A Moment Of Madness

Sixteen

When he got home, Kelly hastily locked the front door and ran up the stairs to his bedroom. Without even bothering to remove his coat he slotted the tape into his little portable TV’s built-in video machine.

The first part of his hunch immediately proved itself to be correct. The film featured Scott and Angel having sex together. She had indeed told the truth, it seemed, about their relationship in that respect. Whatever the exact nature of his affair with Bridget Summers, which even Angel admitted had happened, Scott’s continued enthusiasm for shafting his wife could not be in doubt. And Kelly couldn’t help noticing how well-endowed the rock star was. Did Angel find him inadequate by comparison, he wondered. Then he gave himself a mental telling off. The purpose of having stolen the tape was not to compare himself sexually with Scott Silver or anyone else. Neither was it to become aroused. In spite of everything, and in spite of his instinctive distaste at seeing Angel with another man, even her husband, he began to feel unwanted surges of sexual excitement as images he could not help finding highly erotic unfolded on screen.

Scott and Angel were doing together all the things that he and Angel did. Only better, he thought fleetingly. Then kicked himself again. For a good thirty minutes it went on like that. Thirty minutes of earthy sex. He was beginning to get quite turned on in spite of himself when a tall heavily built man appeared in shot. Kelly’s arousal vanished, and he felt himself break out in a cold sweat. He was so afraid of what might happen next. He peered closely at the screen. The man’s back was to the camera but Kelly knew this must be Terry James. He could see no knife. However, James’s right hand was not visible. For a few seconds James stood absolutely still, facing the bed. Kelly remained unable to see his face but guessed that he had been momentarily at least arrested by the sexual activity going on there. Then, quite abruptly, Scott Silver looked up, as if he had heard a sound, and spotted the intruder. He screamed something Kelly could not hear and, with impressive agility, literally leaped out of bed and threw himself at James, who, although he was so much bigger than Scott, seemed to be at first knocked off balance by the speed and force of the unexpected attack. But James, seasoned street fighter that he was, made a quick recovery, and wrapped his left arm round Scott’s neck, the forearm pressing on the rock star’s larynx. There was still no sign of a knife, but James’s right hand remained concealed. The two entangled men half fell to the floor, and, struggling violently, rolled out of shot. Angel then climbed out of bed and half ran towards her husband and James until she was out of shot too. There were more screams and shouts, then a particularly blood-curdling scream — the moment when Scott was stabbed, Kelly guessed.

A few seconds later Terry James appeared on screen again. He was covered in blood, walking backwards, eyes wide with horror, jaw slack. He seemed to be in shock. Still no knife was visible. Then Angel reappeared. She too was bloody. Dripping blood. And she was holding a lethal-looking knife. It was a large kitchen knife, which Kelly was sure he had seen before in court during Angel’s trial, and which had presumably already been responsible for the death of her husband.

Angel walked purposefully towards James, as she did so lifting the knife so that it was level almost with her shoulders, and pointed at James’s body just above his waist. The big man, still looking dazed, continued to walk backwards until Angel lurched suddenly towards him and plunged the knife into his gut. James gave a little grunt, almost more in surprise than pain it seemed to Kelly, then stretched out his hands as if trying to push Angel away. She stepped back then, withdrawing the knife as she did so, which made a kind of sucking noise as it was pulled free of James’s flesh. He went down at once, dropping heavily to the floor like a length of felled lumber. As he fell Angel stepped towards him again and continued to stab him, thrusting the knife into his body repeatedly. James made no further sound. Blood spouted from him like fizzy lemonade from a pierced can. Thick and red. Angel lashed out at him again and again. And when she finally stopped she stood over him, eyes unnaturally bright, lips parted, breathing deeply, looking, in fact, much the same way she did when she had sex.

Kelly was mesmerised, and shocked to the core. The events of that dreadful night had been filmed, preserved for posterity on a video tape which Angel obviously hadn’t been able to resist keeping. He’d half expected that, hadn’t he? But she’d kept it even though it barely seemed to tally at all with the version of events she’d given to the police and in court.

He wound the tape back and played it again. Then several times more. His head ached. He wished he hadn’t been so darned sanctimonious and had helped himself to a little of Angel’s stash of dope and coke. He could do with some mind-altering substances. This was turning into an extraordinary and quite terrifying night. Kelly desperately needed something to settle his shattered nerves, to restore some sense of wellbeing, in spite of everything. Maybe he was getting hooked again. It made no difference on this occasion as he had nothing to take. Instead he tried to concentrate on what he was going to do with the tape. He knew what he should do. He should hightail it round to Karen Meadows first thing in the morning. He also knew that he wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t going to do anything until he had a chance at least to talk to Angel. But he had no idea where she was. London was a big place, and she had always avoided telling him not only where she was staying but also whom she might be with. Neither did he know for certain when she would be home. A couple of days, she’d said. He was well aware already that that could mean almost anything from twenty-four hours to a week or more. He would just have to be patient, which was hard, because he was desperate to get it over with now. Confronting her with what he’d discovered was not going to be a pleasant experience, he was sure of that — for a start it would be pretty clear that he had broken into her home in her absence — but that is what he intended to do.

He switched off the light, undressed and climbed into bed, burying his head in the pillows, desperately seeking the release of sleep. It was hopeless. His brain was racing. His headache was getting worse. Eventually he hauled himself out of bed and paddled downstairs to the kitchen where he scrabbled in the drawer next to the cooker for the plastic drum of aspirin he knew was there somewhere. His fingers eventually located it, right at the back, of course, jammed behind a roll of bin liners, a box of sticking plaster and a packet of dishcloths. Thankfully he thrust three of the small white tablets into his mouth, filled a mug that had been upside down on the draining board with tap water and washed the aspirin down with one gulp.

He put the mug down again and turned away. Then he paused, turned back and picked up the mug once more. He was well enough aware that in the cupboard above him were a two-thirds-full bottle of whisky and two bottles of wine. When he had first come off the booze and the drugs all those years ago he hadn’t been able to stand having drink in the house, and hadn’t been able to cope with going into a pub because the temptation was just too great. But he had simply learned to steel himself. Moira drank. Nick drank, albeit very moderately. His friends drank. For years Kelly had been able to keep alcohol in his home in order to offer a drink to others without being worried by it, and certainly without even thinking about drinking it himself when he was alone. Tonight was different, he told himself.

He reached up, opened the cupboard door, removed the whisky and poured himself a hefty slug into the same mug. Then he paused. It was well over twelve years since he’d touched a drop. He tried to convince himself he could handle it, that he was never going to go under again, so what harm could a drop of whisky do? Anyway, he needed something. He really did. And the whisky was there. To hell with it, thought Kelly. With one hand he replaced the bottle in the cupboard and with the other he raised the mug to his lips and took a tentative sip.

First he felt the spirit hit the back of his throat, then that still familiar burning sensation, followed almost instantly by the glow of it coursing through his veins. For a true drinker there was nothing, absolutely nothing, like neat whisky. Except perhaps Eastern European vodka, although that didn’t quite have the taste. Both provided instantaneous fixes. Just about the nearest you could get to main-lining out of a bottle. Kelly shut his eyes, savouring the moment. Twelve years without this, he thought. By God, it was good. He took another longer, deeper drink, rolling the whisky around his mouth with his tongue.

For a moment or two he stood there, just enjoying it. Then he reached up to the cupboard again, removed the bottle of Scotch, and headed back to bed, mug in one hand, bottle in the other.

The next morning he woke feeling terrible. He might not have forgotten how good whisky tasted, but he had forgotten what a whisky hangover was like. Selective memory, he supposed, the way most people so frequently look back at the past. On the other hand, he didn’t have much recollection of having suffered from hangovers at all in the old days. The amount of booze he had put away with such regularity quite probably meant that he hadn’t suffered from them much, that his body had gone past even reacting in that way.

Kelly lay very still. His mouth felt like the inside of a stale wash-bag. He might even be growing green mould in there, he thought wryly as he ran his tongue tentatively over furry teeth. His head ached even worse than it had the night before and his gut was periodically contracting with vague spasms of nausea. Perhaps he’d better go to the bathroom. Cautiously he propped himself up on one elbow and attempted to swing his legs out of bed. The room spun.

It was a while before he was able to move without minor disaster, and even then it took him some time to get his act together — brush teeth, shave, dress, all the routine things which were not normally a problem. But they were today.

Then he made his way painfully down to the kitchen, brewed tea, took some more aspirin, and waited hopefully for his headache to fade away and his brain to clear.

It was the best part of an hour before he felt even marginally better. But his head still ached dully and his thought processes were definitely operating on an auxiliary engine. And not a very powerful one, either. The clock on the wall told him that it was 9.30 a.m. already. Kelly should have been in the office at 7.30. He groaned to himself and decided that it would be better to phone in sick than to turn up at his evening paper halfway through the working day.

Deliberately avoiding a direct call to any of his bosses, he succeeded eventually in managing to speak to Phyllis, the front desk receptionist. That alone was quite an achievement, particularly for a man in Kelly’s condition, as, in keeping with the era of voice mail and computer technology, you had to work really hard to get through to the human being behind the piped music and various assorted bleeps of the Argus telephone system. Phyllis, however, was a good sort who had always given the impression of being quite fond of Kelly. He thought she’d do her best for him.

When he had finished spinning an entirely predictable yarn about a stomach upset, food poisoning, terrible cramps, and so on, Kelly poured himself more tea and tried to phone Angel. Situation normal. The landline phone to Maythorpe was switched to automatic answering mode, naturally, and there was no reply from her mobile. Did she ever switch the darned thing on, he wondered wearily.

None the less he called the mobile several times before finally admitting defeat. Then he went back to bed. He was unable to sleep much, but it still seemed to help a bit. Every time he woke up he attempted to phone Angel again, and then, in the late afternoon, he took a run out to Maythorpe just in case she had returned already. The house was deserted.

On the way back to Torquay he stopped at the Fitzroy Arms on the outskirts of town, a pub which he had never frequented before, and ordered a pint of bitter. Kelly had always been a beer man. Whisky gave you the instant hit, beer the slow soothing satisfaction. And there was, of course, nothing like a pint if you’d had a skinful the night before. He ordered a second pint, then a third, and gave serious thought to a Scotch chaser. Probably only the MG parked outside saved him from starting on the whisky again. He really couldn’t afford to risk losing his licence. At least he still had some sense, he thought wryly, as he finished the third pint and headed for the door.

When he got home Nick was waiting for him, sitting in his car parked outside Kelly’s house.

‘Shit,’ Kelly muttered to himself as he slotted the MG into a space right behind Nick’s Porsche. He just hoped Nick wouldn’t pick up the smell of beer on his breath.

Kelly and Nick climbed out of their cars and met rather awkwardly in the middle of the pavement.

‘What a surprise,’ said Kelly, with a forced brightness he certainly did not feel.

Nick did smell the beer on his father’s breath, of course, and his heart sank. His childhood memories of what had happened when drink had almost destroyed his father remained so vivid, and what he couldn’t remember his mother had always been more than happy to remind him of.

Nick felt afraid — for his father, and for the relationship he had with him, which he so valued. He struggled not to show his feelings. Not yet, anyway.

‘Just wanted to make sure you were all right, Dad,’ he said. ‘Why haven’t you replied to any of my messages?’

‘I’ve been busy, that’s all,’ Kelly replied. ‘I’m absolutely fine. C’mon in.’

Nick followed him into the house, and didn’t speak again until they were inside. He studied his father for a moment or two. Kelly looked sheepish, as well he might, thought Nick. And that sheepish look was another unwelcome boyhood memory.

‘You’ve been drinking, Dad, haven’t you?’ he remarked eventually.

‘Oh, only a couple of beers,’ said Kelly, with that same forced brightness. ‘Nothing to worry about. I can handle it OK now.’

Nick doubted that very much. And he also doubted that his father could handle Angel Silver. He knew that Moira thought Kelly was under the woman’s spell, and so did Nick. He wondered just how far things had gone between the two. He felt sure, somehow, that if any kind of relationship had developed between Kelly and Angel it would be one that could only do his father harm. And that meant Nick would be harmed too.

Nick was worried, very worried, and nothing his father was likely to say would alter that. But he decided not to go for further confrontation. Not yet, anyway.

To Kelly’s relief Nick had to leave early the next morning to return to London. Their evening together had passed pleasantly and innocuously enough after Nick’s early remark about Kelly drinking, but Kelly just did not feel comfortable with his son. He was harbouring too many secrets, for a start.

He decided again to give the office a miss and went through the fruitless process of continuing to call Angel repeatedly. He also once more took a trek out to Maythorpe, and afterwards visited the same pub. On the way home in the early evening he gave in to temptation, predictable by then, and stopped at an off-licence to buy a bottle of Scotch. In the safe seclusion of his kitchen he poured himself half a tumbler of the stuff, topped up with water, which he downed almost in one go. Then, perhaps curiously, perhaps not, he wasn’t sure, after just that one big glass of the stuff he felt an overwhelming urge to see Moira. He was consumed by the need for the comfort of her, for the familiarity, for the common sense. He knew better than to attempt to drive, but fortunately she lived close enough for him not to need to. Kelly grabbed his coat and took off at a trot for Moira’s house in Galleon Road.

If he hadn’t been drinking, of course, he probably would not have had the gall under the circumstances even to contact her, let alone turn up unannounced. Indeed, it was just luck that she was off duty and at home, because he no longer had any idea what her rota was. Kelly was not yet drunk exactly, but Moira noticed at once that he had been drinking. After all, he hadn’t drunk alcohol in all the time she had known him.

‘Just a couple of pints,’ he answered her swiftly voiced query, though even if it had been only a couple of pints they both knew how dangerous even that could be to him.

‘John, what’s happening to you?’ Moira asked rather sorrowfully. She stood in the hallway, looking at him, making no move to stand aside, to gesture him in, instead keeping him outside on the doorstep.

‘Please can I come in?’ he asked by way of reply. He thought he sounded pitiful, he knew he felt it. Anyway, at least she took pity.

Moira invited him in then, sat him down at the kitchen table and promptly made him an omelette, without much further comment. Her daughter Jennifer came in from somewhere or other and gave him a big hug. Kelly liked Jennifer, who had always seemed to return the feeling. But he wasn’t capable of taking any interest in her that evening. He barely even hugged her back. Jennifer retreated looking vaguely puzzled. Apart from anything else, Kelly assumed she had smelled his breath. Like her mother, Jennifer knew his history well enough.

Moira studied him unenthusiastically as he ate his omelette gratefully but quickly and without enjoyment, just out of the need for food. He couldn’t remember when he had last eaten a proper meal. He hoped it would help him feel better. As it was, one way and another he barely felt capable of proper conversation.

Moira sighed. ‘I don’t even know what you want from me any more,’ she said eventually.

‘I just want to be with you, I suppose,’ he reasoned lamely.

‘Well, that makes a change, anyway,’ she replied. ‘Your girlfriend away somewhere, is she?’

Kelly looked down at his plate. Ashamed. Moira got the message.

‘Why am I not surprised? You’re making a complete fool of yourself, John, you know that, don’t you?’

He managed an awkward, uncertain smile. ‘I’m just a bit confused, that’s all...’

‘You’re confused, John? What about me? I thought we had something good going. Now I don’t know what to think. And you’re drinking again, after all that you’ve told me, all that it did to you before...’

He looked sheepish; tried to wriggle. ‘Look, I said, just a couple of pints—’

‘And the rest,’ she interrupted sharply. ‘In any case, John, what difference does it make how much you’ve drunk? All the years I’ve known you now I’ve never seen you touch a drop. You’ve always said that you couldn’t, that if you did you’d be gone again—’

‘Well, maybe I exaggerated.’

He didn’t believe that, of course. Not really. He felt terrible. Maybe he was slightly drunk, after all. He supposed he must be after downing all that Scotch. He no longer understood why he had done so. He had some tough thinking to do, and one thing was certain: whisky wouldn’t help. The bloody headache was back as well. He asked Moira if she had any aspirin. She left the room and returned with some, handing them silently to him.

‘Can I stay?’ he asked eventually.

‘You’ve got a bloody cheek, John Kelly,’ she replied.

But she did let him stay. And, slightly to his surprise, she let him make love to her. He was also half surprised both that he wanted to, and that he could. But he did. The sex was warm and nice and loving and familiar. And normal, he thought. He knew that everybody’s definition of normality in sex was different, but he also knew that the sex he had with Angel far exceeded his definition of normality. When the excitement died down, when it was all over, he didn’t even like to think about some of what they did together, and yet he was completely hooked on it, even though he never felt afterwards the peace that he felt after making love with Moira. That gave him a deep peace. Even that night. Even with all that was happening. He wished he had valued it more before he had in a way defiled it, for himself, anyway. However, he fell quickly into a sound sleep, something that had evaded him for days, and as he did so he was only vaguely aware that Moira was lying there next to him wide awake, just watching him.

In the morning he was grateful but sheepish. He knew, and Moira knew, that in spite of how good it had been to be together again, nothing would stop him going to Angel as soon as he had the opportunity. And Moira, of course, didn’t know the half of it.

‘Thank you,’ he said to her.

She smiled ironically. ‘I would say you’re welcome, but I’m not sure you really are any more.’

He nodded in understanding. ‘To be honest I’m surprised that you did, well, you know, that you would...’ he stumbled inarticulately.

‘Old habits die hard, maybe,’ she replied caustically.

He didn’t know quite what to make of that, but he was just relieved, really, that Moira hadn’t tried to lecture him. Maybe she didn’t see the point any more.

He made it into the office that day, only half an hour or so late. Nobody passed any comment on his two days’ sickness, but he was well aware that he was no longer the most popular boy in class. There were plenty of sideways looks from his colleagues, and conversations seemed inclined to dwindle away whenever he passed by. Well, he supposed he would have been rather surprised if there hadn’t been a deal of gossip around about his relationship with Angel, and already probably about his pub drinking bouts, brief though they had so far been. Torquay was a small town. His beat was a local evening paper, and if the guys he worked with hadn’t already picked up on his antics they shouldn’t have their jobs, Kelly thought to himself. He would have done so in their shoes, that was for certain.

Over the next couple of days Kelly only just managed to function without going under, either to the newly rediscovered oblivion of alcohol or to his various neuroses about Angel, or to all of that at once. He continued to phone Angel repeatedly, succeeding in neither catching her mobile nor gaining any reply from Maythorpe. Each day he took at least one run out to the house to check if she had returned. Also each day, he found himself drinking at some stage or another. What with that and his preoccupation with Angel and what he had seen on the videotape, on the third day he again didn’t go to work at all. Neither did he bother to call in this time. He received at least three or four calls from Kit Hansford, which he managed successfully to avoid, as both his mobile and his digital phone at home obligingly told him who was calling.

At home on the evening of that third day his phone rang for the umpteenth time and he saw Angel’s number flash on to the display panel. His heart leaped. He was so suspicious of everything about her, he had determined that he would give her a seriously hard time. He had even considered taking the incriminating tape to the police, hadn’t he? Well, he kidded himself that he had, anyway. But he still couldn’t help reacting the way he did, just to know that she was on the other end of a telephone.

‘Are you coming over or what?’ she enquired. Only it wasn’t an enquiry, more of an order as usual. It was absurd. She had been away for four days, had not contacted him at all, and had been vague to him about her whereabouts, yet she made it sound as if he had been giving her the run-around. He knew he should tell her where to get off. Instead he obediently set off for Maythorpe Manor within minutes of being summoned.

He had drunk several whiskies, while desolately half watching something totally forgettable on TV. He knew he shouldn’t be driving. But that didn’t stop him. Not any more. His common sense seemed to be deserting him in spades. Nothing could have stopped him. He doubted an army would have stopped him. The mood he was in he reckoned he would have found a way round them. That was just how things were, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

When she opened the door to him she was wearing men’s pyjamas several sizes too big for her. An old pair of Scott’s perhaps? But he couldn’t imagine Scott Silver in pyjamas of any sort, let alone the ones Angel had on. They were old-fashioned stripy cotton ones. The trousers were so long they draped over her feet in great folds. The bottom of the jacket reached almost to her knees. The left sleeve completely covered her hand and, in fact, the hem hung two or three inches below her fingers. She had rolled up the right sleeve several times so that it ended at wrist level, and in her right hand she held a large joint.

Her violet eyes were slightly glazed. Her face was pale as ever, the vermilion lipstick a little askew. She swayed gently as if being blown by a breeze that affected only her, and reached out with her left arm towards him. He could see the shape of her fingers inside the huge pyjama jacket sleeve as she struggled to free her hand from the material.

She looked so vulnerable. Kelly felt the usual almost unassailable desire to take her in his arms and protect her. And, of course, he also felt the usual desire to feel and taste her body, to enter her in every possible way. All the ways he had never experienced with anyone else.

Judging from her reaction it showed in his eyes, in his entire body language probably.

‘Take me to bed,’ she said huskily. Another command. But dope always seemed to make her even more randy. And he wondered — as he had done many times before, although he preferred not to think about it — just how much all the various drugs she hardly ever seemed to be totally free of were responsible for her extraordinary level of sexuality.

He took a step towards her. Such was the effect she had on him that only then did he remember why he had wanted to see her so much. And it wasn’t, for once, to fuck her. It was to tell her about the tape, to confront her with what he had seen, what he had learned. He just had to do that. He realised at the same time that all he wanted was for her to come up with some plausible explanation, yet again. And the last thing in the world he wanted to do was to prove that Angel Silver had committed any crime at all, indeed done anything even morally wrong, let alone legally. Yet he always seemed to be trying to catch her out, which was why he had searched for that tape in the first place. It was quite paradoxical behaviour. He knew that. But he had to do it, he had to put it to her. Now that he had seen that videotape, he had no choice.

‘Angel, we need to talk,’ he told her quietly.

‘Do we? How deeply boring,’ she said, and started to undo the buttons of her pyjama jacket.

‘No, Angel, I mean it,’ he insisted. And she was probably so surprised that he should demur at anything she said or did that she allowed herself to be led, without dissension and without undoing any more buttons, into the living room.

He sat her down on the big sofa and drew up a more upright chair, slightly higher, so that he was facing her directly just a couple of feet away. He’d always known the psychological advantage of being able to look slightly down on someone you wanted to get to tell you something they might not wish to tell you. There was just a suggestion of intimidation in it.

‘I’ve seen the video, Angel,’ he said.

He thought there was a flicker of something in her eyes, as if she knew already, without further explanation, exactly which tape he meant. But if that was so then she made a very fast recovery.

‘What video?’ she asked ingenuously, eyes very wide, lips slightly apart, a picture of innocence.

‘The video of what happened the night Scott was killed, the night you killed Terry James.’ Kelly spoke very deliberately, almost spelling the words out, even though he strongly suspected it was not really necessary to do so.

‘Oh, and how did you get hold of that then?’ The violet eyes definitely flickered then. Angel’s voice was calm, but there was just a touch of menace. Trust Angel to switch into attack mode like that, he thought.

‘I expect you can guess how, can’t you?’

‘You haven’t been snooping around here while I’ve been away by any chance, have you, John Kelly?’ she asked, a hint of banter in her voice now as well as the menace.

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that—’

‘Well, I bloody would,’ she interrupted him.

He sighed. ‘Angel, it doesn’t actually matter how I got hold of that tape, it doesn’t actually matter whether you reckon I was snooping, it doesn’t matter how out of order you think I’ve been. What matters is that I did find it and I have watched it. If the police had found it I doubt we’d be sitting here now on fancy fucking chairs in your great big opulent sitting room. I reckon you’d be banged up in jail where you might well belong. It’s totally incriminating, Angel—’

She interrupted again. ‘What do you mean, incriminating? I don’t see what’s incriminating about it.’

‘Don’t you? So why didn’t you just hand it over to the police, then? You’re not stupid, Angel — all sorts of things, but never stupid. I think you see very well. You didn’t kill Terry James in self-defence. He was trying to get away from you. You went after him with the knife.’

Her face was expressionless at first. Then she lowered her eyelids as if offended but trying not to show it.

‘Is that how it looks?’ she enquired. She was cool, very cool. Impressively so. Her voice was still calm. But he could see that the hand protruding from the rolled-up right sleeve of the pyjamas was tightly clenched, the joint squashed carelessly between her fore and middle fingers.

‘Yes it is,’ he replied bluntly.

She couldn’t keep it up then, her pretence of lack of concern.

‘I was terrified out of my mind, for fuck’s sake,’ she yelled at him. ‘Yes, I had the knife. The bastard dropped it after he killed Scott. For a second or two he looked almost as frightened as me, and that was even scarier. Terry James was a huge man, John. What was I supposed to do? Wait for him to pick the bloody knife up and use it on me? No! I grabbed it. Somehow or other I managed to react more quickly than he did. And once I had the knife, what was I supposed to do then? Wait again, for him to take it from me. If I hadn’t got a blow in first he could have got it from me so easily. Like taking candy from a baby it would have been for a man his size. And I’d just watched him commit a murder. Do you honestly think he was going to let me live to tell the tale?’

‘He was walking away, though—’ Kelly began lamely, his voice uncertain.

‘Taking a step or two backwards, nothing more. After all, I did have the knife,’ she interrupted. ‘But he wasn’t going anywhere. He was going to come for me and he was going to kill me. I was absolutely sure of it. Tape or no tape, you couldn’t see his eyes like I did. You should have seen his eyes, John. I didn’t have a second’s doubt. He was going to kill me. I had just one chance to kill him first. And I took it.’

Kelly tried to think clearly, to be dispassionate and rational, to look at things logically. He wished he hadn’t drunk so much whisky. Angel might be doped up, but as ever it didn’t seem to affect her ability to function. He suspected that if he had smoked half as much as she already had that day he would be unable to speak, let alone think. He concentrated hard.

‘So, if that’s what you honestly believe, I’ll ask you again, why didn’t you give that tape to the police?’

‘You have to be joking! I didn’t give it to them because they wouldn’t have understood, would they? Wouldn’t have wanted to, either. If you can behave the way you are having seen the bloody thing, what hope would I have with the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, for fuck’s sake? I’m telling you God’s truth, John. You must know that, surely.’

He didn’t know. It was terrible. He was in love with her. He hated putting that into words, even inside his head, but that was how it was. He was passionate about her. He was besotted by her. But he had no idea whether she was telling him the truth or not. It occurred to him that he never had had any idea whether she was telling him the truth or not. Not from the beginning. Not about anything.

‘I don’t know what I believe with you, Angel,’ he told her, not for the first time.

‘Well then, you should—’ She stopped in her tracks, a look of panic setting in. ‘John, you wouldn’t give that tape to the police, would you?’

For a moment he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. He sighed. ‘Why on earth did you keep the bloody thing, Angel?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Stupid of me, wasn’t it? Habit, I suppose. We kept all the bonking tapes, it was like our own library of blue movies.’ She laughed bitterly.

‘Angel, this isn’t a blue movie, it’s a fucking snuff movie, and you’re the only fucking killer it shows. How sick are you, for Christ’s sake?’

She flinched away from him. ‘Sick? You think I’m sick, d’you?’ Her voice was suddenly very small.

He knew that was probably just another of her tricks. None the less, he hesitated before saying, ‘Sometimes I do, yes.’

‘But not when you’re in bed with me, not then. You don’t think at all then, do you?’

She was quick, very quick, and she was right, of course.

‘No, not then, but don’t imagine for one moment that makes me proud,’ he snapped.

Her lower lip trembled. Her mood swings never ceased to amaze him. ‘You sound as if you hate me,’ she whispered.

‘Hate you? I could never hate you. Sometimes I wish I didn’t love you as much, that’s all.’

‘Please, John, I’m begging you, you won’t go to the police with the tape, will you? Please tell me you won’t. Please.’ To his astonishment he saw that she had started to cry. He realised it was the only time that he had seen her weep since that first interview he did with her before her trial.

She reached out for him with both arms, one hand completely concealed in the pyjama jacket, the other still clutching her joint, which, unsurprisingly considering the treatment it had received, seemed to have gone out. The tears were pouring down her cheeks.

‘I’m at your mercy, John,’ she said. ‘Please don’t do it.’

Half of him knew it was manipulative nonsense. But he could not resist, of course. She seemed to him to be more vulnerable, more fragile than ever. He was, as usual, lost.

‘I suppose not—’ he began.

She gave him no chance to finish the sentence. She clamped her mouth on his mouth. The tears from her face ran on to his tongue. He tasted the salt. Her nose was pressed close to his. He breathed in her breath. Her tongue forced his lips apart and then pushed his tongue back, heading for his throat. Her hands pulled at his shirt front and the fastenings to his trousers.

That was the beginning. After that it was all so inevitable. She carried him with her on a roller coaster of sensations, a frantic night-long seeking for the heights of sexual pleasure. It was dangerous, he knew that. To Kelly it was almost depraved. He actually felt that, even as it was happening, but he couldn’t stop. Sometimes, he feared he would never be able to stop.

Kelly didn’t go home for two days. Neither did he go to work, even though he knew he was already skating on very thin ice as far as his job was concerned. Neither did he contact anyone in his office to attempt to explain his absence. Not even Phyllis. Neither did he contact Moira. For two whole days and two nights he existed only with Angel on a high of sex, booze and drugs.

He was still kidding himself that he could handle it, all of it, but one half of him knew that he was kidding himself.

And when he did go home he was aware that it was probably only because he couldn’t take any more.

None the less, the first thing he did was to play that tape again. Several times he watched it. And all he could ever see in Terry James’s eyes was cold fear.