Silent Scream (28 page)

‘She hated to sleep alone,’ Anna observed. ‘In fact, she was afraid to go to sleep. She used speed, coke and uppers to keep herself awake.’

She pulled up a stool to sit beside him. Langton wasn’t listening. She knew him too well; he could easily tune out when he was concentrating on something. After a moment of silence, she continued.

‘No sign of a break-in, the killer let himself in, but there’s nothing on CCTV. The driver brought her back from the film set, watched her go in before he drove away. He returned later that day, couldn’t rouse her, called her mobile, called her landline . . . are you listening to me?’

Langton nodded. By now Anna had fetched a glass and was pouring herself a Scotch. The bottle was just over half-full and he took it from her to top up his own drink, screwing the cap back on very slowly.

‘Then Andrea Lesser turns up with a key to open the front door and she finds the body. If tests prove that Amanda had been dead a much shorter time than we were told at first, it would mean she was actually killed later that morning,’ Anna said.

‘Keys . . .’ he repeated. Langton started to pace; even in the cramped, small kitchen he still managed two or three paces back and forth.

‘Keys – it’s the keys,’ he repeated. ‘Take a look in your handbag.’

Anna frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

Langton took a set of keys out of his pocket – car keys, house keys, office keys and another for his pedal-bike lock. He hooked them onto his forefinger, twirling it slightly, then dangled his keyring in front of Anna.

‘My keyring is an old medal from the First World War and belonged to my great-grandfather.’

He pulled the stool out to sit beside her again. The key discovered in Amanda’s handbag, he recalled, was on a single ring, nothing else attached. She might have needed keys for her laptop, desk drawer, jewellery case and quite possibly the door keys from her old flat that she was still paying rent on. He counted on his fingers the number of keys that she would have needed. Anna sipped her Scotch, listening.

‘New home ... in my humble opinion, the girl would have had something special as a key ring. This was the first place that she owned.’

‘What exactly does this add to the enquiry, apart from there might be a set of keys missing?’ Anna asked.

Langton drained his glass and crossed to pour the rest of the bottle into it. He gave one of his rare smiles.

‘We never saw anyone entering, nobody saw anyone around the mews, you said yourself she hated to go to

sleep, she was scared of her nightmares. What if the killer was already inside the house?’

‘It’s possible,’ Anna conceded. ‘It would tie in with her knowing the killer, and that the previous night she had a nightmare and woke up screaming.’

Langton ruffled her hair. She had always hated it when he did that, as it made the red curls stand up on end. She flattened it down with her hand as he picked up his coat.

‘I talked to a nurse who’d cared for her at the Drury Clinic,’ she blurted out. ‘She said that Amanda often screamed herself awake. So I don’t think the scream she claimed she heard was connected to her murder.’

He stared at her. ‘You talked to a nurse?’

Anna explained Dilys Summers’s connection with the previous case she had worked on, how the same woman had looked after Amanda Delany at the clinic.

He nodded, then took a match and bit it, using it as a toothpick. ‘Go on.’

‘As I said, apparently Amanda often screamed herself awake and would get very distraught. Dilys Summers also mentioned that Amanda had visitors at the Drury – Colin O’Dell and Scott Myers, and someone else who she didn’t know as she wasn’t on duty, but it could have been Rupert Mitchell.’

‘Really. And was this information passed on to the team?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Not exactly. Jesus Christ! I want to know precisely what our victim was doing weeks before the murder.’

‘She was
filming,
practically non-stop – very long hours. We know that as we have her schedule, we have her mobile phone and we’ve been checking all her contacts and calls made shortly before her murder.’

‘He was inside the mews waiting for her,’ Langton said softly.

‘What?’

‘I think her killer was already inside the mews cottage waiting for her to come home.’

Anna gave a wide-handed gesture. ‘Whoever it was, are you saying he had house keys?’

‘That is
exactly
what I am saying’. Langton shrugged into his coat. ‘He would have time to maybe find that five-year diary, read it and get into a rage, angry enough to kill her.’

Langton walked towards the door and then stopped.

‘No, no, that’s not right because whoever it was came ready to kill. He had the knife, the weapon, on him.’

He flicked his coat collar up. ‘Food for thought.’

Anna followed him as he headed into the hall.

‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.

He turned and cocked his head to one side. ‘Yes.’

‘Why did you come here tonight?’

‘As I said, food for thought and, well, I missed …’

She thought he was going to reach out to her, tell her he missed her, but he didn’t. He opened the front door.

‘I miss these kinds of nights – you know, thrashing ideas around. This case is starting to really get to me. We have to establish who the lady was seeing, if they weren’t connected to the film unit as we suspected. I’d wager it was someone she had been close to for some time.’

He tapped the door with his foot, then reached forwards, cupping her face between his hands.

‘Brings back memories. Thanks for the sandwich. G’night.’ Then he kissed her cheek with no more feeling than if he’d been a family friend, never a lover.

All of a sudden, Anna was riled. She resented the fact that he felt he could drop by at eleven o’clock at night, not only drop in without notice, but get her to make him a bacon sandwich, a pot of tea, then polish off her Scotch. As the door was about to close, she dived towards it and pulled it wide open.

Startled, Langton turned. ‘Remembered something else you’ve forgotten to disclose, have you?’ he said sarkily.

‘No. I’d just like you to know that if you intend making these late-night calls a habit, I’d appreciate you calling me first. Goodnight.’

And then she shut the door.

Unsettled and confused by Langton’s sudden appearance, Anna didn’t feel like going to bed; she knew she would not sleep. Instead, she used an old technique her father had taught her when he was in the force; she had watched him do it as a child. He would make up cards of suspects and, laying them out, would place them in order of suspicion. Anna wrote down the names of Lesser, Smith-Barker and the three male actors, then added both girls from the funeral, along with Amanda’s parents, plus the drivers Harry and his younger brother Tony James. She laid them out in front of her as if she was playing Solo. Which one of them would have a strong enough motive to instigate the murder? Was the motive money? Fraud?

She stared at the names and knew that, without any incriminating evidence, neither Lesser nor Smith-Barker could be in first position so she placed them to one side. Next, the three actors: would any of them really have much to lose if there were extracts about their affairs with Amanda? They were media fodder already; Anna doubted there could be anything that would incite them to kill.

Amanda’s parents were next. As much as she had sensed their near-indifference to their daughter’s death, they surely had no motive strong enough to kill her because they were past caring for her wellbeing. She put the cards with their names to one side.

Felicity Turner had surprised her with her anger. She had been stoned at the party that afternoon and had had too much to drink, but Anna sensed there was more to learn from her. She placed the card bearing Felicity’s name in the centre of the table and put Jeannie Bale’s beneath it. Again, Anna had been taken aback by what the girl had said; her anger and hints that she knew a lot more put her under suspicion. She then picked up the unit drivers’ names and placed their cards alongside the two girls’. A moment later, she moved Tony James’s card in front of Felicity’s, along with his brother’s.

She printed the word
MOTIVE
on a card and sat staring at it. On another she wrote
ABORTION
and on a third card,
KEYS
,
placing this one beside
ABORTION
. She was getting tired; it was after three in the morning. Looking over her cut-out jigsaw of names, Anna knew she was going round in circles. Literally, as by moving one card after another around on the table, she had unwittingly formed a sort of circle. She yawned; she knew she hadn’t really gained anything from the exercise. She rested her chin on her hand, leaning her elbows on the table. If the killer, as Langton suspected, was well-known and sufficiently trusted to be given the dead girl’s house keys, then someone, one of the listed, had to know his identity.

Anna rubbed her eyes and frowned. She recalled that the young, very pretty girl – their victim’s stand-in, Emma Field – had described Amanda as constantly using her mobile; she was always sending text messages. Anna was certain that the mobile Emma had handed to her had shown no sent or received text messages. Amanda must have had a second mobile phone or used a BlackBerry for texts and e-mails.
Where was it?

She picked up another blank card and wrote on it
MONEY
and put it into the circle beside Andrew Smith-Barker’s name. Then she used her forefinger to slide his card outside the circle. Crossing to turn the lights out, she hesitated and went back to the table. Frustrated, she swept all the cards to the floor and went to bed.

The following morning, by the time Anna arrived at the station, Mike Lewis had brought in Amanda Delany’s accountant, a woman called Ronnie Hodgson. She was wearing a smart tailored suit with a cream silk collarless blouse beneath it, and high pointed stilettos that made her even taller than Mike. She placed a large leather briefcase onto the table before she sat down.

‘I do apologise for not being able to meet with you before now, but I hope I’ll be able to assist you and will endeavour to do so to the best of my ability. That said, I have to safeguard the fact that, although my client is now sadly deceased, there are certain problems of invasion of privacy that might arise.’

‘Your client, Ms Hodgson, was murdered and I really doubt there’ll be any issue of invasion of privacy,’ Mike pointed out. ‘We need you to outline Miss Delany’s financial situation and help on a few queries pertaining to our investigation.’

Ronnie Hodgson had dark brown eyes and shoulder-length glossy hair, swept up to give her an attractive, surprisingly youthful look. Anna estimated her age to be late thirties. She wore no jewellery and no wedding ring. She clicked open her briefcase and took out several files and a shiny, black leather-covered notebook.

‘Are you privy to Miss Delany’s will?’ Anna asked.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘We need to know who her beneficiaries are.’

Miss Hodgson nodded and opened her notebook. She scribbled something in it with a slim silver pen before removing Amanda Delany’s Last Will and Testament from a file.

‘I suggested that she use the solicitors Marchbank and Crawley, as they do a considerable amount of work for certain clients of mine. Amanda, I have to say, was in the habit of adding and removing certain bequests, but I had no reason to discuss any alterations with her over the past three months.’

‘We’ll also require details of Miss Delany’s finances,’ Anna explained, ‘her different accounts, any payments and direct debits over the past six months. As you must be aware, you were served with a court order to hand over all the documents we require.’

Ronnie Hodgson nodded, saying, ‘I think you’ll find that all her accounts are in excellent order. Amanda was up to date with both income tax and VAT payments.’ She passed two copies in neat bound plastic covers across the table.

‘Does this include her investments?’ Anna queried.

Miss Hodgson hesitated and withdrew another file. ‘I think you should approach her investment banker about those.’

‘That would be Andrew Smith-Barker?’

‘Yes, that is correct.’

Mike Lewis flicked through the file in front of him and then glanced at Anna.

‘These are accounts up to the previous year.’

‘Yes, obviously this year’s accounts haven’t yet been completed.’

‘But they are the ones we’re most interested in,’ he said quietly.

‘I’m afraid they haven’t been processed yet. We do work a year in advance, but you can’t expect me to have any records to present to you yet, as under the circumstances we are having to deal without Miss Delany’s up-to-date receipts and bank statements.’

‘Do you have Power of Attorney?’

‘No, I don’t. That would be her agent, Andrea Lesser. I believe it was arranged during the purchase and refurbishing of Miss Delany’s mews house.’

‘Did you oversee the payments on the house, to the builders and so forth?’ Mike asked.