Silent Scream (44 page)

They waited expectantly. Was this other person Lester James? When they saw Myers hesitate, Langton asked if the other person was Amanda’s driver. Myers looked confused.

‘No, it was Colin O’Dell. He was there that same night.’

Anna and Barolli had put Colin O’Dell through the same questions and grilled him about irregularities in his original statement. He was almost treating the interview as a joke, saying that he couldn’t remember what he had said as he was hungover that first time. Anna found him to be increasingly irritating; it was Barolli who sorted him out. Although he was there of his own free will to answer questions, it was clear, Barolli warned him, that hungover or not, he had lied.

‘You stated that you had never been to Miss Delany’s mews house, but we now have evidence that puts you right there – your fingerprints, Mr O’Dell – so I suggest you straighten out and don’t play any more games or we will be charging you with attempting to pervert the course of justice. When were you there, in the house?’

As O’Dell turned to confer with his solicitor, there was a rap on the door. Mike Lewis signalled for Anna to join him.

‘I can help you with the date and night you were there,’ Anna said when she returned a minute later.

‘Scott Myers recalls that you were with him at the house two nights before Amanda Delany was murdered.’

‘Christ, listen to me. I had nothing to do with that, all right? So I was there, but I can’t remember much about the evening, just that Amanda had called me to say to come on over as she had something she wanted to talk about.’

Anna glanced at Barolli.

‘I know what it was,’ O’Dell continued. ‘She was worried about her agent. She couldn’t remember if either Scott or I were represented by Andrea Lesser and she wanted to know if we’d been paid our fees for working on
The Mansion.
She was a bit out of it because it was me, not Scott, who’d been in the movie, and I had been paid. She was going on about not getting her money and what should she do? Apparently she knew someone else off the film who had been paid and she was starting to get really paranoid about it.’

Barolli flipped over the file of notes. ‘So what time was this meeting?’

‘Be late. I got there after Scott and he let me in. She was on night shoots, so it was Christ knows what time when she got home, and . . .’ He laughed and pulled a face. ‘She’d left some goodies for us to while away the time.’ He touched his nose and snorted.

‘Take me through what happened when Amanda arrived home,’ Barolli asked.

O’Dell shrugged. ‘She was all uptight about the missing money. I had to catch a flight back to Dublin and she said I could use her driver – she’d told him to wait, I think.’

Anna felt tense. ‘This driver,’ she said. ‘Can you describe him?’

‘Big bloke, fair hair, don’t think I saw his face. Well, he was just the driver, know what I mean? We talk to the backs of their heads. I was well away, but he got me to the airport in time, very ragged I was.’

‘So you and Scott Myers just had a talk about money, and…’

‘Well, one thing led to another.’

‘Like what?’

He whispered to his solicitor and eventually admitted that all three had gone into her bedroom.

‘I was totally knackered, but she was a right little nympho and fuelled up on crack cocaine and didn’t want us to leave – hung onto me, she did.’ He paused. Anna was fast, fitting the pieces together like a jigsaw.

‘You were in
The Mansion,
correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘You also wore a gold crucifix, didn’t you?’

He puffed out his cheeks and repeated that he’d forgotten about it, and only now remembered that Amanda had given it to him from the costume department.

‘What happened to the cross?’

‘She almost choked me with it that evening, snapped it, and said she wanted me to stay, but I had to get my flight back and so we left.’

‘You left with Scott Myers?’

‘Yeah, the driver dropped him off at a taxi rank and drove me to Heathrow.’

Anna left the interview room and went next door to ask Scott Myers if he could identify the driver who had not only brought Amanda home, but had driven him to a taxi rank and taken O’Dell to the airport. Myers admitted to being very stoned and had been sick just after he’d been dropped off. He could not identify the driver as he had hardly spoken to him; all he recalled was that the driver was maybe fair-haired with broad shoulders. When Anna asked what the two of them had talked about in the back of the Mercedes, all he could remember was Colin O’Dell saying it was the best orgasm he’d ever had, even though Amanda had almost choked him to death, and then they had discussed the sexual high of part-strangulations before ejaculating.

It was almost 9 p.m. when Scott Myers and Colin O’Dell were released without charge. Langton was insistent they track down Lester James. A press conference was arranged for the following morning. Concerns for Jeannie Bale and Felicity Turner were growing. They would ask the press to assist them and release photographs of the two of them. They had managed to track down an aunt of Jeannie Bale’s, but the girls seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

Anna left the station and headed on foot to the nearest tube. She had not gone far when Langton drew up in his car and gestured to her to get in. With a sinking heart, she opened the door of the old brown Rover. She was quiet, waiting for him to bring up Gordon but he didn’t. Instead he talked about running over the security tapes from Amanda’s mews to try to get the numberplate or some identifying connection to their suspect.

‘Problem is, with the security cameras being on a timer and not turned on during the day, we didn’t even get the fact that Rupert Mitchell’s wife visited. So it’s doubtful whether or not we’ll get anything more.’

Anna agreed. Everything hinged on Lester James.

‘I think he was supplementing his earnings,’ she observed, ‘if not a user himself, and was supplying Amanda with crack cocaine. We know for certain that she was a user, if not an addict. He was probably the man Helen Mitchell saw at the house and could also be the driver who picked up both the actors…’

Langton interrupted her. ‘I’m not quite following you.’

‘How do you think Lester James would feel if he was in love with her? Maybe she’d even had sex with him. She didn’t restrict her liaisons to movie actors, she often picked up men from clubs, total strangers. And here is this driver having to collect two actors who’d been having sex games with her, discussing their prowess and boasting that she’d not wanted them to leave.’

Langton said nothing. They still had no evidence against Lester James, and until it was confirmed that he had indeed driven the two actors that night, it was pure supposition.

‘Unless it was one or other of the brothers,’ Anna went on, ‘but I somehow doubt it was. Tony and Harry are older and wiser, more-than-my-job’s-worth types, but we can’t rule them out.’

‘Talk to them again and go over their itinerary for the film unit, who drove whom, and so on.’

As Anna nodded, she felt her mobile vibrate in her pocket. There was a text message from Josh Lyons’s secretary apologising for not returning a call Anna had made to his office earlier, and two voice messages from Gordon. She put the phone back in her pocket as they approached her block of flats.

‘You going to ask me in for a drink?’ he asked nonchalantly.

‘I wasn’t going to. It’s been a long day and it’s almost ten.’

‘Never bothered you before.’

‘It doesn’t bother me, it’s just that I am tired. We’ll probably have another long day tomorrow.’

‘Well then, we’ll discuss it now.’

She tensed up but made no reply.

‘What’s going on between you and Gordon?’

She glanced at him and then looked away.

‘It’s fuckin’ unethical, unprofessional.’

‘I am not his patient any more,’ Anna pointed out. ‘I only needed one session and my neck is fine, so I can’t see that it’s either unethical or unprofessional, nor can I see that it’s any of your business.’

‘It is. I suggested you go to him.’

‘So I did, and I really appreciate it, but whether or not I am seeing him outside hours shouldn’t be any concern of yours.’

‘What if it is?’

She was starting to get angry. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that I advised you to go and see him for treatment and he ends up fucking you and I feel in some way responsible.’

‘Are you joking? Responsible? I took your point about my last relationship with Damien Nolan as being unprofessional, and I agreed and I ended it, and I haven’t seen him since. But this has nothing to do with work and I can’t see that I am your responsibility in any way at all.’

‘Because I care about you.’

‘I appreciate that and I thank you, but you have a wife and children, and whatever I am doing with my life is none of your business whatsoever. I don’t ask you about your private life, so what gives you the right to judge mine?’

She had her hand on the door handle about to get out.

‘Because I talked to him about you.’

She froze, turning to face him.

‘You talked about me? When you called him to ask if he could see me for my neck injury?’

‘No, before.’

‘I don’t understand. What sort of things did you tell him about me?’

Langton leaned across, opening the glove compartment, searching for a cigarette.

‘Personal stuff. Is there a pack of cigarettes in here?’

She peered into the glove compartment, his face close to hers as she looked inside.

‘There you go, Marlboros. But you shouldn’t be smoking.’

He ignored her and lit the cigarette, lowering the window on his side.

‘Like a therapist. Well, in some ways, I dunno, but under his influence . . . I just found it therapeutic to talk.’

Anna sighed. ‘So you told him about us?’

‘Not so much about us, more the way I had felt.’

‘Pity you never tried talking to me.’ She regretted saying it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. ‘I have to go in.’

‘Fine. I just wanted you to know, that’s all.’

She turned to face him. The cigarette was dangling out of the side of his mouth, and in the semi-darkness his face was even more handsome, but she realised that she wasn’t eager to be this close.

‘Goodnight.’

She was out of the car and slamming the door shut before he could say anything. She walked away and then retraced her steps, opening the car door and bending down to confront him.

‘I don’t want to play any games with you and I don’t want you thinking you have a priority over my feelings. You had that for too long and I have to get on with my life. I don’t want to know what you told Gordon about me and, to be honest, I don’t care.’

‘Goodnight, Anna,’ Langton replied, starting the engine and tossing his cigarette out of the window.

By the time she had got into her flat, hurled her briefcase aside, Anna’s temper was really up. Listening to her phone messages made her even angrier. The fact that Gordon seemed to have got himself into a tailspin over Langton knowing about their night together irritated her. It was not until she had showered and was in bed that she calmed down. An odd feeling swept over her. The control Langton had over her was no longer something she was afraid of, emotionally or physically. It was, she knew now, really and truly something of the past. Tonight she had been able to confront him on an equal level. In some ways she felt sorry for him because she realised that, as much as she was over him, he was perhaps not over her.

‘Chalk one up for me!’ she said to herself. Just as she snuggled down under the duvet, her landline rang. She was in two minds as to whether to answer it when the answerphone clicked on.

‘It’s Gordon, just trying to touch base. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

She switched off her bedside lamp. She knew the buzz she had felt being with Gordon had gone as well. She didn’t know how much a part in that Langton had played, but her affair with Gordon was over before it had really begun.

M
ike Lewis headed up the press conference, requesting help from the public in tracing Jeannie Bale and Felicity Turner in connection with the murder of Amanda Delany. The safety of the girls was their overriding concern. If anyone knew the whereabouts of Lester James, he added, they should come forward as the police were anxious to speak to him. This was the first indication that the murder team were making progress in their investigation, and as a result they got front-page coverage. It was picked up on morning television, where repeated clips from Amanda Delany’s films were shown.

But there were still gaping holes in their enquiry because they had no concrete evidence against Lester James. The officers assigned to the tedious detail of checking through the CCTV footage from the night of the murder were instructed to repeat their scanning from start to finish, in the hope that they had missed something. The statements from Helen Mitchell, Colin O’Dell and Scott Myers were to be checked and rechecked.