Silent Scream (6 page)

Simon smiled at the nervous girl. ‘You’ve taken over her part, haven’t you?’

‘Not really. I’m being filmed in long shot, but luckily her costume fits . . .’ At that moment, the call boy appeared with his radio and waved over to her. Emma apologised; she was needed for rehearsal.

As she hurried away, Anna checked the phone again. ‘I’ll get this over to the technical support unit to check out her call lists,’ she said.

Simon was distracted. ‘She was very pretty. I wouldn’t mind working on one of these movies,’ he commented. ‘Big break for her, isn’t it, the stand-in, but I doubt that’d be a motive.’

Anna was truly amazed when she stepped from behind the blackout curtain into a massive scenery build of a Victorian incident room at Scotland Yard. Mike Reynolds led her towards Julian Pike, the director, who was standing with his back to her, thumbing through a script.

‘Boss, this is DI Anna Travis.’

Pike turned and gave her a tight smile. Anna could feel his nervous energy. He had piercing eyes and his long, bony fingers twitched. There was an elastic band around his wrist and he slipped it off, twanging it between his fingers.

‘You want to sit down?’ he asked.

‘If you don’t mind,’ she replied.

Pike sat and crossed his long legs, one foot twitching up and down, his hands constantly playing with the elastic band.

‘Did you get on with Amanda?’ she asked, taking out her notebook.

‘Of course I did – everybody did. She could be difficult, but she was a professional and the rushes we have are good. Thankfully her bulk scenes were already shot.’

‘I’ve been told you had a few arguments?’

‘Really? Well, by that you probably mean when I had to talk to her firmly about how she was interpreting the scenes. She was playing a very nervous and sheltered young heiress, and obviously Amanda was neither, so sometimes she would appear too modern – in her gestures, her delivery, et cetera, but I didn’t have any actual arguments with her. I admired her – she was very strong-minded.’

‘Did you have a close relationship with her?’

Pike gave a short barking laugh and pushed his glasses up onto his head.

‘If you are trying to find out if I was having sex with her, you couldn’t be more wrong. I was directing her; it was a professional relationship and nothing more.’ He snapped the elastic band.

‘Had you ever had a relationship with her before this film?’

‘Christ, no, but I’m certain you’ll have a list of men who did – not that I think she was involved with anyone here. Her agent had given her a good talking-to about behaving herself, as the last thing we wanted was any scandal . . . not that it wouldn’t be good publicity eventually, but to have press hanging around the set would have been intrusive. It took me all my time making her concentrate.’

‘You’ve replaced her?’

He recrossed his legs and leaned forward.

‘Listen, I know a lot of the crew don’t like the fact that we have kept the cameras rolling, but I have backers and producers eager to get the movie finished.’ He stood up then, saying, ‘Now, is there anything else you want to ask me, only I should get started as we’re almost ready to go with the next scene.’

‘Did you like Amanda?’

For the first time, Pike became still.

‘Did I
like
her?’ he repeated.

‘Yes.’

‘I cast her, Detective Travis, I admired her, and she was a very beautiful young woman. This is tragic and, to be honest, I’ve not really allowed myself to think about what happened to her.’

‘Would you know of anyone who would have had a grievance against her?’

Pike sighed in irritation.

‘Maybe one or other of the boyfriends she dumped, maybe even one of the wives they left to be with her, but whether any one of them would have done this terrible thing is beyond my comprehension. She was twenty-four years old, with a big career ahead of her, and she was an astonishingly beautiful girl, cut down in the prime of her life and her career.’

There was a sudden flurry of activity, actors returning to the set ready for the filming, lighting technicians hovering. Pike got up from the chair, dismissing Anna.

‘Could I ask you one more thing?’ she said, jumping up and following him.

‘Yes,’ he hissed.

‘Did Amanda say anything to you about hearing someone screaming in the night?’

He turned towards her, his face pinched with impatience.

‘She mentioned it, but I didn’t give it much attention. I said something like . . . oh, I can’t remember, but I think it was that she should use it for the sequence we were shooting. I wanted to hear her really screaming. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .’

‘But she was obviously distressed, wasn’t she?’

‘Listen, Detective, Amanda could get distressed if her costume was too tight, but whether or not it had any connection to what happened, I really couldn’t say. Now, I have to get back to work.’

‘You suspect someone from the unit killed her?’ Simon asked Anna as they walked towards his car.

Anna got into the passenger seat, slamming the door shut. Simon winced as he sat beside her, closing his own door more carefully.

‘I think . . .’ She hesitated. ‘One of them knows a lot more than I was able to uncover. Which one, I don’t know – but I’m not through here. Something doesn’t sit right, apart from their lack of genuine grief, and I didn’t like the director.’

‘Julian Pike? Was it just a personal reaction or did you get something else?’ Simon asked.

‘There’s just something about him. He’s a cold fish. And he doesn’t really have an alibi, does he – since he drove himself home.’

They continued their journey in silence for a while and then Simon hit the steering wheel in frustration, muttering, ‘Fucking traffic! This bloody congestion charge just makes it worse.’

‘What do
you
think about the scream Amanda claimed to have heard?’ Anna asked.

‘Christ knows. You keep going back to that.’

‘I know, it just bothers me. She gets to the set and tells everyone how much it had affected her, but she didn’t call the police.’

They eventually drove into the station car park and headed into the incident room. Phones were ringing nonstop as Anna threaded her way through the booths towards her small glass-fronted office.

As soon as Mathews saw Anna, he signalled for her to join him.

‘The TV coverage is kicking in – they’re showing clippings of her films and they’re impatient for an arrest. So far, we have no suspect. Unless . . .’ He peered at Anna.

‘We’ve come up empty-handed. No one we interviewed on the set appears to have a motive, and in most cases they were either working or had alibis, so the team will have to run checks on them all. Have we been given a closer time-frame for her death?’

‘Not come through yet, but they’ll be finishing up the post mortem some time soon.’ Mathews sighed, then glanced at his watch. ‘We’d better have a briefing and see what else, if anything, we’ve got. With such a high-profile case, we’ll be getting a lot of media attention. You think we should go for an interview on one of the TV crime shows?’

‘I suppose so, but right now we’ve not really pieced together her last known movements, apart from being dropped off at home by the unit driver.’

‘You question him?’

‘Yes, Simon did. His name is Harry James. He didn’t see anything suspicious and waited until Amanda let herself into the mews house before he drove off. He returned to the film set and had another actor to drive home.’

‘What about this scream?’

‘Er, no one seems to have any concrete details, apart from the fact that she told a lot of people about it. She didn’t report it at the time though, and apparently the team has found no one or anything connected to it in the area of the mews.’

‘You get on and write up your report. I’ll be out in half an hour, then I’ve got to get off home.’

‘Yes, sir.’

A few minutes later, Mathews tapped on the window of her office, holding up the front-page coverage in the
Evening Standard.

Anna wasn’t surprised to find, fifteen minutes later, as the team gathered for the briefing, that Mathews had already gone home. Simon waited for everyone to assemble.

‘OK, the Guv has had to leave so it’s down to me to gather all the information we’ve got so far.’

He turned to the board. Alongside the photographs of Amanda from various films were the tragic shots showing how her body was discovered. None of the neighbours in the mews itself and the properties backing onto Amanda’s house had heard or seen anything suspicious. Nothing, as yet, had come in from forensics or the pathology labs to help ascertain the exact time of her murder. They had no weapon.

‘It was a brutal killing,’ Simon stressed. ‘Look at the way her body was found and then look at what we’ve got – fuck all. We have no suspect, we haven’t found anyone so far who saw anything suspicious, and no one we’ve interviewed knows of anyone with a grudge against the victim.’

‘Bar the ex-wives of some of her boyfriends,’ Barbara the blonde DC interjected. ‘Seems like Amanda got her rocks off, shagging married stars and one in particular.’ She held up a newspaper. ‘Scott Myers’s wife is also an actress, also pretty attractive. She’s been in the news over the past year, accusing Amanda of stealing her husband and persuading him to leave her and their three kids – all under seven, by the way.’

Barbara returned to her desk and picked up more copies of newspaper cuttings.

‘Fiona Myers is quoted in the
News of the World
last year as saying that Amanda was like an over-sexed bitch on heat and that she needed a bucket of water chucked over her to cool her down. She said if she ever saw her, she’d be the one to chuck it.’

Suddenly Mathews returned and signalled to Anna to join him.

‘I was in the car park,’ he said. ‘They’ve brought her parents here. Can you talk to them, because I’ve got to go. They’re downstairs.’

It was never easy to confront parents in these circumstances. Anna wished she had someone with her, but she braced herself and walked into the reception.

M
r and Mrs Delany were waiting patiently. Carmen Delany was a very attractive woman, well-groomed and smartly dressed like her husband. They didn’t appear to be the emotionally distraught couple that Anna had expected; rather they were calm and poised as they sat beside each other in one of the incident rooms.

‘First let me give you my sincere condolences,’ Anna said, and offered them tea or coffee. They declined both.

There was an awkward pause as Anna prepared herself for what she should say next, and neither spoke.

‘We are waiting for the post-mortem report to assist in our enquiry, but I want to assure you we’re endeavouring to get a result as soon as possible. If I could just ask you some questions, that might help us get to know more about Amanda.’

Still neither said a word. Anna found it unnerving as they sat so calmly, their eyes on her, waiting.

‘Firstly, could you give me any reason why someone might have a grudge against your daughter?’

‘Grudge?’ Mrs Delany repeated quietly.

‘Anyone who might have had a reason to harm your daughter?’

‘Harm her?’ This was Mark Delany, his voice soft but chilling.

‘Yes. We need to question everyone Amanda knew and find out if there was someone who had been frightening her, or maybe stalking her. Is there anyone you can think of who would have been . . . jealous, angry?’

‘My daughter, we have been told, was brutally murdered. I don’t see how describing anyone’s jealousy or anger would be a motive for them to kill her.’

‘It’s possible, Mr Delany, that you may not have been aware of how intensely someone felt about her. If there is anyone you recall meeting or hearing Amanda talk about, I would really appreciate knowing about them.’

Anna felt her words tumbling over each other, she was so nervous. The Delanys’ reaction to whatever she said was just not normal, unless they were both in shock – but they didn’t appear to be nor were they showing the usual signs of that.

Anna waited. They looked at each other and then returned their almost expressionless eyes to her.

‘I can think of no one we met who would want to harm Amanda.’ Mr Delany had a thin mouth; his words were clipped and said without any emotion.

‘What about you, Mrs Delany?’ Anna asked.

‘No one, but you have to understand that we saw very little of her over the past five years.’

‘Was this lack of contact due to Amanda’s filming commitments?’

They made no reply.

‘Or was there a problem between you as a family?’

Again no response.

‘Did you have some kind of argument, Mr Delany?’

‘Argument?’ The thin mouth shut tightly.