A Moment Of Madness

by Hilary Bonner

  ‘Just a couple of pints,’ he answered her swiftly voiced query, though even if it had been only a couple of pints they both knew how dangerous even that could be to him.

  ‘John, what’s happening to you?’ Moira asked rather sorrowfully. She stood in the hallway, looking at him, making no move to stand aside, to gesture him in, instead keeping him outside on the doorstep.

  ‘Please can I come in?’ he asked by way of reply. He thought he sounded pitiful, he knew he felt it. Anyway, at least she took pity.

  Moira invited him in then, sat him down at the kitchen table and promptly made him an omelette, without much further comment. Her daughter Jennifer came in from somewhere or other and gave him a big hug. Kelly liked Jennifer, who had always seemed to return the feeling. But he wasn’t capable of taking any interest in her that evening. He barely even hugged her back. Jennifer retreated looking vaguely puzzled. Apart from anything else, Kelly assumed she had smelled his breath. Like her mother, Jennifer knew his history well enough.

  Moira studied him unenthusiastically as he ate his omelette gratefully but quickly and without enjoyment, just out of the need for food. He couldn’t remember when he had last eaten a proper meal. He hoped it would help him feel better. As it was, one way and another he barely felt capable of proper conversation.

  Moira sighed. ‘I don’t even know what you want from me any more,’ she said eventually.

  ‘I just want to be with you, I suppose,’ he reasoned lamely.

  ‘Well, that makes a change, anyway,’ she replied. ‘Your girlfriend away somewhere, is she?’

  Kelly looked down at his plate. Ashamed. Moira got the message.

  ‘Why am I not surprised? You’re making a complete fool of yourself, John, you know that, don’t you?’

  He managed an awkward, uncertain smile. ‘I’m just a bit confused, that’s all …’

  ‘You’re confused, John? What about me? I thought we had something good going. Now I don’t know what to think. And you’re drinking again, after all that you’ve told me, all that it did to you before …’

  He looked sheepish; tried to wriggle. ‘Look, I said, just a couple of pints –’

  ‘And the rest,’ she interrupted sharply. ‘In any case, John, what difference does it make how much you’ve drunk? All the years I’ve known you now I’ve never seen you touch a drop. You’ve always said that you couldn’t, that if you did you’d be gone again –’

  ‘Well, maybe I exaggerated.’

  He didn’t believe that, of course. Not really. He felt terrible. Maybe he was slightly drunk, after all. He supposed he must be after downing all that Scotch. He no longer understood why he had done so. He had some tough thinking to do, and one thing was certain: whisky wouldn’t help. The bloody headache was back as well. He asked Moira if she had any aspirin. She left the room and returned with some, handing them silently to him.

  ‘Can I stay?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘You’ve got a bloody cheek, John Kelly,’ she replied.

  But she did let him stay. And, slightly to his surprise, she let him make love to her. He was also half surprised both that he wanted to, and that he could. But he did. The sex was warm and nice and loving and familiar. And normal, he thought. He knew that everybody’s definition of normality in sex was different, but he also knew that the sex he had with Angel far exceeded his definition of normality. When the excitement died down, when it was all over, he didn’t even like to think about some of what they did together, and yet he was completely hooked on it, even though he never felt afterwards the peace that he felt after making love with Moira. That gave him a deep peace. Even that night. Even with all that was happening. He wished he had valued it more before he had in a way defiled it, for himself, anyway. However, he fell quickly into a sound sleep, something that had evaded him for days, and as he did so he was only vaguely aware that Moira was lying there next to him wide awake, just watching him.

  In the morning he was grateful but sheepish. He knew, and Moira knew, that in spite of how good it had been to be together again, nothing would stop him going to Angel as soon as he had the opportunity. And Moira, of course, didn’t know the half of it.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said to her.

  She smiled ironically. ‘I would say you’re welcome, but I’m not sure you really are any more.’

  He nodded in understanding. ‘To be honest I’m surprised that you did, well, you know, that you would …’ he stumbled inarticulately.

  ‘Old habits die hard, maybe,’ she replied caustically.

  He didn’t know quite what to make of that, but he was just relieved, really, that Moira hadn’t tried to lecture him. Maybe she didn’t see the point any more.

  He made it into the office that day, only half an hour or so late. Nobody passed any comment on his two days’ sickness, but he was well aware that he was no longer the most popular boy in class. There were plenty of sideways looks from his colleagues, and conversations seemed inclined to dwindle away whenever he passed by. Well, he supposed he would have been rather surprised if there hadn’t been a deal of gossip around about his relationship with Angel, and already probably about his pub drinking bouts, brief though they had so far been. Torquay was a small town. His beat was a local evening paper, and if the guys he worked with hadn’t already picked up on his antics they shouldn’t have their jobs, Kelly thought to himself. He would have done so in their shoes, that was for certain.

  Over the next couple of days Kelly only just managed to function without going under, either to the newly rediscovered oblivion of alcohol or to his various neuroses about Angel, or to all of that at once. He continued to phone Angel repeatedly, succeeding in neither catching her mobile nor gaining any reply from Maythorpe. Each day he took at least one run out to the house to check if she had returned. Also each day, he found himself drinking at some stage or another. What with that and his preoccupation with Angel and what he had seen on the videotape, on the third day he again didn’t go to work at all. Neither did he bother to call in this time. He received at least three or four calls from Kit Hansford, which he managed successfully to avoid, as both his mobile and his digital phone at home obligingly told him who was calling.

  At home on the evening of that third day his phone rang for the umpteenth time and he saw Angel’s number flash on to the display panel. His heart leaped. He was so suspicious of everything about her, he had determined that he would give her a seriously hard time. He had even considered taking the incriminating tape to the police, hadn’t he? Well, he kidded himself that he had, anyway. But he still couldn’t help reacting the way he did, just to know that she was on the other end of a telephone.

  ‘Are you coming over or what?’ she enquired. Only it wasn’t an enquiry, more of an order as usual. It was absurd. She had been away for four days, had not contacted him at all, and had been vague to him about her whereabouts, yet she made it sound as if he had been giving her the run-around. He knew he should tell her where to get off. Instead he obediently set off for Maythorpe Manor within minutes of being summoned.

  He had drunk several whiskies, while desolately half watching something totally forgettable on TV. He knew he shouldn’t be driving. But that didn’t stop him. Not any more. His common sense seemed to be deserting him in spades. Nothing could have stopped him. He doubted an army would have stopped him. The mood he was in he reckoned he would have found a way round them. That was just how things were, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

  When she opened the door to him she was wearing men’s pyjamas several sizes too big for her. An old pair of Scott’s perhaps? But he couldn’t imagine Scott Silver in pyjamas of any sort, let alone the ones Angel had on. They were old-fashioned stripy cotton ones. The trousers were so long they draped over her feet in great folds. The bottom of the jacket reached almost to her knees. The left sleeve completely covered her hand and, in fact, the hem hung two or three inches below her fingers. She had rolled up the right sleeve sev
eral times so that it ended at wrist level, and in her right hand she held a large joint.

  Her violet eyes were slightly glazed. Her face was pale as ever, the vermilion lipstick a little askew. She swayed gently as if being blown by a breeze that affected only her, and reached out with her left arm towards him. He could see the shape of her fingers inside the huge pyjama jacket sleeve as she struggled to free her hand from the material.

  She looked so vulnerable. Kelly felt the usual almost unassailable desire to take her in his arms and protect her. And, of course, he also felt the usual desire to feel and taste her body, to enter her in every possible way. All the ways he had never experienced with anyone else.

  Judging from her reaction it showed in his eyes, in his entire body language probably.

  ‘Take me to bed,’ she said huskily. Another command. But dope always seemed to make her even more randy. And he wondered – as he had done many times before, although he preferred not to think about it – just how much all the various drugs she hardly ever seemed to be totally free of were responsible for her extraordinary level of sexuality.

  He took a step towards her. Such was the effect she had on him that only then did he remember why he had wanted to see her so much. And it wasn’t, for once, to fuck her. It was to tell her about the tape, to confront her with what he had seen, what he had learned. He just had to do that. He realised at the same time that all he wanted was for her to come up with some plausible explanation, yet again. And the last thing in the world he wanted to do was to prove that Angel Silver had committed any crime at all, indeed done anything even morally wrong, let alone legally. Yet he always seemed to be trying to catch her out, which was why he had searched for that tape in the first place. It was quite paradoxical behaviour. He knew that. But he had to do it, he had to put it to her. Now that he had seen that videotape, he had no choice.

  ‘Angel, we need to talk,’ he told her quietly.

  ‘Do we? How deeply boring,’ she said, and started to undo the buttons of her pyjama jacket.

  ‘No, Angel, I mean it,’ he insisted. And she was probably so surprised that he should demur at anything she said or did that she allowed herself to be led, without dissension and without undoing any more buttons, into the living room.

  He sat her down on the big sofa and drew up a more upright chair, slightly higher, so that he was facing her directly just a couple of feet away. He’d always known the psychological advantage of being able to look slightly down on someone you wanted to get to tell you something they might not wish to tell you. There was just a suggestion of intimidation in it.

  ‘I’ve seen the video, Angel,’ he said.

  He thought there was a flicker of something in her eyes, as if she knew already, without further explanation, exactly which tape he meant. But if that was so then she made a very fast recovery.

  ‘What video?’ she asked ingenuously, eyes very wide, lips slightly apart, a picture of innocence.

  ‘The video of what happened the night Scott was killed, the night you killed Terry James.’ Kelly spoke very deliberately, almost spelling the words out, even though he strongly suspected it was not really necessary to do so.

  ‘Oh, and how did you get hold of that then?’ The violet eyes definitely flickered then. Angel’s voice was calm, but there was just a touch of menace. Trust Angel to switch into attack mode like that, he thought.

  ‘I expect you can guess how, can’t you?’

  ‘You haven’t been snooping around here while I’ve been away by any chance, have you, John Kelly?’ she asked, a hint of banter in her voice now as well as the menace.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that –’

  ‘Well, I bloody would,’ she interrupted him.

  He sighed. ‘Angel, it doesn’t actually matter how I got hold of that tape, it doesn’t actually matter whether you reckon I was snooping, it doesn’t matter how out of order you think I’ve been. What matters is that I did find it and I have watched it. If the police had found it I doubt we’d be sitting here now on fancy fucking chairs in your great big opulent sitting room. I reckon you’d be banged up in jail where you might well belong. It’s totally incriminating, Angel –’

  She interrupted again. ‘What do you mean, incriminating? I don’t see what’s incriminating about it.’

  ‘Don’t you? So why didn’t you just hand it over to the police, then? You’re not stupid, Angel – all sorts of things, but never stupid. I think you see very well. You didn’t kill Terry James in self-defence. He was trying to get away from you. You went after him with the knife.’

  Her face was expressionless at first. Then she lowered her eyelids as if offended but trying not to show it.

  ‘Is that how it looks?’ she enquired. She was cool, very cool. Impressively so. Her voice was still calm. But he could see that the hand protruding from the rolled-up right sleeve of the pyjamas was tightly clenched, the joint squashed carelessly between her fore and middle fingers.

  ‘Yes it is,’ he replied bluntly.

  She couldn’t keep it up then, her pretence of lack of concern.

  ‘I was terrified out of my mind, for fuck’s sake,’ she yelled at him. ‘Yes, I had the knife. The bastard dropped it after he killed Scott. For a second or two he looked almost as frightened as me, and that was even scarier. Terry James was a huge man, John. What was I supposed to do? Wait for him to pick the bloody knife up and use it on me? No! I grabbed it. Somehow or other I managed to react more quickly than he did. And once I had the knife, what was I supposed to do then? Wait again, for him to take it from me. If I hadn’t got a blow in first he could have got it from me so easily. Like taking candy from a baby it would have been for a man his size. And I’d just watched him commit a murder. Do you honestly think he was going to let me live to tell the tale?’

  ‘He was walking away, though –’ Kelly began lamely, his voice uncertain.

  ‘Taking a step or two backwards, nothing more. After all, I did have the knife,’ she interrupted. ‘But he wasn’t going anywhere. He was going to come for me and he was going to kill me. I was absolutely sure of it. Tape or no tape, you couldn’t see his eyes like I did. You should have seen his eyes, John. I didn’t have a second’s doubt. He was going to kill me. I had just one chance to kill him first. And I took it.’

  Kelly tried to think clearly, to be dispassionate and rational, to look at things logically. He wished he hadn’t drunk so much whisky. Angel might be doped up, but as ever it didn’t seem to affect her ability to function. He suspected that if he had smoked half as much as she already had that day he would be unable to speak, let alone think. He concentrated hard.

  ‘So, if that’s what you honestly believe, I’ll ask you again, why didn’t you give that tape to the police?’

  ‘You have to be joking! I didn’t give it to them because they wouldn’t have understood, would they? Wouldn’t have wanted to, either. If you can behave the way you are having seen the bloody thing, what hope would I have with the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, for fuck’s sake? I’m telling you God’s truth, John. You must know that, surely.’

  He didn’t know. It was terrible. He was in love with her. He hated putting that into words, even inside his head, but that was how it was. He was passionate about her. He was besotted by her. But he had no idea whether she was telling him the truth or not. It occurred to him that he never had had any idea whether she was telling him the truth or not. Not from the beginning. Not about anything.

  ‘I don’t know what I believe with you, Angel,’ he told her, not for the first time.

  ‘Well then, you should –’ She stopped in her tracks, a look of panic setting in. ‘John, you wouldn’t give that tape to the police, would you?’

  For a moment he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. He sighed. ‘Why on earth did you keep the bloody thing, Angel?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Stupid of me, wasn’t it? Habit, I suppose. We kept all the bonking tapes, it was like our own library
of blue movies.’ She laughed bitterly.

  ‘Angel, this isn’t a blue movie, it’s a fucking snuff movie, and you’re the only fucking killer it shows. How sick are you, for Christ’s sake?’

  She flinched away from him. ‘Sick? You think I’m sick, d’you?’ Her voice was suddenly very small.

  He knew that was probably just another of her tricks. None the less, he hesitated before saying, ‘Sometimes I do, yes.’

  ‘But not when you’re in bed with me, not then. You don’t think at all then, do you?’

  She was quick, very quick, and she was right, of course.

  ‘No, not then, but don’t imagine for one moment that makes me proud,’ he snapped.

  Her lower lip trembled. Her mood swings never ceased to amaze him. ‘You sound as if you hate me,’ she whispered.

  ‘Hate you? I could never hate you. Sometimes I wish I didn’t love you as much, that’s all.’

  ‘Please, John, I’m begging you, you won’t go to the police with the tape, will you? Please tell me you won’t. Please.’ To his astonishment he saw that she had started to cry. He realised it was the only time that he had seen her weep since that first interview he did with her before her trial.

  She reached out for him with both arms, one hand completely concealed in the pyjama jacket, the other still clutching her joint, which, unsurprisingly considering the treatment it had received, seemed to have gone out. The tears were pouring down her cheeks.

  ‘I’m at your mercy, John,’ she said. ‘Please don’t do it.’

  Half of him knew it was manipulative nonsense. But he could not resist, of course. She seemed to him to be more vulnerable, more fragile than ever. He was, as usual, lost.