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 all 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, let 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 head-scarf 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 welling ton boots.

‘Make him take you inside, dear, it’s quite chilly this morning.’

She strode off, leaving Anna to walk around the narrow pathway to the rear of the house. There was Andrew Markham, in old cord trousers, a polo-neck jumper and green wellington boots similar to those his mother was wearing. He had a brown cloth cap on and was digging out what appeared to be a small trench beside the greenhouse.

‘Hello.’

He turned, surprised. ‘I just met your mother, she said you were out here.’

‘You must be Detective Travis?’

He took off a big old gardening glove and shook her hand.

Anna didn’t have to suggest they go inside; he removed the other glove and propped them on the spade’s handle.

‘Follow me. It’s a bit muddy, I’m afraid, but I’ve got to get a new drainage system as the old one has packed up, so I’m going to run some new pipes from the garage.’

He was a very good-looking man, tanned and fit, and very tall. When he got to the back door, he had to bend his head to enter. He held the door wide for Anna to go through.

The huge kitchen was warm and yet looked as if it needed some decorating. The old green paint was peeling in places and the walls were yellow with smoke. There was a double Aga in one corner with an array of copper pans on hooks beside it, and dog baskets and dog bowls took up a lot of space around it. Anna noticed an old bookcase spilling out an array of cooking and gardening books.

‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Yes I would, thank you.’

He removed his cloth cap and tossed it onto what looked like an old church bench. He had thick dark curly hair similar to his mother’s, worn quite long. He also had a gold looped earring.

Andrew insisted they take their tea into the sitting room as his mother would be back and they’d have wet paws all over them as well as his mother’s attention.

‘We refer to her as the Queen Mother. Do sit down, please.’

The room was gorgeous, high-ceilinged, with lovely old green velvet drapes and matching well-worn sofas and chairs. A stone fireplace held the residue of a wood fire; beside it was a stack of chopped logs ready to light.

There were Persian rugs scattered around the wide polished oak floors. Oil paintings covered the walls, many of horses and hunting, with one very large painting clearly that of his mother as a young woman. The gilt frames were somewhat worn and chipped, but the feel of the room was one of jaded elegance.

Anna sat on the edge of the sofa as Markham handed her tea and some scones. They were freshly baked, he said, but she refused. He sat opposite her, munching on one.

‘I was interviewed years ago about Rebekka, it’s something I don’t think you ever sort of forget. Not the interview, I mean about her disappearance.’

‘Did you meet her?’

‘Oh yes. She was often in the garden with her brothers watching us all work, but they were never a problem. I had to move a small pond – you know, drain it – and they helped catch the fish. We had them in a sort of big old bathtub until we had the new pond ready.’

He sipped his tea.

‘She was very concerned about the frogs. I told her they’d hop over to the new one when it was built, but she wanted to catch them all. She said there were six she knew and had given names.’

He leaned back.

‘Frogs, every time I see one, reminds me of her.’

Anna finished her tea and took out her notebook. She asked about the excavation of the Jordans’ garden and he got up and crossed to an oak desk, searching around and then pulling open drawers. Eventually he returned to sit beside her with a drawing book.

‘These were my original designs. They were the sort of basic to start off from.’

Anna turned over page after page of sketches and notes.

‘Have you found her?’ His voice was soft and quiet.

‘No.’

‘It was a long time ago, maybe five or six years now.’

‘Yes.’

‘May I ask why you wanted to see me?’

She closed the drawing block. ‘Do you recall if you ever, whilst you were working there, saw any children’s toys or got rid of anything the children might have been playing with?’

‘No. I don’t think so. The Jordans hadn’t lived there for very long and I think they had done a bit of clearance before I started. It was a major job though. I mean, Stephen Jordan sort of cleared old garden furniture and stuff like that, but we had to take down the back fence of his garden to get the diggers in and the rubbish out.’

‘When you say “we”, how many of you were working on the project?’

‘Well there was me and two friends I worked with at Kew Gardens who helped out. I hadn’t really started out on my own then but was just doing some extra weekend work on the side, so I had to rely on anyone I could get to give me a hand. Pay was better than I got at Kew so I took a week off to do the initial work. To be honest it turned out to be a much bigger job than I had anticipated.’

‘The builders recommended you for the job, didn’t they?’

He nodded and smiled. ‘Lovely guys, those brothers, and yes they did. Met them in the beer tent at the Chelsea Flower Show in May, a few weeks before starting at the Jordans’. Said I was thinking of starting my own business and gave them my number. In fact I’ve worked on and off for them ever since.’

He leaned back and folded his arms behind his head.

‘We have a possible suspect,’ Anna said. ‘These two people who worked alongside you, do you have their names?’

‘Yes, somewhere. I think one went back to Australia, but the other still works in the hothouse at Kew.’

Anna opened her briefcase and took out the envelope with Henry Oates’s photograph.

‘And you only ever used these two friends to work with you, no one else?’

‘No, the three of us did the job. When the initial excavation of the tree and other shrubs was completed the brothers began digging out the foundations and I was working on my own. I had to demolish a brick wall and dig out the area for the new pond. Couldn’t do a lot more until the building work was completed. It was a big job for them as well, good-sized extension took up almost a quarter of the garden.’

‘So you went back after the extension was built?’

‘Yeah, for a couple of weeks to put up a new wall, rebuild the pond and also finish the overall landscaping. My own company was up and running by then but I worked on my own – not enough money coming in to employ staff back then.’

She passed him the photograph of Henry Oates.

‘Have you ever seen this man before?’

He stared at it, frowned and then ran his fingers through his hair.

‘Jesus Christ. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

Her heart missed a beat. He shook his head, but still stared at the mug shot.

‘I completely forgot. I’d forgotten, Jesus Christ, I had forgotten this guy, this man.’

‘Do you recognize him?’

‘Yes, yes I do. Shit, I don’t believe it.’

The door burst open and the two sodden spaniels hurtled into the room while Mrs Markham screeched for Andrew to get them out and not let them onto the sofas. The dogs chased manically around the room, skidding on the carpets, jumping on and off the chairs as Mrs Markham appeared.

‘Get them out, for goodness’ sake, they’ve been rolling in manure. GET OUT! GET OUT! Why did you leave the kitchen door open?’

Andrew grabbed one by its collar as his mother chased the other out of the room. Anna could hear him shouting at the dogs before he walked back in and slammed the door shut.

She was impatient to hear what he had to say, but he fetched a decanter of Scotch and poured a good measure.

‘Would you like one?’

‘No, thank you. Please, this is very important, Mr Markham. If you recognize this man-’

‘Just a second… I need a drop of water with this.’

Anna wanted to scream, but he came back quickly.

‘Okay. I have to piece this together because it was a long time ago, but…’

He picked up Henry Oates’s photograph.

‘Remember I said that I had to dismantle a wall at the Jordans’… well, I was wheeling the bricks out to my van, as they were nice old ones and I knew I could re-use them and… he came up to me and asked if there were any odd jobs I could give him.’

‘You never mentioned this before?’

‘No, the reason being he wasn’t employed to work at the Jordans’ and without this photograph… I just didn’t think. I gave him twenty quid to help stack up the bricks in the back of my van.’

‘Do you remember his name?’

‘Yes, Henry… Christ, I am so sorry, but you know, when I was first questioned I’d finished off the garden work at the Jordans’ almost six months previously and I was expanding my own company. I mean, if they’d shown me this photograph of course I’d have said something, but it was really more to do with where I was on the day Rebekka disappeared. I gave them the names of the guys who had helped me on the job and they were questioned, I think, but this…’

‘So on this day when he helped you wheel out the bricks, did he go into the Jordans’ back garden?’

‘Yeah, he would have had to, shit!’

‘Is that the only time you saw him?’

‘No. It must have been about one, maybe two weeks later that he turned up here looking for work. He looked down on his luck, I felt sorry for him and paid him fifty quid to clear out our septic tank as it was blocked up.’

‘How did he know where you lived?’

‘From the time before with the bricks. He came back here in the van to help me unload them. I was going to give him more odd jobs to do but Mum had a set-to with him.’

Mrs Markham walked back in with a towel.

‘Have they marked the sofa? How many times must I tell you to always keep the kitchen door closed as they dive in here at the slightest opportunity. You’ll have to hose them down, they’re filthy.’

‘Mother, do you remember this man?’

Anna couldn’t believe it. Mrs Markham picked up the photograph and pulled a face.

‘Yes I do, ghastly creature, I wanted him off my property. You remember I found him skulking around in the kitchen. He smelled dreadful and I said to him, what do you want, and he said a glass of water, I said I had taken a jug out not ten minutes before. It was the time the septic tank was blocked.’

Anna stood up and took a deep breath.

‘Could you both please sit down, this is very important. The man you have both recognized is a suspect in a murder enquiry. It is imperative I get the dates and times you remember seeing him as we believe he could have been involved in Rebekka Jordan’s and another girl’s disappearance.’

‘Oh God, this is terrible. He was in my kitchen!’

She grabbed Andrew’s Scotch from his hand and downed it in one.

Over at the multi-storey car park, Barolli now knew the dates when Henry Oates had worked on the construction site. The last one was the day after Fidelis Julia Flynn was known to be alive. They’d established that Oates was working the ticket machine area alone, with Pavel occasionally checking on him. His job, which he had completed, had been to finish digging out the area then pump in two foot of ready-mix concrete. He was supposed to turn up the next day when the cement was dry to help tile the floor, but he never showed up at the site again.

The archaeologists were almost finished with their GPR analysis and had found nothing that might suggest that a body was buried under the concrete. They told Barolli, who had remained at the scene throughout, that there was nothing more they could do and once they had finished the last section they were going to call it a day. Barolli then rang Mike Lewis to give him the bad news. Mike was naturally very disappointed but thought it strange that if Oates had abducted and murdered Fidelis he should turn up for work the next day, especially if he’d actually buried her there. The day’s events suggested that Oates might have hidden her body elsewhere. Before hanging up, Mike asked Paul to keep the two archaeologists on site as he not only wanted to come and thank them personally for their time and effort but also to seek their advice on further searches of the area.

By the time he got there the archaeologists had set up arc lights and one of them was in the lift shaft.

‘Wasn’t the lift built before Oates ever worked here?’ asked Mike.

‘Yeah, and we weren’t going to bother looking, but I remembered a manslaughter case I was involved with a few years back,’ Barolli began.

‘Paul, this is a murder enquiry…’

‘I know, but the job was a health and safety case. Engineer was working on a lift that had broken down between two floors. He left the door open, no safety tape, no nothing, some poor bloke walked straight in and fell three floors down to the bottom of the shaft.’

‘And your point is…’

‘There’s a recessed area, like a car inspection pit, below the ground floor, big enough to put a body in. So we thought it was worth a look. The archaeologist’s taken a hand-held radar down with him.’

Mike was impressed and patted Paul on the back. They watched the monitor screen, grey and fuzzy as the GPR inched slowly across the lift-shaft floor.

‘I’ve been staring at this all bloody day,’ Barolli moaned.

The lead archaeologist pointed to the screen.

‘We’ve got something.’

Barolli and Mike leaned closer, not really sure what they were looking at. The archaeologist hit a button on the laptop and a three-dimensional image started to appear. Like an ominous shadow a dark shape began to form. They were unable to detect exactly what it was, just that it was some kind of figure just below the surface of the concrete.

‘Is it what I think it is?’ asked Mike.

‘That’s what I’d expect to see with a buried body,’ said the archaeologist. ‘As to who it is… well, that’s up to forensics and pathology.’

Barolli gave Mike an admiring glance. He had certainly grown in confidence – maybe not having Langton breathing down his neck all the time was paying off.

Although time was of the essence, it was almost dark and the archaeologists had been working all day, so Mike was hesitant about continuing the work through the night. The two archaeologists were both now on a high and keen to keep going. It was agreed that they would get some colleagues in to continue the excavation while they took a couple of hours’ break.

‘This is gonna cost,’ Barolli said.

‘I know,’ said Mike slowly, ‘but I think we may have just found Fidelis Julia Flynn.’

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