Хилари Боннер - A Moment Of Madness

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.

Kelly had parked the MG at the far end of the Argus car park where he always did. There was a tall wall there which protected the little motor somewhat both from sunshine and the worst excesses of weather.

He paused to light a cigarette as he approached it, and was vaguely aware of a figure taking off at a run and vaulting over the fence into the main road.

Instinctively Kelly sensed trouble. He quickened his pace slightly. His fears proved justified. Both the tyres on the driver’s side wheels of the MG had been slashed. They were completely destroyed.

Kelly kicked one of them in frustration, unlocked the driver’s door, flung in his lap-top computer and the digital camera duly acquired from the picture desk, both of which he had been carrying over one shoulder, then used his mobile to phone the MG specialist who looked after the car for him. The good news was that Wayne from Torbay Classic Motors had two of the right tyres in stock and would bring them straight over. The bad news was the price: £200. Ouch, thought Kelly. He supposed that he could claim for them on his insurance, but he had a £100 excess. It could have been worse, of course, and Kelly had little doubt that it would have been had he not interrupted whoever had vandalised his car. The MG could have been totally wrecked. Kelly supposed he should report the incident to the police. But for reasons he couldn’t entirely explain he didn’t want to. He had no real idea who might want to vandalise his car but he somehow felt sure it was connected with the Silver story. It occurred to him at once that it could be members of the James family. They wouldn’t be too pleased with him after his stalker story. The interpretation that he had put on what he had learned from his visit to their Fore Street home would not have pleased the family at all. And they were the sort who liked to take the law into their own hands.

On the other hand, of course, the tyre slashing could be just indiscriminate vandalism, but Kelly didn’t think so.

Kelly climbed thoughtfully into the driver’s seat. He preferred to wait there for his new tyres to arrive rather than going back into the Argus office. Hansford would only gloat and Kelly could not really blame him. As Robertson had predicted, Kelly had not been able to resist doing a bit of gloating himself when only a few minutes earlier he had returned those council minutes to Hansford and given him the editor’s message.

Wayne from Classic Motors was as good as his word and arrived less than half an hour later with two replacement wheels.

Within just a few minutes they were fitted and Wayne, a tall angular young man who was one of the best mechanics Kelly had ever encountered, loaded the original pair with their damaged tyres into the back of his van.

When he had finished Kelly asked him if he would just take a look underneath the car and check that nothing else was damaged. Wayne stroked a chin that had never quite recovered from a bad attack of teenage acne and regarded Kelly thoughtfully. But he made no comment, until, after spending several minutes both lying on the ground underneath the little motor and prodding around inside the bonnet he eventually spoke.

‘Looks OK to me, John,’ he said in his squeaky high-pitched voice. ‘Don’t forget you’re overdue for a service, though.’

Kelly nodded. ‘I’ll drop her in as soon as I get back from London.’

He drove back to St Marychurch then to pick up an overnight bag and leave a message for Moira. In the beginning, when they had first met it had been Moira who wouldn’t quite make the commitment of moving in with Kelly. She had, after all, only one major relationship behind her, a marriage to a man who had turned out to be a violent bully, and she told Kelly that after that she had vowed never to make herself vulnerable to any one man ever again. Then later Kelly suspected it had been him who wouldn’t quite make the commitment. They had settled eventually for a slightly disjointed way of life which seemed none the less to suit them well enough. Moira was one of the good ones, and not for the first time Kelly resolved to let her know more how much he valued her. When he got back from London, that was.

The first thing he noticed when he opened his front door was the smell of fresh paint.

As he closed the door behind him a blue-spotted blonde head appeared over the banisters.

‘I thought I’d start on the spare room,’ Moira called, then added with just a small note of anxiety, ‘You did say blue would be OK, didn’t you?’

She didn’t look surprised to see him turn up in the middle of the day. But then, she wouldn’t be. Kelly invariably seemed to manage to come and go from everywhere, including his place of work, on his own terms.

‘Sure,’ Kelly replied, peering at her up the stairs. ‘You know I reckon you always get it right. Shouldn’t you be home in bed, though?’

‘I just want to finish the first coat,’ she replied. ‘I’ve still got time for my seven hours.’

Kelly knew that all too often, particularly if she’d had a tough night, Moira felt unable to go straight to bed to sleep after coming off duty. Virtually the whole of Kelly’s house had been revamped that way. Moira enjoyed decorating and rejuvenating a home. And there had certainly been plenty of scope in Kelly’s house which he’d rented when he first came to Torquay and then managed to buy on a mortgage a few years later. She had eagerly taken on the task of giving his home a face-lift, and continued to regard periodic redecoration as a running task. It was a pleasure for her, she told him. It was how she unwound.

Kelly smiled up at her paint-spattered face. Moira was more or less free to come and go as she pleased, but she never took too much for granted. He liked that. And he liked Moira. A lot.

‘The blue suits you, by the way,’ he said.

Grinning, she held up her hands for him to see. They were both blue too. Moira was very good at painting and decorating, but she always seemed to give herself a coat of paint as well.

‘I’ve got to go to London,’ he said. ‘I’ve just popped back for a bag, and I was going to phone your machine and leave a message.’

When Moira was sleeping during the day she set her telephone answering machine to take calls with the ringing tone switched off.

‘Well, you can tell me to my face,’ she told Kelly, trotting down the stairs. She moved very quickly, almost jerkily. Perhaps that was why she got so much paint over herself, Kelly thought obliquely. She had a small pretty face, which matched her build, a fresh complexion, a ready smile and kind eyes, but there was something in them that made you instantly aware that she had suffered pain in her life.

Kelly had always vowed never to cause her any more.

When she reached the hall he leaned down to kiss her — she was a good six inches shorter than he was — taking care to find a patch of face which was not blue.

‘You’re supposed to paint the walls, not yourself, you know,’ he told her affectionately, stroking her blue-spotted hair.

‘I know, but all of us need brightening up,’ she responded.

Kelly shook his head in resignation. Then he studied her more closely. The shadows beneath her eyes were very dark that morning, and although she was smiling at him there was a strained tightness about her mouth. He knew that Moira’s cheery manner and apparently light approach to life frequently belied the weariness and stress of her job. He was also aware, particularly when he was working on something which excited him, that he was inclined to forget to give her the kind of support she undoubtedly needed.