Fatal Act (4 page)

‘Usual? What do you mean, was it usual?’ he prevaricated.

‘Was it usual for Anna to go out on her own, so late at night?’

He seemed to be thinking. Geraldine repeated the question once more, adding, ‘It’s a simple question, Mr Trevelyan.’

‘She went for a drive,’ he said at last.

He looked old and confused.

‘Had you had a row?’

He lowered his head and nodded wordlessly.

‘M
r Trevelyan,’ Geraldine spoke lightly. ‘Can you tell us when you last drove your black van?’

Piers looked baffled.

‘Your black van. When did you last drive it?’

‘My van? I keep it outside. It’s parked on the street. That’s where I keep it. I hardly ever use it any more, but I hang on to it in case.’

‘In case of what?’

‘Oh, you know, moving stuff. I sometimes lend a hand, you know. Sets and props.’

‘When did you last use the van?’

He shrugged.

‘Two, three weeks ago. But it hasn’t been out there for a few days.’

‘What do you mean it hasn’t been out there? Are you trying to tell us someone took it?’ Geraldine asked. ‘You didn’t report it stolen.’

‘No, not stolen. At least, not as far as I know.’

Geraldine frowned.

‘Who else uses it?’

‘Only my son, Zak. He sometimes borrows it.’

‘Doesn’t he ask you first?’

‘Of course he’s supposed to ask, but you know what kids are like, and he is my son. He knows I’d never refuse him anything.’

H
e dropped his head in his hands again, muttering Anna’s name, but jerked upright when Geraldine told him the registration number of the other vehicle involved in the fatal accident.

‘That’s impossible,’ he blurted out, his face white beneath its natural tan. ‘There must be a mistake. That’s the registration number of my van.’

‘Yes. A black van registered in your name was parked in Ashland Place off Paddington Street last night. It had no lights on and Anna Porter drove into it and died in the crash.’

The accusation hung in the air between them, unspoken.

‘Can you tell us what your van was doing in Paddington Street on Friday night?’

S
am was glaring impatiently at Geraldine who understood perfectly what the sergeant was thinking. The sequence of events appeared straightforward enough, and Sam couldn’t understand why Geraldine was treating Piers so gently. Following an argument, Piers must have pursued his girlfriend out of the house. He had obviously driven after her, eventually abandoning his van, presumably after losing her. But she was still in the area, and had crashed into the van he had left. It sounded vaguely plausible, only Geraldine wasn’t convinced the narrative stacked up. If he had been out pursuing Anna, or looking for her, he would have driven home when he lost her. If the van had broken down, he would have called for help. He was a member of the AA. Apart from such inconsistencies, he didn’t strike Geraldine as a man who had been involved in a car crash. As far as she could see, he wasn’t injured. He hadn’t limped when he led them across the hall to his study, and his hands and face weren’t even scratched. Before she decided to arrest him, she wanted to find out more about him.

‘W
hat did you argue about?’

He sighed.

‘That was the last time I spoke to her.’

He raised a mournful face to stare straight ahead, unseeing. ‘The last words we exchanged were spoken in anger. And it was all so stupid. Anna was nagging me to cast a friend of hers in a show I’m working on. He’s useless, but they were at drama school together and she tried to convince me he’s got what it takes.’

G
eraldine nodded to show she was listening.

‘I’ve seen him perform,’ Piers continued. ‘A good looking boy, but talentless. I can’t give in to that sort of pressure. I have a reputation to consider. I’m always in demand, and do you know why? Because I’m bloody good at what I do. Everyone thinks casting’s easy. Find a face that fits, make a few calls, set up a meeting, and the job’s done. Well, I can tell you, it’s not that easy. And you know what they say? You’re only as good as your last job. That’s what people remember. Cast a few duds and your career’s over. I’ve seen it happen.’

H
e took a deep shuddering breath.

‘Anyway, Anna threw a wobbly and buggered off. So I went to bed.’

‘You went to bed?’

‘Yes, I was shattered. I can’t be running after her every time she throws a tantrum. I’m not as young as I was, and I get tired. Bloody tired. I had no idea where she’d gone, but I knew she’d be back soon enough –’ He broke off, overwhelmed. ‘That is, I thought she would.’

‘Is there anyone who can vouch for your being here all night?’ Geraldine insisted. ‘Does anyone else live on the premises?’

He shook his head.

‘No, it was just me and Anna. Just me now, I suppose.’

P
iers protested vociferously about accompanying them to the station for a formal interview, until Geraldine pointed out that he had no choice.

‘We’ll leave him to stew overnight,’ Geraldine muttered to Sam as they left the custody sergeant going through the rigmarole of questions.

‘Why don’t we just arrest him? They had a row, it was his van, he knew where she was, and he knew there were no witnesses if he followed her. He had the means and the opportunity, and he had a motive, so somehow he stage managed a crash. Maybe he didn’t intend to actually kill her, but he did.’ Sam paused. ‘It was his van, for Christ’s sake,’ she added impatiently, when Geraldine didn’t say anything. ‘Surely you can see it had to be him?’

‘Tell me how he could have climbed out of that van without any injuries and I’ll accept he’s guilty.’

‘Someone must have managed it, so why not him?’

‘Let’s see what he has to say after he’s been kicking his heels in there for a night. Right now, I want to check if the taxi driver who found the body saw anything.’

G
eraldine found it hard to believe that Piers was responsible for Anna’s death. That kind of immature road rage didn’t seem in keeping with the debonair casting director.

‘He must be three times older than her,’ Sam said, as though his age made any difference.

‘Being so much older than her doesn’t make him a murderer!’ Geraldine replied. ‘We’ll need a lot more than that to make this stick.’

‘I can’t see the problem,’ Sam repeated.

‘A clever man like Piers,’ Geraldine mused, ‘he seems like a wily old bugger, and a selfish one at that. Do you really think he would have risked his own life in such a clumsy attack?’

‘I don’t see how you can know that about him, wily and all that. I can’t see the problem. It had to be him.’

G
eraldine remained adamant.

‘He would have to be an idiot to use his own van. They lived together. He would have had any number of opportunities to get rid of her, if that’s what he wanted to do, without making himself such an obvious suspect. I just think he’s cleverer than that. The whole thing points too clearly at him.’

Geraldine frowned. Something didn’t add up about the car crash.

‘We’re missing something.’

She didn’t think Piers would tell them what it was. But he wasn’t the only person who regularly drove the black van.

T
HE
DEAD
WOMAN
RESEMBLED
someone wearing a half mask, one side of her face white and smooth, the other side criss-crossed with hundreds of small lacerations from the shattered glass of the car window. Individually insignificant, together they created a grotesque image, like a cracked egg shell. Geraldine wondered if the victim had been aware of their impact before she died. In a profession where looks were more important than skill, Geraldine hoped the dead girl had been spared the anguish of knowing she would be scarred for life if she had survived. She wondered if Anna’s character would be written out of the television series, or if the producers had a list of lookalikes ready to step in if one of the actors had to drop out. It was a depressing reminder that no one was indispensable. But none of that was of any consequence to Anna now.

‘T
here’s more to this than meets the eye,’ the pathologist said as soon as they entered the morgue.

Sam’s eyes widened above her mask and Geraldine gave her a sympathetic glance before turning her attention to the corpse. Sam found autopsies difficult, and was often tetchy when they visited the morgue. Geraldine had never been badly affected in that way, except when she had once been unexpectedly confronted by the cadaver of a victim she had known while he was alive.

G
eraldine had worked with Miles Fellowes on a previous case. Now, the young pathologist was almost rubbing his hands together with glee. His hazel eyes twinkled at her, making him look more like a mischievous sixth former than a qualified doctor. There would have been something macabre in his enjoyment of his work, had his enthusiasm not been so engaging. Like Geraldine, he was keen to press on. He turned to the body without pausing to greet the detectives, and launched straight into his commentary.

‘T
his is an undernourished female in her early twenties. She’s thin, borderline anorexic, but otherwise healthy. Reasonable muscle tone suggests she probably worked out, or at least took regular exercise. Now, to the effects of her fatal accident. Most obvious are the superficial injuries.’

He pointed to the scratches on the victim’s face.

‘There are multiple minor shallow incisions caused by broken glass from the side window of the car. Bruising to the thorax,’ he gestured at a large dark area on the dead woman’s chest and shoulder, ‘and head trauma, all of which might have killed her, in conjunction with the shock of the impact, if she’d been left unattended for long enough.’

‘He sounds as though he’s reeling off a shopping list,’ Sam grumbled.

Geraldine frowned at her and looked back at the body.

‘W
hat was the cause of death? We need to be specific.’

‘Oh, we can be specific all right. The actual cause of death was this.’

He pointed to the back of the victim’s neck and nodded to his assistant. Together they shifted the body onto its front. He pointed with one gloved finger to a deep gash on the nape of the victim’s neck. The skin around the wound was bloodless, white.

‘A sharp instrument passed through her neck, severing the spinal cord. That was what killed her. I mean, she would have died anyway, but this made certain.’

He grinned, as if to say, ‘I’ve got your attention now, haven’t I?’

G
eraldine waited for him to continue.

‘Yes, she would most probably have died from her other injuries – blood loss, head trauma – but that was what killed her all right.’

‘It was bad luck that the glass happened to strike her in the back of the neck like that,’ Geraldine said.

The pathologist gave a curious smile. ‘It certainly would have been, if it had happened by chance.’

‘Is there something you’re not telling us?’

‘Well,’ he hesitated. ‘The injury was inflicted with some force.’ He paused. ‘To the back of her neck.’

Geraldine frowned. She wasn’t sure she understood the implication.

‘A piece of flying glass?’ she suggested.

‘Coming from behind her, passing right through her head rest?’

T
hey gazed at the wound in silence for a moment.

‘The cut was effected with some force,’ the pathologist repeated. ‘It almost severed her head from her neck.’

‘What are you telling us?’

‘I’m not telling you anything. I’m just pointing out that it doesn’t seem possible an injury like this was inflicted by a stray piece of glass. All the other lacerations make sense. They are what you’d expect from shattered bits of glass flying around, but this – this is different. How did a shard of glass find its way past her head rest to penetrate her flesh, cutting between the vertebrae? And –’ he paused dramatically, ‘where is it now? Having penetrated so deeply, it would have remained embedded in her neck. Even if it had somehow been dislodged, it would have fallen nearby. Yet scene of crime officers have found no trace of anything remotely in keeping with this wound. Whatever caused the injury seems to have vanished.’

‘Along with the driver of the van,’ Sam said.

G
eraldine and Sam went straight from the mortuary to Zak Trevelyan’s address in central London. He was studying set design at Central, the prestigious drama school in London that Anna had attended. They stopped outside a smart block of flats round the corner from Kings Cross station, just a few minutes’ walk from his college.

Sam whistled. ‘This must cost enough. I wonder who’s paying the rent?’

‘No one. Piers bought the flat, and his son’s living in it rent free.’

‘Oh my God. How the other half lives!’

‘Come on, put your tongue back in and stop drooling.’

They rang the bell but there was no one in.

D
riving along Gower Street, they passed the imposing entrance to the drama school. Sam raised her eyebrows.

‘I wonder how he got to study at a place like that?’

‘He could be a very talented set designer,’ Geraldine replied with a smile.

Sam muttered about Zak being born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

‘He still has to do the job.’

‘Designing theatre sets?’ Sam retorted scornfully.

‘Come on, I daresay we’ll find him at home if we call round early in the morning!’

A
rriving back at the station, they went to see the team of detective constables who were checking security cameras in the roads leading to Ashland Place, under the supervision of a sergeant who greeted them with a shrug. He was a solidly built middle-aged officer, satisfied with his rank and the contribution he was able to make to the team.

‘I’m no glory grabber,’ he told Geraldine.

Coming from someone less contented, it might have sounded as if he was sniping at Geraldine for being ambitious. As it was, she understood he was simply stating a fact. She liked the sergeant. He joked that he had only joined the police because of his name.