Хилари Боннер - A Moment Of Madness

It was over then. Angel was dead. His own life was in tatters. But at least it was over at last. And maybe it could only ever have ended with death, he thought.

He stood up and put on his old leather jacket, which looked even more battered than usual as he had spent most of the night and morning using it as a pillow.

The team sent by Karen Meadows to bring Kelly in arrived several minutes after he had already left his St Marychurch home. And by the time DC Burns had tracked down the taxi driver who was able to confirm that he had picked up Mr Kelly from his home in Crown Avenue, taken him to Maythorpe and waited for him for around forty-five minutes before driving him back, his evidence was not really needed.

Kelly was waiting at Torquay Police Station when Karen Meadows returned from the crime scene. They had put him in an interview room and left him in the company of a uniformed constable. Kelly refused to talk to anybody except the DCI.

‘I’ve come to give myself up for the murder of Angel Silver,’ he told her simply.

Neither his voice nor his face gave anything away. Kelly had shut down his emotions. Cut himself off from his surroundings and his circumstances. It was almost as if he was talking about something which didn’t concern him at all.

Karen Meadows sat down with a bump in the chair opposite Kelly. She studied him thoughtfully for a moment or two. Her old friend was very still, his eyes met hers briefly, but his facial expression gave nothing away. There were a couple of angry red weals on his left cheek which could have been scratch marks. Karen’s heart sank even further. She studied him carefully.

‘Right then, John, you’d better tell us all about it, hadn’t you, get it on the record,’ she said eventually, and, glancing at the young detective sergeant standing alongside her, ‘I’d like DS Cooper to do the interview—’

‘No,’ Kelly interrupted sharply. ‘It’s you or nobody, Karen. I’ve already said that.’

The DCI hesitated almost imperceptibly. She could understand well enough why Kelly was so insistent on talking only to her, to someone he knew and presumably trusted, as she always had him. But she really was not sure she was the right person at all to do the job. She didn’t even want to listen to him confessing to a murder, if that really was what he was about to do, of which there seemed little doubt.

There was also the question of politics again. Media and public attention was about to be firmly focused on the activities of the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary once more, and Karen confidently expected to have the chief constable down on her like a ton of bricks at any moment.

Aloud she said, ‘Fine. Let’s do it properly then.’

She gestured to DS Cooper to switch on the double tape recorder on the table in front of Kelly.

‘OK, John, so why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?’ Karen began, after first recording the obligatory formal introduction to the interview.

‘I snapped,’ said Kelly simply. ‘I just flew at her. I hit her in the face. It was a moment of madness, I suppose. But, by God, she provoked me.’

‘Start at the beginning, please.’

Kelly’s expression changed then. His eyes darkened. Karen was unsure exactly what she could see there but she knew she didn’t like it.

‘The beginning?’ he queried. ‘You want the beginning? I wish I knew how it began, I really wish I did. I know I was obsessed with Angel. She took over my entire life. She was all I could ever think about. Most of the time I didn’t even want it to be like that, but I never seemed able to do anything about it.’

He paused. Karen thought there were tears in his eyes now.

‘I loved her, you see, like I’d never loved anyone before,’ Kelly went on. ‘She never returned that. She told me she did once, but I knew it wasn’t true. I really did love her, though. A part of me still loves her, even after... after everything...’ Tears began to run down Kelly’s face then, yet he seemed quite unaware of them. ‘She treated me like dirt half the time, and yet I couldn’t stop loving her...’ His voice tailed off. He sounded almost surprised at his own behaviour.

Karen did not speak. She did not feel she needed to. DS Cooper fidgeted slightly in his seat. He was not a man at ease with displays of emotion.

‘There was the sex, of course. It was almost as if I’d never had sex before. There weren’t any boundaries, you see. It went so far beyond anything I’d ever experienced. Yet I didn’t even like an awful lot of what we did. Not afterwards, that is.’ Kelly laughed briefly and without humour.

DS Cooper fidgeted all the more. Kelly seemed suddenly to become aware of the tears that were still running down his cheeks. He stopped talking and rubbed at his face ineffectually with the back of one hand. His fingers touched the weals on his left cheek, and he winced.

Karen thought he looked surprised, as if previously unaware even that his face had been injured. She waited for a few more seconds. It was almost as if Kelly had gone into some other world.

‘So exactly what happened last night?’ Karen asked, in an effort to bring him back into this one.

Kelly looked down at the table. ‘I’ve never hit a woman before,’ he said. ‘Even when the drink’s got to me, even when I hit rock bottom all those years ago, at least I never did that. But she just went too far. I couldn’t stop myself.’

‘Describe to me how you hit her exactly,’ Karen asked. ‘Did you punch her?’

‘No, not that really.’ Kelly leaned forward and put his head in his hands. Karen didn’t think he was avoiding the question, just trying to think, to get things clear in his mind. After a good minute or so of silence, though, she decided another prompt was in order.

‘So what did you do, John?’

‘Well,’ Kelly still seemed to be struggling with his thoughts, with his memory, ‘I suppose it was more of a slap really. I lost control. It’s hard to remember exactly what I did. I just hit out.’ He moved his hands away from his face a few inches and studied them almost with a kind of curiosity, as if amazed by what they had been responsible for. ‘I think I caught her with my palm. Her nose just seemed to explode. There was blood everywhere. She fell back against the kitchen worktop and then on to the floor.’

‘So what did you do next, John?’

‘I just took off. I was horrified by it all.’

‘You didn’t try to help her?’

‘No, I was just desperate get out, to get away.’ He paused again. ‘In any case, it seems crazy now, but I didn’t even think about helping her. I didn’t think she’d want my help, for a start. She’d just spent some time explaining to me in detail how much contempt she had for me.’

‘So you left her for dead?’

Kelly looked shocked. ‘No, not that. I didn’t think she was dead. Well, she wasn’t, not when I left. She was half lying on the floor, just staring at me. I didn’t think I’d hurt her that badly, not then. She looked, well, it sounds stupid but...’

Again a pause.

‘She looked what, John?’

‘She... she looked almost triumphant. As if she’d wanted me to hit her, as if she’d got her own way.’

‘Did you use a weapon at all?’

Kelly looked puzzled.

‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘I just hit her.’

‘In the face?’

‘I told you so.’

‘Not on the back of the head?’

‘No, no, I don’t think so.’

‘You sound unsure.’

‘Well, it all happened so fast. I know I just lashed out. But I think only that one blow really connected. I’m just not sure, I just can’t tell you any more...’

‘You have what looks like scratch marks on your face. Did Angel do that to you? Was there a struggle?’