Хилари Боннер - A Moment Of Madness

Angel Silver. An extraordinary name for an extraordinary woman. Yet Kelly knew that ‘Angel’ was not some affectation of the music world, but just a shortening of the name her parents had given her. Angelica. Absurdly grand for the daughter of a Billingsgate fishmonger.

A second Argus snapper, Ben Wallis, was already on a watching brief and was able to tell Kelly that there had been no developments at the station except the earlier release of a predictable official statement confirming that Angel was helping police with their inquiries.

Kelly shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his inadequate coat and settled into the waiting game again. As time passed the day became even chillier. By late afternoon he felt that his feet were turning into blocks of ice, particularly his sore right one. His back ached too. He was getting too old for this lark, he thought. That cup of tea and the bun from the seaside caff seemed like ancient history. He managed to persuade a girl reporter from the Western Morning News to nip to a sandwich shop on condition that he both promised to cover for her and paid. She returned with coffee and half a dozen hot pasties in a bag. Kelly attacked the coffee so eagerly he burned his lips. The pasties contained very little meat and the pastry was distinctly stale but Kelly barely noticed, and neither did Ben Wallis, who gratefully accepted one of them.

As darkness fell and six o’clock came and went, Kelly found himself mildly surprised at how long Angel was being held. He reminded himself that two men had died, and he wondered what the police were asking her and what she was telling them about the high drama that had unfolded in her home during the night.

Disconsolately he stretched his arms and legs, and hopped about a bit from one foot to the other in a bid to get his distinctly sluggish circulation going again. The bruised toes of his right foot continued to throb dully. Kelly was beginning to feel extremely weary. After all, he’d been on the case since his call from Karen just after 6.30 a.m. For a moment or two he considered giving up and going home. He didn’t suppose anyone at the Argus would notice or even care. They’d merely pick up from the dailies in the morning. But Kelly hated that sort of reporter. He always saw a job through and he’d never liked second-hand information, which he reckoned invariably led to trouble. Kelly liked to make his own mistakes.

At around eight o’clock it started to rain again. That, Kelly thought, was the final straw. There was no shelter worth mentioning. He had neither hat nor umbrella. Naturally. Icy raindrops cut through his thinning hair and ran down his neck beneath his shirt collar. He began to shiver uncontrollably.

Then, quite suddenly, there was a flurry of activity. Angel Silver emerged through the police station’s big doors. Several policemen escorted her as she began to walk down the station steps, one of them holding an umbrella over her. The couple of dozen or so assorted press, snappers, reporters, radio journalists, and TV teams pushed forward as one body. The area around the station, lit only by standard streetlamps, was suddenly flooded with film-set-scale illumination as cameras flashed and the lights of the TV teams burst into life.

Angel walked with a straight back, head held high, looking resolutely ahead, face even paler than before, if that were possible. Once more Kelly was struck by her beauty and the way she seemed able to isolate herself from all that was happening to her. He knew that she must be knocking forty now, but, even under such great stress, she looked years younger. There was an ageless quality about her.

Kelly was aware that at the rear of the police station there was a police parking area off public limits, where it would have been possible for her to be discreetly bundled into a vehicle and swept away without anyone having a chance to get near her. He suspected that it would have been Angel’s own decision not to sneak out of a back door.

A squad car came roaring around the corner and squealed to a halt as close as it could get to the station steps. One of the policemen escorting Angel stepped ahead to open the near-side rear door. The noise in South Street was every bit as overwhelming as the blazing light. The reporters, TV and written press were all calling out to Angel, desperate to persuade her to tell them what had happened and how she felt. She did not respond and, indeed, gave no indication that she even heard. The snappers and the TV cameramen were hassling each other for the best position for a final shot. Angel bent down to climb into the car and, as she did so, seemed to stumble slightly. A policeman immediately put an arm under her elbow to steady her. She looked round and slightly up at him as if in thanks and then her gaze wandered by him and it seemed almost as if she were taking in the extraordinary scene around her for the first time. It was then, for the second time that day, that Kelly got the impression she was staring straight at him. Certainly their gazes met. Kelly knew all about the Diana factor, but he really felt sure of it. There was something so hypnotic about those violet eyes, their intensity somehow enhanced by the dark shadows beneath them.

‘Angel, what happened in the police station?’ he called out as loudly as he could, aware of his own voice rising above the commotion. ‘Are you being charged with anything?’

Her gaze remained steady. Then she smiled. Well, it was almost a smile. Just an enigmatic lifting of her lips at the corners. A Mona Lisa smile. Slight, yet deep. Unfathomable. But it brightened her whole face.

Then she was gone. Into the car and sandwiched on the rear seat between two extremely large police officers.

Some of the pack ran to their motor cars in order to attempt to give chase. Kelly took his time. Thoughtful. It seemed more than likely that Angel was simply being returned home to Maythorpe, and, in any case, he knew from long hard experience that you could almost never successfully follow a police car.

He started back towards his MG, picking up a bag of chips, which he ate with one hand while he drove out to Maythorpe Manor. No wonder he was growing a paunch, he thought to himself.

Around the gates of the big old mansion probably upwards of a thousand fans of the dead rock star were now gathered in silent vigil, almost every one of them carrying a lit candle. The whole area was bathed in a kind of ethereal light.

Kelly had expected many more fans than had been gathered in the morning. None the less, he was amazed at the sight which confronted him as he approached the house on foot from the car park down in Maidencombe village. Involuntarily he slowed his pace, taking in every detail of the scene. Then suddenly the rather eerie silence was abruptly broken. The gathered fans burst almost as if by pre-arrangement into a song — probably Scott Silver’s most celebrated recording, certainly so well known that even Kelly, not a man with a great knowledge of contemporary music, recognised it at once.

It was a ballad, a hauntingly poignant number made all the more so by the circumstances in which it was being sung.

The haunting strains dripped like liquid through the night air. Kelly couldn’t make out all the words, but did remember that the song was a typical Silver number that had actually been about lost love rather than death. On this night, sung by this particular choir, it was a moving funeral dirge.

Kelly moved forward into the throng. People of all ages seemed to be gathered now. Scott Silver’s appeal spanned the generations. Many of the women and even a few of the men were weeping copiously. Kelly had never quite understood, even as a young man, the adulation many people feel for distant heroes, public figures and celebrities they don’t know — film stars, rock icons, royalty. He had never understood it but sometimes he envied its simplicity.