Fatal Act

by Leigh Russell

  Before she climbed into bed, she took her mother’s photograph out of a drawer. Since having it framed under protective glass, she had kept it on display beside her bed. She had only hidden it away because of Chloe’s visit. The faded picture was the one memento she had of Milly Blake, the mother who had given her up for adoption at birth. Geraldine understood her mother’s reasons for letting her go. At sixteen, and unmarried, she had wanted to give her baby a better chance in life than she could offer. On the face of it, Milly had been right to give up her baby. Geraldine had been raised in comfortable circumstances, by a caring family. After giving birth to a daughter, her adoptive mother had been unable to have any more children and the couple hadn’t wanted their child, Celia, to be an only child. Even when her parents had divorced, Geraldine had been well looked after by her mother, and her father had continued to support them financially. Geraldine had no grounds for complaint. She had been brought up as though she was her parents’ real daughter. But she wasn’t. Her looks and character had been completely out of place in her new family. Despite all the material benefits of her upbringing, she had never felt at ease in her adoptive family.

  Perhaps she would have fitted in more readily if she had known about her history all along, able to understand why she looked so different to the rest of her family. But her parents had never told her she was adopted. She had only learned about it on the death of her adoptive mother just over a year ago. Since then she had been ambivalent, desperate to meet her birth mother, yet afraid of the encounter. Until they met face to face, Geraldine could indulge in happy fantasies about their meeting, the instant rapport they would share, the immediate sense she would have of coming home. But the reality might prove very different. Her birth mother had left clear instructions with the adoption agency that she never wanted to meet her child. She still appeared not to want any contact with her. Geraldine had procrastinated over what to do for nearly a year. She didn’t even know if her mother was still alive. Finally, she had resolved to find her mother and had traced her to an address in London. But when she arrived, trembling with hope, Milly had already moved away. The disappointment had been harsh. She was aware that she risked even more acute disappointment if she did succeed in finding her mother.

  A wave of self pity turned to bitter anger against the mother who had abandoned her at birth. What right did she have to make a stranger of her own daughter? She thrust the photograph to the back of the drawer and slammed it shut. She didn’t actually need to search for her mother. She had no relationship with her. Work filled her life. By the time she retired, she might be settled in a relationship, with a whole new family. The future was full of possibilities without her absentee mother. She didn’t need to cling to a fantasy, and she couldn’t afford to waste energy focusing on the wrong search. Not only was it important to seek justice for its own sake, but if Anna’s killer wasn’t stopped he might strike again. If tracing Geraldine’s birth mother no longer seemed to matter, finding Anna’s killer was growing more important with every passing day.

  Chapter 9

  PIERS WAS DISHEVELLED AND decidedly bad-tempered after his night in a cell. His greying hair was a mess, his face had lost its healthy colour, even his eyes looked dull and had developed ugly pouches from tiredness. He looked at least ten years older than when Geraldine had first seen him.

  ‘What the hell is going on here?’ he demanded, his voice taut and high-pitched with frustration. ‘Where’s my lawyer?’

  His personal solicitor had been summoned and joined them as Geraldine was ushering the suspect into an interview room. Tall and suave, dressed in a sober suit, white shirt and dark tie, he wouldn’t have looked out of place at a funeral.

  Piers leapt out of his seat.

  ‘Terry, at last! What the hell’s going on? Surely they can’t just keep me here without any reason –’

  ‘I heard about Anna,’ the solicitor said in a low voice as he took his seat beside his client. ‘Sit down. I’m sorry, Piers. I never met her, of course, but it’s a terrible shock all the same. Such a young girl. How are you?’

  Piers shook his head vigorously.

  ‘How the hell do you think I am? First Anna, now they want to lock me up. I was in a cell last night! That can’t be legal.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Piers. We’ll have you out of here in no time,’ his solicitor assured him.

  He sounded very confident.

  ‘But have you heard about the van?’ Piers muttered.

  The solicitor hushed him.

  ‘All in good time, Piers. Don’t say anything. Leave this to me. I’ll sort it out.’

  ‘That’s what I pay you for.’

  ‘We’ll soon have you out of here. They can’t hold you.’

  Geraldine interrupted their subdued exchange to go through the lengthy process of initiating the interview. On television this would be conducted in a matter of seconds. Real life formal police interviews weren’t so quick and easy to set up. At last she finished the detailed introductory rigmarole, Piers had given his full name, the solicitor and attendant police officers had been announced, and they were ready to begin.

  ‘Mr Trevelyan, can you tell me where you were between one and three on Saturday morning?’

  He flung himself dramatically back in his chair, and ran his hands through his hair.

  ‘Oh Jesus Christ, do we really have to go through this all over again? I’ve already answered that question. Check your notes, or did you forget to keep any?’

  Geraldine kept her voice even. She stared directly at Piers.

  ‘Mr Trevelyan, a young woman died on Friday night –’

  ‘I’m painfully aware of that,’ he interjected. ‘Anna. My girlfriend. Some arsehole used my van to cause an accident that killed her. She’s dead. This might be all in a day’s work for you, but she was my girlfriend. I happened to love Anna, very much. So I’d like to go home and begin the process of grieving, in private.’

  He stood up.

  ‘Mr Trevelyan, please sit down. We haven’t finished.’

  ‘You may not have finished, but I have.’

  ‘Piers –’

  The solicitor put a restraining hand on Piers’ arm and nodded at the chair, gesturing to him to sit down again.

  ‘The police have to ask questions. The quicker we get through this interview, the sooner you’ll be going home.’

  He turned to Geraldine.

  ‘My client is prepared to co-operate in any way he can to help you find the driver who is responsible for this accident.’

  Geraldine inclined her head.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Piers shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Look, this has all been a huge shock. I don’t want to seem unhelpful, but you have to accept there’s nothing I can tell you about whoever was driving my van on Friday night. Do you think I wouldn’t help you if I could? You think I don’t care about what happened to Anna?’ He took a deep shuddering breath. ‘Someone must have stolen the van and driven her off the road. Presumably he was off his face on drugs. It was nothing to do with me.’

  ‘The person who killed her was driving your van,’ Geraldine pointed out.

  ‘Well, I can’t be responsible for whoever was driving my van, can I?’

  ‘Unless it was you at the wheel.’

  ‘Oh for goodness sake –’

  ‘My client has already stated he was at home, in bed, at the time the accident occurred,’ the solicitor reminded her.

  He gave Piers a warning glance.

  Geraldine turned to another line of questioning.

  ‘You’re telling us that a person or persons unknown stole your van from the street outside your house and followed Anna on Friday night. Can you think of anyone who might have done that?’

  ‘A lot of maniacs might have stolen my van from the drive and followed her, just because of who she is – was. She drove men wild.’

  ‘Was she being stalked?’

  ‘God, yes, of course she was. Don’t
be naive. It goes with the territory. She was a good looking girl, a former glamour model. There were photos of her… She had plenty of fans, believe me, plenty of men ready to chance their luck.’ He turned to his solicitor.

  ‘Get me out of here, for God’s sake. What the hell am I paying you for? Have you seen where I slept last night? Or rather where they kept me cooped up. I didn’t get much sleep.’

  Geraldine stared at the grey-haired man sitting across the table from her. He seemed more upset about his night in a cell than his girlfriend’s death but she knew that grief affected people in strange ways and perhaps the truth hadn’t yet sunk in. Piers turned back to her with a scowl.

  ‘Let’s try and apply some common sense to this, shall we? It seems pretty obvious what must have happened. Some crazy fan of hers found out where she lived. He watched her drive off. Seeing she was on her own, he thought he would seize his chance. He didn’t want to lose her, so he broke into the van and followed her. He was pissed, or high, driving too fast, and ended up leaving the van in some godforsaken street where she was driving, and she crashed into it and that’s what killed her. If that’s not muddled thinking, I don’t know what is. He smashed up both vehicles, killing the poor girl in the process. Realising he had destroyed his idol, he did a runner. Clearly he’s insane. You should be out there looking for him, not sitting here with me. It wasn’t my bad driving that killed her. How many times do I have to tell you? I wasn’t there.’

  He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms.

  He looked irritated when Geraldine asked him if there was anything else he wanted to tell them. He glanced at his solicitor for an explanation. The brief just shrugged, as though to say he had no idea what Geraldine was talking about. Piers turned back to Geraldine.

  ‘What do you mean, anything else? Her car was in a collision. She’s dead.’

  ‘Yes, her car was involved in a collision, but Anna didn’t die as a result of the crash, not exactly. She was concussed, and badly injured, but that wasn’t what killed her. Someone gave her a fatal injury after the vehicles collided. That was what killed her. This isn’t a simple hit and run case, Mr Trevelyan.’

  Piers looked perplexed. Already pale and drawn from lack of sleep, his face took on a greyish tinge. There was no mistaking his unease.

  ‘So the van she drove into –’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that. The van deliberately drove into her car.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve got it on CCTV. There’s no question that this was deliberate. Anna was murdered.’

  ‘Murder? Anna was murdered? You’re saying someone did this deliberately? But why? Who?’

  Geraldine wasn’t sure if he was shocked at hearing that his girlfriend had been murdered, or because the police had seen through a sophisticated attempt to disguise her death as a fatal traffic accident. At her side, Geraldine heard Sam sniff. She glanced around. She could imagine what her colleague was thinking: Piers worked in the world of acting; they couldn’t take anything he said at face value. But Geraldine thought he was genuinely surprised. His solicitor meanwhile looked grave. He advised his client not to say anything. Ignoring his advice, Piers grew strident in his protestations.

  ‘Mr Trevelyan, think carefully. Is there anyone who might have held a grudge against Anna, anyone who might have hated her enough to do this?’

  ‘No one hated Anna,’ he replied sternly. ‘If you’d known her, you’d realise how ridiculous that question is.’

  ‘Who did she mix with? Who were her friends?’

  ‘Anna had no time for friends. She was a lead character in the series. You have no idea what that means. I don’t think you have the faintest idea how time consuming the profession is, or how hard she worked. People like you think it’s easy, appearing on television. Do you know how little time she was given to learn her lines, or the pressure she was under to deliver?’

  ‘You mentioned someone she went to drama school with, the friend she asked you to cast in your latest project. Tell me about him.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. Dirk’s a fool. He’s the reason we argued in the first place. If it hadn’t been for that idiot –’

  ‘Why was she so keen for you to give him a part?’

  Piers didn’t answer. He stared stubbornly at his hands, frowning.

  ‘What was their relationship?’ Geraldine persisted, interested that he had clammed up so suddenly.

  ‘There is no relationship, there wasn’t, not since I met her.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘Before that they were together for a while, while they were students. It was all a long time ago and it never meant anything.’

  Geraldine sat forward in her chair.

  ‘Did it bother you that she remained friends with her ex?’

  ‘They weren’t friends, not exactly. They’d known each other at drama school, but they hadn’t kept in touch, at least not until he wanted to use her to contact me. She was too innocent to understand what he was playing at. I’ve seen it all so many times before.’

  ‘So you didn’t mind her keeping in touch with an ex-boyfriend who was her own age?’

  ‘His age didn’t bother me. Why should it? Do you think someone of my stature would be threatened by a talentless young fool who thinks he has some divine right to be turned into a star? Anna was –’

  Unexpectedly, he broke off and buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook with silent tears. Geraldine was reassured by the sight of his distress. His calm reaction to the death of his girl friend had been unnaturally self-controlled until then.

  Chapter 10

  ON SUNDAY MORNING, GERALDINE rang Zak’s door bell. She had told Sam she wouldn’t need her for this visit. If Piers’ son had anything interesting to tell them, she would pursue that line of questioning with the sergeant beside her at the station. This was just an initial encounter. Zak had a key to the van that had killed Anna, and she felt a rush of adrenaline as a drowsy voice answered her summons. Every person associated with the case was a potential suspect. If she only kept looking for long enough, widening the circle of people she questioned, sooner or later she would come across the right person. If Senior Investigating Officer Reg Milton was right, they had already met him. The key to it all was recognising the killer when they found him.

  ‘Who the hell is it? What do you want? It’s Sunday morning.’

  There was a very long pause after Geraldine introduced herself.

  ‘What’s that you said?’ the voice asked at last.

  Geraldine repeated her introduction.

  ‘Can’t you come back later or something? I’m not even up.’

  ‘I’m afraid this can’t wait.’

  ‘What the hell. Oh, hang on then.’

  There was some muffled swearing and then the voice asked her, very politely, if she wouldn’t mind waiting for a moment. She guessed he wanted time to put on some clothes and stash whatever drugs he kept in his flat. Finally the buzzer sounded and she went in.

  The accommodation was hardly what she would have expected of student digs. Piers had bought the flat as in investment, or perhaps as a liberal gift for his twenty-year-old son. Either way, Zak was living in a smart brand new one bedroomed flat in central London, a couple of minutes from Kings Cross station, and barely ten minutes’ walk from his college. Geraldine felt a flicker of envy as the lift rose swiftly and silently, leaving her in a carpeted corridor that looked as though it had just been painted. She could imagine what Sam would have to say about it. Perhaps unconsciously Geraldine hadn’t wanted to bring the sergeant to Zak’s flat, because she suspected it might prejudice the sergeant against the young man. After all, he could hardly be reproached for taking advantage of his father’s generosity. She wondered what his fellow students made of his good fortune. She guessed they were probably all keen to be friends with the son of an influential casting director. In terms of his living conditions and his career, Zak had certainly been lucky. She remembered Zak’s p
owerful father, and wondered what price the boy had paid for his luxurious lifestyle.

  Zak had inherited Piers’ straight nose and high cheek bones, although his features were more delicate than his father’s, and his complexion swarthy. He had enormous almond-shaped dark eyes and jet black hair that he wore down to his shoulders, with a long floppy fringe that he continuously flicked out of his eyes. If it hadn’t been for his square chin, Geraldine might have mistaken him for a beautiful girl.

  ‘You’d better come in and sit down,’ he said, not ungraciously.

  Geraldine looked around and hesitated, because there was nowhere to sit in the sparsely furnished room.

  Along one wall, a tall wooden bookcase displayed a short row of hardback books and a few dog-eared paperbacks, a wilting spider plant, one framed photograph of a group of laughing young men, and an odd assortment of wooden boxes and pots that looked as though they might have been collected while he was travelling in the Far East, although he could have picked them up in Camden market. At one end of the room a table stood beneath the window, with a variety of art materials on it: paints, small pieces of wood, curling slips of coloured paper and a handful of pencils and paint brushes. There were more paint brushes in a glass jar on the floor beneath the window, and yet more in front of the book shelves. Other than that, the floor was carelessly strewn with jeans and T-shirts, sneakers and newspapers, empty cigarette packets and beer bottles. A grey anorak had been thrown down beside a dying pot plant, and a few more books lay on the floor in no particular order. This was closer to Geraldine’s preconception of a student flat, and nothing like the elegant public areas of the block.