It was then that he noticed the young woman he had nearly run over on Christmas night, the one who intrigued him so much. She was standing right alongside, and it was probably only because she was so still and silent, and dressed in her usual dull dark clothes, that he had not been aware of her presence before. As he would already have expected somehow, almost as if he knew her, she carried no banner, and neither was she joining in the singing. She had her back to him and her face was pressed against the railings as usual.
‘Hello again,’ he said to her.
She did not reply, nor even turn to look at him.
‘Well, at least Angel is free,’ he went on, trying desperately to coax her into conversation.
There was no response. Nothing at all discernible. Although he thought her shoulders tensed slightly.
‘It would have been terrible if they’d locked her up, wouldn’t it?’ he continued conversationally. ‘After all, she was only trying to protect Scott …’
The young woman swung round then to face him. Her features were screwed into an expression of pure fury, her arms hung loose by her sides but her fists were tightly clenched. She uttered a strange sound, which Kelly couldn’t quite make out. It was a kind of moan. Derisory? Scornful? He wasn’t sure.
She was about to talk to him, surely. To tell him what had made her so angry. But she didn’t speak. Instead she suddenly raised her right fist and shook it at him. Kelly was quite taken aback. He didn’t think anybody had ever actually shaken their fist at him before. For a brief moment he thought she was going to strike out at him. But she didn’t do that either. Instead she lowered her arm, pushed past him and half ran up the hill in the direction of the main Torquay road. He watched her reach the first corner and disappear behind the big Devon hedges. Did she have a car, somewhere? Was she on foot? If so, perhaps he could persuade her to let him give her a lift wherever she was going.
He hot-footed it back to the MG, which was parked down the hill in the Maidencombe beach car park again, quickly started the little motor and took off after her, taking the most direct route through the village to the main road. At the top he turned left. He thought that if she had no transport he should be able to see her then. But he couldn’t. He motored slowly for about a mile or so in the direction of Torquay. There was no sign of the girl. She could not possibly have got further on foot, and if she was in a vehicle she would be long gone. He turned in a side road, returned to Maidencombe and this time swung off the main drag directly into Rock Lane. Maybe she was still lurking there somewhere, he thought, or maybe she had even returned to stand outside Maythorpe again.
But Rock Lane was deserted, except outside the old manor house, of course, where the waiting crowd parted reluctantly for him. Kelly slowed almost to a halt, looking for her. Still no sign.
Yet again she had disappeared, it seemed. But then, she was good at that.
Eleven
Kelly slammed down the phone. He had spent just about every waking moment for two weeks either trying to get to see Angel or thinking about her.
Now both Angel’s mobile, to which he had in any case never got a reply, and the telephone number for Maythorpe, where he had only ever spoken to the answering machine anyway, had been summarily changed.
Kelly really had no idea how he was going to get in touch with her directly ever again. And, mindful of Angel’s threat, he couldn’t really approach Rachel Hobbs again. His only solace was that presumably all the other journalists he knew who would be chasing the rock star’s widow were facing the same problems. The previous evening, on his daily trip out to the big old manor house, he had once again put a note in the big letter box by the gate: ‘We must talk. I made a deal with you that I am trying to keep. We really need to talk.’
He didn’t just want Angel’s permission to print, he wanted her reaction now to all that had happened to her. He was after an up-date. He wanted to know how the trial, relatively brief though it had been, had affected her in addition to everything else she had gone through. How was she getting through her days? Was she completely traumatised? He wondered about that. Maybe that was why she was shutting herself off this way. Maybe her quite horrific experience had unhinged her. Maybe she was suicidal. His interest wasn’t just professional, he knew himself well enough to admit that. He found that he was seriously worried for her safety, and deeply frustrated that he could not get near her to find out how she was coping.
The number of fans outside Maythorpe had diminished daily. There was, after all, little there to encourage pilgrims. He had seen the strange young woman only once more, early one evening just a few days after the trial, and as soon as she caught sight of Kelly she did her now familiar disappearing trick. He hadn’t even been given a chance to get near her, not, based on past experience, that he thought it would do him much good if he had.
Contact with the outside world seemed to be limited during that time to a visit from a Sainsbury’s delivery van every couple of days, and the ubiquitous Mrs Nott who was frequently in and out. Kelly had approached her a couple of times for the hell of it, but the woman was largely uncommunicative and, when pressed, merely remained fulsome in her praise of her employer. Kelly had been told that she was probably the best-paid daily help in the West of England and that her wages had continued to be delivered in full even when Angel had shut the house up after Scott’s death. Angel knew how to buy loyalty, he thought, and was then a bit ashamed of himself because he really had no idea what kind of person Mrs Nott was. It was just that there was something about the small plump woman with her tight little mouth which made him think that money rather than friendship would be her driving force.
He leaned back in his chair and racked his brain to no avail. He did what he so often did when he was stuck. He called Karen Meadows. This time it turned out not to be such a good idea.
Karen was on her way home. She felt lousy. She had a rotten cold and she’d left the station early, intending to take to her bed and fight it off.
‘What do you want?’ she asked Kelly nasally.
‘And hello to you too,’ said Kelly.
‘Look, I’m not in the mood.’
‘I can hear that. Have you got a cold?’
‘My God, the man’s a genius,’ she muttered.
‘Sorry. I just wondered if you had any word at all on Angel Silver.’
‘Now there’s a surprise.’
Kelly ignored the sarcasm.
‘Well, have you?’
‘Angel Silver was tried and acquitted, in case it escaped your notice, John. She is no longer any of my business.’
‘I suppose not. It all went pretty smoothly for her really, didn’t it? Nobody gave her much of a hard time, did they?’
Karen made no response to that. She knew what Kelly was getting at and privately she agreed with him. The word from above had been pretty strong. The chief constable had made it quite clear to Karen that there must be no repetition of the Tony Martin case, when public opinion had been so strongly behind the farmer who was at first jailed for life for murder after killing an intruder at his home. Harry Tomlinson had put pressure on Karen, and she knew well enough the pressure he had been under from higher authorities like the Home Office. The processes of law had had to be seen to be executed, but everyone involved had probably known the result that they wanted and, more than likely, everything possible had been done at the highest level to ensure that. Angel had stabbed a man to death and had to be charged with something. Yet, as Tomlinson had said, if Angel Silver had been jailed for killing the man who had killed her husband there would almost certainly have been a public outcry. The jury had fortuitously cleared Angel, and Karen had absolutely no idea just how much the prosecution services had been acting under any particular instructions, but she did know that somehow the right judge had been picked for the job.
There was little doubt that had the jury found Angel guilty of manslaughter, Lord Justice Cunningham would have pronounced the most lenient sentence possible.
> ‘Are you there, Karen?’
‘Yes. I’m here.’
‘It’s just that I made a deal not to print my interview until I’d talked to Angel again. I wondered if maybe you still had some way of contacting her.’
‘No,’ said Karen abruptly. ‘Neither am I interested in your pathetic bloody problems. I’ve got enough of my own, thank you very much. Now bugger off.’
She pushed the end button on her phone. Her nose was running. She sniffed miserably and rummaged around in her handbag, open on the passenger seat, for a paper tissue.
She knew she was inclined to blow hot and cold with Kelly, but sometimes she just couldn’t help it. Apart from anything else the old bugger always seemed to find her Achilles heel.
It wasn’t that she had any real doubt about what had happened at Maythorpe House the night Scott Silver and Terry James had died. And, while believing absolutely that Angel had to stand trial, she also approved absolutely the verdict. Karen stood somewhere in between the wet liberals of the force and the aggressive right. She hoped she stood for common sense. Also she could not help but be aware that her adroit handling of the Silver case had not gone unnoticed.
It was just that whenever politics came into policing, which it so often did nowadays, Karen was left with that uneasy feeling.
By the end of January Kelly was just about ready to break his agreement with Angel. He felt he had kept his end of the deal by waiting that long, and there was no doubt that Angel was giving him the run-around. Then he arrived at Maythorpe one afternoon just as Jimmy Rudge, Scott’s business manager, was driving through the gates on his way out. Immediately Kelly swung the MG in front of Rudge’s black Range Rover, blocking his way. He quickly jumped out of the little car and made his way to the driver’s door of Rudge’s much bigger vehicle. Acting on impulse he tried to open the door, which seemed to be locked.
Jimmy Rudge wound down his window a scant couple of inches.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ he enquired sharply. His voice was calm but his eyes looked a bit panicky.
However, Kelly withdrew at once, stepping smartly backwards, and feeling vaguely ridiculous.
‘John Kelly, Evening Argus –’ he began.
‘I know who you are, you bloody fool, you’ve been around every bloody corner since this thing began,’ Jimmy Rudge shouted through the window, his voice no longer calm at all. It gave Kelly a fleeting sense of satisfaction to see the smooth bastard lose his cool.
But all he said was a quiet: ‘I’m sorry.’ However, he made no attempt to return to his car, which continued to block Rudge’s path.
‘Yes, well.’ Jimmy Rudge switched his gaze hopefully from Kelly to the MG and back again. Kelly made no move.
‘So OK, what do you want?’ asked Rudge huffily.
‘I just wanted to know how Angel is,’ Kelly replied quietly.
‘She’s fine.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes really.’
Kelly still didn’t budge.
‘For God’s sake, man, how would you expect her to be?’ asked Rudge then. ‘Her husband’s been murdered and she’s just stood trial for the manslaughter of the man who killed him. She’s been through hell. But she’s coping and she’s coping by keeping away from people like you.’
Kelly felt wounded by that remark. Of course he was after a story. But he actually had the story already, or the bulk of it, anyway. He wanted to explain that he was trying to do the decent thing; that he really did consider himself to be Angel’s friend; that maybe he had proved that in the past. Perhaps some of that showed in his face. At least Jimmy Rudge sounded marginally less hostile when he spoke again.
‘Look, Angel’s a survivor – if you know anything about her you’ll know that.’
He was right, of course, and the thought cheered Kelly.
He nodded. ‘She’s given me an interview already, but we made a deal that I wouldn’t use it until she gave me the go-ahead. I’ve tried to keep that deal, but now she won’t even talk to me.’
Rudge looked mildly surprised. That gratified Kelly too.
‘Any chance of you asking her to call me?’
Rudge chuckled without much humour. ‘This is the first time I’ve managed to get to see her in weeks,’ he said. ‘And we’ve got so much stuff to sort out, you wouldn’t believe it.’
‘Would you try?’ Kelly persisted.
Rudge sighed. ‘I’ll try,’ he said flatly.
Kelly was far from convinced but reckoned that was the best he was going to get. He returned to the MG, reversing it out of the way to allow Rudge to pass.
‘Thanks,’ he called, more in encouragement than anything else, as the two vehicles’ paths crossed.
He watched the black Range Rover disappear up Rock Lane. There was nobody else around at all. The fans seemed finally to have deserted Maythorpe altogether. It was the worst sort of January day, cold and dull. The sky grey and low with the imminence of rain. That grim sort of winter weather which made even Kelly, who was totally disinterested in sun-seeking, wonder idly whether life wouldn’t be rather more pleasant in a Mediterranean climate. Kelly’s head felt as heavy as the atmosphere. There was a tickle in his nose. Suddenly he sneezed, several times. He wondered if, like Karen Meadows, he too was getting a cold. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his coat sleeve. Why did he never have a handkerchief? The weather and his physical discomfort pretty much matched his mood.
It happened just after 11 p.m. on one of Moira’s nights off. Kelly had cooked dinner for her. She was a far better cook than him, but she seemed to like it when he cooked and he enjoyed doing something for her which gave her pleasure. He did little enough, after all, and although he and Moira seemed to be muddling along well enough he was aware of a certain strain lurking just below the surface. And he knew how distant and preoccupied he had been for so much of the time ever since he had become involved in the Silver case.
The meal went surprisingly well, one of his better efforts. He had managed to cook the sirloin steaks just how they both liked them, thanks to the iron griddle pan that was his favourite kitchen utensil. They were nearly black on the outside and nicely pink inside, all the juices satisfactorily sealed within the almost charred crust.
He and Moira were sitting together in contented companionship on the big sofa, half watching an old movie, Moira stretched out and leaning against him. He undid her bra and was lazily playing with one of her breasts while she occasionally made appreciative noises. He was about to suggest that they go to bed when they were interrupted by the ringing of the phone in the hall.
Kelly jumped to his feet at once, pushing Moira away. He hurried out into the hall. ‘No ID Received’, read the message on the display panel of his digital phone. Somehow he just knew who was calling. There was a tingling sensation running up and down his spine. The adrenalin was racing. He was quite sure that it was Angel calling before he even picked up the phone. Certainly it was true that he didn’t get too many phone calls at that time of night, but it was more than that. He had a sixth sense about the bloody woman, he really believed that he did.
He pressed the receiver to his ear.
‘Hello,’ he said quietly, and he could hear the expectancy in his own voice.
Again, she didn’t introduce herself. ‘You’d better come round,’ she said.
‘What, now?’
‘Whyever not?’
‘It’s nearly midnight,’ he protested mildly, taking care not to say her name, although he might as well not have bothered. As usual Moira was ahead of the game.
‘I don’t bloody believe it,’ he heard her call irritably from the living room. ‘Tell her you’ll go round tomorrow, for Christ’s sake, John.’
Angel was speaking again. Her voice bantering to the point of mockery, yet she somehow managed to sound flirtatious at the same time. ‘Ten minutes past eleven. I see you’re showing your usual strict attention to the facts.’
‘Well, it is late …’
If he took off for Maythorpe now he knew what Moira would say to him – that he had gone running again, jumped to Angel’s whim. Moira would be right too. He had spent weeks trying to get Angel even to speak to him and now, yet again, she just expected him to drop everything and go to her.
‘About to turn into a pumpkin, are you?’
‘Well, no, but –’
She interrupted him. ‘I don’t like buts,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come and see me or not? It’s quite simple.’
An entire choir of voices in his head warned him not to let her have her own way like this, not to let her run rings round him. He reminded himself then that he did have a major story to sort out. Funny how that could be so easily overshadowed in his dealings with Angel. He did have a good professional reason for seeing her, although suddenly it almost seemed like just an excuse to go running, which he was, of course, about to do. So there was little point, really, in continuing to protest.
‘OK. I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he said.
He put the phone down and turned to face the music – in the shape of Moira, who came out into the hall from the living room, buttoning her blouse with one hand, and reaching for her coat from the hat-stand behind the front door with the other.
‘Right, I’ll be off then,’ she said.
‘No, don’t,’ he said automatically. ‘I won’t be long this time, I promise. Go to bed. I’ll be back before you know it.’
‘Spare me, John. You’ll stay with that woman for as long as you can, and don’t think I don’t know it.’
‘Look, Moira, you know I’ve got this interview burning a hole in my notebook. It really is work, you know. You don’t want me to lose the story, do you?’
‘Quite frankly, John, I don’t care about your damned story, and I sometimes doubt you do that much, either.’
‘Why on earth else would I turn out in the middle of the night?’ he asked, realising at once that he had made a mistake.
‘John, will you please stop kidding yourself?’ Moira replied wearily.
A Moment Of Madness Page 19
