Above Suspicion (27 page)

‘Who is it?’ she asked.

‘Me,’ Langton said.

Anna unlocked her door. She was still tucking the towel tightly around her chest. He was leaning drunkenly against the frame. He waved the notes she had slipped under his door.

‘So, this Klein guy came up trumps? The bastard planted those dental records in his apartment, right?’

She took a step back. ‘I’d say it’s a possibility.’

‘Brilliant! Bloody brilliant!’

‘Do want me to order some coffee?’

‘Nope, going to crash out. G’night.’

‘G’night.’

He tottered off down the corridor. She watched, peeking round her door, as he attempted to slot in the card to open his room door: there were three swipes and some swearing and cursing, before the green light bleeped and he disappeared inside. She shut her door, sighing: even if she had been stark naked when he appeared at her door, he probably wouldn’t have noticed.

Anna had ordered coffee, orange juice and a blueberry muffin. What arrived was grapefruit juice, coffee and what appeared to be a banana muffin. There was no time to complain to room service, so she finished it.

She sat in the lobby waiting for Langton to pay their hotel bill. He looked like shit: unshaven and crumpled.

‘Sleep well, did you?’ she asked sweetly.

He grimaced, obviously hung over. She decided not to ask if he had gained ‘vital information’. It did not seem likely.

When they arrived at the airport, she traipsed after him resignedly as he strode around, going to the wrong airline first, then swearing as they retraced their steps to the American Airlines desk. By the time their flight was called, Anna reckoned they had covered the entire airport. He really was useless at directions, she realized, and he was constantly checking for his passport, then the tickets.

They at last boarded the plane. As they weren’t on the same row, she still could not ask him about his meeting with Angie the previous night.

It was not a long flight: under two hours. Langton had decided not to hire a car on their arrival in Chicago, but to use taxis. Even though the hotel was very inexpensive, it was really not bad. They were to meet up in the hotel lobby at two o’clock.

Langton was pacing up and down impatiently when she arrived. He had shaved and changed his suit and wore a white shirt and his usual dark navy tie.

‘Where were you? Let’s go. Taxi’s waiting,’ he snapped.

Tottering after him, she looked at her watch. She was five minutes early.

During the taxi ride to the Chicago Police Department he asked her to repeat her conversation with Klein. He sat with his eyes closed, listening. When she finished, she asked how his meeting with Angie had gone. He shrugged.

‘Good. It was good.’

‘I’m sure it was. But did you get any information?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ He seemed more tetchy than usual.

‘Just that the meeting went on quite late. You do remember waking me up?’

‘Course.’ He gave her one of his direct stares. ‘So, Travis … do you always sleep naked?’

Before she could think what to say, they arrived at the Chicago Police Department. He paid the cab fare and walked ahead of her.

‘Detective Langton?’ A uniformed officer with a crew cut spoke loudly as he approached them across the marble floor of the reception area.

Langton stood and he and the officer shook hands.

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 face down, her hands tightly tied behind her back with a red lace bra. Her neck was wrapped in flesh-coloured 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 which 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 offence. I just watch the Sport Channel.’

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 enquiry.’

‘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 US 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. Goodnight.’

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 towards 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 video cassette 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 towards a car that was kerb 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.