Backlash

by Lynda La Plante

  ‘Sit down, please, my brother will be here any minute, he’s just making sure the truck gets out with a delivery.’

  He seemed like a lovely man in his old knitted sweater and baggy trousers tucked into wellington boots. He asked if Anna would like a coffee or tea as he could rustle one up from a small annexe of a kitchen.

  ‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’

  He sat behind his desk and opened a drawer, taking out a dog-eared folder.

  ‘I got this ready for you. It’s all the team that worked on the Jordans’ extension. We had the same hardcore group back then that we still use on an almost permanent basis and we hire in extra when needed.’

  He placed the file down on his desk, turning it towards Anna.

  ‘We still haven’t got over that missing little soul. She was a sweetheart, made us all feel helpless. What it must have done to her parents. I’ve got grandchildren her age and Norman has grandsons the same age as the Jordans’ two boys.’

  Anna nodded and opened the file. She had taken out her notebook to check the lists from the original enquiry.

  ‘Do these men still work for you?’

  ‘Yes, apart from Don, he died a couple of years ago of cancer. He was our electrician, good solid hard worker with a lot of experience.’

  The door burst open and Norman Henderson walked in. He had the same thick unruly white hair as his brother, but was taller and thinner. He wore a yellow workman’s jacket with their company name printed on the back and he carried a white hard hat, tossing it onto the top of the filing cabinet before shaking Anna’s hand in his big gnarled fist.

  Anna waited until Norman had settled, taking off his jacket and sitting on the edge of the desk.

  ‘I have a photograph of a man I’d like you both to look at,’ she began.

  ‘I’d like to get whoever took her by the throat. She was such a lovely child and so well behaved,’ Norman burst out.

  Anna first passed the photograph of Oates to Bill, who put on a pair of spectacles. He studied it with his lips pursed before passing it over to his brother. Norman scrutinized the picture, then looked to Bill.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever come across him, have you?’ asked Norman.

  ‘No. Looks like a boxer with that flattened nose.’

  ‘Does the name Henry Oates mean anything to either of you?’

  Bill and Norman looked at each other and shook their heads while Anna took back the photograph.

  ‘Stephen Jordan mentioned that there had been a considerable amount of work clearing a section of the garden and patio before the extension was built.’

  ‘Yes, we had to dig down a few feet for the footings, move out a lot of shrubbery and a couple of deep-rooted trees. We had to remove the garden fence and come into their property from the street at the back of their house. We needed some extra hands and we brought in a mini digger.’

  ‘Were the rest of the workers your usual team?’

  Bill scratched his head and then leaned over to take back the file he had passed to Anna. He thumbed through it. There were many receipts and invoices for the extension materials along with a letter of lawful development from the council.

  ‘It’s a long while back now, well over five years ago. In fact, looking at the invoice it was June 2006 when we first started the ground clearance.’

  He flicked back and forth, finding the list of the people he had used on the job.

  ‘Do you recall using anyone not well known to you?’

  Bill ran his teeth over his bottom lip and then wagged his finger. ‘There was the tree surgeon, remember, Norman? We didn’t know him well back then. One of the trees we needed to chop down hung over into next-door’s garden and the roots went under their fence.’

  ‘It was a wall, Bill, they got quite nasty about it, even when we explained to them that we’d rebuild the wall and to whatever specification they wanted.’

  ‘You’re right. You’d be surprised what aggravation we get. I remember having to sit and explain over and over that we were not taking any inches from their garden, just removing the roots of the blessed tree, and that the adjoining wall would be replaced and in a better condition than the one we needed to pull down.’

  ‘Right, it was buckled and quite dangerous because of the roots – the tree must have been sixty-odd years old. I think they even got a solicitor on it, you know; it’s a conservation area around there.’

  ‘This tree surgeon?’ Anna prompted.

  ‘Right, yes, young bloke, has a small company in Kingston, he’s quite posh. Upper-class type, qualified landscape gardener and tree surgeon who worked part-time at Kew Gardens, or he did,’ Norman said.

  ‘He’s not on the list, is he?’ Anna asked.

  They both shook their heads.

  ‘Did you tell the police about him at the time?’

  ‘He had nothing to do with the extension, so I’m not sure. He just helped with the tree and then some of the clearance. I remember he took the old bricks away for us, probably to re-use them,’ Bill said as he flicked backwards and forwards through the paperwork file.

  ‘Ah, here we are, his invoice with a phone number and address near Cobham. He set up his own garden centre called Markham’s not far from his home. Good, he is, we’ve used him a few times since. I’ll give this number a ring for you.’

  ‘It’s okay, thanks, a copy of the invoice will be fine and I will ring him later,’ Anna said.

  As it was almost seven, Anna had not bothered returning to the incident room as she needed to change and get ready to go to Euston Station to catch the sleeper train to Glasgow. She put in a call to Andrew Markham’s garden centre office when she got back to her flat, but was told that he was still on holiday in Thailand. She also rang Barolli and he had given her what little update they had on Fidelis Julia Flynn, which included interviewing her old flatmates. Although they had said she had left leaving rent unpaid, she had also left two suitcases of her belongings, which had been seized by the local detectives who initially investigated her disappearance. Barolli said that he had arranged for the cases to be brought over to the incident room so he could go through them.

  In was another day without a result and Anna could understand Langton’s frustration. She was not too hopeful that her trip to Glasgow would be of any use, but without anything else it would at least give her more of an insight into Henry Oates’s background and possibly assist a behavioural investigator, should she persuade Langton to use one.

  Chapter Five

  Anna had not expected to be met at Glasgow, but standing on the station platform as the train pulled in was a uniformed officer. The patrol car drove her to her hotel and the officer waited while she took a shower. It was not yet nine when she was driven to the Glasgow police station and again she was surprised to be met, by DCI Alex McBride, who had fresh coffee and oatcakes for her on a tray in his office. He was a very well built man with broad shoulders and a wide pleasant face, dotted with moles, and eyebrows so thick they were like an extension of his brown curly hair. When he shook her hand, her elbow jerked up and down, it was such a firm grip.

  McBride filled her in with the details of the armed robbery case in which the security guard had died from gunshot wounds. Anna listened attentively, remembering that their main suspect was the boyfriend of Eileen Oates. As he had given Eileen as his alibi, she had been questioned and they had looked into her background. One daughter, Megan, aged sixteen, was pregnant and living at home and the other, Corinna, was a known heroin addict. Corinna had also been arrested for prostitution on two occasions, but the courts had deferred sentencing on the condition the young woman agreed to go into rehab. McBride informed Anna that he had contacted the centre this morning to check on her progress, only to discover that she had walked out after a week or so and her current whereabouts were not known. McBride suggested she was probably in a drug den somewhere and they’d no doubt find her in a gutter with a needle in her arm. But they had not had any sightings of Henry Oates or a
ny reports of him ever visiting his ex-wife.

  Their suspect for the bank robbery was a Donald McAleese. He had an extensive police record for assault, fencing stolen property and burglary. After finishing her coffee, Anna was taken to the incident room and shown McAleese’s details and photograph.

  ‘Do you suspect that Eileen is lying?’

  ‘We do, and we know that she and McAleese were cohabiting at one time. We had numerous call-outs from neighbours a few years ago. She would always drop charges for assault, but he is a very violent man and it’s possible she’s too scared to admit she’s lying.’

  McBride took Anna through the statements taken from Eileen. She had claimed that McAleese had been with her the afternoon of the robbery and had spent the evening with her visiting a local pub and afterwards taking home fish and chips. The police were only able to verify that McAleese was with her in the pub during the evening and that they were later seen in the fish and chip shop. Eileen was his sole alibi for the afternoon of the robbery.

  ‘The robbery went down at two-thirty in the afternoon on a security van and the whole thing was recorded on CCTV. It was carried out by two masked men, one with a sawn-off shotgun and one with a hand gun. The man with the sawn-off pointed it at the driver’s head while the other demanded the money from the guard who had just come out of the bank. The guard turned to run so he shot him twice in the back of the head with the hand gun,’ McBride explained as he turned a computer screen towards Anna and played the CCTV of the robbery.

  ‘That defies belief. A life lost for what, a few thousand pounds,’ Anna said, taken aback by the gratuitous violence and the senseless death of the young security guard.

  ‘For nothing. The scum thought he had made a collection from the bank but he’d just made a delivery so the container was empty.’

  ‘Why do you suspect McAleese if they were both masked?’ Anna enquired.

  ‘You could see on the CCTV video that the man who did the shooting had a pronounced limp in his right leg. Well, so does McAleese, as the result of a bad motorbike accident a few years ago.’

  Anna paused by the incident board to study the mug shots of Donald McAleese. He was a tough mean-looking man, with small close-set eyes and his thinning greasy hair combed back from a high forehead.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘We’ve got him under surveillance, living with his mother, but without more evidence and with no identity for the second man we don’t have enough to arrest and charge him.’

  ‘How many suspects can you have with a limp?’

  She smiled, but McBride was not amused. He checked his watch.

  ‘Let me go and check if Mrs Oates has been brought in. You want me to leave you alone with her?’

  Anna nodded.

  ‘Can I get you another coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  As she waited to be called to the interview room, Anna had another look at Donald McAleese’s mug shots and decided Eileen Oates didn’t have great taste in men.

  Eileen Oates looked younger than Anna had expected. She had blonde scruffy hair, a thin pale face with acne scars, buck teeth, and she was wearing a scruffy pink jacket with jeans and imitation Ugg boots. Stirring a beaker of tea with a plastic spoon, she glanced up at Anna as she was introduced. McBride hovered for a few moments before leaving the interview room.

  ‘Is this sugar or salt? I’ve not got ma glasses.’

  Anna picked up the white packet and said that it was sugar. She tore off the top and passed it to Eileen.

  ‘Ta.’

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to talk to me.’

  ‘I hadda an option, did eh?’

  ‘May I call you Eileen?’

  ‘If ye wannae, it’s ma name.’

  ‘First off, I want you to understand that I am not here in any connection to Mr McAleese. It is concerning your ex-husband Henry, and if it’s okay with you I’d like to tape our conversation so I can write up my notes when I get back to London.’

  Anna placed her Dictaphone on the table.

  ‘Nae problem, hen, but I cannae help, I’ve not seen him for years, not that ah would wannae see him. Day I moved back here was the best thing I’ve done. I shouldae done it before, but with two bairns, I was dependent on ma mother to help me out, which God bless her she did.’

  Eileen sipped her tea, sucking her lips together.

  ‘It must have been hard bringing up two girls on your own,’ Anna suggested.

  ‘Tell me about it. I had one fuckin’ run off from rehab and t’other’s pregnant. It’s a vicious circle tryin’ to keep ’em on the straight and narrow. I think Corinna’s problems come from that bastard. Told her I slept about and he wasnae her real father and on top of that if he wasnae knocking me around wanting sex he was after her.’

  ‘You mean sexually?’

  ‘Aye. I caught him in her bedroom, she was only ten. I took a broom and belted him. After that I’d had enough so I packed a few bags and while he was out I took what I could and left with the girls.’

  ‘Did he try to get you back?’

  ‘Nae, I said I’d report him tae the polis. For all his fists and loud mouth, he was scared they’d arrest him. He was also, believe it or not, ashamed about trying it on with his own daughter, blubbering that he was drunk and got intae the wrong bed.’

  ‘Was that the last time you saw him?’

  ‘It was, aye, he did try, but I wouldnae even speak to him. Couple of years later he sent some presents one Christmas for the girls, but it was just the once. We’ve moved a few times so he had nae forwarding address.’

  ‘But you must have made contact when you filed for divorce?’

  She shook her head and said the solicitors had handled the papers. Eileen then tapped the table with her finger.

  ‘Not a penny because he was unemployed and had nae income. I got sweet F-all, but at least it meant he couldnae find us. Is that why you’re here, is he trying tae see us?’

  ‘No, I’m here in connection with a murder your ex-husband has been arrested for and charged with.’

  ‘Well, not before time. He shoulda been banged up years ago for what he did to me, never mind his own daughter. We’d not have had food on the table if I hadnae . . . it was him that put me on the game.’

  Anna listened as Eileen went into a lengthy excuse as to why she had been charged with prostitution, and the more she talked the angrier she became, constantly slapping the table with the flat of her hand.

  ‘I’ve worked as a shop assistant, shelf filler, cleaner, but I never did it again. Now I’ve got a steady job in a dry-cleaner’s and part-time in a bar. Bein’ brought in an’ out of this place is doin’ ma heid in, I could lose my jobs. So if you’re finished with me, can I go?’

  Anna opened her briefcase. ‘This shouldn’t take long, Eileen, but I need your help. You see, your husband also claimed that he had been involved in two other murders.’

  ‘I wouldnae know about anythin’ he done. Like I told you, I’ve not seen him for over eight years.’

  Anna took a photograph of Rebekka Jordan out from her file. ‘One of the possible victims is this little girl, missing for five years. When your husband was arrested for the—’ Anna was interrupted.

  ‘He killed that wee bairn? Is that what he’s been arrested for?’

  ‘No, another woman, but he claimed he had killed this child. Her name is Rebekka Jordan. But he then retracted his statement, denying that he had admitted having anything to do with her disappearance.’

  ‘She’s just a wee child.’

  Eileen looked at the photograph of Rebekka, shaking her head and sucking in her lips.

  Anna explained that Rebekka had last been seen leaving a stable yard in Shepherd’s Bush. She asked if Oates had ever worked in that area.

  ‘I wouldnae know. He did odd jobs, but I cannae remember if he was workin’ there. I don’t even know where he lives now. When I left him we had a place in Brixton, but I know the solicitors for the div
orce had a hard time tracing him to sign the papers as he wasnae living there. He used to move into squats, never had any money.’

  ‘You said previously that he had assaulted your eldest daughter. Do you know if he had ever had sexual contacts with other young girls?’

  ‘When he was drunk he’d have sex with a dog. He was a perverted bastard, but I wouldnae know if he had other wee girls.’

  ‘Tell me about when you went to London and met him.’

  She said that she was sixteen when she left home in Glasgow due to a drunken and abusive father. Her mother had arranged for a friend’s family, who lived in East London, to take her in and they had a daughter, Anne, who was the same age as her. Anne’s father, who had recently died of cancer, had been an amateur boxing promoter and not long after she had arrived in London they all went to a boxing match at York Hall in Bethnal Green. This was where she first met Henry Oates, who had fought in one of the bouts that evening. Henry had invited her out for a drink and she liked him and they started a relationship shortly after they first met and he was always very protective of her. She had believed, like Henry, that he was going to become a successful professional boxer. They’d being going out for just over a year when Eileen fell pregnant with Corinna, so they married before her birth. Eileen took out a crumpled tissue from her pocket, her eyes brimming with tears.

  ‘His boxing career didnae take off so he tried tae get into the Army, you know, get permanent work. It seemed like he’d only just got kitted out with his uniform when they threw him out.’