Silent Scream (3 page)

She wanted to say, ‘Having great sex,’ but all she ended up doing was bursting into tears.

‘End it now and I’ll not mention it again, you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good, then do it – and if I hear you are still seeing him, having any kind of relationship with him, then you will pay a high price.’

He picked up his coat and walked to the front door.

‘Don’t think I wanted to come here and tear a strip off you. There is nothing personal in this, you understand what I am saying?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Then no more is to be said.’

‘Thank you.’

As he glared at her, she felt as if his dark eyes were boring into her head.

‘Yeah, you should thank me, because I won’t let a whisper of this get out. You’ve got a bright future and you almost blew it.’

She hung her head like a schoolgirl and he walked out, slamming the door behind him.

She had not seen Damien Nolan since then. She had been on tenterhooks during his wife’s trial, hoping he would not be called to take the stand. He wasn’t, but he did show up in court. Anna had kept her face turned away from him, never meeting his quizzical looks. Damien’s wife was sentenced to twelve years for attempting to pervert the course of justice, assisting an offender, and possessing Class A drugs with the intent to supply. Five years were added for assisting Fitzpatrick’s escape. He had never been caught and his whereabouts remained unknown. The failure to bring him to justice sat heavily on everyone involved in the lengthy investigation, and especially on Langton. Fitzpatrick had been so audacious that Langton knew he had lost. It was one of the few cases with no closure for him, and it had infuriated him.

Anna was asleep when the phone rang. She checked the time: four-thirty in the morning. It was DCI Mathews and he was not a happy man.

‘You heard of Amanda Delany?’

Travis was still half-asleep, so made no reply.

‘Movie actress – well, she was; she’s been found dead. I don’t have any facts and I’m on my way there, so you join me as soon as possible.’

Anna drove herself to Amanda Delany’s mews house in no time at all at that hour of the day. Mathews greeted her with a sigh, gesturing for her to get into a forensic protection suit, like the one he was already wearing.

‘She’s in the bedroom.’

Anna followed him along a narrow hall and up the stairs. She could see the forensic team at work with specialist lighting equipment set up. As she reached the open bedroom door, Mathews nudged her.

‘It’s not that big a room and I want them to get on with it as fast as possible, so just check around. I’ll be downstairs in the kitchen. I’ve already got officers making cursory house-to-house enquiries.’

Anna inched further into the bedroom, moving slowly around the bed to view the body. It lay in a spreadeagled pose. Anna was struck by the actress’s beauty, which even in death was astonishing. Her wide blue eyes were open, and it looked as if someone had carefully arranged her silky blonde hair to spread out across the pillow. Her duvet had been removed and bagged, Anna was told.

A masked forensic officer turned towards Anna. ‘You know who she is?’

‘Was . . . Yes, I do. There’s been a lot of press about her recently.’

‘Be even more now!’

As if on cue, there was a flash of cameras from the press photographers gathered outside.

Mathews appeared and signalled to Anna. ‘Body warm and stiff. Dead for between three to eight hours. Not a lot we can do here, and as it’s such a cramped space, I’ll be back at the incident room.’

There were more flashes of cameras, accompanied by shouts as the press started asking for an update. Anna remained in the bedroom doorway as Mathews went outside to give a statement to the press. He said little, bar the fact that the victim was a white female, aged in her mid-twenties. They were treating her death as suspicious.

Anna remained at the mews for another hour but there was little for her to do, apart from feeling as if she was in the way. No weapon had been found at the scene; neither the locks on the front nor the back doors were damaged. Amanda’s boxes of jewellery seemed undisturbed, and five thousand pounds in cash was found hidden in a drawer with her underwear. The police made it a priority to seize her handbag and were searching for her mobile phone to check for calls and messages sent and received.

By the time Anna arrived at the incident room, set up in nearby Pimlico, it was almost 10 a.m. Amanda’s body, identified by her agent, had been taken to the mortuary. The pathologist would start work as soon as he got in. The number of knife wounds visible on her torso made it clear how she had been killed, but not until they had the pathology report could they surmise whether she had been raped before she was murdered.

It was DCS Langton who had assigned Mathews to the Delany case and instructed him to retain the team who had worked on the Halesbury case. The team now regrouped and waited for instructions. Anna had written up her findings on the board: as nothing appeared to have been stolen, nor did the mews look as if it had been broken into, it seemed very possible that Amanda knew her assailant.

So far, the team had only the basic facts. Forensic would take their time; they were still at the victim’s house and would be there for at least two or three weeks. The team would be forced to wait for the autopsy report. Mathews sent four of them along with a Detective Sergeant to organise and supervise POLSA, Police Search Advisors, to search for the weapon. They would continue a detailed house-to-house enquiry within the small mews courtyard to discover if any resident saw or heard anything suspicious. Amanda’s parents had been contacted. They lived in the South of France, but prepared to return as soon as they could.

Mathews slurped his beaker of coffee.

‘What we need is a motive for the murder. Nothing appears to be stolen and there’s no damage to the property or forced entry, so at present the motive does not appear to be robbery.’ He held up a large coloured day-to-day calendar they had removed from Amanda’s kitchen; it contained very little personal information. He also had a small leather-bound address book.

‘Amanda Delany listed her pick-up times for her current filming, costume-fittings, wig-fittings and so on, but there are no details in it of her private life. It’s possible the killer was someone she knew. We’ll need to draw up lists of her friends, current and ex-boyfriends, work associates, and the contractor and workmen who did the refurbishments to her house as they could have kept hold of spare keys. We also need to question everyone she was working with, as they would possibly have been the last people to see her alive.’

Half an hour later, at the end of Mathews’s briefing, the duty manager began passing out to the team their priorities. Copies of the calendar and address book had been made and pages were handed around so they could begin questioning everyone listed. Mathews signalled for Anna to join him in his office. He wanted her to prepare a full intelligence victim file on Amanda’s life, and start by interviewing Amanda’s agent who was arriving any moment.

‘This is a bloody pain in the arse,’ he muttered, checking the time. ‘I was hoping for a few weeks’ annual leave. I also have a feeling that this is going to be a pressured investigation. The press office is already inundated.’

‘She was pretty famous,’ Anna observed.

‘I wouldn’t have known her if I fell over her.’

‘Maybe her films are more for teenagers, but she had a high profile. She got a break starring in a successful movie straight out of drama school.’

‘She’s not gonna get any more breaks, Travis, but I hope to Christ we do, and can wrap this up as fast as possible. We’ll have Jimmy Langton on our backs – and you know what he’s like. I’d put money on it he’ll be very “present” because he’ll love the publicity. And I’m warning everyone that we’re going to get a shedload of it.’

He paused, as if realising he was repeating himself. He didn’t even notice how Anna flinched on hearing Langton’s name. Changing the subject, she asked who would be partnering her. Mathews sighed.

‘It’s not usual for me to delegate a specific partner, but I can allocate a DS to be the case officer and bring in another DI.’ He passed over an internal list of officers. ‘Your choice. You can take your pick, and if there’s anyone here that you liked working with, then—’

‘To be honest, sir, you and I both know that I had to do a lot of the legwork on our last case and as you’ve said, this one is going to be under the spotlight. I really appreciate you suggesting me for promotion and would have liked, or sort of expected, to get a few weeks off to prepare.’

‘What?’

‘Is it possible for you to replace me?’

‘No.’

Anna felt irritated. ‘In that case, sir, I’d like to be working alongside an experienced DI or DS.’

She was trying to be diplomatic. She’d not found any of the present team to be really talented or prepared to work the long hours she herself had put in.

‘Leave it with me and I’ll call you.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Andrea Lesser was waiting in an interview room. She was an attractive woman in her early forties, wearing little make-up, dressed head to toe in Prada: grey skirt, grey cashmere sweater and a neat jacket that she had draped over a chair. She owned one of the biggest theatrical agencies in London.

‘Thank you so much for agreeing to come in,’ Anna said as she sat down opposite. She offered water but Miss Lesser shook her head.

‘I’d just like to get this over with as soon as possible. I’m still in shock.’

‘It must be very distressing for you. You knew Miss Delany well?’

‘Yes, I’ve been Amanda’s agent since she left drama school. Have you any idea what happened, who could have done this?’

‘Not at the moment, which is why it is imperative I get as much detail as possible about her recent movements.’

‘I wouldn’t say I was a close friend – I mean, my relationship with her was business. I knew her, but not on a social level – by that I mean . . . Oh God! I can’t think straight!’

‘You knew her well enough to have her house keys.’

‘Yes, she did depend on me. I had the keys to check that the building work on her new house was done to her satisfaction. She only moved in a couple of months ago. I had to make sure the interior designer was not going over budget and all the right furniture was delivered . . .’ She sighed.

‘Which is probably more than what an agent is normally required to do?’ Anna said kindly.

‘Well, yes, it
was
a lot of extra work for me but Amanda was an important client and, with her being so young, I suppose I did more for her than most actors I represent. To be honest, I did resent it a little, but there was no one else.’

‘What about her family?’

‘She didn’t really get along with them, partly due to the bad publicity she’d had recently. Her parents are very straightlaced, and found the tabloid hounding distressing.’

‘Did Amanda?’

‘Did she what?’

‘Feel hounded?’

‘She did, but much of it was her own doing.’

‘In what way?’

Andrea Lesser hesitated. She started tapping her foot.

‘Amanda was rather promiscuous, and with well-known actors, so obviously the newspapers were interested.’

‘Can you give me a list of her past friendships?’

‘It’s a long one, but yes, of course. In fact, a few days ago I’d warned her to behave herself, but she assured me that she wasn’t seeing anyone and was concentrating on the filming. Whether or not she had started dating someone from her current movie, I wasn’t aware.’

‘When you last talked to her, did she mention that anyone was being troublesome?’

‘Troublesome? No. She was very excited about moving into her new house as it was the first home she had owned. She was looking forward to being on her own for a while. She used to rent a flat, or move in with various boyfriends.’

Andrea Lesser opened her handbag and took out a tissue.

‘I just can’t believe what has happened,’ she said, dabbing her eyes. ‘I really can’t continue, I’m sorry. I’ll have so much to deal with at my office.’

Anna checked her watch. Perhaps she should end the interview. She sensed that the agent had a lot more to tell her about her client and asked if she would remain at the station until she had drawn up a list of Amanda’s previous boyfriends and any other useful contacts Andrea Lesser could recall, including the builders, decorator and designer for her house.

Anna left her with Barbara, one of the female DCs, and went into the incident room. Mathews was standing by the incident board, studying the numerous pictures of Amanda that had been pinned up. He turned to Anna as she joined him and then looked past her.

‘Ah, you’re here. Let me introduce you to DI Anna Travis.’

Anna turned round to see a tall, blond, rangy man wearing a worn tweed suit and tie at half-mast.

‘This is DI Simon Dunn. I’ve brought him on board to help with the investigation.’ Mathews gave Anna a brief sideways look. ‘You wanted someone with experience, well . . . you got him.’

Simon Dunn shook her hand. He had steely blue eyes and looked in need of a shave.