A Moment Of Madness

Eight

Early next morning Kelly was awakened by the sound of smashing glass.

‘Stay where you are,’ he ordered Moira tersely as he jumped out of bed. He opened the bedroom door and stood for a few seconds listening. Nothing more. He made his way swiftly downstairs. The noise had come from the front of the house. But there didn’t seem to be anything amiss in the hallway. Cautiously Kelly opened the living-room door.

There was shattered glass all over the carpet along with a couple of broken china ornaments which had previously stood on the windowsill. Kelly glanced towards the bay window which looked out over Crown Avenue. All that remained of the central panel was a few jagged edges. And in the middle of the debris on the floor was a rather large brick loosely wrapped in a sheet of paper held in place by strips of Sellotape.

Kelly had no shoes on. He stepped gingerly forward, leaned over and stretched out an arm to pick up the brick. He removed the sheet of paper which carried a message stuck to it from letters and words cut out of newspapers. There was, of course, no signature.

Kelly smiled grimly. He hadn’t thought anybody used newsprint to form anonymous threatening messages any more. The sentiment expressed was clear enough, though, if a little simplistic: ‘Lying bastard. We’re going to get you.’

It had to be the James clan, surely, thought Kelly. Then he heard Moira, who naturally hadn’t stayed in the bedroom as he had told her to, call out to him from the stairs.

‘John, John, are you all right? What’s happened?’

Kelly let the brick drop to the floor again and hastily stuffed the note into his dressing-gown pocket as he made his way gingerly out of the room and into the hallway.

‘Don’t go in there,’ he told Moira. ‘Not with bare feet anyway. There’s broken glass everywhere.’

He opened the front door and peered out. It was only 6 a.m. and there was no sign of anyone at all in the street outside. He glanced towards the Volvo, still parked by the kerbside where he had left it. The car did not seem to have been damaged. Well, it wouldn’t have been, would it, he thought. Whoever threw the brick through the window would almost certainly have had no idea that the vehicle was anything to do with him. The MG was still at Classic Motors. Kelly thanked his lucky stars for that. He dreaded to think what damage might have been caused to his beloved old car had it been parked outside.

He was vaguely aware of Moira standing in the hall now peering into the living room.

‘Oh my God, John!’ she cried. ‘Someone’s chucked a brick through the window. Who on earth would do such a thing?’

‘Just mindless vandals, I expect,’ said Kelly, who had no intention of letting Moira anywhere near the note he had secreted in his pocket.

‘Aren’t you going to call the police?’ asked Moira.

‘I don’t see the point,’ replied Kelly.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ said Moira irritably. ‘Of course there’s a point. It might happen again. And in any case, if you don’t call the police you’ll have insurance problems.’

Kelly sighed. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Will you do it, though? You’re off again today, aren’t you? I really have to get in to work early.’

‘Oh John, I told you Paula’s coming down from London for the day. I really don’t want to be hanging around here.’

Paula was Moira’s married eldest daughter. Kelly had completely forgotten about her planned visit, but he did know how close Moira was to all her girls. Yet she hadn’t seen Paula, who had a demanding toddler, for months. And her second daughter, Lynne, was off back-packing somewhere exotic, much to her mother’s constant concern.

None the less Kelly had no intention of being diverted from his day’s work.

‘Please yourself,’ he said casually. ‘But I really would appreciate it if you could get hold of a glazier.’

Moira studied him without enthusiasm.

‘Oh, all right,’ she said eventually.

Kelly dressed quickly and left the house, doing his best to avoid any further conversation with Moira. He had been threatened before, of course. That was inevitable during a lifetime of the kind of journalism Kelly had been involved in. But he still felt shocked. There was a hollowness in his belly and the palms of his hands were clammy.

He had transferred the threatening note to the pocket of his trousers. He supposed he had concealed it from Moira because he didn’t want to frighten her. Not that she frightened very easily, he had to admit. She was a nursing sister, after all.

Also he didn’t intend to hand the letter over to the police. He didn’t quite know why. He just knew he wasn’t going to, that was all.

Later that morning Kelly sat at the press bench in Torquay Magistrates’ Court doodling in his notebook while he waited for Angel Silver to be brought in and formally charged.

Her arrival brought a low murmur from the packed public benches. She looked as pale and as beautiful as ever. Her hair was slicked back off her face. She wore a neat grey suit, classic in design, old-fashioned even. Only on her it looked sensational.

She spoke just once during the brief hearing, when the chairman of the magistrates asked her how she pleaded to the charge of manslaughter.

‘Not guilty,’ she replied simply. Her voice was loud and clear. Surprisingly so. She stared straight ahead and her expression gave nothing away as she was told that she would be sent for trial at Exeter Crown Court and remanded on bail until then.

No surprises there, thought Kelly. He knew that Angel had already given statements to the police admitting that she had killed James in self-defence, but nobody in their right mind could imagine that she would be a danger to anyone else, which was supposed to be the main criterion for remand in custody.

At one point during the proceedings Angel looked across at the press bench and Kelly experienced what he was now beginning to accept as an inevitable reaction. He was sure she was looking at him. Directly and particularly him. But the big violet eyes were blank.

Afterwards they took her out of the court’s back door where a car waited for her in the private parking area where neither Kelly nor anyone else could get close to her. She had arrived at the court in the same manner. Maybe even Angel had been unable to face any more press attention. Or maybe the police had insisted. The court had been full to bursting point, of course, and at least a couple of hundred fans were outside along with twenty or thirty photographers, several TV crews and a handful of reporters who had been unable to gain access. In spite of police efforts to control them the assorted crowd spread untidily across Union Street, and the flow of traffic, never very fluent at the best of times in Torquay, was seriously disrupted.

Kelly assumed, as did most of the others, that Angel would be taken home again and he drove out to Maythorpe Manor. A few fans still remained, although it seemed that most of them had either gone home now or decamped to the court. Nobody had removed the flowers around the gate, which were now wilted and decayed. A handful of other reporters and photographers were already there, standing around looking slightly lost. The house had a closed, forbidding look about it. There were no police on duty.

And that, of course, was the giveaway.

Kelly was unsurprised when one of the other hacks told him that nobody had spotted Angel since she’d left the court. The word was that she had gone away and would not be returning to Maythorpe for some time. Judging from the lack of police presence she was not expected.

Kelly found that he didn’t like not knowing where Angel was.

Eventually Kelly made his way back to the Argus office and started putting together his background, the material that could not be used until Angel was tried but which would be printed as soon as her trial was over.

In spite of Kelly’s triumph with Angel’s mother in London, Hansford had been prickly with him ever since he had gone over his head to the editor. Kelly couldn’t have cared less. If you weren’t in a position by the time you got to his age to go over the head of a pipsqueak like Hansford then you really were a seriously sad case, he thought.

The news editor kept trying to read over his shoulder, which Kelly found very irritating. Each time Hansford approached Kelly exited the Silver file on his screen.

‘You’ll copy me in when you’ve finished, won’t you?’ instructed Hansford in that irritatingly authoritarian way of his.

‘Naturally, boss,’ said Kelly.

Hansford gave him a hard look. Kelly kept his face expressionless. Like Angel Silver. Only he wasn’t going to think about her any more. Writing the copy was one thing. Getting obsessed with some silly cow who was famous for being famous and nothing much else any more was quite another, he told himself sternly.

It was mid-afternoon before he had put together just about all the material he had amassed so far in one consummate piece. Unknown to Hansford, of course, he had been working on disk and when he had finished he removed the disk and slipped it in his pocket. And, naturally, he didn’t copy Hansford in. After all, that kind of secrecy was second nature to Kelly.

Just before leaving the office he called Moira. He knew that he’d been preoccupied and neglectful ever since the Silver story had begun, and that she was probably still shaken from the events of the morning.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

‘I’ve had the window replaced and the police have been round, if that’s what you mean,’ she replied, in a not particularly friendly manner, he thought.

‘Great. What did the police say?’

‘Much the same as you did.’

‘Told you so. Just mindless thugs at play.’

‘John, are you sure there isn’t something you’re not telling me?’

‘Course not.’

‘It isn’t to do with the Silver case, is it?’

Kelly hesitated. Moira had always been perceptive.

‘Shouldn’t think so for one minute,’ he replied as lightly as he could and decided to change the subject. He wanted to take her mind off things, and make up a bit for what had happened.

‘Do you fancy dinner at the Grand?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Paula’s here, I keep telling you.’

Damn, he’d managed to forget again.

‘But she’ll be going back on the last train, won’t she?’ he replied, making a pretty good recovery. ‘I thought you might like to go out after she’s gone.’

There followed just a few seconds’ silence. Moira’s voice was still a little flat when she replied but he was fairly sure, none the less, that she was genuinely pleased.

‘OK, I’d like that,’ she said quietly.

‘Good. I’ll drive, then you can have a drink. I’ll come round to yours around eight,’ he replied. ‘Oh, and give my love to Paula.’

The MG was ready at Classic Motors and Kelly was able to pick it up on his way, which was a relief, although he cursed himself silently for not having bothered to find a new garage for it after the lease had run out on the one he had rented until mid-summer.

The Grand, as ever, did not disappoint, it was a lovely old hotel in a fine seaside location and boasted an excellent restaurant, and Kelly made a real effort for Moira.

Everything went well until the coffee stage, which he’d ordered along with a cognac for Moira, who had already had a couple of gin and tonics followed by a half-bottle of Chablis with her Dover sole. She seemed relaxed and mellow, and had only mentioned the brick incident fairly briefly in the car on the way to the Grand.

But, somewhat out of the blue, as she sipped her cognac she started asking Kelly about Angel.

‘Why are you so fascinated by that woman?’

‘I’m not,’ he replied shortly.

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I am not being ridiculous. I am not fascinated by Angel Silver. I am fascinated by the story. It’s just such a great yarn.’

‘The story?’ Moira’s voice rose to a considerably higher pitch than usual. Perhaps it was the alcohol that had done that, he thought uncharitably, aware enough of himself to realise that there was nothing in this world more unbearably pious than the converted.

‘Shush,’ he said.

‘No I won’t shush. You’re getting to be obsessed by that woman, and you won’t admit it. Playing her message again and again on your answering machine. It wasn’t even a nice message.’

Kelly felt his irritation rise. This really was not the way he had planned things. He was determined not to let the evening be spoiled.

‘Even when some bastard throws a brick through your window all you want to do is to carry on working on her story, get yourself to court so that you can watch her—’

Kelly interrupted sharply. He didn’t want the evening ruined, and that was the way things were going.

‘Look, shall we talk about something else?’ he said.

‘No, I want to know why you’re obsessed with Angel Silver.’

‘I’ve told you I’m not.’

‘Humph.’ Moira gave a rather silly sort of snort. Her cheeks were flushed. She just wouldn’t let go. She’d never behaved like this before, not with him, anyway. ‘I know you, John Kelly. You just don’t realise how well I know you.’

That was just the sort of comment guaranteed to make Kelly really mad. Moira sounded smug and self-satisfied. After all, he told himself, he had only been doing his job. The anger began to rise in him dangerously.

‘If you really know me that well you’d know what I was thinking now, wouldn’t you?’ His voice was quiet and very controlled. He didn’t know whether she realised or not that he was at his most dangerous when he was like that. But for the first time during the evening she looked uncertain.

‘All right then, what are you thinking?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Really? Well, I bet I could guess. I bet it’s about that Angel—’

He interrupted her then. ‘I was thinking that right now I really do understand why that old man of yours knocked you about,’ he said coldly.

Her eyes opened wide in disbelief. For just a fleeting second she looked as if he had hit her too. Moira was a strong woman, but Kelly had homed in on her big weakness. Her lower lip trembled.

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ he said. ‘Let’s get the bill and I’ll take you home.’

The next day Kelly woke alone feeling terrible. Why on earth had he reacted so strongly? Moira had indeed been deeply irritating but nothing justified the remark he had made. Absolutely nothing.

Kelly did not have a good track record with women. He had made more than his fair share, particularly his first wife, deeply unhappy. But his problem was that he liked women too much. It was almost beyond his comprehension that any man would hurt a woman physically, and Kelly abhorred those who did.

He’d met Moira at a dinner party organised by Joe Robertson, about a year after he had started working for the Argus. Without the prop of alcohol Kelly had found it impossible to build himself much of a social life in the seaside town. Also, when he’d stopped drinking he’d realised that he no longer knew how to pick up women, something he had always rather excelled at. But in any case, no longer fuelled by drink and coke and with damned near unlimited expenses in his pocket, he’d pretty much lost the urge. He’d become a loner. In every way.

Kelly had recognised at once the placing next to each other of an unattached man and an apparently unattached woman of a certain age amid a small group of solid couples for the piece of blatant matchmaking that it had been. But, far from taking offence, he had accepted it as the warm gesture which he was sure his old friend intended and had been touched by it.

Also, he had liked Moira from the start. She was attractive, bright and practical. There was also a sparkle in her eye that suggested that she could be darned sexy too, and without too much encouragement.

‘She’s just what you need, John,’ Joe Robertson’s wife had told him in a slightly too loud aside. Even that had not put him off. Moira had flushed slightly. Kelly had winked his commiseration.

He’d taken her home, and they’d travelled in giggling companionship in the little MG, wondering at other people’s good intentions — which in fact turned out to be almost totally successful.

Moira had invited him into her home, which had proved to be so conveniently close to his own. Somewhat to Kelly’s surprise they’d slept together that same night and he had reflected that Sandra Robertson had actually been quite right. He and Moira were indeed two lonely like-minded souls who needed each other.

Their relationship flourished. It was never a great torrid romance — Kelly had reckoned that they had probably both been through too much ever to experience that again — but rather something warm and comfortable. They gave each other companionship and a level of affection which he felt was as great as anything he could have hoped for. The sex was good too. Surprisingly so. Better than he had thought it would ever be again.

In the beginning he had been almost eager for them to move in together, had wanted totally to share the remains of his life with her. But it was harder for him to win Moira’s trust than her affection. She had little reason to trust men, and it was some time before she told him about her monster of a husband who had used her for target practice with his fists whenever the mood took him.

‘Why did you stay with him?’ he had asked her.

It was the old story. One he had never fully understood because perhaps no man ever could.

‘He was a good father to our three girls. Strange, perhaps, but he never laid a finger on them, and I knew he never would. It was just me he’d vent his anger on. And, you know, every time when it was over, he couldn’t even tell me why...’

Moira was a highly qualified nursing sister, clever and capable, able to make her own way in the world, earn her own living. But she had stayed with the bastard because her girls needed their father. Because he was her husband. Because of all manner of reasons which were quite beyond Kelly.

‘He was always so sorry afterwards, John,’ Moira told him. ‘And then for weeks, maybe months, he wouldn’t touch me, and we’d be quite a happy family. Honestly.’

It was more than not being able to understand. John couldn’t quite believe people could live like that.

‘The girls must have known, surely?’

‘I became good at suffering in silence,’ Moira explained. ‘However hard Pete hit me I never cried out. Never. And he was very organised in his attacks, you know.’

Kelly had thought what an odd turn of phrase that was.

‘He only every hit me in our bedroom. He would tell me to go there and I always did so at once because if I didn’t it would be even worse. He would lock the door, then he would explain to me exactly what I had done to deserve a punishment, then he would go for me. But only on my body, upper arms, upper legs, the parts of me that would normally be concealed by clothes. He never touched my face. A couple of times I had to go to hospital. He broke two ribs once, and my wrist, but we’d just make up some story about a fall.’

‘But you have three intelligent daughters, Moira. They must have known what was going on. Kids do...’

‘No, John, they didn’t.’ She had been quite insistent. ‘And you must never tell them. Never.’

It was then that he had learned that Moira’s daughters, one of whom, the youngest, Jennifer, still lived at home, had not only not known at the time of their father’s violent behaviour but neither had they ever been told. Peter Simmons had died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack three years before Kelly and Moira had met, mercifully releasing his wife from a life of domestic torment, and had been mourned by his family like any other loved father and husband.

To Kelly it was farcical, and he had remained unconvinced that the girls could really have been so unaware. The most he could accept was that Moira’s daughters had just blanked their father’s outrages out, come to believe only what they wanted to believe. Kelly had got to know Jennifer quite well, of course, and she seemed like any other normal well-adjusted teenager to him — at least as normal and well-adjusted as teenagers ever are — but he had always felt uneasy about those four women, mother and daughters, living out their lie together.

After Moira had first told him about her troubled past, he’d thought to himself that sooner or later the whole family would erupt in some kind of awful delayed reaction. It hadn’t happened yet, though. Whatever defence mechanisms they had built up around themselves seemed remarkably effective. Kelly had learned to accept Moira’s way of dealing with what had happened to her and not to criticise. In any case, how could he possibly criticise someone who had been through what she had been through?

Now he had quite crassly and unforgivably thrown the whole dreadful thing in her face. He’d actually told her he could understand why Peter Simmons had beaten her. Nothing justified that. How could he have done it?

He reached for a cigarette for courage, and only when it was lit and he had taken the first few essential drags of the day, did he feel able to call Moira. It was just after 6.30 a.m. But he knew she’d be awake too. Her crazy working hours meant that she was more able to sleep during the day than at night, even when she was off duty. In any case, Jennifer had to leave for college before eight. Kelly imagined Moira pottering around her tidy little kitchen making coffee, waiting for Jennifer to come downstairs at the last possible moment as usual.

She answered the phone quite quickly and in a way that indicated that she had guessed it would be him. Well, who else would call at that hour?

‘Hi, I just wanted to say sorry,’ he said.

‘It’s OK,’ she said, her tone of voice making it clear that it wasn’t. He knew he certainly didn’t need to explain what he was apologising for.

‘You know how I feel about all that, I really am sorry for what I said,’ he repeated.

‘It’s OK,’ she said again. ‘I think I was a bit drunk—’

‘No you weren’t.’

‘Well, I kept on at you, didn’t I? Maybe I wanted to make you mad.’

Was that how she had excused her husband for all those years, he wondered.

‘I shouldn’t have said what I did,’ he went on. ‘It was unforgivable. But if you can forgive me, what about trying again tonight?’

‘I’m back on duty tonight, John.’

Of course. He should have known that. He’d forgotten.

‘Lunch then. I’ll meet you in town at twelve thirty. How about that new fish place on the front?’

She had agreed readily enough. But he knew he’d have some bridge-building to do. He lit a second cigarette from the stub of the first. The extraordinary thing was that he and Moira had never really quarrelled at all during their years together. He had always thought that part of the reason for that was probably that they did not actually live together. But there was more, of course. Both of them had had enough disruption and drama in their lives of one kind and another. Neither was probably able to deal with an emotionally volatile relationship. He had always thought that they were more like friends who had sex together than real lovers, but it wasn’t until now that he had perhaps realised how important their slightly unusual relationship was to him. It had always worked brilliantly. That was the truth of it.

The incident of the previous night had somehow shaken its foundation. They had both broken the unwritten rule really — that there should be no stress, no intrusive probing, and above all no conflict. Just an easy unformulated sharing of their lives.

And now, for the first time in his relationship with Moira, Kelly felt unsure and uneasy.

He set off rather glumly for work and was horrified to find that the MG seemed to be missing from its usual parking space outside his house. Then he remembered. He was so preoccupied that he’d actually managed to forget that he’d parked the car three streets away as a precaution.

Soon after he’d eventually found it and was on his way to the Argus office Karen Meadows called.

‘What’s all this I hear about a brick being thrown through your front-room window?’ she asked.

Kelly sighed. Trust Karen to know already.

‘Vandals, what else?’ he remarked as casually as he could. He still didn’t want to involve the police. Something told him that would stir things up even more.

‘In St Marychurch? At five a.m. on a weekday morning?’

‘Why not?’

‘Yes, well, we checked the brick for fingerprints and surprisingly enough there weren’t any. So uniformed are going to send a couple of lads over to have a word with Ken James and any of the rest of his family.’

‘I’d rather they didn’t.’

‘Tough.’

Karen hung up before he could protest any more. She was sitting, in the kitchen of her seafront flat just up the road from the Grand Hotel, with her cat on her lap and a mug of tea on the table before her. Kelly had always been a sharp operator as a journalist but she hoped he wasn’t getting in too deep with the Silver case. Reporters all too often thought only about the story and gave little or no consideration to any other consequences.

It was strange that Karen still cared about Kelly after all these years, but she did. She knew that many of her colleagues had picked up on what she had once overheard rather sarcastically described as her ‘special relationship’ with the reporter.

The truth was that Karen and Kelly had first met when she had been an eager young detective constable based at the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary HQ in Exeter, and Kelly had been sent back to his old West Country local paper patch by the Despatch to investigate organised crime on the English Riviera.

He had discovered that one of the prime suspects, an Irishman called David Flanigan, was indulging in a passionate affair with DC Karen Meadows. Flanigan, it seemed, was heavily into the international trade of both drugs and arms. And it was a little-known fact that the West of England was a world-wide centre for the arms trade, boasting far more than its fair share of weapons factories, often discreetly hidden away in leafy rural lanes. Flanigan had also had a strong IRA connection, Kelly had been able to reveal.

Looking back, Karen couldn’t believe that she could have been so naïve, not even then. She also hadn’t believed that a newspaper reporter had come up with so much information which the police force apparently did not have, or at least not at her then lowly level. She had been swept off her feet by a sophisticated and handsome charmer. It had been a whirlwind romance — she had known Flanigan for less than three months before the bubble burst — but Karen had been truly in love. She had been aware that there was gossip about him and that his activities had attracted police attention on more than one occasion, but her feelings for him were such that when Flanigan insisted that he was just an honest businessman whose success led to jealous rumour-mongering she had believed him without question. Probably because she had wanted to so much. She still had no idea whether or not David Flanigan had been using her merely for information, but she remained afraid that she had probably, albeit unwittingly, done him several favours.

Kelly had up-fronted Karen first. She had been both astonished and devastated. She had also been surprised by Kelly’s reaction. He left her in little doubt that he had been expecting to confront a bent cop. Instead he had encountered a duped young woman who had fallen head over heels in love and behaved like an idiot. Karen had tried immediately to call Flanigan. She couldn’t reach him. Had, in fact, never heard from him since. Word was he was doing the same kind of business somewhere in South America. It seemed that he had got wind of Kelly’s investigation and done a fast runner.

Karen had expected to be decimated. She waited almost listlessly for Kelly’s story to be printed in the Despatch. When it was, over several days, to her utter astonishment she was not mentioned at all. There were whispers within the force, of course several of her colleagues were aware at least that she knew Flanigan and had been seen with him, although, mercifully, she had never discussed the true nature of their relationship with anyone. A bit of flak flew, but nobody could prove anything, and Karen’s fledgling but promising career was, by and large, unaffected by her indiscretion.

She could still remember calling Kelly in his London office to thank him.

‘Don’t mention it,’ he’d replied. ‘It’s villains and bent bastards I’m after, not bloody fools.’

And that had been the start of a friendship which had lasted getting on for twenty years. Contrary to general opinion, there had never been an affair at all, although sometimes Karen almost wished there had been. But, then, when a woman cop and an old hack were as close as she was with Kelly, rumours were inevitable.

Karen hugged her cat close. Sophie purred her appreciation. The plump tortoiseshell was the only creature Karen had shared her life with for some time. It was her own fatal flaw that since Flanigan she had probably never really trusted any man again. Except John Kelly.

Angel Silver disappeared off the face of the earth. Or that was the way it seemed to Kelly and the rest of the press pack on the case. Half the journalistic world was trying to find Angel, and nobody seemed to have got close, as far as Kelly could work out. He realised that the police must know, unless Angel had jumped bail, and mad as she was he didn’t think she was quite that crazy.

He asked Karen Meadows, who told him he had to be kidding.

‘There are limits,’ she informed him.

‘Even for me?’

‘Particularly for you, you old scallywag.’

He smiled at that. Lovely old-fashioned word, scallywag, and not one you could ever take offence at really. Kelly liked words a lot. That came with the territory, a bit, but in his case was another obsession. He hated it when words were wrongly used. Even apostrophes in the wrong place could set him ranting and raving about dropping standards. He had read in the Telegraph once about a society for the protection of the apostrophe, which he didn’t regard as eccentric or outlandish at all. He even thought about joining it, but Kelly wasn’t a great joiner of things. Alcoholics Anonymous had not had the effect on him he’d been told that it had on most alcoholics, many of whom attended meetings for the rest of their lives. Kelly had never been able to get beyond the embarrassment of it. In the end, and only after he’d sunk to the bottom of the pile and realised that the only alternative was death, Kelly had dealt with the drink the way he dealt with most things in his life. Alone.

Kelly waited for Angel Silver’s trial with a kind of numb anticipation. Following the Narey Report, which had come into force earlier in the year, major criminal cases were already being fast-tracked into crown courts without the old bureaucratic procedures of magistrates’ court committal proceedings. The purpose was to prevent the Human Rights Act violation of keeping suspects on remand in jail for months on end, but it also applied to Angel, even though she had been bailed. Her trial was therefore scheduled to begin at Exeter Crown Court during the second week in January, just eight weeks after the double killing at Maythorpe. And she was expected, as Karen Meadows had predicted from the start of it all, to continue to plead not guilty on grounds of self-defence.

Kelly carried on working intermittently on the Silver case, even though there was actually very little to do until the trial began. He checked all his police contacts regularly and occasionally phoned Mrs Hobbs who was friendly but guarded.

‘Madam wasn’t best pleased with me even though I thought your piece could only have helped her. At first she told me she thought I’d promised never to interfere again. But I told her this was different. It wasn’t some daft showbusiness story. It was my daughter facing a manslaughter charge, and I’d help her as much as I could, in any way that I could, whether she liked it or not.’

‘What did she say?’ Kelly had asked.

‘Do you know, I think I heard her laugh. She’s a rum one, that girl of mine. I’ll never fathom her. She calmed down. She said: “Right, I’ll let you off then. But if you shoot that mouth of yours off again I’ll be round with that carving knife.”’

Kelly had been amazed. How could she make a crack like that when she was on a manslaughter charge for stabbing a man to death — and with a carving knife too? Kelly certainly couldn’t understand Angel Silver and he wasn’t at all surprised that her mother couldn’t either. Angel was extraordinary, she really was.

‘Don’t you even think of printing that, John,’ said Rachel Hobbs quickly. ‘It’s off the record, all right.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Kelly. And he meant it, although he wasn’t entirely sure why.

He asked Mrs Hobbs several times where Angel was and each time she replied patiently that she didn’t know and she wouldn’t tell him if she did. Kelly was inclined to believe her on both counts.

The weeks passed more or less uneventfully. Once Kelly returned home to find the words ‘lying bastard’ painted in white on his black front door, which he managed to swiftly repaint before it was seen by Moira. There were no other attacks of vandalism against him, but Kelly was wary of letting his guard down. Perhaps the police warning to the James family, if indeed they had been the perpetrators, had done the trick after all. Perhaps they’d just got bored. Perhaps not.

Christmas approached, Angel remained hidden away somewhere, and her name remained unspoken between Kelly and Moira. True to the way in which their relationship was conducted the Grand Hotel incident was never mentioned again. Not by either of them.

At first there was just an edge of tension between Kelly and Moira. But after a bit things returned pretty much to normal. The easy familiarity, lack of stress, lack of demands, which seemed to suit them both so well within their relationship, returned. Although Kelly always felt that the incident in the restaurant of the Grand continued to hang between them.

Nick was expected for Christmas, much to Kelly’s delight. It even took his mind off the Silver case for a bit.

The rekindled relationship with his son was indeed one of the best things in Kelly’s life. He had thought often enough about his only son but had not dared to approach him as a boy. He hadn’t even troubled, or perhaps again dared, to get to know him when he had grown into a man. But when Nick had contacted him Kelly had been overjoyed. He had jumped at the opportunity, well aware that he would never have had the nerve himself to make an approach. In any case, rejection was one of Kelly’s great fears. It hadn’t been when he had been young and bold and full of belief in his own immortality. But after the cracks had formed and his world fell apart he had never quite been able to believe again that anyone would ever want him for himself.

His professional confidence, on the rare occasions he was ever given an opportunity nowadays to test himself beyond the mundane, remained fairly strong. But his personal confidence was non-existent. Moira, with her steadfast friendship and obvious deep fondness for him, had raised that confidence a little, but he was aware that the very fact of her loving him, and he had no doubt that she did, devalued her slightly in his eyes. He knew that was wrong. It made no difference. He didn’t love himself. That was the problem.

Kelly’s son shared many of his father’s dreams, and Kelly just hoped that unlike him, Nick, who certainly seemed to have already made a big success of his life even though Kelly didn’t really understand what his work entailed, would live out more of them than he’d ever managed to do.

Father and son had discovered so much in common. The love of words, for one thing. Nick didn’t write, but was an avid reader. Then there was that shared love of fast cars and of fast horses too — although Nick, to Kelly’s relief, did not seem to have inherited his father’s near compulsion for gambling. And they seemed to share the same sense of humour too, the same appreciation of the absurd in life.

Kelly was greatly looking forward to Christmas with Nick, and Moira, who had managed to get leave for the festive period, had agreed to cook a traditional Christmas dinner at Kelly’s house. Moira and Nick got on well. But then Moira got on well with almost everyone, thought Kelly with some satisfaction.

In preparation Moira insisted on giving the kitchen a fresh coat of paint and helped him clean the house, erect a Christmas tree in the living room, fill the fridge with food and the cupboard in the dining room with booze.

‘Just because I can’t touch the stuff doesn’t mean you and Nick can’t,’ Kelly had announced magnanimously.

He was extremely glad that Moira was doing the cooking. In his younger days Kelly had never cooked at all. He’d either eaten meals cooked for him by his wife or dined in smart restaurants with a variety of guests he more often than not shouldn’t have been with at all. Necessity had turned him into a reasonable cook since he’d rebuilt his life in Torquay, but he was not quite confident enough to prepare the kind of Christmas feast he had in mind for his son. There was to be quite a gathering too. Jennifer would be there, of course, and Moira’s eldest daughter, Paula, was coming home from London with her husband, Ben, and their toddler son. It would be like a proper family gathering and it gave Kelly a nice warm feeling to think that he did have a family of sorts nowadays. Against all the odds.

Nick arrived on Christmas Eve at more or less exactly the time he had said he would. And Kelly, although he would have denied it if challenged, had been watching through the living room window for his son’s Porsche. He was impressed by Nick’s lifestyle. Kelly had visited the Thames-side apartment. He knew that Nick holidayed in the Caribbean in the winter and the smarter parts of Europe in the summer, and although he did not seem to have a regular girlfriend his father had got the impression that Nick did not suffer from shortage of women.

John Kelly was truly proud of his only son, whom he greeted with a handshake as usual, and a cautious smile which completely belied the strength of his feelings.

‘And how’s my favourite nurse,’ said Nick, flashing the endearing little-boy smile which he had inherited from his father, and which Kelly, well aware of its effect, had used mercilessly as a younger man both professionally and personally on the various women in his life. Moira stepped forward at once and gave Nick a big hug, to which he responded warmly. They looked so natural together and laughed together easily. Kelly envied Moira. For all that had happened in her life she still had that open quality and seemed always able to give affection without a problem in the world. He wished he could be as comfortable with his only son as she seemed to be.

He hoped that time would help, and that very soon he too would feel able to greet Nick with a big hug instead of a handshake. How he wished that he could. It was mainly guilt, of course, a feeling that you could not rewrite the sins of your own past just like that, which stopped him.

Lunch, however, was a great success. Moira had a calmness about her. Perhaps that came with her job. Certainly cooking a turkey, with all the trimmings, for six plus a noisy toddler determined to get under your feet at all times, did not faze her at all.

The meal was perfect. Nick was as nice and funny as ever. He wanted to help wash up but Moira protested that he should talk to his father, that they didn’t see each other often enough. Then the girls said Moira wasn’t to do any more either, they’d clear up and make coffee.

So, with Nick unconvincingly protesting that he felt like an Eastern potentate being waited on by his handmaidens, the three of them did as they were told. Kelly produced a box of Cuban cigars and passed one to Nick, who then had to quell Moira’s loudly expressed fears that Kelly would give his son a habit as bad as his own.

‘I like the occasional cigar, but I don’t seem to get hooked,’ he said. ‘I guess I’m just lucky. Non-addictive.’

Then, realising what he had said, Nick shot an anxious glance at his father.

‘Don’t look at me,’ said Kelly. ‘Apart from smoking I’m so darned vice free nowadays if I got too clean there’d be nothing left to hold me up.’

The afternoon stretched easily into evening. Paula and Ben took their young son back to Moira’s house to put him to bed. Jennifer was watching TV with the sound low. Moira had dozed off. Her irregular sleeping pattern meant that she would occasionally be overwhelmed by drowsiness, and that combined with the good lunch and quite a lot of wine was proving to be a fatal combination.

Kelly and Nick chatted easily and unchallengingly, enjoying each other’s company.

Then, some time around 10.30 the phone rang.

‘I’ll get it,’ said Kelly automatically. He was never able to leave a phone unanswered. No journalist could.

‘House of Kelly,’ he announced cheerily.

‘My mother seems to think you’re a good ally,’ said a voice. He knew who it was at once.

‘Hello, Angel,’ he half whispered. In the background he was vaguely aware of Moira stirring in her armchair.

‘W-what, who is it?’ she enquired of nobody in particular, just a reflex action upon being suddenly woken by the phone, while probably not even fully aware of what had awoken her.

But Nick had heard what Kelly had said. ‘Somebody called Angel,’ he responded with apparent innocence.

Kelly winced. Moira would not be pleased. The truth, however, was that he didn’t care much. This call, even though it was Christmas, was suddenly the most overwhelmingly important thing in his life.

‘How are you?’ he enquired into the phone.

‘I’ve been better. I just have this awful feeling, in spite of what everyone says, that things may go pear-shaped.’

‘Even the police are on your side, Angel,’ he said.

‘Yes, and why doesn’t that fill me with endless confidence?’

He laughed.

‘Look, John, I’ve got to talk to someone sooner or later. And I need someone to be able to put my case, to know what really happened, to tell it like it is if anything...’ she paused, ‘“... goes wrong in court”. I read your note. I know you’ve fed me all the old lines. None the less, you’re the lesser of most evils, I reckon.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Do I take that as a compliment?’

‘You do,’ she responded. ‘So how about it? How’d you like it to be you I talk to?’

‘I’d love it,’ he replied truthfully. ‘When do you want to meet?’

‘What’s wrong with now?’

‘Angel, it’s Christmas night—’

‘So?’ she interrupted. ‘I might change my mind tomorrow...’

Everything he had ever read about her, everything her mother had told him, suggested that Angel had developed into a manipulative bitch since his brief liaison with her all those years previously. This exchange backed that up.

‘Why would you do that?’ he asked, not giving up entirely without a fight.

‘Because that’s what I do,’ she responded without further explanation.

It was then that he caught something, just a slight inflection, in her voice, which suggested to him that she might be high. And it really was quite likely that when she came down she would change her mind, he thought, already justifying to himself what he knew he was going to do.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

‘Where do you think I am?’ Her voice was taunting, slightly mocking.

‘I’ve been trying to find that out for weeks,’ he said.

She laughed. ‘Jimmy Rudge hid me away. A cottage in Norfolk miles from anywhere and a whole gay network to look after me. The gay community still knows a lot about hiding things, you know.’

‘Sounds interesting.’

‘Boring as hell actually. But I had plenty of outings. Amazing how a wig and makeup can change your appearance.’

He said nothing, but he knew about her chameleon qualities.

‘And they found me company when I needed it,’ she went on.

There was something provocative in her voice which made Kelly unsure of what she meant by that and even more unsure if he actually wanted to know.

‘OK, so where are you now?’ he asked again. ‘At Maythorpe?’

‘Oh, clever boy!’

He ignored the sarcasm. ‘How long have you been back?’

‘About ten days,’ she said. ‘And nobody’s even noticed. I’m not an old story already, am I?’

More mockery. Was it really that long since he’d checked out the old manor house? He supposed it must have been. He had been preoccupied with Christmas and his son’s visit. So Angel was half right. Even he had lost interest a bit after so long with nothing happening.

None the less he told her, ‘You’ll never be an old story, Angel.’

‘So I’ll expect you then?’

‘I’ll be with you in half an hour.’

‘Make sure you hurry.’

She hung up without giving him time to say goodbye. Typical, he somehow suspected. She’d sounded almost flirtatious. She’d also sounded annoyingly sure of herself, sure that he would drop everything and run to her. Which, of course, was exactly what he was going to do.

He replaced the receiver with exaggerated care and turned round very slowly to face Nick and Moira. Jennifer had slipped into the kitchen to put the kettle on and he could hear her arranging mugs.

‘I’m sorry, guys, I’ve got to go out for a bit,’ he said, spreading his arms in apology. ‘Work, you know.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Nick replied quickly.

Moira looked at him steadily. ‘She’s back then,’ she said flatly.

Kelly nodded, trying to keep his face expressionless. When he spoke again he addressed Nick, barely looking at Moira.

‘It’s this Scott Silver story, biggest thing in these parts for years. I’m on a major exclusive here, Nick.’

‘Sure, Dad,’ said Nick in a tone of voice which gave his father no indication at all of what he might be thinking.

‘Yeah, I should be no more than a couple of hours maximum. Sorry, Moira, I’ll be as quick as I can.’

‘Whatever you say, John,’ she replied stiffly.

‘I’ll be back for that cup of tea later,’ he said over his shoulder as he headed for the front door.

Moira followed him out into the hallway, but his thoughts were already racing away from him when he heard her say quietly, to herself really, ‘Only it’s not Scott Silver, is it, John? It’s Angel. She’s snapped her fingers and you’re going running. On Christmas Day, for God’s sake.’

Kelly didn’t reply, pretended he hadn’t heard. He told himself Moira didn’t deserve a reply. He was chasing a big story, the biggest he had encountered in years, that was all, though he was just about honest enough to admit to himself that there might be some truth in what Moira had said.

Angel Silver had summoned him and it was as if he had no choice.

Nick went to the sideboard in the dining room and poured himself a whisky, which he drank in one swallow. He usually drank very little, knowing only too well the damage the stuff could do.

With his head swimming slightly he sought out Moira, who had retreated to the kitchen, where Jennifer was pulling on her coat.

‘Don’t think I’ll wait up for the old bugger,’ he told her casually. ‘I feel like an early night. It’s been a great day. Thanks for everything you’ve done.’

Nick was invariably courteous and thoughtful with people. He worked at it. He liked to get people on his side, and even as anxious as he was becoming about his father, it was automatic for him not to forget to thank Moira.

But all she said in response was: ‘OK, Nick. Good night then.’

She sounded preoccupied and Nick didn’t blame her. Neither did he want to talk to her, however. He just wanted to be alone with his thoughts.

There was something about the way his father had reacted to that phone call. It reminded Nick of the old obsessive behaviour patterns which he still recalled so clearly from his childhood.

Nick felt anxious as he climbed into his pyjamas, which he had that morning folded neatly on the pillow. Nick was very tidy and liked order. That partly came from his army days. It was also, he suspected, a legacy of his childhood when, thanks to his errant father, he had known very little order at all.

He lay down on the bed, still thinking the evening through. Probably he was worrying over nothing, he told himself. Kelly was certainly still dry, Nick was sure that he would know if he’d been drinking at all. And naturally a man with his background would be delighted to be involved in such a big story again.

Nick just hoped that was all it was. Moira already seemed to regard Angel Silver as some sort of threat. Nick didn’t know whether she was or not. Not yet, anyway.