Silent Scream (51 page)

‘I haven’t. I swear before God I have been telling you the truth.’

Anna gave Barolli a tap on his knee beneath the table, indicating for him to change the subject. He kept his voice calm and friendly.

‘Tell us about Dan Hutchins, Jeannie. He overdosed on heroin, yet he’d been on methadone, trying to get clean, hadn’t he?’

‘Yeah. Amanda got him into a rehab programme, paid for him and he promised he’d get clean, and he did for a while.’

‘But then he scored heroin?’

‘Yeah, he sold her computer, that’s how he got the money.’

‘Who did he score the heroin from?’

‘No idea. He had contacts, not just Amanda’s bloke. And he wouldn’t go to him as he’d have told Amanda, and she would maybe have stopped looking after him.’

‘She was already dead, Jeannie.’

‘Oh right, yeah, I forget. But I know he sold her computer, ’cos she kept it at the flat in his room for him to play internet games. She’d bought herself a laptop so she didn’t really need it, but it was hers and he got some cash.’

‘Who did he sell it to?’

‘I dunno. He left the party we was at, and then when we come home he was dead on the floor in his bedroom.’

Jeannie dug into her pocket and took out a tissue.

‘He never got over her being murdered. He really loved her, and she was very good to him, and often when she was at the flat she’d be in his room with him. They were once an item, you know, she and him, and they still sometimes slept together, but he was impotent ’cos he’d been injecting into his groin for a couple of years and it done something to his deckhand. By this time she wasn’t that interested in him ’cos she had this thing with Scott Myers and a few others . . .’

‘So Dan left this party, was able to sell the computer and score heroin in just a couple of hours from when you had last seen him?’

‘No, he’d sold it before the party ’cos Amanda found out and she told him that she wasn’t ever going to see him any more. If you ask me, that is why he OD’d, ’cos she wasn’t going to be his friend any more.’

Anna sighed; her head was aching.

Jeannie clicked her fingers.

‘At the funeral, I think he scored or arranged to get a fix after that, so it might have been Lester what passed him the gear.’

‘By Lester, you mean Lester James, Amanda’s driver?’

‘Yeah, he was there. In fact, maybe he got the computer, I dunno.’

‘Take me through what happened when you returned to the flat and found Dan’s body.’

‘It was terrible. I mean, I looked into his room and I thought he was sleeping as he was in his bed, all wrapped up in the duvet.’

‘On the bed?’

‘Yeah, that’s right. So I shut the door, and I made some scrambled eggs as we reckoned he might be hungry.’

‘But Dan was found on the floor of his bedroom – not, as you have just stated, in his bed. Did you move him?’

Jeannie sat back in her chair, looked to her solicitor and then shrugged her shoulders.

‘Felicity tried to revive him, I think, and he fell off the bed, and that’s when we knew he was dead.’

Anna tapped the tabletop with her pencil. ‘How much heroin did you find?’

Jeannie was offguard for only a beat, then was quick to implicate Felicity once again. She thought that Felicity had found some tinfoil wraps and cocaine.

‘She hid it because we were scared the police would be called and we’d be involved in his death for scoring drugs. I’m an actress, right, and I didn’t want to get any shit thrown at me. I mean, I have to think of my career.’

‘So if Felicity had hidden it, why didn’t she go and use the hidden stash taken from Dan’s room when, as you said, she needed drugs?’

‘She couldn’t remember nothing.’

‘But you remembered?’

She had a whispered conversation with her solicitor and then Jeannie nodded and sat stiffly in the chair.

‘No comment.’

‘Did you take drugs to give to Felicity when you met her at Waterloo?’

Jeannie looked to her solicitor and back to Anna.

‘No comment.’

Barolli glared at the smirking solicitor, as Anna quickly defused the situation.

‘Jeannie, you may be acting on the advice of your solicitor right now not to answer any further questions, but you do not have to take his advice. It may even damage your defence if you don’t mention something now which you may rely on later in court. This, Jeannie, is your opportunity to give your side of the story. We can retain you here until tomorrow morning, especially as it is now eleven-thirty at night.’

‘You can’t do that,’ Jeannie said angrily.

‘Yes, we can. You see, up till now we have not pressed any charges and you have been simply assisting our enquiry. However, I consider you to have been implicated in the death of Felicity Turner and that you supplied her with Class A drugs. This will be a charge we will level at you. There could even be other matters we wish to interview you about, such as blackmail. We will take a statement from Mr Delany regarding the five thousand pounds.’

‘You can’t do this!’
Jeannie was half out of her chair.

Her solicitor intervened. ‘You are interviewing my client on matters about which I do not even have an evidence statement. To threaten to retain her in order to persuade a witness to give a statement is illegal.’

Anna ignored him. ‘What isn’t right, Miss Bale, is that we have been fed a stream of lies from the moment this interview began. We will give you one more opportunity to answer the questions truthfully. Now:
did you give heroin to Felicity Turner?’

Jeannie started to cry. ‘I only gave her what she wanted. She’d been desperate and she had the shakes. I never touch the stuff so I wouldn’t know what I gave her. I don’t do drugs.’

‘Where did you pass this heroin to Miss Turner?’

‘On the boat. She went into the toilets and took it in there. I stayed up on deck; we were going to Greenwich.’

‘So you now admit that you
were
on the boat with Miss Turner?’

At last, between the sobs, they got the facts.

‘I came back with some coffee to try to sober her up. We were near Tower Bridge, and she was at the front of the boat acting crazy, she could hardly stand up, and I got the money off her because she was so out of it, and then she stood on the seats. I told her not to, and she told me to fuck off. I went and left her ’cos I didn’t want people coming up and seeing her. It was raining and they was all inside.’

She broke down sobbing. After a while she had gone back up on deck to find Felicity, but she had disappeared. She had searched the boat, but by this time they were docking at Greenwich.

‘Didn’t you tell anyone that you couldn’t find her?’

She shook her head. Her nose was running and her black eye-make-up had smeared down her cheeks.

‘I got off the boat, an’ I got the tube home. I thought she’d just crashed out somewhere under one of the benches. I was scared about what would happen so I packed my bags and went to see some friends in Bristol.’

‘With all the money?’ Anna asked.

Jeannie nodded.

‘Felicity drowned, Jeannie. You knew that was a possibility and you never told anyone who might have stopped the boat and turned it round to search for her.’

‘No, that’s not true. I just thought she’d passed out. I swear to God I didn’t know she’d fallen overboard, I really didn’t.’

She rested her head in her hands, as her solicitor seemed to shrink back from her. Clearing his throat, he asked what charges they intended passing against his client.

Anna spoke. ‘We’ll consider charging Jeannie for withholding evidence. She’ll be released but we’ll be keeping an eye on her. She mustn’t leave the country, as we’ll want to question her again.’

The girl’s mouth dropped open as she looked from Anna to her solicitor. ‘You mean I can go?’

‘We’ll prepare a report for the CPS to decide if you’ll be charged with gross negligence or the manslaughter of Felicity Turner. You will be released, Miss Bale, on police bail pending further enquiries. We will need a statement from you to confirm that Lester James was supplying drugs.’

Anna and Barolli both knew that for Jeannie’s evidence against Lester James to stand up in court, she would have had to witness a transaction and to know that it was heroin that he had passed to Dan Hutchins. Langton congratulated them and then, to their astonishment, told them he had given the go-ahead to arrest Lester James. Having watched the video of his karate exhibition, he felt they had enough evidence to charge him with dealing and perverting the course of justice. He would kick off the interview the next morning; Anna and Barolli could sit in the viewing room and watch him at work. In the meantime he wanted Lester’s weapon and suggested they search his lockers at the karate dojo he worked out in. Anna watched Langton, his arrogance grating on her nerves, and fully aware that they should have watched Lester’s show as soon as the video had been removed from their suspect’s flat.

‘I include every one of you. To date this has been a shoddy investigation. Now is the time to pull your socks up. I want that bastard charged . . .’

Langton then swept out almost theatrically, leaving them drained and at the same time angry at the way he had spoken to them.

‘Who the fuck does he think he is?’ muttered Barolli. Anna was too tired to argue. ‘What right has he got to speak down to us after we’ve been schlepping our arses off.’

Barbara wheeled in the television set and caught Barolli’s remark.

‘Reason could be that he is Detective Chief Superintendent and you are just Detective Sergeant. He’s rubbed Mike Lewis up the wrong way as well.’

‘Where is Mike?’

Barbara switched on the television.

‘He’s gone to pick up Lester James. OK, are we ready to watch this sodding video because I don’t know about anyone else, but I want to go home.’

Lester James was arrested at three o’clock the next morning. He had been woken by Mike Lewis and two officers, and warned that he was to be questioned with regard to the murder of Amanda Delany. He was allowed one phone call; he made it to his oldest brother Harry to arrange for a solicitor. Lester had hardly spoken to anyone else, remaining subdued as he rested back on the bunk bed in his cell. After breakfast he would be given access to his solicitor before being interrogated.

With time to spare before she needed to be at the station, Anna skimmed over the pages of her section of Amanda’s diary. It appeared that the girl had indeed attempted to straighten out her life. There were several entries about the filming of
Gaslight.
She described the director, Julian Pike, as a ‘closet’ queen and wrote that she was looking forward to working with Rupert Mitchell. The fact that he had virtually ignored her had really pissed her off. The make-up department were boring old gossips and her corset was so tight it made her feel sick. There were also references to her staying clean, how hard she found it to concentrate on the difficult dialogue, and how her interaction with the director was not going well.

Anna was running out of time. She still had a quarter of the diary pages to finish and knew she should be getting ready to leave for the station. She turned a page and came across a rough drawing that looked like the sketch of a woman. Underneath Amanda had written:

Anna closed her eyes.
Filled in . . .
Wasn’t that what the tattooist had said when she had spoken to him, something about Lester James wanting his tattoo filled in? She turned over the page and found a list of numbers and words:
Need a lawyer, the fucking bitch has not paid me my money. I feel used and betrayed and I trusted her.

Next came references to Josh Lyons and Golden Arrow, then details of the lunch at Le Caprice and the words, underlined in red pen:
I will make them all pay.

She mentioned that Josh Lyons wanted to see her diary.
He’s worried about the legal aspect. . . Can’t see why – I am only gonna tell the truth.

Then, three days before her death, Amanda had noted that she was not required for filming and had the night off. She had written down Colin O’Dell and Scott Myers’s names and then one word –
party.
There was no mention of Lester James driving the two of them away from the house. There was, however, mention of LJ a couple of pages further on.