Silent Scream

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘I think she will. Stay calm, Sylvia, and don’t give anything away, will you?’

  ‘I was an actress, you know, before I became an agent.’

  Anna raised her eyes to the ceiling.

  ‘Ah yes, I thought you might have been, so I am depending on you, Sylvia. We really need to talk to Jeannie.’

  Her heart was thudding when she replaced the receiver. So much for Langton and his dismissive response to her plan to ensnare Jeannie.

  After two hours of waiting and still no call, however, Anna’s confidence that she had pulled it off was lessening. At 12.45, Barolli returned from Lester James’s flat, and went straight into Anna’s office, bearing the video of Lester’s showcase at Crystal Palace.

  ‘We got this video, but bugger all else. If he had the hots for Amanda Delany, wouldn’t you think he’d have photographs of her, magazine pictures, but there’s nothing.’

  Just as they were about to slot the video into the machine in the monitor room, Joan interrupted. There was another call from Sylvia. Jeannie had called her back and agreed to be at the audition for 4 p.m.

  Anna and Barolli sped across London in a patrol car and parked up in a side street a few yards from the Tricycle Theatre, from where they were able to monitor the coming and goings through theatre reception.

  ‘What time do you have?’

  Anna smiled. Barolli had checked the time over and over again.

  ‘Two-thirty. We just wait. From Bristol to here takes nearly a couple of hours by train.’

  ‘Busy theatre, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, they do great shows.’ Anna looked at her watch, and then at the clock on the dashboard. The waiting was now getting to her as much as Barolli.

  Josh Lyons was eating a Chinese takeaway lunch at his desk when his phone rang. He wiped his hands with a paper napkin and picked it up.

  ‘Josh, you said to put her straight through if she called.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jeannie Bale – the diary girl. Want to speak to her?’

  ‘Christ, yes!’ He took a gulp of his Starbucks coffee, and waited.

  ‘Mr Lyons?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘It’s Jeannie Bale. I’m back in London.’

  Lyons kept it casual, asking if she’d been on a holiday. She laughed, then said in a singsong voice, ‘I’ve got the diary, I’ve got the diary.’

  ‘Have you? What do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘Gimme a price. How much is it worth to you?’

  ‘Well, Miss Bale, I’d have to take a look at it. Why don’t you come in and talk to me about it?’

  ‘OK. I got an appointment at four o’clock not far from you.’

  ‘I’ve moved offices, my dear. Let me give you the new address. What time can you get here? We’re in St John’s Wood.’

  She said she would get to him as soon as she’d finished an audition.

  ‘You’ll bring the diary with you?’

  ‘Yeah, but we have to talk money, right?’

  ‘Can you give me a contact number?’

  ‘No. I’ll see you later.’

  Before he could say anything else she’d hung up. He wouldn’t talk to Skidmore, he’d make the decision about the diary himself. And also, if it was worth diddlysquat, he’d be a helpful citizen and call Detective Travis.

  At ten to four, Barolli and Anna moved from the patrol car and walked across the street. Barolli went to the theatre reception and Anna, with a radio contact, stood a short distance up the road from the theatre’s advertisements. When Jeannie arrived, Barolli would make his approach from the front and Anna from the rear.

  It was ten past four, still no show. Anna walked down a small alley by the side of the theatre, fearful that there might be another stage door. There wasn’t. Then, just as she was heading back up the alley, she saw a cab draw up. Jeannie got out, wearing her black dress with big mutton-chop sleeves and full skirt down to her ankles with black cowboy boots. Her blonde hair looked as if she had dyed it a shade lighter; it was caught up on either side of her face with bright pink butterfly grips. Anna radioed Barolli.

  ‘On her way into the theatre, wearing black, pink hair-slides and I’m right behind her.’

  Jeannie, carrying a large leather bag in her hand and another over her shoulder, walked into the theatre after paying off the taxi.

  ‘Miss Bale, Jeannie Bale?’ Barolli showed her his ID and she froze, stepping back as Anna took her arm. She put up little resistance and seemed more concerned that she would miss her audition. Anna took her leather bag, and put one hand on Jeannie’s elbow, Barolli at her other side. Jeannie became more frightened than obstreperous, and asked where they were taking her, what had she done?

  ‘You not read the papers, love?’ Barolli steered her towards the patrol car. Anna got into the front seat; he sat with Jeannie in the back as the driver pulled out into the main road, heading for the station.

  ‘I’ve not done anything.’

  ‘We just need you to answer some questions,’ Barolli said calmly, not wanting to unnerve her. Jeannie sat back, biting her nails, and then caught Anna’s eye in the rearview mirror.

  ‘I was up for a big part. You just ruined it.’

  Anna turned to her and said that there was no part; they had been trying to contact her for days.

  ‘I don’t fucking believe it! You’re telling me there was no audition?’

  ‘That’s right. We had to do what we could to trace you. We’ve been very concerned about you.’

  ‘I’ve not done anything, you’ve got no right to trick me like this. My agent was in on it, was she?’

  ‘Where’ve you been, Jeannie?’

  ‘I got a commercial.’

  ‘How come your agent didn’t know about it?’

  ‘’Cos that silly bitch couldn’t get me a job. I got it for myself, I was in Bristol.’

  ‘Why haven’t you come forward? It’s been in the papers and—’

  ‘I was working, OK?’

  ‘Fine.’ Anna stared out of the window. She found Jeannie’s patchouli-oil perfume sickening. She was tempted to tip out the contents of the bag she was holding there and then, but knew she would have to wait.

  Josh Lyons waited, and when it got to after five-thirty he began to get impatient, wondering where Jeannie Bale was. He could hardly voice his irritation to anyone else, as he had told no one about her proposed visit.

  Jeannie was taken into the station and led to an interview room for questioning about the death of Felicity Turner and the murder of Amanda Delany. Her leather bag was placed on a table in front of her. Anna was surprised how little emotion Jeannie showed over Felicity’s death; she only became tearful when they began to take out and make a note of all the items in her bag. There was a Ziploc bag full of dirty panties, two rather grey brassières, hairspray and make-up, then, wrapped in a brown paper bag, a pink diary. Its lock had been broken and its pink velvet cover was filthy. On the front of it, written in smudged black felt-tipped pen, was the name Amanda Delany. Jeannie sat stony-faced. She turned away when they showed her the diary.

  ‘I ain’t done nothing,’ she said angrily.

  Anna held up the diary.

  ‘Yes, you have, Jeannie. You have withheld evidence, you have perverted the course of justice and that is an offence, one that could, if it went to trial, put you in prison.’

  ‘But I ain’t done nothing! It was in me flat, you can’t get me for having it.’

  Barolli notified Jeannie that she was entitled to a solicitor to be present at the interview. As he and Anna removed items from her shoulder bag – her mobile phone and a wallet containing a substantial amount of cash, Amanda Delany’s BlackBerry in a leather case – Jeannie began to realise the seriousness of her situation. The Duty Sergeant was brought in to list all the items and, seeing a uniformed officer, Jeannie started to panic.

  ‘You are in possession of stolen items, Miss Bale,’ Barolli informed her. ‘This BlackBerry belongs to
Amanda Delany.’

  ‘Oh fuck, she left it at the flat and I was gonna give it back, but then she died. I never nicked it, and I couldn’t use it ’cos it’s locked or somethin’.’

  Mike Lewis was interviewing Amanda Delany’s accountant, Ronnie Hodgson, who had brought in various backdated files. Amongst the papers was the account for the BlackBerry service, but as the BlackBerry was now in their possession, they would be able to access the calls and text messages made shortly before her death. It was usual that anyone using a BlackBerry would have it connected to a computer, but Amanda’s laptop did not contain any such file. They now needed to find out if she might have used another computer.

  Harry and Anthony James were brought in for questioning late that afternoon. Mike Lewis interviewed an agitated Harry, who repeated over and over again that he had nothing to add to his previous statements. He brought with him a detailed dossier of the unit drivers’ times, pickups and collections. The names of the drivers who had picked up Amanda for filming on the days and nights before her murder were all noted; they were either Harry himself, or his brother Tony. On the night of her murder, Harry had been her driver, on the previous night, Tony. He denied that Lester had ever driven Amanda during the filming of Gaslight. Mike asked if Lester had turned up to eat at the unit caterers.

  ‘Free dinner? Yeah, now I come to think about it, he did come to the set that evening. I just forgot.’

  ‘This would be the night before her murder. Did you see him enter Amanda Delany’s trailer that night?’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘He’s admitted it.’

  ‘Oh well, then he did. She must have asked to see him because we never go near the artists’ trailers – we’re just the drivers.’

  ‘This would be the day after Miss Delany had heard screams in the night and woken up frightened. Apparently she told everyone about it.’

  ‘Yeah, she did, but nobody took much notice.’

  ‘Maybe your brother Lester did?’

  Harry became evasive, saying that even if Lester had, there was nothing he could have done about it as she was working on the night shoot. Harry had driven her home that night. He was certain that Lester had left long before Amanda was released for the evening.

  The two older brothers had virtually the same spiel, still refusing to admit that Lester could have been involved. They both denied that he had driven Amanda on any of the night filming schedules, and continued to refute that there was any kind of relationship between him and Amanda Delany. In fact, Anthony eventually became truculent, accusing them of harassing the three of them. He was 100 per cent certain, he said adamantly, that his brother Lester wouldn’t have harmed Amanda.

  ‘Why are you so certain?’ Mike Lewis asked.

  ‘’Cos I know. It’d be more than his job’s worth. We’re just drivers,’ was the now familiar mantra.

  The two James brothers were released and by 8 p.m. the team at last got their hands on the photocopied pages of the diary. As time was against them, they split the entries between Barolli and Anna, Joan and Barbara. The four of them were grouped in the incident room so that they could pass any significant information straight over to Anna, who was making notes.

  Barbara was the first to initiate a break.

  ‘I’ve got something. It’s hard to decipher but it’s to do with her stay at her parents’ house in France.’

  In her barely legible, childish scrawl, Amanda had written that while visiting her parents, she had gone to see someone she described as ‘the creeper’. She wrote that she had wanted to make him crawl; she was old enough now to deal with his sick attentions. She had sat on his knee and allowed him to fondle her breasts until he was begging her to take off her clothes.

  Anna asked if ‘the creeper’ had a name. Was it her father? Barbara thought not, as the diary revealed that she had kicked him so hard between his legs he had howled in anguish and she had run to her father with her shirt torn, screaming that he had done it again.

  ‘Hang on a moment. Here we go.’ Barbara read aloud. ‘“This time he believed me, and he said I was to go to my bedroom and he would make sure Grandpa never touched me again”.’

  The next day she had flown back to London. She added that her father had not given her any money.

  Barolli was next to put up his hand.

  ‘She’s using just initials, but I’ve got quite a lot of references to LJ. It’s got to be Lester James.’

  He quoted an entry: ‘“LJ stayed over and brought the goods. He said it was high quality, and we could cut it with something and make more money”· Next entry says she has been sick, nothing else, then two more entries about feeling ill, and LJ went to get a pregnancy test.’

  He held up two blank pages, blank apart from one word underlined: positive.

  ‘Could be a reference to her being pregnant. Anything else?’ Anna asked.

  Barolli read out how LJ had no money so she went back to France.

  ‘“I told Daddy that I was pregnant, and he would have to pay for me to have an abortion. I said that if he didn’t, the baby could be deformed as he knew why, and he slapped me. I spat at him and called him a piece of shit, but he refused to believe ‘the creeper’ had got me pregnant”.’

  Anna interrupted. ‘Hang on. This LJ gets her pregnant and she’s telling her father that it was as a result of her grandfather’s assault on her?’

  Joan was next up with detailed pages describing how Amanda had tried to find someone who could help her. By now Amanda had to be at least four months’ pregnant. She read out a short scrawled page.

  ‘“LJ drove me to the Asian, and it was done. I felt really sick but he was terrific, he carried me back to the car and drove me home”.’

  Mike Lewis looked up from his pages.

  ‘Christ, she put it about. There’s hardly a night she’s not screwing someone or other. She keeps up the reference to LJ and now I’ve got random numbers. It could be money, there’s no pound sign next to the numbers, but they’re five hundred, two hundred, eighty … on every page.’

  ‘You think she was dealing drugs?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Not enough money. I’d say she was supplying to her friends. She’s even got down Colin O’Dell owing her two grand, so …’

  They ploughed on. The diary made sickening reading, veering between childlike tittle-tattle about some of the actresses to lists of male stars with ticks beside them. Sometimes she had noted ten out of ten scores for their sexual prowess. The initials LJ featured constantly, picking her up, driving her home and then getting a blow job as thanks. It was relentless and sordid.

  ‘She was going down on every man she met!’ Barbara exclaimed.

  Anna was getting a throbbing headache. She had the pages covering the last year of Amanda’s life, which were mostly filled with work commitments; the girl seemed to be focusing strongly on her career. There were enthusiastic entries describing the new house, and long entries about its furniture and fittings, then an entry about being interviewed about Gaslight.

  She wrote of her excitement at working with Rupert Mitchell, how she couldn’t wait to make his stuck-up bitch of a wife cry; she was going to fuck his brains out. There were a couple of abusive paragraphs about Fiona, Scott Myers’s wife, and then a long, badly-written section about Scott’s prowess in bed. There were some empty pages, no further references to LJ, then again figures of between two hundred to five hundred listed. Anna presumed it was drugs; sometimes there were initials beside them, but they were as haphazard as the writing. There was a reference to her agent and to money and then, underlined, the words something is wrong. Beneath that was a scrawled note about wanting a puppy.

  Anna looked up. ‘I’m almost done and I don’t have any reference to LJ. Anyone got anything else?’

  ‘It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’ Joan said. ‘I mean, she’s had more sex than I’ve had hot dinners. It’s almost every night! I wouldn’t have the energy, or to be honest the inclination.
I mean, she seems to get her rocks off doing it in the back of the car.’

  ‘Does she say who’s driving?’ Anna queried.

  ‘No, but apparently Colin O’Dell has a very small dick!’

  Barbara gave her a slap. ‘Joan! Wash your mouth out!’

  ‘I’m only telling you what I’m reading and, for your information, the most well-endowed is Scott Myers.’

  Everyone turned as Langton walked in; he made a gesture of disbelief.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  Mike explained.

  ‘And it takes all of you to do it?’

  ‘It’s five years’ worth, Guv, and we’ve come across a lot that we can use.’

  Langton looked furious. ‘Meanwhile, you’ve got that girl waiting around. She’s in with a solicitor, and I want her interviewed again as she might have vital information. Put pressure on her, put the fear of God into her, and tell her she’ll be charged with perverting the course of justice and add blackmail to that.’

  Barolli stood up. ‘I’ll go. I’m nearly through.’

  Langton nodded and then looked at Mike, demanding, ‘We got enough to arrest Lester James?’

  ‘We’ve got the initials LJ all over the diary. We can only assume it has to be him. He was lying about not having sex with her; it looks like it was an ongoing scene for years.’

  ‘We’re also pretty certain he was dealing drugs,’ Barbara added.

  ‘ “Pretty certain” isn’t fucking good enough. Anna, get in with Barolli and see if you can make it more than just “pretty certain”.’

  Anna nodded, and she gathered sections of the diary, putting them into her briefcase with the notes. As she bent down, she felt a wave of nausea and had to sit back in her chair. Joan saw her face drain of colour and went to her side.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yes, just got a bit dizzy.’

  Langton slammed the door of Mike’s office shut with the heel of his shoe.

  ‘This is fuck-all use, Mike. I want a detailed report of what Lester James is doing. We have surveillance on our prime suspect that is costing. Have the guys called in?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He’s keeping quite a low profile, stays at home, goes to a gym early morning, then to a dojo in Marshall Street in the West End, but he’s not doing much driving or work that we know of.’