A Moment Of Madness

Four

Kelly was thoughtful as he drove back towards Torquay and the industrial estate near the hospital which housed the offices of the Evening Argus. Coincidentally his first job as a boy reporter thirty-odd years ago, before he graduated to Fleet Street, had been on the Torquay Times, a weekly newspaper with offices right in the centre of town. Those had been the days, he reflected a little sorrowfully. Nowadays virtually all newspapers, from most of the nationals down to the few non-freebie weeklies that still existed, had been relegated to bunkers somewhere soulless.

The Torquay Times had gloried in the address of Upper Fleet Street, and the town’s evening newspaper back then had been right next door. Kelly had no idea whether the term Upper Fleet Street had been an invention, not to mention an affectation, of the two newspapers. Certainly the grandly named piece of road, a suspended terrace just off and above the town’s main shopping street of Fleet Street, was really just the bottom bit of Braddons Hill Road. Now the Times’s rather splendid old building had become the curiously named Bondi Beach Bar, and the only glory that remained was apparently represented by a load of surfers painted on its once-proud façade. The Torquay Times itself was long gone too — as was the glorious career Kelly had once seemed destined for.

He opened his car window and lit a cigarette. He kept trying to give up, and, indeed, had not smoked for several days again, but a man had to have some vices. The idea of a completely viceless John Kelly was rather awful, he considered. He’d given up the drinking — out of necessity, of course, not choice. They’d told him he’d die if he carried on. Not maybe. Or within a few years. But inevitably. And soon. So he’d knocked it on the head. And he’d quit gambling too. Well, almost. He allowed himself a few quid on the horses on Saturdays only, and limited the stakes to what he could afford to lose. Which was not much, that was for certain, and therefore deeply tedious, because it also meant that what he won was barely worth winning.

He had given up the women too. Apart from Moira. For many years after he and his wife had parted company Kelly had lurched from one short-lived relationship to another, sometimes managing to keep more than one going at a time and fit in the odd one-night stand as well. He had, of course, in those days been drinking for England and gambling constantly. No wonder his career and his marriage had both hit the skids. But now at least he had regular employment again, doing the job he had always wanted to do, albeit at a comparatively low level, but in a lovely part of the world.

And then there was Moira. She was his rock, and Kelly was well aware of the stability she had given him and the state he might still be in, were it not for her. He loved Moira. In a way. In his way. But without that edge of danger which came with high passion, which he had last experienced so long ago he could barely remember it. The trouble was that although Kelly knew well enough that he would still be falling about in a gutter somewhere had he failed to get his life back on an even keel — with not a little help from Moira, whom he had met just a year after joining the staff of the Argus thirteen years previously — he was still an adventurer at heart. Still a chancer inside his head. It was what, once a very long time ago, had made him such a good reporter. Good reporters, the really great ones, were not often anything but chancers. They had a boldness about them, a belief in their own immortality, their own omnipotence. But when that belief was shaken it was often hard for them to hold themselves together. Kelly was the sort who had hung on to his own particular brand of greatness by little more than a single thread. When that thread had broken, so had Kelly. And he had long ago accepted that he would never be that man again.

As he swung the MG into the Argus car park and pulled to a halt, Kelly struggled to snap out of the morose mood he had slumped into. He was aware that he had acquired a tendency towards self-pity. He’d have to watch that. He disliked it in others and even more in himself. At least he had a really good story to bury himself in. It was a long time since he’d worked on anything as big as this.

Stepping out of the car he took a last couple of puffs from his cigarette and inhaled deeply, before tossing the fag end casually on to the ground. The offices of the Argus were, of course, non-smoking. God, how Kelly hated the health-conscious, squeaky-clean, political correctness of modern life. He strode briskly through the big swing doors into the streamlined modern reception area that could have been the entrance to any factory or office block. Nothing indicated press at all. As ever, Kelly allowed himself a brief moment of nostalgia. He was, after all, old school, local-paper-trained, Fleet Street-honed. Hot metal was in his blood and he longed for the noise and the dirt and the sheer exuberance that had once been so much a part of newspaper life.

He made his way unenthusiastically through the ground-floor advertising department and climbed the stairs to the editorial offices above. The journalists produced their newspaper out of one big anonymous grey room. Pale grey walls framed a highly regulated working area in which mid-grey computers sat on lines of dark grey desks. Everything about the Argus newsroom was grey — including the atmosphere, Kelly always thought. There was the usual soft mechanical buzz, which was just about the only buzz you ever got from the place, he reckoned. Reporters sat quietly at their terminals with their heads down. The subeditors had tired eyes, too few of them dealing with too much copy, much of it supplied by reporters who weren’t really worthy of the job description, in Kelly’s opinion.

On his way to his own grey desk Kelly passed the photographers’ room. He almost bumped into Trevor Jones, who came hurrying out, camera bag over his shoulder.

‘Back to normal for me today,’ muttered the younger man glumly. ‘I’m off to cover the opening of that new supermarket. I don’t think they like it when you get an exclusive on this bloody newspaper.’

Kelly smiled sympathetically. Kit Hansford certainly gave that impression sometimes. And Kelly was under no illusions about the young news editor’s opinion of him.

He switched on his computer, logged in, and began to put together a final piece for the midday edition. When he had finished he went on-line to check recent material about Scott and Angel Silver. Having avoided the office the previous day and had no time to use his own computer at home, this was his first chance. On the Net, predictably enough, the principal stuff was fan-based. He plumbed in to the archives of all the national newspapers he could access. The trouble with the Net was that you could only get out what somebody else had put in. Kelly was well aware of the value of the Internet but was wary about the high level of misinformation it contained. He trolled through anything relevant that he could find, and then checked the archives of his own newspaper. The Silvers had lived in Maidencombe for almost ten years, and the Argus had given their various exploits considerable coverage.

But Kelly learned little that was new to him. He had a computer for a brain when it came to storing tabloid-style trivia in his head, although he needed sometimes to remind himself of precise details.

There was something in particular he had been looking for, although he wasn’t sure what use he would be allowed to make of it. The name jumped off the screen at him. Mrs Rachel Hobbs. A spread in the News of the World’s colour supplement featured a half-page picture of a small bejewelled woman with big platinum-blonde hair and an even bigger smile perched on the edge of a large sunken bath, the central feature in the pink satin bedroom of her Essex home. At least most of it seemed to be made of pink satin. Including the wallpaper. No, surely not. Kelly peered more closely at the photograph. Well, it looked like pink satin to him.

Rachel Hobbs. Angel’s mother. There was also a mother-and-daughter picture featuring Angel as a truly angelic-looking teenager. It was an old story, dated 12 August 1979. Kelly remembered vaguely how the Hobbs family, enriched by Angel’s earnings as a child star, had moved into that big flash house. Then when Angel’s bubble had burst, only two or three years after that article had been printed, they had moved back to the same little terraced house in Clerkenwell where Angel had been born and brought up, which, for whatever reasons, the family had never sold. Angel was thirty-nine now. She would have been sixteen then, her mother forty-eight, according to the News of the World report. The various archives were full of material on Angel, including a number of stories concerning her disastrous first marriage to James Carey, a Hollywood actor thirty years her senior. There was even a photograph of her wedding to Carey showing Angel standing alongside her mother, smiling broadly again, and her embarrassed-looking father, Bill, who being a year or so younger than his wife had apparently been exactly the same age as the bridegroom. There were many others tracing Angel’s life since her marriage to Scott but no more at all featuring her mother, except a brief item recording the death of Bill Hobbs, which carried only an old picture of him and his wife. Kelly remembered Rachel Hobbs as having been the archetype showbiz mum, but she seemed to have dropped totally out of sight.

He had been to the Clerkenwell house once many years ago. He wondered if Mrs Hobbs would remember. He suspected she would. It had, after all, been a pretty memorable visit. Suddenly Kelly wanted nothing more than to bowl up to London and talk to Rachel Hobbs. About what it was like to be the wife of a Billingsgate fish porter with a daughter like Angel and then a son-in-law like Scott. About the double killing at Maythorpe Manor, which must surely have turned her world upside down almost as much as it had her daughter’s. He had a strong feeling that Rachel Hobbs could somehow lead him to her Angel.

He phoned one of the few old mates he had left in The Street, a reporter on the Sun, who he was sure would be able to confirm for him whether or not Rachel Hobbs still lived at the Clerkenwell address. He could, and she did. None the less, the odds were against Kelly going anywhere except on his own patch. That was how life was in provincial journalism. To travel outside the Argus’ meagre circulation area was a rare thing indeed.

Kelly looked across at his news editor. Kit Hansford was twenty-five years old, little more than half Kelly’s age. A career provincial man, had it written all over him already. There was a good life to be had in the provinces now if that was the type of journalist you were. The remains of Fleet Street was tougher, more competitive, more cut-throat, more in a hurry than ever before, while in the provinces a man with application and not a lot more could become a big fish in a little pond pretty swiftly.

Hansford was cut out for that. Hand-tailored. Absolutely. Sickening though he found the prospect, Kelly would happily have bet a month’s salary that Hansford would be editor-in-chief of the Argus group within ten years. And on the board, of course. Then maybe he’d go into politics, local councillor, mayor, even stand for MP. Kelly wasn’t sure about the last, though. That might lead to a big pond, which wouldn’t suit Hansford at all. Kelly couldn’t imagine the mentality of a talented young man who could ever be content with anything except at least attempting to break into the biggest time going. But then, he was still inclined to think about talent, which almost certainly ruled Hansford out. And even if it didn’t, Kelly had to admit that he himself was no great advertisement for the so-called big time. He’d been among the best, but look at him now.

The familiar self-pity, which he tried so hard to defy, surged through him in an unwelcome burst.

Hansford looked up from the screen he had been scrutinising. His eyes caught Kelly’s. The older man strove to make his face expressionless. Kelly knew better than to make enemies at his time of life, but it was hard to disguise the lack of respect bordering on contempt that he felt for the young news editor.

Hansford wore round metal-rimmed spectacles. Behind their inadequate disguise he blinked a lot. His fairish hair, already thinner than Kelly’s, was shorn in a trendy crop, but the rather plump face wasn’t strong enough to carry off the look, nor was the head a good enough shape. Hansford’s cheeks and jowls were fleshy, but his lips were narrow, a curious mix. He had pale creamy skin and looked as if he barely needed to shave. In some ways he could be even younger than his twenty-five years. But his body was lean and spare as if he spent every spare moment in the gym training hard, which Kelly knew that he did. Hansford was image-conscious and they were living in the age of the body. It wasn’t just the gay guys and the sporty types who were intent on the body beautiful nowadays.

Kelly leaned back in his chair and gave his present situation some thought. He was still arrogant enough to believe that he was the only man on the Argus who really knew how to handle the Silver story. Did he care enough to push it all the way? He wasn’t sure.

While he was thinking, Hansford stood up abruptly and began to walk across the office towards Kelly. Now what? thought Kelly. It wouldn’t be anything sensible, that was for sure.

‘Are you clear, John?’ Hansford asked.

Kelly suspected that he was about to be baited and determined not to rise to it.

‘Did you like yesterday’s Scott Silver exclusive?’ he asked none the less.

‘Oh yeah, good stuff,’ muttered Hansford, looking vaguely embarrassed. News editors were never inclined to issue many compliments, as Kelly well knew, but with Hansford there always seemed to be this lurking resentment of Kelly, which the older man only half understood. After all, Hansford had it all in front of him. Kelly had left his best days well behind. He had come to terms with that long ago but it still rankled on a bad day.

‘I’ve nothing more to file for tonight, if that’s what you mean,’ he replied edgily. ‘Not yet anyway. But as this is the biggest story there’s been on this patch since they found Bruce Reynolds living next to a house full of so-called trainee journalists just above the old offices of this very newspaper, I thought you might like me to carry on working on it. We are having a newspaper tomorrow as well, aren’t we?’

Kelly was aware of the note of sarcasm in his voice becoming more and more apparent as he continued talking. He really hadn’t meant to rise to Hansford, but he found it so hard not to.

The news editor merely stared at him levelly and handed him a sheaf of papers. Kelly barely glanced at them. He knew what they were and he could hardly believe it. Council minutes.

‘There’s a meeting of the planning committee at two o’clock. I want you there,’ Hansford said. ‘We’re expecting a crucial decision re that proposed new shopping mall there’s been so much hullabaloo about. This is a solid provincial evening newspaper which maintains an extremely high circulation through wide and comprehensive coverage of local news. And I’m employed to keep things that way. The Scott Silver murder will be dealt with appropriately and given the right amount of coverage and no more. There are other stories. We’re not a red-top Fleet Street tabloid, John.’

Kelly didn’t reply.

‘Oh, and, John, you didn’t waste much time getting that exclusive into the nationals, did you? They had a field day this morning with it. You won’t forget who pays your wages every month, will you, old son?’

‘No I won’t,’ replied Kelly evenly, ignoring the ‘old son’, which he knew had been intended to provoke. ‘And you won’t forget that I have an agreement with the editor that I retain my own copyright and get to sell on anything I do for this newspaper on the condition that I make sure the Argus gets to print it first, will you, Kit?’

This time it was Hansford’s turn to make no reply. Kelly waited until the younger man was safely back at the head of the news desk before getting to his feet and setting off across the room for the editor’s office. He could feel Hansford’s eyes on the back of his neck. The news editor was going to dislike him even more now. Kelly was about to do his best to go over his head, and it wouldn’t be the first occasion.

‘Fuck it,’ Kelly muttered to himself as he passed by the desk. ‘No more Mr Nice Guy. There really is no point with that little prick.’

Joe Robertson’s office door was ajar as usual. The big man, minus his jacket, was leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk. His forehead glistened with sweat even though it was not particularly warm in the Argus office. Joe was a good six foot five tall and from certain angles appeared to be almost as wide. The jacket of his suit, slung over the back of his chair, was charcoal grey; as usual, his tie, in the colours of the beleaguered Torquay United football team, had been loosened, its knot an inch or two below the opened neck of his immaculate white shirt. He wore red braces and smoked an overly large cigar. The editor’s office was the only place in the building where the no-smoking rule was allowed to be broken. The management pretended not to notice. It was probably either that or lose their editor. Joe Robertson was that kind of guy.

Kelly smiled appreciatively as he hovered in the doorway. Joe still looked every inch of the old-fashioned Fleet Street production man he had once been. He and Kelly had worked together in the Street of Shame many years previously when Joe had been the youngest night editor in Fleet Street history and Kelly one of the brightest stars on the road. There had always been tremendous mutual respect between the two men, and it was thanks to Joe Robertson, already editing the Argus when Kelly had somewhat spectacularly fallen from grace, that Kelly had been given the job on the Torquay newspaper that he had so far managed to keep. Kelly studied Joe for a moment. The other man had had very different reasons for ending up in a job way below his talent and ability. Robertson’s wife, whom he adored, suffered from a rare mental disorder which resulted in severe panic attacks. Only in her home town of Torquay, among friends and family stretching back to her childhood, did she manage to hold herself together sufficiently for the couple to share anything like a normal married life and successfully raise their two children. And that to Joe had been far more important than his high-flying career. He had chucked it up without a backward glance and thrown himself wholeheartedly into a provincial editorship that barely touched the edges of his vast talents. He had stuck at it, though, with impressive success. In an age when local papers were folding all over the place, the Argus had gone from strength to strength under Joe’s leadership, which had now lasted almost fifteen years. The various awards the newspaper collected almost annually were scattered around the big man’s room.

Robertson was watching the lunchtime regional news bulletin on TV. When he became aware of Kelly watching him his face broke into a wide grin. His eyes sparkled with excitement. Joe Robertson had printers’ ink running through his veins. Just like Kelly. Or like he had once been, anyway, Kelly thought wryly.

‘Great yarn, John,’ Joe roared. He had always been incapable of speaking at anything like a normal volume, particularly when his blood was up on a story. Joe’s voice, like everything about him including his personality, was big. ‘Well done on the stalker angle. Let’s keep it up, shall we? It’s great to beat the nationals at their own game, isn’t it? This is our patch, after all.’

Kelly’s heart lifted. Joe was playing right into his hands. He had known the editor would think the same way as he. Just about the only time Kelly and Robertson had not seen things the same way had been when the editor of the Argus had appointed Kit Hansford as his news editor just over a year previously. Mind you, Kelly understood well enough. Joe had wanted a solid provincial man to news edit his solid provincial newspaper. The comprehensive coverage Hansford had wittered on about earlier was indeed the backbone of the Argus — its structural frame. Robertson had the flair and the originality to make the Argus special on a good day; he didn’t need his own clone running his news team. Kelly supposed reluctantly that Hansford was perfect for the job, an ideal foil to his boss.

‘I have another lead or two, Joe,’ Kelly lied. It came naturally to him to lie to editors and news editors about the progress he was making — or lack of it. You never let the backroom boys get in the way of the story. That was another of Kelly’s golden rules.

‘Yes?’ Joe responded eagerly, his eyebrows raised in query. Expectant.

‘Well, Angel’s the key to it, but we’re not going to get to her for some time, I reckon. I’d like to have a go at her mother. I have a feeling she might be the way to Angel, too.’

‘And she lives where?’

‘London. Clerkenwell. Moved to Essex once when Angel was big as a kid, the obligatory flash showbizzy gaff, but now she’s back in the house where she brought up Angel. Quite poetic, really.’

‘London?’ queried Joe. ‘You need a special pass for that.’ He was still grinning, though, which Kelly found encouraging. ‘What makes you think she’ll talk to you anyway, John?’ the editor continued. ‘The pack will be camped out there, for sure. I don’t really have the staff to send a man up to town on a wasted journey.’

‘It won’t be wasted, I promise you. I’ve got an in with the old lady.’

Robertson shook his head almost imperceptibly. ‘Have you indeed?’ he murmured. ‘And where’ve I heard that before?’

‘Honestly,’ said Kelly.

Robertson was still grinning. He liked chancers. Kelly knew that. Liked the guys with the extra edge. Even though he promoted machines like Hansford to jobs they should never be given a sniff of in Kelly’s opinion.

‘All right then, off you go. You’ve got a day and a half. I want you back in here at seven a.m. Thursday morning.’

‘Deal,’ said Kelly. ‘And I’ll need a snapper, young Trevor—’

‘Forget it,’ interrupted Robertson. ‘You’ll have to do your own pix. Borrow that digital camera for idiots from the picture desk.’

Kelly shrugged resignedly. He’d already got more of his own way than he’d expected. He turned as if to leave, then hesitated. ‘Just one more thing...’

‘Yes?’

Kelly waved the council minutes which were still in his hand at his editor. ‘I’m supposed to be at County Hall at two p.m., according to Hansford...’

‘You really are a crafty bastard, John, but then you know that, don’t you?’

Kelly didn’t respond.

‘All right, tell Kit you’re off all other duties until I say so. Oh, and don’t score points, John, all right?’

‘Now would I?’ Kelly asked over his shoulder as he opened the door to his editor’s office.

And as he closed it behind him he could still clearly hear Robertson’s bellowed response.

‘Not much!’

At about the same time Karen Meadows was arriving at the chief constable’s office at the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary’s Exeter HQ. She was furious, although she knew better than to show it.

Her previous evening’s meeting with Harry Tomlinson had been cancelled at the last moment, and she had only received the call on her mobile phone when she was already halfway to Middlemore. Then, while she had been with Angel Silver earlier that morning Karen had once more been summoned to his presence, and had had to leave her colleagues at Maythorpe Manor.

As far as Karen was concerned the whole thing had already become a monumental waste of valuable time. She had a shrewd idea of what she was in for, too, which didn’t help her mood at all.

‘A very good day to you, Karen.’ The chief constable was a rather short plump man who all too frequently had an air of forced cheerfulness about him. He had a slightly military manner and Karen could easily imagine him as the sort of commander who would lead his men to certain death with a merry quip.

‘Sorry about yesterday. Got tied up with the Home Office, if you know what I mean.’

Karen knew. She had expected the Home Office to get involved.

‘So, right then, you’d better give me a progress report on the Silver case.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Doing her best not to let her frustration show, Karen gave a full and detailed account.

‘It’s quite difficult to get an accurate picture from Angel Silver’s version of the tragedy, and that is all we have, sir,’ she said in conclusion. ‘But she admits that she killed Terry James after he attacked her husband, so it’s primarily a matter of deciding what steps to take next.’

‘Have you talked to the CPS?’

‘Briefly, sir. I plan to give them a more detailed report later today and talk it through with them fully then.’

‘Well, I’ve had the Crown Bench Prosecutor on to me already, and he’s adamant that we have to charge the woman with manslaughter at least. As you well know, everybody’s a victim nowadays, including thugs who attack innocent householders. We have to play this one strictly by the book. He gave me the public interest line, of course. Is that the word you’ve got?’

‘Yes. I don’t think there is any choice. Unless we charge her with murder, of course.’

Karen was being mischievous with her last remark, and she found the chief constable’s reaction highly gratifying.

‘Good Lord no,’ he countered quickly, his earlier avuncular approach no longer evident. ‘There can be absolutely no question of that. There was enough hullabaloo over the Tony Martin case, and he was an unknown farmer who killed an intruder. God knows how the press and the public would react to Angel Silver being convicted of murder when all she was doing was trying to defend herself and her husband. We’re walking a tightrope here, Karen.’

‘Yes, sir, and don’t I know it. If only detectives could just concentrate on detecting the job would be a whole lot easier, wouldn’t it, sir?’

Karen hadn’t meant to say that. She was aware of the chief constable shooting her a rather sharp look, but he made no direct response.

‘So have you talked to her solicitor?’ he asked instead. ‘What will she plead?’

‘Not guilty on the grounds of self-defence, almost certainly.’

Tomlinson sighed. ‘Well, let’s hope we manage to get a jury with some brains for a change. We really can’t afford to send that bloody woman to jail.’

‘No, sir,’ said Karen as expressionlessly as she could manage.

The case was developing in the way she had feared. It was no longer particularly important, it seemed, to try to find out exactly what had happened at Maythorpe Manor that night and to prosecute accordingly. Instead, the emphasis was on ensuring that the due process of law was seen to operate in a way that gave the least possible cause for public outrage in either direction. And neither justice nor truth seemed to have much relevance.

Karen gritted her teeth. Politics all too often seemed to dominate policing nowadays. She was used to it but she’d never get to like it.