Above Suspicion

by Lynda La Plante

  “Don’t say anything to anyone. Just get back here fast and we’ll decide how to proceed.”

  “OK.”

  “Anna, listen to me. If he’s a fucking TV star, we have to tread very carefully. The last thing we need right now is a media cock-up.”

  Anna shut off her phone and took a deep breath to calm herself.

  Back in the incident room, Jean almost had heart failure. Langton cupped her face in his hands and kissed her soundly on the lips.

  “I was right?”

  Langton crossed her lips with his finger. “Shh. Don’t say a word to anyone. Do you hear me, Jean?”

  Jean nodded solemnly. After Langton returned to his office, Jean glanced to the victims’ photographs, then stared at the boyish, smiling face of Anthony Duffy.

  Chapter Seven

  Anna stood shoulder to shoulder with Detectives Lewis and Barolli in the small office. Langton stood behind his desk, facing them. He looked quite sharp in his gray suit, crisp white shirt and blue tie. He had shaved closer, Anna mused, noting the absence of his usual five o’clock shadow.

  She started to attention when Langton began abruptly: “We’re bringing him in this afternoon. The consensus is we take this softly softly. The commander wants Daniels questioned without it becoming public knowledge. Only if further evidence is corroborated do we go for an arrest. Remember, first off, he’s just helping our inquiry.”

  He smiled. “I don’t want you telling your wives, or girlfriends—um, boyfriend, in your case, Travis—understand? When the media acts like vultures in these high-profile cases, it just makes our job harder, sometimes impossible. Now, we’ve only got circumstantial evidence in the first six cases, but it’s a bit better for Melissa. And if Alan Daniels did the lot of them, that’s what we want to get him for: all seven murders.”

  Anna felt the tension rising in the room. Stacked high on Langton’s desk were fifteen or more videos, all films or television series featuring Alan Daniels. Anna noted a number of film and TV magazines nearby.

  Langton indicated the pile of videos. “I’ve been through most of these and I expect all of you to do the same. Use the video set up in the briefing room. No need to wade through the entire thing, just fast-forward to Duffy. Be aware of who we are dealing with. Keep foremost in your mind that he’s an actor. Over there are some back issues of film magazines and Hello! and OK that I want you to check. Guess what? He’s in all of them.

  “He lives alone in a substantial property on Queen’s Gate, Kensington. The only access is the front door; there is no rear exit. The basement is occupied by four students from the Royal College of Art. Two women from the Victoria and Albert Museum rent the top floor from Duffy. Right now, though, he’s the only occupant in the building.”

  Langton continued to bring them up to date. Their suspect did not drive a Mercedes, but a Lexus sedan. He was wealthy, with over two million pounds in the bank. He paid his taxes on time, seemed law-abiding; so far had not even had an outstanding parking ticket.

  His theatrical agent had been helpful, according to Langton. Seemingly unaware of the serious implications of the situation, the agent gave Langton details of his client’s availability and schedule. He was currently filming at Pinewood Studios but had a four-day break coming up when he would be available for interviews. Langton promised to get back to him.

  He wrapped up the briefing with one final piece of information: two officers had been outside the Queen’s Gate address for twenty-four hours. They had orders to report back to base if Duffy, as he continued to call him, left home. Langton was due to arrive at Duffy’s residence at two o’clock, to escort him in.

  There was a strange air of unease back in the incident room. Langton was under heavy pressure to make a fast decision regarding Duffy’s involvement in this case, so they would know later in the day if they had captured a suspect at last.

  When Travis, Lewis and Barolli went to the briefing room to watch the tapes, Lewis was surprised to discover how many of the films he had seen. Not great blockbusters, he explained, but some of them were good genre films.

  Anna found it eerie to watch Daniels age onscreen. In the films he made as a young man, his voice had not matured, but by the early 1990s the older Daniels had acquired a deep, resonant voice with an upper-class, aristocratic tone. He seemed best suited to costume dramas.

  Lewis had control of the remote in his hand and was constantly fast-forwarding or rewinding without consulting the others. He stopped the tape suddenly and said earnestly, “I saw this film. Funny I’d never heard of his name till now. Parts are getting bigger; see, he’s in this one in almost every scene.” Lewis fast-forwarded again.

  “Could we just actually watch a couple of sections?” Anna said impatiently.

  “Turning you on, is he?” Lewis sniggered.

  “I would just like to get a good look at him.”

  “It’s odd how he can be making a fortune, when people like me have never heard of him,” Barolli contributed.

  An hour later they sat watching Falcon Bay, an American miniseries. The men’s constant banter was starting to irritate Anna. She was relieved when Lewis and Barolli decided they had seen enough for one day and left her to watch alone. She took the remote. Now she could pay closer attention to Alan Daniels, whose talent was obvious. His onscreen presence grew more commanding with every scene. It was his stillness, she thought, that was most compelling.

  She fast-forwarded to a scene set in a vast bedroom swathed in silks and billowing curtains. Daniels was sitting on the bed, a shotgun held loosely in his hands. His costume—riding boots, tight britches, shirt open to the waist and a silk scarf loosely draped around the neck—showed his lithe, muscular body to perfection. When he turned slowly, Anna noticed the woman who lay behind him, her dark hair spread across the pillow. She wore a lace nightgown, with the frill loose around her shoulders.

  “How long have you known?” he asked softly.

  “Since Christmas,” she said, eyes closed.

  “And you haven’t told me until now?”

  “I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t want to lose you. Please, come to bed. Lie beside me, just once more.”

  Anna drew closer, fascinated by Daniels’s performance. His sexuality exuded mystery. Slowly, he drew the scarf away from his neck and discarded it. He knelt at the end of the bed, as if to pray.

  “Come to me, darling,” she pleaded.

  As she held out her arms he raised the shotgun. Her eyes opened wide with fright as he fired, her blood spattering his face and white shirt. Slowly, he reloaded the gun; then suddenly, unexpectedly, he turned it toward himself.

  As the camera moved in closer, Anna’s attention was glued to the screen. His eyes at that moment were like a wounded animal’s, full of pain. He was about to pull the trigger when he paused and threw the gun aside. He crawled over the bed, to get closer to the woman’s body. Then he lay down beside her and gently drew her nightgown down to reveal her breasts. He rested his head against her heart.

  “One last time, my darling,” he murmured, then he turned to kiss her breasts.

  Anna almost shot out of her seat. The door had banged open and now Lewis leered at her from the doorway.

  “Aha! You’re still watching! Can’t get enough, eh?”

  She picked up the remote, red-faced, and turned off the set.

  “Gov wants you!”

  “Me?”

  “Needs a woman’s touch. In his office.”

  She ejected the video and placed it in its box, where, on the cover, Alan Daniels, shotgun in his hand, stood like a character out of Gone with the Wind.

  Lewis was still hovering at the door. “Looks like you and Langton are getting to be quite an item.”

  “For God’s sake, Mike, leave off.”

  “I wouldn’t let it go much further, Travis.” He smirked. “He’s got a bad reputation.”

  “Why are you doing this? Is it because you’re pissed off he didn’t ask you to go
to Queen’s Gate?”

  “God, no. Just being a friend,” Lewis muttered as he left.

  Langton was on the phone when she entered his office. He gestured for her to wait for him to finish his conversation, then continued in the mouthpiece: “Right. Yes, yes, we’ll do that. Yes, yes. Travis and I are going to pick him up now.”

  He threw Anna a pained expression.

  “Fine. Thank you. Talk later.” He replaced the phone. “They’re certainly getting hot under the collar. They don’t want Daniels questioned without legal representation. So when we pick him up, he gets to make his call.”

  “Did you tell Lewis you wanted me to go with you?”

  “Yeah. Way I want to work it is ‘slowly, slowly catchee monkey.’ If he isn’t the one, we’ll know fast. Since so many of these fucking solicitors run the show now, I just want one crack at him before he starts the ‘no comment’ game.”

  He looked at her steadily for a moment.

  “Does your hair grow like that, or is it some kind of style?” He cocked his head to one side.

  She ran her fingers awkwardly through her hair.

  “It just has a bad habit of doing this.”

  “Well, go and tidy yourself up. We leave at a quarter past one. Get some lunch, too, if you haven’t had any.”

  She was headed for the door.

  “Travis?” he said quietly.

  “Yes?”

  “What did you think of the film retrospective?”

  Anna hesitated. “He’s talented and the parts are getting bigger. If he is our man, he’s going to lose all that. It’s a lot to risk. And if he’s not?”

  “Yes. That’s why we have to be careful. There’s quite a few embassy top dogs living along Queen’s Gate so they’re used to seeing cops around. It’s not going to put the wind up anyone.”

  “Do you think he’s the killer?”

  “No point in thinking, unless I have the evidence to prove it. What’s your gut feeling, though?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” She looked at her shoes. “With his looks, he could get any woman he wanted. And he’s linked in those magazines with all the starlets and socialites. It doesn’t make sense in one way that he’d gamble a future like that, but if he is a psycho, maybe he’d get off having a secret life and being able to disguise it.”

  “He certainly found the right profession for disguise.”

  “Those celebrity magazines keep pumping out who he’s seen around town with, but there doesn’t appear to be any one woman. Maybe he’s gay; thirty-eight, never married? Makes sense.”

  Langton flipped open one of the magazines. “Better do some reading. I hate this stuff.”

  Since he seemed finished with her, Anna walked out of his office.

  By one forty-five they were in the patrol car outside Daniels’s house, which was on the left-hand side of Queen’s Gate at the Kensington Gardens end. According to the two officers outside who had seen him that morning at a first-floor window, Alan Daniels had not left home.

  Langton turned and gave Anna a small half-smile before he preceded her up the stone steps of the large, pillared entrance of the elegant house. The bells for the other floors had the residents’ nameplates, but the section occupied by Daniels showed no identification.

  Langton rang the bell. After a few minutes a disembodied voice said, “Yes?”

  “Mr. Daniels?”

  “Yes,” the voice said carefully.

  “It’s the police.” Pause. “Could you open the door, please?”

  The door opened with a click. Langton and Travis stepped into a beautiful, high-ceilinged hallway that smelled of polish. The floor was covered in mosaic tiles, which encircled the statue of a Greek goddess at the center of the hall. There was a gleaming mahogany hall table, on which a few letters were neatly piled. The door, presumably leading to Daniels’s apartment, was at the right of a wide, crimson-carpeted staircase. Oil paintings lined the walls, as the staircase soared upward to the floors above.

  It gave Anna a momentary shock when the door swung open to reveal Daniels to see the celluloid image she had been staring at all morning become flesh and blood. He appeared taller and slimmer and his hair was different: blond, silky, cut in what seemed to her a Victorian style. His features were more delicate and the high cheekbones rendered his face more gaunt than on the screen. But his eyes in real life remained the most extraordinary violet color, enhanced by his dark eyelashes. He wore a black polo-neck sweater, faded jeans and a pair of old velvet slippers with an embroidered gold monogram.

  “Is this about the residents’ parking?”

  “No.” Langton took out his ID badge. “I am Detective Chief Inspector James Langton and this is Detective Sergeant Anna Travis. We need to talk to you, Mr. Daniels. Could we come inside?”

  “I suppose so.” Daniels hesitated, then stepped back in the lighted hallway. “Come in.”

  Nothing about him gave any indication of his background, thought Anna; certainly not his aristocratic tone of voice and haughty manner. They followed him into a vast dining room, where light entered from a wall of glorious stained glass. Anna gazed in wonder. Over the dining table hung a crystal chandelier, and impressive crystal lamps had been placed at either side of the fireplace. The table must have been twenty feet long and the accompanying chairs had red velvet seats.

  “Every time there’s a concert at the Albert Hall, they insist on removing the residents’ parking bays,” Daniels was complaining earnestly to Langton. “It’s disgusting that we all have to pay to park here.”

  Langton nodded, showing little interest. Anna was studying the pattern on the Oriental rug beneath her feet when Daniels interrupted her reverie.

  “This way, Detective,” he said with a faint smile. Embarrassed, she followed the two men into the drawing room at the front of the house, overlooking Queen’s Gate. Two tiger skins were splayed impressively across the polished wood floor and several distinguished oil paintings hung from the walls.

  Daniels gestured for them to be seated. Anna sat down awkwardly on one of the huge white sofas with brilliantly colored silk cushions. She had never seen such wealth in all her life. Langton remained standing, unaware of his image caught behind him in a fifteen-foot mirror. Daniels sat down on the edge of the sofa opposite, paying Anna little attention. Between the two sofas there was a carved coffee table, piled with expensive magazines and art books.

  “This all feels very serious.” Daniels’s head was tilted toward Langton.

  “I’m afraid it is,” Langton said quietly. “We are investigating a series of murders. We would like you to answer some questions.”

  In this big room, Langton’s voice made a slight echo.

  “It’s more serious than parking, then,” Daniels responded with a self-deprecating smile. “May I offer you anything? Coffee? Tea?”

  “No, thank you, sir.”

  “Were the murders in this area?”

  “Yes. We would like you to accompany us to Queen’s Park police station.”

  Daniels’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “Why is that?”

  “It is preferable we question you at the station rather than in your home. Would you agree to accompany us?”

  “Of course, but I’d like some more information. I mean, is it anyone I know that has been murdered? Were they neighbors of mine?”

  “You can, if you wish, have representation,” Langton added.

  Daniels’s face showed a slight annoyance as he checked his watch. Then he looked up at Langton: “Are you arresting me?” It seemed to Anna that he had become completely oblivious to the fact there was a third person in the room.

  “We simply want to see if you can help us in our inquiry.”

  “Are you saying I might know the murderer?” Alan Daniels remained casually perched on the arm of his sofa.

  When Langton said nothing, Daniels continued quickly, “At the very least I should be told what it is you wish to question me about. Anything less
is unacceptable. Surely you see that?”

  “I am investigating a series of murders; that is all I can tell you.”

  Daniels ruffled his hair.

  “Do you agree to accompany myself and DS Travis?” Langton persisted.

  “This is all a bit weird, but obviously, if I can help you in any way possible, I will endeavor to do so. First, I think perhaps I should talk to my lawyer.”

  Daniels crossed to a white marble side table and picked up the phone. As he dialed, he gave Langton a small smile.

  “Is this what they call ‘helping police inquiries?’”

  “Absolutely, sir,” Langton replied smoothly.

  Daniels spoke to someone he called Edward. Anna and Langton exchanged glances. What was interesting was that he did not appear nervous. In fact, contrary to their expectations, their only suspect had started treating the situation as a bit of a joke.

  “Yes, Edward, I’m fine. Look, I need your advice. I’ve got a detective here and he wants me to accompany him to—what station is it?”

  “Queen’s Park,” Anna responded sharply. Langton raised his eyebrows, amused.

  “It’s connected to some murders,” the actor continued. “He thinks I might know the killer, or the victims.” He went on to explain that, since they had declined to give him any details, he had no idea what they wanted from him but, he joked, a visit to the police station might be useful material one day.

  “He’ll join us there.” Daniels replaced the phone. “So, I’ll just put on some socks and shoes, then we can go.”

  Anna sat next to Daniels in the patrol car. He made numerous calls on his mobile phone, one to someone he was meeting at the opera later. He was generally so casual, so relaxed, it was unnerving. Something had come up, he said chattily, and he might be late but they weren’t to worry. Next, he called his cleaner about groceries he required and informed her that he needed some dry cleaning collected. All the time, he leaned into his phone and as far away from Anna as possible, only speaking to apologize to her when his foot accidentally touched hers.

  On their arrival at the station, they went in through the back way, avoiding the day’s action. Langton left Anna in charge in the interview room while he went outside to await the arrival of Daniels’s solicitor.