Karen raised her eyebrows enquiringly, took both gifts from him, and ushered him into the flat. Once inside she led him into the living room overlooking the bay and peered into the carrier bag. When she saw the contents she immediately started to laugh.
Kelly had bought the detective chief inspector’s cat a rather sophisticated battery-operated toy mouse.
Karen dangled the creature by its plastic tail and giggled.
‘C’mon, Sophe,’ she called. ‘Your Uncle John has bought you a present.’
There was no immediate response. Kelly glanced around him. Sophie, with her paws in the air, was flat out on her back by the radiator beneath the window. She appeared to be sound asleep and showed no signs whatsoever of intending to arouse herself.
Karen shrugged apologetically.
‘It’s all right,’ said Kelly. ‘She’s a proper cat, that Sophie.’
‘She’s certainly that,’ replied Karen. She walked over to the window, leaned down and scratched Sophie’s head. The cat did not stir.
Karen returned her attention to Kelly.
‘I’d offer to share the bottle you’ve brought if I didn’t know it would kill you, you old bugger,’ she said.
‘I know,’ said Kelly.
‘So how does coffee sound?’
‘Great.’
He gazed idly out of the window as Karen busied herself in the kitchen. Lights flickered all around the bay. It was, appropriately, he thought, a beautiful night. Stars and a half-moon reflected on what seemed to be an unseasonably still sea. Kelly’s senses were on full alert, he realised. His nostrils began to twitch appreciatively. There was nothing quite like the smell of real coffee brewing, and, unlike Angel, he thought aimlessly, Karen Meadows would not consider serving anything other.
Minutes later, when they were sitting companionably sipping coffee which was every bit as good as his sense of smell had led him to expect, Kelly apologised for arriving unexpectedly.
‘It was just that I thought you might find an excuse if I phoned. I do know how much pressure you’ve been under, too,’ he said. He paused. Then added, rather awkwardly, ‘Also, I wanted to say thank you.’
Karen regarded him equivocally. ‘For what?’
‘You know what. And I do appreciate it, that’s all.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Karen.
Kelly didn’t mind. One thing he’d remembered from his AA meetings of years ago was the counsellor who’d told him not to listen to what people said, but instead to observe what they did.
‘Bollocks yourself,’ he countered easily.
Karen smiled.
‘I saw all your stuff in the Sun this morning,’ she said. ‘No wonder you’re in such a good mood.’
‘Sort of. How about you? At least it’s over, after all.’
‘Is it?’
‘Presumably so.’ He returned her steady gaze. ‘And you guys got the result you wanted, after all, didn’t you?’
‘Don’t push it, Kelly.’
There was steel in her voice. Karen Meadows was an extremely capable senior police detective equipped with all the grit that her job required. Kelly knew that side of her well enough, but it always took him by surprise when she levelled it at him.
‘I wasn’t,’ he said at once. ‘I’m just glad when things work out for people I care for.’
Karen smiled very slightly. ‘You know, you really are a tricky bastard, Kelly.’
‘I have no idea what you mean.’
‘Oh yes you do, you bugger. You come here, an old friend bearing gifts, and the next minute you’re starting to pump me like crazy.’
‘No I’m not.’
‘Yes you are.’
It was Kelly’s turn to smile. ‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘Yes you did. And it’s getting you nowhere.’
Kelly was still smiling. ‘Which is only what I would expect from you, Karen,’ he said. ‘I give in.’
They were sitting in armchairs on opposite sides of the living-room window. Torbay was a panorama in front of them. Sophie still lay by the radiator on the floor beneath them. Quite suddenly she stirred herself and jumped on to Kelly’s lap, her claws digging into his thighs as she attempted to paw a bed for herself.
‘There, Karen, see, your cat loves me,’ said Kelly.
Karen sank deeper into her chair. ‘No taste, that creature,’ she said.
‘I have to disagree.’
‘Naturally.’ Karen narrowed her eyes and focused them on him. ‘What the hell are you doing here, anyway, Kelly?’
‘God only knows,’ he said.
‘Are you sure?’ she countered.
‘No.’ Kelly didn’t think then, just blurted his feelings out. ‘There aren’t too many of us around who remember good turns, Karen,’ he said suddenly. ‘You always have done, and I can’t get over it sometimes.’
Karen leaned towards Kelly, who did not move, and tweaked one of Sophie’s ears.
‘You’ve always been a soft sod for a tabloid hack, Kelly,’ she said.
It was only later, at home in St Marychurch, that Kelly wondered if Karen could possibly have been getting at anything else when she’d asked why he’d turned up unexpectedly at her flat.
She probably hadn’t. It made no difference anyway. It was far too late now for their relationship to become anything more than it was.
Five days later the bombshell dropped. A new sensation broke in the News of the World.
‘I WAS SCOTT SILVER’S LOVER.’
It was a major interview with a young woman who claimed to have been Scott Silver’s secret lover, and it threw doubt on almost everything that Angel had told Kelly about her relationship with her husband. In fact, it turned the whole public and police conception of what Angel had been through upside down. If you believed even a half of it then it made Kelly’s stuff suddenly seem like a carefully orchestrated piece of PR. Kelly found himself wondering suddenly if he had been used in a big way by Angel Silver.
From her picture Kelly immediately recognised the young woman as the silently lurking hippylike creature he had seen so many times hanging around the Silver mansion, and whom he had very nearly run over in his car.
Damn, thought Kelly. His instincts about her had been absolutely right. She had been far more than just another fan. He really should have tried harder to pin the woman down. He was furious with himself.
Her name, it seemed, was Bridget Summers, and she was, as Angel had told him, a member of an outlandish religious sect, One God, One People. There all resemblance between the stories of the two women ended.
Summers claimed that she and Silver were deeply in love and that the rock idol had been about to leave Angel for her. And she had letters, allegedly from Silver, which appeared to prove her case. The Screws printed long extracts from the letters, including some, presumably as an indication of authenticity, photographed in their original spidery handwriting.
‘My darling Bridget, I cannot wait to be with you all the time,’ read one. ‘I really am going to free myself from the Crazy One. I have devoted enough of my life to her. I want to move on, I want to be with you, and work with you for all the wonderful things we both believe in.’
Summers claimed that far from being driven mad by her attentions and those of the One God, One People sect, Scott Silver had actually become a devoted disciple. There was indeed a photograph of the two of them together, both wearing the long dark grey cotton robes which was all Kelly had even seen the girl wear, and which were presumably the sect’s required wardrobe. One God, One People was an American order, but its British HQ was in Exeter, which, conveniently for Scott Silver, was just half an hour or so’s drive from Torquay.
Summers also claimed that she was only speaking out at last because of the lies Angel had told in the interview she had given to Kelly. Knowing how shy she seemed to be, Kelly was quite surprised that she had decided to talk to the press at all. His interview must just have been too provocative, he supposed. He also thought about the dam
age Bridget Summers could have done had she gone to the police with this information before Angel’s trial. And he wondered why on earth she hadn’t.
Then he read on. ‘I tried to tell the police but they wouldn’t listen,’ said Summers. ‘They treated me as if I was the Crazy One.’
Well, Kelly could half understand that. The woman came across as being thoroughly crazy, whereas Angel Silver could be extraordinarily plausible if she put her mind to it. But if Bridget Summers were telling the truth about that, then someone somewhere in the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary had made one hell of a balls-up.
He hoped that Karen Meadows wouldn’t be left carrying the can. Impulsively he picked up the phone and called her.
‘I don’t want anything, honestly,’ he told her hastily. ‘I just wondered if you were all right.’
‘Oh yeah, great. I’ve been summoned to see the chief constable again.’ Karen managed just a hint of the sarcastic bantering tone she so frequently employed with Kelly, but it wasn’t convincing.
‘Ah.’
‘Ah, indeed.’
‘Is it true that Bridget Summers tried to talk to you guys?’ he asked.
He could almost feel Karen tense up.
‘Off the record, yes,’ she said. ‘But we were being inundated with fans full of nonsensical fantasies about Scott. I don’t know yet who took her statement. I do know that whoever the poor fucker was, he or she will probably have taken at least another dozen statements like it. There will, of course, be an inquiry, but these things are always so damned fucking obvious with hindsight, aren’t they?’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Do you? I doubt that, frankly. We’ll get Bridget Summers in for serious questioning now. But God knows where we go from there, except deeper into the shit.’
‘Me too.’
‘Oh, come on, Kelly, you’ll come up smelling of roses, you always do.’
He knew the bother she was in and understood her bitterness. None the less he was a bit hurt. Ultimately all he said was: ‘I just hope you do, too.’
‘Fuck knows,’ replied Karen.
Kelly forced himself to return his attention to the News of the World and his unease grew as he read on further.
‘“That woman Scott married knew he was going to chuck her out. She knew he couldn’t stand her wicked ways any more. If you ask me, she’d have done anything, anything at all to keep him. And once she knew that she couldn’t keep him, she was prepared to go to any lengths at all to prevent someone else having him.”’
The article then made the claim that Angel and Scott had had a pre-nuptial agreement which severely limited his financial obligation to her should they ever part, in fact slashed it to the bare minimum unless there were ever children involved. There were not, of course. And Angel had always presented that as the tragedy which Kelly was sure it must have been. In more ways than one, he now thought cynically.
It was damning stuff. Kelly was shocked rigid. Not only was his story starting to look suspect, but his almost blind faith in Angel had been totally rocked. When he had first heard about the double killing he had considered all the options in a cool professional sort of way and had even voiced them to Karen Meadows. But once he had got close to Angel all such careful reasoning went out the window. Had she just made a complete fool of him? Could the double killing at Maythorpe have been part of some bigger, wider plot than a burglary by a chancer who had worshipped the rock idol and developed a dangerously lethal obsession? Perhaps those vague suspicions Kelly had only ever been able to half form did have some truth in them after all.
Kelly put the paper down and tried to clear his head for a moment. He was still in bed. His Sunday morning treat was to get up when he woke up naturally, without setting the alarm clock, which roused him at six every weekday now Moira was no longer making his alarm call, toddle downstairs and pick up the Sunday papers from the doormat, make himself a pot of tea and retire to bed with the lot. It was both slothful and blissful to Kelly.
Moira usually shared the ritual with him, but she had recently been noticeable by her absence more than anything else. Kelly did not even know whether she had been on duty the previous night or not. He hadn’t seen her since he had abandoned her so summarily to interview Angel. Or ‘gone running to that woman’, as Moira had preferred to describe it.
Kelly sighed and contemplated the mess his life seemed to be disintegrating into again after so many years of calm and order – or as near to calm and order as he would ever get, he thought wryly.
There was nothing slothful or blissful about this Sunday morning. Kelly hoisted himself out of bed, sending a tangle of newsprint to join the piles already on the floor around the bed.
He had to see Angel, and find out what was going on. There must be an explanation. There really must be.
Perhaps Moira was right, perhaps he was obsessed. Certainly he was quite disturbed by the prospect of Angel Silver having deceived him. He knew well enough that there were many sides to her. He just hoped that there was no side to her as dreadful as some of the ideas which were forming in his head.
On the way to Maythorpe Manor Kelly tried to call Angel on the numbers he had finally remembered to get from her at the end of his interview with her. Predictably there was no reply from her mobile and, as usual, all he got from the house landline was the answering machine – no more or less than he had expected. He might just as well not have bothered to acquire her new numbers, he thought.
The pack were already gathered. All the daily paper district boys would have got the call from their Saturday night watchman desks as soon as the Screws had dropped, and been told to get on the case straight away. There was a TV crew there already.
Kelly walked through them to try the intercom. It seemed to be connected again, unlike a while ago, but nobody responded when he spoke into it.
Disconsolate, he wandered away, kicking at the ground with one foot.
‘Wassamatter, John? Shut you out now she’s made use of you, has she?’ sneered the man from the Daily Mail nastily. The fact that Kelly reckoned the jibe was probably pretty damned near the truth made it all the more unpleasant.
‘Up yours,’ he remarked in a pleasant tone of voice. He certainly wasn’t going to show his feelings to that mob.
Suddenly down the hill roared an ancient battered Jaguar, mostly black with one door panel white and half the bonnet in the orangy-red of anti-oxide, which normally indicates a state of running repair. It was travelling far too fast for safety and scattered several reporters before drawing to a screeching halt in the middle of the road right in front of the gates.
Out jumped an angry Ken James. Kelly was not surprised to see him. He already had reason to believe in the man’s penchant for direct action against those he felt had wronged him or one of his. The James family had already been infuriated by Angel’s lenient treatment in court; they would presumably have been sent apoplectic by the Bridget Summers revelations. Tactfully, Kelly retreated to the back of the pack. He certainly had no wish to clash with James. Not when the big man was in this mood. Not ever, come to that.
James shouted a command into the intercom. ‘Open up, you fucking slag.’
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, this solicited no response. He then started to smash it with his fist. Hard. A knuckle split open. Blood splashed around, spattering on to James’s face and his already grubby shirt front. The man gave no sign of feeling any pain.
When he presumably felt he had inflicted enough damage on the intercom he stepped back and began to scream abuse at the house itself.
‘I know you’re in there, you rotten slag, I know you set our Ter up. I’m going to get you for it, I promise you, you twisted bitch …’
There was no police presence that morning, even though Kelly felt it likely the News of the World story would at least be sure to lead to Angel being re-interviewed by the police. And watching Ken James’s near-hysterical antics Kelly began to wish that the police would turn up a bit sharpish. So, he gath
ered, from his colleagues’ nervous shuffling, did most of them.
Suddenly James turned his unwelcome attentions on them.
‘As for you lot, you bunch of vultures, who the fuck do you think you’re staring at, eh?’
The big man took a menacing step towards them. He really was huge. Then the worst happened. The reporter Kelly had been hiding behind shuffled smartly to the left, leaving him clearly exposed in James’s sightline.
‘You, you fucking bastard,’ James bellowed. ‘You’re her fucking lapdog, you are, and you turned my family over, you piece of shit. I’ve been wanting to get my hands on you.’
He lunged forward. The assembled press parted readily to let him through. Spineless buggers, thought Kelly. Then he took off. At a sprint. Right up the road and into his car, which, without any police to prevent him doing so, he had parked almost in the hedge just around the corner up Rock Lane. Fortunately the hood was down and the car was facing in the right direction away from Maythorpe Manor, allowing Kelly to jump over the door into the driver’s seat, gun the engine and be gone seconds before Ken James, who looked as if he would like to dismember him with his bare hands, could reach him.
Kelly watched thankfully as the fuming figure in his wing mirror, standing stranded in the middle of the road and waving both fists at him, disappeared into the distance. He managed a small smile. Kelly had always been surprisingly quick on his feet for a man who was invariably totally out of condition. A very good thing in his line of work, he thought wryly.
That evening she phoned. He had hardly dared to hope that she would. He really needed her to explain, and not just for his professional peace of mind.
‘Why don’t you come round? I want to put the record straight about that evil cow’s rantings,’ she said.
Kelly didn’t intend to give Angel an easy ride. He didn’t like being taken for a fool, and he feared she might have done just that. But he wasn’t going to argue with her on the phone. He wanted to confront her face to face. Only that would do. He wanted those big gates to open again and let him into the hallowed inner sanctum of Maythorpe Manor.
It was just after 8 p.m. by the time he got back to Maidencombe. A group of journalists were still hanging around, and so, to Kelly’s horror was Ken James. He was just wondering how he was going to get past the man alive when he noticed that there was a police presence at last: two uniformed constables were standing by the gate. Somebody had probably called the police after the disturbance earlier in the day, Kelly thought – Angel herself, one of his colleagues, or perhaps a neighbour. Kelly was relieved, anyway. Even Ken James was unlikely either to attack him or try to force his way into the house in front of a couple of coppers, he thought.
A Moment Of Madness Page 21
