Above Suspicion (17 page)

The tension of the day was finally taking its toll on Anna. She felt exhausted and was packing up in preparation for home rather than the pub when she looked up to find Jean standing beside her.

‘What was he like?’ Jean whispered conspiratorially.

Anna smiled. ‘Well, he certainly is good-looking. Lives in a fantastic house, beautiful furniture. He’s charming and he’s in great shape.’ She frowned, trying to put her finger on what was wrong.

‘Go on,’ Jean encouraged her.

‘I can’t quite fathom it out. He has a kind of mysterious manner about him. It’s like he knows something that you don’t; a big secret.’

‘If the boss is right and he killed all seven of them, that is one hell of a secret.’ Jean leaned closer. ‘Did you find him sexy?’

‘I’m not sure. Those eyes are amazing. When he turns them on you, it’s like he’s looking right at you, or through you.’

‘Every Saturday I’d sit glued to the TV. You have no idea what a fan I was. Sin City. You don’t remember it?’

‘I was still in school uniform, Jean.’

‘I wasn’t long out of my gym slip either. I was hoping I’d get a glimpse of him. Didn’t you find him attractive at all?’

When Anna saw Jean’s eager expression, she realized what it would be like if Alan Daniels’s involvement in the case became public knowledge. There was something avaricious about Jean’s curiosity and there were no doubt hundreds of Jeans out there who would be snatching up the morning’s papers to read the latest about Daniels. The background details alone would create a tabloid frenzy. Perhaps what he had said on his departure was really heartfelt. To have succeeded in recreating himself and putting his troubled past behind him, was admirable. If the information was leaked that they had questioned him, it could destroy an innocent life.

‘Is it him, do you think?’ Jean was watching her face with interest.

Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Langton seems to think it is,’ Jean persisted.

‘Thinking isn’t good enough,’ Anna protested. ‘He also said that.’

‘No need to get shirty with me,’ Jean retorted. ‘I was just curious what you felt.’

‘If you must know, I felt sorry for him.’

‘Ah, he got to you, did he?’

Anna grabbed her briefcase. ‘No, he did not get to me, as you put it. Anyway, whatever I felt is immaterial. Goodnight.’

“Night,’ Jean said. Moira was packing up. She nodded to Anna’s retreating form.

‘What was that about?’

Jean whispered across their desks. ‘I’d say she fancied Mr Alan Daniels.’

Moira chuckled, though she didn’t take Jean’s comment seriously.

‘She doesn’t have a chance,’ Moira whispered back. ‘Have you seen the way she dresses? He’s got his pick of every woman in London.’

‘I doubt he gave her a second glance,’ Jean concurred. ‘She really needs to do something with her hair.’

Anna, mortified, stood outside the doorway to the incident room. She could hear their laughter as she made her way to the stairs, holding back tears.

Anna had bought some groceries at the small supermarket round the corner from her home: fresh coffee, lots of canned soups. Now she stacked them in her cupboards. Then it was time to do a load of washing, after which she selected garments for dry cleaning, all the while trying to push Jean and Moira’s disparaging comments from her mind. However, as she checked over her outfits for work, she saw their point: charcoal grey pleated skirt with matching jacket; dark grey straight skirt with matching jacket; two pairs of dark brown trousers and one pair of black trousers.

‘Boring! Fucking boring!’ she muttered. She was a plain-clothes detective, who had ‘designed’ herself a uniform. Nothing in her wardrobe had a glimmer of personality and that included the plain, court shoes. She dressed like a frumpy schoolteacher, circa 1960, she thought mournfully.

Even in the shower Anna couldn’t get the women’s comments out of her memory. Her mind zigzagged between the contents of her wardrobe and her next available shopping opportunity. It had hurt her to hear what they really thought of her appearance, because she knew they were right. It wasn’t just that Alan Daniels would not be giving her any second glances, but she reckoned it could be true of any male. After all, she had not had a steady relationship since Richard Hunter, a detective inspector with the Met Drug Squad, and he had seemed more interested in her partnering him in the squash tournament than in his life.

Hunter was a pleasant guy and they did play squash well together. His prowess in the bedroom, though, had not been as good as his game. They had called it quits pretty amicably.

Anna sat up and punched the pillow a couple of times before flopping back down in her bed, but it was no use. Sleep would not come. She got up and sat on a stool in her neat, tiny kitchen, sipping a cup of tea and asked herself honestly what was the matter.

She took out a mirror and regarded herself with a critical eye. Her hair. She really did need to have something done. It was about five inches long and, as Langton had pointed out, it did sprout up in odd places. She wondered whether she should have it cut really short. It was so thick, just another inch and she would have curls, like the child in the old Pears soap advert.

She resolved to cut it as soon as she got time off. She would also have to buy a more stylish wardrobe. She was not going to be a frump. When she went back to bed, she touched the photograph of her father and said softly, ‘G’night, Dad.’

Chapter Eight

As Langton suspected, Alan Daniels’s teeth impressions were of no use. His new dental work had not only been extensive, it had also been done in the United States, where his dentist was not helpful. Apparently, Daniels had suffered considerable pain after teeth implants and developed an infection. He requested his original X-rays and impressions in order to take them to another dentist. Once his teeth settled down, he had destroyed the X-rays and impressions, but refused to pay the dentist the full amount, an astonishing fifty-two thousand dollars.

His appointment had been made before the murder of Melissa and the work was completed after her murder. A coincidence? Or yet another false lead?

The most vital piece of evidence in possibly linking Daniels to the murder of Melissa Stephens was gone. Daniels’s solicitor had provided the details of his dental history, along with a written explanation as to why the dental work had been necessary: a film stunt had gone wrong, a fall which caused damage to his upper front teeth, requiring the emergency dental work.

The only evidence now was circumstantial. They knew that as a child, Daniels had resided at 12 Shallcotte Street along with his mother, Lilian Duffy, and two other victims, Teresa Booth and Kathleen Keegan. They still lacked verification that any of the other victims, either Mary Murphy, Sandra Donaldson, Barbara Whittle or Beryl Villiers, also lived there.

The splintered team decided to concentrate on one victim each and continue enquiries. Anna had been allocated Beryl Villiers, the woman identified by her breast implants. She had called Beryl’s mother. She was friendly on the phone and agreed to see Anna. She had remarried and was now Alison Kenworth. Her new husband, Alec, was a long-distance lorry driver. Mrs Kenworth worked as a manageress, six days a week, at a boutique, she said and could either talk to Anna there, or at her home after she had left the shop.

Confirmation came from his agent that Daniels had indeed been in Cornwall, shooting the remake of Jamaica Inn during the week of 7 February. They seemed to be going downhill fast. Langton obsessively maintained they had the right man, but was aware that if they did not gain fresh evidence soon, the team, already halved, would be disbanded. His office door was almost off its hinges, it had been slammed so often.

Anna was sitting on the train to Leicester, musing over the first stage of her ‘makeover’. She had been to the hairdresser, who had given her a new, cropped hairstyle. It did not seem to have made very much of an impression in the office, though Langton had remarked that it made her look like a boy. There had been no time, as yet, to assemble a new wardrobe, though she had done a bit of surveillance. A sharp suit in Emporio Armani was earmarked along with some of their silk shirts, but the prices were out of her range so she was waiting for the sales.

Arriving at Leicester station, Anna was collected by a local patrol car and a driver. The driver would be on call and available to drive her when required. Langton had informed her in a barbed, throwaway manner that since the car was at her disposal, this time she should consider using it and not rely on local taxis.

She was dropped off at the small boutique at three o’clock. Mrs Kenworth — a well-dressed woman in her fifties — led Anna to a small back room.

‘Will this be all right?’ Mrs Kenworth asked nervously.

‘It’s fine,’ Anna said, putting down her briefcase.

Mrs Kenworth held out her arms for Anna’s jacket, which she placed neatly on a hanger behind the door. In a prominent position on a small desk there was a headshot of Beryl Villiers. Until then, Anna had only seen mug shots and mortuary pictures.

‘This is your daughter?’ she asked, rather unnecessarily. Anna was unprepared for how beautiful Beryl Villiers once was.

‘She used to do some modelling. I have more pictures.’

Mrs Kenworth opened a drawer in the desk and removed a large brown envelope containing eight colour photographs. Anna glanced through them. The photographs had been taken in a studio. Beryl seemed to be between eighteen and twenty years of age.

‘She’s lovely.’

‘From the time she was a little girl, she was always so confident and pretty.’

‘She took after you.’

‘Thank you.’ Anna noticed Mrs Kenworth’s eyes rapidly filling with tears and added quickly: ‘Did Beryl ever live at an address in Shallcotte Street, Swinton?’

‘I don’t know. Shallcotte Street?’

‘Yes. It was demolished fifteen years ago, so this would have been before then.’

‘Oh no, I don’t think so. Though, to be honest, I couldn’t really tell you. From when she was seventeen, she moved around so much.’

‘When she left Leicester, did she give you an address?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know if Beryl ever knew someone called Anthony Duffy?’

‘I don’t recall that name.’

The doorbell pinged and Mrs Kenworth looked into the shop. She excused herself and went to serve the customer.

Anna sifted through the photographs. It didn’t yet make sense to her that such a lovely girl could become a prostitute.

‘Sorry about that,’ Mrs Kenworth said on her return. ‘Regular. She’s taken a couple of outfits to see which her daughter likes. She’s getting married.’

Mrs Kenworth reached for the coffee pot. The tray, with cups and biscuits, was already prepared.

‘You said she left home at seventeen. Why? Did you and your daughter have a falling out?’

‘She got in with a really bad bunch of girls. She was just sixteen. She had been getting good results at school. She was also really talented, said she wanted to be an actress.’

Mrs Kenworth continued talking as she poured the coffee. She had done everything possible to persuade her daughter to stay on in school, but she had refused; she had started work at a local health spa and began to train as a masseuse. ‘At first I got her a flat with two of her friends, not far from where we lived, so I could keep an eye on her. I paid the rent.’ Next thing, Beryl had left, without telling her mother her whereabouts. It turned out she had gone to Southport to be with someone she had met at the spa.

‘She turned up one Sunday, driving a new MG. She said she was living with this man, but she wouldn’t even tell me his name.’

Suddenly, Mrs Kenworth broke down.

‘I don’t honestly know why she wouldn’t let me into her life,’ she wept. ‘She insisted she just wanted to live her own way and without any interference from me. But I wasn’t interfering, I was concerned; she was only seventeen.’

‘What about Beryl’s father?’

Mrs Kenworth dried her eyes. She said that George Villiers, her first husband, had divorced her when Beryl was ten years old. The little girl had worshipped him. At first, Beryl had gone on weekend visits to see him, but after a few years he and his new girlfriend went to live in Canada and they had never heard from him again.

‘I met Alec six or seven years ago. He’s a wonderful, kind man. I don’t know what I would have done without him.’ Tears came splashing down her face again. She blew her nose, apologizing all the time for crying. ‘Sometimes I would get a phone call, always saying the same thing: life was wonderful, she was happy. She used to come home periodically, always in another flashy car, a different one. One time I said to her, why couldn’t I meet this man she was living with?’

Mrs Kenworth took a deep breath. Beryl had told her that she had left the man from Southport and was now with someone else, someone even better and much wealthier.

‘Did you find out the name of the new boyfriend?’

‘No. As ever, she was very secretive, but she was wearing expensive clothes and a big diamond ring; diamond earrings as well. She always wanted the best things, ever since she was a child. I was too weak with her. I’d give her whatever she wanted, just to keep the peace. She had a wild streak in her, a terrible temper.’

Anna checked her watch. She didn’t seem to be getting anywhere; certainly she was not getting the connection she hoped for.

‘It was drugs,’ Mrs Kenworth offered quietly. She poured more coffee and went on speaking in the same quiet voice.

Two or more years later, Beryl had turned up on the doorstep late one night. Her mother hadn’t heard from her, or seen her, in all that time. She was alarmed to see that Beryl had got very thin. ‘I put her to bed. She looked terrible, kept on saying, “I’m sorry, Mum. I’m so sorry.” She was covered in bruises. She wouldn’t talk about it. All she’d say was that she had got herself into a bit of trouble. There were a lot of telephone calls, late at night. Then, once she was better, she started not coming home until morning.’

Mrs Kenworth swallowed. She just sat there for a moment, her eyes full of pain.