‘It was just there beside me. I was really wound up, I picked it up, she turned like this, didn’t she, to avoid the thingy. I just let her have it . . . but only once.’
He had the audacity to swivel round in his chair, indicating the back of his head. Mike was finding it hard to restrain his own anger with Oates but knew he had to continue in the same vein, especially as Kumar was unlikely to interrupt again.
‘Sounds like the slapper deserved it, Henry.’
‘Fucking right she did.’
‘So after you hit her, did it shut her up?’
‘Well, she wasn’t screaming no more, just sort of moaning and gurgling.’ Oates smiled as if he was enjoying recalling the moment.
Mike said nothing; he simply acted as if he too was enjoying what Oates was saying and nodded to encourage him to go on.
‘I realized I’d hit her a bit hard, shook me up a bit, it did, but I thought I’d better take her to a hospital.’
Mike leaned forwards as Oates shook his head, acting bewildered.
‘At what point did you discover she was dead?’
‘When the moaning stopped.’
‘So the drive to a hospital would have been pointless?’
‘I guess so.’
Oates was still obviously lying but he had gone from a visible high in describing the sex and assault on Justine Marks to a sudden low. He clearly thought that Mike was genuinely sympathetic and believed his lies. Anna thought Mike looked drained and wondered if it was the right time for her to step in and take over the interview. She reached over to the trolley and picked up the pictures of Justine Marks that had been taken in the van and during the post mortem. She tapped Mike’s knee beneath the table, and he slowly closed his notebook without looking at her.
‘I would like to ask you some questions, Mr Oates,’ Anna began.
Oates raised his head and looked at her with contempt.
‘Oh here we go, now we get the woman’s point of view. How could you do a thing like that, the poor defenceless girl. Doesn’t matter the bitch kicked me in the nuts, does it!’
Anna held the pictures as if she were a croupier about to deal a pack of cards. She turned the first one over and laid it on the table. It showed the rear of the van with the doors open and Justine’s body wrapped in the bin liners.
‘Justine’s blood was found smeared on the outside of the rear doors, on the bumper and the floor of the van,’ she said.
‘I told you, I hit her on the head in the van.’
Anna now turned over the next picture, which was a close-up of the scuffmarks on Justine’s boots.
‘From these marks on her boots and the direction of the blood patterns on the outside of the van, the scientist says that she was hit on the back of the head before she was dragged into the van.’
Oates said nothing. He started chewing his bottom lip and tapping his right foot on the floor as he had done in the interview after his arrest when asked if he had abducted and killed Rebekka Jordan.
‘You attacked Justine in the street with the spanner,’ Anna persisted. ‘She was already dead when you dragged her into the back of the van, wasn’t she?’
Again Oates said nothing. There was a long pause before Kumar broke the silence.
‘Are you suggesting that Mr Oates is a necrophiliac, DCI Travis?’
‘I’m saying what the evidence suggests, Mr Kumar. Only your client knows the answer to that.’
‘I am bloody not.’
She turned and looked at him.
‘Do you know what Mr Kumar means, Henry?’
‘Yeah I know what the word means, and no way, screwing a dead body, do me a favour.’
‘Why don’t you tell us the truth about what happened that night? It may dismiss any ideas we have that you did have sexual intercourse with Justine after she was dead.’
‘She was alive when I fucked her.’
Adan Kumar could see that his client was becoming agitated and he turned to have a whispered conversation with him, holding his hand up to cover what he was saying. Oates leaned closer to him and then nodded. Anna promptly leaned towards Mike and whispered to him in a similar way, hiding her mouth by holding up her notebook.
‘Wait a minute,’ Oates said and pointed to Mike. ‘You know I’m telling the truth, she wanted to have sex with me.’
Kumar gestured for him to sit back, but Oates wafted his hand away.
‘I am not one of them sick perverts, she was alive. I never done it to her when she was dead.’
Langton pulled a chair in front of him to rest his leg on as Barolli passed him a coffee, asking, ‘What’s all this necrophilia stuff, what’s the angle?’
‘She’s needling him, she never said he’s a necrophiliac – Kumar did. Doesn’t like it though, does he?’ Langton sipped his coffee, watching the monitor closely as he knew exactly where she was leading Oates. Oates’s ego was such that he wouldn’t like the implication he was a necrophiliac. He liked women to know exactly what was happening as he first raped them and then killed them. The forensic evidence had shown he had abused Justine Marks only after he had raped her, possibly in anger that she was unconscious and didn’t respond to his violence. Anna and Mike’s intention was to draw Oates out into the open by firstly siding with him through empathy and then by Anna attacking his lies.
Langton couldn’t believe how well things were going. He watched with satisfaction the way Oates answered questions, unwittingly revealing his deep contempt for women.
‘He’s talking and reacting like Samuels said he would . . . didn’t think it would happen so fast. That bit with Kumar was something else.’
Langton sipped his coffee in satisfaction.
Like Langton, Anna was surprised how quickly Oates had opened up. He was very self-assured, almost cocky, yet agitated. She knew that Oates felt in control when Mike questioned him, but now that an object of his hate, a woman, had taken over, she was worried he might say nothing more, but Oates continued.
‘This is exactly how it went down. I liked the look of her, right? And seeing her walking all by herself was like an open invitation.’
‘One you took advantage of, didn’t you?’ Anna said encouragingly and Oates nodded, going on to explain how he had stalked Justine for only a matter of yards before he hit her on the back of the head with the spanner then dragged her into the van.
‘She was all dazed and her head was bleeding. I got her inside the van within seconds. In fact, if it had taken any longer someone could have walked past, a pub’s a busy place. I drove off sharpish, but she came round, started to scream and yell, and so I pulled over and parked and went to shut her up.’
He recalled very specifically how he had gripped her by the hair and hit her with his fist, rising out of his chair to demonstrate how he had shaken her and then thrown her hard onto the floor of the van. He banged his fist into his hand to imitate the sound as his face twisted into a grimace.
‘I didn’t want it to go down like that, I liked the look of her, but these things happen. I got stuck in and she started to come round again just as I was full on and I pulled her bra up round her throat.’
He raised his hands in a twisting motion towards Anna. She didn’t flinch, but kept up a steady gaze, nodding to encourage him to keep talking. He explained how he had realized she was dead and that it made him angry because he liked it when she struggled and had planned to have much more time with her.
Anna knew the next question could be a provocative one coming from her and at this point she didn’t want Oates to fly off into a rage, so she tapped Mike’s leg.
‘Angry enough to insert this inside her?’ Mike asked, placing the photograph of the spanner onto the table, and Oates nodded, puffing out his cheeks.
‘Yeah, that was a bit over the top, but she really pissed me off, dying like that. Anyway, I got back into the front, sat there for ages. I was in a quandary, understand me? I had to do something with her, I had to get rid of her, cos me mate wanted the van ba
ck.’
‘When did you wrap her body in the plastic bin liners?’
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 wor
k 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.
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