The Echo (38 page)

"Did you know him, sir?"

"In a manner of speaking. One of my younger partners handled his affairs for several years." He tapped the photograph. "The occasion when he refused to act for de Vriess again was when he was instructed to buy off a young woman who had been beaten within an inch of her life during sexual intercourse. De Vriess put a value of ten thousand pounds on her physical and mental well-being, but my colleague was so shocked by the damage done to her that he severed our firm's connection with him. He described de Vriess as a psychopath, and nothing I have ever read or heard about him leads me to think any differently. Society should never allow a man like this to accrue wealth. When money is in the wrong hands then justice, the bedrock on which our democracy rests, can always be corrupted."

Deacon's expression was thoughtful as he looked at his elderly friend.

"I'm not sure I understand the point you're making, sir," said Fortune.

Lawrence looked surprised. "I'm so sorry. I assumed it was obvious. You see, I can believe in de Vriess's depravity far more readily than I can believe in Mrs. Powell's."

"But it's de Vreiss who is dead, sir, and not his lady friend.''

Barry cleared his throat nervously. "She didn't look at all happy," he confessed. "He was pulling her round the room by her hair at one point, and then he made her bend over a little table so that he could-well-" he faltered to a halt. "I think he might have been raping her," he added in a whisper.

Five pairs of eyes swiveled in his direction.

"Why the hell didn't you tell us this yesterday?" demanded Harrison.

Barry looked terrified.

"You didn't ask him," Deacon pointed out. But, by God, it explained much of Barry's confused behavior over the last twenty-four hours. No wonder he had been able to describe the dominant male with such accuracy...

* Daily Express: 27.12.95

Stop Press: Police took the unusual step this afternoon of releasing the name and photograph of a woman they want to interview in connection with the disappearance of missing entrepreneur Nigel de Vriess, whose Rolls-Royce was found abandoned in Dover. She is Amanda Powell of Thamesbank Estate, London E14, formerly known as Amanda Streeter. She is thought to be in hiding somewhere in the UK.

* Daily Express: 30.12.95

Stop Press: Following a sighting by a member of the public, police have charged Amanda Streeter-Powell with the murder of her onetime lover, Nigel de Vriess. She was discovered last night in a cottage in Sway in the New Forest which is only 40 miles from de Vriess's home in Andover. Neighbors say she was a regular weekend visitor there. Neighbors in London E14 and colleagues at work describe themselves as "dumbfounded" by her arrest. "She's a nice woman," said one. "I can't believe she's a murderess."

Telephone message

From: DS Greg Harrison
To: Michael Deacon (Room 104)
Date: 3.01.96
Dictated to: Mary Petty

Greg Harrison is fed up with your calls. He says he spends more time talking to you than he does to his wife, and he loves
her
!

Amanda Powell
has
been charged with murder and is on remand at Holloway, and, no, he can't take you to see her because you'll probably be called as a witness at her trial, along with Barry. In any case, it would be a waste of time your talking to her because she has nothing to add to what she told the police six years ago about James's disappearance. She spent the weekend of 27th/28th/29th April with her mother in Kent, and her mother confirms this. Her alibi satisfied the investigating officers then and continues to satisfy them. Without more evidence, there is no justification for wasting taxpayers' money by trawling the Thames at Teddington.

With regard to de Vriess's murder,
and for Christ's sake don't quote Greg as this is all
sub judice
and he could get the sack for talking out of turn
(Greg asked me to underline that) Amanda agrees with Fiona Grayson. There had been no contact between her and Nigel for months. Amanda claims she had a chance meeting with Nigel in Knightsbridge on Saturday morning (they were both Christmas shopping, apparently), he became very excited about seeing her again, and twelve hours later forced his way into her house in order to rape her. Barry's evidence supports this. When Nigel finally released her, she lashed out at his face and he fell backwards on to the brass doorstop. The forensic evidence (bruise on his cheek/traces of blood on the doorstop) supports this. We are still looking for witnesses who may have seen her BMW in Dover during the Saturday, but have found none to date. The neighbors continue to support her statement that it was parked in her driveway. (Although they're a little less sure than previously as they are very used to it being left there.)

The reason Amanda didn't dial 9-9-9 was because she panicked. She says she realized immediately that she needed to put as much distance between herself and Nigel's Rolls-Royce as possible, so drove it to Dover, a town she knows well because her mother lives only 20 miles away. She agrees it's ridiculous that she thought getting rid of the car was more important than getting rid of the body, but she was confused and frightened following the rape. She hitched a lift out of Dover with a French truck driver, arriving home by 8:30 a.m.

At the moment none of this can be disproved, but Greg is working on it.

Communicate by fax in future. Hardworking policemen can't afford to spend hours on the telephone.

Deacon put through another call to Edinburgh. "It's Michael Deacon," he told John Streeter when the man came on the line. "I presume you've read that your sister-in-law's been charged with the murder of Nigel de Vriess?"

"Yes."

"Have you any idea why she did it, Mr. Streeter?"

"Not really. I spoke to her the Friday before Christmas, suggesting a truce. She was surprisingly amenable."

"What kind of truce?"

There was a short silence. "The kind you suggested," he said then. "I told her we now believed she'd been telling the truth and asked her to use her influence with de Vriess to let us search through the DVS personnel files for anything that might lead us to Marianne Filbert. She agreed and asked me to contact her again in the new year with a view to proceeding."

"Did she seem worried by the suggestion?''

"She was puzzled by it. She asked me why we believed her now when we hadn't before, and I said that you'd become interested in James's story and had persuaded us to work with her rather than against her."

"What was her answer to that?"

"As far as I remember, she said it was a pity we hadn't attracted your interest five years ago before quite so much water had gone under the bridge."

"Did you ask her what she meant by that?"

"No. I assumed she was saying there'd have been a lot less anguish for everyone if the truth had come out at the time of James's disappearance."

"Anything else?"

' 'No. We wished each other a Happy Christmas and said goodbye." Streeter paused again. "Do you know if the police have questioned her about James?''

"Yes, but her story hasn't changed. She still denies knowing anything about what happened to him."

There was a sigh. "You'll keep us posted, I hope."

"Of course. Goodbye, Mr. Streeter."
 

With cast-iron guarantees that her part in the story would never be written, Deacon persuaded Lawrence to talk to his partner about the woman who had been offered ten thousand pounds by de Vriess to keep her mouth shut. "All I want to know," he told the old man, "is whether she reported the incident to the police, and if she didn't, why not?"

Lawrence frowned. "I imagine because the money was an inducement to stay silent."

"How can it have been if he had time to go to his solicitor? Most women dial nine-nine-nine the minute their attacker walks out of the door. They don't give him time to get legal advice. That ten thousand sounds more like severance pay than inducement."

Lawrence phoned through the answer a couple of days later. "You were right, Michael. It was in the nature of a pay-off, and she did not report the incident to the police. There had been a history of abuse against the poor woman which ended in the injuries my colleague witnessed. In fact he urged her to prosecute-" he chuckled happily-"somewhat unethically it must be said because he was still acting for de Vriess at the time-but she was too frightened to do it."

"Of de Vriess?"

"Yes and no. She refused to give any details but my colleague believes de Vriess was blackmailing her. She was a stockbroker and his best guess is that she used insider knowledge to buy shares, and de Vriess found out about it."

"Why stop? Why pay her?''

"De Vriess claimed it was a onetime incident when he'd acted out of character because he was drunk. The woman said it was the culmination of a series of such incidents. My colleague believed her and promptly severed our firm's connection with a man he considered to be extremely dangerous.
His
view is that de Vriess realized he'd gone too far-he broke her arm and her jaw-and decided to release her with a lump sum. His instructions were to offer the woman ten thousand pounds on the clear understanding that there would be no further contact between the two parties."

"Did she ever get paid?"

Another chuckle. "Oh, yes. My colleague screwed twenty-five thousand out of de Vriess before refusing any further business from him."

"You realize this would help Amanda's case considerably? It proves Nigel had a taste for rape."

"Oh, I don't think so. It wouldn't suit her book at all to have it demonstrated that Nigel blackmailed women in order so make them party to their own rape. As I understand it, her defense is that this had never happened before, that Nigel forced his way into her house in a state of high arousal, and that his death was an accident when she lashed out after managing to get free of him."

"She's lying."

"I'm sure she is, my friend, but she's fighting for her life, poor creature."

"Will she get off?"

"Undoubtedly. Barry's witness evidence alone will persuade a jury to acquit.''

"She wouldn't have been arrested but for him," said Deacon, "and now she's looking to him to save her. As Terry would say, that's well ironic."

Lawrence tittered. "How's his reading coming along?"

"Faster than I expected," said Deacon dryly. "He's discovered the joys of looking up dirty words in the dictionary, and he's sending me round the bend by reading the definitions out loud."

"And how's Barry?"

There was a long pause. "Barry's decided to be honest about his feelings," said Deacon even more dryly, "and unless he puts a sock in it pretty rapidly, I'm planning to do the job for him by ripping his balls off and stuffing them in his mouth. I'm a tolerant man, as you know, but I draw the line at being the object of someone else's fantasies."

Facsimile transmission-Dated: 4.01.96

THE STREET, FLEET STREET, LONDON EC4

From: Michael Deacon
To: DS Greg Harrison

Nota Bene:
You're not the only person I've been telephoning!

1. John Streeter called Amanda the week before Christmas (on my advice), asking for a truce and saying that the Friends of James Streeter were planning to approach Nigel de Vriess in the new year with a view to searching through the DVS/Softworks personnel files to try and get an angle on Marianne Filbert.
   
2. Wise up! It's about as likely that Amanda met Nigel by chance in Knightsbridge on the Saturday before Christmas as you or I winning the lottery. The odds against it are phenomenal. For Christ's sake, the world and his wife would have been there looking for last-minute presents. She made an arrangement with him to come to her house for some Christmas jollies. See below.
   
3. Who owns the cottage in Sway? Amanda or Nigel? If Nigel, then his wife knew nothing about it, and her evidence that there was no contact between Nigel and Amanda doesn't hold water. I'm betting Amanda was required to get herself down there whenever Nigel said "jump." (He
   knew
   she'd murdered James, and was using her as his personal punch bag whenever he felt like sex. Lawrence has told you what a bastard Nigel was, and Barry says he was
   RAPING
   her-what more proof do you need that Nigel had a hold over her?)
   
4. How did she know where Nigel had left his Rolls if it wasn't outside her house? Did he pause in mid-rape to tell her where he'd parked it?
   
5. If her car
   was
   parked in her driveway, why didn't she reverse into her garage, load Nigel into the boot and dump him somewhere before getting rid of the Rolls? The fact that she didn't is the best proof you've got that the BMW wasn't there.
   
6. How does she explain the sacks of cement in her garage when we have photographic evidence that the garage was empty at the beginning of December?
   
7. Why have rumpy-pumpy in London when they could have gone to Sway, considering she was going there anyway and it was only forty miles from Halcombe House? Because the disappearing act would have been harder to work from Sway, that's why! It
   had
   to be London for easy access to Dover; and it
   had
   to be somewhere he wasn't known. So she phoned him and persuaded him to come to
   London
   for a change!
   

This was premeditated murder which would have worked if Barry hadn't thrown a spanner in the works. While Kent & Hampshire police were running around like headless chickens looking for a kidnapped/absconded entrepreneur she would have been spending a quiet Christmas with her mother (who gives solid alibis!). The only risk was leaving the body in her garage over the holiday, but she didn't have time to dispose of the Rolls
and
Nigel all in one night so she probably thought it was a risk worth taking. It was never going to be as easy as disposing of James. If she'd tipped Nigel over her garden wall he'd be sitting on a mud-bank when the tide went out, and someone would want to know what was in the concrete overcoat. You really
must
trawl the river beside the Teddington flats. I guarantee you'll find a bag of bones weighted down with hardened cement, and you can use John Streeter for DNA comparison. I've met Amanda's mother, by the way, and the alibi's lousy. The poor old thing's been arthritic for years and knocks herself out every night with sleeping pills. Amanda could have murdered half of England, and Mrs. Powell Snr. wouldn't have known a damn thing about it.