a chance meeting with Nigel in Knightsbridge on Saturday morning (they were both Christmas shopping, apparently), he became very excited about seeing her again, and twelve hours later forced his way into her house in order to rape her. Barry's evidence supports this. When Nigel finally released her, she lashed out at his face and he fell backwards on to the brass doorstop. The forensic evidence (bruise on his cheek/traces of blood on the doorstop) supports this. We are still looking for witnesses who may have seen her BMW in Dover during the Saturday, but have found none to date. The neighbors continue to support her statement that it was parked in her driveway. (Although they're a little less sure than previously as they are very used to it being left there.)
The reason Amanda didn't dial 9-9-9 was because she panicked. She says she realized immediately that she needed to put as much distance between herself and Nigel's Rolls-Royce as possible, so drove it to Dover, a town she knows well because her mother lives only 20 miles away. She agrees it's ridiculous that she thought getting rid of the car was more important than getting rid of the body, but she was confused and frightened following the rape. She hitched a lift out of Dover with a French truck driver, arriving home by 8:30 a.m.
At the moment none of this can be disproved, but Greg is working on it.
Communicate by fax in future. Hardworking policemen can't afford to spend hours on the telephone.
*21*
Deacon put through another call to Edinburgh. 'It's Michael Deacon,' he told John Streeter when the man came on the line. 'I presume you've read that your sister-in-law's been charged with the murder of Nigel de Vriess?'
'Yes.'
'Have you any idea why she did it, Mr. Streeter?'
'Not really. I spoke to her the Friday before Christmas, suggesting a truce. She was surprisingly amenable.'
'What kind of truce?'
There was a short silence. 'The kind you suggested,' he said then. 'I told her we now believed she'd been telling the truth and asked her to use her influence with de Vriess to let us search through the DVS personnel files for anything that might lead us to Marianne Filbert. She agreed and asked me to contact her again in the new year with a view to proceeding.'
'Did she seem worried by the suggestion?''
'She was puzzled by it. She asked me why we believed her now when we hadn't before, and I said that you'd become interested in James's story and had persuaded us to work with her rather than against her.'
'What was her answer to that?'
'As far as I remember, she said it was a pity we hadn't attracted your interest five years ago before quite so much water had gone under the bridge.'
'Did you ask her what she meant by that?'
'No. I assumed she was saying there'd have been a lot less anguish for everyone if the truth had come out at the time of James's disappearance.'
'Anything else?'
' 'No. We wished each other a Happy Christmas and said goodbye.' Streeter paused again. 'Do you know if the police have questioned her about James?''
'Yes, but her story hasn't changed. She still denies knowing anything about what happened to him.'
There was a sigh. 'You'll keep us posted, I hope.'
'Of course. Goodbye, Mr. Streeter.'
With cast-iron guarantees that her part in the story would never be written, Deacon persuaded Lawrence to talk to his partner about the woman who had been offered ten thousand pounds by de Vriess to keep her mouth shut. 'All I want to know,' he told the old man, 'is whether she reported the incident to the police, and if she didn't, why not?'
Lawrence frowned. 'I imagine because the money was an inducement to stay silent.'
'How can it have been if he had time to go to his solicitor? Most women dial nine-nine-nine the minute their attacker walks out of the door. They don't give him time to get legal advice. That ten thousand sounds more like severance pay than inducement.'
Lawrence phoned through the answer a couple of days later. 'You were right, Michael. It was in the nature of a pay-off, and she did not report the incident to the police. There had been a history of abuse against the poor woman which ended in the injuries my colleague witnessed. In fact he urged her to prosecute-' he chuckled happily-'somewhat unethically it must be said because he was still acting for de Vriess at the time-but she was too frightened to do it.'
'Of de Vriess?'
'Yes and no. She refused to give any details but my colleague believes de Vriess was blackmailing her. She was a stockbroker and his best guess is that she used insider knowledge to buy shares, and de Vriess found out about it.'
'Why stop? Why pay her?''
'De Vriess claimed it was a onetime incident when he'd acted out of character because he was drunk. The woman said it was the culmination of a series of such incidents. My colleague believed her and promptly severed our firm's connection with a man he considered to be extremely dangerous.
