A Moment Of Madness

Nine

It was very dark outside Maythorpe Manor. The security lights were off, and if there were any lights on inside the house the curtains must have been tightly drawn because Kelly could not see even a chink at the windows. The place was deserted. No police. No fans. No press.

Well, it had been empty for weeks and people get fed up with standing outside an empty house. Even journalists.

Kelly slowed almost to a halt outside the towering electronic gates and was about to stop the car to get out and speak into the intercom when the gates opened before him as if by magic. At the same moment the lights blazed on.

Had Angel been watching from inside, seen his headlights approaching, Kelly wondered. Or maybe she had heard the engine. No motor in the world had a more distinctive sound than an MG.

He drove into the grounds of the imposing old house. It felt strange to be an invited guest after having stood on the doorstep for so long. He motored slowly across the gravelled forecourt and pulled to a halt outside the pillared front door.

Thanks to the neon glare of the security lamps it was almost like daylight as he stepped out of the car. From what he could see of the garden it already did not look as well cared for as when he had last studied it. The white paint of the front door was peeling slightly. Only the daily help, Mrs Sheila Nott, had been retained, Kelly understood. It seemed that everything had started to fall apart.

He fastened the zip of his battered old leather jacket as he stepped out of the car. A bright and sunny Christmas Day had turned into a cold damp night.

The front door opened just as he reached for the bell pull on the wall alongside it. Suddenly she was standing right in front of him. He withdrew his hand and stood looking at her.

Her hair was wispy blonde again, close to its natural colour perhaps. He wondered if even she knew what her natural colour was any more. The violet eyes studied him in that slightly mocking way which seemed to come naturally, even when she would appear to have absolutely nothing to be mocking about. Her mouth was, as usual, a vermilion slash in that translucent porcelain skin. It parted in a slight smile of greeting, the lips curling almost imperceptibly in the corners.

‘Don’t just stand there, come on in,’ she said.

He took a step forward. His legs felt weak, slightly shaky. There was something about getting close to someone you had trailed from a distance. He had spent so much time thinking about Angel Silver and what had happened to her, trying to get inside her head.

‘Close the door behind you,’ she commanded, stepping backwards, still looking at him. She was a woman fully aware of the effect she could have on men.

Kelly did as he was told, and a little voice inside his head sent him a message that this was how it would always be with Angel Silver. Trouble was, he didn’t even care.

She led him into a big high-ceilinged sitting room which looked as if it could do with a good clean. Its décor was the first surprise. Absolutely traditional English furniture. One or two rather good antiques, Kelly thought. Two chintzy sofas, a rocking chair, a beautiful mahogany desk in the corner, heavy velvet drapes at the windows, richly coloured Indian rugs scattered over a dark wood-block floor, cream brocade wallpaper.

Kelly was not sure what he had expected to find in the home of a rock icon and his beautiful if slightly weird wife, but this was not it at all. It was so conventional. He had just assumed that he would be confronted by something outlandish, he supposed.

Music played softly in the background. Another surprise.

‘Mozart,’ he said.

She nodded, the eyes even more mocking.

‘Didn’t you think Angel Silver could appreciate classical music?’

He noted the use of the word ‘could’ instead of the ‘would’ that might have fitted rather more naturally.

‘I hadn’t thought about it,’ he said, trying to sound casual. He looked around again. There was no sign at all in the house that it was Christmas Day. Indeed, when they had spoken on the phone earlier it had been almost as if she were unaware of that until he had pointed it out.

‘Have you been alone today?’ he asked.

‘Yes?’ she replied questioningly, sounding surprised that he should bother to make such an enquiry.

‘Well, nothing, but it is Christmas...’ he stumbled uncertainly.

‘Just another day to me,’ she replied quickly. ‘Particularly this year.’

Of course, he thought, wondering if he had been insensitive.

‘I suppose so. I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Don’t be. Can I get you a drink?’

‘Coffee maybe?’

Her eyebrows had lifted. ‘Coffee? Is this the wild man of Fleet Street that I remember?’

Everything she said to him seemed to be mocking, or teasing at the very least. She was wearing what he could only describe to himself as a sort of little-girl frock in an almost fluorescent pink silky material. On any other woman of her age it would have looked ridiculous. Angel got away with it. She looked gorgeous. The dress was low and displayed an enticing glimpse of small pert breasts. Kelly tried not to look. They were very white. A vivid image of what they would be like fully exposed — small but perfect, with dark hard nipples — suddenly flashed in front of his eyes.

As if on cue her hand went to the front of her dress. She tugged at it slightly, revealing just a little more pale flesh.

He flinched, and made a real effort to pull himself together. Could she read his mind?

‘I’m surprised you remember me at all.’

‘Why? Because I was out of my head?’

‘No, I didn’t mean that—’

‘Yes you did, but it’s all right.’

She invited him to sit down, and disappeared somewhere to make coffee, leaving him alone with thoughts which were already confused. She had been flirting with him, there was no doubt about that, and he wasn’t sure whether he hoped she would stop or not. He had no illusions. He suspected flirting was just a reflex action for her. None the less he found it terribly disturbing. He fiddled with his tape recorder, making sure it was working properly, and checked unnecessarily that his notebook and pen were in his jacket pocket.

Angel seemed to be away a very long time. Kelly wondered how used she was to making coffee for herself. It was somehow difficult to imagine Angel Silver undertaking any mundane household task. Eventually she returned with two large porcelain mugs on a plastic tray.

‘Instant OK?’ she enquired in a voice which suggested that it didn’t much matter whether it was OK or not, because it was all he was getting.

‘Sure,’ he said.

She tripped slightly over the rug by the sofa. Kelly leaned forward and grabbed the tray, steadying it, then taking it from her. The two mugs each sat in a brown puddle now. She reached for a box of paper handkerchiefs on the little table next to him and mopped up the tray, very carefully. As she leaned over him the flimsy pink dress gaped even more and he could see her breasts even more clearly. The nipples disproportionately large, very dark brown, and standing out. Hard. Inviting. Much as he had imagined them earlier. He made himself look away.

‘There,’ she said, behaving as if she’d accomplished a momentous task as she finished cleaning the tray, screwed up the paper handkerchief and tossed it into the already littered grate of the unlit fireplace. Then she sat down on the sofa next to him, closer to him than most people would sit, he thought. Her eyes were unnaturally bright. She was breathing quickly. She gave a little sniff and lifted one of the mugs to her lips. He studied her. He had a pretty fair idea of what she had been doing which had kept her so long while she’d been allegedly making the coffee. He’d done enough coke himself to know the signs. He made no comment, of course. What could he possibly say? That he’d always had her down as one who’d never really be able to kick all her bad habits, somebody who would never even want to face every day of the rest of her life without that something extra, without something to bend her mind, without that buzz, that lift, that you can get from a little packet of white powder? Yet Angel seemed to survive, and to continue to function, whatever she was doing, whatever she was on, whatever got her through the days. If she still had a habit she must at least have retained some control over it, he reckoned. She looked so good, for a start. Perhaps she was one of the ones who could handle it after all, at least well enough to kid themselves that they could. And maybe she’d had to sink to rock bottom first to get even that far, just like he had done not so long afterwards. She still looked so absurdly young although it was almost seventeen years since he’d plucked her from the gutter. And since then he’d been there himself.

He picked up the other coffee mug and took a sip, moving the tray from his lap on to the floor at their feet.

‘So, are you going to switch that thing on or what?’ Angel asked, gesturing at the tape recorder, taking charge again.

You’d think she was the one conducting the interview, Kelly thought. He gave himself a mental talking-to. If this was going to work he had to take control.

‘If you’re sure you’re ready,’ he said. ‘I’d like to start with you taking me through the night when it all happened. When Scott and Terry James died. Your own version of events—’

‘What do you mean, “version”?’ she interrupted sharply, snapping at him, no mockery now in her eyes, just a fast-blazing anger.

‘Whoa. That’s just a turn of phrase, that’s all.’

‘Well, you watch your turn of phrase then. I thought you were supposed to be an expert with words.’

‘Shall we try again? Would you just tell me what happened from the beginning?’

‘Where do you want me to start?’

He had a feeling Angel was deliberately testing his patience. He didn’t rise.

‘Wherever you think you should.’

She nodded, leaning back on the sofa, and seemed to go off into a kind of dream.

‘Scott and I had spent the evening here alone, listening to music. We weren’t mad ravers any more, you know. We liked our home, just being together. A nice meal, a decent bottle of wine. Maybe a video. We were just like any ordinary married couple.’

She glanced at him appealingly. Anybody less like half of ‘any ordinary married couple’ than Angel Silver was difficult to imagine. Kelly did not speak. He just gestured her to continue.

‘We went to bed about midnight, I suppose. I’m not sure. We both fell asleep quite quickly, I think. The next thing I knew was I felt Scott stir, I think he sat upright, and he must have flicked the bedside light on. It was probably the light which woke me, or it may have been when he cried out, “What the fuck?” That’s what he said. “What the fuck?”

‘I suppose neither of us was quite awake. It was like a bad dream. There was Terry James standing in the middle of our bedroom just looking at us. He was carrying a bag in one hand — the police said later it was full of our things — and he had this knife in the other. I recognised it. Can you believe that? At that moment I recognised it as one of our kitchen knives, he’d just picked it up, apparently. I was kind of mesmerised by him just standing there, couldn’t take it in as real, but Scott leaped out of bed and threw himself at him. He was always like that, Scott, fancied himself as a bit of an action man. He was the first person I knew to try bungee jumping, before most people had even heard of it. Scott liked danger. He was never afraid. It was just like him to act first, then think later...’

Angel’s voice tailed off. Her eyes still had that faraway look. Kelly didn’t want to break the spell. He kept silent, waiting for her to speak again.

‘There was a struggle. Scott was very strong, you know, tough, wiry. He had hold of Terry James’s knife arm, and with his other arm he was going for him, clawing at him, punching, going for his eyes, it looked like. James was shouting, “Get off me.” I just watched. I can’t believe now that I didn’t manage to do anything else. I could have helped. There was a panic button by the bed. I might even have had time to phone the police. But I didn’t do anything. I just watched.

‘Anyway, although Scott was strong he was half Terry James’s size. James got his knife hand free and started lashing at Scott. He cut him on the cheek, I think, just a glancing blow, but Scott cried out in pain and he sounded scared then. I think he finally felt afraid, realised what he was taking on. He just turned away, cowering. James brought the knife up from under, and stabbed him in the side of his back, low down, right in the kidneys, the police said. That first blow, that...’

She broke down then. Tears started to pour down her face. Kelly stared at her, fascinated. She wasn’t sobbing, not weeping at all in the conventional fashion, but these huge tears were just pouring down her face. He passed her one of the paper hankies. She took it but did not attempt to use it. It was almost as if she did not fully realise that she was crying.

‘That first blow, they told me, that alone, may have been fatal. B-but, he didn’t stop. It was like he went mad. Scott started to fall, James was half holding him up, and he just kept sticking that knife into him, over and over again.

‘Then suddenly he let go. Scott fell in a crumpled heap, and it was as if James suddenly realised what he had done. He seemed rooted to the spot, just staring at Scott, the knife dangling from his hand. For a moment it was like he had forgotten that I was there.

‘Sc-Scott was making this funny gurgling noise. He was covered in blood. It was spurting out from all over his body, out of his mouth too, sort of bubbling out. But I didn’t think that he might be dying, might be more or less already dead. I just wanted it all to stop. I had to protect him, I thought. It was down to me to make it stop.

‘I half fell out of bed and I grabbed James by the arm and took the knife from him. I think I took him completely by surprise. I got the knife from him quite easily. Suddenly I had it in my hand. It was covered in blood, of course, thick gooey blood, but I don’t remember caring about that at all.

‘James made this sort of grunting noise, as if suddenly becoming aware of what I had done, or even that I was there at all. Then he said, “C’mon, give it me back,” and he said it quite gently, which made it all the more frightening, somehow. I kept walking away from him, backwards, watching him all the time. I don’t know quite what I intended to do — maybe throw that dreadful knife out of the window, anything to get rid of it. Maybe I was too shocked to have any intentions. I didn’t take my eyes off him. He was like a wild animal. I kind of thought as long as I had eye contact it would be all right, that he wouldn’t charge. But he did, you see. That’s exactly what he did. Suddenly he came at me...’

The tears were flowing more freely than ever; liquid was flowing from her mouth and nostrils as well. She was not crying prettily. At last she started to sob properly and her shoulders began to heave. Her eyes were red and swollen. This was a bitter heartfelt outpouring of grief. It could, Kelly felt, be nothing else. But still he did not intervene. He didn’t know what to say, for a start.

The paper hankie he had passed her was screwed into a ball in her right fist. He passed her another one, silently. She took it, dropping the first one on the floor, and this time blew her nose loudly. Then she mopped the worst of the tears from her face. He watched as she struggled to regain control. It was two or three minutes before she started to speak again.

‘He came at me,’ Angel repeated, her voice low and distant. ‘He just charged at me. This huge powerful man. I don’t think it occurred to him that I would use the knife on him. I don’t think it occurred to me either. I was just trying to protect myself, to protect poor Scott, to make sure he didn’t hurt us any more. He charged and I just thrust out the knife. He more or less threw himself on it. He took almost the full blade in his stomach. It just went in so easily...’

Her voice became even more faraway. She started to sob again. Kelly waited but she made no attempt to speak again.

After a while he took her hand lightly in his. ‘But Angel,’ he said very gently, ‘it’s been reported that Terry James was stabbed at least ten times. How did that happen, Angel?’

She stopped crying at once, turned to look at him full face, and quite deliberately removed her hand from his. The vermilion slash of her mouth was smudged now, lipstick smeared across her face. Like blood, he thought. Only nothing was like blood, except blood. And Kelly knew that better than most.

Her voice surprised him when she finally spoke again. But then, Angel Silver was full of surprises. Always had been. Suddenly she sounded quite hard.

‘I pulled the knife out of him. It came out as easily as it had gone in. He started to fall to the ground. He was clutching his belly. Scott kept making this dreadful gurgling sound. Suddenly I wanted to hurt the bastard, just like he’d hurt Scott. I lost it. I know I lost it. I can’t believe what I did. I stabbed him again. And again and again. I just couldn’t stop. I couldn’t, couldn’t stop.’ She paused. He waited.

‘So, does that make me a monster too, John?’

‘No,’ he said, and he meant it. He knew what fear could do to people, decent people, he knew how shock and blind terror could make them behave in ways they would not think themselves capable of. But he also thought she was probably lucky to have got away with a manslaughter charge. Like the chief constable and Karen Meadows, although for different reasons, he thought about the farmer Tony Martin, who, a couple of years earlier, had shot a young tearaway in the back when his home had been broken into. He’d been charged with murder, found guilty and been locked up. Obliquely Kelly wondered if that farmer would have faced the same charges had he been the beautiful wife of a rock icon instead of an unknown middle-aged man who presented a none-too-attractive image.

He took Angel’s hand again. This time she didn’t remove it. He must concentrate, make sure that he did not antagonise her. He needed more detail.

‘There must have been an awful lot of blood, Angel,’ he remarked, leading her forward as much as he dared.

She nodded and started to cry again. ‘I’d never seen so much blood. I didn’t know there was so much blood in a man’s body. There was Scott’s blood, and Terry James’s blood. It was just everywhere.’

‘You were lucky not to be injured yourself,’ Kelly continued, gently pushing and probing.

‘Lucky was one word for it. After what that bastard did to Scott, and when I realised fully what I’d done to him, when it all started to sink in, well, I wished that I was dead, John. I really did.’

‘So then what did you do, after you’d stabbed Terry James, what did you do next?’

‘I went to Scott. I tried to stop him bleeding. I pulled one of the sheets off the bed and I sort of wrapped it round him, as tight as I could, like a big bandage. Stupid, I suppose. I didn’t know what I was doing. Then I phoned for the police and for an ambulance, and I just sat with Scott until they came. It was terrible, John. I watched the blood gush out of him, watched his life just drain away. There was this dreadful gurgling sound and his eyes were wide open all the time, staring at me. That’s how it felt anyway, as if he were staring and staring at me. Yet I knew he couldn’t see anything. I just knew that. And then, and then, eventually the gurgling stopped. I felt his body go cold, I felt him go cold, John. I don’t remember much else. I know that the police came and the paramedics. I don’t remember what they did. What I did. I know they took my clothes away, but I don’t remember undressing. I know I was examined by a doctor but I don’t remember it happening. They told me later they’d taken a DNA sample from me, but I don’t remember that at all. I know somebody put me in a bath, washed me. But it’s all just a vague impression. At some stage I fell asleep. Can you believe that. I fell asleep. The body’s great defence mechanism. I fell asleep.

‘The next thing I remember clearly is the following morning — well, later that day really — being taken to the police station, being questioned. I felt like I was the villain. Like I was the murderer. And I had killed a man. But I’m not a murderer, I’m not, am I, John?’

There she was again, that poignantly charismatic mix of the vulnerable and the manipulative.

‘No you’re not, Angel, of course you’re not,’ he said. And again he meant it. Kelly believed that all too often victims were turned into villains. He had seen it happen. The law did that, and all its well-meaning hangers-on, the sort who get IRA murderers thousands of pounds in damages because their human rights have allegedly been violated.

He wanted so much to reassure Angel. He only narrowly resisted an absurd urge to take her in his arms and cuddle her. Instead he made himself concentrate on the matter in hand. He was an old-hand hack, for God’s sake, an accomplished interviewer, and this was one hell of a story.

‘Will you tell me about you and Scott, Angel?’ he asked. ‘I want to know about your time together, about your marriage.’

She nodded. Her face lightened slightly and her eyes brightened as she began to speak. ‘Scott was everything to me,’ she said. ‘You know what I was like before, don’t you? You know as well as anyone. Better than most. I don’t know what would have happened to me if it hadn’t been for Scott. Shall I tell you about how I met him?’

Kelly nodded. He’d heard versions of this story, including her mother’s, but never directly from her, of course.

‘I’d cleaned up my act, after... you know.’ She looked at him anxiously. ‘You won’t write about that, will you, not ever, John? I just couldn’t bear it. Promise me?’

There she was, vulnerable again. Pleading. Irresistible. Little girl lost in a big bad world.

‘Don’t you think I would have done so by now if I’d ever intended to?’

‘I’ve never been up on a manslaughter charge before.’

She was sharp. Even at a time like this, even after having just disintegrated into near-hysterical tears. And she was right, of course. Everything in her past was suddenly of much more interest than it had ever been before.

She sighed, and started to smile.

‘I’d cleaned up my act,’ she said. ‘I’d moved back in with Mum in Clerkenwell. We’d sold the flat and invested what was left after I’d cleared my debts. I didn’t have much, but I was free again in every way. Mum found me this agent and I was even starting to work again. They got me this pantomime in Croydon. I was the puss in Puss-in-Boots.

‘Scott had this sister he was mad about who was also in the show. The word went round one night that he was in the audience. I couldn’t believe it. I’d always been crazy for him, you see, since I’d been a little kid. Me and half the rest of the world. He came back stage afterwards and his sister introduced us. The first words he said to me were, “Angelica Hobbs, I’ve been in love with you ever since I saw your first movie.”

‘And I said, “I’ve been in love with you since I heard your first record.” It was incredible really, looking back. I don’t suppose either of us was entirely serious, but he just looked at me with those come-to-bed eyes of his and I melted. I went with him that night, of course. There didn’t seem to be any choice, not for either of us, I don’t think. In the morning I woke up with him and I thought, You bloody fool, Angel, you’ve done it again. Easy lay, as ever. You’re just another groupie to him, you fool. If you weren’t before you will be now.

‘Then he woke up and we made love again. Well, there wasn’t much point in resisting then, was there? In any case, it was so good with Scott. Always was. I could never say no to him.

‘Then afterwards he said, “How do you feel like waking up to me every morning for the rest of your life?” I thought it was a really sweet thing to say. But it didn’t occur to me that he meant it.’

She picked up her mug and took a long drink from it. The coffee must be cold by now, Kelly thought. Her eyes were brighter than ever. Sparkling. The tears just a memory. She was transformed, smiling as she talked.

‘He did mean it, though. Three months later we were married in Vegas. It was all my dreams come true. He was the man of my dreams, he really was.’

She sighed deeply. Kelly studied her more closely than ever. From almost anyone else the words would be at best trite at worst a cliché and Kelly’s natural cynicism would have kicked in. But she got away with it in his book; the words were all right, somehow, coming from her. And he did not doubt her sincerity. Not for a moment.

‘Can you imagine losing that, John?’ she asked. ‘And in such a way?’

Kelly couldn’t. He didn’t think he had ever had anything remotely like the way she had described her relationship with Scott to lose.

‘Was it really that perfect?’ he asked, the cynic shining through just a little.

She looked at him directly. ‘Yes, I suppose it was,’ she said. ‘Hard to believe, really. Somebody like me, somebody like Scott. We were soul mates.’

‘Didn’t you ever quarrel?’

She looked puzzled. ‘We didn’t have anything to quarrel about. We had a wonderful life. All this...’ she gestured at the opulent home, ‘a house in LA as well. We travelled when we wanted, did what we liked when we liked. Scott never needed to work again to keep it all going either. Anything he did was because he wanted to, no other reason. No pressure at all. And we had each other.’

From anyone but Angel it would have sounded sickeningly smug. She seemed quite ingenuous. Then her face clouded over.

‘There was only one thing that wasn’t perfect,’ she continued. ‘We wanted children. But you’d know about that. The whole world knows about that.’

She was right too. Angel Silver had suffered a series of much publicised miscarriages in the first few years of her marriage to Scott. The best fertility brains in the country were not able to sort the problem out. The final miscarriage almost killed her. Both Angel and Scott had talked publicly about their anguish. There had been one high-profile interview in which Scott said he had made the agonising decision that they would stop trying for a child.

‘I cannot risk Angel any more,’ he had announced memorably. ‘I can live without a child but I cannot live without my wife.’

Kelly stayed for another hour or so, going over with Angel half-forgotten details of her past, and going through again the night of the killings.

A couple of times Angel made an excuse and left the room for several minutes, reinforcing Kelly’s suspicion that she was taking cocaine. He decided to confront her, to let her know that he was not a fool, and that he remained as streetwise as ever.

‘I didn’t know you were still doing that stuff,’ he remarked mildly.

She looked startled.

‘C’mon, Angel,’ he went on, keeping his voice very gentle. ‘It takes one to know one.’

‘It’s only coke,’ she said sulkily. ‘I’d never get back on the smack. Never. This stuff I can handle. And it’s helping me get through all this. God knows I need something...’

She shot him that vulnerable, appealing look. He tried not to fall for it totally.

‘But you weren’t on it the night it all happened?’

He knew she’d been tested clean when she was charged with manslaughter four days after the killings. The police were well aware of Angel’s track record and if there’d been any kind of drug angle she’d never have got off with a manslaughter charge.

Angel shrugged. ‘I can take it or leave it.’

Kelly doubted that somehow. But maybe she believed it. Who knew?

‘The police searched your house. That’s routine. They didn’t find anything, though, did they?’

He knew that to be the case, and it was beginning to puzzle him more and more.

Angel scowled. ‘Even druggies run out of stuff sometimes.’

Her voice was hard-edged, heavy with sarcasm. He supposed she had a point. He changed the subject. He didn’t want to antagonise her. He had a great interview. And he had a feeling there would be more to come. He needed to keep her sweet. Oh, and to hell with it, he had to admit it, he didn’t want to upset her unnecessarily, to give her more grief. He wanted everything to be all right for her.