Karen hugged her cat close. Sophie purred her appreciation. The plump tortoiseshell was the only creature Karen had shared her life with for some time. It was her own fatal flaw that since Flanigan she had probably never really trusted any man again. Except John Kelly.
Angel Silver disappeared off the face of the earth. Or that was the way it seemed to Kelly and the rest of the press pack on the case. Half the journalistic world was trying to find Angel, and nobody seemed to have got close, as far as Kelly could work out. He realised that the police must know, unless Angel had jumped bail, and mad as she was he didn’t think she was quite that crazy.
He asked Karen Meadows, who told him he had to be kidding.
‘There are limits,’ she informed him.
‘Even for me?’
‘Particularly for you, you old scallywag.’
He smiled at that. Lovely old-fashioned word, scallywag, and not one you could ever take offence at really. Kelly liked words a lot. That came with the territory, a bit, but in his case was another obsession. He hated it when words were wrongly used. Even apostrophes in the wrong place could set him ranting and raving about dropping standards. He had read in the Telegraph once about a society for the protection of the apostrophe, which he didn’t regard as eccentric or outlandish at all. He even thought about joining it, but Kelly wasn’t a great joiner of things. Alcoholics Anonymous had not had the effect on him he’d been told that it had on most alcoholics, many of whom attended meetings for the rest of their lives. Kelly had never been able to get beyond the embarrassment of it. In the end, and only after he’d sunk to the bottom of the pile and realised that the only alternative was death, Kelly had dealt with the drink the way he dealt with most things in his life. Alone.
Kelly waited for Angel Silver’s trial with a kind of numb anticipation. Following the Narey Report, which had come into force earlier in the year, major criminal cases were already being fast-tracked into crown courts without the old bureaucratic procedures of magistrates’ court committal proceedings. The purpose was to prevent the Human Rights Act violation of keeping suspects on remand in jail for months on end, but it also applied to Angel, even though she had been bailed. Her trial was therefore scheduled to begin at Exeter Crown Court during the second week in January, just eight weeks after the double killing at Maythorpe. And she was expected, as Karen Meadows had predicted from the start of it all, to continue to plead not guilty on grounds of self-defence.
Kelly carried on working intermittently on the Silver case, even though there was actually very little to do until the trial began. He checked all his police contacts regularly and occasionally phoned Mrs Hobbs who was friendly but guarded.
‘Madam wasn’t best pleased with me even though I thought your piece could only have helped her. At first she told me she thought I’d promised never to interfere again. But I told her this was different. It wasn’t some daft showbusiness story. It was my daughter facing a manslaughter charge, and I’d help her as much as I could, in any way that I could, whether she liked it or not.’
‘What did she say?’ Kelly had asked.
‘Do you know, I think I heard her laugh. She’s a rum one, that girl of mine. I’ll never fathom her. She calmed down. She said: “Right, I’ll let you off then. But if you shoot that mouth of yours off again I’ll be round with that carving knife.”’
Kelly had been amazed. How could she make a crack like that when she was on a manslaughter charge for stabbing a man to death – and with a carving knife too? Kelly certainly couldn’t understand Angel Silver and he wasn’t at all surprised that her mother couldn’t either. Angel was extraordinary, she really was.
‘Don’t you even think of printing that, John,’ said Rachel Hobbs quickly. ‘It’s off the record, all right.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Kelly. And he meant it, although he wasn’t entirely sure why.
He asked Mrs Hobbs several times where Angel was and each time she replied patiently that she didn’t know and she wouldn’t tell him if she did. Kelly was inclined to believe her on both counts.
The weeks passed more or less uneventfully. Once Kelly returned home to find the words ‘lying bastard’ painted in white on his black front door, which he managed to swiftly repaint before it was seen by Moira. There were no other attacks of vandalism against him, but Kelly was wary of letting his guard down. Perhaps the police warning to the James family, if indeed they had been the perpetrators, had done the trick after all. Perhaps they’d just got bored. Perhaps not.
Christmas approached, Angel remained hidden away somewhere, and her name remained unspoken between Kelly and Moira. True to the way in which their relationship was conducted the Grand Hotel incident was never mentioned again. Not by either of them.
At first there was just an edge of tension between Kelly and Moira. But after a bit things returned pretty much to normal. The easy familiarity, lack of stress, lack of demands, which seemed to suit them both so well within their relationship, returned. Although Kelly always felt that the incident in the restaurant of the Grand continued to hang between them.
Nick was expected for Christmas, much to Kelly’s delight. It even took his mind off the Silver case for a bit.
The rekindled relationship with his son was indeed one of the best things in Kelly’s life. He had thought often enough about his only son but had not dared to approach him as a boy. He hadn’t even troubled, or perhaps again dared, to get to know him when he had grown into a man. But when Nick had contacted him Kelly had been overjoyed. He had jumped at the opportunity, well aware that he would never have had the nerve himself to make an approach. In any case, rejection was one of Kelly’s great fears. It hadn’t been when he had been young and bold and full of belief in his own immortality. But after the cracks had formed and his world fell apart he had never quite been able to believe again that anyone would ever want him for himself.
His professional confidence, on the rare occasions he was ever given an opportunity nowadays to test himself beyond the mundane, remained fairly strong. But his personal confidence was non-existent. Moira, with her steadfast friendship and obvious deep fondness for him, had raised that confidence a little, but he was aware that the very fact of her loving him, and he had no doubt that she did, devalued her slightly in his eyes. He knew that was wrong. It made no difference. He didn’t love himself. That was the problem.
Kelly’s son shared many of his father’s dreams, and Kelly just hoped that unlike him, Nick, who certainly seemed to have already made a big success of his life even though Kelly didn’t really understand what his work entailed, would live out more of them than he’d ever managed to do.
Father and son had discovered so much in common. The love of words, for one thing. Nick didn’t write, but was an avid reader. Then there was that shared love of fast cars and of fast horses too – although Nick, to Kelly’s relief, did not seem to have inherited his father’s near compulsion for gambling. And they seemed to share the same sense of humour too, the same appreciation of the absurd in life.
Kelly was greatly looking forward to Christmas with Nick, and Moira, who had managed to get leave for the festive period, had agreed to cook a traditional Christmas dinner at Kelly’s house. Moira and Nick got on well. But then Moira got on well with almost everyone, thought Kelly with some satisfaction.
In preparation Moira insisted on giving the kitchen a fresh coat of paint and helped him clean the house, erect a Christmas tree in the living room, fill the fridge with food and the cupboard in the dining room with booze.
‘Just because I can’t touch the stuff doesn’t mean you and Nick can’t,’ Kelly had announced magnanimously.
He was extremely glad that Moira was doing the cooking. In his younger days Kelly had never cooked at all. He’d either eaten meals cooked for him by his wife or dined in smart restaurants with a variety of guests he more often than not shouldn’t have been with at all. Necessity had turned him into a reasonable cook since he’d rebuilt his li
fe in Torquay, but he was not quite confident enough to prepare the kind of Christmas feast he had in mind for his son. There was to be quite a gathering too. Jennifer would be there, of course, and Moira’s eldest daughter, Paula, was coming home from London with her husband, Ben, and their toddler son. It would be like a proper family gathering and it gave Kelly a nice warm feeling to think that he did have a family of sorts nowadays. Against all the odds.
Nick arrived on Christmas Eve at more or less exactly the time he had said he would. And Kelly, although he would have denied it if challenged, had been watching through the living room window for his son’s Porsche. He was impressed by Nick’s lifestyle. Kelly had visited the Thames-side apartment. He knew that Nick holidayed in the Caribbean in the winter and the smarter parts of Europe in the summer, and although he did not seem to have a regular girlfriend his father had got the impression that Nick did not suffer from shortage of women.
John Kelly was truly proud of his only son, whom he greeted with a handshake as usual, and a cautious smile which completely belied the strength of his feelings.
‘And how’s my favourite nurse,’ said Nick, flashing the endearing little-boy smile which he had inherited from his father, and which Kelly, well aware of its effect, had used mercilessly as a younger man both professionally and personally on the various women in his life. Moira stepped forward at once and gave Nick a big hug, to which he responded warmly. They looked so natural together and laughed together easily. Kelly envied Moira. For all that had happened in her life she still had that open quality and seemed always able to give affection without a problem in the world. He wished he could be as comfortable with his only son as she seemed to be.
He hoped that time would help, and that very soon he too would feel able to greet Nick with a big hug instead of a handshake. How he wished that he could. It was mainly guilt, of course, a feeling that you could not rewrite the sins of your own past just like that, which stopped him.
Lunch, however, was a great success. Moira had a calmness about her. Perhaps that came with her job. Certainly cooking a turkey, with all the trimmings, for six plus a noisy toddler determined to get under your feet at all times, did not faze her at all.
The meal was perfect. Nick was as nice and funny as ever. He wanted to help wash up but Moira protested that he should talk to his father, that they didn’t see each other often enough. Then the girls said Moira wasn’t to do any more either, they’d clear up and make coffee.
So, with Nick unconvincingly protesting that he felt like an Eastern potentate being waited on by his handmaidens, the three of them did as they were told. Kelly produced a box of Cuban cigars and passed one to Nick, who then had to quell Moira’s loudly expressed fears that Kelly would give his son a habit as bad as his own.
‘I like the occasional cigar, but I don’t seem to get hooked,’ he said. ‘I guess I’m just lucky. Non-addictive.’
Then, realising what he had said, Nick shot an anxious glance at his father.
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Kelly. ‘Apart from smoking I’m so darned vice free nowadays if I got too clean there’d be nothing left to hold me up.’
The afternoon stretched easily into evening. Paula and Ben took their young son back to Moira’s house to put him to bed. Jennifer was watching TV with the sound low. Moira had dozed off. Her irregular sleeping pattern meant that she would occasionally be overwhelmed by drowsiness, and that combined with the good lunch and quite a lot of wine was proving to be a fatal combination.
Kelly and Nick chatted easily and unchallengingly, enjoying each other’s company.
Then, some time around 10.30 the phone rang.
‘I’ll get it,’ said Kelly automatically. He was never able to leave a phone unanswered. No journalist could.
‘House of Kelly,’ he announced cheerily.
‘My mother seems to think you’re a good ally,’ said a voice. He knew who it was at once.
‘Hello, Angel,’ he half whispered. In the background he was vaguely aware of Moira stirring in her armchair.
‘W-what, who is it?’ she enquired of nobody in particular, just a reflex action upon being suddenly woken by the phone, while probably not even fully aware of what had awoken her.
But Nick had heard what Kelly had said. ‘Somebody called Angel,’ he responded with apparent innocence.
Kelly winced. Moira would not be pleased. The truth, however, was that he didn’t care much. This call, even though it was Christmas, was suddenly the most overwhelmingly important thing in his life.
‘How are you?’ he enquired into the phone.
‘I’ve been better. I just have this awful feeling, in spite of what everyone says, that things may go pear-shaped.’
‘Even the police are on your side, Angel,’ he said.
‘Yes, and why doesn’t that fill me with endless confidence?’
He laughed.
‘Look, John, I’ve got to talk to someone sooner or later. And I need someone to be able to put my case, to know what really happened, to tell it like it is if anything …’ she paused, ‘“… goes wrong in court”. I read your note. I know you’ve fed me all the old lines. None the less, you’re the lesser of most evils, I reckon.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Do I take that as a compliment?’
‘You do,’ she responded. ‘So how about it? How’d you like it to be you I talk to?’
‘I’d love it,’ he replied truthfully. ‘When do you want to meet?’
‘What’s wrong with now?’
‘Angel, it’s Christmas night –’
‘So?’ she interrupted. ‘I might change my mind tomorrow …’
Everything he had ever read about her, everything her mother had told him, suggested that Angel had developed into a manipulative bitch since his brief liaison with her all those years previously. This exchange backed that up.
‘Why would you do that?’ he asked, not giving up entirely without a fight.
‘Because that’s what I do,’ she responded without further explanation.
It was then that he caught something, just a slight inflection, in her voice, which suggested to him that she might be high. And it really was quite likely that when she came down she would change her mind, he thought, already justifying to himself what he knew he was going to do.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Where are you?’
‘Where do you think I am?’ Her voice was taunting, slightly mocking.
‘I’ve been trying to find that out for weeks,’ he said.
She laughed. ‘Jimmy Rudge hid me away. A cottage in Norfolk miles from anywhere and a whole gay network to look after me. The gay community still knows a lot about hiding things, you know.’
‘Sounds interesting.’
‘Boring as hell actually. But I had plenty of outings. Amazing how a wig and makeup can change your appearance.’
He said nothing, but he knew about her chameleon qualities.
‘And they found me company when I needed it,’ she went on.
There was something provocative in her voice which made Kelly unsure of what she meant by that and even more unsure if he actually wanted to know.
‘OK, so where are you now?’ he asked again. ‘At Maythorpe?’
‘Oh, clever boy!’
He ignored the sarcasm. ‘How long have you been back?’
‘About ten days,’ she said. ‘And nobody’s even noticed. I’m not an old story already, am I?’
More mockery. Was it really that long since he’d checked out the old manor house? He supposed it must have been. He had been preoccupied with Christmas and his son’s visit. So Angel was half right. Even he had lost interest a bit after so long with nothing happening.
None the less he told her, ‘You’ll never be an old story, Angel.’
‘So I’ll expect you then?’
‘I’ll be with you in half an hour.’
‘Make sure you hurry.’
She hung up without giving him time to say goodbye. T
ypical, he somehow suspected. She’d sounded almost flirtatious. She’d also sounded annoyingly sure of herself, sure that he would drop everything and run to her. Which, of course, was exactly what he was going to do.
He replaced the receiver with exaggerated care and turned round very slowly to face Nick and Moira. Jennifer had slipped into the kitchen to put the kettle on and he could hear her arranging mugs.
‘I’m sorry, guys, I’ve got to go out for a bit,’ he said, spreading his arms in apology. ‘Work, you know.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Nick replied quickly.
Moira looked at him steadily. ‘She’s back then,’ she said flatly.
Kelly nodded, trying to keep his face expressionless. When he spoke again he addressed Nick, barely looking at Moira.
‘It’s this Scott Silver story, biggest thing in these parts for years. I’m on a major exclusive here, Nick.’
‘Sure, Dad,’ said Nick in a tone of voice which gave his father no indication at all of what he might be thinking.
‘Yeah, I should be no more than a couple of hours maximum. Sorry, Moira, I’ll be as quick as I can.’
‘Whatever you say, John,’ she replied stiffly.
‘I’ll be back for that cup of tea later,’ he said over his shoulder as he headed for the front door.
Moira followed him out into the hallway, but his thoughts were already racing away from him when he heard her say quietly, to herself really, ‘Only it’s not Scott Silver, is it, John? It’s Angel. She’s snapped her fingers and you’re going running. On Christmas Day, for God’s sake.’
Kelly didn’t reply, pretended he hadn’t heard. He told himself Moira didn’t deserve a reply. He was chasing a big story, the biggest he had encountered in years, that was all, though he was just about honest enough to admit to himself that there might be some truth in what Moira had said.
A Moment Of Madness Page 15
