A Moment Of Madness

by Hilary Bonner

  Richards turned to face her. ‘The former I’m well aware of, so therefore it is vital that I protect my reputation when faced with impossible questions before I even have a chance to examine the corpse properly,’ he said. ‘The latter I can only assume is your idea of a joke, Karen.’

  The use of her Christian name, in spite of the admonishment issued in an apparently frosty tone, was, Karen knew, a good sign. And indeed, it did seem that the flattery had worked, because Richards continued to speak and, considering that he had so far made only the briefest of preliminary examinations, proceeded to be unusually helpful.

  ‘Look at the membranes between her nostrils,’ he said. ‘They’re quite severely damaged. You wouldn’t have had to give that nose much more than a tap to make it bleed. Coke, of course.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Karen, wondering suddenly why she and Phil Cooper hadn’t themselves already noticed how paper thin the skin and tissue division which separated Angel’s nostrils had become. ‘I’m sure she wasn’t like that when I last saw her.’

  ‘It can happen quite suddenly after years of abuse.’ Audley Richards looked thoughtful. ‘This is quite an extreme case, too.’

  ‘So the blood has no relevance to her death?’

  ‘Hard to say.’

  For a man who was famously reluctant to provide information at the scene of crime, Richards was being extremely co-operative, almost avuncular by his standards. Karen knew all too well how much he preferred to wait until he had examined a subject in his laboratory before giving anything away.

  ‘It would seem most likely that she was attacked and that her attacker hit her in the face,’ he went on. ‘But there is some sign of bruising, which indicates that she didn’t die straight after the blow to her face. I really can’t say any more yet until the post mortem.’

  ‘Time of death?’ Karen enquired, adding quickly, in order not to antagonise the pathologist, ‘Only approximately, of course.’

  Richards grunted. ‘Very approximately, some time around midnight, I would say.’

  Karen nodded thoughtfully. So, just as she had already guessed, Angel had lain dead in her kitchen overnight until the arrival of her daily help, Mrs Nott, first thing that morning.

  The DCI persisted in trying to extract as much information as possible from Audley Richards.

  ‘Could that blow to the back of the head have been enough to kill her, Audley?’ she asked, although pretty sure she wouldn’t get a straight answer until Richards was able to do the job properly. She was quite correct, too.

  ‘Hit the right spot and a tap can kill you, Karen,’ he said tiredly. ‘As you well know. So can three inches of water, half a peanut if you have that allergy, and an unexpected aneurysm without warning as you walk along the street. Doesn’t mean a thing, does it?’

  He wouldn’t budge. The DCI would have to be patient, something she wasn’t all that hot on if the truth be known.

  Meanwhile she went into standard operating mode for the senior investigating officer at a suspicious death, which, she had to remind herself, was all that she had at the moment – although she was somehow pretty damned sure it was going to turn into a murder case pretty sharpish. A team was dispatched to ask questions in the neighbourhood about any comings and goings the night before.

  Mrs Nott had been asked to wait in the living room, and Karen Meadows decided to talk to her herself, along with DS Cooper. The daily help could provide no hard information at all about who might have visited Angel Silver during the previous night, but she was willing, with little or no encouragement, to hazard a guess.

  ‘That reporter feller on the Argus, he’s always out here, snooping about,’ she said. ‘And he’s been here upstairs sometimes, in her bedroom more than likely, when I haven’t been supposed to know about it.’

  Mrs Nott, making a quick recovery from her gruesome discovery, looked quite smug about that.

  ‘So how did you know about it then?’ Karen asked rather wearily.

  ‘You couldn’t miss that flashy little car of his, could you? He used to park it round the side of the house but there’s nowhere here to hide it, and how many dark green open sports cars are there around? I ask you.’

  Mrs Nott had sniffed derisively. Karen felt an unwelcome shiver of anticipation run down her spine.

  ‘Do you know this reporter’s name, Mrs Nott?’ she enquired flatly, aware that it was a question she hardly needed to ask.

  ‘Course I do. His name’s been all over the papers, hasn’t it, ever since this started. John Kelly, that’s his name. And the papers isn’t all he’s been over, that’s for sure.’

  Karen felt irritated. The woman’s sanctimonious superiority was a little hard to take.

  ‘Did you see John Kelly at this house last night?’ Karen asked sharply.

  ‘Well, no, of course I didn’t,’ responded Mrs Nott quite chirpily, apparently blissfully unaware of the warning chill in Karen Meadows’ voice. ‘I go to bed at night, me, at a proper time, like decent folk.’

  The DCI sighed. ‘So have you any specific reason at all for suspecting that John Kelly may have been here last night?’

  ‘Well, he’s always sniffing around here, isn’t he?’ Mrs Nott repeated. ‘Can’t keep away. Well, he couldn’t anyway …’ The woman’s voice tailed off, as if she was suddenly remembering again what she had seen that morning.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Nott. Doesn’t look like you can help us at all, really, does it?’ said Karen even more sharply. And this time Mrs Nott did at least have the grace to look a little uncomfortable, if nothing more, which made the DCI feel marginally better – although not for long.

  One of the detective constables, an eager fresh-faced young man recently promoted from uniform, who had been sent on the house-to-house, was waiting in the hallway for her and DS Cooper to finish interviewing the cleaning lady.

  ‘Thought you’d like to know, boss, we’ve got an insomniac in the house across the way who saw a taxi pull up just before midnight and someone get out and walk towards Maythorpe,’ said DC Burns. ‘He couldn’t give any description worth having, said it was too dark. He saw little more than a shadowy shape and couldn’t even be certain whether it was a man or a woman, although he said he somehow thought it was a man. And he can’t see the gates to Maythorpe properly from his bedroom window where he was looking out, so he couldn’t even be sure this person went into the manor, but he said the taxi was there for at least half an hour because he stood by his window for that long drinking tea. Then he went back to bed so he didn’t know what time it left.’

  Karen listened to DC Burns’s report in grim silence. She knew well enough that Kelly was off the road, so, had he been the midnight visitor, there would have been no distinctive MG arriving. Kelly’s pride and joy was a write-off, even if Kelly was mad enough to drive in spite of his ban. It was more than likely that if he had wanted to visit Maythorpe, he would have used a taxi.

  ‘Do we know the taxi firm?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘Yes, he saw that all right, boss. Tor Cars. You can’t miss ’em. They have those distinctive yellow and red signs.’

  Karen nodded. ‘Right, get on to it then. Let’s find the driver.’

  DC Burns, on what was almost certainly his first murder inquiry, left at once, almost running out of the door, coattails flapping. Karen absently watched him go for a moment. Burns was a big man, a stalwart of the local police rugby team. When excited he looked like an extremely large over-grown schoolboy, she thought. Phil Cooper was standing by the DCI’s side and she could feel his eyes on her. She turned towards him challengingly.

  ‘Even if it was Kelly, doesn’t mean he did anything to her, boss. It could even still have been an accident,’ said DS Cooper, not particularly convincingly but showing his usual intuition. ‘Let’s say it was him, he still may not even have entered the house. Word is he’s been in the habit sometimes of coming out here just for a look-see.’

  Karen warmed to him more than ever. Cooper knew, as they
all did, that she had a suspiciously soft spot for Kelly. Most of the others would either have said nothing or taken the piss.

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ she responded crisply. ‘Anyway, we’ve already got his fingerprints on file and his DNA following his arrest for drink driving. If he was involved in this he’s bound to have left a mark somewhere.’

  ‘Well, I expect his prints are everywhere in this house from what I’ve heard …’

  Cooper looked uncomfortable as he paused, unsure perhaps if his boss wanted to hear the rest of what he was going to say. It was obvious anyway.

  Karen shot him a wry look. Sometimes it seemed that the entire Devon and Cornwall Constabulary had little to do other than to gossip. She knew that it was generally believed that she and Kelly had once had a big affair, and she could well understand why even the possibility of such a liaison was considered so intriguing. After all, Kelly, even before the recent catastrophic events in his life, had been widely regarded as just a tired old hack who had seen better days, while Karen was a highly successful, crisply efficient senior police officer awaiting an expected promotion, in fact, to the rank of detective superintendent.

  The truth, of course, would never be believed – how a tabloid journalist had chosen to save her career and proven himself to be one of the best friends she ever had. In any case, Karen actually much preferred the fictional version to the reality of her having made a fool of herself over a dangerous criminal who had more than likely been conning her all along. Now Karen Meadows was one of the few who remembered the person Kelly had once been and had always been able to see flashes of that in him.

  Until he met Angel Silver, she thought. Karen had fallen wildly in love with David Flanigan all those years ago and had totally lost any sense of judgement – a condition, she suspected, that was at the root of John Kelly’s potentially disastrous behaviour.

  Now it seemed that Kelly might have been driven to murder. Karen Meadows found herself suddenly overwhelmed with a terrible sadness, not to mention a sense of impending loss. The only way she knew to deal with it was simply to do her job.

  ‘We’d better get Kelly in for questioning,’ she said expressionlessly.

  After he had returned home Kelly had sat up all night watching TV. Somehow he had not needed to sleep. And, in any case, he had known that he would not be able to. But at around 8 or 9 a.m. the exhaustion caught up with him and he did fall asleep in his armchair, TV still on, waking with a start just as the lunchtime news bulletin was starting.

  ‘The body of a woman has been found at Maythorpe Manor, the Torbay home of the late rock star Scott Silver. It is believed that she may be Silver’s widow, Angel …’

  The shock ripped through Kelly’s body like a flash of freak lightning. Could she really be dead? He supposed that he shouldn’t be surprised. Well, not shocked, anyway.

  It was over then. Angel was dead. His own life was in tatters. But at least it was over at last. And maybe it could only ever have ended with death, he thought.

  He stood up and put on his old leather jacket, which looked even more battered than usual as he had spent most of the night and morning using it as a pillow.

  The team sent by Karen Meadows to bring Kelly in arrived several minutes after he had already left his St Marychurch home. And by the time DC Burns had tracked down the taxi driver who was able to confirm that he had picked up Mr Kelly from his home in Crown Avenue, taken him to Maythorpe and waited for him for around forty-five minutes before driving him back, his evidence was not really needed.

  Kelly was waiting at Torquay Police Station when Karen Meadows returned from the crime scene. They had put him in an interview room and left him in the company of a uniformed constable. Kelly refused to talk to anybody except the DCI.

  ‘I’ve come to give myself up for the murder of Angel Silver,’ he told her simply.

  Neither his voice nor his face gave anything away. Kelly had shut down his emotions. Cut himself off from his surroundings and his circumstances. It was almost as if he was talking about something which didn’t concern him at all.

  Twenty-two

  Karen Meadows sat down with a bump in the chair opposite Kelly. She studied him thoughtfully for a moment or two. Her old friend was very still, his eyes met hers briefly, but his facial expression gave nothing away. There were a couple of angry red weals on his left cheek which could have been scratch marks. Karen’s heart sank even further. She studied him carefully.

  ‘Right then, John, you’d better tell us all about it, hadn’t you, get it on the record,’ she said eventually, and, glancing at the young detective sergeant standing alongside her, ‘I’d like DS Cooper to do the interview –’

  ‘No,’ Kelly interrupted sharply. ‘It’s you or nobody, Karen. I’ve already said that.’

  The DCI hesitated almost imperceptibly. She could understand well enough why Kelly was so insistent on talking only to her, to someone he knew and presumably trusted, as she always had him. But she really was not sure she was the right person at all to do the job. She didn’t even want to listen to him confessing to a murder, if that really was what he was about to do, of which there seemed little doubt.

  There was also the question of politics again. Media and public attention was about to be firmly focused on the activities of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary once more, and Karen confidently expected to have the chief constable down on her like a ton of bricks at any moment.

  Aloud she said, ‘Fine. Let’s do it properly then.’

  She gestured to DS Cooper to switch on the double tape recorder on the table in front of Kelly.

  ‘OK, John, so why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?’ Karen began, after first recording the obligatory formal introduction to the interview.

  ‘I snapped,’ said Kelly simply. ‘I just flew at her. I hit her in the face. It was a moment of madness, I suppose. But, by God, she provoked me.’

  ‘Start at the beginning, please.’

  Kelly’s expression changed then. His eyes darkened. Karen was unsure exactly what she could see there but she knew she didn’t like it.

  ‘The beginning?’ he queried. ‘You want the beginning? I wish I knew how it began, I really wish I did. I know I was obsessed with Angel. She took over my entire life. She was all I could ever think about. Most of the time I didn’t even want it to be like that, but I never seemed able to do anything about it.’

  He paused. Karen thought there were tears in his eyes now.

  ‘I loved her, you see, like I’d never loved anyone before,’ Kelly went on. ‘She never returned that. She told me she did once, but I knew it wasn’t true. I really did love her, though. A part of me still loves her, even after … after everything …’ Tears began to run down Kelly’s face then, yet he seemed quite unaware of them. ‘She treated me like dirt half the time, and yet I couldn’t stop loving her …’ His voice tailed off. He sounded almost surprised at his own behaviour.

  Karen did not speak. She did not feel she needed to. DS Cooper fidgeted slightly in his seat. He was not a man at ease with displays of emotion.

  ‘There was the sex, of course. It was almost as if I’d never had sex before. There weren’t any boundaries, you see. It went so far beyond anything I’d ever experienced. Yet I didn’t even like an awful lot of what we did. Not afterwards, that is.’ Kelly laughed briefly and without humour.

  DS Cooper fidgeted all the more. Kelly seemed suddenly to become aware of the tears that were still running down his cheeks. He stopped talking and rubbed at his face ineffectually with the back of one hand. His fingers touched the weals on his left cheek, and he winced.

  Karen thought he looked surprised, as if previously unaware even that his face had been injured. She waited for a few more seconds. It was almost as if Kelly had gone into some other world.

  ‘So exactly what happened last night?’ Karen asked, in an effort to bring him back into this one.

  Kelly looked down at the table. ‘I’ve never hit a woman before,
’ he said. ‘Even when the drink’s got to me, even when I hit rock bottom all those years ago, at least I never did that. But she just went too far. I couldn’t stop myself.’

  ‘Describe to me how you hit her exactly,’ Karen asked. ‘Did you punch her?’

  ‘No, not that really.’ Kelly leaned forward and put his head in his hands. Karen didn’t think he was avoiding the question, just trying to think, to get things clear in his mind. After a good minute or so of silence, though, she decided another prompt was in order.

  ‘So what did you do, John?’

  ‘Well,’ Kelly still seemed to be struggling with his thoughts, with his memory, ‘I suppose it was more of a slap really. I lost control. It’s hard to remember exactly what I did. I just hit out.’ He moved his hands away from his face a few inches and studied them almost with a kind of curiosity, as if amazed by what they had been responsible for. ‘I think I caught her with my palm. Her nose just seemed to explode. There was blood everywhere. She fell back against the kitchen worktop and then on to the floor.’

  ‘So what did you do next, John?’

  ‘I just took off. I was horrified by it all.’

  ‘You didn’t try to help her?’

  ‘No, I was just desperate get out, to get away.’ He paused again. ‘In any case, it seems crazy now, but I didn’t even think about helping her. I didn’t think she’d want my help, for a start. She’d just spent some time explaining to me in detail how much contempt she had for me.’

  ‘So you left her for dead?’

  Kelly looked shocked. ‘No, not that. I didn’t think she was dead. Well, she wasn’t, not when I left. She was half lying on the floor, just staring at me. I didn’t think I’d hurt her that badly, not then. She looked, well, it sounds stupid but …’

  Again a pause.

  ‘She looked what, John?’

  ‘She … she looked almost triumphant. As if she’d wanted me to hit her, as if she’d got her own way.’