Silent Scream

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘Right, go and get dressed and I’ll be in reception.’

  ‘You have a car?’ Gordon asked as he stood behind the small reception counter closing up his appointment book.

  ‘Yes, but it’s still in the garage,’ Anna replied, handing him a cheque.

  ‘Whereabouts are you going?’

  ‘Tower Bridge.’

  ‘Let me give you a lift. I live further up the river in an old warehouse conversion.’ He fetched his jacket and turned off the lights, waiting at the door.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t. Don’t forget your neck brace, but I wouldn’t advise you wear it.’

  ‘Thank you. A lift would be great.’ She held the neck brace over her arm and followed him out.

  ‘Are you married?’ he asked casually as he drove through the West End.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just to your job?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She wanted to ask him the same question, but felt awkward. When they arrived at her block of flats, he asked if it was also a warehouse conversion. It was just a matter of course to ask him up to see her top-floor flat.

  ‘This is really great,’ he said, as she opened the doors onto the small balcony.

  They went into the lounge. Seeing her jumble of files and printed cards, laid out over the floor and on the table, she apologised.

  ‘Hey, you don’t have to worry, but I can see you bring your work home with you.’

  She opened a bottle of wine and fetched glasses from the kitchen. When she returned, he was looking over the cards.

  ‘What are these names?’ he asked.

  ‘Suspects.’

  ‘In the Amanda Delany case?’

  ‘Yes.’

  As they sat on the sofa and ate cheese and crackers, Anna couldn’t remember a time when she had, with an almost total stranger, not only discussed a case she was working on, but talked about her suspicions.

  ‘It’s a hard one to piece together, as we have a slew of suspects who had some kind of axe to grind against the victim, from ex-lovers to agents and even parents.’

  Gordon was an attentive listener. He asked sensible questions and Anna enjoyed talking to him and hearing his views. She described how Amanda’s body had been found, what items were missing from her house, how every time they made a strong move forward they took two steps back. How the team strongly believed that both her agent and the investment banker had a motive, but that she herself felt that neither would be capable of murder. She didn’t even consider how unethical it was, divulging so much confidential material to a near-stranger.

  ‘Unless they hired someone,’ Gordon suggested.

  ‘Even that’s hard to believe. I think her agent was driven by her emotional tie to the investment banker.’

  ‘Well, a woman in love is capable of Christ only knows what. Obsession can drive someone to do the unthinkable.’

  ‘But to hire a hitman? Come on, I don’t think so. Also would a hitman rape her?’

  Gordon picked up a photograph of Amanda.

  ‘She was very beautiful, very famous – and if you think about the rumour that someone had sexual intercourse with Marilyn Monroe in the mortuary, maybe the killer couldn’t resist.’

  Anna frowned.

  ‘Men have sexual obsessions,’ he continued, ‘and if you take away the hitman, then that will leave you with a man who was obsessed by her, someone whom she may have hurt, betrayed or made to look foolish, and that could result in a fury that made him stab her with such ferocity. You say he left marks of the hilt of the knife?’

  Anna sipped her wine, listening, aware that she had also come to this conclusion.

  Gordon looked through the file of photographs showing the victim in situ.

  ‘He never touched her face.’

  Anna drained her glass, knowing she had gone too far.

  ‘I’d better put those away. Everything we’ve discussed is highly confidential, so please don’t mention any of it to James Langton.’

  Gordon looked surprised. ‘As if I would.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have shown you any of this or even discussed the case. It’s very unprofessional of me.’

  ‘Well, it’s quite unprofessional of me to do this.’ He reached over and drew her close and kissed her. She was so surprised she didn’t resist, nor when he kissed her again.

  ‘How’s your neck?’ he asked softly.

  She moved closer to rest in his arms. ‘No pain.’

  He was silent for a few moments and then looked down at her as she lay against his shoulder.

  ‘I could leave and we make a date for tomorrow, or I can stay and still see you again.’

  ‘I think …’ she murmured.

  He tilted her chin gently and rubbed her cheek with his thumb.

  ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘No, stay, or at least have another glass of wine.’

  ‘Ah no, better not, Detective Travis. Drink driving and all that.’

  He got up and reached for his jacket, while she remained on the sofa, wondering how she could persuade him to stay. He put his empty wine glass in the middle of her printed cards.

  ‘Have you got a hunch as to which one is the killer?’

  Anna joined him at the table and he slipped an arm around her.

  ‘I don’t know. I keep moving them around.’

  ‘Maybe it isn’t any of them. Then what do you do?’

  She sighed. ‘Go back to square one. Start all over again, and if that doesn’t work, then we have a cold case.’

  Gordon stared at her cards and then hugged her gently.

  ‘I would think whoever it is will not be cold, but burning up, not with the fact that he got away with it, but with the knowledge of what he had done. Paid her back, then taken her precious little toy rabbit as a keepsake of when she slept with him and held it in her arms.’

  Anna turned to him. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Everyone’s a detective,’ he said, smiling.

  She stepped back, staring at him.

  ‘No, the toy rabbit. I never mentioned it to you. How did you know that it’s missing?’

  ‘It’s in the file.’

  ‘Which file?’

  Gordon sighed and lifted his hands up in a submissive gesture.

  ‘All right, I’ll come clean.’

  ‘You better had,’ she said sharply.

  ‘Eh, come on, don’t speak to me like that. If you must know, it was James who told me, at our last session. He was asking me …’

  ‘He talked to you about the case?’

  ‘Not that much of it, just a few bits and pieces.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Maybe because of exactly what you said to me, that it was confidential. It only came about because he had his son with him and the lad had this teddy bear that he carries everywhere and James said how the kid creates when it goes missing.’

  ‘His son came to one of the sessions with you?’

  ‘Yeah, I also work with children, cranial massage. He’s quite a handful.’

  ‘Tommy?’

  ‘Yeah. We started talking about the reasons kids retain something like a comfort blanket.’

  Anna was nonplussed. She was angry, and at the same time couldn’t really believe what she was hearing. Gordon put his jacket down and poured another glass of wine.

  ‘We discussed the case, not in detail as I just said, but he asked me why I thought your victim’s toy had been taken. I suggested that your killer may have had a perverse reason for taking it because he knew how much it meant to her.’

  ‘You should have mentioned this to me.’ Anna reached for the bottle of wine.

  ‘Why? Like I said, it was confidential on the one hand and on the other, I suppose I wanted to impress you.’

  ‘Impress me?’

  He put his glass down unfinished. ‘I’d better go.’

  But Anna was keen now to know exactly what else Langton had sa
id. ‘Did he discuss me at all?’ She couldn’t help it.

  It was Gordon’s turn to look phased. He shook his head.

  ‘Did he call you to say he’d given me your number?’

  ‘Yes, and he said that you were a kind of special person and would I look after you.’

  ‘Kind of special?’

  He frowned, as if annoyed at her persistence.

  ‘Did he say anything else about me?’

  ‘No. Just that you were in a bit of trouble and had hurt your neck and if I could see you he’d be grateful.’

  Anna sat down on the sofa; she drank the entire remains of the wine in her glass.

  ‘We had an affair, we lived together. It’s over now, but I have trouble getting rid of the … leftover feelings.’

  Gordon sat down a few feet away from her.

  ‘He never mentioned that to me, Anna, nor has he ever discussed you in any previous sessions. When he came to me he was in a very bad way. His leg injury was excruciating and the chest wound hadn’t healed well. He was in a really low state, mentally and physically. He was very concerned that he would have to retire and I could see that he had created more problems for himself by attempting to over-exercise, prove himself fit … This is, as you’ve got to realise, just as private and confidential as your telling me about the murder enquiry.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘I really like him, admire him – he’s a very strong individual and with a powerful magnetism, but he’s also … I got him to cut down his smoking as that was killing him. And I want you to know, truthfully, that he did not discuss anything about you or any previous liaisons you had together, cross my heart.’

  He turned, smiling as he crossed his heart with his right hand and reached for her with his left.

  He kissed her hand. ‘All right?’

  She nodded and kept her hand in his.

  ‘What did you mean by leftover feelings?’

  Anna didn’t want to get into it and tried to withdraw her hand but he held it firm.

  ‘I wasn’t just in love with him, I was enamoured of him. He is a brilliant detective, innovative and ruthless and obsessive, all those things rolled into one. He made me feel extraordinary, but he also made me feel incompetent and inexperienced, which I was. He was very difficult to be with when he was injured, a nightmare patient.’

  Her eyes welled up with tears.

  ‘I just couldn’t deal with having so little of him. He had so many other commitments – women, children – and I knew I had to end it before he made me feel totally inadequate.’

  ‘So these leftover feelings are what? Regrets?’

  She bit her lip, trying to understand herself what she had said.

  ‘I feel so much for him, but it’s like I’m a schoolgirl whenever he’s around. Part of me doesn’t believe that I lived with him, that he ever appeared to care for me. I think he cared for me as much as he cares for anyone; he told me once that he could only give me so much, and I wanted and needed more. It’s hard for me to be working with him now. I can’t ever say anything too personal and a few of the team know that we were together, so I think it makes him very cautious not to show me any favours.’

  Tears trickled down her cheeks. Having never had anyone close with whom she could discuss her feelings for Langton, it was incongruous that she was opening up to an almost total stranger.

  ‘I have such a lack of self-esteem and I think I try to cover it up. What’s the word to describe someone who is always trying to please? Because that’s what it feels like I am doing, trying to please him because I keep thinking that it was me who was at fault, my fault it never worked. But then it was me who broke it off, not him …’

  ‘That sounds to me like a lot of leftover feelings.’ Gordon touched her shoulder, patting it lightly.

  ‘He doesn’t respect me.’

  ‘Do you respect him?’

  ‘Of course I do. He’s always had my respect; it’s just I hate feeling so inadequate around him.’

  ‘Do you want him back?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t.’

  Gordon smiled, said he felt the lady did protest too much.

  ‘It’s as if I was fresh out of training school.’ She stood up and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. ‘I’m a bloody good detective. I’ve got results in one case after another, and my old boss put me up for promotion. Then in walks Langton, kicks him out, kicks half the team out, brings in his old buddies and he even …’ She drained Gordon’s glass. ‘He even took me off a television crime show because he felt I wasn’t capable, as if I was a naughty ten-year-old girl. He said it was because I might be recognised but … I wasn’t drunk; I wasn’t in a cat fight …’

  ‘Wow, you just lost me there.’

  ‘I never knew Amanda, I’d never even seen one of her films, so I have had to immerse myself into who she was, and the more I find out, the more wretched I think she was … It’s as if she was surrounded by people feeding off her, and all the time she was crying out for help.’

  Unable to stop the tears, Anna broke into sobs. Gordon held her in his arms.

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me,’ Anna wept. ‘I’ve never done this before.’

  He stroked her hair.

  ‘You know what they say about magical hands; I’ve just released a lot of bad things you’ve stored up. Next time you come to see me, I’ll give you manual lymphatic drainage. It stimulates your lymph system, boosting the body’s immune system and I’ve been told that some of my patients float out of my clinic’

  She laughed and stood on tiptoe to kiss him. She loved his smell, partly because of his perfumed oils and aftershave like fresh lemons. She loved the feel of him; he was slender yet muscular without an ounce of fat on his six-foot frame.

  ‘You know, I think with a few sessions I’ll get that son of a bitch out of my system.’

  He looked into her bright, brilliant blue eyes, and eased her away from him.

  ‘When you have done that, call me. I’m not going to get into any healing process, Anna, I deal with that all day.’

  She was afraid he was going to walk away from her and she grabbed his hand.

  ‘Listen to me. I have never, I swear, never told anyone how I feel about James Langton, and it’s over; you’ve made it even more over.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘You sure?’ Gordon cupped her chin to kiss her. He then whispered, ‘Do you have something to eat? I’m starving.’

  She sprang away, heading to the kitchen, saying, ‘How about a toasted bacon sandwich?’ She suddenly remembered that was exactly what Langton had ordered her to make for him.

  ‘I’m a vegetarian.’

  She offered toasted cheese, lettuce and tomatoes, and a chilled bottle of Pinot Grigio. Gordon slowly took off his jacket for the third time.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Anna slept beside Gordon with no thought of Amanda Delany, no thought of Langton, no anxiety and, crooked in the security of his arms after they had made love, no bad dreams. All her pent-up emotions had been released.

  Gordon was not so relaxed. He lay wide awake for hours, wondering if he had just been very foolish. When he looked down at Anna’s sleeping face, so innocent, he wished that he had not been so easily drawn in. He’d had a number of these types of nights and had always extricated himself quickly, partly out of professional concern, but also partly to protect himself; his last love affair had left him badly hurt. What he would never admit to Anna was that he had, when Langton had talked about her, become enthralled. He remembered Langton’s words.

  ‘She’s a total mystery to me, Gordon. She’s childlike one moment and then the next she’s a strong and forceful woman and I’ve never been able to deal with her strengths. She frightens the life out of me because I am constantly and inexplicably drawn to her. She rests inside my soul and inside my brain.’

  Langton’s opening up to him about his feelings for Anna had moved
the young man deeply.

  ‘I can’t give her what she wants,’ James observed morosely.

  Gordon, as he massaged his back, asked what it was he felt she wanted.

  After a long pause, Langton had said, ‘Unconditional love. I don’t have that much to give and I don’t know of any man who would have it either. Reason being that everyone – I mean every man of my age – has old baggage clinging to him and she has none. That’s what makes her so rare.’

  Lying now with Anna in his arms, Gordon wasn’t sure if he could deal with that rare quality of hers, maybe because she had been so honest with him about her feelings towards Langton. He doubted he could reciprocate. He wished, too, that he had been more cautious, certain that, if Langton was to discover he’d slept with Anna, he’d not only lose someone he now valued as a friend, but a client who had entrusted him with details of his private life.

  ‘It’s me. Open up.’

  Anna hurtled back into the bedroom as Gordon stepped out of the shower. They had woken early the next morning and made love and would have gone on, but for the insistent ringing of the doorbell.

  ‘It’s Langton. For God’s sake, get dressed.’

  Gordon fumbled with his clothes. This was the last thing he wanted. It seemed they had only seconds before the doorbell rang again.

  ‘I came to see how you were,’ Langton said when Anna finally opened the door, and presented her with a modest bunch of flowers. Then he stared past her as Gordon appeared down the hall.

  ‘Morning, James,’ Gordon said coolly. ‘Anna left this in my surgery last night,’ he swung her collar brace, ‘so I dropped it back this morning. You know my feelings about these things though.’

  Langton nodded as Gordon handed Anna the brace, then held out his hand to shake hers.

  ‘Thanks for the coffee. I’m sorry I got here so early.’ He turned, smiling, to Langton. ‘Off to play squash. I’ll no doubt see you at the surgery later in the week.’

  ‘You want a coffee?’ Anna asked Langton when Gordon had gone.

  ‘No, I just came by to see how you were. Recovered, it seems.’

  ‘I was worried during the night about not wearing the brace, as the hospital had said I should keep it on. But then I didn’t have my car and I couldn’t face using public transport to go all the way back to Dr Berry’s surgery, so I gave him a call.’