Silent Scream (9 page)

De Silva turned to look at the shrouded body, then back to the blow-up pictures.

‘Your victim had breast implants, and the right one was punctured by the knife. She was very underweight. Her height was almost five feet seven and a half, but she weighed only six stone and five pounds. I would say she had suffered from anorexia for some time, since her skin tone is very poor and dry. Further internal examination showed that she had undergone a total hysterectomy. Her fallopian tubes were removed, which could have occurred after a botched abortion. Whoever had done the operation performed amateur work. The poor child must have been in agony and for a considerable time.’ The pathologist sighed, shaking her head.

Crossing to the body, she lifted a corner of the sheeting to show puncture marks between the toes.

‘The blood and urine tests will give more detail but I would say she had been using heroin, not recently though, perhaps a month or so before she was killed. The injection site seems old due to yellowish bruising around it. I’ve recommended testing her hair for a clearer history of drug abuse. She had recently snorted cocaine, as there was a residue of powder still in her right nostril and crustation around both nostrils. Again, I will have confirmation from the toxicology report, but along with the hair sample it’s going to take at least ninety days for the results. Now we get to her arms.’

De Silva lifted the sheet and held out Amanda’s right arm. She showed numerous self-inflicted small scars running up the inside of her forearm. It was the same picture on her left arm. They had no skin or blood from beneath her fingernails, and all her false nails were intact. One had been removed to show that the nails beneath were bitten down to the quick. The false nails were short and unvarnished, but very good quality.

De Silva estimated that Amanda had been dead for at least twelve hours because the body had been discovered in the afternoon and rigor mortis had set in.

Lastly, she lifted the sheet away from Amanda’s face. She was, even in death, beautiful, with high cheekbones, a small pert nose and eyes set wide apart. De Silva directed them to look at a bruise above her right ear. She was preparing brain tests, as Amanda could possibly have been unconscious when the knife wounds were inflicted, which would explain why there were no defence marks.

De Silva covered the body and gave directions to a lab assistant to wheel out the gurney to the freezer section.

‘That’s it,’ she said, as she took off her rubber gloves. ‘It’s a wretched case and astonishing to think that this poor child was the envy of so many teenagers. The reality is, she was a shell of a woman, yet still managed to maintain her ethereal beauty. I doubt if she would have been able to retain her looks for much longer without medical assistance, as she was dehydrated and even her teeth were becoming loose.’

Anna and Simon thanked her and headed over to the forensic department. Neither said anything, but both had been affected by De Silva’s report. By the time they got to the forensic section, it was almost four-thirty.

Anna entered behind Simon and paused as she caught sight of Pete Jenkins, the forensic scientist she had met when she had worked on the Fitzpatrick case, seated at a bench with a microscope. He looked up and smiled at Anna.

‘Hi there, how are you?’

‘I’m fine, thank you. This is DI Simon Dunn who’s working with me on the Delany case.’

Pete shook Simon’s hand and then eased off his stool. ‘We don’t have much for you, I’m afraid.’

He headed towards a long trestle table covered in brown paper. There lay a silk nightdress in pale oyster pink. Yellow marker pen circles showed the knife entry wounds; it was heavily stained.

‘She was wearing this, nothing else.’

Pete gestured to the sheets and pillowcases. They had found no other hair samples, only Amanda’s, but from the sheets they had raised different DNA profiles from two semen stains. Neither could be traced on the National Database. Pete had numerous bath towels and face cloths and a section of carpet brought from Amanda’s house, but all the bloodstains belonged to her.

‘We can bring in more garments from her wardrobe but I can’t see that it will help. From her laundry bag, we’ve taken two more pillowcases smeared with make-up, but no other DNA or unknown source fibres. We have some of her underwear which is being tested for DNA to match with the sheets.’

Pete glanced at Anna. She had made notes, interested in the results of the vaginal, anal and mouth swabs checking for semen due to signs of sexual assault on the body.

‘Our movie star put it about a bit and we found this under her bed.’ Pete showed them a tinfoil wrap and said it was crack cocaine. They had also found a glass pipe in a box, with two small rocks of crack cocaine.

‘Did anyone bring in a diary?’ Anna asked. ‘It’s just we think she kept one, but so far we haven’t found it.’

Pete shook his head. They had done a thorough search of the mews house, and the numerous fingerprints found there were being checked through the database. Most were Amanda’s, but as yet there was no match for any of the others. He showed them a mug of what looked like residue of black coffee, but it was Marmite. They had siphoned it off from the mug at the scene and submitted it separately so that they could examine the mug for saliva and prints.

‘Her fridge had a half-empty jar of it, a bunch of grapes and some bottles of water, nothing else. The mug has her fingerprints on it, no one else’s and the kitchen was clean, didn’t look used. Even her microwave still had the plastic wrap around the plate inside.’

Anna nodded and crossed to two large albums. These were leather-bound, but only one had photographs inside. She opened it to see some very lovely face shots of Amanda, but no other family or social snapshots.

‘Why have you got these?’ she asked.

Pete shrugged and suggested they had been brought in to check out fingerprints.

‘They should be taken to the station,’ she said brusquely.

‘Apparently she had only recently moved into the house, which is why it’s so devoid of fingerprints and so tidy. Lot of carpet fluff everywhere, but that’s because the carpets were new. I would say her killer would have a lot of carpet fibres over him, but he wasn’t wearing anything that shed. There must have been a real tussle on the bed where she was stabbed. Oh . . .’ Pete paused and looked along the table, then walked to the far side. In a small plastic bag was a tiny gold cross and a few links of a broken chain.

‘We found this caught between the top and bottom sheet. It’s a crucifix but the chain has been snapped. I don’t know if it belonged to Amanda, but it would be good to find out, because if it wasn’t hers it could be the killer’s and she snapped it off when she was attacked. We’ve checked for skin cells but no luck.’

Anna inspected the small cross; it didn’t look the type worn by a man. It was plain and quite heavy, with an eighteen carat gold mark printed on the back. The chain links were also gold.

‘Can I take this?’ She would look through all Amanda’s photographs to see if she was wearing it.

Pete nodded, asking her to sign it out. Simon was staring at the bloodstained sheets.

‘There was no sign of a break-in, was there?’ He looked at Pete.

‘No. There was no damage to the front or back door. Last but not least, we have the victim’s handbag.’

The bag was good designer leather with a matching purse inside containing eight pounds in coins. A wallet had two hundred and fifty pounds in it, all in fifties. There was a compact, comb and lipstick and a credit-card holder with numerous credit cards and membership cards for nightclubs and a health club. Anna said that checks had been made on Amanda’s accounts to see if any withdrawals had been made, but there had been none to date since her murder.

‘So robbery wasn’t the motive, but then we can’t even be sure about that, as we don’t know what might be missing,’ Simon murmured and looked at Anna. ‘Let’s take these and double-check the clubs, et cetera.’

Anna nodded then glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘We should get going.’

Simon headed out first and Pete moved closer to Anna.

‘How’s things with you?’ he asked.

‘Fine, working away, you know.’

‘Maybe catch up with dinner one night?’

‘Yes, maybe.’

‘Still the same old Anna. I didn’t get a chance to speak to you after the trial and I hear that Langton is still seething about losing Fitzpatrick, but you can’t win ’em all.’

‘No, you can’t.’

‘I reckon he’ll surface one day.’

‘Do you?’

‘Don’t you?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Fitzpatrick got away with enough money to hide out for a long time. I don’t think he’d risk coming back to the UK.’

‘Maybe not, and like I said, you can’t win ’em all. Do you have a suspect for Amanda Delany?’

‘No.’

Pete shook his head, turning back to look at the trestle table.

‘That’s bad news. There’s a lot of media coverage. I’d say it had to be someone she knew, let himself in . . .’

‘We have no motive or any information about anyone stalking or harassing her. She was in the middle of shooting a movie.’

‘Maybe she pissed off one of her boyfriends,’ Pete suggested.

‘Well, we’re making enquiries.’

He laughed softly then mimicked her. ‘ “Making enquiries” . . . good luck to you. If I get anything to help you, I’ll be in touch.’

‘Thanks, Pete.’ Her mobile rang.

Simon was standing impatiently by her Mini.

‘What took you so long?’ he said.

‘Just chatting. I’ve worked with Pete before. Listen, I just got a call from the guy who redesigned her house. He said he’d meet us there.’ She bleeped open the car and Simon got in next to her. When she started the engine, he slapped the dashboard with the flat of his hand.

‘Jesus Christ, you know we have nothing, nor does your friend Pete have anything for us. Some bastard walked into her house, knifed her to death and walked out without leaving a single thread or hair or . . . it’s mind-blowing.’

Anna drove out of the car park and into heavy traffic heading north across the river.

‘I suppose we have that cross,’ Simon sighed. ‘We need to find out if it was Amanda’s or . . .’ he said it under his breath ‘. . . the killer’s.’

He leaned back.

‘I’d put money on it that it’s hers. What man walks around with that kind of thing round his neck nowadays? Tacky medallions, yes, or plain gold chains, but crucifixes? No way.’

‘What if her killer was a woman?’

‘Impossible.’

‘Why do you say that?’

Simon asked rudely if she had listened to what De Silva had said. The pathologist was certain that Amanda had been raped; the fact that there was no semen inside her body was because the killer wore a condom.

‘They could have used some kind of instrument,’ Anna argued.

‘Yeah, like a brass dildo.’

‘If De Silva finds evidence from the brain scans that Amanda was unconscious whilst being raped and then knifed, it could have been done by a woman.’

‘I disagree,’ Simon retorted. ‘It doesn’t fit a female pattern.’

They drove on in silence for a few moments before Anna gave him a sidelong look.

‘What exactly in your mind is a female pattern?’ she enquired.

He glanced at her and folded his arms.

‘They don’t go armed with a Commando knife, they don’t stab their victim repeatedly and they don’t
rape
them. Unless you think they wore a strap-on dildo and . . . oh look, I don’t fucking know. It just doesn’t feel as if a woman would do what was done to that poor kid.’

‘Who in your mind
would
do it, then?’

‘Someone racked with jealousy, someone she’d turned down, someone who didn’t feel they were good enough or she’d made feel that way, someone she’d used and then dumped, someone full of anger. Also, I think, someone not able to mix in her circles. The more famous she got, the more out of reach she became, but I’m damned sure it’s someone who knew her.’

A new Mercedes convertible was parking up outside Amanda’s mews house. Getting out was a tall elegant man, at least six feet four, tanned and good-looking, wearing a snazzy striped blazer, open-necked shirt and grey flannel trousers.

‘He looks like he’s gonna play cricket. What a prat,’ Simon snapped.

‘That’s got to be Maurice Sutton,’ Anna observed. ‘He’s from Sutton and Hargreaves interior designers.’

‘You met him before?’

‘No, but I recognise him from their brochure. He’s quite well-known.’

She got out of the car and smiled at Sutton. He turned towards her.

‘Detective Travis?’ He had a deep resonant voice.

‘Yes, that’s me, and this is Detective Simon Dunn.’

Sutton nodded to Simon and looked over at the house. A uniformed officer was on duty outside and there were yellow scene-of-crime ribbons across the front door.

‘Are we going inside?’ he asked.

Anna nodded. The three entered the narrow hall one behind the other. Sutton was head and shoulders above both Anna and Simon.