A Moment Of Madness

by Hilary Bonner

  ‘Has Jimmy Rudge been out again?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope,’ replied the the youngster flatly. ‘The police come and go. The SOCOs have only just left. God knows what they were doing in there. The postman’s been already with another two big sacks of mail. And that was today’s big thrill.’

  There was still a lone policeman on duty by the gate, and Karen Meadows had indicated a further presence inside. The mound of floral tributes to the murdered rock star had grown into a small mountain.

  Kelly wandered over for a closer look. It was then that he noticed the same young woman he had accidentally collided with on the night after the murder, the one who had stood apart from the rest. She was standing apart now, but this time leaning against the railings looking unseeingly towards the crowd rather than into the grounds of Maythorpe Manor.

  Kelly had not seen her face before but he was sure it was the same young woman. She had the same long robes and the same long lank hair. Several strands of beads hung round her neck and she carried a further strand in her left hand, like a rosary. She looked like a kind of sixties throwback.

  He took a couple of paces nearer to her. She was prettier than he had at first thought, but she wore no makeup and everything about the way she dressed and the way her hair hung untended, almost straggly, indicated someone who took little interest in their appearance, and certainly someone who made no attempt to look attractive.

  She was very dark, her hair almost black, her skin olive brown. The shape of her eyes suggested that she might have some oriental blood. They were red-rimmed and her cheeks were tear-stained.

  Kelly was standing right in front of her now, but she gave no sign that she was even aware of him being there.

  ‘You look very upset,’ he said.

  There was absolutely no response.

  He tried again. ‘Scott must have meant a great deal to you.’

  She glanced at him then, as if suddenly surprised by his presence. ‘Yes,’ she said in a quiet, distant sort of voice. ‘He did. A great deal …’ Her voice tailed off and she turned and walked away from Kelly.

  ‘Miss, miss,’ he called after her, ‘I’m from the Argus. Would you talk to me? Will you tell me who you are?’

  Her shoulders stiffened and her pace quickened. Kelly did not attempt to follow her.

  When Kelly eventually returned home he walked, as was his habit, straight through the hall, and up the stairs to his spare-room office in order to check his telephone answering machine. A disconcerting message awaited him.

  ‘I may owe you a favour from half a lifetime ago but don’t you ever go near my mother again.’

  That was all. Nothing else. A woman’s voice, but the caller did not leave her name.

  She did not have to. The accent, still Hollywood Cockney mixed with stage school English. The slight lisp. Such a distinctive unusual voice. Such an unusual woman.

  Seven

  Kelly played the tape over and over again. There was anger in Angel’s voice, but also the familiar vulnerability.

  He wondered if she had got his note, or if it had merely become buried in fan mail as he had suspected. If not, it seemed likely that she had spoken to her mother and Rachel Hobbs had given her his number. Old hack that he was, he found himself oddly disturbed that she was angry with him. Also, although it was unlike him to give a damn, he hoped that he had not caused her to be angry with her mother, whom for some reason he quite genuinely liked.

  Kelly frowned in concentration as he attempted to sort out his thoughts. He was so engrossed he did not even notice Moira, standing quietly in his office doorway.

  For two or three minutes Moira watched in silence as Kelly kept pushing the play button on his digital answering machine. She had been in the kitchen when he had arrived home, but she heard him open the front door and run up the stairs, and had followed him, intending only to greet him in a normal fashion. But there had been something in the intensity of his manner as he kept playing his message which had stopped her.

  Suddenly he seemed to become aware of her presence and swung round to face her. He looked mildly surprised.

  ‘I – I didn’t hear you,’ he stumbled.

  She smiled uncertainly. ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, hi.’

  ‘Good trip?’

  ‘What? Oh yes.’ He was distracted, and it showed.

  ‘I saw the paper. It looked great. Got what you wanted, I assume?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said again, still looking as if his mind were somewhere else.

  She walked across the room to him then, and, standing on tiptoe, stretched up to kiss his cheek.

  ‘Welcome back,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks,’ he replied, abstractedly stroking her hair, almost the way he always did but not quite.

  She pulled away again and studied him carefully. ‘You’d forgotten I was coming round, hadn’t you?’ she enquired.

  ‘Course not,’ he replied swiftly.

  But she knew it was a lie. She knew him too well, well enough certainly to know how selfish he was when he got stuck into a story. He’d told her many tales about his time on the Despatch and although most of them were great entertainment she was well aware that he must have been a real monster to live with back then. Even without the booze and the drugs, and even though he was no longer a big-time operator, Kelly still had a selfishness about him when he was working. He hadn’t called her at all while he had been away, even though she had left two messages on his mobile voice mail.

  ‘Sorry I didn’t phone,’ he said then, almost as if he had been reading her mind. ‘I meant to last night, then Rachel Hobbs called, late …’

  His voice tailed off. He was still preoccupied. Well, thought Moira, she was never going to change that in him so she might just as well make the best of it and take an interest.

  ‘So who was that on the machine?’ she asked.

  He told her.

  ‘And why do you keep playing the message?’

  ‘I, um, don’t know.’

  Kelly sounded as if he didn’t want to talk about it. Taking an interest was obviously not going to win her many bonus points on this occasion, thought Moira, just as Kelly abruptly changed the subject.

  ‘You cooking?’

  ‘Of course. That’s what we agreed, and I remembered, even if you didn’t.’

  If he was aware of the acerbic note in her voice he certainly did not show it.

  ‘Tell me what’s for dinner then, beautiful?’ he asked her. ‘I’m absolutely ravenous. I haven’t eaten since breakfast.’

  Moira couldn’t help smiling at that. It could be infuriating, but there was something appealing in the boyish enthusiasm Kelly still displayed about his work, an enthusiasm which had remained undampened against the odds.

  ‘And I bet you didn’t remember that until now, either,’ she countered.

  He grinned at her. ‘You’re not wrong,’ he said.

  Then the phone rang. Kelly pounced on it, not bothering to look at the display panel, instead grabbing the receiver as if afraid the caller might not give him time to pick it up.

  ‘Hello, hello. Oh, it’s you.’

  Moira detected a definite note of disappointment in his voice. She looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘It’s Nick,’ he mouthed to her.

  Moira was surprised. She didn’t think she had ever seen Kelly anything but overjoyed to hear from the son he had only in recent years been reunited with. So who had he been expecting or hoping the caller would be? Angel Silver was the only person Moira could think of, although judging from the message she had heard Kelly play, that seemed pretty unlikely.

  After only a minute or two more Moira headed back to the kitchen to tend the leg of lamb she was roasting, leaving Kelly to talk to his son in private. She was aware of him making a conscious effort to sound interested. That really was unlike him.

  He must be seriously caught up in the Scott Silver case, she thought to herself as she removed the lamb from the oven, threw on
more rosemary and garlic, and piled some potatoes and parsnips around it to roast alongside.

  Well, she thought indulgently, it must be a good feeling for him to be involved with something other than council meetings and magistrates’ courts again.

  Nick, alone for once in his dockland apartment, had also been surprised at the way his father had greeted him. He had grown accustomed to warm enthusiasm from Kelly.

  ‘Everything all right, Dad?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course, Nick. Couldn’t be better.’

  ‘Right. Good.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Yeah. Fine. Really fine. Got another big bonus this week. I’m thinking of trading the Porsche in for that new model I told you about that they’ve just brought out.’

  ‘Oh great, yeah.’

  It wasn’t the words, but the lack of expression in them which puzzled Nick. Kelly shared his son’s love of sports cars. In his father’s case it was classic British racing cars, particularly MGs, of course. But Nick knew that he had also developed an interest in the Porsches his son so adored. Kelly was highly unlikely ever to be able to afford such a vehicle himself now, and Nick thoroughly enjoyed chucking his father his car keys and watching Kelly turn into a boy racer. On this occasion, however, there was barely a note of enthusiasm or any interest at all in Kelly’s voice.

  Nick ran the fingers of one hand through his thick sandy hair, an inheritance from his blonde mother, and tried again. ‘You know we talked about you coming up to town for a weekend, well, if you could manage it within the next two or three weeks I’ll try to arrange a test drive.’

  There was a pause. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to, Nick,’ Kelly replied eventually. ‘Not that quickly, anyway. There’s this big story, you see …’

  Nick felt his shoulders tense. During the relatively small amount of time that he had spent with his father as a boy this was all he remembered hearing. Kelly was invariably away on some big story. Only as he’d grown older Nick had learned that that was not always the truth. All too often his father had been drunk or stoned, or with a woman other than Nick’s mother. Frequently all three, Nick reflected.

  Nick had been ten when his mother and Kelly had finally split for good, but even before the final breakdown of his parents’ marriage he had seen very little of his father. When Kelly had not been away allegedly working, he would still, more often than not, arrive home only in the middle of the night and sometimes not at all. After the divorce Nick had seen virtually nothing at all of him until, a grown man of twenty-one and a young army officer, he had sought his father out of his own volition.

  He still didn’t know quite why it had been so important to him to build a relationship with Kelly. Neither did he know why he had still cared. After all, looking back he didn’t even know whether his father had loved him at all during those early years. But it had been important. Possibly the most important thing in Nick’s life. And he had cared, desperately.

  Kelly had tried to explain how the whole fatherhood thing just passed him by. He had pronounced himself overjoyed to be reunited with his only son and had told him: ‘It was only guilt and shame that kept me away from you. I honestly thought you and your mother would be better off if I didn’t go near either of you.’

  Nick, all too aware of the depths his father had sunk to, had been moved by that. And he certainly had no doubt that his father loved him now. He could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, every time they met or even talked on the phone.

  Which was why this conversation was so peculiar. Kelly was so distracted. Ever since their reunion Nick had been aware of being at the centre of his father’s universe. Not today, though. And that disturbed Nick. He had grown to love Kelly every bit as much as he believed his father now loved him. It was more than love, really. It was an acute need for a part of his life he had previously felt to be missing.

  Nick was twenty-seven, tall, fit, and well aware of his own attractiveness as well as his abilities. He had both charm and looks, and he knew it. He also had money. He had left the army two years previously and had since pursued a much more lucrative career. Nick liked the good things in life. During his time in the army he had been trained as a computer expert. The modern army, he had learned, no longer marches so much on its stomach as on its software, and Nick learned skills which he found to be much valued in civilian life. His official title now was ‘business consultant’, which covered all manner of territory. The reality was that he moved with rare ease among people he regarded to be the real movers and shakers of the world, and that he provided specialist services with a rare aplomb. Nick was the kind of young man who seemed to have been born with an old head on his shoulders, which, combined with the energy and daring of youth, had led to him already being very successful. His spacious and luxuriously appointed penthouse apartment, with its views down the river to Greenwich, was just one of the many trapping of that success. His Porsche was another.

  Nick was the guy who had everything. And neither his business associates nor the succession of glamorous young women he dated would have believed just how much his relationship with his father meant to him.

  Nick tried to ease the tension in his shoulders, moving them in a kind of circular movement to loosen the muscles.

  Kelly was still talking. ‘… It’s this Scott Silver case. I don’t know if you’ve seen any of my stuff in the nationals. It’s the best yarn that’s come my way since God knows when …’

  Nick listened absently. He just hoped that was all it was. He knew his father was proud of him, but wondered if Kelly realised that Nick too was proud of him for the way in which he had rebuilt his life. Nick didn’t just love his father, he liked and respected the man he had only been able to get to know just a few years previously. And Nick was pretty sure his father wouldn’t have any idea how frightened Nick got at the remotest prospect of Kelly turning back into the distant, thoughtless, shadowy creature of his boyhood memory. Nick was always afraid that his father would start drinking, fall back into his old ways. And Nick didn’t know if he could handle that. Not again.

  ‘Sure, Dad,’ he said. ‘I understand. No problem. Maybe I can get down to you guys soon.’

  He made his voice bright and brisk, determined that his disappointment and fear wouldn’t show. Nick was good at hiding how he felt. That was another of the reasons for his success.

  When Kelly walked into the Argus office early the next morning as promised, he received an excellent reception. Even Hansford congratulated him on his coup, albeit in his usual grudging way, and Robertson was ecstatic.

  ‘Great stuff, John,’ enthused the editor. ‘Seems like you haven’t lost your touch after all.’

  Kelly liked compliments as much as the next man, albeit barbed ones. And he didn’t mind banter a bit. After all, he’d been weaned on it. But the most important thing that came along with his latest exclusive was that nobody, not even Hansford, was likely to suggest that he worked on anything other than the Silver story for a bit.

  He had already had his usual quick run through the national dailies at home, but sitting at his desk he had another more thorough look, particularly at the Sun to which on this occasion he had filed exclusively. The Sun News Desk had asked him to give them the chance of an exclusive on any fresh material he came up with and he had done so. They paid well, from experience he found them less likely to mess freelances about than most of the rest, and he still had a couple of good old mates there, in senior positions now, whom he dealt with directly. Only the early issues reached Torquay, but Kelly felt sure that all the papers would have followed up his Sun stuff in their later editions. He had been more interested to see if any of the other nationals had anything that was new to him.

  The Mail had an interview with one Mrs Sheila Nott, Angel and Scott Silver’s daily who had waxed lyrical about what wonderful people they both were and how, when she had said goodbye to Scott on the morning preceding his murder, she had had a premonition that it would be the last time she wo
uld ever see him. Nonsensical crap, thought Kelly.

  Much more intriguingly the Mirror had a fairly detailed account of what they claimed to be the post-mortem reports on both Scott Silver and Terry James. Somebody must have had a good contact at the hospital, Kelly thought, turning the pages. Of course, there was no guarantee of the accuracy of the Mirror story, but Kelly doubted very much that any paper would go big on a flier with a tale that could have as many repercussions as this one.

  It seemed that both Scott Silver and the man believed to have broken into his home had been the victims of frenzied attacks. Both of them had been stabbed several times. Scott Silver had suffered a total of eight stab wounds all over his body, primarily around the area of his heart and in his belly, but also in his upper arms, suggesting he had been trying to defend himself. Terry James had suffered even more wounds, possibly as many as ten.

  Kelly thought about it for a moment or two. Karen Meadows had refused to tip him off about the results of the post mortem before the official report that would be given at the inquests into the two deaths, but he was fairly sure she’d be prepared to tell him if the Mirror story was fundamentally correct. He decided to phone her at once. She was her usual self, brisk, in a hurry, and gratifyingly straightforward.

  ‘As near as damned,’ she said in reply to his question.

  ‘So both of them were stabbed repeatedly? It must have been a blood bath out there.’

  ‘Yup. God knows how those bastards at the Mirror got hold of so much detail at this stage but that’s journalists for you.’

  ‘Good at their jobs, you mean,’ Kelly countered mischievously.

  ‘Good at being devious,’ she responded.

  ‘Any chance of a meet?’ he went on, not bothering to react to that one.

  ‘Now? In the middle of a murder investigation? You have to be joking.’

  ‘Nope. Thought you might like to talk to somebody you could trust.’

  ‘Is that another joke?’

  He smiled and remained silent. He knew that she did trust him, and liked him. They wouldn’t have been having this conversation otherwise.