Хилари Боннер - A Moment Of Madness

He checked his watch once more: 12.21 p.m. Fore Street was just a few minutes’ drive away. He reckoned he had given the police and the James family plenty of time, and he could feel his heart thumping in anticipation as he drove into Paignton along Esplanade Road and swung a right towards the railway station. But when he reached Fore Street there was a police squad car parked outside number 24. Kelly battled to keep his natural impatience under control. He’d have to wait again. He could not expect to get any result except a rocket from Karen Meadows if he knocked on the door while there was still a police presence.

Kelly drove slowly past the house. At the far end of the street he spotted Trevor Jones’s battered green VW Golf already parked there. The photographer raised a hand to him as he passed. Where Fore Street met the main drag Kelly manoeuvred a swift U-turn and pulled in against the kerb behind Trevor. Trying to look as casual as possible, Kelly clambered out of his own car and made his way to the passenger side of the old Golf. Trevor pushed the door open for him. Between them the two men shifted a pile of old newspapers, chip papers, chocolate wrappers and discarded film packets into the back of the vehicle so that Kelly could clamber in, his feet instantly becoming buried in even more debris.

Kelly passed no comment. He was used to the state of Trevor’s car. Instead, he quickly gave the younger man a précised version of what he had learned from Karen Meadows.

‘As soon as the bogies have gone I’m in,’ he said. ‘I don’t want ’em frightened by cameras so you wait here until I call you. Got it?’

Trevor Jones nodded, albeit a little reluctantly. Photographers were a nervous breed. They didn’t like waiting outside closed doors while reporters had access.

‘And you snatch anyone, anyone at all, going in or out,’ Kelly continued.

Trevor shot him a slightly reproachful look. The young snapper was already sitting with a camera ready, its 500-mil lens balanced on the dashboard and no doubt already focused on the door to number 24. Kelly smiled.

‘OK, OK, I’m sorry,’ he said.

Trevor might be relatively new to the game but he had been a quick learner from the start, and already didn’t miss too many tricks, even without coaching.

Kelly settled into the passenger seat. The assorted rubble on the floor made crackling noises as he shifted his feet a little. Suddenly there was a bang almost like a pistol going off. Kelly nearly jumped out of his seat, instinctively jerking his legs up so that his knees almost touched his chest, and covering his face with his hands.

‘It’s OK,’ he heard Trevor say. ‘I knew I’d lost a flashbulb in here somewhere.’

Kelly removed his hands from his face, shaking his head in mild disbelief.

‘You pillock,’ he said. ‘Apart from putting the fear of God into me, we’re supposed to be keeping a low profile here. You really are going to have to get this tip fumigated.’

Trevor mumbled something apologetic. Kelly glanced along the street in all directions. There was nobody about. If anyone, including the police, had heard the bang as the flashbulb had exploded they had apparently not thought it worth investigating. Very tentatively Kelly stretched out his legs again, once more checking his watch. If they were forced to wait for long they’d never make that deadline, he thought. But little more than ten minutes later a young uniformed policeman emerged from the James house accompanied by a man in a suit, who Kelly assumed was CID, and an older woman wearing grey trousers and a cream linen jacket whom he recognised as a detective sergeant he knew vaguely. She seemed to glance in the direction of the Golf. Kelly hunkered down in his seat and gestured to Trevor, who had already knocked off a few frames, to do the same. Kelly didn’t want to have to explain himself to Devon and Cornwall’s finest, and he had deliberately slotted the distinctive MG in behind Trevor’s car where it could not easily be seen from number 24. There were a lot of people around who would recognise Kelly’s MG straight away.

Kelly stayed in the half-crouch until he heard the engine of the squad car burst into life. He peeped cautiously through the side window as the police vehicle motored slowly away, fortunately proceeding in the direction it had been facing, which meant that it would not pass the two watching journalists and their cars. He waited another couple of minutes to be sure the coast was clear. Then he was in like Flynn, moving fast in spite of his bruised right foot, which was still causing him to limp slightly, out of the car, along the pavement, up the steps, through the patch of rubble which passed for a garden, and knocking on the door with its peeling blue paint.

A young man, equally as tall as Kelly remembered Terry James, eventually opened the door and looked him up and down with some distaste. From his vague memory of the dead man this could almost have been Terry James, although even more thickset and maybe a few years older.

‘If you’re looking for your lot they’ve just gone,’ growled the man, aggression oozing from his every pore.

‘I’m not police,’ said Kelly quickly.

‘What the fuck are you then? The Sally Army?’

Kelly smiled. ‘No, not exactly—’ he began.

‘I’ve got it, you’re a fucking vulture.’

‘I’m press, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Well, we’ve got nothing to say to yer. My brother’s just been murdered. Our Terry’s dead. Haven’t you got no respect?’

‘I just thought—’

This time Kelly was interrupted by the arrival at the door of a small dark woman, face tear-stained, hair dishevelled.

‘Who is it, Kenny?’

‘Some toerag reporter, Mam. Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of him.’

‘Mrs James,’ said Kelly quickly, taking an educated guess, ‘I’m so sorry about your son. I just want to find out what happened to him, every bit as much as you do, really. Things aren’t always what they seem, are they?’

‘No, they’re not,’ said Mrs James.

‘Well, I’d like to get the family’s side to things now, find out what really happened, put the record straight on your behalf,’ Kelly offered, coming out with the oldest line in the business. Nobody had been charged with anything yet; there was even a possibility that nobody would be. Terry James was dead, after all, so he couldn’t face trial, and who could tell how Angel Silver would ultimately be dealt with? None the less Kelly wanted a swift result while he still didn’t have to worry about sub judice .

‘Come on, Mam, let’s leave it,’ said Ken James, moving between the woman and Kelly and at the same time pushing the door with his shoulder in order to shut the reporter outside.

Kelly put his good foot in the door jamb and as he did so wondered if he might be making an extremely dangerous mistake. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever actually put his foot in a door before, and he wouldn’t have done so then if he hadn’t sensed that he could get through to Mrs James, that she wanted to talk. He certainly didn’t want to take her son on. But it seemed that he had. Kelly could feel the full weight of Ken James as the big man leaned heavily against the door, pushing it against the reporter’s now trapped foot and looking down on him menacingly.

‘Do you know what they’re saying about Terry, Mrs James?’ asked Kelly desperately, pushing his face against the now painfully narrow opening in the doorway.

Even Ken James hesitated. To Kelly’s immense relief the pressure on his trapped foot, encased in its flimsy shoe, eased. Kelly had banked on both Ken and his mother wanting to know what was being said. They weren’t the sort of people who had much trust in the police, after all. Karen had told him that, as if he had needed telling.