A Moment Of Madness

Thirteen

She was wearing the same silky dressing gown, gaping open. A cigarette hung from her mouth. For once there was no vermilion lipstick; no fresh makeup at all, in fact. Just panda eyes. Black smudges of yesterday’s mascara mingling with the dark shadows that almost always seemed to be there.

She led Kelly into the living room and began to pace up and down in front of him. Her hair was all over the place, the black roots all the more evident, and not even combed that morning, Kelly suspected. In one hand she held a packet of cigarettes, in the other a lighter.

‘I’m seriously fucked off, John,’ she yelled, throwing both arms in the air in a furious gesture. The dressing gown opened even more. Kelly tried not to stare at her breasts. Why did she always do this to him, he thought. It must be deliberate, it really must. Although if Angel noticed his interest in her body she gave no sign of it. Kelly actually thought it possible that, just for once, she was actually unaware of the effect she was having on him. She was steaming angry.

He made himself concentrate, determined not to let her take charge.

‘So am I,’ he said flatly.

That seemed to stop her in her tracks. Abruptly she sat down on a chair by the window. He suspected that might be a deliberate gesture. On his previous visits she had chosen the sofa where he had been able to sit next to her. She took a final drag on the cigarette in her mouth, took another from the packet she still clutched, lit it from the glowing end of the first, ignoring the lighter in her other hand, and then tossed the butt end at the fireplace. It missed by just an inch or two, hitting the fender and falling back on to the thick cream hearth-rug where it smouldered gently. Angel made no attempt to pick it up. In fact, she leaned back in her chair looking at him steadily, whether genuinely unaware of what had happened or challenging him to let the house burn down he wasn’t sure. Probably a challenge. It didn’t matter. Kelly wasn’t in the mood for playing games. He walked briskly across the room towards the fireplace and stood on the butt, grinding it into the rug. When he removed his foot, iron-grey ash had spread around a dark brown scorch mark.

Then, uninvited, he made his way across to the window end of the room and sat on a chair facing Angel’s but several feet away. Both chairs were ornately Victorian and upright. Their seating arrangement was therefore quite formal. That suited him. He put his tape recorder on his knee and, without asking her, he switched it on. Then he just waited. After all, she knew her only hope of repudiating the News of the World stuff was to talk to him, or at least to somebody like him. And it seemed she had chosen him again.

Angel shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Kelly already knew how much she liked to be in control.

‘It’s all a load of crap, you know,’ she told him eventually.

‘Is it?’ he enquired, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

‘Yes, it bloody is. I’m not saying Scott didn’t shag the silly cow. He’d screw anything that moved, male or female, and it didn’t need to move much either. Did you know that?’ She glowered at him. Provocative as ever. Always keen to shock. Kelly didn’t react. Again he just waited.

It was several seconds before she continued, ‘I always knew that about him. I didn’t have any illusions. But he sure as hell wasn’t planning to leave me. He needed me. Always did. As for those bloody letters, well, Scott would tell you whatever you wanted to hear to get his own way. He was always like that. It never meant anything...’

‘Didn’t it?’ It was Kelly’s turn to be provocative, and he succeeded.

Angel jumped to her feet. ‘For God’s sake, Kelly,’ she yelled, ‘stop being so infuriating. I’m telling you the fucking truth.’

‘Well, that will make a change. I’m beginning to think all I’ve had from you so far is a pack of lies. What about the dream marriage, then? The great fairy-tale romance? The fucking knight in fucking shining armour?’ Kelly could no longer even act cool.

Angel winced. ‘I never told you anything like that.’

‘As near as damn it,’ Kelly stormed. He became aware that he was trembling with rage, and he was surprised at the strength of his anger. Kelly was no stranger to making a fool of himself. Other people had done the job more rarely, and, professionally, hardly ever. Kelly had always been able to do it all by himself. But this one was the tote double. Angel might well have made a fool of him both personally and professionally, he reckoned.

‘Look, it was a good marriage,’ she insisted. ‘All right, it may not have been everybody’s idea of a good marriage. I knew Scott played away from home occasionally. And I knew I’d never stop that. I’m not the first woman to put up with the three-card trick because she loves her man to distraction, am I?’

‘No. But was that all, Angel? What about you? Did you play away from home too? Did you have a lover waiting somewhere in the wings for you to run to once you’d made sure of collecting Scott’s loot?’

The violet eyes blazed. She looked as if she might attack him. Then her demeanour changed. Dramatically. Instantly. In that astonishingly total way he already knew that it could.

She lowered her eyelashes, went all coquettish on him.

‘That would be telling,’ she half whispered.

‘Don’t mess me about, Angel,’ he commanded. ‘Answer the question.’

She stepped away from him, sat down again, and when she looked up at him once more all the teasing coquettishness had left her as quickly as it had arrived.

‘Never,’ she said. ‘Not once in all the years we were together. You can mock if you wish, and I know it sounds like a cliché, but he really was the man of my dreams in every way. I never strayed and I never would have done for as long as Scott had lived. Can you believe that?’

Kelly didn’t know what to believe. Even if it were true, he wondered how far Angel would have gone, what she would have done, in order not to lose a man she had cared for so deeply to another woman. And an erstwhile hippy religious nut at that. His doubt obviously showed in his face.

‘I don’t give a fuck what you believe, actually,’ she told him sulkily.

‘I believe you’re still holding back on me, Angel,’ he said. ‘You’ve made me look a fool in print once, I’m not letting it happen again.’

‘But I want to set the record straight, that’s why I wanted to see you. I didn’t tell you anything that was wrong or untrue. I just left some bits out, that’s all.’

She pouted at him, a little girl suddenly. Were there tears in her eyes, too? Kelly wasn’t sure, and, in any case, remained unimpressed. For once her wiles seemed to be having no effect on him at all.

‘Oh, c’mon, Angel. You left out the minor point that this husband you adored and who allegedly adored you, who you claim you’d killed a man for in an attempt to save his life, was having a rampant love affair. Even more than that, he’d told the new woman in his life that he was going to leave you for her. And whether he meant it or not, the fact that he told her so appears to be a matter of record. There really is little doubt. Don’t you realise that changes totally how most people would regard you? Anyone reading Bridget Summers’ story is bound to find themselves wondering what really happened here the night Scott and Terry James died.’

‘I don’t see why. I don’t see that it changes anything,’ Angel insisted stubbornly. She was still pouting.

‘You wouldn’t, would you?’ Kelly remarked wearily.

‘He wouldn’t have left me. Not ever. Really he wouldn’t. I want you to make that clear.’

‘Yes, well, I need more than that if we’re going to come up with any decent reply to the Screws’ allegations. For a start, tell me where you reckon Scott stood with One God, One People.’

‘Oh, he was completely under the spell of that lot,’ she responded at once. ‘You’d have thought he’d have had more sense, wouldn’t you? I don’t know how he first got involved, but suddenly it was as if they’d taken him over. They have this leader in America somewhere, and that Summers woman is one of the leading lights over here. I have no idea why or how. She’s hardly Miss Fucking Charisma, is she? Anyway, Scott even invited her into the house here once, the bastard. I’d already guessed that something was going on. But to bring her here? That was seriously out of order and I told him never ever to do it again. He didn’t either. He’d broken our rule, you see. The rule was that he never brought his...’ she hesitated, something Kelly had noticed her do quite often, as if she were searching for absolutely the right word, and nothing less would do, ‘... he never brought his peccadilloes home with him,’ she went on, eventually choosing a word that made Kelly smile in spite of himself. ‘That was the rule. But although he never brought her here again, there was always this presence. Her presence, in a way, and also this religious presence, I suppose. It did change him. He considered himself a born-again Christian. They had these weird chants, One God, One People, and I’d find Scott in odd corners sitting on the floor cross-legged chanting at the ceiling. It was pretty disconcerting. It really was as if he was under a spell.’

Now this was better. ‘That’s good, Angel,’ Kelly encouraged. ‘Just something with a bit of bite, that’s what we need. So you believe Scott was under a kind of spell from the sect? Now what effect do you reckon that had on his relationship with Summers?’

‘I think it had a very great effect,’ she replied quickly. ‘I mean, you’ve seen her. All you have to do is look at her. Scott always went for the same type — dolly birds, they used to call them once upon a time. Very pretty and very young. The younger, the better. And preferably none too bright. There was more than a touch of the Bill Wymans about Scott. I always pretended, even to myself, not to notice. It was the only way I could cope with it. But I noticed this one because she just wasn’t right. She didn’t look right. Didn’t dress right. Didn’t act right. Made no attempt to make the best of herself. Scott would never have touched her if he’d been in his right mind.’

Kelly came back at her fast. ‘What do you mean by that? Do you think he wasn’t in his right mind?’

‘I suppose that I think he was so much under the control of that sect that he may have gone slightly off his head. Yes, there was a kind of madness about him.’

‘If you really thought that, didn’t you try to do something about it? Get some help? Psychiatric help, maybe?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I wasn’t worried about Scott, you see. Not really. Annoyed, frustrated, but not worried. I’d seen it all before, remember, or bloody near. I thought it was just a phase. I still think that. If Scott hadn’t died he’d have moved on to something else by now, forgotten all about One God, One People, and forgotten all about Bridget Summers. I’d bet anything on it. Scott was always going through phases, getting mad enthusiasms for things. Women, of course. I was the only one he stuck to; we were different, Scott and me. But the others came and went at the speed of light. It was more than that, though. Ideals. Beliefs. He’d get these crazes. Scott just kept on looking for something to believe in. He had this need. I remember when he went through the Indian guru thing, just like the Beatles did. That didn’t last either. And nothing changed our relationship. Everything stayed the same between us really. Even though he knew how much I disliked the One God, One People lot, we were still close. It changed his attitude to life in many ways, but it never came between us. Not really. Nothing ever did.’

‘OK,’ said Kelly, who was beginning to feel slightly better about things. Angel could be very persuasive, very convincing. He just hoped he could put that across. ‘There’s a couple more things we have to address, though. Particularly this pre-nuptial agreement thing. Now that could be a really damning allegation. I need to know, is it true?’

‘No,’ she replied emphatically. ‘That’s a load of bollocks. We never had any such agreement. Scott did love me, you know — every bit as much as I loved him, in his way. I will always believe that, and he trusted me. Absolutely.’

Kelly studied her carefully. ‘You wouldn’t lie to me about that, would you, Angel? Because if you did, well, it will come out in the end. It’ll have to. There must have been solicitors involved, clerks, all manner of people. You’d never get away with a lie about something like that.’

‘I am not lying,’ said Angel, pouting at him again.

‘OK,’ he repeated, rising from his chair, switching off his tape and putting his notebook in his pocket. For once he didn’t want to stay with her any longer. She’d given him a surprisingly reasonable account of her side of the story, he thought. He just wanted to go home and write it — for his paper tomorrow. It was already too late to catch the last editions of today’s Argus, and the nationals the day after, in what seemed to be becoming his usual routine.

He walked out into the hall and she followed him in silence. At the door a final thought occurred to him. ‘I saw the two Noddy hats at the gate, of course, but have the police talked to you again yet?’

‘This morning. DCI Meadows and a detective sergeant. I told them much the same as I’ve told you. They seemed satisfied. Anyway, there’s nothing they can do, is there?’

‘Isn’t there?’

She looked mildly startled. ‘Of course not. I’ve stood trial and I was found not guilty. It’s over.’

‘Right, that’s OK then,’ he responded, mildly sarcastic.

‘Yes it is,’ she said quietly. ‘It doesn’t change anything anyway. It can’t change anything. I’ve told the truth from the beginning about what happened that night. I had no reason to lie.’

‘All right, Angel,’ Kelly responded, relenting a little. ‘I’m sure you did. It’s just that Bridget Summers has opened a real can of worms here. But you know that, don’t you?’

She nodded, then surprised him again by reaching up and kissing him on the cheek.

‘Thanks for coming, Johnny,’ she said quietly.

Angel’s response to the Bridget Summers allegations ran big in the Argus and on the following day in all the nationals, as Kelly had known that it would. Kelly tried to get to Bridget Summers, or at least somebody from the sect, and failed miserably. It seemed that the Screws still had Bridget locked away.

The copy looked good. It was as strong a reply to Summers’ allegations as could possibly have been expected. Kelly felt that at the very least much of his own journalistic credibility had been restored. He had managed also to restore much of Angel’s credibility, he thought. He reckoned he might actually have succeeded in making her appear as convincing in the copy as she had been in the flesh when he had talked to her. A woman who allowed her husband to make a fool of her because she loved him so much was not exactly unique, after all. It was a fair bet that Angel would retain her sympathy vote among the public. But Kelly was still not happy.

There were doubts now, holes in Angel’s original story, that he had never even suspected, let alone known about. And they were niggling away at him.

He had a strong feeling that the best thing he could do would be to leave well alone now, let Angel sort herself out, let the story and the law, should it decide to step in, run their course. Get out while the going was good. Kelly had done extremely well out of the Scott and Angel Silver saga professionally and had so far avoided getting in too deep personally. What he should do now was to back off. He had no doubt about that, but he also knew, for reasons he perhaps did not want to recognise, how hard that would be for him. Inside his head, and perhaps in his heart, he was already in deep.

He did succeed in holding back for almost a week. Then he called her. He told himself that all he really wanted from her was further reassurance. He wanted to fire questions at her, give her a hard time, and at the end of it he wanted her to come up with the kind of answers which would put all his fears at rest. He also wanted to hear her voice again, of course, but he tried not to think about that.

But, to his surprise and delight, halfway through his message Angel interrupted and picked up the phone.

‘I wondered if I could come round?’ he asked at once.

‘Why?’ she enquired. She sounded languid, slightly distant. Stoned again? Kelly was no longer sure when she was and when she wasn’t under the influence of some drug or other, or perhaps alcohol. He suspected that she was just a little bit stoned most of the time. It didn’t seem to affect the way she functioned very much.

‘I want to see you,’ he said. ‘I have a few more questions.’

‘Is that all?’

The flirtatious teasing approach again. Kelly deliberately didn’t respond.

‘I can be round in half an hour, if that’s OK,’ he said.

‘If you like,’ she said, sounding as if she really didn’t care either way.

‘See you then,’ he replied, ending the conversation as abruptly as he had begun it.

He went straight for her as soon as she opened the door to him. He hadn’t meant to. But it was becoming increasingly important to him to be sure of her, to know. And he thought the way to do it might be to shock her into some kind of submission.

‘Look, you could still be done for murder, you know,’ he told her bluntly.

They were standing facing each other in the imposing hallway of Maythorpe Manor. He hadn’t even waited to be taken into the now familiar living room before beginning his assault.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ she asked, slurring her words slightly.

She was definitely at least a bit stoned. Her eyes had that unnatural brightness about them. She ran the fingers of one hand through her white-blonde hair. He noticed that they were trembling slightly. She was wearing what he thought was a man’s shirt, with just one or two buttons done up. The shirt was so long on her that it hung almost to the hem of her short skirt. Kelly made himself not even look at her body.

‘Murder, I’m talking about. OK, almost certainly you couldn’t be done for the murder of Terry James, because you’ve been cleared of his manslaughter, but there’s always the murder of Scott.’

She looked genuinely astonished.

‘The murder of Scott? Me?’

It all came out then, the half-voiced suspicions he had never quite confronted before.

‘You have to see how it could look. I’m just playing devil’s advocate, honestly,’ he told her. ‘Your husband is cheating on you and maybe you just can’t live with it any more, in spite of what you say. You can’t stand even the thought of losing him to another woman. Then you have this intruder. He comes into your bedroom, wakes you both up. Everyone is startled. You think fastest. You grasp the opportunity. You grab the knife. You kill Scott and then you kill Terry James. It’s easy.’

She was studying him quizzically, her jaw slack.

‘It is? Oh yes. I get it. I understand. I leap out of bed, and tackle this six-and-and-a-half-foot-tall giant, grabbing his knife, which I then use on the husband I love while the giant stands meekly by and then allows me to stab him too. Several times. Easy. Yes.’

‘Something like that.’ Actually, Kelly had to admit, it did sound pretty silly when put that way. Maybe he just had too highly developed an imagination. He’d often been accused of that. But he didn’t mind that it sounded silly. He was, of course, only calling her bluff, seeing how she would react. There was no evidence at all, just the rantings of Bridget Summers, and Kelly doubted she would ever prove to be a very convincing witness. He just wanted Angel to vindicate herself. He wanted that more than anything, and that’s what he was trying to shock her into doing. But by voicing his half-formed suspicions he’d probably pissed her off to such an extent that she would never want anything to do with him again. And he supposed he couldn’t really blame her.

Her reaction was a complete surprise to him. Suddenly his reverie was interrupted by a great roar of laughter. Angel, head thrown back, was rocking with laughter. Eyes filled with tears, she was laughing so much she was shaking.

He stared at her in astonishment. Had his remarks been that funny?

Then as abruptly as she had started laughing she stopped.

‘Why are all the men I get involved with slightly mad?’ she enquired lightly.

‘I’m not mad and we’re not involved,’ he said.

‘No. Of course not.’

She stepped back, swaying slightly the way she did. Was it coke, or dope, or booze, or just the way she was? It really was true that he didn’t even know for sure when the woman was under the influence of some substance or just being herself.

She had another surprise for him. With one hand she started to undo her shirt. While he was still wondering what exactly she was up to, what trick she was playing this time, she removed the shirt and let it drop to the floor. He already knew that she was not wearing a bra. Then, before Kelly could even begin to gather his thoughts, she swiftly removed her short skirt too. She was not wearing any underwear at all. In the blink of an eye she was standing before him stark naked.

He took a sharp intake of breath. Those small pert breasts. The tiny waist. Legs longer than they should be. The small almost imperceptible round of her tummy. Smoothly translucent skin. She was stunning. Quite sensational.

He didn’t move. She had been staring at him while she undressed and continued to do so.

‘This is what you want,’ she said. ‘This is what you have always wanted. Why don’t you admit it? Why don’t you take it?’

‘Oh, Angel...’ He spoke softly, almost sorrowfully. In his head he didn’t want her to behave like that. But his body’s reaction was somewhat different. He could feel himself becoming aroused.

‘What’s the matter? Are you afraid to take what you want? Or maybe you aren’t capable any more...’

There was something unpleasant in her tone of voice — sarcasm and mockery, definitely, and an inflection of something else he couldn’t quite make out. But it wasn’t nice, he was sure of that.

Not that it stopped him. Not that anything could. She had pushed him too far, which he had little doubt had been her intention. Almost involuntarily he lurched forward and was on her before she could change her mind, indeed before she could move, his hands and mouth all over her. He must have had an erection all the time he had been talking to her, he suddenly realised. Not for the first time probably. He had not felt so urgently virile in years. He had known he was still capable of performing, all right, but not of anything as extreme as this.

He half carried her backwards, pushing her against the wall by the stairs, undoing his flies with one hand. She was so small, so light, so compliant. He manoeuvred her into position with far greater ease than he would have considered possible and entered her straight away, thrusting into her with all his might. Kelly had no time for foreplay. No time for any niceties at all.

She flinched slightly but did not utter a sound. It didn’t take very long for him to finish. He pulled out of her and stepped back, using one arm to lower her to the ground. She slumped straight to a sitting position on the polished wooden floor, as if she were exhausted. Her eyes were fixed on his, largely unfathomable, but triumphant somehow.

Kelly was astonished at himself, and a little ashamed too. She had issued the invitation. She had taken the lead. She had undressed before him and clearly waited for him to make the next move. She had even mocked him when he had not done so at once. But when he had eventually responded to her it had been in such a way he could hardly believe it. He had been like an animal, and he had never behaved like that before. But then no woman in his life had ever had that kind of effect on him before.

None the less Kelly felt very uneasy. Invitation or not, it had been almost like rape.