A Moment Of Madness

by Hilary Bonner

  The paper’s aim was to check out the tip and, if it was true, to expose Angelica in a big way. Kelly’s task was to find her, get close to her, and get pulled. It was not the kind of assignment he liked but it went with the tabloid territory. And he had appreciated it for the seriously great yarn that it was.

  Angel hadn’t been hard to find. On only his second night hanging around in the bar the paper had been told was her regular haunt, he had spotted her. He did not immediately recognise her. Angelica Hobbs’ hair had been raven black rather than its familiar blonde. Indeed, it was during that period of life that her chameleon tendencies had evolved. She had been wearing tinted glasses and heavy makeup, something for which she had not previously been known. After all, Angelica had actually once been described by a major film critic as ‘the fragile English rosebud of our cinema’.

  She had walked straight to the bar, mincing slightly as she did so, and a glass of pink champagne had been provided by an unsmiling barman as soon as she sat down on one of the tall stools. If this young woman was indeed a prostitute – and there was something indefinable about her that suggested that – then her visit was probably business for the barman too, Kelly had thought wryly. He watched her take a packet of cigarettes from her handbag and light one up. Perhaps she had felt Kelly’s eyes on her. Abruptly she took off her glasses and looked right at him. Christ, it really was her, he thought. Angelica Hobbs. You could never mistake those eyes: almond-shaped and brilliant violet. Like Elizabeth Taylor’s, he had thought then as he had again when he had encountered her all these years later. And she was so beautiful. Most women wore heavy makeup in an attempt to enhance their looks. It was almost as if Angelica Hobbs had plastered the stuff on her face to tone hers down. Instead of the flawless porcelain complexion Kelly remembered from her films, Angelica’s skin had the matt look which usually indicated bad skin coated with thick layers of slap.

  She remained stunning, though. Although too thin. Far too thin.

  For several seconds the two of them stared at each other. Eventually Angel’s eyebrows rose in some silent query. Was that the come-on? Kelly had felt awkward, embarrassed, unusually unsure. He looked away. He needed to watch her for a bit. And, to be honest, he needed a few more drinks before he felt he could take this one any further.

  He glanced over his shoulder. The photographer he was working with was sitting in a corner of the bar with a virtually untouched beer on the table in front of him. Kelly jerked his head slightly in the direction of Angelica Hobbs and gave a small nod. Michael Phildon, one of the Despatch’s hot shots, nodded back even more discreetly.

  Phildon’s job now would be to snatch what pictures he could of the young woman, preferably with a punter or two on her arm.

  Kelly remembered that Phildon hadn’t had long to wait. A man appeared as if by magic at Angelica’s side. Kelly guessed that he was an Arab and he had that air of confidence about him of the seriously rich who have never had cause to lose their certainty that money can buy anything.

  Kelly saw Mike Phildon slip out of the far door of the bar. Phildon had been a good twenty years older than Kelly, but he was the kind who never went off the boil, an expert in his trade. A photographer with years of experience behind him of working on investigations and exposés, including more than his share of sex exposés like this one.

  A few minutes later Angel and her Arab punter also left the bar. Kelly had known that Phildon would be lurking somewhere unseen in the foyer. He’d have the pair of them on celluloid in a flash without either of them knowing they’d been had. They didn’t call Mike Phildon Super Snatcher for nothing.

  Kelly stayed at the bar patiently waiting. Less than an hour later Angelica returned alone. Ready to pull another trick, no doubt. Kelly watched again as she settled on to the same bar stool and the still unsmiling barman provided her with another glass of pink champagne. She had passed him a wad of notes, a considerably greater amount of money than the price of a couple of glasses of pink champers, even in that rip-off joint, Kelly had reckoned.

  He had stared hard. Again she took off her glasses and gave him the come-on. This time he pulled his stool closer to hers and offered her another drink.

  It was not very long before they were leaving the bar together. She had been quite direct, businesslike almost.

  ‘Do you have a room here?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. It was a two-bedroomed suite, in fact, equipped in anticipation of a result with another photographer and state-of-the-art recording equipment in the locked second bedroom.

  They walked to the lift together. He realised that she was swaying slightly. She stumbled and he grasped her by the elbow to prevent her falling. Her bones were so thinly covered by flesh that they felt sharp to his touch. He had already noticed how thin she was, but it was more than that. Angel was quite emaciated.

  She leaned against him. The dark glasses slipped down her nose and he could see her violet eyes close up for the first time. There was a blankness in them, and her pupils were dilated. He wondered what on earth she had been taking. Her black silk dress had slipped off one shoulder. He could see an ugly black bruise over her collar bone. Out of the corner of an eye he glimpsed Mike Phildon stepping softly forward from a shadowy corner beneath the staircase, camera at the ready. On an impulse Kelly pulled Angel closer to him so that Mike Phildon would be unable to snap her without the protection of her tinted specs.

  Then, even more impulsively, he heard himself speak. There was something about her, the way she looked at him, her fragility, which made it impossible for him to throw her to the wolves.

  ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘I’m taking you for something to eat. You look starving.’

  Kelly had surprised himself. He was, after all, a dedicated tabloid hack, top man, and his behaviour had been completely out of character.

  Angel made no protest. She had probably been unable to. In the taxi it became apparent that she was beyond eating. She just slumped in the seat beside him, passing no comment when he redirected the taxi driver from the restaurant he had planned to take her to, giving him instead the address of a hotel he had used before. Somewhere where the staff were used to couples with no luggage turning up unannounced.

  In the room he swiftly acquired he had poured himself a Scotch from the hip flask he invariably carried and only gave her one when she insisted.

  ‘I know who you are,’ he told her.

  She did not argue. ‘Add to the thrill, does it? Would you like me to put on a gym slip?’

  He’d shaken his head, wondering why she made him feel so sad. At one point she began to undress. He’d stopped her, thought about telling her who he was and then thought better of it in case he frightened her.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked.

  ‘Girl’s got to make a living,’ she told him, and shortly afterwards said that she needed to use the bathroom.

  She seemed a long time. He tapped on the door. No response. Eventually he tried the handle. The door opened, she had not even bothered to lock it. Inside she was slumped on the lavatory seat, a syringe on the tiled floor beside her. He picked it up and smelled it. Smack. He had thought as much.

  Angel looked at him with unfocused eyes, a silly smile on her lips. ‘I feel better now,’ she said.

  He helped her to the bed and she lay back against the pillows. ‘I think you should go home,’ he told her. ‘Have you got anyone to look after you?’

  She had shaken her head and fallen deeper into her drugged stupor.

  Kelly was quite full of sorrow for her by then. He remained unable to explain to himself why this waif of a girl moved him so, but she had done from the very beginning. From the first moment he had looked into her eyes she had had this effect on him.

  He went through her handbag then. There was a diary with some phone numbers and addresses at the back. Rachel Hobbs had been listed there – Angelica’s mother. Kelly had known all about her. Everyone did in those days – the archetypal pushy stage mum,
generally regarded as being of the opinion that she was as much a star as her daughter had once been.

  Kelly called Rachel Hobbs’ number. It was 2 a.m. An irritable voice, heavy with sleep, answered. But the irritation turned to what seemed like genuine concern when Kelly told her who he was and what had happened, exactly what her daughter was doing and the state she was in. However, being media wise, Mrs Hobbs was not just concerned about her daughter’s welfare.

  ‘You’re going to make a meal of this, I suppose, in that rag of yours. Well, I have no comment to make to add to whatever rubbish you’re going to write. Just tell me where my daughter is and I’ll come and get her.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary, Mrs Hobbs,’ said Kelly. ‘I’m bringing your daughter home. Oh, and I didn’t ring you for a quote, by the way. I don’t intend to run with this story. I rang you because you’re not only Angelica’s mother, you made her what she is. So now you’re the one who has to get her sorted. If you don’t, there will be other reporters, I promise you. If she goes back on the game to fund this habit of hers it will only be a matter of time before she gets found out big time. Mind you, she mightn’t even live that long.’

  Kelly had not waited for Rachel Hobbs to reply. Instead he called a cab, wrapped his jacket round Angel, helped her out of bed, and bundled her down the stairs and out of the hotel. She was still only semiconscious when they arrived back at that same terraced house in Clerkenwell, the house the family had moved back to when Angel’s child star bubble had burst, the house Kelly had revisited earlier that night, seventeen years later.

  Kelly had helped Angel into the house, half carrying her. Mrs Hobbs had put her to bed and made him a cup of tea.

  ‘I had no idea she’d gone on the game. I had no idea it had got that bad,’ Rachel Hobbs told him, and she had looked at him quizzically. ‘Are you really not going to write this?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, Mrs Hobbs, I’m not sure I can answer that,’ he had responded honestly. And he had never been able to answer it, really. It had always been inexplicable. Kelly hadn’t been a soft touch for a sob story, that was for certain – not in those days, anyway.

  ‘I’m grateful,’ she’d told him. And he’d known that she had been.

  The next day Kelly informed his bosses at the Despatch that there’d been a mistake. The girl looked like Angelica Hobbs, but it wasn’t her, he was sure of it.

  The news editor had not been best pleased. He’d wanted to know why Kelly hadn’t taken the girl up to the suite they’d hired at great expense. Kelly had said she’d refused to go with him there. He didn’t know why. She’d insisted they go back to her flat. The news editor was suspicious, Kelly knew that, but his reputation had yet to be completely destroyed. He was still the Despatch’s leading fireman, after all, and his version of events had been reluctantly accepted. More or less. They’d pored over Mike Phildon’s photographs, but they were snatches, albeit good ones, and none had caught Angel without the dark glasses. Kelly had made sure of that.

  He knew that they’d sent another team round to the same hotel bar for a few nights, but he’d hoped that Angel would never be found there again. And she wasn’t.

  He’d often thought of her, even then, and wondered how she was getting on. One of the other dailies picked up the story that she’d been booked into the famous Priory rehabilitation clinic. He’d supposed that had been inevitable. At least she and her mother were trying to do something. Three months later he’d received a phone call.

  He’d recognised her accent at once, Hollywood Cockney meets stage school English.

  ‘My mother tells me I owe you a thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Think nothing of it,’ he replied.

  ‘I can barely remember that night.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘In any case I just want to blank the whole thing out. You really did me a big favour, you know. When I realised how close I’d come to be splashed all over the Despatch even I knew something had to be done.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to do it just for yourself? You were on a free fall to destruction. That stood out a mile.’

  There had been a brief pause, then she’d said something which had sent a little shooting pain right through his heart.

  ‘I guess I never liked myself that much, Mr Kelly.’

  He struggled to find the right reply. ‘And now?’

  There had been another pause, and when she eventually spoke again she carefully avoided answering him properly.

  ‘I promise you one thing, Mr Kelly, I’ll never get in that state again.’

  Then she’d thanked him again and hung up. He’d sat at his desk thinking about her even more, trying to work out why she captivated him so much, and wondering why he hadn’t invited her out to dinner or something. Perhaps it was because he recognised that she was just a fantasy for him. Perhaps because one side of him was disgusted by her behaviour and yet he recognised a lot of himself in her. Maybe he’d realised even then that he was sliding down a similar slippery slope.

  But less than a year later Angel met and married Scott Silver after a whirlwind romance, and their marriage had always been represented as one of the great love affairs of the showbusiness world. Kelly had never met or spoken to Angel since, nor seen her except on TV and in newspaper photographs, until the killings at Maythorpe Manor.

  The next morning Kelly e-mailed his story back to Torquay, along with the up-to-date snaps Rachel Hobbs had allowed him to take of her with the digital camera which he was able to connect directly to his lap-top, in time to catch the first editions of the Argus. He’d written his piece the previous night before going to bed, but it didn’t do to give ’em copy too early. They thought you hadn’t worked hard enough for it. Kelly’d learned that long ago as well as so many other tricks.

  He had nothing more to do in London, but when he spoke to Hansford he invented a story about meeting contacts. He had no intention of reappearing at the Argus office until the following morning, as agreed with the editor. After a quick breakfast he rescued his car from its extortionately expensive car park and set off through the heavy London traffic, heading west across the city towards Chiswick and the start of the M4.

  On the way he called Karen Meadows on his mobile. If they were about to charge Angel Silver all his hard work could be wasted – for the time being, at any rate.

  ‘She’s going to be charged, almost certainly, but I can’t tell you when or even exactly with what, John,’ said Karen. ‘You’ll be all right for tonight’s edition, though, if that’s what’s worrying you.’

  ‘And tomorrow morning?’

  ‘What’ve you got, John? Something you’ve flogged to the nationals, I presume.’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Kelly lightly. And that much was true. He would file just as the lunchtime edition of the Argus hit the streets. The paper did pay him a regular monthly wage, after all, even if it was a pittance compared with what he had once earned.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I want –’

  The DCI interrupted him. ‘You don’t have to, I know. But even Angel Silver isn’t mad enough to give you or anyone else an interview right now. Anyway, I’ve got someone with her. For her own protection, you understand.’

  Kelly understood. ‘And the post mortem – did that tell you anything you didn’t know already?’

  There was a pause. Then she went formal on him. ‘You’ll have to wait for that, John. Our inquiries have only just begun.’

  ‘Forensic?’ he queried. ‘DNA?’

  ‘Already?’ she responded. ‘You’ve got to be joking. Only in the movies do you get forensic results this quick. And DNA, as you well know, takes three weeks or more. Look, John, we’ve got a double killing here. I’m really not going to be able to help you any more until we’re damned sure we know exactly what happened.’

  ‘But you do know, don’t you?’ Kelly was always persistent. ‘That’s what you told me, anyway.�
��

  ‘Well, yes. It seems straightforward enough. But two men have been stabbed to death on my patch and one of them was one of the biggest rock stars in the world. This is not a good case to make mistakes on. I’ve already got the chief constable on my back, and he’s got the Home Office on his.’

  ‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’ said Kelly as he ended the call.

  He knew that any major crime was always surrounded by people working to their own agenda. The police were no exception. In this case there really seemed to be very little detection to be done, but Karen Meadows would be only too well aware of how high profile the case was, and she was obviously determined that nothing was going to go wrong. That would be disastrous PR.

  Kelly drove to Torbay without a break and headed for Classic Motors. It might have been his imagination, but he’d reckoned the MG had sounded a little rough on the way home, so he decided to heed Wayne’s warning about the overdue service and drop the car off straight away.

  Wayne lent him his courtesy car as usual, which was rather a posh term for the overly large elderly Volvo, which felt to Kelly rather like a tank after the MG. None the less he decided to continue on out to Maidencombe, to the Silver home. The Volvo seemed particularly huge and clumsy as Kelly manoeuvred it through the village and down the slope to the beach car park. He had deliberately avoided attempting to negotiate Rock Lane, where, as he had expected, a number of fans and a smattering of press were still gathered outside Maythorpe Manor. Kelly mingled with them for a bit, soaking up the atmosphere, picking up a few quotes, gathering what information he could.

  Nobody had caught sight of the rock star’s widow since the police had escorted her back to the old manor house after she had been questioned at Torquay Police Station.

  Trevor Jones was there again. In fact, looking at him, Kelly wondered if he had been home at all. The young photographer was unshaven and slightly dishevelled-looking, his bright eyes hooded with tiredness. Even his normally unquenchable enthusiasm seemed to have waned slightly. Doorstepping did that to you, thought Kelly wryly.