Silent Scream

by Lynda La Plante

  Langton nodded and walked past her into the lounge. She had a moment of panic wondering if she’d left the wine glasses out. Then she remembered they’d opened another bottle in the kitchen and taken the glasses with them. She glanced into the kitchen and, seeing the debris of their evening snack left on the breakfast counter, she closed the door.

  ‘You’ve been working,’ he said, staring at her printed cards and then looking to the sofa with all her files stacked across it.

  ‘Yes, well, I couldn’t sleep.’

  He cocked his head to one side. ‘So how did you find young Gordon?’

  ‘You gave me the address.’

  ‘I know that. I meant, did he make you feel he’d done some good?’

  ‘Oh yes, fantastic, which is why I foolishly skipped off without the brace. I felt light-headed.’

  Langton checked his watch. ‘You going to come into the station today?’

  ‘I was planning to, but wasn’t sure.’

  ‘You look all right to me.’ He stared at her and she flushed. ‘I always liked it when you’d just woken up – no make-up, cheeks flushed. Not running a temperature, are you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘We’ve got a result coming in. The poor bastards who’ve been glued to the TV watching hours of CCTV footage are positive about some vehicle, and at long last we’ve retrieved the security footage from the mews. Apparently it’s not much good though, as the cameras were directed towards the front of the house rather than the mews yard.’

  ‘I’ll get dressed and come in.’

  He nodded and swung the door back and forth with the toe of his foot.

  ‘Want me to wait?’

  ‘No, no, I’ll take a shower and get a taxi in.’

  When Langton left, shutting the door behind him, Anna remained standing, unable to move. Eventually she returned to her bedroom and the unmade bed and flopped down, hugging a pillow close to her. She had lied to Langton and now she knew just how good a liar Gordon was; she had no idea whether Langton suspected they had spent the night together. She punched the pillow angrily. Even if he did, she thought, so what? He had nothing to do with her private life, yet he still came round first thing in the morning as if he had a right. This was the second time he had just appeared on her doorstep, albeit this time with a bunch of cheap flowers. She would have to talk to him.

  Holding her head under the jets of warm water in the shower, Anna remembered him saying how much he had liked the way she looked first thing in the morning. By the time she had dressed and dried her hair, she realised that Langton was not prepared to let her go. His cool attitude towards her belied the fact that he still cared, more perhaps than he wanted to admit. Instead of anger, Anna found this gave her more confidence. She felt sure that she could handle it and use it to her benefit. She felt even more buoyant when, collecting her mail, she came across a letter approving her application for promotion. The date for her first interview was in two weeks’ time.

  Andrea Lesser and Andrew Smith-Barker had been charged and released on bail to await trial for fraud. Their passports had been relinquished and warnings given that neither should attempt to leave the country. There was still a possibility that they might have hired someone to kill Amanda. Both suspects’ mobile phone and landline call lists were being checked to see if they threw up anything suspicious.

  Arriving back at the station, Anna joined the gathering in the incident room and listened as Barolli gave details of the new CCTV developments. Officers had been sifting through hours of black and white footage taken from the streets in and around the mews. They also had the security film from the mews house.

  ‘We’ve not got anything too exciting, but we can confirm that on the night before her murder the unit driver Tony James did, as he stated, drop Amanda Delany home. She was subsequently collected the following afternoon. We also have footage of a second driver driving her home on the night of her murder …’

  Barolli gave a signal for the large TV to be turned on.

  ‘It’s very grainy and we can’t make out the numberplate but here, you can see, is a black Mercedes dropping her off at four-fifteen a.m. There you can see Amanda walking from the car.’

  Everyone leaned forward, unable to see the top half of Amanda’s torso, merely her legs and a section of her skirt. They also saw the driver – again, only his legs were in view – walk round from his side of the Mercedes and wait slightly behind her as she entered the house and closed the door. The same driver returned to the Mercedes. The car made a three-point turn in the mews yard, before the tail-lights disappeared.

  ‘OK, here he comes again. We’ve got better shots as it’s now afternoon.’

  ‘Do we know which driver this is?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Yes, this is Harry James,’ Barolli snapped at her, irritated. ‘We have his written statement. Now we see him returning at five-twenty p.m. to collect Miss Delany.’

  They watched the driver walk to the front door, wait, then crouch down to look through the letterbox. This was the only time they got a reasonable full shot, but his face was unclear as it was turned away from the security camera. He then returned to the car and got inside. After fifteen minutes, he started up the car and did the same three-point turn as the Mercedes had done the night before, and drove out of the mews.

  ‘OK, we got a numberplate. It coincides with the vehicle driven by Mr Harry James.’

  Next they watched the same car returning, another vehicle hidden behind it, the taxi used by Andrea Lesser. They saw her hurrying to the front door; again they had no full shot, just her legs in high-heeled shoes. They saw her entering the house. Once the body had been discovered, police cars and various other vehicles all listed by their licence plates, pulled into the mews.

  Eventually Barolli turned the film off. As the tapes of CCTV footage from the surrounding streets were set up, Anna asked how far back they had been working. ‘We can’t go back any further than a week before the murder as the tapes had been reused,’ Barolli said. ‘Now watch closely. There are four vehicles which we’ve been unable to trace, partly due to their numberplates being obscured. First up is a black Lexus. We’ve seen this vehicle on two occasions.’

  Anna raised her hand: she recalled that Scott Myers drove a black Lexus. ‘We’re aware of that, Anna,’ was Barolli’s terse response.

  Then there were two shots of a black Mercedes with tinted windows, similar to the ones used by the unit drivers. Lastly, a Rolls-Royce was seen driving into the road away from the mews, its licence plate obscured by parked traffic.

  Anna couldn’t help wondering out loud if the Rolls-Royce could be the same one she had seen being parked outside Rupert Mitchell’s house in Kingston. She asked if any of the fingerprints from Amanda’s house being matched at forensic had been linked to Rupert Mitchell, Scott Myers and lastly Colin O’Dell.

  There had been a match with Colin O’Dell, Barolli confirmed, also Scott Myers … but none with Rupert Mitchell. O’Dell and Myers, who had denied ever going to Amanda’s mews, would be brought in and re-questioned.

  Barolli looked around the room.

  ‘We still haven’t traced Amanda’s complete set of keys. We know that four front-door keys were cut and two are missing. Did Amanda give her set to someone, and was that someone inside her mews on the night she returned home?’

  That still left one key missing.

  When Mike Lewis asked if anyone had anything new to add to the case, Anna debated with herself. She was loath to discuss her theories in front of the entire team because they were still just theories, without any strong evidence that linked to the murder.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind just running a few things by you later,’ she murmured.

  ‘Fine. I want to run a few things by you too, so in my office, say, in ten minutes?’

  Joan had, as Anna had requested, run all three James brothers through the database. Harry James had no police record, nor had the middle brother Tony, but the youngest brother Lester had
had a number of small-time convictions. None of them were serious: when he was sixteen he had been on probation for handling stolen property, and he had been arrested twice for drunken assault, but served only community service. His last brushin with the law had been more serious but took place over seven years ago. Lester had been arrested for attacking a man in a bar, was given a six-month suspended sentence and fined two thousand pounds. The Judge had warned him that if he was ever brought before a court again, he would serve a lengthy prison sentence.

  Joan had worked hard, tracking as much as possible on young Lester James. Up on the screen she had a photograph of him winning a karate championship at Crystal Palace; he was a 7th Dan Shotokan expert and she had found a display of his ability using karate weapons.

  ‘Shit, was this shown to any of the team?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Not yet. I’ve only just finished the Google job I’ve done on him. Do you want me to print out the material?’

  ‘Yes, please. I want a full suspect intelligence file prepared on him. What has he got down as a profession?’

  ‘Chauffeur and bodyguard, like his brothers.’

  ‘You get anything of interest from the fanmail?’

  ‘I’ve not had time to go through it all,’ Joan admitted, just one bag so far, and it all seems legit. Young girls wanting Amanda’s photograph and so on, but I’ll keep checking.’

  Armed with paperwork from Joan and a photograph of Lester showing him in a white karate Gi and with a crewcut hairstyle, Anna headed for Mike’s office. Lester James was handsome in a rough way, six feet two, with the same piercing blue eyes as his brothers. He was twenty-seven, unmarried, and lived in Esher.

  Anna had only just sat down in Mike’s office when Langton walked in.

  ‘Just having a word with Anna,’ Mike said rather unnecessarily.

  ‘Mind if I sit in?’

  ‘No.’

  Langton pulled up a chair to sit a few feet from Anna in front of Mike’s desk. She opened her file.

  ‘I wanted to run some stuff by Mike that I’ve been checking out. Some of it I think could be relevant, but some I’m not sure about.’

  ‘We’ll be the ones to decide,’ Langton said, crossing his legs. He seemed irritable.

  ‘Right.’

  Anna described her meeting with Mrs Delany and her impression that, as parents, she and her husband appeared to be lacking in any genuine emotion. Then she described how she had worked out, from talking to the two girls Jeannie Bale and Felicity Turner, the date and timeline of the victim’s pregnancy.

  ‘I honestly can’t see how an abortion four or five years ago has any connection to the murder,’ Langton interjected.

  Anna didn’t look up from her file.

  ‘Amanda took two return flights to France, three months apart. On the second visit she was pregnant. When she returned to London, she had an abortion that resulted in her very nearly losing her life. As it was, she was given a hysterectomy, which for a girl her age had to be physically and emotionally very stressful.’

  Mike breathed heavily through his nose, as if to telegraph his impatience. Langton pinched at the crease in his trousers.

  ‘Go on. I’m assuming there’s a reason for this backtracking.’

  Anna continued. She had no proof, but she felt there was a strong possibility that their victim could have been molested by a family member. She believed it could have begun when Amanda was very young, which would be one of the reasons why she was so attached to the toy rabbit. She may have gone to her parents for money and they refused her, perhaps even refusing to believe she was pregnant, or in total denial that it could have been by someone known to them.

  ‘For chrissakes, Anna, what has this to do with her murder?’ Langton leaned forward, tapping the desk.

  ‘I’m just getting to it,’ she snapped back. ‘Her parents, or her father alone, did come to London and did put his daughter into the Drury Clinic. Her mother stayed in France. Again, to my mind, that is suspicious, heartless.

  ‘If Amanda was sexually abused by a family member,’ she went on, ‘maybe even her father, and her parents heard that she was writing her memoirs, it would be a very strong motive to try and stop publication.’

  Langton stood up and paced the room, rubbing at his knee. ‘I don’t buy it. They may not have liked it, but murder their own daughter? No.’

  Someone close to Amanda had to have arranged the abortion, Anna insisted. Someone she trusted. She had not told her flatmates about the operation; all they knew was that she was collected afterwards by a ‘driver’ and then brought back home. Later that night, they had had to call an ambulance as Amanda was bleeding all over the place. They also phoned her parents.

  ‘Missing from her mews house, we believe, are a set of keys, her toy rabbit and part of a gold crucifix chain and, most important of all, as it could be crucial evidence, her five-year diary.’

  Langton stood up and leaned against the wall, his eyes half-closed. Mike had now straightened in his desk chair, no longer swivelling as if he was bored.

  Anna changed tack. She talked about the post mortem, the description of the knife wounds, the fact that the hilt of the knife had left an imprint on Amanda’s body. She took out a sheet of black and white photographs of various karate knives, all different shapes and sizes, and laid it on Mike’s desk. She showed them a combat knife, a typical weapon used by bodyguards. The knife wounds had been deep and methodical, inflicted by someone with great strength stabbing in a downward motion, angry rather than frenzied, taking care not to leave a mark on her face.

  Langton sat down again and rested his chin on his hand, listening.

  ‘Right now, I do not have a shred of evidence,’ Anna admitted. ‘All I do know is that there was a book offer for over a million pounds, there was a diary Amanda kept up to date and there was her cuddly toy. These items were removed by someone who knew a lot about Amanda, but who also cared about her, was perhaps in love with her, and she had either humiliated or abused them and this was a revenge murder.’

  Langton gave her a sidelong glance, as she showed them the picture of Lester James.

  ‘Both this man’s brothers worked as unit drivers on Gaslight, but sometimes, though I have no concrete evidence that this occurred, when they were busy they would bring another driver on board to cover for them. This is when both Harry and Tony used their own brother Lester, who had driven Amanda, not only on her first movie, but on two subsequent films. This man knew her, this man would have access to her private life.’

  ‘Anyone interviewed him?’ Langton asked.

  ‘It’s the first I’ve bloody heard about him,’ Mike said angrily.

  ‘We have to move very carefully,’ Langton observed. ‘If Lester James is the killer, he must believe he has got away with it. He could be a very dangerous man and as yet, we do not have a single piece of evidence against him.’ He looked at Anna. ‘Correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We need to try and discover if he was in the mews house; he’ll have his fingerprints on record. We have to prove that he was in the house and he killed her.’

  Mike was very quiet, hating that Anna had divulged all this in front of his boss. Langton gave nothing away, merely suggesting that Anna return to her office and type up her report. As she reached the door, he asked if there was anything else she might have left out. There was a note of sarcasm in his voice.

  ‘There is one thing,’ she said. ‘The pink diary was last seen at her flat by the publisher of Golden Arrow, whose name is Josh Lyons. Days ago, I suggested that we get a warrant issued to search the flat, just in case Amanda left it hidden there.’

  Anna walked out, closing the door quietly behind her. As she made her way along the corridor, she couldn’t help smiling. She could so easily have said something like, ‘Screw you, Mike, you refused to get me that search warrant,’ but she knew Langton would be onto it fast.

  Typing up her report was tedious and time-consuming work. When she got as far as the conversation b
etween Felicity and Jeannie, something jolted inside Anna’s brain. In the incident room she searched the board for details of Dan Hutchins’s death, written up because of his connection to Amanda, and looked at the photographs of the boy’s body. Felicity had said they had found him lying on the floor, a syringe beside him. The photos of the dead boy were as she described, his face partly turned away as he had vomited over himself, his sleeve rolled up and the rubber tie used to pump up his veins still attached to his arm. Anna tried to remember exactly what the girls had said. Dan had been very distressed at Amanda’s death, but they didn’t know where he had got the money to buy the amount of heroin he needed to satisfy his addiction.

  Anna read through the post-mortem report; the boy had taken a massive overdose, choking on his own vomit, lying on the floor of his bedroom.

  Anna tapped on Mike’s office door and he shouted for her to come in. Both he and Langton looked as if they had been in the middle of a heated exchange.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, there’s something else. I can’t be certain, but something doesn’t add up …’

  She laid down the photographs of Dan Hutchins’s body. The autopsy report gave cause of death as an accidental heroin overdose with no other suspicious circumstances, yet the deceased also had a very high alcohol content. Dan was a drug addict and had been on a methadone programme for more than six months. Before that, he had been on heroin, thus highly experienced in the use of hypodermic needles. This was confirmed by the report; a number of injection sites had been found on the body.

  ‘What is your point, Anna?’ Langton asked.

  ‘If you look at the way the rubber tubing is knotted around his right upper arm, it indicates that he used his left hand to wrap it round and tighten it. Often addicts put one end in their mouths to adjust the band tighter, but the longer end is facing towards the camera, not as it should be towards the dead boy. It could be that someone helped him to inject or forced the needle into his arm.’

  Langton and Mike Lewis remained silent as they passed the photographs back and forth, then put them onto the desk.