Backlash (32 page)

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 fingerprints.’

‘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?’