Adan Kumar arrived at Hackney Police Station promptly at eight-thirty. He was as usual overconfident and ingratiating, smiling and shaking hands with both Mike Lewis and Anna as they at first discussed the murder of Justine Marks. As he was already well aware that his client was charged with her murder, he listened without interruption. He had not, as they feared he would, requested a psychiatric assessment of his client. Kumar did however express concerns about his client’s physical and mental state, but Mike informed him that on his arrival earlier this morning Oates had been seen by a doctor who had declared him fit to be interviewed.
It was a shaken Adan Kumar who was led through the disclosure of his client’s connection to the disappearance of Rebekka Jordan and the murder of Fidelis Julia Flynn. He made copious notes and often asked for Mike to repeat himself, which he obligingly did. Kumar appeared hardly able to digest the bulk of evidence mounting against his client. He did attempt to argue that he should have been given prior access to the documents, but Mike pointed out that the enquiries were still ongoing and it was hoped that his client would be able to assist them.
Kumar, now visibly nervous, was given access to Oates to discuss the disclosure evidence and, to the surprise of the team, he returned after spending only half an hour with his client, to inform them he was now ready to be interviewed.
Langton was already set up in the viewing room with Barolli. The interview would be filmed and recorded to DVD. Whilst they waited for Oates to be brought up from the cells, Mike and Anna checked through the trolley filled with files and made sure that the photographs and statements for the Justine Marks case were laid out. Mike glanced at Anna. She had her notebook out and a row of sharpened pencils beside it.
‘You all set?’
‘Yes.’
They had only a few more minutes to wait before they heard footsteps outside in the corridor. Kumar entered and sat opposite Mike Lewis. He took out his notes and took one of the bottles of water provided on the trolley. The solicitor said nothing, but he gave a couple of anxious coughs and looked at his watch. Heavier footsteps sounded from the corridor as two uniformed officers approached with Henry Oates between them. One opened the door, the other stepped back to allow the suspect to walk into the room. He was wearing prison-issue denim jeans and shirt and black slip-on trainers. He was smaller than Anna had anticipated, no more than five feet nine, but he was well built, with broad sloping shoulders and a slim waist, and the jeans without a belt looked loose.
‘I sit here, do I?’ he asked, nodding to the only vacant chair.
‘Yes, please,’ Mike said, without looking up.
‘Opposite her,’ Oates said, smiling.
Anna forced herself to return his smile and stared into his face. His wide-set very blue eyes were unnerving, babyish, the nose even more flattened than in the photographs, as if the entire bridge had been crushed. His flared nostrils tilted upwards, giving his cheeks a strangely flat appearance. His thick lips were pinkish, and from his smile she could see that his teeth were gapped and stained. He wore his hair in a dirty blond curly crew cut which revealed that one of his ears was much thicker than the other.
Mike quietly read through the police caution, gesturing first to the tape recorder and then to the cameras. It was ten-thirty-five. He started off by asking Oates if he could call him Henry, to which the prisoner nodded in agreement. Mike said he was sorry to hear about the assault on him in prison and that he hoped Oates was now feeling better. Oates said nothing but just sat looking around the room. Anna knew that Mike was trying to soften him up as Samuels had suggested, but so far this was not bringing any noticeable response from Oates.
‘We have here, Henry, your original statement when you were arrested,’ Mike went on, ‘and I would like to draw your attention to certain paragraphs in which you told me how the body of Justine Marks came to be discovered in the rear of the van you were driving.’
Oates listened attentively, slouching in the chair.
‘I need to go over what happened with Justine again.’
‘Why? I already told you it was an accident.’
‘Yes, and we appreciate your honesty, but last time I didn’t really give you an opportunity to tell your side of the story and there are a few things I didn’t understand.’
‘All right, fire away then,’ Oates replied with a yawn.
‘You said that you stopped to offer Justine a lift home but she was rude. How was she rude?’
‘Bitch told me to fuck off when I was just trying to do the right thing.’
‘She must have liked you, though, as she obviously changed her mind.’
‘Yeah, but I had to tell her I was okay, like nothing for her to get worried about.’
‘You must have really turned on the charm to persuade her to have sex with you,’ Mike suggested.
‘Well, not a lot. I think she was just up for it and fancied me anyway.’
‘Wish I was so lucky.’
‘Well you got it or you ain’t,’ Oates replied with a wink of his eye.
Both Anna and Mike noticed that Oates had started to sit more upright as the conversation went on. He was now leaning forwards making eye contact with Mike as if he was having a lads’ chat in the pub.
Langton sighed. This was going to be a very long day. He found it extremely irritating to have to sit and listen to Mike being all namby-pamby with a man like Oates, but he knew there was a purpose to it and that it had to be done if Oates was to fall into the trap. He was actually impressed with Mike’s tactics and the way he was drawing Oates onside. He did wonder how much of the strategy was down to Travis’s advice, but either way the fact that they had planned the interview and were now executing it together was good to see.
‘You said that after willingly having sex with you Justine suddenly became hysterical and attacked you . . .’ Mike was saying.
‘Kicked me in the balls.’
‘That must have pissed you off, let alone hurt like hell.’
‘It did piss me off. I thought, you ungrateful slag. I give her a good shagging and she then throws a hissy fit.’
‘If I were you I think I’d have slapped her as well.’
Kumar suddenly interrupted.
‘DCI Lewis, I really think this line of questioning is leading—’
Before he could finish his sentence Oates with a look of rage in his eyes turned quickly and poked his solicitor firmly in the chest.
‘You don’t ever interrupt me again!’ Oates shook his head in annoyance then turned back to Mike, who resumed at once.
‘I was saying I could understand you losing your temper like that and hitting her with the spanner.’
‘It was just there beside me. I was really wound up, I picked it up, she turned like this, didn’t she, to avoid the thingy. I just let her have it . . . but only once.’
He had the audacity to swivel round in his chair, indicating the back of his head. Mike was finding it hard to restrain his own anger with Oates but knew he had to continue in the same vein, especially as Kumar was unlikely to interrupt again.
‘Sounds like the slapper deserved it, Henry.’
‘Fucking right she did.’
‘So after you hit her, did it shut her up?’
‘Well, she wasn’t screaming no more, just sort of moaning and gurgling.’ Oates smiled as if he was enjoying recalling the moment.
Mike said nothing; he simply acted as if he too was enjoying what Oates was saying and nodded to encourage him to go on.
‘I realized I’d hit her a bit hard, shook me up a bit, it did, but I thought I’d better take her to a hospital.’
Mike leaned forwards as Oates shook his head, acting bewildered.
‘At what point did you discover she was dead?’
‘When the moaning stopped.’
‘So the drive to a hospital would have been pointless?’
‘I guess so.’
Oates was still obviously lying but he had gone from a visible high in describing the sex and assault on Justine Marks to a sudden low. He clearly thought that Mike was genuinely sympathetic and believed his lies. Anna thought Mike looked drained and wondered if it was the right time for her to step in and take over the interview. She reached over to the trolley and picked up the pictures of Justine Marks that had been taken in the van and during the post mortem. She tapped Mike’s knee beneath the table, and he slowly closed his notebook without looking at her.
‘I would like to ask you some questions, Mr Oates,’ Anna began.
Oates raised his head and looked at her with contempt.
‘Oh here we go, now we get the woman’s point of view. How could you do a thing like that, the poor defenceless girl. Doesn’t matter the bitch kicked me in the nuts, does it!’
Anna held the pictures as if she were a croupier about to deal a pack of cards. She turned the first one over and laid it on the table. It showed the rear of the van with the doors open and Justine’s body wrapped in the bin liners.
‘Justine’s blood was found smeared on the outside of the rear doors, on the bumper and the floor of the van,’ she said.
‘I told you, I hit her on the head in the van.’
Anna now turned over the next picture, which was a close-up of the scuffmarks on Justine’s boots.
‘From these marks on her boots and the direction of the blood patterns on the outside of the van, the scientist says that she was hit on the back of the head before she was dragged into the van.’
Oates said nothing. He started chewing his bottom lip and tapping his right foot on the floor as he had done in the interview after his arrest when asked if he had abducted and killed Rebekka Jordan.
‘You attacked Justine in the street with the spanner,’ Anna persisted. ‘She was already dead when you dragged her into the back of the van, wasn’t she?’
Again Oates said nothing. There was a long pause before Kumar broke the silence.
‘Are you suggesting that Mr Oates is a necrophiliac, DCI Travis?’
‘I’m saying what the evidence suggests, Mr Kumar. Only your client knows the answer to that.’
‘I am bloody not.’
She turned and looked at him.
‘Do you know what Mr Kumar means, Henry?’
‘Yeah I know what the word means, and no way, screwing a dead body, do me a favour.’
‘Why don’t you tell us the truth about what happened that night? It may dismiss any ideas we have that you did have sexual intercourse with Justine after she was dead.’
‘She was alive when I fucked her.’
Adan Kumar could see that his client was becoming agitated and he turned to have a whispered conversation with him, holding his hand up to cover what he was saying. Oates leaned closer to him and then nodded. Anna promptly leaned towards Mike and whispered to him in a similar way, hiding her mouth by holding up her notebook.
‘Wait a minute,’ Oates said and pointed to Mike. ‘You know I’m telling the truth, she wanted to have sex with me.’
Kumar gestured for him to sit back, but Oates wafted his hand away.
‘I am not one of them sick perverts, she was alive. I never done it to her when she was dead.’
Langton pulled a chair in front of him to rest his leg on as Barolli passed him a coffee, asking, ‘What’s all this necrophilia stuff, what’s the angle?’
‘She’s needling him, she never said he’s a necrophiliac – Kumar did. Doesn’t like it though, does he?’ Langton sipped his coffee, watching the monitor closely as he knew exactly where she was leading Oates. Oates’s ego was such that he wouldn’t like the implication he was a necrophiliac. He liked women to know exactly what was happening as he first raped them and then killed them. The forensic evidence had shown he had abused Justine Marks only after he had raped her, possibly in anger that she was unconscious and didn’t respond to his violence. Anna and Mike’s intention was to draw Oates out into the open by firstly siding with him through empathy and then by Anna attacking his lies.
Langton couldn’t believe how well things were going. He watched with satisfaction the way Oates answered questions, unwittingly revealing his deep contempt for women.
‘He’s talking and reacting like Samuels said he would . . . didn’t think it would happen so fast. That bit with Kumar was something else.’
Langton sipped his coffee in satisfaction.
Like Langton, Anna was surprised how quickly Oates had opened up. He was very self-assured, almost cocky, yet agitated. She knew that Oates felt in control when Mike questioned him, but now that an object of his hate, a woman, had taken over, she was worried he might say nothing more, but Oates continued.
‘This is exactly how it went down. I liked the look of her, right? And seeing her walking all by herself was like an open invitation.’
‘One you took advantage of, didn’t you?’ Anna said encouragingly and Oates nodded, going on to explain how he had stalked Justine for only a matter of yards before he hit her on the back of the head with the spanner then dragged her into the van.
‘She was all dazed and her head was bleeding. I got her inside the van within seconds. In fact, if it had taken any longer someone could have walked past, a pub’s a busy place. I drove off sharpish, but she came round, started to scream and yell, and so I pulled over and parked and went to shut her up.’
He recalled very specifically how he had gripped her by the hair and hit her with his fist, rising out of his chair to demonstrate how he had shaken her and then thrown her hard onto the floor of the van. He banged his fist into his hand to imitate the sound as his face twisted into a grimace.
‘I didn’t want it to go down like that, I liked the look of her, but these things happen. I got stuck in and she started to come round again just as I was full on and I pulled her bra up round her throat.’
He raised his hands in a twisting motion towards Anna. She didn’t flinch, but kept up a steady gaze, nodding to encourage him to keep talking. He explained how he had realized she was dead and that it made him angry because he liked it when she struggled and had planned to have much more time with her.
Anna knew the next question could be a provocative one coming from her and at this point she didn’t want Oates to fly off into a rage, so she tapped Mike’s leg.
‘Angry enough to insert this inside her?’ Mike asked, placing the photograph of the spanner onto the table, and Oates nodded, puffing out his cheeks.
‘Yeah, that was a bit over the top, but she really pissed me off, dying like that. Anyway, I got back into the front, sat there for ages. I was in a quandary, understand me? I had to do something with her, I had to get rid of her, cos me mate wanted the van back.’
‘When did you wrap her body in the plastic bin liners?’
Oates sucked in his breath.
‘Oh right, I done that straight after, they was in the back with all the balloons and stuff. Sometimes they want about twenty of them blown up and these giant-size bags can hold up to ten.’ He gave a laugh.
‘I was doing some deliveries for me mate one time when I got out of the van with a bunch of them and off they go up in the air and I was running around trying to catch the strings. You gotta tie them in a special way so the knots come out easy, parents get pissed off if they can’t hand out a frigging balloon to each kid.’
‘Yeah I know, I’ve got youngsters – party bags, balloons. So, there you are with a van that needs to be returned – what were you planning to do with the body?’
‘Well, that was it, wasn’t it? Sitting like a prick when the coppers come and knock on me window.’
‘You must have had some plan for disposing of her, though?’
Oates raised his hand, pointing his index finger to the ceiling.
‘Felt the Lord looking down at me and I just wanted it to be over.’
In the viewing room Langton swore under his breath. He didn’t want the ‘good Lord’ coming into the interview – that, or any hearing bloody voices.
‘To be honest, I was relieved, you don’t go through something like that and live with yourself easily,’ Oates explained.
This was not going the way Anna had hoped, but Mike carried on with his questions.
‘That surprises me, Henry, you’re an intelligent man, you must have had some kind of plan in mind?’
‘Nope.’ He fell silent, licking his lips.
Anna kept her fingers crossed that Mike wouldn’t start to ask about the other victims; they had to know what he had planned to do with Justine first.
‘I’m glad, to be honest, glad it’s over.’ Oates appeared ready to carry on. ‘I’ve not been sleeping because of it, you know; it was something that took me over and I know by my admitting to doing what I did I will be in prison for a long time.’ He bowed his head and made the sign of the cross. ‘God forgive me.’
‘Well, Henry, I have to say I admire you for telling us the truth about what really happened to Justine,’ Mike said, managing to keep his voice sincere, ‘but just out of curiosity, though, let’s say the police hadn’t stopped you that night and you had the chance to dispose of Justine’s body, what would you have done with her?’
‘I just told you. I acted on impulse, it’s not as if I ever done anything like it before. It was something that happened and, like I said, the coppers caught me red-handed.’
Mike was now tired of being Mr Nice Guy, knowing as he did that Oates was playing games with them and enjoying every minute of it, and so he put down the pen, cap on, beside his notebook to indicate to Anna to take over.
Anna remembered what Edward Samuels had said about Oates not knowing all the evidence against him and to keep him guessing.
‘I overestimated you,’ she told him. ‘I imagined that a man with your experience and intelligence would have made a very clever decision as to where or how you would dispose of a body. Not somewhere where you worked or had visited – that would be plain stupid.’
‘Lemme tell you, if I had, you’d never have picked me up, right?’
‘Maybe not, as you had no police record, no prints or DNA on file . . .’
‘I worked all over London, I know places that I could have used, but like I keep saying, I was caught before I had got me thoughts sorted out.’
‘Well if that’s true, give me some indication of these possible dumping places, because for the future I’d like to know, be a good career move for me to have the knowledge.’
Oates chuckled and leaned towards her.
‘I could have been a contender! You see that film with Marlon Brando? He said that. Well, I could have been a professional, it was down to me being depressed about the death of a man who was me mentor. I lost the fight, lost me confidence, and then with a wife who was a lying bitch things got on top of me, but I’ve kept up the training all these years, work out at a gym, swimming, I’m bloody fit for my age.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘This is always ticking. I might not have the education, but there’s not much that I can’t get to grips with.’
‘It must have been really annoying when you were accused of stealing a necklace from the sports centre you frequented.’
‘Too fucking right it was. I was there every week and it wasn’t a necklace, it was a cheap piece of crap, a crucifix, not even proper gold, left on a windowsill. I never knew it even belonged to anyone and the stiff that called himself the manager there had a right go at me, said not to come back. I’d like to have thrown a right hook at him, but he had these two other pricks with him.’
Anna had tapped Mike’s knee under the table and he brought out the photograph of the crucifix.
‘Is this the item you took?’ she asked.
Oates glanced at it, then nodded.
‘Piece of crap like I just said, and it meant I lost me membership.’
‘What did you do with it?’
‘Lost it somewhere, threw it away, can’t remember.’
‘What work were you doing at this time?’
‘Part-time labour finishing off the multi-storey car park in Shepherd’s Bush. They were hiring fit blokes to dig out areas for cementing.’
He suddenly pressed himself hard against the back of his chair, making it creak. He shook his head.
‘Fucking walked into this one, haven’t I? Eh? I think you are the clever one.’ He wagged his finger at Anna. ‘I tell you what I’ll do, I’ll make a deal with you: you tell me what you got and I’ll tell you what I know. Depending on how good you are, I might help you out.’
‘I am not making any deals with you, Mr Oates, but I believe that you killed this girl.’
Mike put the photograph of Fidelis Julia Flynn down on the table, but there was no immediate reaction from Oates.
‘Never met her in my life,’ he said eventually.
Mike quietly told him that when he had been arrested he had made a statement admitting to killing two other women, one of whom he could only remember as being called Julia. Before he could continue, Oates clapped his hands.
‘Right. Back on that, are we? Well, I have already told you I’d seen the missing posters for them two girls and I was having a laugh with you lot.’
Anna slid the photograph away from him but Oates gave a chuckle and put his hand out to draw the photograph back to be in front of him.
‘Pretty, very pretty.’
In the viewing room Langton sighed, sensing that Anna and Mike were now going backwards rather than making progress. He stood up and stretched, wishing that he was in the interview room; he was more than sure that he would have had Oates confessing by now.
‘I guess if you didn’t know her then someone else working on the same building site, at the same time as you, must have murdered her and then put her body in the lift shaft,’ Anna suggested.
Oates slowly looked up from the picture of Fidelis with a grin on his face. Anna leaned forwards and whispered as if she were telling him a secret.
‘The crucifix, Henry, you messed up. You dropped it beside her body before you covered it in cement.’
‘You are a good little detective, aren’t you? Yeah, I take all that, but you don’t know how or where I killed her, do you?’
Adan Kumar tapped Oates’s arm and warned him to give no further details, as the discovery of the crucifix and body had not been disclosed to him.
‘I’m fucking helping her, all right?’
In sickening detail Oates described meeting Fidelis Julia Flynn on a lunch break from work. He had gone to his regular place, the McDonald’s by Shepherd’s Bush Green, and sat at the same table as her. She had told him she was looking for somewhere to rent and he had said that he lived in an old house that had spare rooms and if she came back after he had finished work he could take her to see it.
He was sweating, clearly enjoying himself as he recalled waiting for her and then taking her back to his basement flat. It had been dark and there was no one about. His anger had been triggered when she said the place was a pigsty and she called him a fucking animal. He calmly spoke of how he beat her unconscious then raped and strangled her. He had put her body in an old suitcase, carried it up to the main road late at night, got a taxi and took her to the building site, because he had noticed the security was bad there.
‘I knew I had to fill the ticket machine area with cement the next day so I put her in the bottom of the lift shaft. Once it was done I thought no one would ever find her. I didn’t go back there, Polish supervisor didn’t like me anyways, said I was lazy.’
He showed absolutely no signs of remorse. On the contrary, he seemed to be having the time of his life, directing much of his explanation at Anna. Exhausted by the effort of keeping him talking, she observed he got through two bottles of water, and was sweating and wiping his face with the cuff of his shirt throughout. He had the audacity to toss the empty water bottles into a bin and then smile.
‘Anything else you got for me to help you with?’
This was what Langton was waiting for, the chance for the interview to move on to the case of Rebekka Jordan. But Oates asked for a bathroom break before they could begin. It was now one-thirty, so Kumar requested that the break also take in lunch as his client was hungry and had been at the station since early in the morning. Oates asked Kumar if he could get him a Big Mac but his solicitor said it was not allowed.
Oates was led out, not tired in the slightest – quite the reverse, as he jumped to his feet to be accompanied by two uniformed officers down to the cells and toilet facilities.
‘See you later,’ he called out to Anna.
Mike had organized sandwiches to be brought into the viewing room, and so Anna joined him and Langton as they were pouring fresh coffee.
‘Good going so far,’ Langton said, choosing a sandwich.
Anna wasn’t hungry but sipped her coffee. Having been sitting hunched at the interview table for so long it was good to stretch her legs.
‘I think he’s going to tell us about Rebekka. I just hope the break doesn’t stop the bastard talking,’ Langton continued.
‘I doubt it,’ Mike said, taking his second sandwich.
Anna was not as confident as she felt Oates would be more reluctant to confess to the murder of a thirteen-year-old girl. After she had finished her coffee, she announced she was going to take a walk outside the station and get some fresh air.
‘You all right?’ Langton asked.
‘Yes, I’m fine, thanks, it just sickened me having to keep up the encouragement and be pleasant to that creature. He makes my skin crawl.’
‘But it’s worked, you’re keeping him buoyant, his ego is such that he can’t keep his mouth shut.’
‘Well I’ll try not to deflate it,’ she said sarcastically as she walked out, passing Barolli as he came in.
He brought the news that they were getting results back from their enquiries into some of the ‘trinkets’ found in Oates’s basement. Two cold cases were being re-opened, along with the Angela Thornton investigation. He explained that he had tried to speak with Angela’s parents but they were away on holiday and wouldn’t be back for a few days. Langton poured his second cup of coffee.
‘Christ, how many do you think the scumbag has killed?’
Barbara tapped on the door with a message from the forensic lab. Pete Jenkins had found no prints on the windows and doors of the wrecked Jeep but had decided to try the driver’s seat adjuster as it would have been reasonably protected from the fire and from the wind and rain over the last five years. He had recovered prints of a middle and right index finger matching Henry Oates’s, and they were now going to search the Jeep for traces of blood. Langton swore, passing the report to Mike. He had hoped for some evidence that Rebekka had been in the vehicle. All this meant was that Oates had stolen a car and dumped it at the chalk quarry.
Anna walked around the car park, smoking a cigarette from the pack in the glove compartment of her Mini. She didn’t smoke on a regular basis, but sometimes she just felt she needed one and this was one of those times. After stubbing it out she went back into the station and to the Ladies’. Barbara was there and passed on the information from Pete Jenkins.
‘You were right then about him using it with false plates,’ Barbara said.
‘I guess I was.’
‘They’re also bringing up some cold cases that may be connected to the box of stuff taken from Oates’s basement.’
‘Dear God, how many?’
‘Two, and then the bracelet belonging to Angela makes it three, but nothing has been confirmed. We have to get verification from all the case files of missing items.’
‘I’d better get back,’ Anna said, drying her hands.
‘You had lunch?’ Barbara asked as she herself was leaving.
‘Not hungry, thanks.’
Alone, Anna rested her hands on the sink, staring at herself in the mirror; she looked tired. Taking out a comb she undid the elastic band holding her hair in a ponytail. She replaced the band, drawing her hair tightly away from her face, then she opened her make-up bag, ran a powder puff over her nose and cheeks, and added some lip gloss. She still looked ashen-faced so she rubbed her finger over the top of the lip gloss and added a little to her cheeks for colour.
Mike was standing in the corridor in the throes of a heated discussion with Adan Kumar. As Anna approached the solicitor stormed off into the interview room, slamming the door behind him.
‘What’s up with him?’
‘Annoyed about the lack of full disclosure, said we only gave him some new stuff on the Marks case. I reminded him we decide when and what we want to disclose, not him. Anyway, forget Kumar, you all set?’
‘Yes, and I’ve heard the good news about the finger-prints.’
‘After you,’ he said to Anna and opened the interview-room door.
Anna returned to her seat, Mike beside her. Kumar, sitting opposite, opened his notebook. They all turned to the door as the heavy footsteps sounded on the stone flags, then Oates entered the room.
‘Sit back in the same chair, do I?’
‘Yes please, Mr Oates.’
Mike reminded him that he was still under caution, and the cameras and recorder were started up as he gave the time the interview was resuming and who was present.
‘I had steak and kidney pie, mashed potatoes, carrots and gravy and a custard tart,’ Oates announced.
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it,’ Anna said
‘I never said I did – it was horrible, prison food’s better. Did it come from your canteen?’
‘I believe so.’
‘What did you have?’
‘Sandwiches and coffee.’
‘What was in them?’
‘Mr Oates, can we continue the interview, please,’ she said quietly, as Mike placed onto the table the Rebekka Jordan file.
‘Just making conversation,’ Oates said, disgruntled.
Rather than go down the usual route of displaying photographs and asking if the suspect knew the victim, Mike and Anna had discussed presenting the bulk of evidence they had accumulated.
They kicked off with the discovery of the doll’s head and leg found in his basement, explaining that these had been identified as belonging to the young girl who went missing five years previously.
‘Rebekka Jordan,’ Oates said.
‘Correct.’
‘I remember that case, which was why I brought it up when I was arrested.’
‘Because you did, Mr Oates, we began an extensive enquiry.’
‘Read about it in the papers.’
‘I am sure you did – it was a very big media story, the missing girl was only thirteen years old.’
‘Why I remembered it, but it had nothin’ to do with me.’
‘How did the pieces of doll get into your basement flat?’
‘I don’t know – in fact, how do I know you didn’t put them there? I told you last time you’d try and fit me up.’
Anna continued to talk, quietly giving details of the Andrew Markham connection, showing that they knew that Oates had been in the Jordans’ garden, and that they had confirmation that Oates had been to the Markhams’ house on two occasions: once to help unload bricks and the other two weeks later when he cleaned out the septic tank.
Oates nodded and then leaned towards Anna.
‘You’ve put fresh make-up on.’
‘Yes, that is correct. I knew I’d be coming back to talk to you and I also combed my hair, very observant of you.’
‘You look better than you did earlier.’
‘Thank you.’
Mike brought up the subject of the stolen Jeep, but Oates gave no reaction and concentrated on staring at Anna.
‘We have your prints from the stolen vehicle,’ Mike told him.
Kumar tapped the table, saying he had not been given this information, and Mike replied that they had only just heard it themselves.
‘What is the connection between my client and this Jeep?’
‘We believe that your client abducted Miss Jordan using this stolen vehicle.’
Oates shook his head, smiling.
‘So I nicked the Jeep, I admit it, but they’re lousy things to drive, and it wasn’t automatic, I like automatic cars. I just dumped it along the A3 somewhere and I left the keys in the ignition so who knows who nicked it after I done.’
‘We discovered your hidden box of jewellery and are checking it out right now. I bet we find that the items belonged to women who have been reported missing.’
‘Rubbish, I get that stuff off car boot sales. Is there any murder you might have missed that you think I done?’
Anna smiled. ‘A lot, a lot more, Mr Oates.’
Mike felt her nudge him under the table and he let her take the lead.
‘How do you get along with your neighbours across the way?’
‘Oh, swift change of subject, right? Getting nowhere with the Jeep, right? Well I get along just fine.’
‘You clean their car, don’t you?’
‘Yes, ma’am, I do. I also, as you probably know, helped the old geezer put his gate posts up, mixed the cement.’
‘Do you know you scared Mrs Murphy?’
‘What, me? Never, I hardly had two words with her, gimme a cup of tea and biscuits, but God forbid they asked me inside their house. She’s got polishing mania, that woman, the brass strip of her doorstep is like glass.’
‘She said she thought she had seen a ghost, all white and walking down the road at two o’clock in the morning; frightened the life out of her and she told her husband. He said she was dreaming, must have been the way the lights were shining.’
Oates laughed, nodding his head.
‘Yeah, right. He asked me about it – funny, he said she was scared I was a fucking ghost, right, but it was just—’
He pulled back and wagged his finger.
‘Fuck me, you nearly made me say something then, didn’t you?’
‘Like what?’
‘That I was covered in chalk dust.’ He wafted his hand and then laughed again.
‘There you got me, didn’t you?’
‘Was it chalk dust?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where did you get it from?’
‘You tell me.’
‘No, Mr Oates, I need you to tell me.’
Langton was tense, his fists clenched.
‘Where the hell is she going with this?’
Barolli murmured that she was trying to get Oates to say he was at the quarry.
‘Why doesn’t she just come out with it?’
‘I dunno.’
Langton leaned back as the game continued in the interview room.
Anna then brought up Timmy Bradford, who had when interviewed said that Oates had tried to get work with him at the quarry. Oates refused to rise to the bait.
‘He said they wouldn’t give you work because you didn’t have a driving licence, which I have to say surprised me as you are a very competent man and I’m amazed you were unable to pass a simple driving test.’
‘I never needed one, I never went with him.’
‘But you obviously did, to try and get work. It must have really made you angry to go all that way and then get turned down, and Timmy didn’t even offer to drive you back to London, did he?’
‘Listen, that guy’s a prick, and not a good fighter, he’s got a glass chin, always getting knocked out.’
‘He told me about a fight, one when you were punched so badly the ref tried to stop the fight.’
‘Right, but I never gave up, I kept getting back on my feet, nobody knocked me out.’
‘So when they said you couldn’t work driving the trucks, but he could because he was clever enough to have a licence, maybe that big fight did something to you – you know, made you punch-drunk.’
‘I was never that – he is, Timmy is, his brain’s scrambled, fucking taking me all that fucking way and then dumping me.’
‘Got you again, haven’t I?’
‘What?’
‘Well, now you have just admitted that you did go to try and find work at the chalk pits.’
Before he could get angry with her she switched to admiring him.
‘But you managed to get a ride back, never bothered with him again, right? It must have taken you hours, though.’
‘Yeah, bloody miles from anywhere.’
‘Did you walk a long way?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, with you being so fit, I’d say you could have run all the way.’
‘Yeah, got fucking lost, though.’
‘Was that the only time you’d been there?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So how did you get covered in chalk dust all that time after, months after? In fact it was March the 15th, as Mrs Murphy recalled the exact date she saw you walking home.’
Anna knew she was chancing her luck when she dropped in the lie about Mrs Murphy knowing the exact date but thought it was worth the risk.
‘It was cement, something or other, and her seeing me as a ghost, it was a joke.’
He shrugged.
Anna glanced at Mike, feeling it was his turn again.
‘Did you keep the Jeep and change the number plates on it?’ he asked.
‘I told you, I dumped it on the A3 – someone else must have found it and done that.’
‘Why dump it so far from where you lived?’
‘Because I didn’t like it not being automatic, for Chrissake, and I’m telling you, some of the drivers on that A3 are like lunatics, seventy, eighty miles an hour, flashing their lights at you.’
‘The same type of Jeep was used with false plates to drive off without paying for petrol. The description of the driver in each case matches you.’
‘Then someone who looks like me was using it.’
As they couldn’t get Oates to admit he had kept the Jeep they had to move on. If he had abducted Rebekka in it he would have had to have driven it into and possibly out of London.
Anna watched as Mike brought out the photographs of Rebekka Jordan, placing them in front of Oates. Then she felt her mobile phone vibrate in her pocket. She hesitated, and at that moment there was a knock on the door. Langton gestured for Anna to leave the interview room.
‘This is Rebekka Jordan, Mr Oates,’ Anna said.
‘Well, if you say so. I mean, I recall her name, but nothin’ else and—’
He swivelled round in his chair as Anna stood up and spoke into the tape recorder to say she was leaving the incident room. She stepped out into the corridor, where Langton was very agitated.
‘Pete Jenkins found something in the rear of the Jeep. It was in the boot well where the spare wheel’s kept, reckons that’s why it survived the fire.’
‘What? What is it?’
Langton had to pause to get his breath, he was so hyped up.
‘He reckons it’s part of one of the dolls.’
Anna closed her eyes.
‘You are kidding me.’
‘It’ll be here in fifteen; you’ve got the other two items, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, the head and leg, but I got no reaction from him when I brought them up earlier, other than that he thinks we’re trying to frame him. As for the jewellery, he said—’
‘I know, got it from car boot sales. I’m watching from the viewing room. The bastard must have killed Rebekka, then put her body in the boot well of the Jeep before dumping her.’
Anna gasped, then nodded – it made sense. ‘You will come and get me as soon as the evidence arrives, won’t you?’ Langton agreed. Before she went back in she checked her mobile and there was a text from Pete telling her about the toy. Closing her eyes, she had to take a few moments to compose herself before re-entering the interview room.
When the police courier arrived at the station Barolli was waiting to sign for the sealed security bag. He ran with it to the incident room where Langton was waiting. Langton cut the seal and opened the bag and there inside was the tiny piece of doll, in a Perspex box. He held it up: it was a tiny left arm with the remains of a pin attached where it would have been joined to the shoulder of the doll. The little hand had been crushed; minuscule jagged pieces of wood were all that remained of it. Langton stared at enlarged images of the head and the leg on the incident board, and he could make out an identical pin at the top of the leg.
Anna was hardly able to contain herself while she waited. Mike had attempted to draw Oates out by showing him more pictures of Rebekka and asking why he thought it would ‘be a laugh’ to say he had murdered a thirteen-year-old, but Oates continued to sit back, glancing at Mike without any show of emotion.
‘Listen, I’m sorry about this girl, but, you know, I’ve admitted to you about the others, and I wouldn’t hurt a little girl, no way would I do that, I got daughters.’
Anna nudged Mike’s leg, the signal for her to take over.
‘I know about your daughters, Mr Oates, you were very close to one of them, so close you were accused of sexually abusing her so—’
‘That’s a fucking lie, that’s my wife – she’s a lying bitch. Corinna wasn’t even mine but I raised her like she was. I wouldn’t ever have harmed either of them. If she says different, get her to say it to my face cos she wouldn’t dare.’
‘Wouldn’t she? Because if she did you’d knock her out, isn’t that why she left you and took the girls as far away from you as possible?’
Oates clenched his fists, but before he could answer there was a rap on the door. Anna’s hand was shaking as she looked into the sealed bag. Langton said he was certain the arm was identical to the bits of doll found in Oates’s basement, but Pete Jenkins had taken a paint sample from it for testing to be sure. She nodded. But there was no time to waste as Langton had already turned to go back to the viewing room, leaving her to resume the interview with Oates.
‘Mr Oates, you claimed earlier, when these items were shown to you, that you had never seen them before.’ Anna took the boxes containing the small head and leg from the trolley and placed them on the table.
‘Yeah, yeah, we’re going round in circles here. I said I never saw them. If they was in my place they was planted, just like the box of stuff you say was in me fireplace. I go on weekends to car boot sales and—’
Anna pushed the boxes towards him.
‘You have also claimed that on the day you stole the Jeep, you didn’t drive it into London but left it on the A3 with the keys in the ignition, speculating that anyone could have picked it up and used it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you look at this item which has been recovered from the Jeep, please?’
Anna opened the sealed bag Langton had given her and placed the box with the little arm next to the other pieces of doll.
Oates leaned forwards and grimaced.
‘I dunno what it is.’
Anna placed some white tissue paper on the table then removed the tiny head and leg from their containers and laid them down on the tissue. Next she put the latest find beside them.
‘As you can see they are from dolls, very small dolls, as made for Rebekka Jordan by her father. The pin in the leg is identical to the pin in the tiny arm – they are actually sewing pins cut to measure by Mr Jordan and used to join the bits together. This bit, a left arm, was found in the Jeep you stole.’
‘Listen, you don’t expect me to believe this shit – you must have fucking planted that, it’s wood, isn’t it, so it would have burnt up in the fire.’
‘Burnt up? What are you referring to?’
Oates twisted his head as if his neck was constricted.
‘I know what you are talking about, because I know you have lied,’ Anna went on. ‘You didn’t leave the Jeep on the A3, did you? You drove it back to London and put false plates on it so you could use it when you needed to go looking for your next kill, which was Rebekka Jordan.’
Oates was so fast. He pushed his chair back so hard it hit the ground and his legs came up as he somersaulted backwards, then sprang up, raising his fists like a boxer.
‘Come on, come on then, hit me, hit me.’
Mike hit the panic button and stood up quickly as Oates pranced in front of the table and began shadow-boxing. Kumar ducked down and crouched against the wall, plainly afraid he was going to be punched. The door opened and Langton came in with two uniformed officers as Oates became crazed, hunching his shoulders and punching wildly. As they grabbed both his arms, he struggled and started kicking. They twisted his arms behind his back and he howled in pain. Only after they had managed to push him forwards so that he was bent almost double did he suddenly deflate and sink to his knees.
They could still hear him as he was led down the corridor to the cells. It was a screeching howl, so high it sounded like a wounded animal. Langton suggested they put everything on hold until Oates calmed down. Kumar was shaken and said that he doubted if they would be able to continue. Langton snapped at him that it was all a big act, no doubt encouraged by Kumar, and he would get the police doctor out to examine him. He would decide if Oates was fit to be interviewed again.
Half an hour later and Oates had stopped screaming but was sitting on the cell bed rocking backwards and forwards, moaning at the top of his voice without making any sense. The police doctor had still not arrived to examine him as he was busy at another station some miles away. Barolli went to the cells to check up on the prisoner as Mike and Anna went over the interview. Anna didn’t say it, but what had occurred was the very thing Samuels had warned them about: Oates had flipped. Barolli returned to say that the screeching had stopped, but the prayers were now in full flow. Oates was on his knees, claiming God was talking to him, the voices were calling to him, and he wanted a Bible.
Anna had joined Mike in his office when Langton came in to inform them that the police doctor had still not arrived and there was nothing further they could do until he had assessed Oates. He checked his watch.
‘Maybe gives me enough time, but if I’m in the cells and the doctor arrives, stall him. Take your time explaining why we called him.’
Mike looked at Anna in surprise and then turned to Langton.
‘There are cameras all over the custody suite.’
‘Not in the cells.’
‘Where is Kumar?’
‘Oates’s antics scared him so he’s gone for a walk to calm his nerves.’
Langton hurried out and Anna sighed.
‘What do you think he’s going to do?’
‘Well he’s not going to say a few prayers with him, is he?’
‘He could jeopardize the whole investigation. All our hard work gone because he has a personal agenda with Oates.’
‘I think between you and me we just keep our noses out of it,’ Mike replied as he flicked up his blinds. Langton appeared to be deep in conversation with Joan.