Backlash

by Lynda La Plante

  As soon as Anna got back to the station she rang Glasgow. McBride gave her the contact number of the rehab facility that Corinna Oates had, as a condition of her sentence for drugs offences, been ordered to attend. Frustratingly she was switched from one department to another and no one appeared to know what she was talking about. She tried McBride again, apologizing for bothering him, but explaining she urgently needed to contact either Eileen Oates direct or whoever had been dealing with her daughter absconding from the rehab centre. After yet another series of time-wasting calls she found no one able to give her any assistance, but then McBride called her to say that Eileen was at the hospital with her youngest daughter who was about to give birth.

  Everyone had noticed that Anna was obviously caught up on some business or other as she had been on the telephone most of the afternoon. As the team were all working on the charges against Oates, everyone was equally busy. Oates was still being held in the cells at the station, and Mike as the DCI on the investigation had been closeted with the Area Commander and Langton as they reviewed the mass of new evidence. Preparing to re-interview and then charge Oates with the murder of Mrs Douglas along with the other victims was a lengthy process, and they were still waiting on the post mortem reports to finalize the papers, whilst at the same time evidence was still being brought from Mrs Douglas’s flat. It was hard to even contemplate that number of man-hours.

  Anna had turned her attention to the tapes of Henry Oates’s interviews. She was focusing in particular on the moment when Oates placed the bracelet on top of the photograph of Angela Thornton, playing it over and over. She would then rewind to the bit when he had dismissed various other photographs of missing girls until he had selected the ones he claimed to have murdered then taken to the quarry. He was abusive and rude about some of the missing girls’ looks, but he had clearly picked out the picture of Angela Thornton and he had placed the gold bracelet on it. Although he did not know their names, he could identify the items he had removed from each body. Backwards and forwards she rewound, replayed, half unsure of what she was looking for, until Barbara interrupted her.

  ‘I’ve got the name and contact number of a girl who shared a room with Corinna Oates at the rehab centre. She left there just after Corinna absconded. I’ve not managed to talk to anyone at the centre as they blank me with invasion of privacy, and without having permission from Christ knows who they just clam up, but this girl is clean and doing community work as part of her sentence. Her name is Morag Kelly, she’ll be at that number after ten this evening.’

  ‘Terrific, thank you.’

  ‘I’ve been onto BT and they are getting back to me, but I’ve been a bit caught up.’

  Anna pursed her lips.

  ‘This is very important, Barbara. Leave it with me, I’ll do it myself.’

  ‘Mrs Douglas’s flat is a crime scene – I mean, surely Mike can get this information within seconds?’ Barbara suggested.

  ‘He’s busy right now; as I said, I’ll check it out. Besides, right now it’s just a theory, so don’t bother him with it.’

  Barbara gave a small shrug of her shoulders and went back to her desk. Bursting with irritation, she turned to Joan.

  ‘She’s off on some theory of her own! But she’s got me running around for her as if we’ve not got enough on our plates.’

  ‘Well, she’s not the DCI on the case, Mike is, and she’s sort of got the Rebekka Jordan charges to deal with.’

  ‘But it’s too much. She’s constantly interrupting me to check on things that aren’t part of our work.’ Sighing, Barbara looked across to Mike Lewis’s office, where the blinds were drawn down. She checked her watch – it would be time for another round of coffees in there any minute now.

  Meanwhile Anna had got onto BT. They were very accommodating and she now had a printout of all the calls made from Mrs Douglas’s flat from a month prior to Oates’s original arrest. Unfortunately tech support said that because Mrs Douglas’s phone was an oldstyle, it did not record details of who had called in during the same period. Anna noticed however that two reverse charge calls had been made to the flat on the day after Oates escaped. Underlining all the numbers of interest in pink highlighter, she carried the pages over to Joan, and asked her to find out who those numbers belonged to. Almost as an afterthought, she also asked Joan to double-check the races held at the Wimbledon dog track on the night Henry Oates escaped from the quarry.

  Anna truthfully could not have given her reasons for what she was doing, but knew it was like her father used to say: a gut reaction based on copper’s instinct with no rational explanation. She didn’t even think about sharing her concerns, as it was very obvious the entire team were inundated. Although time and time again Langton had reprimanded her for not being a team player, she genuinely didn’t consider that this was the right time to voice her suspicions.

  As tray after tray of coffee disappeared into Mike’s office, Anna had the first hint that she might be on the right track. Joan presented her with the traced numbers of the calls made from Mrs Douglas’s flat. On the day prior to Oates’s escape there had been a call to the NatWest Bank in New Malden and also one the following day. The two reverse charge calls were from pay phones – and they were in the early morning after Oates had escaped from the quarry. Adding to her mounting suspicions was the news that Timmy Bradford had lied about being at the dog racing in Wimbledon on the night Henry Oates had taken his mother hostage. There was no racing as the track was under refurbishment and was not reopened until the weekend. Annoyingly the bank had already closed for the day, but Joan was given the task of getting hold of the manager and making an appointment for Anna to see him. Fortunately the ten thousand pounds was still retained by the police as evidence.

  A second hit came from Professor Hall at the mortuary, who was very loud and pompous when he rang. Anna had to hold the receiver at arm’s length.

  ‘DCI Travis?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘The marks on Mrs Douglas’s neck are as I quite rightly suspected post mortem. She was hanged with the cord after death.’

  ‘Was she strangled with it first?’

  ‘No, and this is strictly off the record for now, as a neurologist needs to examine her brain before I can give you a definitive cause of death.’

  ‘I really appreciate this, Professor Hall.’

  ‘So you should, dear. Right, I’ve confirmed the victim did not die from the cord noose: although it was drawn very tightly she was dead before it was wound round her neck. My approximate time of death is, again subject to further tests, but I’d say at least two days ago and no more than three. No signs of defence wounds, but there is a large bruise to the back of her head and also one on her chest and it’s possible your victim died of natural causes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t confirm it just yet, but although there is some swelling to the brain from the head injury, Mrs Douglas may have died of a heart attack. Also, whoever was with her re-dressed her as her nightdress was on back to front, unless of course she put it on back to front herself.’ He gave a snorting laugh.

  Anna was too impatient to be amused by his joke, but as she listened further she could feel her heart start pumping.

  ‘The anthropologist has looked at the unidentified remains and believes, from the cranial features, that our victim is white European, aged between eighteen and twenty-five, and from the decomposition she has been dead for less than six months.’

  ‘She’s not black then?’

  ‘This is more or less an observation and not a certain fact – further tests will need to be done on the bones, soil particles, the clay and the chalk effects to give a much clearer time frame. At this stage I couldn’t even begin to give you a cause of death.’

  ‘I really appreciate you contacting me.’

  ‘So you should, and kindly inform those concerned that I am doing everything within my power to ensure they get results as soon as possible, but it will take considerable t
ime thanks to the decomposition of—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she interrupted, wanting to get him off the phone, and finally managed to get rid of him.

  She sat back and closed her eyes. If she was correct she would still have to get more evidence.

  ‘Joan, have you arranged a meeting for me with the bank manager yet?’

  ‘Not yet, but you know I have some priority files to get in order and—’

  ‘Just do it now. Contact him at home if necessary!’ Anna snapped and got up from her desk, so tense she needed to go to the Ladies’. She banged out of the incident room as Joan angrily snatched up her phone.

  Sitting in the cubicle Anna leaned forwards, trying to ease her stomach, which was cramping from her being so wound up. Now, thinking about what she had learnt, she made the decision that she wouldn’t go it alone, but tell Mike and Langton what she had uncovered, even though the picture was far from complete because she still had to make further enquiries in Glasgow. By the time she had washed her hands and combed her hair she was calmer, and almost relieved that she was going to get it off her chest.

  Anna tapped on Mike’s office door, opened it and entered.

  ‘Ah, we wanted some sandwiches – oh, it’s you, Travis, where have you been . . .?’

  She interrupted Langton before he could get started.

  ‘The mortuary and then making some urgent enquiries. I need to have a talk with you and Mike.’

  ‘You are the other DCI on this investigation. You should have been here when we began. I’m not going to repeat everything we have discussed over the last few hours so—’

  ‘It’s important.’ She clutched her notebook tightly.

  Mike was sitting behind his desk, with Langton on one of the chairs in front of him. There were stacks of files everywhere and the room felt overheated and claustrophobic.

  ‘Floor’s yours,’ Langton said.

  Anna was flushed as she stood in front of them.

  ‘Firstly I have to say I have not confirmed everything, and I have been acting on a sort of gut instinct that we might have been—’

  ‘Never mind the bloody instinct, Travis, get on with it – we’ve still got a lot of work to plough through,’ Langton cut in.

  She was hesitant at first and shifted her weight from foot to foot, but forgot her nerves as her conviction grew.

  ‘Angela Thornton’s is not one of those bodies at the mortuary, the dental records didn’t match. We’ve got an unidentified white female, aged eighteen to twenty-five, who’s been dead for less than six months.’

  ‘So Oates made a mistake with the “Misper” photographs and killed someone else.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that, but I took a hair sample to the lab to try and identify her by DNA. The other thing is, Timmy Bradford lied to me when I first interviewed him with regard to how well he knew Henry Oates. When he was brought into the station for further questioning he gave us more details about when he had actually met with him, and he admitted taking him to the quarry.’

  ‘We know all this, Travis,’ Langton said irritably.

  She opened her notebook.

  ‘After Henry Oates escaped from the quarry, we spent a long time trying to trace his whereabouts, only to discover he was holding Mrs Douglas hostage, and we believed—’

  Langton leaned towards her.

  ‘Believed? What are you talking about?’

  She kept it as brief as possible: she now suspected that Henry Oates made prior contact with Timmy Bradford because the same night he escaped there were two reverse charge calls from public pay phones to Mrs Douglas’s flat in the early hours of the morning. One made from Hammersmith and the other from Soho. It was likely that Oates had some very big hold over him. At the present time she was unable to determine what exactly it was, but she thought that Bradford had agreed to help hide him and give him the ten thousand pounds to aid his escape.

  Langton got up and pulled at his tie, shaking his head. He couldn’t fathom out where the hell she was going with this.

  ‘I think that Timmy Bradford’s mother was already dead,’ Anna went on. ‘It is not yet confirmed, but it’s a possibility the time of death does tie in with when Bradford told us Henry Oates broke into the flat.’

  Langton sat back down in his chair, as Anna explained that Bradford’s claim that he was at the dog track was a lie, and furthermore she had been checking the phone calls from the flat and it appeared that Bradford was possibly making arrangements at the NatWest to get his mother’s money before Oates was even there.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ muttered Langton.

  Mike Lewis stared down at his hands and then looked at the stunned face of Langton. He was red-faced with anger and clenched his fists.

  ‘Is this all confirmed by the pathologist’s report?’

  ‘Not one hundred per cent, yet! But if Bradford gets a call from Oates asking for help, it would have been a perfect set-up to frame him for his mother’s murder – he might even have intended to kill him. There was immediate media coverage and it was plastered over every newspaper, Oates was on the run and—’

  ‘Hold it right there,’ Langton said. Mike and Anna fell silent as he yanked at his tie.

  ‘This is all conjecture right now, and you’re running on empty as far as Bradford’s concerned; you’ll need a lot more evidence, but if this is true we’d better clear it up and fast. We go pressing charges against Oates for the old girl’s murder and his legal team prove we’ve screwed up, we could lose the whole fucking case in court.’

  ‘Exactly, which is why I felt it was necessary to give you as much detail as I have been able to acquire.’

  It was decided that they would call it quits for the night as everyone was tired out. Tomorrow morning they would bring in Timmy Bradford for questioning, tease him out with the carrot of the ten thousand and see if they could break him down. By that time they would have made contact with the bank manager and hopefully had Mrs Douglas’s time of death confirmed.

  As Anna packed up ready to leave for the night, Langton came and perched on the edge of her desk.

  ‘What’s the hold you reckon Oates has over Bradford?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He cocked his head to one side.

  ‘You have an idea though?’

  ‘I’ve not thought it through yet, but as I said I’m trying to get more information on the unidentified victim.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well obviously, who she is for starters. I’ve not got anything confirmed and then there’s also Angela Thornton. Although we haven’t found her body I do think Oates murdered her as well.’

  Langton walked over to the incident board and stared at the girls’ photographs. He realized what Anna was thinking.

  ‘Why did he put that bracelet on her picture, claim that she was one of his victims,’ he wondered, tapping the photograph.

  Anna stood beside him, arms folded.

  ‘That’s what bothers me. I’ve looked at the footage from his interview and he carefully places her bracelet over her picture, just as he did with all the other victims’ possessions.’

  ‘But she wasn’t brought back from the quarry.’

  ‘No, so that leaves us with either another body up there in the woods, or wherever, and the unidentified remains in the morgue.’

  ‘Shit, this case is like a nightmare, it never ends.’

  He eased his tie back up and pressed down the edge of his collar.

  ‘Well, tomorrow is another day and I’m going home.’

  He gave the small of her back an affectionate pat and smiled.

  ‘Good work. I think you gave Mike heart failure, but if you’re correct, thank Christ for you. Like it or not, now the press are all over the investigation and due to the fuck-ups so far we now have to run everything by Commander Leigh — you know, protocol, big brother, et cetera.’

  The night staff were beginning to take their desks as he strolled out. Barbara and Joan had already left, but An
na felt restless and sat at her desk. She saw the lights go off in Mike’s office and kept her head down as if reading her notes as he walked past.

  He paused in the doorway, turning back to her.

  ‘Are we to expect any further surprises from you?’

  ‘Depends on how tomorrow pans out. But if it all tallies up it could be the reason Oates has behaved himself since we re-arrested him.’

  ‘Goodnight, Anna,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Goodnight, Mike,’ she replied.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The first thing Anna did when she got home was to ring Morag Kelly’s mobile phone. It was after ten so she hoped the young woman would pick up. It rang and rang, and she was impatiently about to end the call when someone answered.

  ‘Is this Morag Kelly?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I wondered if you could help me. I am trying to trace Corinna Oates and I know you were in rehab with her.’

  There was an intake of breath and Anna quickly tried to keep the girl calm, explaining that Morag was not in any kind of trouble whatsoever, but the call was very important as Anna was part of a police investigation attempting to find Corinna’s whereabouts.

  ‘Well I cannae help ye. I’ve not seen her since she ran off, and we wasnae that friendly anyway.’

  ‘But you knew her?’

  ‘Aye, but she’s nae friend of mine. When she left she nicked some of ma stuff, so even if I did meet up with her, I’d slap her face.’

  ‘I just need to ask if you remember maybe Corinna saying anything about where she might go.’

  ‘Nae, we’ve all been asked about her, but she never told nobody – she did a runner when we was supposed tae be workin’.’

  ‘You are being really helpful, and just one more thing: can you recall any of her clothes, what she might have been wearing?’