Echo

'Did she ever get paid?'

Another chuckle. 'Oh, yes. My colleague screwed twenty-five thousand out of de Vriess before refusing any further business from him.'

'You realize this would help Amanda's case considerably? It proves Nigel had a taste for rape.'

'Oh, I don't think so. It wouldn't suit her book at all to have it demonstrated that Nigel blackmailed women in order so make them party to their own rape. As I understand it, her defense is that this had never happened before, that Nigel forced his way into her house in a state of high arousal, and that his death was an accident when she lashed out after managing to get free of him.'

'She's lying.'

'I'm sure she is, my friend, but she's fighting for her life, poor creature.'

'Will she get off?'

'Undoubtedly. Barry's witness evidence alone will persuade a jury to acquit.''

'She wouldn't have been arrested but for him,' said Deacon, 'and now she's looking to him to save her. As Terry would say, that's well ironic.'

Lawrence tittered. 'How's his reading coming along?'

'Faster than I expected,' said Deacon dryly. 'He's discovered the joys of looking up dirty words in the dictionary, and he's sending me round the bend by reading the definitions out loud.'

'And how's Barry?'

There was a long pause. 'Barry's decided to be honest about his feelings,' said Deacon even more dryly, 'and unless he puts a sock in it pretty rapidly, I'm planning to do the job for him by ripping his balls off and stuffing them in his mouth. I'm a tolerant man, as you know, but I draw the line at being the object of someone else's fantasies.'

Facsimile transmission-Dated: 4.01.96

THE STREET, FLEET STREET, LONDON EC4

From: Michael Deacon

To: DS Greg Harrison

Nota Bene: You're not the only person I've been telephoning!

John Streeter called Amanda the week before Christmas (on my advice), asking for a truce and saying that the Friends of James Streeter were planning to approach Nigel de Vriess in the new year with a view to searching through the DVS/Softworks personnel files to try and get an angle on Marianne Filbert.

Wise up! It's about as likely that Amanda met Nigel by chance in Knightsbridge on the Saturday before Christmas as you or I winning the lottery. The odds against it are phenomenal. For Christ's sake, the world and his wife would have been there looking for last-minute presents. She made an arrangement with him to come to her house for some Christmas jollies. See below.

Who owns the cottage in Sway? Amanda or Nigel? If Nigel, then his wife knew nothing about it, and her evidence that there was no contact between Nigel and Amanda doesn't hold water. I'm betting Amanda was required to get herself down there whenever Nigel said 'jump.' (He knew she'd murdered James, and was using her as his personal punch bag whenever he felt like sex. Lawrence has told you what a bastard Nigel was, and Barry says he was RAPING her-what more proof do you need that Nigel had a hold over her?)

How did she know where Nigel had left his Rolls if it wasn't outside her house? Did he pause in mid-rape to tell her where he'd parked it?

If her car was parked in her driveway, why didn't she reverse into her garage, load Nigel into the boot and dump him somewhere before getting rid of the Rolls? The fact that she didn't is the best proof you've got that the BMW wasn't there.

How does she explain the sacks of cement in her garage when we have photographic evidence that the garage was empty at the beginning of December?

Why have rumpy-pumpy in London when they could have gone to Sway, considering she was going there anyway and it was only forty miles from Halcombe House? Because the disappearing act would have been harder to work from Sway, that's why! It had to be London for easy access to Dover; and it had to be somewhere he wasn't known. So she phoned him and persuaded him to come to London for a change!

This was premeditated murder which would have worked if Barry hadn't thrown a spanner in the works. While Kent & Hampshire police were running around like headless chickens looking for a kidnapped/absconded entrepreneur she would have been spending a quiet Christmas with her mother (who gives solid alibis!). The only risk was leaving the body in her garage over the holiday, but she didn't have time to dispose of the Rolls and Nigel all in one night so she probably thought it was a risk worth taking. It was never going to be as easy as disposing of James. If she'd tipped Nigel over her garden wall he'd be sitting on a mud-bank when the tide went out, and someone would want to know what was in the concrete overcoat. You really must trawl the river beside the Teddington flats. I guarantee you'll find a bag of bones weighted down with hardened cement, and you can use John Streeter for DNA comparison. I've met Amanda's mother, by the way, and the alibi's lousy. The poor old thing's been arthritic for years and knocks herself out every night with sleeping pills. Amanda could have murdered half of England, and Mrs. Powell Snr. wouldn't have known a damn thing about it.

Best wishes,

Mike

Metropolitan Police-Isle of Dogs-facsimile-10.01.96 09.43

From: Greg Harrison

To: Michael Deacon

Hearsay evidence. Amanda denies John Streeter said any such thing. Her version is that he verbally abused her as he has done every Christmas since James vanished.