Silent Scream (10 page)

‘Oh my God, this is so sad,’ Sutton said quietly. He looked around the small hallway as Anna gestured for them to go into the drawing room. The perfectly proportioned room, with its cream walls and matching carpet, looked immaculate. The soft tan leather sofa and chairs were complemented by matching cushions. Cleverly positioned mirrors made the room feel larger. The inlaid coffee-table had a deep blue glass bowl and glossy magazines stacked on it. There were three paintings on the walls, a number of candlesticks on the shelving and nothing else. Spartan and almost austere, the room was still very comfortable and belied its size. Sutton sat in the easy chair and Anna on the sofa, but Simon remained standing.

‘Is there anything in this room you think is missing?’ he asked.

Sutton gave a slow glance around the room. ‘Well, I’ve not been here for about eight or nine weeks . . . but no, it looks exactly as I left it.’

‘Do you have a set of keys?’

‘Er, no. I did, of course – but I handed them back to Amanda’s agent, Miss Lesser.’

They eventually moved to a small room Amanda must have used as an office. There were fitted bookshelves and a desk with a leather office chair and again, little else. No books; even the desk drawers were empty. Sutton said it was just as he had left it. Even the new green carpet had no scuffmarks.

‘She wanted this room kept very simple,’ he explained. ‘She was going to get a computer; as you can see, everything is wired and ready. The desk lamp is about the only thing she must have bought. It’s not one that I supplied.’

On one of the shelves was a big stack of scripts, some still in brown envelopes with dates written on yellow Post-it notes and handwritten memos from Andrea Lesser.

‘As far as I can recall, most of the scripts were here,’ Sutton said, looking around. ‘I remember her agent telling me Amanda was supposed to read them. They’re all offers of work.’

Anna asked Sutton if he had met Andrea Lesser frequently.

‘Yes, she was overseeing the rebuilding and refurbishing and would come by to check on deliveries and progress.’

They went into the newly fitted kitchen, which looked as if it had barely been used.

‘I don’t think Amanda ever cooked, but she asked for all this high-tech equipment,’ Sutton pointed out. ‘There’s a small laundry room over here.’

They then checked the dining room with its French windows leading into the small walled garden. According to Sutton, nothing had been moved or changed or was missing. The small box bedroom was done out in soft peach tones, with matching headboard, drapes and cushions on the single bed, the white carpet thick with fluff. The fitted wardrobes were empty, as were all the drawers of the small dressing-table.

As they headed to the master suite, Sutton paused. ‘Is this where it happened?’

Anna nodded and stood back for him to go in ahead of her and Simon. The king-sized bed with its decorative headboard had been stripped, the pillows, sheet, duvet and mattress removed. Sections of the bloodstained carpet had been cut out. Sutton stood close to the bed, shaking his head.

‘Amanda was really only interested in this room. She chose the colour scheme and the linen, even the cushion covers. The walls are lined with Japanese silk, very expensive, the drapes too.’

Anna slid back the mirrored wardrobe doors to reveal a mass of clothes. There were four mirrored compartments, one containing racks of shoes from floor to ceiling, another with sweaters of every shade, carefully folded and stacked according to their colour. There was a rack of blouses, evening on one side, day on the other; Anna could see by the labels that they were all very expensive designer and couture garments.

A massive square mirror ran the length of the wall above the bedhead. The two bedside tables had crystal lamps and cut-glass bowls full of fake velvet and silk flowers. There was a hidden dressing room, and behind one wall of mirrors was a dressing-table, an old theatrical type with light bulbs on three sides. The carpet in the bedroom was very scuffed and there were a lot of fluff balls. It showed the imprint of their feet as they moved around the markings left by the forensic teams. Anna asked Sutton to look over the dressing-table. She switched on the lights; they were so bright she wanted to shade her eyes.

There were drawers filled with make-up and hairpieces. They opened up to sit flat either side of the dressing table. Wigs, hairbands and fake-tan bottles were jumbled together with bottles of different scents. There were drawers filled with sexy lace underwear, and on top of the dressing-table was a large leather jewel case, containing rows of rings, gold bracelets, numerous pearl necklaces, gold chains and lockets – a genuine treasure trove.

‘Are these real stones?’

Sutton glanced at the many rings and shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I never saw her wearing any jewellery really.’

‘What about a gold cross? Did you ever see her wearing a crucifix?’ Simon interjected.

‘No, no, I don’t think I ever did.’ Sutton turned to look at the stripped bed and frowned. Neither Anna nor Simon spoke, waiting as if they both knew he’d remembered something.

‘Did you find a toy floppy-eared rabbit? It was very worn and she, I mean Amanda, used to have it propped up on her pillow. Apparently it was always with her.’

‘How do you know?’

Sutton turned, looking confused. ‘What do you mean?’

‘How did you know it was always on her pillow? From what you’ve said to us, you hadn’t been here since you finished the decorations.’

This was Simon again. Anna noted a frown pass over Sutton’s handsome face.

‘I don’t think I said that. What I did say was I hadn’t been here for about eight weeks. The last time I came here I was with Andrea Lesser to check over any snags, and I remember seeing the toy on her pillow. Miss Lesser said that it went everywhere with Amanda and she always slept with it beside her. It was like a child’s comfort blanket.’

‘This was when you gave over the house keys?’

‘That is correct, but to be certain you should check with Miss Lesser.’

Simon looked to Anna. ‘Did she say if anything was missing?’

Anna shook her head, more intent on seeing if there was anything more to gain from Sutton. He was staring at his own reflection in the large mirror, as if recalling being with Amanda.

‘She was child-like. When I first met her here, she was very excited. This was quite a rundown property . . .’

He gestured around the bedroom.

‘To create such a large bedroom, we knocked through two walls and I extended further by a couple of feet into the garden. This was to create as much natural light as possible. Amanda wanted the mirrored wardrobes – in fact, she insisted on them. Not to my taste, but she was the client.’

‘How much did it all cost?’

Again, this was Simon. Anna knew that they could easily find out the exact amount from Miss Lesser; it somehow felt wrong to question Sutton about it. Thankfully, he didn’t seem concerned.

‘The house was gutted and we had to do extensive work to get rid of a lot of structural problems. It’s a very small property, but I think the outcome was around four hundred thousand – and that was without the fabrics and furnishings. I would say the total would be somewhere in the region of three quarters of a million pounds.’

Simon whistled and Sutton gave him a raised eyebrow.

‘You think that’s expensive? Well, when you consider the property is now worth over three million and was bought for seven hundred and fifty thousand, it was an exceptionally good investment. Don’t think when I say Miss Delany was child-like that she didn’t pay close attention to all the accounts. She was an astute businesswoman and bought this place at auction.’

‘But didn’t Miss Lesser oversee everything?’ Anna asked as they walked from the bedroom.

Sutton gave a wry smile. ‘Miss Lesser was Amanda’s agent and she was earning vast sums of money from her, but I sensed that she didn’t like having to check over all the merchandise. Whatever Amanda wanted, she got, and Miss Lesser’s job was to see that she got it, and at a good price.’

‘Did they have a good relationship?’

Again Sutton gave that wry smile. ‘Little Amanda was her golden goose, so she made very sure they had a good relationship. She did not want to lose her client and nor did I, for that matter.’

They let themselves out and crossed to their parked cars.

‘Thank you for coming to meet us here,’ Anna said, shaking Sutton’s hand.

‘I wish I could say it was a pleasure, but we’re here under very tragic circumstances,’ he responded.

Anna watched Sutton drive off in his Mercedes before she reversed and headed out of the mews. Simon sat beside her, his mood obvious.

‘Well, that didn’t give us much,’ he said grumpily.

‘On the contrary, I think we got more of an insight into our victim for one, and we now know that along with her diary, her cuddly toy is missing.’

‘Terrific. So what are you saying?’

‘That maybe the killer stole both these items. The diary I can understand, but not the cuddly toy. That is odd. I mean, why take it unless it meant something to him?’

It was after seven in the evening when they returned to the station. The incident room was quiet with only the night staff working. Apart from a few details regarding the files taken from Amanda’s laptop, there were no new items written up on the incident board.

Anna sat in her office and felt weary. Not that it had been a particularly hard day’s work; it was piecing together their victim’s background that made her feel depressed. She felt compassion for the girl with her anorexia, her drug-taking and damaged skinny body; then to be murdered at just twenty-four years of age was wretched. Anna was only twenty-nine but by comparison she felt so much older. It was as if their victim had hardly lived. After finishing her reports, she was preparing to leave when she saw on her desk a file from Joan Falkland with a typed note attached.

Copies of the files from Victim Amanda Delany’s laptop – more to come. I’ve also made a CD copy for you to use on your own computer.

Anna flipped open the folder. It contained printed sheets from the various files, listing each one by name and date. She slipped the CD into her briefcase, then finished the evening’s work by marking up her notes on the incident board. She’d catch up on reading the files from the laptop at home, but as Joan had not underlined any passages or remarked on anything of interest connected to the case, she didn’t feel there was any immediate urgency.

Anna didn’t get home until after nine. Unlike the Amandas of this world who would probably be getting ready to go out clubbing, she had a shower, made an omelette and, too tired to continue working, went straight to bed. She set her alarm for six the next morning, intending to work at home before going into the station.

I
t was a wonder to Anna the next morning how such a delicate, confused and tortured creature could not only be phenomenally successful but very rich and, as Sutton had said, very much in charge of her finances. It felt as if she was investigating two women, instead of just one young girl. With so many physical ailments, Anna wondered how on earth Amanda Delany had got herself out of bed each day to work on the film set.

She jotted down a list of things that bothered her: the two missing items – the toy rabbit and the rest of the gold crucifix chain – and she underlined them both. Tapping her teeth with the pencil, she then wrote down the three names, Scott Myers, Rupert Mitchell and Colin O’Dell. She paused, then wrote Fiona Myers’s name down too and underlined it. She flopped back onto her pillow, trying to fathom out what else was niggling away at her. She couldn’t quite get it to surface, then she remembered something. Getting up, she went into her sitting room, opening her desk drawers in search of an old notebook. Thumbing through it, certain that she was correct, she went back to her previous case – the murder of Lord Halesbury.

There it was.
The nurse, Dilys Summers, had first met Lord Halesbury when she was working as a nurse at the Drury Clinic, She had left the clinic to work privately for His Lordship. Summers must have been at the Drury around the same time as Amanda Delany.

Anna added Dilys Summers to the list of people she wished to interview. By this time it was after seven and she still hadn’t checked the files copied from the laptop. Dressing quickly, she took the file into her kitchen to read while she ate breakfast. Flipping through pages of childish jottings, some diets and some awful poetry, she sighed.

Anna shook her head. There were pages and pages of these trite poems. Headings at the top of the page read
Too Much Too Soon, Screwing My Life Up,
and then there were further odd lines, some misspelled:
It’s not all agony, Hiding behind the screen, Not all just up to now.
There were whole pages of these one-liners; Anna couldn’t make out what they meant. Were they, perhaps, the first line of a poem or just random thoughts?