‘Come on. He worked doors and now lives in a place you say was worth what, how many thousands?’
‘He has his own security business. I didn’t think he was lying. He also works as a film and TV extra.’
‘All the same, run a check on him. I’d say he was dealing drugs . . . only way you get out of the world of doing heavy muscle on club doors is supplying gear to the kids.’
‘Okay, I’ll look into it. Goodnight.’
Barbara was just about to leave when Anna asked if there had been a CRO check on Ira Zacks for any previous criminal record. It felt as if Mike had been having a small dig at her, but he was right . . . she knew she should have run a check on Zacks and Bradford before visiting them. It had totally slipped her mind. She didn’t think that Ira Zacks was a drug dealer, but then she had also believed Eileen Oates.
‘Joan was dealing with the boxers,’ Barbara had told her. ‘She’s in the Ladies, but I’m off. Mike said it was okay, I’ve got a dinner party.’
‘Goodnight, have a nice evening.’
Barbara was already heading out of the door and Anna overheard her say to Joan, ‘She’s still here so I wouldn’t bother putting your coat on yet!’
‘You want me?’ Joan said, coming over.
‘Did you run a check on any criminal record for Ira Zacks?’
‘No, did you want me to?’
‘Yes, and run one for Timmy Bradford as well.’
‘Anything else?’ Joan sat at her desk, taking a squirt of moisturizer from a container she kept by her computer. She rubbed her hands together and patted them with a tissue from the box she always had on her desk.
‘No, just get them as soon as possible,’ Anna said, more abruptly than she’d intended, but she was already trying to compose herself for the difficult call to the Jordans.
Stephen Jordan answered and Anna quickly explained her reason for wanting to see him as soon as it was convenient, so they agreed she would drive over that evening. Anna decided she’d fortify herself with a quick bite to eat first. She knew she should have chosen something light like a salad, the canteen’s steak and kidney with chips made her feel ill just looking at it. She took a few mouthfuls and then pushed her plate aside. She just about managed to finish her strawberry trifle, but knew deep down she was intensely agitated. She absolutely dreaded the thought of facing the Jordans and explaining how they had discovered the tiny broken figures, which would further reduce any hope they had of Rebekka still being alive.
Joan was sitting with her coat on ready to leave when Anna got back from the canteen. She gave one of her flushed looks.
‘Both of those men have criminal records. Timmy Bradford, when he was a juvenile, for assault and burglary and a six-month sentence for handling stolen property. Ira Zacks has had a number of run-ins with the law. Ten years ago, again an assault charge. He apparently used too much force ejecting someone from a disco, but more recently he was flagged up by the Drug Squad. Suspected of being involved in a cocaine ring; they’ve been monitoring the gang for eighteen months.’
Anna sighed, resting her head in her hands.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am. I should have checked them out earlier.’
‘It’s all right, Joan, don’t worry about it. I’m as much to blame.’
‘Here’s all the details and if you want the contact for the Drug Squad officer there’s his mobile and office number.’
‘Thank you.’
Joan hovered and asked if she could get off home and Anna nodded, more interested in reading the reports.
‘It’s just I have to do a grocery shop for my mother.’
‘Goodnight, Joan.’
Anna was furious at herself; it was a real oversight. But even knowing their backgrounds didn’t really change the fact they both denied seeing Henry Oates for a number of years. Unless of course they had both lied, but she could see no reason why, as neither would benefit from it. What concerned her was her lack of intuition. It was even worse that Mike Lewis had been onto Ira Zacks’ possible drug connection without even meeting him.
She opened a bottle of water and fished around in her desk for a packet of aspirin and took three. Sitting sipping the lukewarm water that had been on her desk all day she picked up the phone and rang the Drug Squad. The officer Joan had mentioned was not at work so she left a message, hoping that she hadn’t in any way compromised their operation by visiting Zacks at his home address. If she had, she knew Langton would go ballistic at her failure to carry out basic procedures.
The aspirins were beginning to do their job as she headed towards Hammersmith and the Jordans’ property. Was it coincidence that Ira Zacks lived not far from them?
‘Stop it. Just stop it,’ she told herself. She had to be in total control for her meeting with Stephen Jordan as she knew it would be wretched.
Stephen Jordan opened their front door a moment after she had rung the bell. ‘Emily’s out with some friends at the theatre,’ he said as he led the way into the kitchen.
Anna put her briefcase down on the granite-topped counter and then quietly told him how she had discovered the figures. She brought out the plastic evidence bag, laid out a piece of sterile paper and carefully removed the wooden pieces from their Perspex boxes, first the tiny head and then the leg.
‘Do you recognize these, Mr Jordan?’
He didn’t touch either, but stood staring down at them. After a long pause he had to cough before he could speak.
‘Yes. I carved them. They are made from plywood and the head I remember painting. See the small hole at the top of the leg? I used very fine pins from my wife’s sewing kit to attach them to the bodies.’
‘Are you absolutely certain? These are the ones you made?’
‘Yes, one moment.’
He quickly turned and she heard him running up the stairs. Although it was only a few moments it felt like an age before he returned. He held out in the palm of his hand two tiny dolls; one had on a little white dress and black painted shoes, her pigtails made of woven yellow cotton. The other doll was incomplete, just a head attached to a post, the face half painted.
‘I was working on these for Rebekka’s new doll’s house.’
He laid them down beside the head and the leg and they were without doubt identical in shape and size.
‘May I take these with me, Mr Jordan?’
‘Yes of course. I have more if you need them.’
‘No, this is enough.’
Anna carefully replaced the figures in the boxes, which then went into the evidence bag.
‘It’s almost over, isn’t it?’ His voice was hardly audible.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘This man, this suspect, it’s him, isn’t it?’
She closed her briefcase.
‘This is very incriminating evidence, but we have nothing to indicate that Rebekka did in fact have the figures with her on the day she disappeared.’
‘They’d fit in her pocket. She often used to take them with her to school.’
‘Yes I know, but this is not yet confirmation. Our suspect could say he found them.’
‘Oh God, it’s unbelievable . . .’
‘Thank you for seeing me, Mr Jordan, and I will be in touch as soon as I have anything further to tell you.’
He could hardly speak as he followed her down the hall back to the front door. Finally he choked it out:
‘I see her every day. I wake up and she’s standing out there on the path in the drive . . . Bye-bye, Daddy . . . that was the last time I saw her and I will live with that moment for the rest of my life . . . Bye-bye, Daddy . . .’
Anna gently touched his arm and could almost feel the grief that tortured him.
‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, Detective Travis. Thank you.’
Chapter Nine
It felt as if her brain cells were being hammered. Pictures fractured and split into jagged fragments like shards of glass. Broken dolls, horses, the faces of her team and victims al
l flashed by as Rebekka Jordan called out, ‘Bye-bye, Daddy.’
Anna was woken by the sound of her landline. It was five-thirty! Her answerphone clicked on but the caller didn’t leave a message. It was no good going back to sleep so she went into the kitchen to have a coffee. Mug in hand, she checked the answer machine and then pressed for the caller’s number to be displayed; it was withheld. She suspected it was Langton, but made no effort to call and see if she was correct.
She was dressed and had just made herself some tea and toast when her kitchen phone rang. She snatched it up.
‘Yes?’
‘You up?’
‘Yes,’ Anna replied sharply at his lack of apology for the 5.30 a.m. call.
‘Mike came round last night and I spoke to Stephen Jordan after he left. He told me you’d been to see him.’
Anna, wanting to eat her breakfast, put the phone on speaker.
‘Yes.’
‘Very monosyllabic this morning, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she said whilst tearing her slice of toast in two.
‘I would have liked to hear the update from you. Why didn’t you call me?’
‘I’d had a long day at work, unlike some people!’
‘So what’s on the agenda for this morning?’
She sighed, knowing that Langton had always been impervious to sarcasm.
‘I need to discuss with Mike how we use the discovery of the dolls in an interview with Oates. If you spoke to Stephen Jordan, you know he matched the wooden pieces with ones he was making and said without doubt they belonged to Rebekka.’
‘If you find that Oates did work at or nearby the Jordans’ you can bet Kumar will throw in that Oates found the doll parts. Be good to have further evidence, like exactly when they were made. If it was just before Rebekka disappeared the evidence will be stronger.’
‘I am aware of that.’
‘I asked if he’d ever thrown any of her toys out and obviously as I was given the doll’s house for Kitty this could muddy the waters. Stephen said that she’d often taken the wooden dolls to school with her.’
‘Wait, hang on a minute. Are you suggesting that by you having the doll’s house at your flat, there could be a legal problem with the evidence from forensics?’
‘Yeah. You took it from my place into the incident room, so his sharp bastard solicitor could imply you planted the evidence. Were there any dolls or similar bits in the bags with the furniture?’
‘Not in the bags, just the two pieces lying inside in the doll’s house. Barolli was with me when I found them.’
‘Did you record it in your notebook?’
‘Of course, and I’m sure the Crime Scene Manager will have a record of the exact time when Oates’s basement was cleared and all the items will have been listed and photographed in situ as well as at the lab.’
As she said it she knew that she hadn’t looked in all the little bags as she was so excited when she found the doll parts. When she had spotted the small doll’s head at the lab, the toys were in fact jumbled together. She very much doubted that each individual item would have been recorded in the exhibits book and photographed. Fearing Langton’s anger she didn’t tell him.
‘Let’s hope the CSM does have something written down that will prove they removed them from the basement.’
‘I’ll check the paperwork first thing when I get in and call the lab on the way,’ Anna said, nervously writing a reminder in her notebook.
‘Okay, talk later.’
She managed to reach the assistant who had been part of the team checking the items from Oates’s property.
‘It’s very important, double-check your copy of the submissions list and photographs from the suspect’s flat and see if there is a shot with the doll’s head and leg in focus.’
The last thing Anna wanted was to be accused of tampering with evidence. As she hadn’t actually mentioned that she had brought the doll’s house in from Langton’s, she wasn’t too concerned that Kumar might suggest the possibility that she could have planted the items, but if more pieces were found in the little bags it could pose a problem. If the question did arise, they could argue that Langton could not have planted the incriminating evidence, as he was incapacitated and unable to leave his flat. But Anna also realized that Kumar could say Langton gave her, or someone else, the doll pieces to plant as evidence or, worse, that she acted alone.
Anna was spreading everything from the little bags over her desk when Mike Lewis made her jump. She hadn’t heard him come out of his office.
‘We might have a problem with that.’ She pointed to the doll’s house.
‘Langton said he’d been given it for his stepdaughter and you brought it in from his place,’ Mike told her.
‘Yes I did.’ She blushed.
‘Are there any more of the dolls here?’
‘I don’t know, that’s what I’m looking for. It’s mostly bits of furniture for the various rooms. Maybe Langton should check with his stepdaughter if there were any more dolls when she got it?’
‘Yes, you’d better ask him to do that. It was a big breakthrough and the last thing we want is for it to slap us in the face.’
‘Mike, I’ve got something.’
Anna held up a tiny arm, half the size of her thumb. ‘It’s part of one of the dolls, and it still has a pin attached. Mr Jordan said he used his wife’s sewing pins.’
Mike sighed and held out his hand to take it.
‘We have no reason to think that Rebekka Jordan had one with her when she went missing.’
‘I know but she could have had it in a pocket and her parents wouldn’t have known. Her father said she often took them to school.’
He handed back the tiny limb. ‘Well if it turns out Oates was in their property working on the excavation he could say he found the bits. One step forward, another major one back!’
‘That’s what Langton said.’
‘Look, for now just put that arm into the system and put me down as finding it with you. It’s so tiny you missed it first time round; no big deal, it could happen to anyone. We may not need to use it as evidence anyway.’
‘Thanks, Mike.’
Barolli made an entrance, beaming.
‘Just come from a contractor. He put me in touch with some of his regular workers that were on the multi-storey car park job . . .’
Everyone turned expectantly.
‘Didn’t have much luck at first but kept digging away as you do . . .’
‘Get on with it, Paul!’ Mike shouted.
Barolli gestured towards the mug shots of Henry Oates on the incident board.
‘Polish lad, Pavel, identified him as working on site near completion, very confident, said he remembered him because he was Oates’s supervisor. Said he was a lazy worker and they didn’t get along. Oates was helping to finish off the ground-floor pay station area by the lift. He’d only been there for a few days and then left. Pavel reckoned it was about a year and a half ago.’
Barolli gave a mock bow.
‘I’m going to double-check with the contractor. According to my Polish informant he said a couple of times guys would hang around the site asking for any work. He thinks Henry Oates was employed that way.’
Mike clapped his hands and told them that now Paul had narrowed down the area where Oates was working he would get clearance for the forensic archaeologist’s team to get started with their specialist equipment to see if there was a body buried in the concrete.
During Barolli’s self-congratulatory speech, Anna’s phone rang. It was Andrew Markham, saying, in a very pleasant upper-class voice, that he had just returned from his holiday and was available should she wish to speak to him. Even though Langton had questioned him previously, Anna felt that she would still like to eliminate him for her own satisfaction.
Mike and Barolli arrived at the multi-storey car park just after midday. It was closed while the search took place, which was causing a lot of aggravation from the owners, le
t alone the customers, especially the ones that had private parking bays.
They met up with the forensic archaeology team by the lift area. It was a much larger space than Mike had imagined, especially as the ticket machine had been moved out for the search. The floor was covered with plastic grid sheets and looked like a giant chessboard. One member of the team was slowly moving the ground-penetrating radar over the grid while the lead archaeologist viewed a laptop monitor that was linked up to the radar. They had been working since nine, moving inch by inch over the floor, but as yet had found nothing suspicious. Mike and Barolli stood side by side looking at the monitor screen. Barolli, inquisitive as ever, asked how it all worked. The lead archaeologist explained that the GPR emitted and received reflected radar signals up to a thousand times per second, in effect creating a map of what lay beneath the surface. The information was relayed to and stored in the laptop, allowing the team to interpret any images or unexplained spaces that they found.
Although Mike had been told it would only take a day or so to search the area with the radar, he had not been warned that if anything was found, it would then take much longer thanks to the need to be cautious so as not to damage any human remains during excavation. He decided that Barolli could inform the owners that the car park might be closed for longer than was originally anticipated and he would return to the office to catch up on his paperwork.
Meanwhile, Anna drove over to Markham’s garden design centre, only to be told that he was at his home. Mari gave her directions and added that they were going to be busy later as Markham had had a very successful buying trip and they had to clear part of the barn for the deliveries coming in.
Markham’s home was set back off a small lane, with very ornate gardens and a paved drive leading to a white stucco thirties-style three-storey house. A wood of fir trees was on one side and a small lake on the other. The elaborate pillared porch had vast urns with a profusion of plants and four white stone steps which led up to a pale blue studded front door.
A woman wearing a raincoat and headscarf, two spaniels on leads beside her, appeared from around the side of the house.
‘If you’re the detective that wants to see Andrew he’s out by the greenhouse. I’m his mother.’ She loosened her headscarf and shook out her dark hair, then removed a leather glove to shake Anna’s hand. She was very well presented, with dark red lipstick, small drop pearl earrings, a pearl necklace and a whopping diamond on her ring finger. It was all rather at odds with her big green wellington boots.
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