Ninety minutes later Anna and Walker entered Interview Room Two where Neville Quinlan and the duty solicitor appointed to him were waiting.
Detective Prescott and a couple of uniforms had arrested him at his flat and he’d been read his rights.
While that was happening, Anna and the rest of the team had viewed the CCTV footage that proved Quinlan had lied about what he did and where he went on Monday afternoon. They had also begun to gather more information on the man he’d met in the pub and driven off with.
Anna was carrying a small laptop that she placed on the table between them, along with a documents folder. She flicked the switch to turn on the wall-mounted video camera that would record the interview.
‘For the benefit of the tape those present are DCI Tate, DI Walker, duty solicitor Kenneth Bloom, and his client, Mr Neville Quinlan,’ she said.
Bloom was a familiar face at MIT HQ, and Anna rated him highly. He wasn’t a time waster, and he always gave his clients sound advice, even if they were low-life scum like Quinlan.
Bloom was smartly dressed in a light grey suit, but Quinlan looked as though he’d got ready in a hurry. His sparse grey hair clearly hadn’t been brushed, and his dark shirt was badly creased, with some of the buttons left undone.
‘Before you start asking your questions, I would like to make a statement for the record on Mr Quinlan’s behalf,’ Bloom said. When Anna nodded, he continued. ‘My client would like it to be known that he regards what is happening as an extreme and unwarranted form of police harassment. He has already been interviewed twice and has continued to deny any involvement in the abduction and death of the ten-year-old Jacob Rossi. His flat has also been subjected to a thorough search and he’s been led to believe that nothing incriminating was discovered.
‘His only mistake was to park outside Jacob’s school on one occasion last week and he’s explained that he did that because he felt unwell while driving. He most certainly did not have a sinister motive. He has also given an account of his movements on Monday afternoon when Jacob went missing. So I’m …’
Anna felt a stab of irritation, which prompted her to cut him off.
‘Let me stop you there, Mr Bloom,’ she said. ‘We are not harassing your client. He’s a convicted paedophile who went to prison for sexually abusing two teenage boys. He was first interviewed after Jacob Rossi went missing. When the boy was found dead in the pub cellar, we felt it necessary to talk to him a second time. And now he’s here again because new evidence has come to light, which proves that he lied to us about what he was doing on Monday afternoon.’
Bloom’s face fisted into a frown and he turned to his client who was shaking his head.
‘You’re trying it on again,’ Quinlan said to Anna. ‘It’s what you did when you pretended that the boy was found alive. You claimed that he’d told you I was the person who’d snatched him. Well I didn’t fall for it then and I’m not falling for it now.’
Anna flipped open the laptop, brought it to life, and turned it towards Quinlan.
‘You told us that you went out for your usual walk on Monday afternoon at about three o’clock,’ Anna said. ‘You insisted that you did not meet or talk to anyone, and that you returned home an hour later.’
‘That’s exactly what I did,’ Quinlan said.
Anna shook her head. ‘But that isn’t true is it? The CCTV clips you’re about to see prove that.’
Anna pressed a key on the laptop and the first clip started to play.
‘This footage was captured on a camera opposite the Bell Inn pub which is just over a mile away from your flat,’ she said. ‘As you can see it shows you entering the saloon bar at three-fifteen that day.’
Quinlan shifted uncomfortably on the chair as he watched himself on the screen, and Anna noticed how his lower lip began to tremble.
‘And this second clip is from a security camera inside the pub,’ she said.
It showed a busy bar and at the far end of the room Quinlan could be seen sitting at a table opposite a large man in his mid-thirties, who had on a black leather jacket and a baseball cap.
‘You stayed with this individual for forty minutes and you each had a pint of beer,’ Anna said. ‘From the look of it you had a lot to talk about and were clearly enjoying each other’s company.’ The clip ended and she moved straight on to another one. ‘This third clip shows you eventually leaving the pub through the rear door and getting into the man’s BMW in the car park. You can then be seen driving off together.’
Anna let the video play through before ending it and closing the laptop.
‘So there you have it, Mr Quinlan,’ she said. ‘I can only assume that you must have had a good reason to lie to us. So I’ll now give you an opportunity to put the record straight. Tell us why you met up with that man and where he took you after leaving the pub.’
Quinlan stared at her across the desk, his eyes filled with panic.
‘I think we should suspend the interview while I consult with my client,’ the solicitor said.
‘And I think your client should stop pissing us around and come clean,’ Anna said.
Quinlan’s tongue flicked across his lips and the breath rushed out of him.
‘It’s none of your fucking business who I meet up with,’ he said. ‘So I don’t see why I should tell you who he is.’
‘Well for your information we already know who he is,’ Anna said, and was unable to suppress a grin. ‘He’s the registered owner of the BMW. His name is Craig Sullivan and he lives in Norwood. He has previous convictions for drug dealing and theft. He’s also the younger brother of one Tony Sullivan, who was jailed three years ago on charges of child sex trafficking. It’s strongly believed that he’s now part of the same trafficking network that his brother ran, but so far he’s managed to dodge getting collared.’
Quinlan clenched his jaw and hissed an obscenity at Anna. Then he leaned forward on the table and buried his face in his hands.
‘I want to know where the pair of you went,’ Anna said.
Without looking up, Quinlan responded with a ‘no comment.’
Anna turned to Bloom. ‘I suggest you explain to your client that he won’t be leaving here until he’s told us the truth.’
She then announced that she was suspending the interview and switched off the video camera. She got to her feet and picked up the laptop and documents folder.
Before leaving the room, she said to Quinlan, ‘My officers are now on their way to Craig Sullivan’s home so it won’t be long before he’s sitting in the room next door. It’ll be interesting to see if he’s just as reluctant as you are to tell us what the pair of you got up to on Monday afternoon.’