Karen had once believed unfalteringly that a police officer should always seek the truth, regardless of the consequences. But the more senior she became in the force, the more she had learned to accept grim reality. All too often the discovery of truth was neither wise nor desirable.
And there were some cases it was actually preferable never to solve.
When Kelly arrived home in a police squad car Moira opened his own front door to him.
‘God, I’m glad to see you,’ he said, and he meant it.
Kelly was completely washed out. At one point he had quite convinced himself that he really was a murderer. He was now beginning to realise that, at least as far as Angel Silver’s violent death was concerned, he had merely been a victim of circumstances and of coincidence. But it took a bit of getting used to.
His own company had not been an inviting prospect.
Kelly could smell cooking in the kitchen, and he could hardly believe his luck.
He sniffed the air appreciatively. ‘I know I don’t deserve this,’ he said. ‘And I certainly don’t deserve you.’
‘No, you don’t,’ said Moira.
Kelly reached out a hand tentatively and stroked her hair.
‘Love is nothing to do with what people deserve, is it?’ she continued. ‘You can’t just switch it off. I tried and it didn’t work.’
‘It certainly isn’t,’ said Kelly, reflecting on the madness of his feelings for Angel, and what it had led to.
Suddenly he leaned forward and pecked Moira on the cheek. He half expected her to resist even that, but she didn’t, although neither did she respond.
‘At least I know I’m not a murderer now,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I could have lived with that under any circumstances.
‘I really did think I’d done it, you know, Moira. I was so confused when I heard Angel was dead, and I’d been so bloody angry. My head just wasn’t working. I didn’t know what I might have done for a bit. But all I did was push her, it seems. I’m not even sure I ever hit her properly. Apparently her nose was shot to hell, that’s why it bled so quickly and so much.’
Moira didn’t know any of what Angel had told him about the night that her husband and Terry James had died, about how she had murdered both of them in cold blood. And Kelly didn’t intend to tell her. Not unless he ever thought she might learn about it from some other source.
But, like Karen Meadows, he reckoned the whole thing might stay under wraps now. And like the DCI, although for very different reasons, he thought that would be, by and large, the best thing.
Kelly’s folly was already great enough in Moira’s eyes, he was sure, as it indeed was in his own. He didn’t see the need to reveal that the woman he had been so obsessed with, the woman with whom he had so recklessly joined on the road to self-destruction, was also a double murderer.
Abruptly, Moira stepped away from him, held him at arm’s length and studied him quizzically.
‘You were a bloody fool, weren’t you?’ she remarked.
‘I certainly was,’ he agreed.
‘You do know that now, don’t you?’
‘I do. Yes.’
Moira nodded. And there was real aggression in her voice when she spoke again. ‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ she said. ‘Whatever you say, I wouldn’t have blamed you for killing that bitch. I could have done so myself, for two pins.’
‘No you couldn’t,’ said Kelly mildly. ‘Oh no, you couldn’t.’
But Angel Silver could kill, he thought. Just like that. He would carry the terrible truth about her around with him for the rest of his life, and it would be a burden like no other he had ever had experience of. There was another terrible truth too. He hadn’t attacked Angel because she’d told him about the murders she’d committed, as much as because of the contempt she’d shown him. He had still been in love with her in spite of everything. Maybe a bit of him always would be. He had just no longer been able to stand the way she had tormented him.
He avoided Moira’s gaze. At that moment he didn’t dare look her in the eye.
‘We’ve got a lot to talk about,’ she said, and he hoped she hadn’t been reading his mind.
‘Yes,’ said Kelly quietly. And a lot we won’t ever talk about, he thought.
‘But not now, not tonight.’
As if on cue the doorbell rang. Moira reached past Kelly and opened it. Nick stood on the doorstep, his smile more uncertain than Moira’s – but at least he was still smiling, thought Kelly.
‘Hi, Dad,’ he said.
‘It’s very good to see you,’ replied Kelly, feeling the tears well up.
‘I called Nick on his mobile as soon as I knew you were being released,’ said Moira. ‘He said he’d come straight away. But I didn’t think he’d be this quick.’
She shot Nick an affectionate glance.
‘I wasn’t so far away. I was on a business trip to Bristol. Lucky coincidence. Just wanted to welcome you home, that’s all, Dad.’
‘Luckiest thing around here is that I’ve still got you two,’ said Kelly. And he found that, at least for a while, he was able to stop thinking about the turmoil of his recent past.
‘Just hold it together this time, Dad. Keep off the hooch and any other crap that’s around, will you?’
‘Yes. I promise.’
‘And stay way from loose women too.’ Nick grinned.
Kelly was not very amused, although he managed a weak grin back. ‘I promise that as well,’ he said automatically.
But all he could think of was that neither Nick nor Moira really had a clue about his feelings for Angel and the strange power she had had over him.
He supposed it really was over now. Angel was dead, after all, and he couldn’t say he was sorry about that any more. Actually, he wasn’t sorry. In fact, in spite of the fact that he probably still loved her, he was almost glad. It was, as he had known from the moment he had first heard of her death on the TV news, the only way any of it could ever be over for him. He was also glad that he hadn’t killed her. That would have been too much to cope with.
He could rebuild his life now. He would rebuild his relationship with Moira too, if she’d let him, and every indication, somewhat miraculously, was that she would. Eventually. He would stay off the drink. And the drugs. If he’d ever harboured the notion that enough time had passed since he’d hit the bottom of the pile and that he could cope with either of them, then he’d learned that lesson the hard way.
In the morning he’d phone Joe Robertson and see if his job was still there for him. He had no idea whether it would be or not, but if there was anyone in the world who would stand by him in spite of everything, after Moira and Nick, of course, it was Joe.
Kelly was being handed another chance again. He knew it, was grateful for it, and he genuinely intended to make the most of it.
He also knew, however, that if Angel were still alive, none of that rebuilding would be possible. Because as long as she were there, somewhere, almost anywhere, Kelly would not be able to stay away. His obsession was something he still couldn’t explain, even to himself. It was not something he liked. It was not something he had ever liked much really, not something he had enjoyed most of the time. It had been completely beyond his control. Angel’s power over him had been frightening and total. He didn’t suppose he would ever have been able to overcome it. Not if she had lived.
Her death had freed him.
He put an arm round both Nick and Moira and the three of them moved together into the dining room. They were his future now. And at least Kelly realised how extraordinarily lucky he was to have any kind of future at all.
Moira had roasted a chicken, the traditional way with sage and onion stuffing.
Nick liked roast chicken. He liked Moira too, and thought, as he had so many times before, how good she was to and for his father.
He would, of course, have preferred his father to have stayed with his mother and to have been the dad he had always wanted, both in his childhood and th
roughout his life. But even Nick had sometimes to accept that you couldn’t have everything. He certainly didn’t resent Moira. She had arrived on the scene far too long after his father had messed up the first time round, and abandoned him and his mother, to be resented in any way. In fact, one of the reasons he liked Moira so much was that she had been instrumental in giving him back his father. Moira had kept Kelly on the straight and narrow, Moira had provided the kind of family environment that Nick had never thought his father would attain again. Nick liked that. He’d liked it a lot until Angel Silver had come along and spoiled it all.
Nick hadn’t liked it being spoiled. And he hadn’t wanted to lose the father he had so recently regained. Indeed, he had ultimately decided to make sure that he wouldn’t lose him.
People didn’t realise, thought Nick as he leaned back in his chair and watched Kelly and Moira mend bridges, just how much it meant to have a father. To be honest, he thought, he himself had been surprised by the strength of his feelings for a man he had barely known until a few years ago. A man he could have felt just the opposite about, except that John Kelly was the only father Nick had, and that mattered to Nick more than he would have thought possible.
The kind of father-son relationship that, it seemed to Nick, almost everybody else in the world had, came to him late. But he had eventually found it. And it had genuinely destroyed him to see Kelly lying in a hospital bed, bashed and battered and damn near down and out. Nick had quite a lot in common with the James clan, really. He was fiercely loyal to his family, even though, unlike the Jameses, Nick had never really had a family. However, that seemed only to make his feelings for his father more intense once he had been reunited with him.
Although it was Nick’s nature to take action when he or anything that he wanted or revered in life was threatened, he had never intended to do anything about his father’s situation except offer his support. He really hadn’t …
‘Nick, Nick.’
His father’s voice, somewhere in the distance, interrupted Nick’s thoughts.
‘Sorry, Dad. I was miles away.’
‘Could see that. Look, there’s an AA meeting in town tonight. I don’t want to go. But everyone tells me how important it is, and I reckon I ought to start how I mean to go on.’
‘Sure, Dad.’ Nick liked the sound of that, saw it as an indication of just how serious his father was this time.
‘It’s down in Union Street and I was wondering if you might drive me there. I shan’t be driving myself for a bit, as you know,’ Kelly finished wryly.
It was when they swung into Union Street, just by the magistrates’ court, that Kelly was suddenly overwhelmed with unwelcome memories.
It was there that he had watched Angel first plead not guilty to manslaughter. There that he had sat in the press bench and been overwhelmed by her beauty and her composure.
Kelly found himself staring at the old courtroom building, turning his head round for a further look at it over his shoulder.
He was aware of Nick shooting him a quick glance. They were close, father and son, surprisingly so considering how long they had been separated. Kelly was fairly sure that Nick knew what he was thinking. And he seemed to be right.
‘You are going to be able to put all this behind you, Dad, aren’t you?’ Nick asked, a note of tension evident in his voice.
‘I promise you, Nick,’ Kelly said.
Nick made no reply as he drew the Porsche to a halt a hundred yards or so further on down the street, outside the venue for the AA meeting.
Then, just as his father was getting out of the car, he asked testily, ‘For Christ’s sake, Dad, how did you come under that woman’s spell the way you did? What the hell was it?’
Kelly was taken aback. The outburst was completely unexpected.
‘I don’t know exactly,’ he answered honestly. Then he smiled. ‘She was very beautiful, you know.’
‘Beautiful?’ Nick shouted the word, his handsome features suddenly contorted. ‘She was a slag, for Christ’s sake. A filthy slag. Rich, famous, and a slag. Nose shot to hell by what she stuffed up it. Old makeup smudged all over her face and a filthy stinking old dressing gown. That was her style. That’s how she was when she died and that’s how she was when she lived.’
Abruptly Nick reached out for the car door which his father was still holding open and slammed it shut, almost trapping Kelly’s fingers.
Kelly was both disturbed and thoughtful as he watched his son roar off. He was shocked by the level of Nick’s anger, and he was also puzzled.
He didn’t think that a detailed description of the state Angel had been in when she was killed had ever been released by the police. Even the stuff about her wrecked nose wouldn’t become public knowledge until the inquest into her death, which had yet to be heard.
Kelly stood quite still on the pavement as the Porsche disappeared into the distance, concentrating very hard, forcing himself to remember everything.
Nick had even known about the grubby dressing gown Angel had been wearing when she was killed.
Kelly shook his head, partly to clear it, and partly in denial of the unthinkable.
Nick took deliberately measured long deep breaths as he drove far too fast through the town.
This would never do. He was usually so controlled. But this entire business between his father and that bloody woman had caused him to lose it more than anything else, ever.
He really would have to be more careful. Not that he regretted what he’d done, of course. Not for a moment. He just realised that he might well have said too much, and could only hope that Kelly had not taken in the significance of his angry remarks.
He stopped the car down by the seafront, deciding to wait there for the hour or so his father would be at the AA meeting, rather than return to St Marychurch, where he would be expected to talk to Moira.
It was a clear moonlit night. Nick wound down a window and gratefully drank in the cool fresh air.
It had all begun for him on the night before Angel Silver’s death, the day his father was discharged from Plumpton House. What Nick witnessed that night changed everything. Before that he really hadn’t intended to do anything.
Under the impression, like Moira, that Kelly was not being released until the next day, Nick had arrived unexpectedly at Plumpton just as Kelly was leaving. The taxi carrying his father had passed Nick as he’d pulled off the main road into the lane leading to the rehabilitation centre. Kelly had been using his mobile phone, and had not noticed his son or his distinctive car. Nick had been about to blow his horn and flash his lights, but something stopped him. He decided instead to turn the Porsche round and follow the taxi at a discreet distance.
It was already dark and Nick was good at surveillance. He had, after all, been trained in it. And somehow, he wasn’t altogether surprised when the taxi swung off the main Torquay drag into the road, past the hospital and the Argus offices, which led to Maidencombe. As Nick by then expected, the taxi had turned into Rock Lane and proceeded down the hill to Maythorpe Manor. Nick switched off his headlights and coasted into the entrance of another house just up the lane, hoping that nobody would want to come in or out. He watched his father get out of the taxi and open the electronic gates to Maythorpe, unsurprised that he seemed familiar with the appropriate combination number.
Then, during the brief time that Kelly was inside the old manor house, Nick sat and thought about exactly what he was witnessing.
Nick knew that his father was a weak man, but he blamed Angel Silver for Kelly’s fall from grace even more than Kelly himself.
And suddenly, rather in the way his father had later realised it when he heard the radio report of Angel’s death, it had struck Nick with devastating clarity that as long as Angel Silver was alive, John Kelly would never be able to extricate himself from her. He would be under her spell always. He would almost certainly start drinking and doing all manner of drugs all over again, because of her.
If that was allowed to
happen then Nick would lose his father again.
It was then that he made a decision. Nick was good at decisions. And he was extremely well equipped to carry out the decision he had made.
Nick was indeed a computer expert, but of a very special kind. He was an expert at overcoming security systems, and his special talents, plus his all-round exceptional ability as a soldier, had led to him being seconded to the SAS, a regiment well suited to his nature, which was both daring and devious.
But Nick had always liked the good life, something he had inherited from his father, he thought wryly, although Kelly, of course, had had seriously to downsize his expectations in that direction.
As a lucrative sideline Nick had farmed out his knowledge, and even some of his equipment, to various freelance operations of the kind that the British army could never approve of. More often than not some dodgy mercenary outfit.
Nobody outside his regiment knew, least of all his father, but Nick’s days in the army had ended abruptly when one of his extramural activities had been discovered. Nick had not been thrown out. That would not have been good either for army morale or regimental reputation. Instead, he was discreetly asked to leave, and always being one to know when the game was up, unlike his father on most occasions, Nick had done so promptly and discreetly.
Now he just continued out of uniform what he had started while in it. He lent his expertise to almost anyone who had a security system to breach. Often, because of his army background, there was a military connection. Sometimes the operations he took part in were criminal. Nick didn’t care a lot. He loved adventure and did not understand morality very much. He knew what he wanted and how to ensure that he got it.
The striking of a clock somewhere in the town interrupted his thoughts. Nick checked his watch. It was time to collect his father. He started up the Porsche and motored slowly along Union Street. Kelly was just stepping out on to the pavement as he approached.
Kelly was apprehensive. He had been preoccupied throughout the AA meeting. Unwelcome speculation filled his head.
‘Hi, Dad,’ said Nick cheerily. Kelly looked him up and down. Nick was smiling and seemed absolutely calm and controlled, the way he usually did.
A Moment Of Madness Page 37
