Silent Scream (40 page)

‘It was more than likely yet another of her lies. We dismissed it as nonsense. Who could write their memoirs at twenty-four? It’s ridiculous!’

‘It wasn’t a lie, sir. I have met with the publisher.’

He shrugged.

‘You see, if Amanda had been subjected to sexual abuse as a child, she would probably have intended writing about it.’

‘She wasn’t.’

‘But you must understand why I have to ask these questions. As I said, it is a possible motive.’

‘What do you mean?’ He stepped closer to Anna.

‘I think you understand, sir. You and your wife would have featured very prominently in your daughter’s—’

‘Get out.’ Delany gripped Anna by her arm and drew her towards the door. ‘I have heard enough. I will make a complaint to your superiors so
out –
get the hell out of this suite!’

Anna jerked her arm free. She was almost knocked off her feet as he opened the door and pushed her out, slamming it behind her.

Anna returned to the patrol car, shaken but certain of a few more facts. In reality she doubted that Mr Delany had any part in the murder of his daughter, nor had his wife. She was sure, however, that there had been some kind of abuse inside the family, but it would be almost impossible to prove. Unless they found the diary and the diary contained any details of what Amanda had suffered.

Mrs Delany was retouching her make-up in the bathroom, her hands shaking as she heard her husband ordering a taxi to take them to St Pancras. They had decided to stay at The Grand in Paris before returning to their villa in the South of France.

She physically jumped when he opened the bathroom door.

‘We’ve got about half an hour. Do you want coffee and sandwiches sent up?’

‘No, nothing, thank you.’ She stared at him from the mirror as he came towards her, gently rubbing her shoulders.

‘Everything will be all right as soon as we get home.’

She nodded, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘She loved that little rabbit, didn’t she?’

He nodded. ‘Why bring that up?’

‘It’s missing – they think the killer took it. I remember her cuddling it. She’d have been no more than six, never would go to sleep without it.’

‘I know.’

Slowly she turned to face him, but then couldn’t meet his eyes. He reached out and gripped her face in his hands.

‘He’s dead now, Carmen. We have to get on with our lives – we must put it all behind us.’

‘It’s just hard for me sometimes,’ she whispered.

‘I know, but you can’t blame yourself

‘Yes, I can,’ she breathed.

He sighed, and turned to leave.

‘We should have protected her,’ his wife cried out. ‘I should have, but I didn’t honestly believe he would . . . How many times when we went on holiday did we leave her with him, how many times . . .?’ She broke down in tears.

‘Shush,’ he said, walking out.

Mrs Delany looked back to the mirror. She had not come to London when Amanda was almost dying because she was attending her father’s funeral. They had lived close by him for most of their married life. Christian de Wolf was a very wealthy, handsome widower, a wine importer with a string of polo ponies, and she, his only child, had been molested by him from an early age. When she had admitted it to her husband, he had used a riding crop on his father-in-law, until the latter begged forgiveness. He had never touched his daughter again, and moved into a small lodge attached to the villa, having arranged for a massive annual allowance to be settled on his daughter.

Mrs Delany suspected her father was becoming overly fond of his young granddaughter, but when she confronted him, he denied it and threatened to halt the allowance they lived on and force them out of the villa. She couldn’t stop the tears now. Had her father made Amanda terrified to tell anyone, just as he had done with his own daughter? Terrified that she would be taken away and given up for adoption? Was that why she had kept the secret for so long?

Mr Delany couldn’t go to her even when he heard her crying in the hotel room. He couldn’t face any more problems, any more anguish. During one of her final trips home, when Amanda had claimed that her grandfather had raped her, he refused to believe her, as did his wife. When she returned to London, he confronted the man he detested; de Wolf had sworn on his knees that he had never touched their precious child. Two weeks later he died from a heart-attack, leaving the rest of his fortune to his only daughter. Mr Delany sat staring at the matching Gucci suitcases stacked up by the door. He had failed to protect Amanda; he knew it, but until now had denied it.

He recalled taking the toy to her bedroom. She looked like a princess, in her bedroom with its pink carpet and pink drapes. He had put the rabbit in her arms and whispered that he loved her and would never let any harm come to her. She had reached up to put her arms around his neck, asking if he would promise, and he had kissed her.

‘I promise, Princess. This little rabbit will always look after you.’

‘I’ll call him Promise,’ she had said.

He knew he had broken that promise, he had broken it for money, and he was ashamed. He had lived in total denial, watched helplessly as his Princess became a little monster, hellbent with her string of sexual conquests on making them ashamed of her.

Mrs Delany had regained her composure as she joined her husband, slipping her mink-lined cashmere coat around her shoulders.

‘Did you have any success?’ she asked him.

‘No. There was no one in and I didn’t want to stay around in case I was seen.’

‘We have probably been over-reacting. Without Amanda, I’d say they couldn’t publish anything anyway.’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘How much would you have been prepared to pay for it?’

Delany shrugged, knowing he would have paid a good price to get his hands on his daughter’s diary. He looked at his elegant, beautiful wife, with her make-up and immaculate hair, and he reached for her hand.

‘It’s over, darling.’

‘Not yet. Not until they find who killed her.’

He doubted that they ever would; it had already been too long. She threaded her fingers through his, her diamond rings glinting, her nails perfectly manicured. She had soft hands, delicate. She was a delicate creature and one he had protected, but he should have taken her away before she confronted her father. For him, having been overprotective of his beloved wife, his daughter had paid the price.

‘Shall I call for the porter?’ she asked.

‘Yes, we should be on our way.’

‘You have the passports and tickets?’

He patted his pocket and nodded. Soon they would be able to create yet another protective shell to hide the guilt that was inside them both. For his part, he reasoned that he would not have been able to provide for his wife on his own in the manner to which she was accustomed. She, for her part, had lived in luxury like a caged exotic bird, never making any decisions for herself and never being a good mother. She was too damaged; the threat her own father had whispered to her, that he could take everything from her and leave her with nothing, was a persistent nightmare. There had been a time when she had often woken up screaming, just like her daughter. But while she had been protected by her doting husband, Amanda had had only the warmth of a cuddly toy rabbit.

L
ester James had been working on a TV series in Manchester when his brother Harry called to say that the police were sniffing around in connection with the Amanda Delany case. He drove straight to Manchester airport and boarded a flight to Amsterdam, and although he had told his brother that he was not in any kind of trouble, his disappearing act was highly suspicious. Tony was very edgy when he met up with Harry, asking if there could be any link between their youngest brother and the murder.

‘No way, but you know, if he has any more trouble he’ll get nicked and it’ll be prison for him. Is he still dealing shit?’

‘He swore he wasn’t, but he gave me a wrap to pass over to that Colin O’Dell at the fucking funeral. He told me he wasn’t doin’ that any more – we’ve had enough problems with him in the past. So what do we do, apart from keeping him at arm’s length for a while?’

Harry had always been a father figure to both his brothers; now he said he would see to it that Lester would be looked after. He left Tony sitting in a small café. He didn’t believe his kid brother would have anything to do with the murder, but at the same time, he knew that Lester had been scoring and dealing drugs. Even when they had warned him to cut it out, he still beefed up his legitimate salary, mostly dealing in small amounts to the cast and crew of the films he was working on. It was those dealings that made both brothers wary of having the police question Lester.

Armed with a search warrant, Barolli and his team brought in two Scene of Crime Officers to search Lester James’s flat in Esher. They found an array of sharp suits and shoes and multi-coloured shirts, and shaving equipment and bottles of cheap aftershave lined up in the bathroom cabinet. In the small box room were his karate medals and cups, and his Gi in pristine condition. The single bed was covered in a dark green candlewick bedspread; the blinds on the window were drawn. Barolli stared around the living room with its hideous couch and two matching easy chairs. There was a large plasma screen in the corner and numerous karate championship videos and DVDs piled next to it. Stacked on a bookshelf were boxes of vitamins and karate magazines. Caught between two pages was a torn piece of paper listing plane times to Amsterdam. In the fridge in the kitchen were butter and eggs, all well past their sell-by date, and open cartons of rice and noodles, along with four cans of Red Bull.

Barolli instructed the team to remove some of the DVDs and a couple of videos, but there was nothing else of interest, no passport, no money, nothing incriminating. That was, until they found a large polished wooden box containing a collection of karate knives.

The officers outside Jeannie and Felicity’s flat also found no one at home. They knocked, rang the bell and, climbing into the back yard area, shone torches through the windows, front and back. After fifteen minutes they called the search off when Mike Lewis instructed them to put a surveillance team in place outside.

It was late afternoon when both teams returned to the station. Anna was only just back herself. ‘We really need more evidence on Lester James,’ she said to Barolli.

‘Terrific. Right now the bastard could be anywhere.’ He was eager to get the box of knives for forensic testing. ‘Maybe someone tipped him off. If he’s done a disappearing act, something or someone had to have given him a nudge that we were interested in him.’

Lester James was now listed as prime suspect and both his brothers had agreed to come in for questioning. Also earmarked for interview were Scott Myers and Colin O’Dell. As both were filming during the day, they were to be questioned on video early the following evening.

Left alone, Anna felt a hot flush coming on. She had reprimanded Barolli about a tip-off to Lester James, but she now had a pretty good idea where it had come from: Bruce Mason. She waited to calm down before she went back into the incident room to talk to Barolli.

‘This Lester James,’ she began, ‘on his previous he’d had some connection to drug dealing. If he was a serious player then maybe he scored from Amsterdam, which would be why he’s skipped over there. Maybe he knows people who’d give him a place to stay. The Amsterdam drug squad might have a contact. You found a note about plane times, right?’

‘Forever on the ball, aren’t we?’

‘Someone has to be,’ she said sarcastically. In her handbag was Bruce Mason’s card; back in her office she tapped it against her teeth. Her own car wouldn’t be ready for collection for a couple more days. If she asked to use him as a driver, she’d be able to question him without him giving the James brothers a heads-up. She decided to wait, reckoning she’d be at the station for a very long time that evening.

Harry James, being interviewed by Anna and Barolli, complained that he had already given a statement: he and Tony were indeed the two drivers from the unit who handled Amanda’s collection and pickups on
Gaslight.
He was her named driver but, on the night before her murder, his brother Tony had taken over. Harry denied that Lester was ever used during the days running up to the murder; he and his brother would be willing to co-operate and show the police the records.

‘What was your brother Lester’s relationship with Amanda Delany?’ Barolli asked.

‘Relationship?’ Harry queried. ‘He was just a unit driver, like us. There wasn’t no relationship bar passenger and driver – it’s more than our job’s worth to ever get involved with clients. We pick them up and take them home, then do it all over again the next day.’

‘Did Lester ever socialise with Miss Delany when she wasn’t working?’

‘Not that I know of. He’s got a big mouth and if he did, he wouldn’t have kept it quiet, so no way.’

‘But didn’t Amanda use him on a private basis?’

‘You got me there. I wouldn’t know. She did use a few of us guys, but whether one of them was Lester, I couldn’t tell you.’

‘Where is he?’ Barolli wanted to know.