Backlash (22 page)

It felt very much as if everything was on hold, and the team was now waiting for the pathologist to examine the skeletal remains. The priority was to get an identity as soon as possible. The
dental records of Fidelis Julia Flynn had already been forwarded from a dental practice in Dublin some months ago and were on her ‘Misper’ file. The concrete around the mouth area was
being chipped away very slowly to avoid any damage, so that the forensic odontologist had the best chance of making a match. Mike decided that he would hold off interviewing Henry Oates again until
they had confirmation, either by dental records or DNA, that the remains were indeed those of Fidelis Julia Flynn.

Mike had a very terse conversation with Adan Kumar, who was clearly fishing to see if there was any more evidence.

‘I keep getting calls from my client. As you are no doubt aware, Mr Oates is on suicide watch and is clearly not fit to be interviewed. I think he needs to be further assessed by the
prison psychologist.’

Mike couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his reply.

‘Well he must be unstable if he keeps calling you . . . and yes, having spoken with the prison I am aware he is on suicide watch, which is about to be lifted.’

‘Have you found any evidence that implicates my client?’

‘Our investigation is ongoing, Mr Kumar, and all will be disclosed to you when we are ready to re-interview Oates.’

Mike cut off the call. Thanks to his daily contact with the prison governor he knew that, contrary to Kumar’s assessment, Henry Oates had settled down, and although he was still segregated
he had had no violent mood swings. He was eating three meals a day and sleeping. Even though he remained on suicide watch and unable to be interviewed, Mike was not overly concerned by this as it
gave him more time to put the evidence together. Oates had no visitors apart from Kumar.

Mike left his office to study the incident board. ‘Zacks has done a runner,’ Anna informed him, putting down her marker pen. ‘Drug Squad think that my visit might have worried
him. I really need to narrow down the date he last saw Henry Oates. He was vague about it when I spoke with him, said it was three or more years ago. Oates didn’t have a vehicle then, so if
this meeting occurred shortly before or after Rebekka Jordan went missing he may have got rid of the Jeep.’

‘There’s a lot of difference between three and five years,’ Mike retorted.

‘I know but I don’t think he was really concentrating on what I was saying, especially if his drug dealing was on his mind.’

‘Kumar called,’ Mike said gloomily. ‘He wants Oates reassessed by the prison psychologist. I think he’s trying to get the suicide watch extended so we can’t
interview him. I don’t want to be caught out; we need to look at all the evidence together then get Oates back in police custody for interview.’

Anna shrugged. She felt like the investigation was beginning to stall but she knew that it could move rapidly forward if they could only get Oates to open up and reveal more about his
crimes.

‘Have you thought any more about the Behavioural Investigative Adviser?’

‘I’m not sure. Langton was dead against it . . .’

‘What have we got to lose?’

‘Well for one it could all backfire on us if the BIA thinks Oates is nuts. I don’t want all our time and effort wasted.’

‘How about we ask him to stick to advice on an interview strategy only?’ Anna suggested.

‘Who’s the best?’

‘Guy called Edward Samuels, doctor of psychiatry, works at the Bethlem Hospital. I’ve not met him personally but I have heard him lecture and also recommended him on a few cases;
he’s a cool customer with a lot of experience. Feedback’s always good . . .’

‘Then go ahead, unless Langton disagrees – I’d run it by him.’

‘Yeah, right, I’ll do that,’ Anna said with sarcasm and laughed.

‘Sorry, stupid suggestion. We’ll keep it to ourselves for the time being then. I’ll make DVD copies of the interviews with Oates and all the relevant statements and get them
couriered over to Samuels.’

‘Thanks, Mike, I appreciate your help. I’ll ring him and brief him on the case and what we need,’ Anna said.

Glad that Mike had agreed with her, she couldn’t help wondering if he would back her if and when Langton found out.

‘By the way . . . sorry for interrupting you during the meeting yesterday. What you had to say was a leap forward for the investigation, but you do go the long way round to get to the good
bits.’

‘You know me, Mike,I like everyone to know all the facts.’

While Mike headed off to the canteen for breakfast, Anna took the chance to use his office phone to speak to Samuels. After a lengthy conversation she went back to her own desk
in the main office to try and concentrate on discovering how long Oates had lived in the basement squat. She knew from his ex-wife that he had at one point lived in Brixton, and basically survived
off benefits and working odd jobs for cash in hand. She and Joan contacted social security, employment and National Insurance records, finding that Oates had been working the system and making
various claims for years.

During the initial search of Oates’s squat the scene of crime officers had removed a stack of claim forms and old rental receipts dating back years. Joan and Anna set to work to try and
make sense of them all. Anna couldn’t believe how long Oates had worked the system; the number of different addresses, let alone assumed names, made it difficult to compile a straightforward
list. He appeared to be able to move from one area of London to the next, constantly claiming unemployment and benefits in a variety of names. It seemed from the dates on the seized documents that
he had stopped making false claims three years ago. Did he think he was about to be caught or had he become bored, she wondered. What amazed Anna was that Oates, over a five-year period, was always
one step ahead of the authorities, and had never been arrested for any benefit fraud offences. She wondered if they had all underestimated Oates’s level of intelligence – clearly he was
clever and able to plan his crimes.

To discover how long he had lived in the basement took yet another round of calls by Joan. The house was under a protection order and had been empty for six years; numerous squatters had lived
in the property, so to try and trace anyone who could confirm just how long Oates had been there seemed impossible. There were old computer records of the police being called out, as neighbours
across the street had made complaints about squatters on a number of occasions. These were from six years ago, shortly after the owners had moved out and the squatters moved in.

‘You know, I’m going round in circles, because Oates’s squat was due for demolition and the houses either side are also under the same order, so he could have been ejected and
then moved back into the basement after things calmed down,’ Joan said to Anna.

Anna sighed, and suggested they get some of the team over there to ask the local residents if they could recall seeing Oates.

The dental records for Fidelis Julia Flynn had now arrived at the mortuary, where the forensic odontologist was taking dental X-rays from the body for comparison. It had taken
hours of painstaking work to excavate the body from its concrete tomb. The remains, now laid out on the mortuary table, had been cleaned, with the last residues of cement carefully washed away. The
remnants of clothing had been removed and parcelled up ready to be sent to the forensic lab: scraps of wool, one boot, part of a sleeve from a blue anorak and fragments of material from what might
have been a skirt or jeans.

They had measured the body and determined that their victim was five feet six, and the shoulder-length hair, which had now been washed through, was clearly auburn and still reasonably undamaged.
They had recovered a small gold crucifix on a chain still snagged to one of the woollen remnants. It had been swabbed for DNA, photographed and then put in an evidence bag so Barolli could take it
away with him to show Fidelis’s two known boyfriends.

The forensic pathologist could not determine time or cause of death because of the level of decomposition. Although there didn’t appear to be any broken bones or stab wounds he
couldn’t rule out the use of a knife and also suggested she might have been strangled or suffocated to death.

Mike had put off contacting Fidelis’s parents until the odontologist had checked out the dental records. Finally, at five that afternoon, he had a confirmed match, and not only from the
dental records: the DNA comparison to her parents showed that the remains were those of Fidelis Julia Flynn.

They now had evidence that Oates had worked at the construction site on both the day before and after their victim went missing. What they did not have was any witness that saw him with
Fidelis.

By six that evening the team of three detectives had returned from interviewing the residents in Oates’s street. Shown a photograph, one neighbour was able to confirm
that he did live in the basement, and she could give an exact date she knew him to be living there because he had helped her husband put up new gates. Oates had been living in the basement for even
longer than they had anticipated, for at least five and a half years, because the gates had been bought in March 2007. She also said that he came and went and was sometimes absent for days or even
weeks on end, but as he was no trouble and often helped wash cars for cash, no one bothered making a complaint about him. She had never seen Oates with any children, and as far as she could recall
she’d never seen anyone else entering or leaving with Oates. She also implied it was disgusting that the house had been left unoccupied for so long because the owners were waiting for
planning permission to demolish all three buildings and build a block of flats. She had never seen Oates with a car, or a Jeep, but claimed he was always helpful and pleasant and had shovelled up
the snow from her pathway the previous year.

Although the evidence linking Oates to Rebekka Jordan and Fidelis Julia Flynn was mounting, they still had no eyewitness who had seen Oates in the company of either girl. The hope of finding any
forensic evidence from Fidelis’s remains or clothing that might implicate him was slim.

‘Could he have killed Rebekka in the squat?’ Anna wondered.

Barbara pointed at the photographs of the house, boarded up on three floors.

‘I know this neighbour said she never saw anyone coming or going apart from Oates, but don’t tell me she was at her window twenty-four seven. He could have snatched her, hidden her
body in the house.’

Anna came over to stand beside her.

‘It’s possible, but how did he get her there? We still haven’t established that he was driving the Jeep – the neighbour never saw it parked up and we have no witness that
saw him in it. We suspect he stole it, but only by supposition because someone saw a man fitting his description outside the owner’s house. We have no proof that it was Oates that took
it.’

‘Still no trace of it either,’ Joan said, joining them.

She had been contacting every garage, auction house and dealership, plus the wreckage yards, and there was no trace of it.

‘Any luck with the crime reports?’ Anna asked.

‘I’ve given all the details to the station crime analyst and I’m waiting for her to get back to me.’

Anna went into Mike’s office.

‘Did the search team who went over Oates’s place look under the floorboards?’

‘Yeah, they used an optical cable attached to a monitor. Nothing untoward, though.’

‘So they didn’t lift the floorboards?’

‘No, they thought using the lens would be quicker.’

‘Rebekka could be buried under the floorboards! I want Oates’s basement stripped, in fact the entire house – pull the bloody place apart.’

‘Wheels are already in motion.’

‘What?’

Mike gave a wide-handed gesture.

‘Langton, he implied the house should have been searched properly as soon as the doll parts were discovered. We didn’t realize they had cut corners so the search team’s going
back in tomorrow morning. Crime Scene Manager’s going to keep an eye on them.’

‘Good, but he should have been there to supervise the first search.’

‘Langton had a lengthy conversation with our Joan and she brought him up to date. I’ll give him a visit tonight; let him know we have identified the recovered body as
Fidelis.’

‘Don’t let him use you as his housemaid.’

‘Listen, can you do me a big favour, the Flynn parents are flying in and I’d appreciate it if you could see them over at the mortuary.’

Anna was so wrong-footed she wasn’t sure how to react.

‘But she’s been identified by dental records.’

‘I know, but they insisted. It’s a grotesque sight, and the remains are not recognizable as their daughter.’

‘Okay, what time are they due?’

‘I’ve got a car picking them up from Heathrow and taking them straight to the mortuary, should be there around eight tonight. Barolli left this on my desk. You might want to take it
with you,’ Mike said, handing her an evidence bag containing the crucifix and chain.

‘Was this on the body?’

‘Caught in some clothing. Probably Fidelis’s but we need to be sure.’

Anna went back to her desk. It was not yet seven, so she decided to grab a bite to eat, then go straight to the mortuary. Joan and Barbara had already left. Written up on the board were the
details of the search teams for Oates’s flat, and she could see ten officers were assigned to the job. She suspected Mike’s budget was going through the roof. She partly wished she had
taken the call from Langton. It really irritated her that even holed up unable to walk he was overseeing the cases. Her case specifically.

At eight-fifteen, Anna was waiting in a small ante-room off the mortuary set aside for relatives. By eight-thirty there was still no sign of Mr and Mrs Flynn, and Anna was
becoming impatient. What was left of Fidelis’s body was now shrouded in a white sheet and laid out on a trolley in the chapel of rest. All that could be seen of her was a skeletal face and
her auburn hair. The mortuary assistant played with the light dimmer in a futile effort to dull the shock that awaited the Flynns before pulling the shroud up over where her face had been.