Хилари Боннер - A Moment Of Madness

Kelly would just put that out of his head, along with so much else.

Nick was relieved. He’d got away with it again. His father obviously didn’t suspect a thing.

He smiled to himself, thinking back over the smooth operation he had conducted.

He hadn’t wanted to follow his father into Maythorpe Manor that night, and possibly allow suspicion to fall on Kelly, so he’d decided that he would return the next night, which would also give him time to sort out the necessary equipment.

And so, just before midnight the following day, Nick had driven out towards Maidencombe, parked his Porsche in a concealed lay-by a mile or so away, and walked across the fields to Rock Lane. He wore dark camouflage gear, combat trousers and jacket, and had pulled a black balaclava over his head. A small rucksack on his back had contained all that he needed. He climbed over a gate into the lane, as near as he could to Maythorpe, and kept close to the tall hedges until he reached the wall which surrounded the old manor house. No vehicle passed him. Had one done so Nick, in his camouflage gear, would have literally thrown himself into the hedge almost certainly out of sight. He knew how to avoid detection.

The defences of Maythorpe Manor, sophisticated as they might seem to civilians, presented him with no more problems than he had expected.

His natural athleticism, plus the grappling equipment he had brought with him, meant that he did not find it difficult at all to scale the tall wall. And it didn’t take him long to disable the system of alarmed cable at the top of the wall in such a way that the security company to which it was connected by telephone link was not alerted. Nick had, after all, been trained by arguably the best in the world to do just that.

He knew all about creating an alternative circuit so that there would be no alert when he cut through the sensitive original wire. Nick was an expert. And when he had entered the house he had done so with admirable stealth.

He found Angel Silver in the kitchen. And it was there that he killed her.

She had had her back to him as he entered the room and had not even known he was there, silently closing in behind her, until he had swung the lump hammer into her skull and smashed the life out of her.

It was only when she fell to the ground that he realised that her nose had been bleeding and that she had been standing over the sink trying to stem the flow. As she fell, some of the blood splashed on to his dark combat trousers. He didn’t need to check that she was dead. Nick had also been trained to kill with one blow. He turned away almost as she hit the ground.

Then he had simply exited swiftly in the way that he had entered, repairing the security circuit behind him in such a way that only the most minute of examinations could ever have discovered it.

It was only when his father had been arrested and charged that Nick had realised that John Kelly must have been at Maythorpe Manor earlier that night — indeed, by unfortunate coincidence, only minutes earlier, Nick later learned.

Nick then made another decision. He had to take further action to protect the father he did not intend to lose.

Fortunately the lump hammer and his bloodstained trousers had still been in the boot of the Porsche. After all, Nick was not even remotely under suspicion and he had had a strange feeling that sooner or later both might come in useful. His plan had once again been very simple. Nobody had a bigger grudge against Angel Silver than Ken James, who Nick knew had actually publicly threatened her. So Nick staked out the Jameses’ house, followed Mrs James to the seaside caravan site where he found Ken James’s van.

He planted the lump hammer, wrapped in the trousers, in the back of it, later calling Karen Meadows anonymously to tip her off.

Very straightforward. And it had all worked extremely well. Of course, Ken James getting his neck broken in a pub brawl had been an added bonus. A real stroke of luck. But then, Nick reckoned you made your own luck in the world. And he should know, the way he’d been brought up.

It had meant nothing to Nick to kill Angel Silver.

Nick didn’t have a great deal of respect for human life. Much of it deserved to be snuffed out, in his opinion. The due process of law took far too long to satisfy him. And Angel had been a prime example of a human being who was a complete waste of space. Indeed, Nick reckoned he’d probably done the world a favour.

As he pulled into Crown Avenue, Nick turned towards his father. John Kelly looked tired and wan but there was a kind of resignation about him. He too must realise that at least it was over now, thought Nick. And he was clean and sober, and likely to remain so. A darn sight more likely than he would have been with Angel around, that was for certain.

Nick was happy. He’d fixed it. Angel was out of the picture. His father had his life back, which meant Nick had his father back.

Quite suddenly he felt Kelly’s hand on his shoulder.

‘I’ll never let you down again, son,’ his father said.

‘I know, Dad,’ replied Nick. ‘I won’t let you.’