Back at Maythorpe Manor, Angel greeted him enthusiastically. There was something about her that led him to think she might have been at the coke again while he had been away.
‘Have you got it? Good. Come with me then.’
She led him to a door beneath the stairs which he had previously assumed was just a cupboard. However, there was another staircase inside, leading down to a cellar he had not known existed. No wonder the house seemed so unusually hot. A huge cast-iron boiler was roaring away in the middle of a cavernous basement room.
He studied it in some surprise. Surely he’d noticed a modern oil boiler in the kitchen.
‘That’s the old solid-fuel boiler. It was here when Scott and I moved in,’ explained Angel. ‘We didn’t want to rely on having to stoke up some ancient boiler every day so we installed a new state-of-the-art heating system, but we kept this as a standby in case of a problem with the other one.’ She grinned. ‘Jolly useful for disposing of things,’ she added.
He glanced at her, wondering suddenly what else she might have disposed of in the boiler. Using a big pair of pliers she wrenched open the boiler’s feed door. Not for the first time he thought how surprisingly strong she was for someone so small, who gave every appearance of fragility.
Once the iron door was open the heat of the fire became almost overpowering.
‘Go on, throw the video in,’ she commanded.
He hesitated only for a second or so before he did so, allowing himself to give no further thought to the immensity of what he was doing. The flames engulfed the black tape. It disappeared instantly into the white-hot molten mass within the boiler.
Angel closed the door to it at once and turned to him.
‘I suppose that was the only copy,’ she said, a sly note creeping into her voice.
‘Of course.’
‘Why of course? I’d have made another copy if I’d been you.’
Yes, thought Kelly, I bet you would. But all he said was: ‘Well, you’re not me, are you?’
‘You really didn’t copy it?’
‘No.’ And that was the truth. Extraordinary really, thought Kelly. He didn’t quite know why he hadn’t copied the tape. He only had one video recorder in his house, the one in his bedroom, but that was just a technicality. He had not even considered it. Of course, he’d been drinking so heavily over the last few days that he had lost his impetus to do anything much. But the truth was that all he had ever wanted, once he had acquired the tape and watched it, was for Angel to explain away what he had seen on it.
Which she had done. Or had she? Kelly didn’t really know. More than anything he wished his head would stop aching, but that seemed to be an almost permanent state nowadays.
They climbed up the stairs again to the ground floor. As they passed the library he glanced in through the open door. The false wall which concealed the priest’s hole was open.
He jerked his head towards Angel and looked at her questioningly. He had a feeling she had not lit that huge boiler just to burn one tape.
‘I thought it was time for all the tapes to go,’ she replied to his silent query. ‘They were too dangerous. And, anyway, now that Scott’s dead, well, it’s not the same …’
No, thought Kelly. Was he then such a poor substitute? Oh God, he wondered, why was he so obsessed with his sexual prowess, or lack of it, when he was with Angel?
Unexpectedly her face broke into a big grin. ‘We can start a whole new video library, if you like, John,’ she said.
Kelly shook his head. He didn’t particularly enjoy being reminded of that side of their sex life, although he could hardly deny the kick he got out of watching the two of them in bed together.
‘Did you mean what you said earlier?’
‘What was that?’ She looked quite ingenuous. Had the words meant so little to her?
‘That you loved me,’ he replied flatly.
Her eyes were very wide open and quite unfathomable as usual.
‘Absolutely,’ she told him.
Eighteen
They went to bed, their activities aided as usual by a heady mixture of dope and coke. Kelly got an almost desperate relief from being in bed with her again. She was as passionate as ever. Not for the first time he told himself she could not give so totally if she didn’t care about him. But he knew really that the sex they indulged in together was not about caring. It was the most torrid he had ever known, and he remained thrilled by it. Yet as he lay back on the bed afterwards he was aware that he felt sated rather than satisfied. Certainly there was no peace.
Then just before midnight Angel suddenly announced that she wanted to go clubbing. Kelly was surprised. They had never gone out anywhere together.
‘I’m bored,’ she said.
Kelly studied her wearily. He should be used to her mood changes by now, he supposed, but she did have the knack of never ceasing to surprise him.
‘I’m tired, Angel,’ he responded.
She pouted at him sulkily. ‘Scott and I used to go out all the time.’
Kelly didn’t think that was true. Not in Torquay, anyway. He’d have heard. In any case he really was tired. Bone tired. He just wanted to go to sleep. He felt emotionally drained, and the soporific aftermath of the whisky he had drunk, not to mention the joint he had shared with Angel, seemed stronger than the rush of nervous energy he would expect to have been generated by the cocaine he had snorted, but he had only taken one small line.
‘Not now, Angel, surely,’ he protested lamely.
‘Why not?’ she enquired, adding mischievously, ‘Are you ashamed to be seen out with me?’
Nothing, of course, could have been further from the truth. He loved the idea of being seen around town with Angel Silver on his arm. She was a widow and he was single – well, not living with anyone. Though that had, until recently anyway, not been true in spirit, as he knew very well. He was aware, even half stoned, that he had betrayed Moira and was continuing to do so.
There was nothing he could do about that now, he told himself. He had blown that relationship for good, and when he was with Angel, of course, he didn’t even care. So far his liaison with Angel had been conducted as if it were a clandestine affair, with him often turning up in the middle of the night, lying to Moira and his friends and colleagues. The prospect of them going public had never been raised. They had never even been to the pub together, never been out for a meal in a restaurant. In fact they hardly ever ate. Kelly pulled himself up into a sitting position and looked disconsolately down over his body. You would have thought that at least one good thing to have come out of all this would have been that he might have lost his paunch. He hadn’t. It didn’t seem to have diminished at all. He supposed that was the booze.
He turned to look at Angel, who was lying naked on the bed beside him. If only he could give her a few of his excess pounds. She remained so painfully thin, and so beautiful, he thought yet again. Even through the haze of the alcohol and assorted drugs which were fighting each other inside his head, he experienced that familiar, almost painful pang of deep tenderness for her, a tenderness he had become resigned to never being returned.
Of course, Kelly realised, life with Angel Silver was always going to be different from anything he had experienced before. And if they started going out together he would have to get used to the likelihood of her being recognised wherever they went. Any kind of outing for him and her was bound to be more than just a night on the town. It would be a statement. He battled with his weariness.
‘Ashamed to be seen out with you? You’ve got to be kidding,’ he replied, then added with a grin, ‘I’m just not sure I have the energy, that’s all. You’re an exhausting woman, you know.’
She smiled her Mona Lisa smile. ‘C’mon,’ she said. ‘Do another line.’
Obediently he complied, this time snorting up a much larger amount of the fine white powder through the rolled-up tenner that she passed to him. And this time it hit the spot instantly. The lethargy of the whisky and the
joint he had smoked earlier just disappeared.
His brain was buzzing. Suddenly he felt a hundred per cent alive and awake. He could conquer the world probably. He could certainly do the town.
‘Right,’ he said, almost jumping out of bed. ‘What are you waiting for, my darling?’
It took Angel only seconds to pull on a skimpy black dress. All he had was the jeans and sweater he had arrived in earlier, plus his trusty leather jacket. She didn’t seem to mind. Neither of them had showered. He guessed they must both smell of sex. He pulled her close to him, buried his face in her neck, in her hair, in the tantalising cleavage at the low-cut neckline of her dress. He was right, she did smell of sex. Strongly. And how he liked that. He felt his cock stir, pulled her still closer to him. God, he felt good. He was sure he could fuck her all night. Maybe he wouldn’t let her persuade him to take her out after all.
She pushed him gently away. ‘Later,’ she said, brushing her right hand lightly over his crotch, then grabbing his hand and pulling him towards the door.
‘Oh, all right,’ he responded grudgingly. Then a thought occurred to him. He hadn’t a clue where to take her. Late-night clubs were hardly his scene.
‘Where are we going anyway?’ he asked.
‘Valbonnes, of course,’ she said.
He’d heard of it, and knew where the place was in Upper Union Street, close to the town centre, but had never been there. It was hardly Tramp or Annabel’s, but, knowing Angel, probably the nearest Torquay got to either of those.
He tripped over the first wide step outside the house, and was only prevented from falling by Angel’s grip on his hand. They started to giggle. They were still giggling when they climbed unsteadily into the MG.
Afterwards Kelly had no idea why they hadn’t called a taxi. No idea why he had not even considered whether he was fit to drive. That, of course, was what coke did to you – made you believe you were indestructible, above the law, above pain, superior, sharper, invincible.
They never got to Valbonnes. They never even got to Torquay. At the road junction between Rock Lane and the main road into town, Kelly drove straight out without pausing to look. Or at least he attempted to. Inside his coked-up head he had seen no reason to stop. It was partly as if he believed the rest of the world would get out of his way. Partly that he no longer knew what he was doing. He smashed straight into the side of small saloon car travelling law-abidingly along the road at right angles to him.
Kelly couldn’t get out of the car. His first coherent thought after the accident was that he was trapped. The driver’s door wouldn’t open. It had been buckled by the force of the collision. His second realisation was of a sharp stabbing pain in his abdomen and that his head felt seriously woozy now. In fact, it felt rather as if it didn’t belong to him at all. He was vaguely aware that he had been drinking and that he taken coke, so it could just be that which was making his head feel so strange. He reached up a hand. There was already a swelling forming on his right temple. Somehow or other he’d managed to bump his head, it seemed, although, miraculously, he was wearing a seat belt. He had a vague feeling that he might have been knocked unconscious for a minute or two. He wasn’t sure. His brain just wouldn’t work properly. He wasn’t sure of anything.
The front of the MG had caved in. The bonnet was buckled and the remains of the engine was spouting steam. There seemed to be a lot of noise in the road around Kelly, mostly screaming and shouting. He realised that the screaming came from the car with which he’d obviously collided. The MG’s windscreen had smashed and he could see very little of anything that might be happening in front of him. He became aware of someone tugging on the handle of the driver’s door from the outside. It still wouldn’t budge.
He felt terrible. He really had no comprehension of what had happened. Angel. Angel was with him. Was she all right? He turned towards her anxiously. She wasn’t there.
He tried to look out of the driver’s side window, peering into the darkness, which was punctuated now by the lights of other vehicles and one much smaller light which was moving erratically. For a moment he was puzzled by that and then a brief flash of clarity entered his spinning head. It was a torch, of course. He could see figures moving but they were just black shapes. He had no idea whether or not one of them was Angel.
The soft top of the little car had snapped open like a big gaping black mouth. Kelly tried to push it further back so that he could climb out, over the boot or the bonnet perhaps, but it too had jammed somehow. As he pushed, though, he strained himself upwards and over the MG’s shattered windscreen and could see the car he had hit. The near side of it had caved right in and the force of the impact had jammed the car against a wall on the far side of the main road. Kelly’s headlights no longer even existed, but there was a motel on the other side of the road, and its lights cast enough illumination for him to make out two figures trapped inside and to see that the one nearest him, in the remains of the passenger seat, a woman he was almost sure, was slumped back, unmoving, with blood pouring out of the side of her head. He could also see the mouth of the figure in the driver’s seat opening and shutting. That was the person doing the screaming, the quite awful nerve-shattering screaming, he realised. It was like a horror movie unfolding before his eyes.
Panic as well as pain engulfed him. He had to get out, had to get away. Even above the clamour and the dreadful screaming he could hear the beat of his own heart, pumping, pumping, far too fast. He was hyperventilating. He felt as if no breath at all was getting into his lungs. He had to free himself from the smashed vehicle. He just had to. Suddenly he noticed that the MG’s passenger door was slightly ajar. He had no idea why he had not seen that before, but then he was barely functioning. He felt very peculiar and it occurred to him obliquely that he might be quite badly hurt. He began to manoeuvre himself over the arm rest and gear lever system between the car’s two seats, pushing himself upwards with his feet and trying to crawl across towards the open door. But the shooting pains in his abdomen immediately became agonising. It felt as if he was being stabbed repeatedly by something jagged like a piece of broken glass – and that thought brought unwelcome images into his mind too. He cried out with the pain and collapsed across the seats, unable to push himself any further. For a few seconds the stabbing sensation, the unnerving thump thump thump of his heart and his inability to breathe properly were all he was aware of. Then the door of the MG opened fully, strong arms reached through it, and he was half pulled, half lifted out on to the street.
There was a powerful smell of oil and petrol. Kelly’s car was still hissing steam. He could feel his legs buckling beneath him. The arms lowered him gently to the ground at the roadside. For a moment he just slumped there, only vaguely aware of the commotion which now seemed to be all around him. Then he hoisted himself on to one elbow.
‘Angel,’ he called. ‘Angel, where are you?’
He tried to stand up, but he just fell down again.
Someone, he had no idea who, put a restraining hand on his shoulder.
‘Steady, now, mate. Take it easy …’
He could hear the words clearly enough, but it was as if they were somewhere in the distance.
‘Where’s Angel?’ he asked. ‘Where’s … where’s …’
He couldn’t quite get the words out, even though he knew exactly what he was trying to say. Eventually he managed it.
‘The woman I was with, w-where is she? Is she all right?’
‘I didn’t see no one with you, mate.’ It was the same voice, a man’s voice. The man who had pulled him out of the car and then tried to reassure him. ‘And I was first on the scene …’
‘But she was there. What’s happened to her?’
‘Anybody see a woman in the MG?’ The man raised his voice. There seemed to be a number of people around now, mostly surrounding the other vehicle, and there were a few mumbled responses, but Kelly couldn’t quite make them out. He could hear the wail of sirens. Vehicles with flashing lights w
ere approaching at speed. He realised, even in his befuddled state, that these were ambulances and police cars arriving. It occurred to him vaguely that he might be in serious trouble as well as injured.
‘No, mate, nobody’s seen no woman,’ the same male voice continued. ‘You was on your tod in the car, time I got here. Maybe you’re just mixed up, aye?’
Kelly tried again to get to his feet. Where the hell was Angel? Had she just gone off and left him to face the music, just walked away, not even bothering to find out how badly hurt he was? Surely she wouldn’t have done that. The thoughts were all jumbled up inside his head, which was really starting to swim.
The man who had been talking to him came closer, and put his hands on Kelly’s shoulders in an attempt to stop him from trying to move. Kelly couldn’t even see him. There was only blackness in front of his eyes now. He realised he was about to pass out. Maybe for the second time.
The last words he heard before he did so, were: ‘Jesus Christ, he’s drunk. That’s what’s wrong with the bastard. He’s drunk as a skunk.’
Kelly came to in Torbay Hospital to find Moira sitting by his bedside. Instinctively he raised a hand to his forehead, which was throbbing for England, and as he did so the movement caused shooting pains in his abdomen. He grunted involuntarily.
Moira passed no comment on his obvious discomfort. Her face looked pinched and sad.
‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ she said. She looked fed up, totally exasperated, angry, perhaps as much at herself as at him. ‘I spend quite enough time in this place without coming back in when I’m off duty to see someone who’s behaved like a raving lunatic.’
‘Well, thanks anyway.’ Kelly was desperately trying to remember through the pain what had put him in hospital in the first place, what his latest felony had been. But when he did begin to remember he wasn’t sure that he wanted to.
Moira was continuing to speak. ‘They called me from casualty soon after you were brought in. But to be perfectly honest, John, I’m inclined to wish they hadn’t. And I really wish they hadn’t known that you were the man I shared my life with. Or used to!’
A Moment Of Madness Page 29
