Above Suspicion (Anna Travis Mysteries Book 1) Page 18

  He suddenly dropped her hand and opened his arms expansively. “Would I risk losing all of this? Especially now I finally have the chance of making it big-time. If this new film comes off, it’ll mean I’ve got a chance to work in Hollywood. Mainstream success has eluded me, until now.”

  She looked to the door hopefully.

  He chewed his lower lip. “All I am guilty of is hiding my past. I buried it and if it was to surface, it would—”

  “We have every intention of keeping this private,” she said firmly.

  Daniels gave a soft laugh. “It must appear very shallow, my life, compared to yours.”

  “No.”

  “You probably think it all rather sad, to be so dependent on material things?”

  “I do understand,” she said helplessly. Part of her couldn’t believe that a famous movie star was being so familiar with her. The other part—the professional part—disapproved strongly.

  To her alarm, he threw his arm around her shoulders. “Anna, I want to show you something.”

  When she shifted position, he looked at her, surprised.

  “I just want to show you something.”

  He kept one arm around her shoulder and produced from his back pocket a slim kid-leather wallet.

  Langton arrived soundlessly in the doorway and watched them. Their heads were bent close to each other.

  “I have never shown this to anyone before,” Daniels was saying softly.

  He indicated a small black-and-white picture of a little boy with frightened eyes. His hair was plastered down and he was wearing baggy gray shorts with a knitted jumper. “It is the only photograph I have from my childhood.”

  Opposite was a scaled-down version of his headshot. He was tanned, handsome and looked ahead with confidence. Alan tapped the photograph. “See? They face each other. One lives inside the other. One comforts the other. Both of them are the reason I am so ambitious.”

  There was a loud cough. Anna broke away, embarrassed.

  “We’ve finished, Mr. Daniels,” Langton said coolly. He looked strangely at Anna.

  “Have you?” said Daniels lightly. He replaced his wallet into his back pocket.

  “Yes, sir. I am taking a few items that I will need you to sign for.” Langton walked further into the room. As he passed Anna, he gave a curt nod. “If you wish to accompany me around your apartment, to see there has been no damage? You can return to the car, Travis.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As she passed, Daniels took her hand. She stopped, confused, and watched him lift it to his lips.

  “Good-bye, Anna,” he said, quietly playful.

  Flushed to the roots of her hair, Anna left swiftly.

  Outside the house, she found Lewis and Barolli had already gone.

  She climbed in the back of the patrol car, waiting for Langton with some trepidation. As Langton exited from the house, she saw Daniels appear at the ground-floor window for a moment, then disappear. Langton opened the front passenger door, got in and then slammed it so hard, the car rocked.

  “What the fuck was that about?” He spun around to confront Anna.

  “What, exactly?” she stammered.

  As the car moved off, Langton’s face remained taut with anger. “You were supposed to be searching his fucking room, Travis. I walk in there: you are standing with his arm around you. I felt like I was intruding. And allowing him to kiss your hand? What the fuck do you think you were doing?”

  She swallowed.

  “What the fuck was going on? I have never seen anything so fucking unprofessional.”

  “If you would just calm down and stop swearing at me, I can tell you.”

  He glared at her. “Asking you out on a date, was he?”

  “No! He was talking about his childhood. He’d opened up. And then, just before you came into the room, he wanted to show me a picture.”

  “What kind of picture, Travis?”

  “Similar to the ones his foster mother showed us: a black-and-white snapshot. And opposite it, a recent one.”

  “Really? And what do you deduce from that?” he snapped.

  “He said that one lived inside the other. He also talked about his fear of losing all he had gained. I suspect he fears becoming that wretched child again.”

  Langton groaned. “Well, that’s fucking brilliant psychology, Travis. I’m glad you compromised your dignity for that nugget of wisdom. He didn’t identify the wretched child as the real serial killer by any chance, did he?”

  Sullen, she did not reply.

  Several minutes later, Langton turned back to her, more calmly. “We found his dental X-rays. So he lied about them being lost.”

  She stared out of the window wordlessly. She decided not to say what she thought, which was that Daniels’s compulsive neatness would, in her opinion, mean he knew exactly where everything was. If they were in any way defamatory, he would have destroyed them.

  Langton unbent a little more. “So, after your tête-à-tête with Anthony Duffy—what do you think?”

  She took a big intake of breath. “He has too much to lose. I don’t think he would jeopardize the life he has now.”

  There was a pause.

  “So, in your humble opinion, is he our man or not?”

  “No, I don’t think he is.” She leaned slightly forward. “What about you?”

  “I’d like his wardrobe.” He smiled ruefully.

  “That’s not a proper answer.” She managed a half-grin.

  “It’s all you’re going to get,” he said. Langton knew they might have come up empty-handed and it hurt.

  Peace had been restored between them.

  Chapter Ten

  Anna was at her desk by nine o’clock the next morning, when Lewis and Barolli strolled out of Langton’s office. Lewis gave her a lewd wink and whispered, “Heard he almost got into your pants!”

  “What?” she hissed.

  “Just a joke, all right?” Lewis grinned. Suddenly his mobile phone rang and he went into a flap, trying to get it out of his pocket. He listened, then he grabbed his coat, yelling, “It’s coming! The baby’s coming!” and legged it fast out of the incident room, followed by hooting and cheering.

  When the noise had died down, Moira looked at Anna. “Come on. You can tell me. What happened between you and Alan Daniels?”

  “Christ!” Anna pushed back her chair in a temper and stomped off to the filing cabinet where Barolli was sifting through the photographs from Daniels’s flat.

  Jean called out to him: “Hear he’s got a great place.”

  Barolli nodded. “It was a palace. Course, I didn’t get to see the master bedroom. Travis checked that herself. Right, Travis?”

  Anna slammed the filing cabinet drawer closed. “What is it with you lot?”

  Moira told Anna to ignore them, they were just trying to lighten things up. Barolli grinned in response.

  Langton walked in, his raincoat drenched and his umbrella dripping. “It’s pissing down,” he said, unbuttoning his raincoat. Taking some pages from inside his breast pocket, he passed them to the nearest officer. “Report says the X-rays are no good; bite won’t match the impressions. It wasn’t Daniels’s teeth that bit Melissa.”

  “We get anything from his laptop?” Barolli asked.

  Langton shook his head. He looked crumpled and badly in need of a shave. Anna noticed he was still wearing the same shirt from the night before.

  “Where’s Lewis?” he asked.

  “His baby is on the way,” Jean said, smiling.

  “That’s good.”

  Langton walked into his office, the dripping umbrella leaving a trail of water after him, and closed the door.

  “Eh, Travis. Come and have a look at this, will you?”

  Barolli was holding a magnifying glass. She crossed to Barolli’s desk and bent down to look at the photograph.

  “Is that Julia Roberts he’s got with him?”

  Anna turned away. “I wouldn’t know.”

>   Jean replaced the phone and announced the commander and the chief superintendent were on their way in. She hurried to Barolli’s desk and took the magnifying glass.

  “No! That’s nobody. It doesn’t even look like Julia Roberts. He’s got a great body, though, hasn’t he? Is he coming in again, Anna?”

  Anna switched on her computer and said tersely, “I wouldn’t know, Jean.”

  “But do you know, is he or isn’t he a suspect now?”

  Anna started typing furiously as Langton put his head around the door. “Jean, can you check out the cost of a flight to San Francisco? And internal flights to Chicago and Los Angeles.”

  “Yes, gov. Hotels, as well?”

  Langton gave a brief nod before retreating.

  Jean started to log on to the Internet. As she checked for the airlines, she glanced across to Moira.

  “Be a nice little trip for someone. He won’t go alone.”

  “Not me, I hate flying,” Barolli said, replacing the photographs into their envelope.

  “Could I see those?” Anna put her hand out. Barolli, at his desk, tossed the packet across to her.

  Suddenly everyone froze. The big brass had just entered the incident room. The commander, two members of the Gold Group and their chief gave frosty nods and muttered a few good mornings on their way toward Langton’s office. Jean grabbed her phone, then replaced it.

  “Shit. I forgot to tell him they were coming in. I’ll get a bollocking.”

  The team went quiet as the blinds that covered the window looking into the incident room were drawn down.

  “I think that’s his American trip out the window,” Moira said quietly.

  Barolli took a deep breath. “Tenner on it; they’re scaling us down.”

  “But they can’t do that,” Anna said, shocked.

  “Yes, they can. We were brought in for Mary Murphy. That was over eight, nine months ago. It’s been two months since Melissa Stephens was found and we’ve no bloody result on that, either. It’s too costly to keep us all on the case.”

  They all gave an involuntary glance at the shuttered window and began working at their desks.

  At one o’clock, Jean took coffee and sandwiches into Langton’s office. Back in the incident room, she reported a very tense atmosphere. “The gov looked as if he was being hauled over the coals.”

  Inside his cramped office, Langton sat in mute fury. He had not, as yet, even broached the subject of a trip to the States.

  The commander put her sandwich aside. “I mean it, James. We are seriously going to have to consider scaling down the team. As far as I can gather, your suspect, Alan Daniels, has cooperated on every level. The search warrant and subsequent search of his flat resulted in nothing whatsoever that implicated him. With no new evidence forthcoming, it’s a very costly operation to keep so many officers on.”

  “I am aware of that,” Langton said coldly.

  “I do understand the reasons for focusing on Alan Daniels, but the evidence is totally circumstantial. There is nothing corroborating it and even though intuition is something we can’t dismiss, we nevertheless have to seriously contemplate how you intend to take this further. Now is the time to give me—everyone here—details.”

  “Results, so far, are these: we have a serial killer on the loose and, as you’ve read the reports, you know as well as we do that he could also have been committing the same crimes in the United States.”

  Langton opened the file on the American victims.

  “I read it, James,” Commander Leigh said curtly. “But that brings up the possibility that the perpetrator could be American.”

  Exasperated, Langton threw up his hands. “That isn’t feasible. Daniels was in the States: filming in Chicago, in Los Angeles and San Francisco. That is too bloody coincidental. We also know there were two periods when he was in New York. I am getting them checked and—”

  She interrupted him. “I am aware of the latest report. But being in the same place does not automatically mean he was involved. That said, it could let us off the hook if the killer turns out to be an American. We could feed that information to the press.”

  He knew what she meant.

  “If you can take it, ma’am. I wouldn’t want the responsibility of closing us down and then another victim being discovered,” he said. “Because I am damned sure he’s not stopped.”

  “It’s not a question of me taking it,” she snapped. “The costs to date outweigh the results. I have to present my report to the assistant commissioner. That means making a decision about bringing in a new team, which I am loath to do, as it will spiral the cost even further.”

  “Give me more time, then. Let me take a trip to the States; check out their records of the victims. They’ve sent over only case reports and the fact they have the same MO, but if I could get more details, I would, at least for my own satisfaction, eliminate Alan Daniels.”

  She sighed impatiently. “Eliminate him? You don’t have one scrap of evidence to implicate him, for Christ’s sake, and definitely nothing to link him to the Melissa Stephens murder. All you have is a group of women who may or may not have known him and who may or may not have known each other! I have read the reports.” She was fighting to retain her temper. “You have had every possible opportunity. You have not, I am sorry to say, given me anything today that warrants keeping an entire murder team here in Queen’s Park.”

  “You’ve already halved the team. I won’t let this go,” he said firmly.

  “It is not a question of what you want,” she said angrily. “Look, let’s not get into a shouting match over this. I will consider giving you two more weeks.”

  “Give me three days. That’s all I need to go over there and check out these cases.”

  The commander looked at Chief Superintendent Thompson, who, till then, had not said more than a few words. “I trust James.” He carefully placed his coffee cup on the desk. “If he feels there is a possibility of gaining a result, I’d send him to Alaska, if necessary.”

  Langton gave him a grateful look. The commander collected her briefcase and walked to the door.

  “Three days and keep me informed. Because we are going to have to prepare a press release.”

  The team watched curiously as the procession of brass walked out, but could find nothing in their manner to indicate what had happened inside. A call from Lewis lifted the gloominess in the atmosphere. Barolli yelled out the news: Lewis had a son, weighing in at seven pounds, six ounces. After a moment of quiet conversation, he replaced the receiver.

  “He’s going to put in for maternity leave,” he said, surprised.

  “I think you mean ‘paternity’ leave,” Jean commented wryly.

  “What did you tell him?” Moira asked.

  “I just said that from what has been going down here, I didn’t see why not.”

  Langton appeared. He called out to Jean, who was printing material from the Internet. “You get the information I wanted?”

  Jean gathered up all the pages. “Mike Lewis has just had a baby boy,” she informed him.

  He looked puzzled for a moment, then gave a half-smile.

  “Moira, send him a bottle of champagne and some flowers for his wife. From all of us.”

  He returned to his office, Jean following on his heels.

  “Christ, Jean, is this the cheapest deal you can get?”

  “Yes. I checked with all the airlines and the Virgin Atlantic flight is the cheapest, direct to San Francisco.”

  She passed him another sheet. “I would suggest you hire a car from San Francisco and drive to Los Angeles, then get an internal flight from there to Chicago.”

  “Thanks,” he said curtly. Then he reached for the phone.

  When Jean returned to the incident room, she grinned at Anna conspiratorially. “He’s having kittens about the price, but it’s not that bad: round-trip for under six hundred quid.”

  Moira had taken a call from the NYPD in New York. “No joy in New York; th
ey’ve not got anything on the dates Daniels was over there.” She buzzed the message through to Langton’s office.

  She took a couple of notes and looked over to Jean. “Jean, can you get onto CAP in San Francisco. That’s the division that handles the murders of prostitutes: Crime Against Prostitutes, it’s part of the Vice Division in the San Francisco Police Department. You need to ask for Captain Tom Delaware.”

  Moira leaned on Jean’s desk, watching her write it all down. “He wants a hotel. Somewhere in a place called Tenderloin.”

  “Tenderloin?” Jean asked. “You sure you got that right? Tenderloin?”

  “That’s what he said. Tenderloin.”

  Having just walked in, Langton overheard the conversation: “It’s called that because during the Depression era, only police officers earned a good steady wage and could get a decent steak.” The two women turned to him, astonished, and he shrugged. “Now you know!”

  Jean and Moira seemed to return to their work in hand, though when they noticed Langton lean on Anna’s desk, neither of them was averse to watching from a corner of her eye.

  “We’re on the eleven o’clock flight tomorrow. Heathrow direct to San Francisco. Can you drive an automatic?”

  “Yes,” said Anna. “San Francisco!”

  Langton straightened up. “Jean, check out the visa situation ASAP, for Travis and myself.” He returned to his office.

  Moira and Jean threw a glance at each other. Barolli pushed back his chair, irritated. It wasn’t that he wanted to go to San Francisco; it was just that it would have been ethical to ask him, since he’d been there longer. He also wanted to know what the hell was going to happen in London when his gov jetted off to the States.

  Langton looked round the corner of his door at the sight of an uptight Barolli and added, “With Mike out being a daddy, I need you to run the incident room.”

  “So, we still have one,” Barolli said moodily.

  “We are hanging on to it by our fingernails. We only have two weeks. I’ll be giving a briefing in fifteen minutes.”

  “Right,” Barolli said, still not mollified.

  “And I know you bloody hate flying. I’ve got a long drive from San Francisco to LA, then an internal flight to Chicago. And only three days to do it, there and back.”