‘The lady who owned the crucifix is a Sabrina Holt and I went to see her on my way back here. It was stolen eighteen months ago. Sabrina said it was rolled gold, not real gold, and that it had a chip mark at the bottom of it.’
Anna pointed to the picture of the crucifix on the board and circled a small chip mark, which was in the same place described by Sabrina Holt.
‘She said it could not have been taken by anyone else as Oates was working out when she started her class and left before it had finished and no one else entered the gym.’
‘Did she report it to the police?’ Barbara asked.
‘No, she said it was not that valuable.’
‘Nobody actually saw him with it though, did they?’ Barolli said.
Anna snapped that the necklace was stolen two days before Fidelis went missing and had now been recovered snagged to her clothing. It was obvious Oates had taken it.
Joan had been on the phone during all of this, but now called out: ‘I got a hit!’
Anna turned towards her.
‘I did as you asked about the chalk and building sites. Basically raw chalk itself isn’t really used on site but it is used to make cement, lime, mortar and so on. Oates told his neighbour it was chalk dust on him so as a bit of initiative on my part I started ringing round working chalk pits near London. Been onto a chalk quarry near Marlow – that’s sort of past Heathrow Airport, M40-M4 – it’s only semi-running at the moment, but the manager was really helpful. Worked there for over twenty years.’
Anna was so impatient she wanted to shake Joan.
‘Did Henry Oates work there?’
‘No, but I also ran by the manager, amongst other names, Timmy Bradford – remember him, ex-boxer associate of Oates?’
‘Yes, and?’
‘In 2006 Bradford worked there briefly as a driver, and he brought a friend along who was looking for a similar position, but the friend was unable to provide a driving licence.’
‘This guy has a bloody good memory,’ Barolli said.
‘I thought that, but he recalls “the friend”, who matches Oates’s description, as being trouble. When he was refused a job he became belligerent, screaming and shouting about wasting his time and the next minute the two of them were fighting.’
‘Which two, the manager and Oates?’
‘No, Timmy Bradford and Oates. They had to be separated, which is why he remembers the incident. Oates cleared off and Bradford only lasted a few more weeks before he left.’
Anna still had the marker pen in her hand.
‘Joan, hit me with the dates this happened.’
‘Well, the manager thinks it was late June, early July 2006.’
Anna tapped her teeth with the pen. The date didn’t match when Mrs Murphy had seen Oates covered in chalk dust but was around the time he worked at the Jordans. She hesitated before writing down the information.
‘What’s this place like, Joan?’
‘I don’t know, it’s called Taplow Quarry. I’ll get some pictures of it up on the web. Some parts of it are disused, or so the manager said.’
Anna leaned on the back of Joan’s chair as she brought up the pictures on the website. It was like an alien world – colossal, with towering white cliffs of chalk and a quarry hundreds of feet in depth and width. The dumper trucks looked like small toys in comparison. They could see huge open-sided barns with loading bays and conveyer belts, which Joan said were to move the blasted chalk into a crusher before it went on to the cement and lime factories. The disused area was also massive, with a large pond, trees, bushes and abundant moss.
Anna went back to her desk but couldn’t concentrate. The quarry had given her an eerie feeling – the hairs on her arms were raised. She doodled on her notepad. Why had Henry Oates been seen covered in chalk dust nearly nine months after he had applied for work there?
‘Paul, will you do me a favour?’
Barolli looked over.
‘I’d like you to bring in Timmy Bradford for further questioning.’
‘Sure, and good work on tracking the crucifix down. Do I have a reason for wheeling Bradford in?’
‘Yeah, he lied.’
Timmy Bradford sat nervously in front of Anna, who had Barolli beside her. This time he was outside the comfort zone of his mother’s flat, and there was no tea and biscuits on offer.
‘You fed me a load of lies, Timmy, didn’t you?’ Anna began, in no mood to mess about.
‘No.’
‘Listen, Timmy, I’ve looked at your record. You’re not sitting here because of another petty juvenile crime. You’re very close to being arrested on suspicion of murder, so you need to start telling me the truth.’
‘I ain’t done nothing.’
Anna opened her notebook and began to flick through the pages.
‘You said you last saw Henry Oates seven years ago at York Hall.’
Bradford leaned forwards.
‘I was telling you the truth. I ain’t seen him for years, that’s God’s truth.’
‘What about the time you took him to Taplow Quarry?’
‘What?’
‘You were working there.’
Bradford leaned back in his chair and shook his head.
‘Are you shaking your head because you didn’t work there?’
‘No, it was bloody years ago, and I only lasted a few months cos the work was shit, and the money was no good. You got covered in the crap, in your hair, up your nose . . .’
‘Tell me about the time you took Henry Oates there.’
Bradford sighed, looking down at the table top, unable to meet Anna’s eyes.
‘He was looking for a job. I met him at a boxing match. I told him I was working there and he asked if I could take him with me.’
Bradford’s gaze wandered around the small room.
‘Like I said, it was years ago the last time I saw him and I just forgot he went with me to Taplow.’
‘You had a fight with him, didn’t you?’
Bradford shrugged.
‘Yeah, we had a punch-up. They wouldn’t let him drive one of the trucks like I was doing cos he had no driving licence. Like I said, I had a job and he wasn’t gonna get one. He was all uptight, blamed me for wasting his time; he told me I had to take him back to London, but I told him to fuck off or wait for me to finish workin’.’
‘Don’t swear, Mr Bradford,’ Anna said firmly.
‘Sorry, but you know you got me hauled in here, my mum’s frantic, she won’t believe it was for nothin’.’
Anna glanced at Barolli and closed her notebook. Bradford had confirmed what they had been told by the chalk pit manager.
‘I dunno how he got back to London, maybe thumbed a ride, but that was the last time I saw him.’
‘But how do you think he got back to London?’
‘I dunno. I swear before God I never saw him again. He bloody swung a punch at me and hit me in the face. Knowing him, he could have even walked back. As it turned out, I left the job a few weeks later like I told you, but I never wanted to see him again. He’s got this temper and he could just let fly. I mean, I could hold me own with him, but he caught me off guard.’
‘Are there any other contacts with Henry Oates that you may have “forgotten” about?’
Bradford hesitated and then gave a slow nod of his head.
‘Yeah, forgot this an’ all, sorry, but it was before the fight at the quarry. I’d had this run of bad luck. I’d been saving up and looking for a place to live, but I was stupid. I took a punt on a dog, got told it was a certainty, lost five hundred quid.’
‘What about the savings your mother mentioned, that you’d lost the money you’d saved for a flat?’
He pulled a clownish face.
‘Yeah well, that was a bit of a lie, she’d have never let me stay with her if she’d known I’d blown what I’d got on a fucking dog. Excuse me, sorry, she’s very careful with her savings. I know she’s got quite a packet from her last husband, and . .
. I completely forgot this. I’ve had to move in with her off and on for years, it’s the gambling doing me in always, and then when I get a bit of dough I move out. Me and her husband didn’t get along either, but since he passed on I’ve been staying with her more and more.’
Anna waited patiently.
‘Go back to the time you say something had slipped your mind.’
‘Right, yeah. It was when I was taking him to the quarry, he came to Mum’s flat for me to drive him there. I don’t even have the car any more, had to sell it.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, he was early so I let him in and told him to wait in the hall. Of course Mum was hovering around, it was only six-ish but she’s always up with the birds.’
‘Did she meet him?’
‘Christ no, he was stinking out the hallway and she’d have gone apeshit about me being with his type. I just grabbed my overcoat and we left. I was tellin’ you the truth, cos I honest to God haven’t seen him since that time at the quarry.’
‘Thank you for coming in, Mr Bradford.’
He had the audacity to smile. ‘Had an option, did I?’
‘What’s so important about this chalk pit?’ Barolli asked after Bradford had been allowed to go.
Anna explained that Oates couldn’t have been working at the chalk pit when Mrs Murphy said she saw him covered in dust. She thought it unlikely that the elderly couple would be nine months out, particularly as Mrs Murphy recalled the exact date the gates arrived.
‘It’s the chalk pit, something about that place. But if they are right about the dates Oates helped them put their gates up, it was March 2007 that Oates explained to Mr Murphy about the chalk dust. Mrs Murphy did say her husband’s memory was not so good. Maybe he did get the timing wrong.’
Joan was in tears, her shoulders shaking as she slumped at her desk.
‘What’s up with you, Joan?’ Anna asked.
‘Just got a dressing-down from the Chief Super.’
‘Langton?’
‘No, the one who’s standing in for him.’
Anna leaned close to Joan, who was wiping her eyes with a tissue.
‘What happened?’
Joan tearfully explained that she had, although not specifically instructed to do so, run a check through missing persons, searching for the Christian name Angela.
Anna tensed up, leaning closer still as Joan passed her a report. She sniffed.
‘Angela Thornton, “Misper” from Epping over five years ago, and as you can see from the description of the clothes she was wearing they also include a gold bracelet, a present from her parents for her twenty-first. It was engraved with the inscription, “Angela 1999 from Mum and Dad”.’
Anna couldn’t believe it. She perched on the edge of Joan’s desk.
‘Good work, Joan, but tell me what Hedges said that’s got you so upset.’
Joan said that she had left early the previous evening so had come in that morning very early and had decided rightly or wrongly to check out the bracelet.
‘I mean, it’s the most obvious because of the inscription.’
‘Absolutely, yes I agree.’
‘I’d just got a result when I picked up the phone and it was him, Chief Superintendent Hedges. He asked me for an update. I mean, he usually speaks with Mike, but I was the only one available and so I told him.’
‘About the bracelet?’
‘Yes, and he went ballistic. He said that he had not given the go-ahead to open up any further missing persons cases and as such I had overstepped my position.’
Anna patted her shoulder.
‘Leave this with me, go and get yourself a cup of coffee in the canteen. As far as I’m concerned you’ve done nothing wrong. If Hedges had been more of a presence and kept up to date with our investigations he’d have realized the recovered jewellery had to be followed up.’
As Joan left the room Anna became more irate as she recalled how Mike Lewis had told her that Hedges had said that as far as he was concerned both investigations were now Langton’s. She decided that if Hedges should complain to her or Mike about Joan’s behaviour she would remind him of his remark to Mike and his total lack of interest concerning the investigation of a possible serial killer.
Anna, still annoyed about Hedges’ attitude, sat at her desk reading the Essex Police report about the missing girl. The case had been left open on file, with no suspects and no clues as to her whereabouts. Angela Thornton had last been seen in June 2007 on CCTV footage with two friends leaving a nightclub in the Mile End Road. The friends had said that they had all been drinking heavily and as they lived locally together they walked home, leaving Angela to get the Central Line Tube home to Epping. By the time she left the club the last Tube would have already gone. Anna looked at a map of the area and noticed how close Mile End was to Hackney and Oates’s squat.
Turning around, she could see that Mike was on the phone in his office, and so she picked up the report and knocked on his door.
‘Can I see you for a second?’
He gestured for her to come in and returned to his phone call.
‘I understand, sir, yes, yes.’ He rolled his eyes to the ceiling.
‘I understand, sir, and I will take it up with her, but now the ball has started rolling I won’t know until I have had the time to—’
Mike pulled at his tie.
‘Yes, sir, well as I just said, leave it with me, and let me get back to you.’
Mike eventually replaced the receiver, and pointed to the report in Anna’s hand.
‘If that is what I think it is, I’ve just been told off because we are apparently attempting to open up yet another murder enquiry when we are snowed under with the ones we’ve already got.’
‘Mike, you can’t walk away from this. Angela Thornton’s bracelet was in the hoard of stuff we removed from Oates’s basement.’
‘It’s not a question of me walking away, Anna, she’s an Essex “Misper” so it’s not in my hands to say whether or not—’
His desk phone rang.
‘Yes? What? Bring him in straight away when he gets here . . . yes, to my office.’
Mike stood up.
‘She was last seen in Mile End, which is close to where Oates . . .’ Anna began.
‘Let me deal with the Angela thing later. Right now we’ve got Edward Samuels coming in, he’s ten minutes away. Get Joan to arrange some tea. He’s also asked for sandwiches.’
Mike’s phone rang again and he snatched it up.
‘DCI Mike Lewis, incident room . . . Good morning.’
Mike covered the mouthpiece and said it was Langton, the last person he wanted to have to talk to, so Anna made her escape fast.
Half an hour later Barolli ushered the diminutive Mr Samuels into the incident room as Anna was asking Joan if she could also rustle up some sandwiches. She was very eager to hear what Samuels thought of their prime suspect, and hurried to join him in Mike’s office.
Samuels turned to shake her hand, his own almost the same size as hers. He was wearing a grey pin-striped suit with a white polo-neck sweater and had very highly polished black shoes. He drew his chair closer to the desk and opened his laptop.
‘I’ll obviously have my report typed up, but for now we can discuss, from my notes and observations, what I believe is the best way forward when you next interview Mr Oates. I have been quite thorough going over the paperwork and viewing the DVDs you sent me, but firstly let me explain how behavioural assessments work . . .’
Before he could continue, Joan entered with the teas and a plate of sandwiches. Samuels thanked her, saying he was hungry as he’d not had time for breakfast. Anna was quite intrigued by the way he ate – very quickly, in big bites, each of which he chewed rapidly before hesitating a moment then swallowing. It was rather like watching a hamster as his cheeks bulged and he held the sandwich in front of him poised for his next mouthful. Anna gave a glance towards Mike, who also appeared fascinated watching Samuels consume th
ree sandwiches then reach for his tea, taking quick rapid sips before he let out a sigh of relief.
‘Ahhhh, good, feel a lot better now. I usually have a big breakfast, but this morning I skipped it, always a mistake. My mother, God bless her, always said breakfast was the most important meal of the day, sets you up.’
Anna smiled, and Mike murmured his agreement, but he was obviously a little bemused by Samuels.
‘Right, let’s get the show on the road. Now obviously I have made an assessment of Mr Oates’s personality, behavioural and lifestyle characteristics.’
‘Dr Samuels, Anna and I really appreciate your help but we wondered if you could stick to the interview strategy as we—’
‘DCI Lewis, I have not had a doctor-to-patient psychiatric session with your suspect so I am not giving any opinion regarding his fitness to plead. It is not my place to dictate how you, or DCI Travis, should conduct the interview, but I can suggest how to approach it and hopefully connect with Oates. To achieve this you must have some understanding of the person you are dealing with, particularly if you want positive rather than negative outcomes.’
Mike and Anna looked at each other, both realizing that Dr Samuels was very much on their side but his opinions and advice had to appear unbiased. He went on to explain that although the information about Oates’s family background was limited and to a large extent influenced by his ex-wife Eileen’s statement, he felt that she might be lying about some elements of her life with and without Oates.
‘In respect of the suspect’s childhood and the abuse that he endured at the hands of his mother, her lovers and in care, his wife, in my opinion, would have no reason to make these incidents up. He could have lied to her but, and this is off the record, I made some enquiries through my contacts and Henry Oates was in and out of care homes because of physical abuse. He suffered a wretched childhood and although he seriously assaulted other children he was replicating what his mother did to him. It brought him the attention he craved although he never sought pity or spoke about his abuse to his carers, so he may respond to sympathy.’
Samuels told Mike and Anna that abuse in a child incited feelings of hurt and, almost inevitably, that hurt led to a feeling of hate and a longing for revenge. He believed Oates’s running away from the care home at sixteen was an attempt to escape those feelings and make a new life for himself. Certainly at the outset he seemed to have succeeded. He found a way of suppressing his anger through boxing, held down a job, made new friends and, in Eileen, found someone who he loved and no doubt believed loved him.
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