A Moment Of Madness

Fourteen

Kelly didn’t stay with her. He couldn’t. He had watched for a moment as she had sat on the floor, panting slightly. Her expression remained mocking. Then, without speaking, she had pulled herself upright and walked off, still naked, in the direction of the downstairs bathroom. He could only see her back view, but he was sure that her shoulders began to shake as she walked away from him. Then he heard her laugh out loud just before she closed the bathroom door behind her.

He didn’t like it. Not any of it. Suddenly he didn’t like her, or himself, or what had happened. Not one little bit.

He zipped up his flies, struggling to regain self-control, and swiftly left the house, making no effort to say anything to Angel. It gave him some satisfaction that as he retreated through the big front door he thought he heard her call after him.

It was only when he was in the MG that he remembered the electronic gates. God, he thought, he couldn’t even get out of the damned place without her help.

He drove slowly towards the closed gates and pulled to a halt in front of them, leaving the engine running while he contemplated what to do next. Ultimately he had no decision to make. The gates suddenly started to part in that magical way he was becoming used to.

Angel had obviously decided not to attempt to keep him there. Well, that wouldn’t have been her style, would it?

There were no longer any police on duty, nor was there any sign of Ken James. Just one lone photographer waited outside. There was, after all, by now, not a deal of point in an across-the-board press presence. Angel had talked. She’d given the interview they’d all been after, and she’d given it to Kelly.

He drove thankfully through the gates, trying to ignore the tingling sensation in his crotch. In one way that brief, almost violent sexual act had been horrible. It had also been extraordinarily thrilling. He had to remind himself that the way it had happened was quite repugnant to him. Or it least it was to the man he had always been, he thought, as little waves of lingering excitement coursed through his body.

He made a vow to himself, a pledge. It was over. Whatever Angel Silver was up to, whatever she had or hadn’t done, whatever her future held, he would have no part of it. He would never see her again.

Pledges, however, like rules, are made to be broken. Kelly’s good intentions lasted precisely three days, thirteen hours and five minutes.

He had the usual problems getting through to her, ultimately leaving messages on her mobile and her home number and even sending a fax. There wasn’t much point in trying not to look too eager. She already seemed to know him too well.

She kept him waiting another day and a half before she returned his call. And during that wait every time his phone rang, at home, in the office, or the mobile he kept in his jacket pocket, he answered swiftly, hoping and praying that the caller would be her. He was sitting at his desk in the Argus newsroom when she finally phoned.

‘So what on earth might you want?’ she asked him, her voice mocking him in the way which already seemed to have become par for the course.

‘I want to see you,’ he replied throatily.

‘Do you indeed, Johnny boy? After the way you left the last time?’

‘It was wrong. What happened was wrong.’

‘Oh, don’t you want to fuck me after all then?’ More mockery.

He sighed.

‘Not like that, I don’t. No. I care about you.’

‘Really? Spare me, John. You should have seen the expression on your face. You looked as if you’d wanted to have sex like that all your life.’

He felt empty. She was half right, that was the worst of it. He looked anxiously around him. Even though he knew it was impossible, it seemed to him that everybody in the newsroom could hear her voice as clearly as he could.

‘Look, I can’t talk about it now,’ he said. ‘Can I come round tonight?’

‘Why not?’

A disinterested approach now, then just a slight change of tone. ‘Only don’t pretend to be some fucking born-again Christian, will you, Johnny? I’ve had enough of that crap.’

He arrived at Maythorpe just after eight, and was relieved that there were no longer any journalists at all waiting outside. He didn’t want too many questions asked about his visits. The gates were shut so he merely drove the MG up to them and sat waiting for them to open. He was beginning to get the hang of it now — well, the mechanics of getting into the house, if nothing else. The gates duly parted. He drove through, and after just a second or two’s thought, parked the car around the side of the house where it could not easily be seen from the road. Now that he and Angel had had sex, of a sort, all the goal posts in their relationship had changed. That was the way it always was. Kelly no longer wanted to advertise his business with her, whatever that might turn out to be in the future.

He walked to the front door, hunching his shoulders against the rain which had just started to fall, and again waited for a moment or two for her to open it in the way that she had done previously when he had visited Maythorpe. When she failed to appear he tugged at the big bell pull to one side. Still no response. Then he realised that the door was not even properly closed. Gingerly, he pushed it open. There was still no sign of her. He walked in, shutting the front door behind him. First he checked the big living room where he had so far spent most of his time in the house. Then he checked the kitchen, the formal dining room alongside it with its gleaming mahogany furniture, and the low-beamed book-lined library, the one room in the house, he understood, to have retained any of Maythorpe’s original Tudor structure. Back in the hall he glanced towards the section of wall against which he had pushed Angel the last time. Against which he had had her in the most direct animal fashion he had ever known.

Almost in defiance of his wishes, because he didn’t really want to remember it, the thought of that short sharp fuck caused the desire to rise in him again.

He walked over to the bottom of the stairs.

‘Where are you, Angel?’ he called.

For a few seconds there was no reply. Then her voice wafted down the stairs, husky, perhaps slightly slurred.

‘Why don’t you come on up.’

Like Mae West, he thought obscurely, or more likely a spider inciting a fly into her web. It made no difference. He had stopped even kidding himself that anything much could. He mounted the stairs with alacrity. All but one of several doors leading directly off the landing were closed. He walked to the one which stood ajar and peered inside.

She was lying naked on the bed, leaning against the pillows, eyes half closed. In her hand she held an overly plump cigarette. He recognised the pungent, heavy odour of dope at once, even though it had been a very long time since he had smelled it, let alone smoked it. The curtains were drawn and the room was lit only by candles. Mozart played gently in the background.

As ever she looked breathtakingly, wonderfully beautiful. Or he thought so, anyway. The pink glow of the candles flickered enticing over her pale body.

‘Do you want a drag?’ she asked languidly, holding up the joint.

He remembered how well he had always found dope went with sex. None the less he shook his head.

‘For God’s sake,’ she snapped, her mood changing in a second in that way he was becoming so familiar with. ‘I told you not to come here if you were going to be fucking sanctimonious.’

‘I can’t smoke, Angel,’ he said. ‘I really can’t. I can’t handle it.’

‘Fuck it, Kelly, I’m offering you a pull on a fucking joint. It’s not a syringe full of smack. I’m not trying to get you mainlining, am I?’

She glowered at him, those eyes blazing again.

He decided just to ignore the offer and get on with what he really wanted to do. He walked over to the bed and sat down on it next to her and began to stroke her. Very soon she started to move under his hands, sensuous as a cat. He couldn’t believe how much pleasure it gave him to feel her body like that, just to touch that translucent white flesh. She looked as if she had never exposed herself to the sun in her life, he thought, as he let his fingers trail the downy hair which ran in a thin line along the centre of her belly. Then he started to explore between her legs.

She began to move quite frenziedly. On an impulse he swung himself round, buried his head there and began to use his tongue on her. Almost at once she started to buck violently and to cry out. He was pretty sure she reached an orgasm, but, just as she appeared to do so, she pulled herself away from him.

Then it began. Really began. First she lay face down on the bed and asked him to enter her from behind. Then she made him lie down on the bed and sat across him. From somewhere she produced a silk scarf and wrapped it round his head, covering his eyes.

She continued to ride him while she took first his left arm and then his right and tied them to the bed-head. He didn’t even know what she used to tie him up. He couldn’t see, after all. He found it disconcerting but also strangely exciting. Certainly he didn’t protest. Not until he felt something wound round his neck and be tightened. He started to struggle then. But it was too late.

Whatever his now buried suspicions about what might have happened at Maythorpe house the night Scott Silver and Terry James died, Kelly didn’t think for one moment that Angel was trying to kill him. He realised immediately what she was trying to do. He had no doubts whatsoever by now that her tastes in sex leaned strongly towards both the bizarre and the extreme.

He knew all about what he had always regarded as the quite mad practice of limiting the air supply to the brain in order to increase the sensation of climax. It had killed that gay Labour MP a few years back and had quite possibly killed rock star Michael Hutchence. Kelly had no doubt at all that was what Angel was trying to do to him, and he was terrified.

But by the time he started to protest, with his arms already tied, his struggles proved merely fitful. His vision was fading, and his brain felt fuzzy; however, his other senses did seem to heighten. After a bit he couldn’t see at all. There was only blackness in front of him and a grey mist inside his head. But he was sure his erection had grown six inches. He arched his back against her, pushing himself into her moist softness with as much strength as he could muster. The climax came swiftly then and it was truly amazing. The most extreme he had ever experienced he was sure of it. So good it was worth even risking his life for. In that moment of madness he was sure of that too.

Then he blacked out completely.

When he recovered consciousness, he had no idea how much later, but he somehow thought only probably a few seconds, she was still sitting astride him with that familiar triumphant look in her eyes. He felt wonderfully sated, wonderfully relaxed. Of course, he realised suddenly, some of that might be due to the joint she was holding between his lips.

He struggled against the restraints which still tied him to the bed, wanting to sit up, wanting to free himself, wanting to get rid of the joint which was making his head feel even more woozy. Then, equally suddenly, he didn’t want to get rid of any of it at all.

‘It’s just dope, for Gods sake,’ she had said.

He felt himself drifting off again. He didn’t know exactly what was causing it then, the dope or the effects still of the lack of oxygen to his brain. Neither did he care much. He just allowed himself to float away.

When he next came to, the restraints had gone and he was propped up comfortably against the pillows. He didn’t think he would have been able, in his condition, to move into that position unaided. Maybe Angel was stronger than she looked. She lay naked beside him. In her left hand she held another freshly made joint which she offered to him at once. He rejected it, really wanting to clear his head.

This time she did not try to persuade him. Instead she took a deep pull herself and said, ‘Time for the film show, then.’

‘What?’ he enquired, looking at her.

Her eyes were deeply mocking. But there was nothing new about that.

Casually she reached out with one hand for the video and TV control which lay on the bedside table next to her. A picture appeared on the wide-screen TV set into the wardrobe system along the far wall. At first Kelly couldn’t quite make out the first image to appear, then he saw that it was Angel, lying spread-eagled on the bed they were now sharing. After a moment he appeared alongside her and started to stroke her pale body. He watched her almost instantly responding to his touch.

‘How the fuck—’ he began.

‘The best of modern technology,’ Angel drawled. ‘There’s also a video camera concealed in that unit. You can probably see its lens if you look closely, in the corner of the big mirror.’

He looked, but still couldn’t see it. In any case his eyes were drawn back compulsively to the screen. His head was between Angel’s legs now, she was bucking and the sound of her cries of pleasure filled the room. He knew he was becoming aroused again, in spite of himself.

‘Scott used to like to watch himself fuck,’ Angel whispered. ‘I thought you might like it too. I wasn’t wrong either, was I?’

She reached out and touched him. He made an unusually fast recovery. For him. He thought he might never have been so hard. He pulled her on to him. He loved her compliance. It was as if he just melted into her. It was just sensational.

The next night, and the night after, and the night after that, he went back for more. He couldn’t keep away. Each time the sexual demands she made of him were more and more extreme. Almost always there was bondage involved. Angel liked anal sex. She liked him to hit her at the moment of climax. Whatever they did together she often wanted him to hurt her, it seemed to him. Once she asked him to use a needle on her, piercing her nipples while he slowly fucked her. He nearly did it too. But there was still a limit, it seemed. In the end he just couldn’t pierce her perfect white skin, couldn’t bear the thought of seeing blood run over her breasts.

Everything else that she asked, he did. And, crazily, he frequently let her use the scarf round his neck, becoming almost hooked, just like she was, perhaps, on seeking more and more sensational orgasms.

He gave up even pretending not to want to smoke dope with her. Not only did it increase his physical senses, it also numbed his mental senses. And he didn’t want to think when he was with Angel.

Always, whatever they did in bed, always there was the film show afterwards. He anticipated it too, began to play to the camera. She had been right. He loved to watch himself fuck her, loved to watch her use her mouth on him, loved to watch himself ejaculate over her breasts, into her mouth. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was taboo.

And, by God, afterwards he hated so much of what they did together. Loathed it. Abhorred it. Hated what his relationship with Angel, if it could be called that, was doing to him. But that was only when he was away from her.

When he was with her the sex between them was everything. He existed on a kind of sensual roller coaster.

In spite of everything, Kelly felt an overwhelming tenderness for Angel which did not square with the kind of sex they indulged in, and which certainly did not seem to be returned. Angel shied away from any show of affection, any gentleness at all. When he tried to talk to her about her feelings, she hid behind that façade of distant mocking indifference which he began to feel increasingly irritated by.

Angel had experienced far more than her share of the dark side of life. She was rich, famous, albeit primarily for being famous, and existed now in the lap of luxury. But she also knew what it was like to be in the gutter. She had known emotional turmoil too, and sadness. She’d suffered a series of miscarriages and failed to produce the child she claimed she and Scott had longed for, although Kelly was beginning to wonder about everything now, even that — to wonder how much of all that she had told him was fantasy, or just plain lies. Most of all he continued to wonder about the night of the double killing. He couldn’t help it. So much didn’t add up.

It was strange, but the greater their sexual involvement became, the greater became Kelly’s concerns about what had happened. He also worried for Angel’s future.

Angel seemed to believe there was little that the police could do to her, but Kelly feared that he knew better. When it came to unearthing the truth about murder the forces of the law were not inclined to give up so easily.

He called Karen Meadows to ask whether or not the case was being reopened. She was rather abrupt with him.

‘I don’t know why you’re asking me that, John,’ she told him curtly. ‘You’re the one with all the inside information, aren’t you?’

And that had been more or less the end of the call. Karen had rung off, saying that she had to go to an urgent meeting.

‘Just be very careful, John, OK?’ were her last words.

Kelly had somehow been left in little doubt that the detective inspector now knew about him and Angel. He had no idea how, but he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised.

Karen had had no urgent meeting to go to. She just hadn’t known what to say to her old friend. Kelly had been right, she was well aware that he and Angel were almost certainly having an affair. Even if Kelly didn’t realise it, his liaison with the rock star’s widow was the talk of the Argus. Newspaper offices leaked like sieves, and Kelly wasn’t the only journalist around with special police contacts.

Karen stretched out her long legs beneath her desk. She was still reeling from the Bridget Summers revelations in the News of the World. The chief constable had already come down on her like a ton of bricks, and she had only with difficulty been able to gloss over Summers’ initial approach to the police which, however understandable in the circumstances, did seemed to have been rather pathetically overlooked.

The interviews her team had since conducted with the young woman had also been sorrowfully inconclusive. Bridget Summers stuck rigidly to her story but had been able to tell them little more, and neither had there been any further proof to substantiate her allegations.

The recent new interview that Karen had conducted herself with Angel Silver had not taken investigations any further either, although the picture Angel painted the second time round of her relationship with her husband differed substantially from her original version. None of it was enough, however, for Karen to make any kind of move on Angel in spite of the suspicions which were now beginning to form in her mind concerning the night when Scott and Terry James had died. There was, in reality, no new evidence to justify formally reopening inquiries.

In any case, even if there were, there was probably little that could be done. Angel had already been cleared of the manslaughter of Terry James. There was no way she could be charged with murder under the same set of circumstances.

None the less, Karen continued to have that nasty feeling that the Scott Silver case was far from over. And she didn’t like the sound of Kelly’s involvement with Angel one little bit. She knew all too well how vulnerable Kelly could be, in spite of his apparently streetwise approach to life and his journalistic cunning. Angel’s reputation as a party girl who drank a lot and almost certainly still took drugs, even though Maythorpe Manor had proved to be clean when they’d searched it after the killings, also disturbed Karen. She feared Kelly might prove unable to resist temptation, and that if he were tempted he would not be able to cope.

She also reckoned Kelly’s innate decency, good-heartedness and sense of fair play — unexpected always in a tabloid hack but which she had experienced first-hand all those years ago and never forgotten — might well, in the case of Angel Silver, cause him only trouble. She suspected that Angel was the sort who knew all too well how to cash in on the good nature of others, particularly if she had managed to get them under her spell in the way it was rumoured that she already had Kelly.

‘Underneath it all, John Kelly, you’re as soft as shit,’ the DCI muttered to herself under her breath. ‘And I just hope you don’t land yourself in it again...’

Kelly too had just enough sense left to realise he could indeed be heading for big trouble. The problem was that he was mesmerised by Angel Silver, even though he didn’t trust her an inch. He was totally under her spell, as Karen Meadows suspected, and yet he was still honest enough with himself to be aware of it, just about. And occasionally he became overwhelmed by doubt and suspicion. Was Angel just using him? What had really happened that dreadful night? Then he felt disloyal. He adored her, after all. He adored making love to her. Only she never allowed it to be that. It was always that ultimate thrill-seeking fuck, which sometimes he didn’t like at all. Not afterwards, anyway.

Kelly was totally confused. He knew what he really wanted to do — the only thing that made any sense. He wanted to clarify events in his mind in such a way that he could exonerate Angel from any blame. He wanted to prove her innocence to himself. That’s what he wanted to do. And as long as he failed to do so he was always going to be uneasy in their relationship.

But Kelly was getting nowhere fast with Angel in that regard. He could never get a straight answer from her about anything. He would occasionally drop loaded queries into their conversation, on the rare occasions they had any conversation. He’d wondered whether the police had found the video camera in the bedroom. It had never been mentioned publicly. Kelly supposed it was irrelevant really, but it was just the sort of thing smart-arse lawyers liked to make mileage out of.

One night he asked her about it. ‘What would you do if you knew a load of plods were going to come trampling over your life?’ she replied. ‘I packed it away in its box, of course. There was nothing in the bedroom for them to find.’

He’d thought about that carefully. How could Angel have had the presence of mind to hide away a video camera after what she had seen and done that night? After she’d allegedly watched her husband murdered and then killed his murderer? But Angel Silver was not like other women; she was not like any other human being he had ever known.

On another occasion he asked her again why the police hadn’t found drugs.

‘You never fucking give up, do you, John?’ she stormed at him. ‘Why should they have found anything? We weren’t fucking dealers.’

No, thought Kelly. And he had no idea where she got her stuff from, although he suspected she did her buying in London, where she was inclined to disappear every so often for a couple of days or so, he had discovered.

‘I’ve never been here when you haven’t had plenty.’

‘Oh, fuck off, John,’ she said.

And he’d backed off at once. He couldn’t bear to have her mad at him. He lived for those long wonderful hazy nights when she lay compliant by his side, her pale translucent body so inviting, and begged him to do things to her. Absolutely anything to her.

The mornings were invariably an embarrassment. Sometimes Kelly couldn’t quite look Angel in the eye, not after the things they had been doing during the night. They didn’t bother her, though. Then there was Mrs Nott, the cleaning lady, who worked at Maythorpe three mornings a week. Kelly’s early evening paper hours meant that he normally avoided her, but a couple of times on days off and on one occasion when he overslept he’d had to pass the time of day with her on the way out. Mrs Nott had looked complacently superior. Angel didn’t seem to care what the cleaning lady saw, it seemed, but Kelly had a sneaking feeling the woman could be dangerous.

Nothing put the breaks on his lust for Angel, though. Nothing could. One night she persuaded him to let her put cocaine on the end of his penis. He knew the old trick. It would numb the nerve ends slightly, make his erection last longer, maybe even make him harder and bigger.

He let her do it, remembering more vividly than ever all the other effects of the enticing white powder which he had once so enjoyed. He allowed himself to forget the part it had played in destroying his life.

And it was only a matter of time before he joined her in a line. The familiar buzz went straight to his brain. He thought he was the best stud ever. He thought he could conquer the world. He couldn’t imagine how he had lived without this wonderful drug for so long.

The need returned at once. But then he had always known that it would. Kelly had never been able to dabble, not in drink, not in coke. Not in sex, it seemed now. Maybe not in anything. He always had to go all the way.

Kelly quickly lost interest in everything in his life except Angel. His relationship with his news editor hit a record low. When he was out of the office, which was most of the time, Kelly had stopped returning Hansford’s calls at all, even though he knew he was close to committing professional suicide for the second time in his life. He even started avoiding Nick’s telephone calls, in spite of the increasingly anxious tone he detected in his son’s messages, particularly when Nick called Kelly at home at times when he would definitely be expected to be there.

His relationship with Moira went from bad to worse. Indeed, since he had begun to have sex with Angel he’d barely seen the woman with whom he had previously shared his life.

He felt sure she knew what was going on but he still went through the pretence of deception. She phoned his home on more than one occasion, and a couple of times called round, when she would have expected him to be there. And twice, although he couldn’t believe he’d done it, he made definite arrangement to see her and then just disappeared. To Maythorpe Manor, of course.

He began to invent stories which seemed unlikely even to him. An unexpected summons to the death bed of an aged aunt who had never before even been mentioned. A meeting with a nameless Fleet Street editor so impressed with his work on the Silver case that he was on the cusp of offering Kelly a truly amazing job.

‘Work?’ repeated Moira caustically. ‘So that’s what they call it nowadays.’

But she hadn’t pushed the point.

Then one morning he returned to his house after a night with Angel to find Moira sitting at his dining-room table. He was taken by surprise in more ways than one. Moira still had a key to his front door, but it wasn’t like her to use it without a prior arrangement. He stood in the doorway just looking at her, unable to think of anything to say.

‘I–I just thought it was time we talked,’ she stumbled. ‘I never seem to be able to catch you now. I’ve just come off duty, so I thought I’d come round. I just assumed you’d be here...’

Her voice tailed off. She looked shattered. Empty. Kelly had little doubt that she knew darned well where he’d spent the night.

But, on autopilot, he continued with the pretence of deception. Desperately he sought for inspiration.

‘I just popped out to get some papers,’ he managed.

She looked pointedly past him towards the hall. He followed her gaze. The usual pile of newspapers lay against the wall where they would have been pushed when she had opened the door earlier.

‘Er, they’d missed one or two out... distribution problems...’ he continued lamely.

Moira looked very weary. She just nodded.

He took a step towards her, tripped over the edge of the carpet, and very nearly went flying. He was aware then of her studying him closely. He was, of course, still stoned, which was getting to become the norm again, and without doubt he shouldn’t have driven home. He ran a hand over his stubbled chin, and with difficulty manoeuvred his tongue around the inside of his mouth, which suddenly felt unbearably dry. He had come home to shave, change his clothes, and try to get himself together in order to go to work. It was getting to be more and more difficult to extricate himself from Angel and to come even close to keeping evening paper hours. But so far he had managed it, just about. If only in order, he reflected with a rare flash of honesty, to convince himself that he had everything under control.

His head ached. He was having some difficulty focusing on Moira. Abruptly he made a lunge for a dining-room chair and, with a feeling of great relief, sat down on it.

‘Have you been drinking, John?’ asked Moira. Her tone of voice suggested concern more than interrogation. She knew all about Kelly’s past; she knew how low he had once sunk.

‘No,’ he answered truthfully.

She peered at him closely. He lowered his eyes. It was always the eyes that were the giveaway.

‘What have you been doing then, John? What on earth have you been taking?’

It was guilt and maybe fear that made him fly off the handle.

‘Nothing, you stupid woman, and in any case it’s none of your fucking business,’ he growled at her. And he regretted it as soon as he’d said it.

She recoiled from him. He moaned to himself softly, unable in his befuddled state even to begin to retrieve the situation.

Then, in that plucky way that she had, the way he assumed she had managed to survive with that brute of a husband for all those years, she gathered herself together, stood up and walked to the door, where she paused and turned to face him again.

‘You’re absolutely right, John, aren’t you?’ she remarked quietly. ‘It isn’t any of my fucking business. So I’ll just leave you to it, shall I?’

He didn’t reply. There was no reply to make that he could think of. In any case his head was swimming. He lowered it into his hands. His brain felt as if it belonged to somebody else, and somebody else he didn’t know. After a moment he heard an almost inaudible click followed by a gentle thud — the noise of the front door being opened and shut quite carefully.

Kelly raised his throbbing head and leaned back in the chair. The ceiling was going round and round.

‘Oh shit,’ he said rather more loudly than he intended.