Хилари Боннер - A Moment Of Madness

Moira smiled indulgently. For the last seven years she had shared her life with Kelly, and she reckoned she knew him pretty well. Evening paper journalists have to start work early, but Moira was only too aware that it didn’t come naturally to Kelly. He was an old morning paper man more at home working late into the night than rising at dawn.

‘And a very good morning to you too,’ said Moira, realising that as usual her cheery tone gave little indication of the harrowing night she had endured. That was down to a mixture of training and experience.

‘Thank you very much,’ muttered the sleepy voice in St Marychurch, and with little more than a few further grunts and a couple of yawns, Kelly hung up.

Moira had not expected him to ask after her welfare at that hour of the morning. She was used to his slow awakenings, although she somehow thought he would bounce into action a little more readily than usual today. She knew that he had been excited to be involved in a big story again the previous day, and that the Scott Silver case was already intriguing him. She was used to his preoccupation with his work, too.

But that morning she had wished that, just for once, he had enquired about her work.

With a small sigh she rose from her chair and made her way back out to the wards.

Kelly forced himself to get out of bed almost at once. As Moira had guessed, the promise of another day being involved in such a cracking good story made the process less painful than usual. None the less, he was still yawning and rubbing his eyes as he made his way downstairs, picked up the newspapers in the hallway, and dumped them on the living-room floor on his way through to the kitchen to brew a pot of tea.

His first job in the morning was to read the papers. That was what he always did. He had the lot of them delivered and he had a special arrangement with his newsagent, involving prolific bribing of various delivery lads, to ensure that they arrived by 6 a.m. When the tea was ready he carried it back into the living room and sat as he always did in the chair by the fireplace. It was habit for Kelly. But that day the papers were a particularly gratifying read. His bank manger was likely to think so too.

‘Stalker kills rock idol Scott Silver’, ‘The crazy obsession of wild man Terry’, ‘How my boy stalked Scott Silver, by his killer’s mother’. That last one was going a bit far, thought Kelly. Skirting the edge of the law. But then that was what editors did, had always done.

The telephone rang for the second time just after 6.30. He ignored it. Moira, who Kelly knew would be immersed in what was inclined to be the busiest period of her shift, never phoned again after making her wake-up call until she came off duty. There was only one other person it could be at that hour. Kit Hansford, provincial boy wonder, newly appointed news editor of the Argus , and the kind of journalist in a suit Kelly simply could not stand.

Kelly glanced again at the front page of his own newspaper, lying crumpled on the floor by his side. He had given the Argus all he had yesterday afternoon, but the young news editor would also know that he had filed to the nationals and that Trevor Jones had sent them his pictures. In addition, the approach of the major dailies was so much more sensational, so much more direct, that it left the Argus looking lame.

Well, that wasn’t his fault, thought Kelly. He was a bit surprised that Joe Robertson, the Argus ’ hard-hitting and imaginative editor, had not given it a bit more top spin. But even Joe had to keep his well-honed journalistic instincts curbed nowadays. The hidden agendas of newspaper proprietors no longer focused merely upon getting great stories and getting them first — which was the only kind of journalism Kelly had ever completely understood. The Argus was as much about keeping the advertisers happy as anything else, which meant lots of meaningless advertising features about everything from holiday hotels to shopping malls.

Hansford had no idea of the work that Kelly had already put in on the Silver story. Nor would he care. He didn’t know that Kelly had stayed on the case until well after midnight. But Kelly did not clock-watch when he was on a story like this one. That was another habit; the training of long ago. A kind of compulsion.

Kelly spooned sugar into his tea. He liked it so strong and sweet that the dark brown liquid became almost a syrup. He took a deep drink and concentrated on what he was going to do that day. His first thought was to stick to Angel Silver. Wherever she was, whatever was happening to her, she was the key, he was sure of it. And he saw no need to discuss his plans with the Argus yet. Or not with Kit Hansford, anyway. Kelly only discussed anything with Hansford when his back was absolutely against the wall.

He hauled himself out of his chair, scattering newspapers across the floor like over-sized confetti. Moira always said that she reckoned one day it would be impossible to get into Kelly’s house because of the piles of old papers. Kelly thought that might be one of the reasons she insisted on keeping her own home just a few streets way. Or was it he who had ensured that they had never quite set up a proper home together? Kelly was no longer entirely sure. Certainly he barely noticed the newspapers and magazines, which seemed to scatter themselves, unaided by human hand, he sometimes thought, all over his house. He picked up his car keys off the hall table and reached for his Barbour jacket, which was hanging on the stand behind the door. Then, abruptly, he turned on his heel, walked back across the hall and up the stairs to the spare bedroom where he kept his computer.

‘It might not be much of a job, but it’s the only one you have and are likely to get, old son,’ he muttered to himself.

‘Following new lead, mobile phone not working, will be in touch soonest,’ was the brief message he e-mailed to his long-suffering boss. The simple duplicity of it, which would not fool Hansford for a second, cheered Kelly.

He drove straight to Maidencombe then, this time turning off the main Torquay road directly into Rock Lane. There were probably even more fans outside Maythorpe Manor than there had been the previous night, despite it being so early in the morning. They parted reluctantly, pressing themselves against the perimeter walls of the big old property on one side of the lane and into the tall Devon hedge on the other, as Kelly motored slowly through them. A lone policeman, a large man close to retirement age, stood by the locked gates. It seemed that the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary recognised the peaceful nature of the crowd and were not expecting trouble. Kelly hopefully attempted to manoeuvre the MG into a corner of the gateway. The policeman, his body language weary, stepped unenthusiastically forward and waved Kelly on with one impatient movement of his right arm. Kelly grimaced wryly and continued slowly down the lane through Maidencombe village to the beach car park. He had no alternative but to trudge up the hill again to Maythorpe and, for the second day running, stand in the lane freezing half to death along with the fans. Although mercifully not raining, it was a cold damp day again, but many of the gathered crowd lay on the ground, huddled in sleeping bags or covered in coats. In spite of the chilly conditions it was clear that some had just stayed there through the night and had been joined by yet more.

Kelly shivered at the thought of such a vigil and hugged his Barbour around him, wondering if there was anyone in the world he would stay out all night to mourn in the middle of a wintry November. He knew the answer. There wasn’t and never had been. Not even his only son, Nick, whom he adored. Kelly knew how to keep his feelings buttoned inside him. By and large, that was how he’d coped with the world throughout his life.