Хилари Боннер - A Moment Of Madness

Kelly was taken aback. The outburst was completely unexpected.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ he answered honestly. Then he smiled. ‘She was very beautiful, you know.’

‘Beautiful?’ Nick shouted the word, his handsome features suddenly contorted. ‘She was a slag, for Christ’s sake. A filthy slag. Rich, famous, and a slag. Nose shot to hell by what she stuffed up it. Old makeup smudged all over her face and a filthy stinking old dressing gown. That was her style. That’s how she was when she died and that’s how she was when she lived.’

Abruptly Nick reached out for the car door which his father was still holding open and slammed it shut, almost trapping Kelly’s fingers.

Kelly was both disturbed and thoughtful as he watched his son roar off. He was shocked by the level of Nick’s anger, and he was also puzzled.

He didn’t think that a detailed description of the state Angel had been in when she was killed had ever been released by the police. Even the stuff about her wrecked nose wouldn’t become public knowledge until the inquest into her death, which had yet to be heard.

Kelly stood quite still on the pavement as the Porsche disappeared into the distance, concentrating very hard, forcing himself to remember everything.

Nick had even known about the grubby dressing gown Angel had been wearing when she was killed.

Kelly shook his head, partly to clear it, and partly in denial of the unthinkable.

Nick took deliberately measured long deep breaths as he drove far too fast through the town.

This would never do. He was usually so controlled. But this entire business between his father and that bloody woman had caused him to lose it more than anything else, ever.

He really would have to be more careful. Not that he regretted what he’d done, of course. Not for a moment. He just realised that he might well have said too much, and could only hope that Kelly had not taken in the significance of his angry remarks.

He stopped the car down by the seafront, deciding to wait there for the hour or so his father would be at the AA meeting, rather than return to St Marychurch, where he would be expected to talk to Moira.

It was a clear moonlit night. Nick wound down a window and gratefully drank in the cool fresh air.

It had all begun for him on the night before Angel Silver’s death, the day his father was discharged from Plumpton House. What Nick witnessed that night changed everything. Before that he really hadn’t intended to do anything.

Under the impression, like Moira, that Kelly was not being released until the next day, Nick had arrived unexpectedly at Plumpton just as Kelly was leaving. The taxi carrying his father had passed Nick as he’d pulled off the main road into the lane leading to the rehabilitation centre. Kelly had been using his mobile phone, and had not noticed his son or his distinctive car. Nick had been about to blow his horn and flash his lights, but something stopped him. He decided instead to turn the Porsche round and follow the taxi at a discreet distance.

It was already dark and Nick was good at surveillance. He had, after all, been trained in it. And somehow, he wasn’t altogether surprised when the taxi swung off the main Torquay drag into the road, past the hospital and the Argus offices, which led to Maidencombe. As Nick by then expected, the taxi had turned into Rock Lane and proceeded down the hill to Maythorpe Manor. Nick switched off his headlights and coasted into the entrance of another house just up the lane, hoping that nobody would want to come in or out. He watched his father get out of the taxi and open the electronic gates to Maythorpe, unsurprised that he seemed familiar with the appropriate combination number.

Then, during the brief time that Kelly was inside the old manor house, Nick sat and thought about exactly what he was witnessing.

Nick knew that his father was a weak man, but he blamed Angel Silver for Kelly’s fall from grace even more than Kelly himself.

And suddenly, rather in the way his father had later realised it when he heard the radio report of Angel’s death, it had struck Nick with devastating clarity that as long as Angel Silver was alive, John Kelly would never be able to extricate himself from her. He would be under her spell always. He would almost certainly start drinking and doing all manner of drugs all over again, because of her.

If that was allowed to happen then Nick would lose his father again.

It was then that he made a decision. Nick was good at decisions. And he was extremely well equipped to carry out the decision he had made.

Nick was indeed a computer expert, but of a very special kind. He was an expert at overcoming security systems, and his special talents, plus his all-round exceptional ability as a soldier, had led to him being seconded to the SAS, a regiment well suited to his nature, which was both daring and devious.

But Nick had always liked the good life, something he had inherited from his father, he thought wryly, although Kelly, of course, had had seriously to downsize his expectations in that direction.

As a lucrative sideline Nick had farmed out his knowledge, and even some of his equipment, to various freelance operations of the kind that the British army could never approve of. More often than not some dodgy mercenary outfit.

Nobody outside his regiment knew, least of all his father, but Nick’s days in the army had ended abruptly when one of his extramural activities had been discovered. Nick had not been thrown out. That would not have been good either for army morale or regimental reputation. Instead, he was discreetly asked to leave, and always being one to know when the game was up, unlike his father on most occasions, Nick had done so promptly and discreetly.

Now he just continued out of uniform what he had started while in it. He lent his expertise to almost anyone who had a security system to breach. Often, because of his army background, there was a military connection. Sometimes the operations he took part in were criminal. Nick didn’t care a lot. He loved adventure and did not understand morality very much. He knew what he wanted and how to ensure that he got it.

The striking of a clock somewhere in the town interrupted his thoughts. Nick checked his watch. It was time to collect his father. He started up the Porsche and motored slowly along Union Street. Kelly was just stepping out on to the pavement as he approached.

Kelly was apprehensive. He had been preoccupied throughout the AA meeting. Unwelcome speculation filled his head.

‘Hi, Dad,’ said Nick cheerily. Kelly looked him up and down. Nick was smiling and seemed absolutely calm and controlled, the way he usually did.

‘You all right?’ Kelly enquired casually.

‘Sure, Dad. Sorry about earlier. It really shook me up, you know, you going back on the hooch and then being charged with murder, for God’s sake!’

‘Yeah, I know.’

Kelly did, too. Of course it was perfectly natural for Nick to show his anger occasionally. It was Kelly who’d behaved like a prat, not his son, he reminded himself.

He opened his mouth to ask Nick how he knew so much detail about the way Angel was when she had died. Then he thought better of it. It could only antagonise Nick. There would be a simple explanation. For a start, Kelly had not seen all the papers when he’d been locked up. More than likely some journo somewhere had got hold of more than the official line.

Nick put his toe down as they hit the hill leading up to St Marychurch. Like his father, he was inclined to drive far too fast.

Kelly studied him affectionately.

He couldn’t even allow himself to think along the lines he had been earlier. It was total nonsense even to consider that Nick could be involved in any way.