One of the worst aspects of being a night sister was that all too often the sick seemed to die at night when their defences were at their lowest. Moira, perhaps because she knew only too well from personal experience what it was like to deal with despair, had a reputation for being particularly adept at comforting the bereaved. She had the knack of displaying just the right blend of concern, sympathy and professionalism. Only it wasn’t a knack, not really, rather something that came quite naturally to her.
After a few seconds she opened her eyes and gave herself a little shake. There were a whole load of tasks in the wards to be completed before she went off duty and the day staff came on at 7.30, and there was also her ritual morning wake-up call to be made.
She checked her watch: 5.55 a.m. That at least was perfect. She always made the call just before six. She reached for the desk phone and dialled a number which rang for well over a minute without reply. Eventually John Kelly, in bed in his three-bedroomed terraced house in St Marychurch, high above Torquay town centre and the seafront, answered with little more than a sleepy grunt.
Moira smiled indulgently. For the last seven years she had shared her life with Kelly, and she reckoned she knew him pretty well. Evening paper journalists have to start work early, but Moira was only too aware that it didn’t come naturally to Kelly. He was an old morning paper man more at home working late into the night than rising at dawn.
‘And a very good morning to you too,’ said Moira, realising that as usual her cheery tone gave little indication of the harrowing night she had endured. That was down to a mixture of training and experience.
‘Thank you very much,’ muttered the sleepy voice in St Marychurch, and with little more than a few further grunts and a couple of yawns, Kelly hung up.
Moira had not expected him to ask after her welfare at that hour of the morning. She was used to his slow awakenings, although she somehow thought he would bounce into action a little more readily than usual today. She knew that he had been excited to be involved in a big story again the previous day, and that the Scott Silver case was already intriguing him. She was used to his preoccupation with his work, too.
But that morning she had wished that, just for once, he had enquired about her work.
With a small sigh she rose from her chair and made her way back out to the wards.
Kelly forced himself to get out of bed almost at once. As Moira had guessed, the promise of another day being involved in such a cracking good story made the process less painful than usual. None the less, he was still yawning and rubbing his eyes as he made his way downstairs, picked up the newspapers in the hallway, and dumped them on the living-room floor on his way through to the kitchen to brew a pot of tea.
His first job in the morning was to read the papers. That was what he always did. He had the lot of them delivered and he had a special arrangement with his newsagent, involving prolific bribing of various delivery lads, to ensure that they arrived by 6 a.m. When the tea was ready he carried it back into the living room and sat as he always did in the chair by the fireplace. It was habit for Kelly. But that day the papers were a particularly gratifying read. His bank manger was likely to think so too.
‘Stalker kills rock idol Scott Silver’, ‘The crazy obsession of wild man Terry’, ‘How my boy stalked Scott Silver, by his killer’s mother’. That last one was going a bit far, thought Kelly. Skirting the edge of the law. But then that was what editors did, had always done.
The telephone rang for the second time just after 6.30. He ignored it. Moira, who Kelly knew would be immersed in what was inclined to be the busiest period of her shift, never phoned again after making her wake-up call until she came off duty. There was only one other person it could be at that hour. Kit Hansford, provincial boy wonder, newly appointed news editor of the Argus, and the kind of journalist in a suit Kelly simply could not stand.
Kelly glanced again at the front page of his own newspaper, lying crumpled on the floor by his side. He had given the Argus all he had yesterday afternoon, but the young news editor would also know that he had filed to the nationals and that Trevor Jones had sent them his pictures. In addition, the approach of the major dailies was so much more sensational, so much more direct, that it left the Argus looking lame.
Well, that wasn’t his fault, thought Kelly. He was a bit surprised that Joe Robertson, the Argus’ hard-hitting and imaginative editor, had not given it a bit more top spin. But even Joe had to keep his well-honed journalistic instincts curbed nowadays. The hidden agendas of newspaper proprietors no longer focused merely upon getting great stories and getting them first – which was the only kind of journalism Kelly had ever completely understood. The Argus was as much about keeping the advertisers happy as anything else, which meant lots of meaningless advertising features about everything from holiday hotels to shopping malls.
Hansford had no idea of the work that Kelly had already put in on the Silver story. Nor would he care. He didn’t know that Kelly had stayed on the case until well after midnight. But Kelly did not clock-watch when he was on a story like this one. That was another habit; the training of long ago. A kind of compulsion.
Kelly spooned sugar into his tea. He liked it so strong and sweet that the dark brown liquid became almost a syrup. He took a deep drink and concentrated on what he was going to do that day. His first thought was to stick to Angel Silver. Wherever she was, whatever was happening to her, she was the key, he was sure of it. And he saw no need to discuss his plans with the Argus yet. Or not with Kit Hansford, anyway. Kelly only discussed anything with Hansford when his back was absolutely against the wall.
He hauled himself out of his chair, scattering newspapers across the floor like over-sized confetti. Moira always said that she reckoned one day it would be impossible to get into Kelly’s house because of the piles of old papers. Kelly thought that might be one of the reasons she insisted on keeping her own home just a few streets way. Or was it he who had ensured that they had never quite set up a proper home together? Kelly was no longer entirely sure. Certainly he barely noticed the newspapers and magazines, which seemed to scatter themselves, unaided by human hand, he sometimes thought, all over his house. He picked up his car keys off the hall table and reached for his Barbour jacket, which was hanging on the stand behind the door. Then, abruptly, he turned on his heel, walked back across the hall and up the stairs to the spare bedroom where he kept his computer.
‘It might not be much of a job, but it’s the only one you have and are likely to get, old son,’ he muttered to himself.
‘Following new lead, mobile phone not working, will be in touch soonest,’ was the brief message he e-mailed to his long-suffering boss. The simple duplicity of it, which would not fool Hansford for a second, cheered Kelly.
He drove straight to Maidencombe then, this time turning off the main Torquay road directly into Rock Lane. There were probably even more fans outside Maythorpe Manor than there had been the previous night, despite it being so early in the morning. They parted reluctantly, pressing themselves against the perimeter walls of the big old property on one side of the lane and into the tall Devon hedge on the other, as Kelly motored slowly through them. A lone policeman, a large man close to retirement age, stood by the locked gates. It seemed that the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary recognised the peaceful nature of the crowd and were not expecting trouble. Kelly hopefully attempted to manoeuvre the MG into a corner of the gateway. The policeman, his body language weary, stepped unenthusiastically forward and waved Kelly on with one impatient movement of his right arm. Kelly grimaced wryly and continued slowly down the lane through Maidencombe village to the beach car park. He had no alternative but to trudge up the hill again to Maythorpe and, for the second day running, stand in the lane freezing half to death along with the fans. Although mercifully not raining, it was a cold damp day again, but many of the gathered crowd lay on the ground, huddled in sleeping bags or covered in coats. In spite of the chilly conditions it was clear that som
e had just stayed there through the night and had been joined by yet more.
Kelly shivered at the thought of such a vigil and hugged his Barbour around him, wondering if there was anyone in the world he would stay out all night to mourn in the middle of a wintry November. He knew the answer. There wasn’t and never had been. Not even his only son, Nick, whom he adored. Kelly knew how to keep his feelings buttoned inside him. By and large, that was how he’d coped with the world throughout his life.
As ever he looked carefully around him, taking in the scene, watching out for those little details which can take a story into another dimension. He didn’t know if he was being fanciful, but it seemed to him that the crowd was giving off a kind of steamy haze. It was one of those very English wintry days that threatened never to become fully light. Cigarette ends glowed in the gloom. He seemed to be the only journalist there. He wasn’t surprised. It was 7.30 in the morning, most of the daily guys would reckon they didn’t need to be there until later, even if their News Desks thought differently, and his was the only evening paper in the area. He walked nearer to the railings to have another look at all the flowers. Involuntarily he glanced at the spot by the gates where that rather strange-looking young woman had stood alone last night. She was no longer there, though he did notice that there were two pints of milk in a box by the locked gate.
A minor commotion behind him alerted him to the arrival of the day’s first TV news team, probably putting together a piece for breakfast television. Kelly observed with a jaundiced eye. An eagerly bright-eyed young woman reporter puffed up with self-importance was leading a harassed-looking cameraman through the throng towards Kelly, who instinctively shuffled his feet out of imminent danger.
The duo passed by him without incident or damage, and Kelly turned his attention to Maythorpe. Nothing seemed to be moving in the house or its grounds. The big Georgian building had a sleepy locked-up look about it. Kelly always had the feeling that houses could speak to you if you let them, although he was rarely inclined to share that thought with any of his fellow newspapermen or women, who would merely reckon he had completely lost it. Kelly stared hard at Maythorpe. The old house didn’t want to wake up that day, he was sure of it, and he was equally sure that the woman inside, the woman who had somehow survived a night of unspeakable horrors only to be forced to spend an entire day detained in a police station, would not want to wake up either.
He took a few steps towards the huge wall which surounded Maythorpe, interrupted only by the iron-railed gate area, and leaned gratefully against it, as usual hunching his shoulders inside his inadequate coat. When would he ever learn, he wondered, glancing down at his lightweight leather-soled shoes as he settled for a long wait. Half an hour or so later a familiar red van arrived and a slightly bemused-looking postman unloaded two mail sacks and carried them to the gate. The large police officer, who had dealt with Kelly in such a perfunctory way when he had attempted to park outside Maythorpe, punched a code into the control panel by the gates, which swung slowly and silently open, allowing the postman to pass the mail inside. Letters of condolence from fans, Kelly assumed. Two sackloads of them already. His thoughts turned to Angel, yet again. Scott Silver’s mesmerising, captivating widow. Would she want to see the letters, let alone read them, he wondered, as the big gates swung closed again with a small but forbidding clunk.
And would she, he wondered, want to see the letter he had written, which was tucked in the inner pocket of his Barbour? Even less, he guessed. He glanced towards the letter box inset in the end of the wall to the left of the gate, only an arm’s length away. Well, he had nothing to lose, he supposed. He reached inside his coat, removed the envelope containing his letter, stretched out and posted it into the box. The letter simply asked Angel for an interview, which, in common with all the rest of the press, was what Kelly wanted more than anything else. But Kelly had met Angel before, and it had been an unusual meeting to say the least. They had a brief but maybe exceptional shared history, of which he reminded her in his note. In spite of this he knew how heavily the odds were stacked against him. He also knew what a full talk with Angel Silver would be worth. It would be a seriously hot property. If Angel was charged with manslaughter within the next few days, which he had already been told by Karen Meadows was the most likely outcome, no newspaper would be able to print such a story until after her trial because it would be sub judice. But if Kelly got that lucky he would not find it difficult to be patient.
He realised suddenly that he had been fantasising and forced himself to return his attentions to reality. For a while he concentrated on trying to put another early background story together in his head – something that could be used right away, something that could be published now, before Angel was charged. If indeed she was charged.
Suddenly, at around 8.30 a.m. the monotony was momentarily broken. A police car arrived. All the gathered journalists pushed forward trying to see who was inside. Kelly managed to get quite a good look at the four people the car contained. In the back were two men wearing nondescript grey jackets and ties, almost certainly CID, although Kelly didn’t recognise either of them, and in front Karen Meadows, wearing something red to add a flash of colour, sat next to a uniformed driver. The DCI was staring straight ahead, her chiselled features stern beneath her glossy dark hair, which was shaped, as usual, into an almost geometric, rather seventies-style bob. Although she remained an attractive woman, Karen Meadows’ appearance invariably gave an impression of severity, which Kelly always assumed was her intention. The policeman by the gate turned his attention to the control panel again as the squad car approached and the electronic gates opened, allowing the vehicle to sweep through.
Two women fans made a half-hearted attempt to run after the car. The big policeman merely put out one arm and stared them down. He had about him an air of slightly bored authority. You knew there was no point in quarrelling with him. The fans retreated meekly, as indeed Kelly had done earlier when confronted by the same approach. A few spots of rain began to fall. Kelly felt them not only on his forehead but also through his thinning hair as usual. He sighed in glum resignation as he looked up at an increasingly threatening sky.
He forced himself to retreat into the half-trance he had developed over the years in order to get him through long, tedious, and often seriously uncomfortable doorstepping sessions. After a bit he virtually ceased to notice the steadily falling rain and nearly an hour passed before he checked his watch again. It was almost 9.30 a.m. His deadline would shortly become pressing, but he decided to give it until eleven before leaving the scene. None the less he suspected that, at the best of times, Angel Silver would be a night bird, unlikely to surface much before the afternoon – and that didn’t bode well for an evening paper man.
However, just before 10.30, during a break in the rain, a tall bearded man wearing jeans and a leather jacket emerged from the house and made his way up the drive towards the gates, which opened as if by magic as he approached them, so that his stride did not even have to falter. They must have been operated from inside the house, thought Kelly. The tall man seemed to be framed by the slowly parting gates as he strode through, the massively imposing house looming behind him. Suddenly, as if on cue, the black clouds overhead parted momentarily and a brief shaft of pale autumn sunlight, much the same as Kelly had witnessed lighting up the sea the previous day, illuminated the man, causing his reddish hair and beard to gleam. The wonders of English weather, thought Kelly. Yet again it was almost as if the scene had been stage-managed.
Kelly was amused; Scott Silver had been renowned as a wonderful showman. Kelly felt that he should know who the tall bearded man was. He seemed to have been cast from the same mould as the legendary rock star – there was certainly something theatrical about him. There was, however, also something indefinably camp about him, quite unlike the legendarily heterosexual Scott, and as he stepped out into Rock Lane, his fairly flamboyant body language made it clear that he wanted to speak.
&nb
sp; ‘Any press here?’ he yelled. His voice had a mellow quality in spite of its high volume.
Kelly pushed forward. So did the others. There was a second TV crew now, and a smattering of print reporters and cameramen, together with a young woman from Radio Devon.
‘I’m Jimmy Rudge, Scott’s business manager,’ announced the tall man. He was very thin and had a nervous tick in one eye, which somewhat belied his bold stride and loud confident voice. As soon as he introduced himself Kelly remembered him. He had, of course, seen Rudge in countless press photographs with Scott and being interviewed on TV. From what Kelly could recall, Jimmy Rudge had always been rather more than a business manager. He had certainly been a public spokesman for the rock star on many occasions, and it seemed that role was going to continue even after Silver’s death.
‘Angel has asked me to come out and talk to you,’ Rudge began. ‘She is devastated, of course, by the tragedy that has happened here and is far too distraught to make any statement herself. In any case, as you know, the police are still investigating the two deaths which occurred here at Maythorpe Manor, and she is unable to comment for legal reasons.’
Rudge paused and continued in an even louder voice as if trying to project himself to the whole crowd of people: ‘However, Angel has asked me to thank all Scott’s fans who have come here to pay their respects. She watched you last night, saw the candles, listened to the singing, and she was very moved. She feels you paid a fine tribute to Scott.’
There was a kind of murmur of approval. So, thought Kelly, almost certainly he had been right. Angel Silver had been peeping through the curtains last night, watching, listening. He had felt it. He really had.
A Moment Of Madness Page 5
