Lynda La Plante - Deadly Intent

Cunningham looked at her watch, then at Langton. "Maybe you should take a break."

"Was she going to her sister's?" he muttered, ignoring her suggestion.

"That's what we all thought."

"Not Gatwick, not Heathrow, and not Southampton, so that excludes boats and planes. Do we have anything from her landline?"

"No calls," Cunningham said, trying to hide a yawn.

Langton removed from his pocket the crushed mobile, still wrapped in his handkerchief. "Get this checked over; see if we can find out who called. She had to have made contact with someone to do a runner, right?" He frowned. "Unless it was already planned."

Cunningham said nothing, but looked at her watch again, eager to get home. "When are you going to pick up the sister and her husband?"

"When I'm ready. As long as we know they are holed up at that farm, they can stay there. One move out of it that looks suspicious, we pick them both up and bring them in, but I'm not quite ready for them."

Again, Cunningham said nothing; nor did she remark that it now appeared, to all intents and purposes, that James Langton had taken over the case.

Anna hadn't realized how tired she was until she got home. It had been strange to work alongside Langton. He never showed her the slightest familiarity—in fact, quite the reverse—but it was not as difficult to work beside him as she had thought.

Like Cunningham, she knew that he had taken over the case. She had to admit that, with him at the helm, they were regrouping, as if he had picked them all up and shaken them. She also wondered, just like Cunningham, why he had not yet brought in Honour and Damien; she was as certain as everyone else of their involvement. Her eyes started to droop as she lay back on her pillow; the last image before she fell asleep was the dead Julia's face, and the glinting diamond earrings.

Laid out on a trestle table covered in white paper were the items removed from Julia Brandon's handbag. The shards of glass had been swept to one side in a small heap. The wallet contained three hundred pounds in crisp new notes. There were sunglasses, now with a twisted frame, and two photographs of the children in a small leather case. There were some dry-cleaning receipts and old car parking tickets, paid for at a machine. A silver powder compact was open, with the lid caved in as if someone had stamped on it. Everything had a strong smell of Julia's perfume, from the broken bottle of Chanel No. 5. The diamond earrings were in a small plastic bag, with a Rolex watch, a gold chain with a large dewdrop diamond, and a small daisy-chain diamond bracelet.

Anna stood, staring down at the items—then jumped with fright as someone came up behind her.

"Long time no see."

"Pete!" She turned. She couldn't resist telling him that she had dropped by his house after her drinks with Langton. "But just as I was drawing up," she concluded, "I saw your friend Daniella paying a taxi, so I headed home."

"Oh, right—yeah, she did come by. You should have joined us."

Anna laughed. "I'm sure."

You two seemed very familiar."

ttTT

I’ m sorry?

"You and Langton."

"Well, we've worked together a few times," Anna said defensively.Pete said casually, "I suppose you must have gotashock,seeingmethere.""No—it is your local, isn't it?" Anna was surprised at how readily the

lie came. "I was concerned you might feel I'd said one thing to you and then done another." She apologized for not calling him and explained that they had been run ragged with the case. "So I hear. In fact, I was beginning to wonder when you lot would bring in another body!""Well, you've got one—or her possessions, at least.""Yeah, I hear she was pretty mashed." Pete looked over the table. "Okay .. · most interesting—and please do not ask me how I can be so certain—is the powder compact.""Yes?""Pure, very high-quality cocaine."They walked farther along the table to the overnight bag and its contents, which were laid out, item by item: a satin nightdress with matching dressing gown; a small pair of silk slippers; a lace brassiere and matching panties; two new packs of seven-denier stockings and a suspender belt; some makeup in a velvet bag. There were also two cashmere sweaters, a pair of Yves Saint-Laurent black trousers, and a pair of soft leather, high-heeled boots.Anna could smell Julia's perfume; to touch the luxurious and very expensive clothes made her skin crawl."She must have been a very sexy woman," Pete said, folding his arms; then he said there was one other item that had been locked up— the dead woman's jewelry case. "We didn't put the other jewelry in, as it has traces of blood on, so will need to be tested." He unlocked a small safe, signed a book by the side of it, and took out a square black leather jewel bag. It unfolded like a large envelope; if Anna had been impressed by the size of Julia's diamond earrings, she now looked on in amazement."Don't quote me, because I don't really know, but the emeralds look magnificent. Each item is, in my estimation, exceptional quality. What do you think?"Anna agreed. As she had never owned an emerald, she wouldn't know, but the color of the stones in the large necklace was beautiful. Among the items were rings and spectacular drop earrings of ruby and pearl; the pearls were large, and glowed on the black velvet lining."Nice booty; maybe why she couldn't stand to be broke," Langton said, making both Anna and Pete turn."Not broke if you sell this lot," Pete replied."Ah, but she reckoned she'd earned these. You know what they say about a woman scorned? She wasn't going to sell this lot; she wanted it all. Like she said,' What have I done?'Well, what she did was get very greedy, and underestimate what Lover Boy would do.""Have you seen the items taken from her handbag?" Pete asked.Langton walked back along the trestle table as Pete returned the jewels to the safe. He paused for a moment by the silk nightdress, and then gently lifted a part of the hem to smell it. "Nice. Some women know what's a turn-on in the bedroom, and I'd say this lady was hot to trot. No wonder he kept her for all those years.""You can tell all that from her nightdress, can you?" Anna wished she'd kept her mouth shut. "Pete said there's cocaine in the powder compact," she added quickly."And old Pete would know!" Langton said softly. His mobile rang, and he moved off slightly to take the call.Pete returned. "Shall we meet up tonight?""Why not? It'll be down to what time we're through. I didn't get back until after eleven last night.""Well, call me. I can come to you, or you can come to me, or we can go Italian or Indian.""Travis!" Langton was already banging through the door into the corridor. As Anna scurried after him down the stone stairs, he told her they had come up with something in the mechanical forensic section in the yard.They left the building and headed into a cordoned-off yard with large hangars. Inside, a team of four forensic experts were checking over the appalling wreckage of Julia Brandon's Mercedes. It was cut into sections so as to prize apart the crushed metal. Langton went up to the men and conferred with them; then they walked him around to show him sections laid out on a big workbench. Anna felt like a spare part as she moved around the wreckage, standing back as a metal cutter was used on a section of dashboard.The engine had shifted into the front seats and a section of the bonnet had already been cut away Now cleared, the mangled dashboard was visible and they could get access to the buckled glove compartment. They used a crowbar to prize it open. The contents—like those of Julia's handbag, which must have been on the front seat—were flattened and soaking wet, as there had been a bottle of water inside. They slowly began to withdraw, with large steel tweezers, the crushed plastic bottle, then a leather-covered road map, an AA book, and the Mercedes manual. Each item removed was placed into plastic evidence bags.Langton joined Anna. He watched for a few moments, and then said quietly that Julia hadn't stood a hope in hell of getting out of the car alive; what surprised him was that it hadn't happened sooner. "The brakes were tampered with, virtually severed in two." He then took off, shouting out his thanks to the workers, and headed back toward the car park. "Fucking surveillance."Anna chased after him. "If the car was parked in her garage, there were the two so-called bodyguards inside the house, plus the children, plus the so-called au pair! There's a connecting door from the kitchen into the garage; they would have had plenty of time to cut her brakes without being seen."Langton glared. "Somebody, either the two beefed-up bodyguards, or some unknown bastard, took her kids and drove fucking out, right under our noses.""Their routine was to be taken to nursery school.""Jesus Christ!"Anna persisted: after the surveillance team saw the children go into the school, they returned to the property."Letting them just walk out of the school!""The officers were told to return to the house, as Julia was by then in a patrol car, with me, heading back there!""Fine, fine. Make excuses for total incompetence!" He got into the front passenger seat beside the driver and slammed the car door so hard it rocked.Anna refused to rise to the bait. She got into the back of the patrol car and sat, tight-lipped.He calmed down as they drove out of the yard. "Unless that is exactly what she intended to happen: lead them off, then come into the station and have a screaming fit.""I think she was a liar, and a very good one, but I honestly don't think she had any prior knowledge that the children were going to be taken.""Well, thank you for that insight, Travis," Langton muttered. He turned to face her, leaning his arm along the back of the seat. "What if she did have? You said you thought it strange the way she went from hysteria into giving you a eulogy; even admitting that Collingwood had been to the house."Anna shrugged, not believing it."What she didn't know was that her brakes would be liable to give way."He turned back to face the front as they continued the journey across London toward Chalk Farm and the station. "The clothes, the overnight bag; that doesn't look like someone who didn't know where she was going. The suitcase should have sent alarm bells ringing, albeit to two dozy fuckers on surveillance.""They were on her tail the moment she left the house.""Yeah, I know, but where was she going? M40 to Oxford? Unless she was doing a drive-around to lose the tail?” They said she was doing over ninety most of the time—so was she leading them on a runaround? Or was she heading for the farmhouse and her sister?""Well, it's going to be hard to question her!""Very adroit, Travis."She asked why he had delayed on bringing in Honour and Damien Nolan."I'm not positive I've done the right thing, if the surveillance team on them is as fucking useless as the one on Julia Brandon.""But surely they're both implicated?" They knew the Mitsubishi had been there; they knew Damien probably wrote the directions too.Langton slapped the seat with the flat of his hand. "You presume! We can't presume anything!" He took a deep breath, exhaling slowly as if to control his temper. "They are involved in this up to their necks but, until we have something to really pull the carpet from under their feet, we stay off them. We watch and we wait."