Backlash

Chapter Six

Mind if I sit with you?’ Anna asked Barbara the next morning. She’d decided to get to work early and have breakfast in the canteen.

‘Good heavens, no.’ Barbara put her Daily Mail to one side, eyeing up Anna’s loaded tray, piled with eggs, bacon, sausages and fried bread, plus coffee, in stark contrast to her own bowl of half-eaten bran cereal. ‘Not on a diet then?’

Anna smiled and shook her head.

‘I’ve been on one for twenty years. I hate bran, it’s like chewing cardboard, but I reckon my system has got used to it. I crave a big fry-up, but I get terrible indigestion. I’ve got packets of Rennies in all my handbags and pockets because if I’m not careful I get this heartburn after anything fried.’

Anna tucked in, not really paying any attention to Barbara’s stomach condition.

‘How did it go in Glasgow?’ Barbara eventually asked.

Anna gave her a sketchy outline, ending with the one new possibility that Henry Oates had worked in a riding stable.

‘Well, shovelling shit could mean anything, road sweeping even.’

‘I know.’

Barbara sipped her green tea and pulled a disgusted grimace. ‘I hate bloody green tea as well.’

‘You have anything from yesterday?’ asked Anna.

‘Not that much. Trying to piece together a character build and last known sightings for Fidelis Flynn. We had her flatmates in, nice girls, both at art college when Fidelis answered the advert for sharing. They said she was younger than them and from what I could gather they didn’t want to know that much about her. She was behind with the rent and was always very argumentative; you know the type of thing that happens with flat-sharing.’

‘I don’t actually.’

Barbara gave her an odd look of surprise. ‘Well it’s who takes the last of the butter, uses your shampoo and doesn’t clear up after themselves that starts the friction. They said she was always a few quid short for the rent…’ Barbara leaned forwards. ‘She didn’t intend leaving – well I don’t think so, because we found her make-up and a purse in one of the suitcases she left with her clothes, and in it were two twenty-pound notes and some loose change.’

‘But did she take any other belongings with her?’

‘They didn’t really know what was missing, if anything, because they didn’t know what she had in her wardrobe. All they recalled was that the evening Fidelis went missing she left their flat to go to work and didn’t appear to be worried about anything. They thought she might be working late as the garage stays open until midnight, but what they did remember was that she always carried a rucksack-type bag. When she didn’t return, they did nothing.’

‘Doesn’t quite make sense. Why did they think she’d done a runner without paying the rent she owed if she’d left her make-up behind and the wardrobe was still full of her clothes?’

‘No, they were packed into the suitcases and zip-up bag that local police seized later.’

‘Still sort of doesn’t sit right. Also, if there was money and she was short of it, why leave it behind if she didn’t intend returning?’

‘A workmate at the garage was questioned when her parents reported her missing. He said that he had an on-off relationship with Fidelis and although she had started seeing a male nurse they were still friends. He had expected her to come to work the night she went missing.’

‘Was this the first time she’d failed to show up for work?’

Barbara nodded and said that she and Joan had talked about it and what they came up with was that Fidelis had maybe intended leaving, perhaps was even going to meet someone to rent another room somewhere. But as she’d left her belongings and money behind, they thought she must have been planning to return, at least for that night.

‘Did you get anything further from her phone calls?’

Barbara’s eyes opened wide and she smiled. Anna knew that she was at last about to be told something encouraging.

‘Yes, the unregistered phone. I ran a property lost or stolen check on the number and I got a hit. Reported stolen in a mugging a few days after Fidelis went missing.’

‘Good work, Barbara. So who does the phone belong to?’

‘A Barry Moxen, and he’s coming into the station this morning, never even knew she had been reported missing. He’s a nurse who works in Charing Cross Hospital. When I talked to him he said he had not seen or heard from Fidelis for almost nineteen months. He met her at a New Year’s party and had been having a sexual relationship with her on a regular basis and when he didn’t hear from her he just presumed she had finished with him.’

Anna moved her plate aside.

‘It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? The girl goes missing and everyone that appeared to know her never reported it. If it wasn’t for her parents we’d maybe never have even known she’d disappeared.’

Barbara returned to the incident room and repeated her conversation with Anna to Joan, who suggested they quickly update the incident board with all the data as she didn’t want Anna finding fault. They had just completed it when Anna came in from the canteen, but she went straight to her desk. The first thing she did was pick up a voicemail from Pete Jenkins at the forensic lab. When she rang back he was not available as his wife had just been taken into hospital; her waters had broken and the baby was coming earlier than expected.

Anna had no other calls so she picked up her marker pen and went over to the section of the incident board that was allocated to Rebekka Jordan. She began listing all the information she had gathered from the last few days.

Barbara glanced up. ‘Looks like she’s writing a novel,’ she whispered to Joan. But they didn’t get an opportunity to read it all for themselves until Anna had gone into Mike Lewis’s office.

‘What’s this about the doll’s house?’ Joan wondered. She peered closer and then pulled a face.

‘She’s got a suspect, Andrew Markham.’ Barbara tapped his name and Joan returned to her desk.

‘Do you watch CSI, Barbara?’

‘Sometimes, why?’

‘They had a long-running case, over quite a few episodes, about a serial killer that sent in these little doll’s house rooms to police just before the murder. Then after the murder he posted these tiny dolls with knives stuck in them or gunshot wounds matching how he had actually killed the victims. One even had a teeny little cup and poison…’

‘I didn’t see it.’

‘My mother never misses an episode.’

Mike listened as Anna brought him up to date and finished by asking if she could put Joan or Barbara onto tracing any known associates of Henry Oates. He agreed. They had found no address book or diary in Oates’s basement so they had no idea of who he knew, but they had been gathering details on his infrequent employment through his National Insurance number and Jobseeker’s. It appeared that whenever the Department for Work and Pensions threatened to withdraw his Jobseeker’s Allowance he managed to find work for six to eight weeks. Apart from the jobs listed it appeared he had basically worked for cash in hand. They had tracked down various building, painting and decorating businesses, but it was tedious work and questioning each employer was taking up a lot of time. The priority was to check construction work he could have been involved in eighteen months previously and if there was any site that might be linked to the disappearance of Fidelis Flynn.

There was no record of him having worked for Andrew Markham, even though they had gone back as far as seven years. Anna suggested they send someone to the stables again to see if anyone could recall him working there on a cash basis.

Mike agreed, but observed that the old stable yard had recently been taken over and refurbished. The new stables were much larger, but still close to the Shepherd’s Bush flyover.

‘I’d like to go and look at this Andrew Markham’s garden centre,’ Anna said.

‘Okay. I’ll get Barolli to check out the stables for you, and go ahead with asking Barbara to trace any boxing associates of Oates.’

‘Thank you.’

Mike smiled. Sometimes she forgot what a good-looking man he was; very blond and blue-eyed. He was also dressing much better since he had been made a DCI, in suits and freshly laundered shirts. In fact, he was starting to resemble Langton – not quite as flashy – but she noticed that like the ‘Guvnor’ he now had bags from the local drycleaner’s in his office.

‘What?’ he asked, seeing her looking at them. ‘Just you look different, very smart and slightly like Langton – you are prepared for an all-night session.’

‘What?’

‘The dry-cleaning. He always used to have half his wardrobe in his office.’

‘Oh right, yes, just for convenience really, and this afternoon I’ve got that prick Adan Kumar coming in.’

‘What’s he want now?’

‘Just to look at the list of forensic exhibits and the unused material in the Justine Marks case.’

‘Has he said anything about a psychiatric assessment of Oates yet?’

‘No, and Langton said don’t raise the subject with Kumar.’

‘Oates being in the prison hospital could help Kumar’s argument that he’s not the full ticket.’

‘Right. I know that, but we’ve been running a check every day with the prison governor and Oates hasn’t required any further medical treatment since the assault. They said he’s suffering from depression and put him on suicide watch just in case.’

‘Do you think he’s faking it?’

‘Could be. Couple of days he refused to eat, but now he’s accepting food and complaining that he’s hungry, so he doesn’t sound to me as if he’s climbing up and down the walls.’

‘Anything worth re-interviewing him about yet?’ Mike shrugged. ‘I’m in no hurry and he’ll be in the hospital wing for a few days yet.’

Again she thought how attractive he was when he gave a lovely smile.

‘I’m hoping we get more on your enquiry and the Fidelis girl. They’ve got a boyfriend coming in this morning.’

Anna stood up and said she’d clear her desk and then get over to Andrew Markham’s garden centre.

‘You got a bad feeling about this guy?’

She hesitated and then after a moment nodded. ‘The thing is, as far as we can tell Oates never owned a vehicle and did not have one when Rebekka Jordan went missing. Whoever picked her up had to have access to a car or a van to snatch her off the street. All the CCTV footage on the day she disappeared from the Tube station shows no sighting of her buying a ticket or catching a Tube, so she had to have been grabbed during that short walk from the stables to the station.’

‘Yeah, but in the report two cameras were out of action, so it’s a possibility she did go into the station, met her killer on the train maybe.’

‘But not one witness came forward, not even after the TV reconstructions or all the press handouts; she had to have been snatched not far from the stables. Well that’s what I think.’

‘You could be right,’ Mike conceded.

‘See you later then,’ Anna said as she headed for the door. ‘I forgot to tell you DCS Hedges rang while you were in Glasgow.’

‘What’s he want?’

‘Well he is supposed to be in charge while Langton is off. He gave me an ear-bashing about Langton going above him. Pissed off with me as well, said that if Langton wants to run the show from his sickbed then he can get on with it. Reckoned if it all goes tits up it’s not his problem.’

‘So we don’t need to keep updating him as well.’

‘Looks like it, yeah.’

Anna returned to her desk and asked Joan to ring York Hall, the big amateur and professional boxing venue, to ask the head trainer if he remembered Henry Oates, his friends or sparring partners and to find out if they kept a library of old fight programmes or posters. Before leaving she took a quick look over Fidelis Julia Flynn’s board. They now had more recent photographs of her. In one picture she was smiling, revealing her slightly crooked teeth. In another she was standing with a spaniel puppy, laughing, wearing a floral dress over black tights and Doc Martens boots. Anna sighed. There was always something from the photographs of the missing or murdered girls that haunted you. It was the light in their eyes, which you knew was now gone.

‘They were sent in by her parents,’ Joan said as she opened a drawer in her desk. ‘There’s more if you want to see them.’

‘No, thank you. I’ll be on my way. Be back after lunch and I’ll be on my mobile anyway.’

Before she left the station she couldn’t resist heading down to the interview rooms on the floor below.

Barry Moxen was sitting opposite Barbara. He had black hair, spiky and gelled, a lot of acne, and was wearing a heavy leather biker’s jacket. Anna watched for a few moments via the window in the door and as she turned to leave Barbara saw her.

‘You want to talk to him?’ Barbara opened the door. ‘I don’t think so.’

Barbara closed the door and stepped out into the corridor.

‘I showed him the picture of Fidelis. He says she always called herself Julia and that she was seeing the bloke from the garage before she went out with him. He was working night shift at the hospital the whole week during the period Fidelis went missing. I rang them and they confirmed it. Last time he saw her was the weekend before his night shift when they went to the cinema. Julia told him she was fed up with the girls in the flat she shared and she was going to see some other rooms for rent and that she’d call him when she got a new address. She never did. Like he told me on the phone, he reckoned she’d ditched him.’

‘Did he try her old flat?’

‘Yeah, he was told she’d moved out.’

‘Okay. Just ask if he knew the address or location of any of the new places Fidelis was going to view. Did she use a letting agent, look in the papers or online, Time Out, Gumtree or whatever, then you’ll have to check back and see if she contacted any of them.’

‘Oh right, will do.’

Andrew Markham’s garden centre was hard to find. It was not far from Cobham in Surrey, but the entrance was on a curve in the road, so easily missed. It had a barred gate with a notice to please make sure the gate was always closed. Only a small sign indicated that it was also a garden design company. Anna opened the gate and drove a few feet before she returned and heaved it shut. She found herself on a dirt track with big cart ruts and deep puddles. On one side was an open field; the other had a large barn with private property notices fixed to the side. The lane went on for about a quarter of a mile before a green-painted sign read MARKHAM’S GARDEN DESIGNS.

A big red arrow pointed to a high barred gate, which was standing open enough for Anna to drive in.

The garden centre had about an acre of land. Scattered around were modern greenhouses and there was another large barn, full of tractors, vans with the company logo, and a Range Rover. There was a trailer-cum-caravan with ‘Office’ printed on a card on the door. Anna knocked and waited, but there was no answer. She tried the door, but it was locked.

Now she wished she’d put her wellington boots in the car as it was very muddy, forcing her to hop over two deep puddles as she headed for the first greenhouse. Plants grew in profusion, every shelf creaking with different varieties of flora. It was very well heated and irrigated, but it was also empty.

‘Hello? Anyone here?’ she called out.

There was no reply so she made her way towards the second greenhouse. Outside were hundreds of clay pots of every size and a few stone statues. Anna could see more plants and inside this greenhouse the sprinklers were turned on. They gave a fine spray, making the windows steam up.

Anna looked around the yard. The last building was the barn, and she plodded through the mud to get to it. The old wooden door was ajar and through it she could hear the sound of a tinny radio playing Bruce Springsteen.

‘Hello? Is anyone here?’

She peered inside: it was huge. Both sides were stacked with sacks of peat and soil reaching the ceiling. Then her gaze fell on a mass of gardening equipment – rakes and brushes and shovels – all piled in a square wooden pen. Wheelbarrows were propped against each other in a row and beyond them was a stable. A horse’s head stuck out, chewing straw, and the closer Anna got the more she could smell the overpowering stench of manure. A large second pen held bales of straw and sacks of horse feed. Propped above an old carpenter’s bench were saddles and riding equipment, and hard hats balanced on pegs.

The second stall was empty but Anna was drawn by the sound of water and clanging buckets.

‘Hello?’ she called.

There was a girl wearing jodhpurs, a green padded jacket and a cloth cap. She had rubber riding boots on and was using a hose to wash down the walls.

‘Excuse me. Hello,’ Anna tried again.

The girl turned and gasped with shock as Anna had surprised her. She pulled out an earphone.

‘Christ, you scared the hell out of me.’

‘I’m so sorry. I’ve been calling out for ages.’

‘What do you want?’

Anna showed her ID and the girl pulled off a thick padded leather glove.

‘Shit, this isn’t that bloody farmer having a go at us again, is it?’

‘No, but if you could spare me a few minutes I’d like to talk to you. I am Detective Anna Travis.’

‘I’m Mari. Here, take the keys and go into the caravan and I’ll finish in here. Only the other horse will be back any minute and I want it clean before he’s here.’

Anna opened up the caravan and got into the warmth. An old Calor gas heater made it feel like an oven. There was a decrepit floral sofa with the stuffing hanging out, two equally old armchairs, a large desk, and filing cabinets that were new and covered one wall. There was also a small kitchen with rows of chipped mugs and instant coffee jars and boxes of tea bags with names taped to them.

It was about fifteen minutes before Mari banged into the caravan, making it shake.

‘That man is making our lives a nightmare. We are not allowed to put up a decent sign on the road, so we don’t get any passing customers – not that we really need them – but it’s a constant battle. I hope to Christ you shut the gate when you came in.’

‘Yes.’

‘Good, because God forbid it’s left open. That bastard comes down the lane like something out of a Gothic nightmare. Trouble is, Andrew was left this patch of land by his father and he, the so-called farmer, wants him to sell up, which Andy refuses to do unless he’s paid a good price. He just wants his bloody cows to use our path.’

Mari took off her cloth cap and a cascade of wild golden ringlets came loose. She was an exceedingly pretty woman. Devoid of any make-up, her skin was like a young child’s with ruddy cheeks and she had freckles dotted over her small neat nose.

‘So what’s this all about then?’

She plonked herself down on one of the worn armchairs, indicating for Anna to sit in the other.

‘Well my full title is DCI Anna Travis from the Met murder team.’

‘Wow. Well my full name, believe it or not, is Marigold Summers – bane of my life. My sisters are also named after flowers; theirs are Daisy and Violet. Hippy parents, obviously, but everyone calls me Mari.’

Anna smiled. Mari was a character, albeit it a very attractive one, with her skinny frame beneath an old man’s shirt, jodhpurs and rubber riding boots. She also had tiny slender hands.

‘Do you smoke?’

‘No I don’t.’

‘Mind if I make a roll-up?’

‘No.’

‘So why are you here? I think Daisy said she took a call from some detective about contacting Andy, but he’s in Thailand, due back this weekend.’

Anna watched as Mari fished in her pockets and took out a small square tin, pinched some tobacco out of it and very professionally rolled a thin cigarette. Licking the paper and twisting the end tightly, Mari then got up and fetched a lighter from the desk.

‘So what is this all about then?’

She sucked at the thin roll-up and flicked the lighter on a couple of times before the tobacco caught.

‘It’s about a missing teenager; a girl called Rebekka Jordan.’

Mari gave no reaction to the name as she leaned forwards to listen.

‘Mr Markham did some work on a property in Hammersmith for a Mr and Mrs Jordan. It’d be over five years ago.’

There was still no reaction from Mari as she puffed at her roll-up.

‘Do you have documents here that could give me a list of the people Mr Markham employed on that specific job?’

‘I can have a look. I wasn’t around then. His filing system is a bit of a mess, his accountant goes mad, he’s always behind, but half the time it’s not his fault. You’d be surprised how late people pay their bills. The posher and richer they are, the worse they are. He’s forever sending off invoice after invoice.’

Mari began to pull open drawers in one of the filing cabinets and turned to Anna.

‘Sorry, I’ve forgotten what I’m looking for?’

‘Mr and Mrs Jordan from Hammersmith.’

Mari banged open one drawer after another. ‘It’d be a help if he put them in alphabetical order.’

‘Tell me about Mr Markham?’

Mari turned and grinned. ‘He’s fabulous. I adore him. I was in love with him from the age of seven as he knows my parents. I was always obsessed with horses and he used to be part of the local hunt. In fact the two hunters we’ve got are sort of a charity case as they’re ancient, but he won’t let them be sent off to the glue factory. We give the local kids riding lessons and-’

‘Is he married?’

Mari was now sitting on the floor with a stack of folders, skimming them and putting them to one side.

‘He has been twice, but with him working all hours here they didn’t last. He lives in his mother’s house now, but you’ll often find him kipping on that old sofa. Ah! Hang on…’

Mari had a thick file filled with papers and drawings and pictures of greenhouses cut from magazines. She carried it to her chair and sat balancing it on her knee.

‘I think this is it. Gosh, it was quite a big job. There’s loads of invoices. What do you want to see?’

‘Did he use regular workers? Can you see if there is a list of people he employed to do the job?’

Mari skipped through the pages and then passed the file over to Anna.

‘I can’t really tell you. It was quite a long time ago. He used to work part-time at Kew until he got this place up and running.’

Anna smiled as she tried to sort through the mess of documents.

‘How many people work for him on a permanent basis?’

‘Well there’s me, my sister Daisy, two old blokes that he uses for the heavy lifting, and William who does the deliveries and buys any plants we don’t grow here.’

‘Have you ever seen this man before?’

Anna passed Henry Oates’s photograph to her. She looked and wrinkled her nose.

‘No, don’t know him.’

‘When Mr Markham does a big job, say like the Jordans’, does he bring in extra help?’

‘Yeah, if he needs to. I mean the two old guys live locally and they don’t go out on jobs as they’ve got their work cut out here. William sometimes helps out, and me and Daisy, but the commissioned work is always handled by Andy. If he needs muscle he’ll get self-employed casual labour.’

‘Cash in hand, would that be?’

‘Yes, always is for part-timers. I think he’s got a group of guys he uses on a regular basis when they are needed.’

‘Do you have their names?’

Mari chewed her lip and then picked up the lighter, sticking her roll-up in the corner of her mouth.

‘Now, they may be in his address book. He’s mind-blowing cos he uses a big old leather thing from years ago. We buy him new ones, but he likes to keep the old moth-eaten one cos he can’t be bothered to transfer all the names and addresses.’

Mari was now looking over the desk, moving stuff aside and opening drawers.

‘What about a computer?’

‘He uses a laptop all the time, carries it with him. It will probably be at his house.’

‘Would he have a record of employees on his computer?’

‘Yeah, he might have.’

Anna was getting frustrated. The Jordans’ file contained invoices, a list of plants, costings for the removal of a small fishpond and plans for a new garden layout and large new pond. There were photographs of the back of the Jordans’ house, showing the trees and shrubs that required removal. Amongst the papers were more diagrams of the brick wall that was to be replaced, the fences and then many samples of materials for the extension and proposed garden changes. It was almost impossible to find anything about how many people would be required to do the job, but it confirmed her belief that it would have been impossible for one man to do the clearance. She knew from the builders that Markham had excavated areas of the garden so the footings and foundations could be laid for the extension. From the dates on the invoices she calculated that Markham started the clearance work at the end of June 2006 and it probably took about two weeks to complete.

Mari dumped a thick leather-bound diary onto the desk. Page after page was covered with Post-it notes, stuck with Sellotape to some pages, and at the back were names and addresses, hundreds of them. There were so many scribbled notes and crossings-out, it was difficult to decipher anything, but Anna began to sift through it anyway.

‘When did this girl go missing?’

Anna looked up as Mari began rolling another cigarette. ‘Five years ago.’

‘Oh wow, long time. How come you are asking questions about it now?’

‘We have a suspect.’

‘Wow, that’s interesting. And you think he might have worked for Andy?’

Anna looked up, surprised that Mari had worked it out.

‘Yes, it’s possible, but I really need to talk to Mr Markham.’

The sounds of a horse’s hooves clattering on the cobbled stones outside made Mari yank open the caravan door.

‘Daisy, I’m in here! I washed down the stall so you can give him his feed!’ she yelled, then shut the door and pointed to a black-and-white photograph pinned on a noticeboard.

‘That’s him, he’s such a dozy lovable nag. He’s seventeen hands and twenty years old now.’

Anna smiled as she glanced at the photograph. Mari lit her second roll-up.

‘Is that Mr Markham riding?’

‘No, that was his father. Do you want a coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

DS Paul Barolli had a fear of horses – in fact it was almost a phobia. He’d been given one lesson, aged seven, and the horse had trodden on him and injured his foot. He hated the smell of the manure, his stomach churned and he wanted to pinch his nose. The stables were very busy with young children having lessons in the manège area, the horses’ hooves throwing up sand as the instructor shouted for her pupils to sit up straight and gather in the reins for a trot. There were youngsters and adults mucking out stables, grooming horses and buffing up leather saddles. Barolli, not paying attention to where he was going, found himself stepping in a fresh mound of horse muck.

The stable manager’s assistant, Kelly, a young girl in jodhpurs and thick polo-neck sweater, was removing her boots when Barolli was ushered into the reception office. He attempted to explain the reason for his visit, but was constantly interrupted as another girl answered the telephone, arranging rides and lessons and asking Kelly for timetables. It was hard for him to concentrate as he was sweating profusely, but he began to ease up when Kelly suggested they use an adjoining small office where they wouldn’t be disturbed.

Barolli showed Kelly the photograph of their suspect.

‘We are interested to know if there is anyone working here who recalls seeing this man. He may have worked part-time and used the name Henry Oates.’

‘Five or six years ago?’ Kelly said, looking at the photograph.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve heard about the girl that went missing, but you do know the whole stables have moved as it’s a much bigger organization now and we also have an equestrian training ring and large indoor-’

He interrupted her. ‘Yes, yes, we are aware of that, but would you know if there are any employees still working here from the old stables?’

‘It’s likely, though I wouldn’t know, to be honest, I’ve only been here eighteen months, but I can get someone to find out for you.’

‘Thank you.’

Kelly returned to the larger office and Barolli could hear her asking if it was possible to run a check on the computer for a Henry Oates. She came back in and explained that they had a big turnover of people at weekends and that they also had a lot of trainers and owners coming through as they stabled privately owned horses.

‘It’s more likely this person worked mucking out. I doubt if he would have owned or ridden a horse, just been part-time labour,’ Paul told her.

‘What happened to the girl?’

‘Her name was Rebekka Jordan. It has been an ongoing investigation, but we’ve had a couple of new leads so they have to be looked into.’

‘But you don’t know what happened to her?’

‘No we don’t.’

Kelly glanced at her wristwatch and apologized, saying she only had another few minutes before she was due to teach a lesson in the indoor arena.

‘I can walk you round the stables if you like. I presume you’ll want to show everyone this photograph.’

‘I’d like to wait to see if there is anyone from five years ago and then talk to them in here. I’m allergic to hay, I get hay fever.’

It took Anna over an hour to read through the whole of Markham’s diary and finish checking the files for the job at the Jordans’. Mari had returned now and again to top up her mug of coffee. By the time Anna left she felt it had been a lot of time wasted and she still had no connection between Andrew Markham and Henry Oates. She had found some memos listing cash payments for part-time labour, but no names had been mentioned. She had made a copy of the dates and times Markham had worked for the Jordans, but his payments for the clearance had been settled by the builders. The fee for his work on the redesign of their garden, after the extension had been completed, was paid directly to his company account. Markham had finished working at the Jordans almost six months before Rebekka went missing.

It turned out that the head groom and one of the riding instructors had been employed as young stable hands at the old yard when Rebekka went missing, but neither of them were able to identify Henry Oates. They remembered Rebekka, particularly as both had been questioned by Langton’s team. They did recall that often part-time labour would be used when the stables were being repaired. The previous owners used to hire from a job centre, but they were often youngsters. Barolli had heard enough, and couldn’t wait to get back to the station.

Barolli and Anna arrived back at the incident room at the same time.

‘Got nothing new from the stables,’ he said. ‘There were two blokes who’d worked there for over five years and they’d also been questioned by Langton’s team and cleared, but they didn’t recognize Oates as ever being seen around there.’

‘I didn’t get much luck either.’ Anna wrote up her section of the board, underlining that Andrew Markham was still to be questioned on his return from Thailand.

‘What’s he doing there?’ Barolli asked.

‘Holiday.’

‘Ah, likes the young girls there, I bet. That’s why most blokes go there. They throw themselves at you.’

‘Really? Well, we’ll see what he says, but according to this girl Marigold Summers, he buys up a lot of artefacts there and gets them shipped here for his garden displays.’

‘Excuse me, ma’am.’ Anna turned to see Joan standing there. ‘I’ve had some luck on the boxing front. I’ve sent out one of the guys to York Hall to bring in old posters and programmes that they had in storage and I’ve got a couple of names and possible addresses for boxers that trained there in the nineties and were friends with Henry Oates.’

‘Good. Put the details on my desk, Joan.’

Realizing it was getting late, Anna went to the Ladies for a wash and brush-up and then rushed to the canteen. By the time she returned to her desk it was after six, and Barbara and Joan had already left.

Anna seriously considered packing up and doing the same. Beside her desk was a large brown carrier bag with a lot of rolled-up posters and old boxing programmes, all with that distinctive musty smell as if they had been stashed in a damp cupboard somewhere.

The two ex-boxers identified as friends of Henry Oates were a Timmy Bradford and Ira Zacks. There was an address and home number for Bradford and a mobile number for Zacks. Anna sighed – she really didn’t feel fresh enough to contact them and arrange interviews so marked it up as a priority for the morning. She decided she wouldn’t even look over the posters and programmes, but make her escape and have an early night.

As she headed to the car park, Anna’s phone rang. Langton. She didn’t answer, but it immediately rang again. She swore under her breath, certain it would be Langton, but it turned out to be Pete Jenkins from the forensic lab. Feeling guilty about not calling him about his baby, she answered.

‘Pete. I was just about to call you.’

‘I’ve been at the maternity hospital. Baby came early. She’s doing all right, but it’s been touch and go; she was just three pounds and has got some infection, so she’s still in the intensive care unit. Her breathing’s getting better, though, she’s a real little fighter.’

‘I’m so sorry, but a baby girl, congratulations!’

‘She going to be called Matilda, Maddy, and she’s got thick black curly hair. It’s scary; she nearly fits into the palm of my hand.’

‘I love the name. How is your wife?’

‘She’s very tearful and it’s hard to go back onto the ward with all the other mothers as they have their babies with them, so she’s coming home. In fact I’m going to pick her up now.’

‘Fingers crossed then, and thanks for calling.’

‘I just wanted to say I’ll be back at the lab tomorrow. My assistants have done a lot of dirty work sorting stuff if you want to come in. I’ll be there around twelve.’

‘See you then.’

‘Okay, bye now.’

Anna sighed and started up the ignition, just as her mobile rang yet again. It was Langton this time, of course, but she was eager to get home.

No sooner had she got through her front door than her landline rang. This time she decided to pick up.

‘Travis?’

‘Yes. How you doing?’

‘Don’t you answer your effing mobile?’

‘Been out interviewing.’

‘Any chance of you dropping in?’

‘Not tonight. I’ve only just walked in.’

‘On your way in tomorrow then, we can have breakfast. Bring some fresh bagels and smoked salmon. I also need some coffee.’

She scrawled his requests on a notepad by the phone. ‘See you in the morning about eight.’ She cut off the call, not wanting to talk further. He was starting to really grate on her nerves and she’d tell him so in the morning.

Lying in bed after a long hot shower, she mulled over the day’s progress. She didn’t have a lot. There were no further developments in the Rebekka Jordan enquiry. She thought about Pete with his beloved little Matilda in an incubator and it made her wonder about what it would be like, God forbid, to lose a child. Ken had wanted a family – his rugby team – and she had wanted it too. An awful sadness swamped her. She had hoped for so much and had been left with nothing.