Above Suspicion (Anna Travis Mysteries Book 1) Page 22

  He flashed a smile at her. “Hi, you must be Anna. I’m Captain Jeff O’Reilly.” He shook her hand, squeezing her fingers tightly. Yet another American with really great teeth, she thought.

  “Good to meet you. Right, we can go up to Records first. Then, if you want a drive around, I got a patrol car outside.”

  Two floors up, Langton and Anna followed O’Reilly through a cavernous room filled with thousands of files until they reached the Z section. O’Reilly removed a file, signed it out and took them into a small room off another corridor with just a table and chairs inside.

  He held up a photograph of a blonde woman, with wide-apart brown eyes. “This is Sadie Zadine. How she was.” Then he took out a second picture of the victim, in situ. She was lying facedown, her hands tightly tied behind her back with a red lace bra. Her neck was wrapped in flesh-colored tights. The identical MO to their victims; no suspect, no witness. Travis had noted one other similarity.

  “Sadie’s handbag, was that found?”

  O’Reilly raised his eyebrows. “Her what?”

  “I think you call them purses. We call them handbags in England.”

  “Ah. I’m with you,” O’Reilly said. “No. No handbag, as you call it.”

  Anna and Langton perused copies of the witness statements. Sadie was last seen bending down, talking to a john who was cruising in a car. She slid into the passenger seat and the car drove off. The other prostitutes thought the car was a Lincoln, dark green, but did not notice plates, or anything else that would help identify the driver.

  They needed verification that Alan Daniels was filming in Chicago at the same time. O’Reilly took them to his office, where they could go through the lists of film companies. They contacted two location companies. The consensus seemed to be that any major film being shot in Chicago would more than likely employ their own location manager.

  O’Reilly asked if they had a suspect and Langton explained they had a possible one. An actor.

  O’Reilly suggested that they check with the local television station and offered them his desk. After at least twenty minutes of being redirected to various departments from accounts to costumes to maintenance, their break came. A television director advised them to look in “Promotional Programs.” This resulted in a further flurry of phone calls until they located a popular show that interviewed book authors on tour as well as film actors promoting movies. Sadie was murdered recently enough to mean they might not only have a record of personalities interviewed that month but also have retained the tape.

  O’Reilly was ready to go off duty. He told Langton that if they wanted to stay over an extra night, he would work alongside them the next morning.

  “Thank you, but we have to go back to London,” Langton replied.

  “So, you gonna tell me who your suspect is?”

  Langton hesitated before telling him. O’Reilly shook his head. “Alan Daniels? I’ve never heard of him! I don’t go to the movies. I don’t have time to watch much TV. Anyway I get sick to death of real-life crime, so I don’t need to watch a bunch of ten-year-old-looking women running around with guns. Anna, no offense. I just watch the sports channels.”

  He shook their hands and wished them luck. “You know, about finding Sadie’s killer, we did give it our best shot. We had a whole team out for two weeks. But these johns, they could be transient, you know what I mean? This city is full of salesmen and business guys flying in, flying out. She was in the wrong place, wrong time. If you track down your guy, I’d like my ten minutes with him.” He gave a rueful smile and left.

  As it turned out, the producer of Good Afternoon, Chicago was on maternity leave. Eventually they were put in touch with her researcher, who was recording a show for the following morning and said she couldn’t check anything until after seven. However, if they gave her the name of the interviewee and the dates they wanted, her runner would start going through the files. Uneasily, Langton gave her Alan Daniels’s name.

  They returned to the hotel. It was after seven o’clock. They were to catch the first flight out of Chicago to Heathrow the following morning at nine. By now Langton was in a really bad mood: tired, hungry and frustrated. He retired to his room, saying he’d order from the room service menu and wait for the television station to make contact.

  Two hours later, Anna’s door was rapped so loudly that she panicked. She had been watching Channel 58, COPS on Court TV.

  Langton was like a kid at Christmas. He was garbling his words, so she had to ask him to repeat them: “They are sending over a fucking tape. He was here, in fucking Chicago, for the exact dates we want, when the interview took place.”

  “My God.” As she stepped back, he dived in, closing the door behind him. He lowered his voice: “I didn’t say why we wanted it. All I said was we were conducting an inquiry.”

  “When will it be here?”

  “They’re biking it over now, by courier. I’ll call your room as soon as it arrives.”

  She was just closing the door when he dived back in, asking if she had had anything to eat. He was so obviously excited, she found it infectious.

  “I had a hamburger.” She smiled.

  “How was it?”

  “Fine.”

  “Right, I’m going to have one.”

  She closed the door behind him, her heart beating nineteen to the dozen. Whatever anyone said, this was too much of a coincidence. Alan Daniels had now been in all three U.S. cities at the time of the murders. When the phone rang, she made a grab for it. It was Barolli. She judged it had to be after twelve in London.

  “Is he with you?” he said.

  “No. What is it?”

  “We’ve got another murder.”

  “What?”

  “Can’t talk. I’ve got to call him.”

  “He’s in Room 436.”

  “’Kay. Good night.”

  Anna put the phone down and sat on the edge of her bed.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  Chapter Twelve

  Anna tapped on Langton’s door.

  “It’s open,” came his voice.

  “Ma’am?”

  She turned and saw the hotel receptionist walking toward her.

  “This just came for Mr. Langton.” The receptionist extended a white envelope. “I need a signature: the courier is waiting downstairs. I’ve been trying to call Mr. Langton’s room, but his phone was busy.”

  Anna took the bulky envelope. She signed for it and was thanking the receptionist when Langton appeared at the door.

  “Is that it?”

  She took a videocassette out of the package. “Yes. Does your TV have a video player? Mine doesn’t.”

  “Shit, I don’t know.”

  Inside his room, Langton sat back on his heels and examined the TV set. Frustrated, he called reception and requested a video player urgently.

  While Langton paced up and down, waiting for them to call back, Anna cast a look around his room: it was an untidy mess of discarded clothes, half-eaten hamburger and numerous empty cans of beer. There were wet towels trailing from the bathroom and piled up on the dressing table were the contents of his pockets: coins, banknotes, receipts and his passport.

  When the phone rang, Langton grabbed it. “That’s fine. I don’t care how much. Just get me one up here.”

  He slammed the phone down, swearing.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s happened in London?” she murmured. She took the wet towels into the bathroom. He must have left the shower running; there were puddles of water everywhere.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he snapped when she returned.

  “I know. I’m just doing it until you calm down.”

  He slumped down on his bed with a sigh. “Well, they have another victim. They found her early this afternoon. So far, she is unidentified, but it’s the same scenario.”

  “Where?”

  “Just off the A3, not far from Leatherhead. Could be a copycat killing. I’ve told Barolli to
see if we can bring back Mike Lewis. Shouldn’t be hard. Barolli says his baby is driving him nuts. We don’t have the case yet and he didn’t have many details. But it’s a fucking nightmare. The discovery is causing a lot of heat around our investigation; the media are rehashing our old press releases.”

  He lit a cigarette.

  “Commander’s shitting herself. She’s been on the blower to Barolli all afternoon; said to try and get back tonight. I said it was impossible. As it is, we’re getting the first plane out tomorrow.”

  He sat down on a stool by the dressing table and started to flick through the stack of papers.

  “O’Reilly gave me the press back issues on Sadie. Apparently, where she was found is pretty notorious.”

  “Incongruous name, isn’t it: Roseland?”

  “Yeah. It’s just twelve miles from all the glittering, brand-spanking-new skyscrapers. All those nice new little houses we saw being built are just a stone’s throw away from crack dens and the hookers walk the street in broad daylight. There have been numerous murders in the same area, because of all the derelict houses. For a time, they also had a suspected serial killer on the loose.”

  “But only Sadie has the same MO as ours.”

  “Correct. But now with this latest murder, my being here is going to look like a waste of public money. Never mind letting that bastard kill again!”

  “But you were told you didn’t have enough evidence to arrest him.”

  “I still don’t, but I should be there instead of farting around in Chicago, San Francisco, LA.”

  “Hold on—didn’t you get anything from Angie?”

  He frowned, stubbing out his cigarette. “I got fuck-all from her. Said the victim came in the club alone. Said she was very drunk, so they threw her out. Said the victim then walked toward a car that was curb-crawling. But she couldn’t recall what the driver looked like.”

  He checked his watch. “Where’s this fucking video? This fucking hotel!” There was a tap on the door. While the man from room service nervously connected the dusty video machine, Anna read the note attached to the tape, dated 12 July 1998. She turned it over.

  “It says this was a live interview for Good Afternoon, Chicago, ‘an afternoon women’s hour, which promotes the latest movies and authors on book tours.’ Good Afternoon, Chicago is a low-budget, local TV show.”

  Langton took the note. “This could be a waste of bloody time.”

  As the man from room service backed out of the room, Anna slipped him five dollars. Before the door had closed behind him, Langton picked up the remote control and pressed play. He patted the bed for Anna to sit beside him and watch.

  He fast-forwarded through the cooking section, a floral arrangement and a female writer, until at last the presenter was welcoming, “all the way from England, to promote his latest film in Chicago: Alan Daniels!”

  The small invited audience applauded his arrival as he joined the interviewer on the sofa. Anna and Langton watched intently. He was casual but elegant in a cream jacket, a dark T-shirt and jeans. His hair was much longer than when they had last seen him. The overall impression he gave was of a reserved, rather shy man. He behaved in a modest, self-effacing way and gave a genuine-looking smile as he told the interviewer how pleased he was to be on the show. He created a ripple of laughter in the audience when he added that they were probably wondering who he was. The interviewer laughed and commented that everyone in the city would soon be aware of who he was and that they would now see a clip of his new film, The Blue Diamond.

  The clip was short: a scene where Daniels was opening a safe vault. The diamond on a velvet cushion sparkled and sent shafts of blue light over his face, making his eyes seem bluer than blue.

  At the end of the short interview he was sitting back in his chair, more relaxed, his legs crossed. He gave a slight wave of his hand and a small nod of his head to acknowledge the applause. He had charmed the audience and the interviewer. She reached over to shake his hand and he kissed it, in exactly the same way as he had kissed Anna’s.

  Langton sat, remote in his hand, rewinding. “Want to see it again?”

  “Yes,” Anna said, slightly stunned.

  As they watched a second time, she wondered: could it be that a handsome movie star could be attracted to plain Anna Travis? Or was Langton right? Was he just pretending? In which case, she was in real danger. They watched it a third time, neither speaking, before Langton turned the TV off.

  “What do you make of him, honestly?” he asked.

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” she said quietly. “He seems charming, he listens attentively…”

  “Puts on a good act.”

  “It’s funny. He’s easy to look at and those eyes are amazing, but he didn’t come over as particularly sexy.” Anna turned toward him. “Do you think it’s him? Is it him?”

  He ejected the tape. “Sometimes I don’t fucking know anymore.”

  Anna straightened the bedcover. “You’ve gone cold on him?”

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Let’s just say my intuition about him is shakier than it was. Something about him on video did it. It’s just that…Jesus God, if I have been wrong, we’ve wasted so much bloody time!”

  “What? What on the video?”

  He looked up, lost for an answer. “He was just so likeable, wasn’t he?”

  “I felt the same way at his flat, when he showed me the photograph. There was also something quite naive about him, but when I spoke to him on the phone, I got scared. Nothing he said, it was just…something.”

  “Do you want a drink?” He opened the minibar with a flourish.

  “No thanks. I’d better pack up. We’ve an early start.”

  “OK, see you in the morning.”

  “G’night.”

  “’Night.” He examined a miniature bottle of vodka. She noticed he didn’t even look around as she let herself out.

  In actual fact, she had already packed. She was just tired of discussing Alan Daniels.

  Langton wasn’t. He was even more obsessed by him. Alone, he inserted the tape again, fast-forwarding to Daniels; he turned down the sound and continued watching, replaying it over and over.

  Langton had set his alarm for five o’clock the next morning, so he could contact London for an update. Mike Lewis said that the victim was not a prostitute but a girl of sixteen. He had seen the body and, although her hands were tied behind her back, she had not been strangled with her tights but by someone’s bare hands. He was doubtful it was their man. They already had a suspect in custody: the girl’s stepfather.

  The return flight was uneventful. They talked during their lunch and Langton told her what Lewis had said. He mentioned that he would bring the profiler in to look at the TV interview and see what he made of it. The rest of the time Anna read her book.

  As they were told they were about to land, Langton leaned across to her and thanked her. “You’ve been easy to travel with, Travis; I’m just sorry we’re not going back with more.”

  “I think you’ll find, when we reassess everything, we’ve done some good work.”

  He laughed softly. “Thank you for that, Travis. A real boost to my confidence. I can’t wait to ‘reassess,’ as you say.”

  As the plane landed, they both wound on their watches six hours. It was now eleven o’clock in the evening and Langton planned to drop in at Queen’s Park. The patrol car took Anna home and Langton said he would see her in the station first thing in the morning.

  Mike Lewis was waiting for him at the station. He confided that, in all honesty, he was glad to be hauled back in. His small bundle of screaming joy had kept him awake since the day he’d come home from hospital.

  Lewis briefed Langton on the latest murder. It was not one of theirs. That was the good news. The bad news was that they still hadn’t got a break in their own case.

  “So we’re hoping you’ve got something for us,” he said.

  Langton was silent.

  “Di
dn’t it go well, then?” Lewis asked.

  “No. I’ve come back empty-handed, Mike.”

  “Shit. But Daniels was in all three places, right?”

  “Yep. But since not one witness puts him in the frame, it’s circumstantial. I’m starting to cool off on him.”

  “Jesus Christ, that’s one hell of an expensive cool.”

  “Yep.”

  Langton told Lewis to take himself home to the baby. There were only four people working the late shift in the incident room. Since he was too tired to start up a conversation with anyone, Langton went straight to his office, stacking his receipts and ticket stubs in a pile. He put the video down on a desk already piled high with outstanding memos and paperwork, then opened his bottle of Scotch and poured a heavy measure. If they took out Daniels, they were back to square one. No witness. No suspect.

  Back home, Anna bundled her dirty clothes into the washing machine. She pottered around for a while; she didn’t feel sleepy yet. She checked her answerphone. There were four messages, but when she pressed play, there was nothing there. Whoever had called had hung up.

  Though she made sure her father’s photograph was in the same position, she was not comforted: in fact, the opposite. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that someone had moved it before. She couldn’t sleep from all the tossing and turning. If Daniels had been in her bedroom, how in God’s name had he got in? She knew there had been no forced entry. Since no one but she herself had used the flat, she decided that she would take the frame in for fingerprint tests. The plan comforted her and she fell asleep.

  Though he had changed his shirt and shaved, Langton looked like he had slept in his chair. By the time Anna arrived the next morning, he was already in his office with Barolli and Lewis. Moira gave her a welcoming smile and asked if she’d had a good trip.

  “Yes. But with three cities in three days, I didn’t get to see much.”

  Jean held up the video. “This doesn’t play on our machine. We’re sending it over to the lab to get it converted.”

  Anna began work on her American report. She picked up a pile of files from her desk. Beneath them were the photographs taken from Alan Daniels’s flat.