A Moment Of Madness

Twenty-one

‘They’ve found another body out at Maythorpe Manor,’ DS Cooper blurted out excitedly as he burst into Karen Meadows’ office. ‘We’ve just had a 999 call, boss.’

Karen Meadows looked up at him. She had been sitting at her desk, dealing with a mountain of unwelcome paperwork. Almost involuntarily she jumped to her feet.

‘Whose body, who is it?’ she enquired.

‘Angel Silver, almost certainly,’ replied Cooper. ‘It was her daily, Mrs Nott, who found her. The woman was half hysterical on the phone, apparently, but she kept saying that it was Mrs Silver. “Mrs Silver’s been murdered.”’

‘Christ,’ said Karen. ‘I just knew this one wasn’t going to go away. Did Mrs Nott say how she thought Angel had been killed?’

‘No, just that there was a lot of blood everywhere.’

Karen grabbed her shoulder bag from her desk and headed for the door. There was no point in asking Phil Cooper any more questions. She needed to get to the scene of the crime fast to see it all for herself.

‘C’mon Phil, let’s get out there,’ she said.

Angel Silver’s body lay spread-eagled on the kitchen floor. Her eyes and mouth were wide open. Her face was bloodied, particularly around her nose and mouth, yet her expression was far more one of surprise than of fear, or even of pain.

One of her arms was lying at an impossible angle, almost certainly broken. The fresh bruise on her forehead, which Kelly had noticed and been disturbed by when he made his late-night visit, looked even more prominent in death, and Angel’s grubby towelling dressing gown was heavily bloodstained.

Karen Meadows peered at the body, getting as close as she dare before the SOCOs arrived and sealed the crime scene. She could see no signs of a major wound.

‘Is that more blood behind her head, Phil?’ she asked DS Cooper.

The young detective sergeant leaned forward to study the black and cream tiled floor. There was a smattering of dark red spots on the shiny slabs.

‘I reckon so, boss,’ he said. ‘There’s blood in her hair too, I think.’

He pointed to a patch of Angel’s hair protruding from behind one of the dead woman’s ears. The DCI could see that it was also dark red and matted.

‘Yes,’ said Karen Meadows. ‘Quite a bash on the head she’s taken. How exactly? That’s the question.’

‘She could just have fallen and cracked her head on the worktop,’ said Cooper. He gestured towards the granite surfaces. ‘Hard as nails, this stuff, and the edges have got sharp corners too.’

DCI Meadows nodded. ‘Thing is, was she pushed?’ she asked almost rhetorically.

‘Look at her eyes,’ said Cooper. ‘Pupils dilated. She was high as a kite when she died, I reckon.’

‘They did teach you something at college, then, Phil?’

‘Oh yeah, boss. I’m an expert on drug abuse, got really good at it.’

The young policeman grinned. Karen grinned back. She liked Phil Cooper’s sense of humour. You needed things to be lightened sometimes in their job.

The SOCOs arrived swiftly, as did the region’s Home Office pathologist. Karen had had a good relationship with his predecessor. She wasn’t too sure of Audley Richards, a taciturn character as precise as his small neat moustache, who invariably didn’t give an inch. But there was no doubt that he was darned good at his job.

Richards almost immediately made one pronouncement, which was a result in itself from a man who seemed to regard any form of educated guesswork or speculation in pathology as a crime equal almost in severity to murder itself.

Peering close to the body he said, ‘I think all this blood might be deceptive. I think she might have had a nose bleed.’

Karen Meadows leaned closer. ‘Caused by what?’ she asked.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Detective Chief Inspector. I’m a pathologist not a clairvoyant.’

Karen decided to resort to flattery. ‘Oh, come on, Audley,’ she said. ‘You always know more than you want to let on. You’re a seriously clever bastard. That’s why we all love you.’

Richards turned to face her. ‘The former I’m well aware of, so therefore it is vital that I protect my reputation when faced with impossible questions before I even have a chance to examine the corpse properly,’ he said. ‘The latter I can only assume is your idea of a joke, Karen.’

The use of her Christian name, in spite of the admonishment issued in an apparently frosty tone, was, Karen knew, a good sign. And indeed, it did seem that the flattery had worked, because Richards continued to speak and, considering that he had so far made only the briefest of preliminary examinations, proceeded to be unusually helpful.

‘Look at the membranes between her nostrils,’ he said. ‘They’re quite severely damaged. You wouldn’t have had to give that nose much more than a tap to make it bleed. Coke, of course.’

‘Christ,’ said Karen, wondering suddenly why she and Phil Cooper hadn’t themselves already noticed how paper thin the skin and tissue division which separated Angel’s nostrils had become. ‘I’m sure she wasn’t like that when I last saw her.’

‘It can happen quite suddenly after years of abuse.’ Audley Richards looked thoughtful. ‘This is quite an extreme case, too.’

‘So the blood has no relevance to her death?’

‘Hard to say.’

For a man who was famously reluctant to provide information at the scene of crime, Richards was being extremely co-operative, almost avuncular by his standards. Karen knew all too well how much he preferred to wait until he had examined a subject in his laboratory before giving anything away.

‘It would seem most likely that she was attacked and that her attacker hit her in the face,’ he went on. ‘But there is some sign of bruising, which indicates that she didn’t die straight after the blow to her face. I really can’t say any more yet until the post mortem.’

‘Time of death?’ Karen enquired, adding quickly, in order not to antagonise the pathologist, ‘Only approximately, of course.’

Richards grunted. ‘Very approximately, some time around midnight, I would say.’

Karen nodded thoughtfully. So, just as she had already guessed, Angel had lain dead in her kitchen overnight until the arrival of her daily help, Mrs Nott, first thing that morning.

The DCI persisted in trying to extract as much information as possible from Audley Richards.

‘Could that blow to the back of the head have been enough to kill her, Audley?’ she asked, although pretty sure she wouldn’t get a straight answer until Richards was able to do the job properly. She was quite correct, too.

‘Hit the right spot and a tap can kill you, Karen,’ he said tiredly. ‘As you well know. So can three inches of water, half a peanut if you have that allergy, and an unexpected aneurysm without warning as you walk along the street. Doesn’t mean a thing, does it?’

He wouldn’t budge. The DCI would have to be patient, something she wasn’t all that hot on if the truth be known.

Meanwhile she went into standard operating mode for the senior investigating officer at a suspicious death, which, she had to remind herself, was all that she had at the moment — although she was somehow pretty damned sure it was going to turn into a murder case pretty sharpish. A team was dispatched to ask questions in the neighbourhood about any comings and goings the night before.

Mrs Nott had been asked to wait in the living room, and Karen Meadows decided to talk to her herself, along with DS Cooper. The daily help could provide no hard information at all about who might have visited Angel Silver during the previous night, but she was willing, with little or no encouragement, to hazard a guess.

‘That reporter feller on the Argus, he’s always out here, snooping about,’ she said. ‘And he’s been here upstairs sometimes, in her bedroom more than likely, when I haven’t been supposed to know about it.’

Mrs Nott, making a quick recovery from her gruesome discovery, looked quite smug about that.

‘So how did you know about it then?’ Karen asked rather wearily.

‘You couldn’t miss that flashy little car of his, could you? He used to park it round the side of the house but there’s nowhere here to hide it, and how many dark green open sports cars are there around? I ask you.’

Mrs Nott had sniffed derisively. Karen felt an unwelcome shiver of anticipation run down her spine.

‘Do you know this reporter’s name, Mrs Nott?’ she enquired flatly, aware that it was a question she hardly needed to ask.

‘Course I do. His name’s been all over the papers, hasn’t it, ever since this started. John Kelly, that’s his name. And the papers isn’t all he’s been over, that’s for sure.’

Karen felt irritated. The woman’s sanctimonious superiority was a little hard to take.

‘Did you see John Kelly at this house last night?’ Karen asked sharply.

‘Well, no, of course I didn’t,’ responded Mrs Nott quite chirpily, apparently blissfully unaware of the warning chill in Karen Meadows’ voice. ‘I go to bed at night, me, at a proper time, like decent folk.’

The DCI sighed. ‘So have you any specific reason at all for suspecting that John Kelly may have been here last night?’

‘Well, he’s always sniffing around here, isn’t he?’ Mrs Nott repeated. ‘Can’t keep away. Well, he couldn’t anyway...’ The woman’s voice tailed off, as if she was suddenly remembering again what she had seen that morning.

‘Thank you, Mrs Nott. Doesn’t look like you can help us at all, really, does it?’ said Karen even more sharply. And this time Mrs Nott did at least have the grace to look a little uncomfortable, if nothing more, which made the DCI feel marginally better — although not for long.

One of the detective constables, an eager fresh-faced young man recently promoted from uniform, who had been sent on the house-to-house, was waiting in the hallway for her and DS Cooper to finish interviewing the cleaning lady.

‘Thought you’d like to know, boss, we’ve got an insomniac in the house across the way who saw a taxi pull up just before midnight and someone get out and walk towards Maythorpe,’ said DC Burns. ‘He couldn’t give any description worth having, said it was too dark. He saw little more than a shadowy shape and couldn’t even be certain whether it was a man or a woman, although he said he somehow thought it was a man. And he can’t see the gates to Maythorpe properly from his bedroom window where he was looking out, so he couldn’t even be sure this person went into the manor, but he said the taxi was there for at least half an hour because he stood by his window for that long drinking tea. Then he went back to bed so he didn’t know what time it left.’

Karen listened to DC Burns’s report in grim silence. She knew well enough that Kelly was off the road, so, had he been the midnight visitor, there would have been no distinctive MG arriving. Kelly’s pride and joy was a write-off, even if Kelly was mad enough to drive in spite of his ban. It was more than likely that if he had wanted to visit Maythorpe, he would have used a taxi.

‘Do we know the taxi firm?’ she asked eventually.

‘Yes, he saw that all right, boss. Tor Cars. You can’t miss ’em. They have those distinctive yellow and red signs.’

Karen nodded. ‘Right, get on to it then. Let’s find the driver.’

DC Burns, on what was almost certainly his first murder inquiry, left at once, almost running out of the door, coattails flapping. Karen absently watched him go for a moment. Burns was a big man, a stalwart of the local police rugby team. When excited he looked like an extremely large over-grown schoolboy, she thought. Phil Cooper was standing by the DCI’s side and she could feel his eyes on her. She turned towards him challengingly.

‘Even if it was Kelly, doesn’t mean he did anything to her, boss. It could even still have been an accident,’ said DS Cooper, not particularly convincingly but showing his usual intuition. ‘Let’s say it was him, he still may not even have entered the house. Word is he’s been in the habit sometimes of coming out here just for a look-see.’

Karen warmed to him more than ever. Cooper knew, as they all did, that she had a suspiciously soft spot for Kelly. Most of the others would either have said nothing or taken the piss.

‘That’s as maybe,’ she responded crisply. ‘Anyway, we’ve already got his fingerprints on file and his DNA following his arrest for drink driving. If he was involved in this he’s bound to have left a mark somewhere.’

‘Well, I expect his prints are everywhere in this house from what I’ve heard...’

Cooper looked uncomfortable as he paused, unsure perhaps if his boss wanted to hear the rest of what he was going to say. It was obvious anyway.

Karen shot him a wry look. Sometimes it seemed that the entire Devon and Cornwall Constabulary had little to do other than to gossip. She knew that it was generally believed that she and Kelly had once had a big affair, and she could well understand why even the possibility of such a liaison was considered so intriguing. After all, Kelly, even before the recent catastrophic events in his life, had been widely regarded as just a tired old hack who had seen better days, while Karen was a highly successful, crisply efficient senior police officer awaiting an expected promotion, in fact, to the rank of detective superintendent.

The truth, of course, would never be believed — how a tabloid journalist had chosen to save her career and proven himself to be one of the best friends she ever had. In any case, Karen actually much preferred the fictional version to the reality of her having made a fool of herself over a dangerous criminal who had more than likely been conning her all along. Now Karen Meadows was one of the few who remembered the person Kelly had once been and had always been able to see flashes of that in him.

Until he met Angel Silver, she thought. Karen had fallen wildly in love with David Flanigan all those years ago and had totally lost any sense of judgement — a condition, she suspected, that was at the root of John Kelly’s potentially disastrous behaviour.

Now it seemed that Kelly might have been driven to murder. Karen Meadows found herself suddenly overwhelmed with a terrible sadness, not to mention a sense of impending loss. The only way she knew to deal with it was simply to do her job.

‘We’d better get Kelly in for questioning,’ she said expressionlessly.

After he had returned home Kelly had sat up all night watching TV. Somehow he had not needed to sleep. And, in any case, he had known that he would not be able to. But at around 8 or 9 a.m. the exhaustion caught up with him and he did fall asleep in his armchair, TV still on, waking with a start just as the lunchtime news bulletin was starting.

‘The body of a woman has been found at Maythorpe Manor, the Torbay home of the late rock star Scott Silver. It is believed that she may be Silver’s widow, Angel...’

The shock ripped through Kelly’s body like a flash of freak lightning. Could she really be dead? He supposed that he shouldn’t be surprised. Well, not shocked, anyway.

It was over then. Angel was dead. His own life was in tatters. But at least it was over at last. And maybe it could only ever have ended with death, he thought.

He stood up and put on his old leather jacket, which looked even more battered than usual as he had spent most of the night and morning using it as a pillow.

The team sent by Karen Meadows to bring Kelly in arrived several minutes after he had already left his St Marychurch home. And by the time DC Burns had tracked down the taxi driver who was able to confirm that he had picked up Mr Kelly from his home in Crown Avenue, taken him to Maythorpe and waited for him for around forty-five minutes before driving him back, his evidence was not really needed.

Kelly was waiting at Torquay Police Station when Karen Meadows returned from the crime scene. They had put him in an interview room and left him in the company of a uniformed constable. Kelly refused to talk to anybody except the DCI.

‘I’ve come to give myself up for the murder of Angel Silver,’ he told her simply.

Neither his voice nor his face gave anything away. Kelly had shut down his emotions. Cut himself off from his surroundings and his circumstances. It was almost as if he was talking about something which didn’t concern him at all.