There followed just a few seconds’ silence. Moira’s voice was still a little flat when she replied but he was fairly sure, none the less, that she was genuinely pleased.
‘OK, I’d like that,’ she said quietly.
‘Good. I’ll drive, then you can have a drink. I’ll come round to yours around eight,’ he replied. ‘Oh, and give my love to Paula.’
The MG was ready at Classic Motors and Kelly was able to pick it up on his way, which was a relief, although he cursed himself silently for not having bothered to find a new garage for it after the lease had run out on the one he had rented until mid-summer.
The Grand, as ever, did not disappoint, it was a lovely old hotel in a fine seaside location and boasted an excellent restaurant, and Kelly made a real effort for Moira.
Everything went well until the coffee stage, which he’d ordered along with a cognac for Moira, who had already had a couple of gin and tonics followed by a half-bottle of Chablis with her Dover sole. She seemed relaxed and mellow, and had only mentioned the brick incident fairly briefly in the car on the way to the Grand.
But, somewhat out of the blue, as she sipped her cognac she started asking Kelly about Angel.
‘Why are you so fascinated by that woman?’
‘I’m not,’ he replied shortly.
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I am not being ridiculous. I am not fascinated by Angel Silver. I am fascinated by the story. It’s just such a great yarn.’
‘The story?’ Moira’s voice rose to a considerably higher pitch than usual. Perhaps it was the alcohol that had done that, he thought uncharitably, aware enough of himself to realise that there was nothing in this world more unbearably pious than the converted.
‘Shush,’ he said.
‘No I won’t shush. You’re getting to be obsessed by that woman, and you won’t admit it. Playing her message again and again on your answering machine. It wasn’t even a nice message.’
Kelly felt his irritation rise. This really was not the way he had planned things. He was determined not to let the evening be spoiled.
‘Even when some bastard throws a brick through your window all you want to do is to carry on working on her story, get yourself to court so that you can watch her –’
Kelly interrupted sharply. He didn’t want the evening ruined, and that was the way things were going.
‘Look, shall we talk about something else?’ he said.
‘No, I want to know why you’re obsessed with Angel Silver.’
‘I’ve told you I’m not.’
‘Humph.’ Moira gave a rather silly sort of snort. Her cheeks were flushed. She just wouldn’t let go. She’d never behaved like this before, not with him, anyway. ‘I know you, John Kelly. You just don’t realise how well I know you.’
That was just the sort of comment guaranteed to make Kelly really mad. Moira sounded smug and self-satisfied. After all, he told himself, he had only been doing his job. The anger began to rise in him dangerously.
‘If you really know me that well you’d know what I was thinking now, wouldn’t you?’ His voice was quiet and very controlled. He didn’t know whether she realised or not that he was at his most dangerous when he was like that. But for the first time during the evening she looked uncertain.
‘All right then, what are you thinking?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Really? Well, I bet I could guess. I bet it’s about that Angel –’
He interrupted her then. ‘I was thinking that right now I really do understand why that old man of yours knocked you about,’ he said coldly.
Her eyes opened wide in disbelief. For just a fleeting second she looked as if he had hit her too. Moira was a strong woman, but Kelly had homed in on her big weakness. Her lower lip trembled.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ he said. ‘Let’s get the bill and I’ll take you home.’
The next day Kelly woke alone feeling terrible. Why on earth had he reacted so strongly? Moira had indeed been deeply irritating but nothing justified the remark he had made. Absolutely nothing.
Kelly did not have a good track record with women. He had made more than his fair share, particularly his first wife, deeply unhappy. But his problem was that he liked women too much. It was almost beyond his comprehension that any man would hurt a woman physically, and Kelly abhorred those who did.
He’d met Moira at a dinner party organised by Joe Robertson, about a year after he had started working for the Argus. Without the prop of alcohol Kelly had found it impossible to build himself much of a social life in the seaside town. Also, when he’d stopped drinking he’d realised that he no longer knew how to pick up women, something he had always rather excelled at. But in any case, no longer fuelled by drink and coke and with damned near unlimited expenses in his pocket, he’d pretty much lost the urge. He’d become a loner. In every way.
Kelly had recognised at once the placing next to each other of an unattached man and an apparently unattached woman of a certain age amid a small group of solid couples for the piece of blatant matchmaking that it had been. But, far from taking offence, he had accepted it as the warm gesture which he was sure his old friend intended and had been touched by it.
Also, he had liked Moira from the start. She was attractive, bright and practical. There was also a sparkle in her eye that suggested that she could be darned sexy too, and without too much encouragement.
‘She’s just what you need, John,’ Joe Robertson’s wife had told him in a slightly too loud aside. Even that had not put him off. Moira had flushed slightly. Kelly had winked his commiseration.
He’d taken her home, and they’d travelled in giggling companionship in the little MG, wondering at other people’s good intentions – which in fact turned out to be almost totally successful.
Moira had invited him into her home, which had proved to be so conveniently close to his own. Somewhat to Kelly’s surprise they’d slept together that same night and he had reflected that Sandra Robertson had actually been quite right. He and Moira were indeed two lonely like-minded souls who needed each other.
Their relationship flourished. It was never a great torrid romance – Kelly had reckoned that they had probably both been through too much ever to experience that again – but rather something warm and comfortable. They gave each other companionship and a level of affection which he felt was as great as anything he could have hoped for. The sex was good too. Surprisingly so. Better than he had thought it would ever be again.
In the beginning he had been almost eager for them to move in together, had wanted totally to share the remains of his life with her. But it was harder for him to win Moira’s trust than her affection. She had little reason to trust men, and it was some time before she told him about her monster of a husband who had used her for target practice with his fists whenever the mood took him.
‘Why did you stay with him?’ he had asked her.
It was the old story. One he had never fully understood because perhaps no man ever could.
‘He was a good father to our three girls. Strange, perhaps, but he never laid a finger on them, and I knew he never would. It was just me he’d vent his anger on. And, you know, every time when it was over, he couldn’t even tell me why …’
Moira was a highly qualified nursing sister, clever and capable, able to make her own way in the world, earn her own living. But she had stayed with the bastard because her girls needed their father. Because he was her husband. Because of all manner of reasons which were quite beyond Kelly.
‘He was always so sorry afterwards, John,’ Moira told him. ‘And then for weeks, maybe months, he wouldn’t touch me, and we’d be quite a happy family. Honestly.’
It was more than not being able to understand. John couldn’t quite believe people could live like that.
‘The girls must have known, surely?’
‘I became good at suffering in silence,’ Moira explained. ‘However hard Pete hit me I never
cried out. Never. And he was very organised in his attacks, you know.’
Kelly had thought what an odd turn of phrase that was.
‘He only every hit me in our bedroom. He would tell me to go there and I always did so at once because if I didn’t it would be even worse. He would lock the door, then he would explain to me exactly what I had done to deserve a punishment, then he would go for me. But only on my body, upper arms, upper legs, the parts of me that would normally be concealed by clothes. He never touched my face. A couple of times I had to go to hospital. He broke two ribs once, and my wrist, but we’d just make up some story about a fall.’
‘But you have three intelligent daughters, Moira. They must have known what was going on. Kids do …’
‘No, John, they didn’t.’ She had been quite insistent. ‘And you must never tell them. Never.’
It was then that he had learned that Moira’s daughters, one of whom, the youngest, Jennifer, still lived at home, had not only not known at the time of their father’s violent behaviour but neither had they ever been told. Peter Simmons had died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack three years before Kelly and Moira had met, mercifully releasing his wife from a life of domestic torment, and had been mourned by his family like any other loved father and husband.
To Kelly it was farcical, and he had remained unconvinced that the girls could really have been so unaware. The most he could accept was that Moira’s daughters had just blanked their father’s outrages out, come to believe only what they wanted to believe. Kelly had got to know Jennifer quite well, of course, and she seemed like any other normal well-adjusted teenager to him – at least as normal and well-adjusted as teenagers ever are – but he had always felt uneasy about those four women, mother and daughters, living out their lie together.
After Moira had first told him about her troubled past, he’d thought to himself that sooner or later the whole family would erupt in some kind of awful delayed reaction. It hadn’t happened yet, though. Whatever defence mechanisms they had built up around themselves seemed remarkably effective. Kelly had learned to accept Moira’s way of dealing with what had happened to her and not to criticise. In any case, how could he possibly criticise someone who had been through what she had been through?
Now he had quite crassly and unforgivably thrown the whole dreadful thing in her face. He’d actually told her he could understand why Peter Simmons had beaten her. Nothing justified that. How could he have done it?
He reached for a cigarette for courage, and only when it was lit and he had taken the first few essential drags of the day, did he feel able to call Moira. It was just after 6.30 a.m. But he knew she’d be awake too. Her crazy working hours meant that she was more able to sleep during the day than at night, even when she was off duty. In any case, Jennifer had to leave for college before eight. Kelly imagined Moira pottering around her tidy little kitchen making coffee, waiting for Jennifer to come downstairs at the last possible moment as usual.
She answered the phone quite quickly and in a way that indicated that she had guessed it would be him. Well, who else would call at that hour?
‘Hi, I just wanted to say sorry,’ he said.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, her tone of voice making it clear that it wasn’t. He knew he certainly didn’t need to explain what he was apologising for.
‘You know how I feel about all that, I really am sorry for what I said,’ he repeated.
‘It’s OK,’ she said again. ‘I think I was a bit drunk –’
‘No you weren’t.’
‘Well, I kept on at you, didn’t I? Maybe I wanted to make you mad.’
Was that how she had excused her husband for all those years, he wondered.
‘I shouldn’t have said what I did,’ he went on. ‘It was unforgivable. But if you can forgive me, what about trying again tonight?’
‘I’m back on duty tonight, John.’
Of course. He should have known that. He’d forgotten.
‘Lunch then. I’ll meet you in town at twelve thirty. How about that new fish place on the front?’
She had agreed readily enough. But he knew he’d have some bridge-building to do. He lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first. The extraordinary thing was that he and Moira had never really quarrelled at all during their years together. He had always thought that part of the reason for that was probably that they did not actually live together. But there was more, of course. Both of them had had enough disruption and drama in their lives of one kind and another. Neither was probably able to deal with an emotionally volatile relationship. He had always thought that they were more like friends who had sex together than real lovers, but it wasn’t until now that he had perhaps realised how important their slightly unusual relationship was to him. It had always worked brilliantly. That was the truth of it.
The incident of the previous night had somehow shaken its foundation. They had both broken the unwritten rule really – that there should be no stress, no intrusive probing, and above all no conflict. Just an easy unformulated sharing of their lives.
And now, for the first time in his relationship with Moira, Kelly felt unsure and uneasy.
He set off rather glumly for work and was horrified to find that the MG seemed to be missing from its usual parking space outside his house. Then he remembered. He was so preoccupied that he’d actually managed to forget that he’d parked the car three streets away as a precaution.
Soon after he’d eventually found it and was on his way to the Argus office Karen Meadows called.
‘What’s all this I hear about a brick being thrown through your front-room window?’ she asked.
Kelly sighed. Trust Karen to know already.
‘Vandals, what else?’ he remarked as casually as he could. He still didn’t want to involve the police. Something told him that would stir things up even more.
‘In St Marychurch? At five a.m. on a weekday morning?’
‘Why not?’
‘Yes, well, we checked the brick for fingerprints and surprisingly enough there weren’t any. So uniformed are going to send a couple of lads over to have a word with Ken James and any of the rest of his family.’
‘I’d rather they didn’t.’
‘Tough.’
Karen hung up before he could protest any more. She was sitting, in the kitchen of her seafront flat just up the road from the Grand Hotel, with her cat on her lap and a mug of tea on the table before her. Kelly had always been a sharp operator as a journalist but she hoped he wasn’t getting in too deep with the Silver case. Reporters all too often thought only about the story and gave little or no consideration to any other consequences.
It was strange that Karen still cared about Kelly after all these years, but she did. She knew that many of her colleagues had picked up on what she had once overheard rather sarcastically described as her ‘special relationship’ with the reporter.
The truth was that Karen and Kelly had first met when she had been an eager young detective constable based at the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary HQ in Exeter, and Kelly had been sent back to his old West Country local paper patch by the Despatch to investigate organised crime on the English Riviera.
He had discovered that one of the prime suspects, an Irishman called David Flanigan, was indulging in a passionate affair with DC Karen Meadows. Flanigan, it seemed, was heavily into the international trade of both drugs and arms. And it was a little-known fact that the West of England was a world-wide centre for the arms trade, boasting far more than its fair share of weapons factories, often discreetly hidden away in leafy rural lanes. Flanigan had also had a strong IRA connection, Kelly had been able to reveal.
Looking back, Karen couldn’t believe that she could have been so naïve, not even then. She also hadn’t believed that a newspaper reporter had come up with so much information which the police force apparently did not have, or at least not at her then lowly level. She had been swept off her feet by a sophisticated and handsome charmer. I
t had been a whirlwind romance – she had known Flanigan for less than three months before the bubble burst – but Karen had been truly in love. She had been aware that there was gossip about him and that his activities had attracted police attention on more than one occasion, but her feelings for him were such that when Flanigan insisted that he was just an honest businessman whose success led to jealous rumour-mongering she had believed him without question. Probably because she had wanted to so much. She still had no idea whether or not David Flanigan had been using her merely for information, but she remained afraid that she had probably, albeit unwittingly, done him several favours.
Kelly had up-fronted Karen first. She had been both astonished and devastated. She had also been surprised by Kelly’s reaction. He left her in little doubt that he had been expecting to confront a bent cop. Instead he had encountered a duped young woman who had fallen head over heels in love and behaved like an idiot. Karen had tried immediately to call Flanigan. She couldn’t reach him. Had, in fact, never heard from him since. Word was he was doing the same kind of business somewhere in South America. It seemed that he had got wind of Kelly’s investigation and done a fast runner.
Karen had expected to be decimated. She waited almost listlessly for Kelly’s story to be printed in the Despatch. When it was, over several days, to her utter astonishment she was not mentioned at all. There were whispers within the force, of course several of her colleagues were aware at least that she knew Flanigan and had been seen with him, although, mercifully, she had never discussed the true nature of their relationship with anyone. A bit of flak flew, but nobody could prove anything, and Karen’s fledgling but promising career was, by and large, unaffected by her indiscretion.
She could still remember calling Kelly in his London office to thank him.
‘Don’t mention it,’ he’d replied. ‘It’s villains and bent bastards I’m after, not bloody fools.’
And that had been the start of a friendship which had lasted getting on for twenty years. Contrary to general opinion, there had never been an affair at all, although sometimes Karen almost wished there had been. But, then, when a woman cop and an old hack were as close as she was with Kelly, rumours were inevitable.
A Moment Of Madness Page 14
