Lynda La Plante - Above Suspicion

‘A what?’

Anna sighed. ‘A ball of string. Sometimes it’s worth untangling.’

‘What?’

‘You get a ball of string and if you want to use it again, you make the effort to untangle it—’

‘Fucking ball of string? What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about you. Your private life is all tangled up.’

‘And you’d know about my life, would you?’

‘Don’t get angry at me because I’m being honest. I’m just saying, I don’t think you’ve really come to terms with losing your first wife and on top of that you’ve got your daughter and Nina—’

‘She just comes by sometimes, when Kitty—’

‘I’m very serious about my career. I’d like to work with you again and I think any personal relationship we might have would get in the way. I just don’t want to become part of the tangle.’

She had to stand on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. She had forgotten how she loved the feel of his skin and his smell. She felt a sweep of emotion through her body, strong enough to test her resolve, but he broke away first, his face flushed. ‘Well, I’ll no doubt see you in the morning. At the station.’

‘Yes. Thank you for dinner.’

‘My pleasure,’ he said, walking away, throwing a ‘goodnight’ over his shoulder. She watched him for a moment. She could tell he was angry by the familiar way his hands clenched at his sides. Then she turned away. She decided not to hail a taxi immediately, but to walk for a while. She was deep in thought when his car caught her up, so she didn’t see the look on his face as he passed her striding down the street. He was driving the old brown Volvo that had been parked beside her Mini that first day in the station car park; the same car that, no doubt, had scrunched the side of her own.

Observing his ‘little carrot top’, arms swinging, striding along the street, Langton yearned to leap out of the car and take her in his arms. But he didn’t, knowing she was probably right that they might be working together again. It had never worked in the past when he’d had a fling with one of his team. But she was right at a deeper level, too. He had never got over the death of his first wife and Kitty kept him trapped in the relationship with Nina. He looked in the rear-view mirror. Anna was staring in a dress shop window at a smart Amanda Wakeley suit. Without so much as a sun shadow across the shoulder.

Alan Daniels had asked for writing paper and been given a lined prison-issue notepad. His note began, TO ANNA, in capital letters, and then beneath he wrote in his fancy scrawl: ‘People think that acting takes a giant ego, but it’s more about knowing where to put it, where to store it. You keep on shifting consciousness to different parts of you. Acting is really all about energy. Only when I was acting was I at peace, because I was no longer Anthony Duffy, the boy trapped in the cupboard. Goodbye, Anna.’

He had spent two days and two nights in a prison cell, longer than he had boasted he would. Always resourceful, he had hidden the plastic bag from the clean clothes he had been allowed to take to the police station. He tied it tightly round his neck, almost as tight as when he used to strangle his victims. The bag was pressed so close to his face that when the officers looked in on him every fifteen minutes, he seemed to be sleeping. It was on the two o’clock check when the spy-hole was moved aside that suspicion was aroused. His hands were clasped behind him; a final show of his determination to die.

Anna received the news the following morning. She refused to read or listen to the contents of the note he had addressed to her. She felt an enormous relief at the realization that she would not have to face him over and over again in a lengthy trial. This way was really the best outcome for her, though as usual, Alan Daniels had only been thinking of himself. To celebrate what she felt was her ‘release’, she splashed out on a new suit. As she watched it being folded up with sheets of tissue paper and put in the box, she realized she was ready for the next case. She had cut her teeth on a serial killer, first time out. Nothing could faze her now. As she handed over her credit card, she smiled into the intense blue eyes of the helpful young saleswoman and remembered the tip Barolli had given her for the future: ‘Watch the eyes. Wait for the fear.’