Silent Scream

by Lynda La Plante

  Josh Lyons’s office was dominated by a massive desk and a bookcase containing rows of paperbacks, a large plasma TV and walls decorated with posters of their recently published books – Sex Slave, My Drug Horror, Days as Page Three, Life After Game Show. Mr Lyons himself was nowhere to be seen. Anna sat in an uncomfortable red plastic chair placed in front of the desk and looked over the lurid book titles. Then Lyons, a small, well-preserved, sun-tanned medallion-weaving type, swept in and beamed at Anna.

  ‘Sorry, I was in a meeting.’ Heavy cologne permeated the office.

  Anna introduced herself, certain it was going to be a waste of her time. Lyons sat behind his desk in an over-large leather chair, listening as she explained that she was investigating the murder of Amanda Delany.

  ‘God, that was terrible, beyond belief. I mean, she was so special, a real talent. I wouldn’t say I knew her well, but what a shock, she was lovely.’

  ‘So you had met her?’

  ‘Yeah, I’d met her – course I had.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  They had first met at a nightclub, he explained, and met up again shortly afterwards.

  ‘She came here?’

  ‘No, we had lunch at Le Caprice. I’ve got the exact date somewhere.’ He opened a drawer and took out a desk diary.

  ‘Could you tell me why she contacted you?’

  He thumbed through his diary, preoccupied.

  ‘It was four months ago. We’d exchanged numbers ’cos I said I would like to talk to her.’

  ‘Can I ask you what it was about?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. I offered her a book deal. You know, she was a real star and in the press every two minutes and I just reckoned she’d be up for it.’ He jabbed at a page of his diary. ‘Here you go! It was exactly four months ago that we met to discuss writing her memoir. I’d even got a good ghostwriter to work with her. Believe you me, she would have needed a lot of help.’

  ‘Did she submit material to you?’

  ‘She did. What I said to her was that we’d need some indication that she’d be able to come up with the goods – know what I mean? Not in those exact words, of course.’ He laughed.

  ‘So, would you mind telling me how far you got with—’ Anna started, but Lyons interrupted.

  ‘We were about to draw up a contract and …’ He shook his head. ‘Can you imagine what it would be worth to us now? Jesus, sorry, that sounds so money-grabbing, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘How far had the negotiations gone?’

  Lyons rocked in his chair. ‘We had a very expensive lunch.’

  ‘Who was she with when you first met her at the nightclub?’

  As far as he could remember, she was with a number of people, but he didn’t recognise any of them. He had simply approached her and given her his card, asking if she had ever considered writing her autobiography. At first she didn’t seem interested, but when he said he had published many Number One bestsellers, she was more intrigued.

  ‘She didn’t mince her words, but came straight out and asked how much she would get. I told her that we had paid a considerable amount for these.’ He gestured to his framed posters on the wall. ‘I obviously couldn’t start talking money there and then and I told her so, but she was quite insistent. I eventually said that depending on ghostwriters or whatever was required from us, she could be looking at starting at around half a million.’

  ‘And her reaction?’

  ‘She agreed to meet me and, in fact, called the next afternoon and we arranged to have lunch.’

  ‘Could you take me through what happened at lunch?’

  ‘Sure. She was delightful and very enthusiastic and also, which surprised me, eager to write it herself

  ‘Did you discuss money again?’

  ‘She’d checked out what a number of other show-business people had been advanced and she said that she would want over a million. I was a bit flabbergasted, but the reality is that this is the kind of money we’ve been paying for this lot.’ Again, he gestured to his posters.

  ‘Did she not want her agent to be present?’

  ‘Absolutely not – though that would be the usual route. If they didn’t use their theatrical agent, they usually got a literary agent to handle the negotiations, but Amanda seemed to be intent on dealing with it all herself, and I have to say she seemed pretty well clued-up.’

  ‘How did it progress from there?’

  Lyons spread his hands wide.

  ‘I suggested to her that before we finalised any negotiations we have another meeting, allowing both of us to think about the project.’

  ‘Did you ask her to show you chapters or any samples of her writing?’

  ‘Yes, I did. She didn’t want to come into the office here in case any press were to see her. She wanted our discussions kept very secret, so that no one knew what she was up to.’

  ‘But she met you at Le Caprice. That’s a very popular restaurant, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but she came by car and it dropped her directly at the front – and unless someone inside the restaurant recognised her, I doubt if anyone would have known what we were meeting about. I also left before her.’

  ‘Did you see her drive herself?’

  ‘No, she had a driver.’

  ‘The next meeting?’

  Lyons looked in his diary. ‘I went to a flat belonging to some friends of hers, nasty little dump in Maida Vale.’

  ‘Did you meet anyone there other than Amanda?’

  ‘No, she was alone.’

  Anna waited for him to continue.

  ‘She showed me some pages she had printed off from her laptop. She refused to allow me to leave with them, but insisted I read them there and then. It was a bit ridiculous as they were pages of poems and not exactly what I was after. I explained to her that the whole point of writing her memoirs was really to focus more on her childhood, her lovers, her career as an actress; I wasn’t that interested in her poetry! Frankly, I doubted if anyone else would be either.’

  He described how she took the pages back, tore them up in front of him and then asked him exactly what kind of thing he wanted her to write.

  ‘Her relationships with various actors, I said, would need to be part of the book. Maybe a few brief chapters about her childhood, but basically we would have to have as much scandal as possible to sell the book, and obviously the more explicit, the easier it would be for us to promote it. If we were to pay her a big advance, I would need some indication from her as to how far she would be prepared to go, and I would also require photographs and so on.’

  Anna jotted down a few notes and asked if Amanda had done as he had asked.

  ‘No. She called me twice to ask about the legal side – you know, how far should she go in naming names, and I explained to her that she should not worry too much about that as our legal team would obviously look into anything that could have repercussions.’

  By then Lyons was certain that they would need a ghostwriter to help her, but was waiting for the right opportunity to tell her so. In the meantime, he simply encouraged her to start thinking about what the content of the book would eventually be.

  ‘I reckoned by the next call or meeting she would either come up with the goods and then we would be able to negotiate her advance, but …’ He shook his head. ‘She was dead, a great shock to me and to some of my staff’

  ‘So they knew she was possibly writing her memoirs?’

  ‘Not everyone, but my editor-in-chief knew and we had approached a writer. But nothing was confirmed and I’d given strict instructions that we had to keep the author’s name under wraps.’

  ‘Why do you think Miss Delany didn’t want her agent to know about your proposition?’

  ‘I have no idea. She inferred that if the deal was leaked to the press she would deny any dealings with this company. I understood; we’ve often kept authors’ identities top secret and used other names on their manuscripts so as to keep everything confidential.’

 
‘Did you agree on an advance?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Could you tell me what it was?’

  ‘I can, but it was still negotiable. We hadn’t exchanged any contracts and, as I’ve said, for such a young woman, she was extraordinarily confident and knowledgeable. She wanted one and half million, half to be paid when we signed the contract and half on publication.’

  ‘Did you agree to this amount?’

  ‘In theory, I suppose I did – but I told her that it would be dependent on how far she would be prepared to go to spill the beans about her life.’ He halted. ‘I’ll always remember what she said. You know, she was extraordinarily pretty, with the clearest blue eyes. She was very skinny, of course, and she just picked at her food.’

  Lyons looked away for a moment, sighing.

  ‘She was wearing a skimpy T-shirt, a denim miniskirt – none of it looked as if it had been washed or ironed – and these big furry boots that made her legs look skeleton-thin. There was no jewellery, nothing that indicated she was already not only famous, but wealthy. They say the camera never lies, don’t they? I think what she had was a perfect photogenic face …’

  Anna waited while he stared at some point on the wall behind her head.

  ‘What was it she said to you, Mr Lyons?’ she prompted.

  ‘She said that she would “dish the dirt on all the bastards who had felt they were too good for her, that she’d name names and make sure they all paid for what they had done to her” …’

  Anna was being ushered out of Josh Lyons’s office when she remembered to ask him if he knew whether Amanda had kept a diary. He didn’t hesitate. At their last lunch she had brought a thick book with her. It looked very well-thumbed, with a small lock, and was pinkish-coloured if somewhat grubby. When at some point he’d asked if she would be able to remember things from her past, she had patted it. Giggling, she said that she never forgot anything. This was a five-year diary and she wrote in it every night. She had had it beside her when he visited her flat.

  Anna thanked Lyons for being so helpful and smiled when he suggested that if ever she wanted to write about her own life, she should contact him.

  ‘Just a joke,’ he said pleasantly, as the lift door opened.

  Chapter Eleven

  Justin Smalls was a blond-haired man in his early thirties, wearing a snazzy suit with the cuffs turned back to reveal a green satin lining, pleasant but with a snobbish air about him. Before introducing himself as one of the agents with International Theatrical Agents, ITA, he asked Anna if she was there to discuss the parking arrangements; they had been having some difficulty with their landlord. Anna quickly showed him her ID. He sat down promptly, but at some distance from her.

  ‘Wow, that sounds rather ominous,’ he commented when she outlined the reason she was there and asked him if he had met Amanda Delany.

  ‘You see,’ she went on, ‘I really want to know if anyone from ITA had approached her to represent her.’

  Smalls shook his head. He himself had never approached Miss Delany, nor, he believed, had any of his fellow agents. He suggested that perhaps Anna had been given incorrect information.

  ‘Andrea Lesser had represented Amanda since the start of her career,’ he pointed out. ‘I really doubt Miss Delany would have considered leaving her, as Andrea is extremely well-respected.’

  Anna stood up, ready to leave.

  ‘Have you been told otherwise?’ he asked.

  ‘We are just making enquiries, so thank you for your time.’ She felt uneasy. He seemed to look down at her as being hardly worth wasting his time on.

  But if she felt that Justin Smalls had been dismissive of her, it was even worse at Payne & Hudson, a much smaller agency with offices in a rundown mews off Wardour Street.

  ‘Amanda Delany,’ Jennifer Hudson, the owner, barked in an upper-crust tone, tossing her hair and making her looped earrings swing. ‘I don’t say that I wouldn’t have jumped at the chance, but she was very firmly with Andrea Lesser and I would never have tried to poach her. I’ve had enough run-ins to last me, and if I had tried to represent Amanda, Andrea would really have gone for the jugular’

  ‘Do you know of anyone who might have been interested?’

  Jennifer Hudson took off the large green glasses perched on her nose and squinted at Anna.

  ‘Any agent worth their salt would have wanted her. She had tremendous potential and was to my mind a far better actress than she was ever given credit for. That said, she was also trouble, with her penchant for seducing her leading men, plus her known drug problems, but, one has to be honest in this sad day and age, it doesn’t seem to really harm their careers; on the contrary. But she might have done some damage as far as working in the US was concerned, as they are really very much against employing anyone from here with a history of drug abuse. Mind you, there are strings that can be pulled and I am sure that Andrea Lesser knew everyone who could work the system.’

  ‘So there was never any rumour that she was contemplating changing agents?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge – and word would certainly spread. It’s a very small industry so not a lot goes past me or anyone I know.’

  Anna stood up, then as an afterthought, she took out a photograph.

  ‘Could I ask if you recognise this man?’ She passed over the photograph that she had taken outside Liberty.

  ‘I don’t know him, but I do know who he is. He works in the City, and I believe handles some actors’ investments. I think, but please don’t quote me on this, he was hit very hard in the recent banking nightmare. Fortunately, none of my clients lost money – but I know a number of people who went down a bundle.’

  ‘His name?’ Anna prompted.

  ‘Andrew Smith-Barker.’

  ‘Do you have a contact number or an address?’

  Jennifer Hudson peered over her thick-rimmed glasses and shook her head.

  ‘Sorry, no. Andrea Lesser would, of course. I’ve seen her with him at a few social functions.’

  Headed back to the car park, Anna put in a call to the incident room and asked Barbara to track down Andrew Smith-Barker. She was stuck in a traffic jam in Regents Street on her way back to the station when her mobile rang.

  ‘Hi, Anna, it’s Pete.’

  She put him onto speaker.

  ‘It’s not much, but something’s been bothering me and it might mean going back to the pathologist to double-check.’

  ‘I’m all ears,’ Anna said, inching forwards. Whichever way she looked, the traffic was solid.

  ‘When I was at Amanda Delany’s place – and I got the call-out early – Scene of Crime Officers were already working and she had been certified as dead, but the body was still in situ until I’d completed my scene examination.’

  ‘Yes?’ Anna was impatient to hear what he had to say.

  ‘Well, I recall the bedroom was small, the whole place was not very spacious, and with so many people coming and going …’

  ‘Yes? Come on, Pete, don’t keep me in suspense any longer. What is it?’

  ‘It was quite a cold day for summer and had been a chilly night, as I recall. Lots of people have been putting the heating on, haven’t they, and Amanda obviously did too. Judy, my assistant, remembered one of the officers saying they had been sweating, as the central heating system had been turned up very high when they arrived. So someone, and I don’t know who, had turned it off. As it was, it was still very stuffy and we had to open a window to get some air into the place. I think the Crime Scene Manager at the time of the examination gave the wrong temperature.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t understand where you’re going with this.’ Anna eased the car another few feet forward.

  ‘Time of death. If the heating had been on full blast when she was killed, this would have advanced decomposition; rigor mortis had already come and gone. It would mean, Anna, that the timeframe for her murder was possibly a few hours earlier than has been estimated. I’ve had a chat to the pathologist and he agrees.’


  ‘OK, I’ll look into it, but I know the central-heating timer and thermostat would have been checked.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m sure. Anyways, apart from that, I’m sorry to say we’ve come up with nothing that I think can help your case. We’re still enhancing and examining the fingerprints from the house, but as I told you, it was remarkably devoid of prints as she had only just moved in. I’ve sent what matches we have from the voluntary prints taken and brought to us. None, by the way, matched any criminal ones on our database, but we’re still checking.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You free for dinner at all?’

  ‘Not for a while, Pete. We’re working round the clock on this one, but as soon as I do have some free time, I’ll call you.’

  ‘OK, nice talking to you.’

  No sooner had Anna cut off the call from Pete than her mobile rang again. This time it was Barbara. She had traced the Knightsbridge address and phone number of Andrew Smith-Barker, and Anna decided she would make an unscheduled call on him.

  ‘Good morning.’

  Anna, sitting waiting in the reception area of Andrew Smith-Barker’s offices, stood up.

  ‘Please come into my office. It’s Detective Travis, correct?’

  ‘Yes.’ She picked up her briefcase and followed him, surprised that he appeared to be so handsome, more so than when she had first seen him through her car window with Andrea Lesser. He was tall, at least six feet three, and was wearing an immaculately tailored suit. His thick hair was cut short and flecked with grey, and he had dark brown eyes in an angular face with a slight hooked nose. She could smell Cuban cigars and subtle cologne, like magnolia flowers.

  Andrew Smith-Barker’s office was spacious and elegantly furnished, dominated by a carved oak desk. The walls were lined with files and books and a couple of oil paintings. Nothing was out of place, not a loose paper to be seen.