‘Good heavens. I hadn’t noticed that this is a replica of the Jordans’ own house.’
‘Yeah, Stephen made it. Kitty isn’t interested in it any more. Laura’s sister put it under there. I dunno what to do with it. I can’t throw it out.’
Anna bent down, drawing the doll’s house further out from beneath the table. It was exceptionally well made and beautifully painted. The front door and porch area with its two tiny pots of plastic flowers were just like those of the Jordans’ house in Hammersmith. She eased it further round to see the back of the house.
‘It was made before the extension,’ Langton said.
Anna leaned forwards on her hands and knees. There was some kind of a back garden attached to the house. A tiny swing was still upright, there was a mock crazy-paved patio made of small cut-out cork squares and close to the back door was a broken tree and some small squashed shrubs made of Plasticine. There were marks where there had been a fence and a hand-painted brick wall was still partly upright, the paper torn.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Just looking at how well constructed this is, but I can see from the kitchen that as you say it was crafted before they extended the house. There’s no Aga cooker and it’s now all white with painted floorboards. This must have taken hours of work. Have you seen the little stools and tables? Perfect.’
She closed the doll’s house and stood up, linking the hooks to fasten it shut. Beside the house was a plastic bag containing more furniture and some tiny dolls.
‘I’m going,’ said Anna.
‘Talk tomorrow.’
‘Yes, I’ll call you.’
As she left she could hear him switching on his television. She let herself out and closed the front door. Heading down the stairs, not paying attention, she almost tripped on the frayed carpet.
There was something about the doll’s house that stayed in her mind, but she put it to one side because as she stepped out of the house the rain was lashing down. She ran along Warrington Crescent to Maida Vale Tube Station, and then endured an uncomfortable ride to Tower Bridge, having to switch Tube lines, and did not get home until after ten.
Her coat was still sodden from the rain so she hung it over the heated towel rail in her bathroom before having a shower.
Anna’s own fridge was virtually empty. She sighed, knowing she should have bought some groceries for herself, never mind Langton. She made some beans on toast and a mug of tea, taking them on a tray to eat in her bedroom. Her initial nagging thoughts about the doll’s house returned. Putting down the tray on the floor beside the bed, she reached for her briefcase and took out her notebook. She flicked back a few pages, but nothing triggered a response until she got to the name Andrew Markham, the tree surgeon used by the builders for the Jordans’ extension. She got off her bed and turned on her computer. Andrew Markham had a very professional website describing his company, with landscaping and tree surgeon qualifications alongside pictures of gardens he had designed in the past few years. She knew he was away until the end of the week, but from the website she was sure he would have other employees she could talk to.
Still unable to stop her mind churning, she opened her bedside table and searched for a pencil. If the doll’s house represented how the Jordans’ property had looked before the extension, there had to have been a considerable amount of earth removed to be able to lay down the new foundations. She recalled one of the Henderson brothers saying there had been a sixty-year-old tree that needed to be removed, as well as shrubs, a fence and brick wall. It seemed to Anna that there must have been a lot of work for one landscape gardener to complete on his own. She wondered if Andrew Markham might have used cash-in-hand labour to remove the debris from the Jordans’ back garden. Still unable to switch off, she sat on the edge of her bed, checking the files to see if Andrew Markham had made a statement or had even been interviewed. There was no reference to him; perhaps due to the fact the work had taken place so long before Rebekka went missing. Had Langton, unaware of the ground clearance work, missed the possibility that Andrew Markham could also be a suspect? She wrote his name in her notebook, underlining the importance of talking to him as soon as she could.
By the time she turned off her bedside light it was after midnight, but it still took her half an hour to eventually fall asleep.
Chapter Six
‘Mind if I sit with you?’ Anna asked Barbara the next morning. She’d decided to get to work early and have breakfast in the canteen.
‘Good heavens, no.’ Barbara put her Daily Mail to one side, eyeing up Anna’s loaded tray, piled with eggs, bacon, sausages and fried bread, plus coffee, in stark contrast to her own bowl of half-eaten bran cereal. ‘Not on a diet then?’
Anna smiled and shook her head.
‘I’ve been on one for twenty years. I hate bran, it’s like chewing cardboard, but I reckon my system has got used to it. I crave a big fry-up, but I get terrible indigestion. I’ve got packets of Rennies in all my handbags and pockets because if I’m not careful I get this heartburn after anything fried.’
Anna tucked in, not really paying any attention to Barbara’s stomach condition.
‘How did it go in Glasgow?’ Barbara eventually asked.
Anna gave her a sketchy outline, ending with the one new possibility that Henry Oates had worked in a riding stable.
‘Well, shovelling shit could mean anything, road sweeping even.’
‘I know.’
Barbara sipped her green tea and pulled a disgusted grimace. ‘I hate bloody green tea as well.’
‘You have anything from yesterday?’ asked Anna.
‘Not that much. Trying to piece together a character build and last known sightings for Fidelis Flynn. We had her flatmates in, nice girls, both at art college when Fidelis answered the advert for sharing. They said she was younger than them and from what I could gather they didn’t want to know that much about her. She was behind with the rent and was always very argumentative; you know the type of thing that happens with flat-sharing.’
‘I don’t actually.’
Barbara gave her an odd look of surprise. ‘Well it’s who takes the last of the butter, uses your shampoo and doesn’t clear up after themselves that starts the friction. They said she was always a few quid short for the rent . . .’ Barbara leaned forwards. ‘She didn’t intend leaving – well I don’t think so, because we found her make-up and a purse in one of the suitcases she left with her clothes, and in it were two twenty-pound notes and some loose change.’
‘But did she take any other belongings with her?’
‘They didn’t really know what was missing, if anything, because they didn’t know what she had in her wardrobe. All they recalled was that the evening Fidelis went missing she left their flat to go to work and didn’t appear to be worried about anything. They thought she might be working late as the garage stays open until midnight, but what they did remember was that she always carried a rucksack-type bag. When she didn’t return, they did nothing.’
‘Doesn’t quite make sense. Why did they think she’d done a runner without paying the rent she owed if she’d left her make-up behind and the wardrobe was still full of her clothes?’
‘No, they were packed into the suitcases and zip-up bag that local police seized later.’
‘Still sort of doesn’t sit right. Also, if there was money and she was short of it, why leave it behind if she didn’t intend returning?’
‘A workmate at the garage was questioned when her parents reported her missing. He said that he had an on-off relationship with Fidelis and although she had started seeing a male nurse they were still friends. He had expected her to come to work the night she went missing.’
‘Was this the first time she’d failed to show up for work?’
Barbara nodded and said that she and Joan had talked about it and what they came up with was that Fidelis had maybe intended leaving, perhaps was even going to meet someone to rent another room somewhere. But as she�
�d left her belongings and money behind, they thought she must have been planning to return, at least for that night.
‘Did you get anything further from her phone calls?’
Barbara’s eyes opened wide and she smiled. Anna knew that she was at last about to be told something encouraging.
‘Yes, the unregistered phone. I ran a property lost or stolen check on the number and I got a hit. Reported stolen in a mugging a few days after Fidelis went missing.’
‘Good work, Barbara. So who does the phone belong to?’
‘A Barry Moxen, and he’s coming into the station this morning, never even knew she had been reported missing. He’s a nurse who works in Charing Cross Hospital. When I talked to him he said he had not seen or heard from Fidelis for almost nineteen months. He met her at a New Year’s party and had been having a sexual relationship with her on a regular basis and when he didn’t hear from her he just presumed she had finished with him.’
Anna moved her plate aside.
‘It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? The girl goes missing and everyone that appeared to know her never reported it. If it wasn’t for her parents we’d maybe never have even known she’d disappeared.’
Barbara returned to the incident room and repeated her conversation with Anna to Joan, who suggested they quickly update the incident board with all the data as she didn’t want Anna finding fault. They had just completed it when Anna came in from the canteen, but she went straight to her desk. The first thing she did was pick up a voicemail from Pete Jenkins at the forensic lab. When she rang back he was not available as his wife had just been taken into hospital; her waters had broken and the baby was coming earlier than expected.
Anna had no other calls so she picked up her marker pen and went over to the section of the incident board that was allocated to Rebekka Jordan. She began listing all the information she had gathered from the last few days.
Barbara glanced up. ‘Looks like she’s writing a novel,’ she whispered to Joan. But they didn’t get an opportunity to read it all for themselves until Anna had gone into Mike Lewis’s office.
‘What’s this about the doll’s house?’ Joan wondered. She peered closer and then pulled a face.
‘She’s got a suspect, Andrew Markham.’ Barbara tapped his name and Joan returned to her desk.
‘Do you watch CSI, Barbara?’
‘Sometimes, why?’
‘They had a long-running case, over quite a few episodes, about a serial killer that sent in these little doll’s house rooms to police just before the murder. Then after the murder he posted these tiny dolls with knives stuck in them or gunshot wounds matching how he had actually killed the victims. One even had a teeny little cup and poison . . .’
‘I didn’t see it.’
‘My mother never misses an episode.’
Mike listened as Anna brought him up to date and finished by asking if she could put Joan or Barbara onto tracing any known associates of Henry Oates. He agreed. They had found no address book or diary in Oates’s basement so they had no idea of who he knew, but they had been gathering details on his infrequent employment through his National Insurance number and Jobseeker’s. It appeared that whenever the Department for Work and Pensions threatened to withdraw his Jobseeker’s Allowance he managed to find work for six to eight weeks. Apart from the jobs listed it appeared he had basically worked for cash in hand. They had tracked down various building, painting and decorating businesses, but it was tedious work and questioning each employer was taking up a lot of time. The priority was to check construction work he could have been involved in eighteen months previously and if there was any site that might be linked to the disappearance of Fidelis Flynn.
There was no record of him having worked for Andrew Markham, even though they had gone back as far as seven years. Anna suggested they send someone to the stables again to see if anyone could recall him working there on a cash basis.
Mike agreed, but observed that the old stable yard had recently been taken over and refurbished. The new stables were much larger, but still close to the Shepherd’s Bush flyover.
‘I’d like to go and look at this Andrew Markham’s garden centre,’ Anna said.
‘Okay. I’ll get Barolli to check out the stables for you, and go ahead with asking Barbara to trace any boxing associates of Oates.’
‘Thank you.’
Mike smiled. Sometimes she forgot what a good-looking man he was; very blond and blue-eyed. He was also dressing much better since he had been made a DCI, in suits and freshly laundered shirts. In fact, he was starting to resemble Langton – not quite as flashy – but she noticed that like the ‘Guvnor’ he now had bags from the local dry-cleaner’s in his office.
‘What?’ he asked, seeing her looking at them.
‘Just you look different, very smart and slightly like Langton – you are prepared for an all-night session.’
‘What?’
‘The dry-cleaning. He always used to have half his wardrobe in his office.’
‘Oh right, yes, just for convenience really, and this afternoon I’ve got that prick Adan Kumar coming in.’
‘What’s he want now?’
‘Just to look at the list of forensic exhibits and the unused material in the Justine Marks case.’
‘Has he said anything about a psychiatric assessment of Oates yet?’
‘No, and Langton said don’t raise the subject with Kumar.’
‘Oates being in the prison hospital could help Kumar’s argument that he’s not the full ticket.’
‘Right. I know that, but we’ve been running a check every day with the prison governor and Oates hasn’t required any further medical treatment since the assault. They said he’s suffering from depression and put him on suicide watch just in case.’
‘Do you think he’s faking it?’
‘Could be. Couple of days he refused to eat, but now he’s accepting food and complaining that he’s hungry, so he doesn’t sound to me as if he’s climbing up and down the walls.’
‘Anything worth re-interviewing him about yet?’
Mike shrugged. ‘I’m in no hurry and he’ll be in the hospital wing for a few days yet.’
Again she thought how attractive he was when he gave a lovely smile.
‘I’m hoping we get more on your enquiry and the Fidelis girl. They’ve got a boyfriend coming in this morning.’
Anna stood up and said she’d clear her desk and then get over to Andrew Markham’s garden centre.
‘You got a bad feeling about this guy?’
She hesitated and then after a moment nodded.
‘The thing is, as far as we can tell Oates never owned a vehicle and did not have one when Rebekka Jordan went missing. Whoever picked her up had to have access to a car or a van to snatch her off the street. All the CCTV footage on the day she disappeared from the Tube station shows no sighting of her buying a ticket or catching a Tube, so she had to have been grabbed during that short walk from the stables to the station.’
‘Yeah, but in the report two cameras were out of action, so it’s a possibility she did go into the station, met her killer on the train maybe.’
‘But not one witness came forward, not even after the TV reconstructions or all the press handouts; she had to have been snatched not far from the stables. Well that’s what I think.’
‘You could be right,’ Mike conceded.
‘See you later then,’ Anna said as she headed for the door.
‘I forgot to tell you DCS Hedges rang while you were in Glasgow.’
‘What’s he want?’
‘Well he is supposed to be in charge while Langton is off. He gave me an ear-bashing about Langton going above him. Pissed off with me as well, said that if Langton wants to run the show from his sickbed then he can get on with it. Reckoned if it all goes tits up it’s not his problem.’
‘So we don’t need to keep updating him as well.’
‘Looks like it, yeah.’
Anna retu
rned to her desk and asked Joan to ring York Hall, the big amateur and professional boxing venue, to ask the head trainer if he remembered Henry Oates, his friends or sparring partners and to find out if they kept a library of old fight programmes or posters. Before leaving she took a quick look over Fidelis Julia Flynn’s board. They now had more recent photographs of her. In one picture she was smiling, revealing her slightly crooked teeth. In another she was standing with a spaniel puppy, laughing, wearing a floral dress over black tights and Doc Martens boots. Anna sighed. There was always something from the photographs of the missing or murdered girls that haunted you. It was the light in their eyes, which you knew was now gone.
‘They were sent in by her parents,’ Joan said as she opened a drawer in her desk. ‘There’s more if you want to see them.’
‘No, thank you. I’ll be on my way. Be back after lunch and I’ll be on my mobile anyway.’
Before she left the station she couldn’t resist heading down to the interview rooms on the floor below.
Barry Moxen was sitting opposite Barbara. He had black hair, spiky and gelled, a lot of acne, and was wearing a heavy leather biker’s jacket. Anna watched for a few moments via the window in the door and as she turned to leave Barbara saw her.
‘You want to talk to him?’ Barbara opened the door.
‘I don’t think so.’
Barbara closed the door and stepped out into the corridor.
‘I showed him the picture of Fidelis. He says she always called herself Julia and that she was seeing the bloke from the garage before she went out with him. He was working night shift at the hospital the whole week during the period Fidelis went missing. I rang them and they confirmed it. Last time he saw her was the weekend before his night shift when they went to the cinema. Julia told him she was fed up with the girls in the flat she shared and she was going to see some other rooms for rent and that she’d call him when she got a new address. She never did. Like he told me on the phone, he reckoned she’d ditched him.’
‘Did he try her old flat?’
Backlash Page 10
