sober.
    ‘Hangridge,’ Kelly repeated. He knew about the place, of course. The isolated barracks built on a remote Dartmoor hilltop was the headquarters of the Devonshire Fusiliers and a major infantry training base. Farmers settled in moorland valleys, the army always chose hilltops. Hangridge was known not only for its bleakness, exposed by its geography to the most vicious of Dartmoor’s elements, but also for the toughness of the regime endured by the young recruits stationed there. But the Devonshire Fusiliers was an elite regiment with a proud history, and Hangridge’s training programme was designed to produce only top-notch professional soldiers. Idly, Kelly wondered how a Scots lad had come to join a regiment which he knew still drew around sixty per cent of its intake from Devon, its home county.
    Kelly had been to Hangridge once, the previous year when his paper had sent him to cover an anniversary visit by the minor royal who was the regiment’s colonel in chief, but for a moment hecouldn’t quite place its exact location in relation to The Wild Dog. He attempted to visualise a map of Dartmoor. The pub was on the south side of the moor, on one of the highest points of the road between the villages of Hexworthy and Buckfast, just forty-five minutes’ or so drive out of Torquay. Hangridge was considerably further north, on the far side of the moor heading towards Okehampton. Kelly half closed his eyes, trying to measure the distances involved.
    ‘Shit, Hangridge must be almost twenty miles away,’ he said. ‘And you say you walked here?’
    ‘I yomped it,’ muttered the boy, suddenly exhibiting just a flash of the military pride for which the Devonshire Fusiliers were famous. ‘Came over the hills, didn’t I? Not sho far that way.’
    He slumped into his seat again, the moment of near-erudite diction behind him, his legs thrust out before him. For the first time, Kelly noticed that his jeans were stained with mud almost to the knees and that his boots were also caked in mud. A damp parka lay in a pile on the floor over by the bar.
    ‘That’s still quite a march for a pint,’ said Kelly mildly.
    Alan glanced around the bar before he replied. Kelly thought he seemed nervous.
    ‘I was heading for the main road. I was going to hitch a ride. But I was wet through and so bloody cold …’
    Alan interrupted himself with a sudden bout of hiccups.
    Kelly finished his sentence for him.
    ‘So you came in here. Where were you going on a night like this, anyway?’
    ‘None of your fucking business,’ Alan replied through his hiccups.
    ‘Fine,’ said Kelly, who had too much experience of drunks to be offended. ‘But you’ve had a few now, so why don’t I run you back to Hangridge. It won’t take long in a car.’
    He was unsure of why he was prepared to go so far out of his way. After all, the barracks were almost directly in the opposite direction to Torquay. Was he just being kind, or was his generous offer prompted rather more by the curiosity he was already beginning to feel about this young man? Something did not add up, and Kelly could never resist even the hint of a good human riddle.
    However, he had no time for further introspection. Alan reacted almost as if Kelly had hit him. He shot upright in his chair and would no doubt have jumped to his feet had he been capable of such sudden movement.
    ‘I’m not bloody going back there,’ he yelled at the top of his voice. ‘Nobody’s bloody taking me back there.’
    Out of the corner of his eye, Kelly noticed the elderly couple whose quiet supper had been so disrupted sidling towards the