Silent Scream

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘What about this scream?’

  ‘Er, no one seems to have any concrete details, apart from the fact that she told a lot of people about it. She didn’t report it at the time though, and apparently the team has found no one or anything connected to it in the area of the mews.’

  ‘You get on and write up your report. I’ll be out in half an hour, then I’ve got to get off home.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  A few minutes later, Mathews tapped on the window of her office, holding up the front-page coverage in the Evening Standard.

  MOVIE STAR’S MURDER. WHO KILLED AMANDA?

  Anna wasn’t surprised to find, fifteen minutes later, as the team gathered for the briefing, that Mathews had already gone home. Simon waited for everyone to assemble.

  ‘OK, the Guv has had to leave so it’s down to me to gather all the information we’ve got so far.’

  He turned to the board. Alongside the photographs of Amanda from various films were the tragic shots showing how her body was discovered. None of the neighbours in the mews itself and the properties backing onto Amanda’s house had heard or seen anything suspicious. Nothing, as yet, had come in from forensics or the pathology labs to help ascertain the exact time of her murder. They had no weapon.

  ‘It was a brutal killing,’ Simon stressed. ‘Look at the way her body was found and then look at what we’ve got – fuck all. We have no suspect, we haven’t found anyone so far who saw anything suspicious, and no one we’ve interviewed knows of anyone with a grudge against the victim.’

  ‘Bar the ex-wives of some of her boyfriends,’ Barbara the blonde DC interjected. ‘Seems like Amanda got her rocks off, shagging married stars and one in particular.’ She held up a newspaper. ‘Scott Myers’s wife is also an actress, also pretty attractive. She’s been in the news over the past year, accusing Amanda of stealing her husband and persuading him to leave her and their three kids – all under seven, by the way.’

  Barbara returned to her desk and picked up more copies of newspaper cuttings.

  ‘Fiona Myers is quoted in the News of the World last year as saying that Amanda was like an over-sexed bitch on heat and that she needed a bucket of water chucked over her to cool her down. She said if she ever saw her, she’d be the one to chuck it.’

  Suddenly Mathews returned and signalled to Anna to join him.

  ‘I was in the car park,’ he said. ‘They’ve brought her parents here. Can you talk to them, because I’ve got to go. They’re downstairs.’

  It was never easy to confront parents in these circumstances. Anna wished she had someone with her, but she braced herself and walked into the reception.

  Chapter Three

  Mr and Mrs Delany were waiting patiently. Carmen Delany was a very attractive woman, well-groomed and smartly dressed like her husband. They didn’t appear to be the emotionally distraught couple that Anna had expected; rather they were calm and poised as they sat beside each other in one of the incident rooms.

  ‘First let me give you my sincere condolences,’ Anna said, and offered them tea or coffee. They declined both.

  There was an awkward pause as Anna prepared herself for what she should say next, and neither spoke.

  ‘We are waiting for the post-mortem report to assist in our enquiry, but I want to assure you we’re endeavouring to get a result as soon as possible. If I could just ask you some questions, that might help us get to know more about Amanda.’

  Still neither said a word. Anna found it unnerving as they sat so calmly, their eyes on her, waiting.

  ‘Firstly, could you give me any reason why someone might have a grudge against your daughter?’

  ‘Grudge?’ Mrs Delany repeated quietly.

  ‘Anyone who might have had a reason to harm your daughter?’

  ‘Harm her?’ This was Mark Delany, his voice soft but chilling.

  ‘Yes. We need to question everyone Amanda knew and find out if there was someone who had been frightening her, or maybe stalking her. Is there anyone you can think of who would have been … jealous, angry?’

  ‘My daughter, we have been told, was brutally murdered. I don’t see how describing anyone’s jealousy or anger would be a motive for them to kill her.’

  ‘It’s possible, Mr Delany, that you may not have been aware of how intensely someone felt about her. If there is anyone you recall meeting or hearing Amanda talk about, I would really appreciate knowing about them.’

  Anna felt her words tumbling over each other, she was so nervous. The Delanys’ reaction to whatever she said was just not normal, unless they were both in shock – but they didn’t appear to be nor were they showing the usual signs of that.

  Anna waited. They looked at each other and then returned their almost expressionless eyes to her.

  ‘I can think of no one we met who would want to harm Amanda.’ Mr Delany had a thin mouth; his words were clipped and said without any emotion.

  ‘What about you, Mrs Delany?’ Anna asked.

  ‘No one, but you have to understand that we saw very little of her over the past five years.’

  ‘Was this lack of contact due to Amanda’s filming commitments?’

  They made no reply.

  ‘Or was there a problem between you as a family?’

  Again no response.

  ‘Did you have some kind of argument, Mr Delany?’

  ‘Argument?’ The thin mouth shut tightly.

  ‘Yes, perhaps a falling-out. Your daughter was very famous and I’m surprised that you didn’t see her often.’

  ‘We travel and don’t reside in London any more.’ Mr Delany crossed his legs, and with bony fingers plucked at the immaculate crease in his trousers.

  Anna stood up and asked if they would excuse her for a moment. She hurried into the incident room, where Simon was finishing up the briefing, and asked for his help.

  ‘He’s a frosty, tightlipped man and she seems almost afraid to speak, so what I suggest is, as a ploy to separate them, I’ll tell them we need to take background statements as standard procedure. I’ll say I don’t want to keep them any longer than necessary in their time of grief, and so on. You take Mr Delany and leave her to me.’

  In the interview room Simon was charming, expressed his condolences, then asked to speak to Mr Delany alone. The man didn’t like it but agreed to accompany Simon, who explained to him that he wanted to discuss some photographs, but didn’t wish to upset Mrs Delany. In his office, Simon set out the pictures of the rooms in Amanda’s house, and asked Mr Delany if he could tell if there was anything missing or unusual. No, came the answer. He had only been there briefly after Amanda had bought it, and before it had been refurbished.

  Meanwhile, Anna tried to coax more information from Mrs Delany. At first the woman was unforthcoming, constantly looking to the door for the return of her husband. Amanda had left home very young, she said, just a few weeks after her sixteenth birthday, as she had won a coveted place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. They had been very proud of her and were hopeful that she would become a well-respected actress. Mrs Delany mentioned that they used to be frequent theatregoers, especially to the National or Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Amanda had rented a room in some friends’ house in St John’s Wood and seemed very happy, but eventually insisted on moving out and into a flat with other students.

  There was a long pause as Mrs Delany looked again to the door, either hoping for her husband’s return, or fearful that she was saying too much. Anna reassured her that this was all helpful as she needed to build up a complete background of her daughter. Mrs Delany gave her names of two students that she remembered, but couldn’t recall any others. To begin with, she said, Amanda was doing well, and then it all became difficult.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Anna pressed her.

  ‘She became very awkward, rude, and her father was furious, as he’d given her a bank account and a credit card and she started running up debts. No matter what he said to her, she just carried on spending and th
en …’

  Anna waited as Mrs Delany chewed at her lips in agitation.

  ‘She stole some things from Harrods and we had to go and sort it all out. Thankfully it was never reported and for a while she behaved herself. Her career seemed to take off and …’

  Again, Anna had to wait as she saw Mrs Delany trying to control herself. Her manicured fingernails gleamed with bright red polish; diamonds glittered on her wedding finger.

  ‘She got into trouble and we had to travel from France to sort it out, and this time it was dreadful. She had fallen pregnant and had had an abortion that nearly killed her. She was bleeding internally, and if we hadn’t rushed her to hospital, she would have died. As it was, she destroyed any hope of ever having children, and poor Mark had to pay a great deal of money to a surgeon to get her fixed up and released. After that, he virtually refused to see Amanda; she was so ungrateful and all the money she was earning she squandered and wouldn’t let her father look after it. We didn’t know what to do with her. There was no possibility she could come home with us to France – not that she would have wanted to. She went back to living in some awful place until her mews house was ready to move into, and we didn’t really speak much to her again … Well, her father didn’t.’

  Anna had made a few discreet notes, but didn’t want to distract Mrs Delany or put her off.

  ‘She got into cocaine, so I came to see her and asked her to go into rehab, which she did. I booked her into the Drury Clinic and paid – she never even said thank you. Then when she was released, she got a good part in a film and her career really took off.’

  ‘You must have felt very proud of her success.’

  It was at this moment that Mr Delany walked in, Simon behind him, pulling an apologetic face at Anna.

  ‘I was just saying how proud you both must have been, when Amanda’s career became so successful,’ said Anna.

  ‘Having hordes of photographers tracking us down, invading our privacy and making life hell for us, made it very hard for us to be able to say unequivocally how proud we were. The scandals she created made our lives a nightmare, and disgusted us both. By now you have to have realised that even in death, our daughter has made us a spectacle. We have been phoned at all hours of the day and night, and there are television cameras outside our hotel, which I would really like to return to and then leave as soon as possible. There is nothing we can tell you that would give you any clues as to why Amanda was murdered. Tragic as it is, we just want to get on with our lives in peace.’

  As Delany gripped his wife by her elbow, helping her to stand, for the first time there was some real emotion in his face.

  Anna watched them from one of the station’s windows. Mr Delany was hurrying his wife to a waiting Mercedes, their driver ready to help them inside. Mrs Delany was sobbing as she got into the back of the car, Mr Delany slamming the doors shut to sit in the front beside their driver.

  Anna turned to Simon, commenting, ‘Well, at least she’s weeping. I have never met a couple like them, so hateful, arrogant and in denial that they could have had anything to do with why Amanda was so estranged from them. I know I would be; he was really horrible.’

  Simon nodded. ‘It was hard to keep him with me any longer. He’d only been to her mews house once before it was done up. Apart from that, he said he hadn’t spoken to her or seen her since she was in rehab.’

  ‘That’s odd.’ Anna frowned. ‘His wife said that she was the one who arranged the rehab. Did he say if his wife was with him when he went to visit her?’

  ‘No, just that that was the last time he had been with her.’

  Anna went back to her office feeling depressed. Whether it was due to the experience of interviewing two very bitter and cold parents, or because she couldn’t help but feel for the dead girl, she wasn’t sure. She knew that shock and grief often made loved ones react in strange ways that could even be construed as suspicious. She could understand why Amanda had been so promiscuous; that what she was desperately looking for was love. She wondered if someone Amanda had thought loved her had killed her. Packing up to leave for the night, Anna made a note in her diary to check when Amanda was at the Drury and see whether she had had any visitors while she was at the clinic.

  Suddenly thoughtful, Anna tapped her diary with her pen and went into the incident room. Checking on the board the items removed from the dead girl’s home, she saw that the calendar from the kitchen was listed, but there was no mention of a diary. This didn’t feel right: with such a hectic lifestyle, let alone work commitments, Amanda was certain to have kept some kind of a diary. Also, as a well-known actress, surely she would have had some kind of blog or a website, even a fan page, but to date they had found nothing.

  She put in a call to Andrea Lesser, Amanda’s theatrical agent. The answer machine was on so she left a message asking her to call back. By now it was almost eight o’clock and Anna felt tired. It had been a long day with poor results, and she was eager to get home, have a shower and an early night to start refreshed in the morning.

  Chapter Four

  Anna was in the incident room early the next morning and had written up her interview with Amanda’s parents. She had also listed the interviews to be arranged by DC Joan Falkland with Amanda’s three ex-lovers – Scott Myers, Rupert Mitchell and Colin O’Dell.

  Simon joined her in her office and asked if she wanted him along to the interviews. He grinned, adding that he was certain she wouldn’t, as half the females in the station were panting over Scott Myers, never mind Colin O’Dell.

  ‘Depends on what you’ve lined up,’ Anna responded tetchily. ‘Whatever you have is priority because, as yet, Joan hasn’t confirmed exactly when I am to meet them, and Colin O’Dell is filming in Dublin.’

  ‘I want to go over to forensics and push them a bit. We should have the post-mortem results in this morning. I wouldn’t mind finishing up the interviews with the rest of the cast and crew and then we can decide who to eliminate from the case.’

  Anna cocked her head to one side. ‘I’m sure you’ll find some reason to question Amanda’s pretty little blonde standin again.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’ Simon was on the defensive. ‘I’ll want to ask everyone what they know about the people listed on Amanda’s mobile phone, plus we’ve found a few text messages and—’

  Anna interrupted him. ‘I haven’t seen that report; it’s not up on the board.’

  ‘Because, sweetheart, I’ve only just had the information from technical support.’

  Anna was really tetchy now. She hated being patronised and was also starting to dislike Simon; he was so self-assured and even though they were the same rank, she constantly felt as if he was belittling her. Her desk phone rang. It was the switchboard: Andrea Lesser was on the line.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said coldly to Simon and he walked out. ‘Miss Lesser, thank you for returning my call.’

  The agent was certain that Amanda had to have possessed some sort of a diary. Her agency used to send her appointments by e-mail, often marking out for the week where she was to be, who would be her drivers, and about film premières she was to attend and so forth. Andrea Lesser agreed to send Anna copies of these dates, but reminded her that some of it would be very private and should not be made public. Anna assured her that the information would be held at the station.

  ‘She was invited to virtually the opening of an envelope,’ Andrea Lesser continued, ‘so she must have kept some kind of record. Then there were all her boyfriends. I know she kept a couple or more on the go at the same time.’

  Anna then put in a call to the station’s press office to make sure they sent her press coverage of Amanda going back as far as they could. Next, she asked Barbara to Google Amanda and print off all the articles she could find. When she asked if the laptop removed from Amanda’s home had been checked out, Barbara rolled her eyes.

  ‘Not yet. The lab has got it and they’ll be processing all the data.’

  ‘Check the e-mails.’


  Barbara gave a sarcastic gasp. ‘Oh right, as if we wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘It should have been done by now, so put some pressure on whoever is dealing with it.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  Anna walked away as Barbara called over to Joan, ‘Get them to hurry the laptop details over to us, will you, Joan?’

  The other DC shrugged and picked up her desk phone. ‘Simon said he was gonna talk to them, but if you insist …’

  ‘Yeah, Simon says a lot of things’, Anna interjected, ‘but he doesn’t get them done!’

  Joan waited until Anna was out of earshot. She was a dowdy, thin-faced woman in her late thirties, who had never married but lived in hope, unlike Barbara, who was married to a plumber and had two children. They worked well together and neither particularly liked Anna, perhaps because, unlike them, she never gossiped and very rarely joined them in the local pub for a drink after work.

  ‘You know what she’s got me doing?’ she said.

  Barbara shook her head.

  ‘She’s only had me line up appointments with Rupert Mitchell and Scott Myers.’

  Barbara whistled. ‘Both of them?’

  ‘Yes, and that’s not all. She’s planning to fly to Dublin to meet Colin O’Dell as he’s filming over there.’

  ‘Shit! She’s got all three of them. I was hoping they might be brought in, especially Rupert Mitchell. He’s a real looker …’

  The famous Drury Clinic was located close to Richmond Park. Anna had made an appointment with the consultant registrar who admitted all the patients, but was told that he could not possibly divulge any of their patients’ private medical records. Moreover, the psychiatrist who had been dealing with Amanda’s case was no longer working there. Dr Eamon Suchet had moved to a practice elsewhere; Anna was given his forwarding address. When she called to make an appointment, his secretary said he would be available either within the hour or first thing the next morning.