Backlash (41 page)

Anna moved to the board to indicate the address of Ira’s flat close to Hammersmith Bridge. ‘We know the bird has already flown from there along with his girlfriend, so that would
mean it’s empty. He maybe could have broken in. They found the police car Oates stole abandoned in Hammersmith by the flyover. Sad as it may seem, we need to check on the Jordans and
Markhams; again this is all down to where we know he knows. The other location is Kingston, the housing estate were Timmy Bradford lives with his mother. There are also numerous empty flats there
that are being done up to be sold. Double-check the health club he used, any place we know Oates frequented.’

Anna hesitated and crossed to the large section of the board with the quarry pictures.

‘He knows this area, quote, like the back of my hand – who knows, he might return there. There’s also the gypsy camp – I don’t know whether or not they’d
allow him to hide out, but he’s doing just that, he is hiding out. Oates can’t risk going out amongst the public so he will probably move about at night. We need reports of any house
break-ins in London. Prioritize the night ones, particularly where food, cash or clothing is stolen. He worked for Andrew Markham, so check the Cobham area as well. There are barns and outhouses,
stables, lot of places to lie low. Mrs Markham had a greenhouse. We get as much manpower as we can to cover the known possibilities.’

Mike had been given clearance for a huge team of officers to coordinate and carry out the searches. Anna went into his office to ask if he wanted to join up with any of the
crews, but he shook his head. Orchestrating the search would be very much down to her. He himself had been kept busy with Scotland Yard and the press office, not to mention that the incident room
was being virtually deluged with potential sightings. Hundreds of phone calls were coming in, most from idiots, but every one of them had to be investigated and cleared. Four more clerical workers
had been brought in to handle the calls and record the details of the alleged sightings on the HOLMES computers. Everyone was working flat out, but they were beginning to flag as one possible
sighting after another proved unproductive.

Anna went through the list of all the locations that had been checked without any success. They had even had teams of officers from the Home Counties police forces searching woodland, farm
buildings and outhouses outside London but no visible trace of Oates had been found.

Mike shook his head with frustration. He was under huge pressure, having to fend off not only the press but also the Area Commander. ‘She’s asked me to give her a detailed review of
the operation, so obviously it’s a total failure,’ he told Anna.

‘It wasn’t a failure. For God’s sake, we uncovered five victims and under horrendous circumstances. Don’t let them wear you down, Mike, you have to speak up for
yourself.’

He sighed and then put his head in his hands.

‘Where the bloody hell is he?’

‘He’ll surface, he has to, and there is no way he can get far. Pump out more press on him, they’ve been screwing it up for us at the quarry. Turn it around on them.’

Mike looked up, frowning.

‘That bloody press helicopter was screwing it up, make them know it,’ Anna insisted. ‘Put a portion of the blame on them, we want as much coverage as is possible. Oates’s
ego will blow up in his face.’

Mike sat back.

‘Yeah. I guess I’m just tired out.’

‘Then go home and get some sleep. I’ll stay on here until late and you’ll feel a whole lot better in the morning.’

‘How come you look so good?’ he asked, smiling.

‘I had a full night’s sleep.’

The calls were like persistent gnats all night, buzzing and often anonymous, but they kept on coming. It was intensely frustrating to have so many leads and all of them false.
Every call had to be recorded and logged and Anna, along with Joan, Barbara and the extra clerical workers, were kept busy until at ten o’clock Anna said the night staff could take over. Joan
had a large bunch of flowers she was going to deliver to Barolli with a card signed by all the team close to the enquiry.

‘You’d better get them over there, Joan, they’re wilting.’

Anna was packing up ready to leave when Langton arrived.

‘I was just going home.’

‘Come and have a drink with me.’

She didn’t really feel like going to a pub, but he gestured to Mike’s office and tapped his coat pocket.

Langton opened the drawers until he found a glass and poured a heavy measure of Scotch into it.

‘Here you go. I’ll use the bottle.’

‘I can get a glass from the canteen.’

‘It’s closed.’

She looked at the Scotch and sipped; it hit the back of her throat like fire.

‘My God. I need some water in this.’

She opened a bottle of water left on Mike’s desk.

‘I’ve been to the mortuary – the Rebekka Jordan report will be in tomorrow morning. You got a cigarette?’

‘Yes I do actually; hang on, I’ll get them.’

Anna returned to the incident room and picked up her briefcase. The phones were still ringing nonstop.

Langton was drinking from the bottle of Scotch as she took out the packet of Silk Cut and tossed it onto the desk. He lit up and then opened the office window. She also took one, and he leaned
forwards to light it.

‘I looked in on the other victims. They’re mostly skeletons and a couple may have had animals at them. All lined up and laid out, just makes your heart sink to think that that piece
of shit is still out there.’

She took another sip of her watered-down Scotch. They were using a dirty half-filled coffee beaker as an ashtray.

‘What did the pathologist say about Rebekka?’

‘Jawbone broken and fractures to the skull, all occurred before death and consistent with being punched repeatedly, so looks like Oates was telling the truth when he said he hit her. Only
problem is, because her body was so badly decomposed he can’t give a definitive cause of death or say if he sexually assaulted her.’

‘So he will probably offer a plea of manslaughter, saying he didn’t mean to kill her, just shut her up?’

‘He won’t get away with that, not with the similar evidence on the girls he’s admitted raping and murdering so far.’

‘Well that’s something it’s better they don’t know.’

‘The parents?’

‘Of course.’

‘Like the Flynns they want to see their daughter,’ Langton groaned. ‘I’ve asked if they can do something with the remains. If I was them I wouldn’t, it’s no
longer their daughter, she’s long gone apart from that hair; lovely hair. It’s been cleaned.’

He took a long gulp of Scotch out of the bottle, and then put it down on the desk.

‘Listen, Mike is going to be torn to shreds. I’ve spoken with the Commander, tried to make it less of a fuck-up, but it’s hard, and no matter what excuses I make about the
fucking arc lights blowing and toppling, somebody still has to be the fall guy. Then we’ve got fucking Barolli leaving the keys in the ignition of the unmarked car, and the biggest screw-up
is that Oates had his handcuffs removed and took an armed officer’s gun.’

‘But you gave the order for that.’

His head snapped up.

‘What?’

‘You gave the clearance for the cuffs to be removed the second time. Oates was back in the wagon, Mike told you he wanted to call it a day but you overruled him. You told him to get Oates
out again.’

Langton stubbed out his cigarette. She could see his tight-lipped anger.

‘Didn’t you tell the Commander there was no way he could have climbed into the pit and up the other side with the cuffs on? We succeeded in recovering Rebekka Jordan’s remains
because of him being up on the ledge. If we hadn’t used Oates we might never have found her.’

Langton flipped the packet of cigarettes up and down, saying nothing. It was clear he had tried to offload the blame onto Mike and, incensed by what he’d done, she decided to stand up to
him.

‘You were there, the events that occurred to enable Oates to escape were not down to Mike’s incompetence, but . . .’

‘As you so tartly said, Travis, I was there, I am aware of exactly what happened.’

‘Paul Barolli tried to stop Oates by using the car door, and then got out to try and rugby-tackle an armed man and ended up getting shot for his troubles. It may have slipped your mind but
the cadaver dogs had found something and YOU told Paul, NOT Mike, to go over to the woods and that was why he was in the car!’

‘I know that, I bloody know that.’

‘Then you have to know that the blame cannot be pinned on anyone in particular.’

‘The top brass don’t see it as an act of God, so someone’s got to take the blame.’

‘Why? You were there, I was there . . .’

‘I have no intention of taking the flak for this, Travis, you hear me? I haven’t come this far to get rubbed out just when I am about to be recommended for . . .’

‘Another promotion board, is it! You’ve missed out on Commander how many times now?’

‘Yes it fucking is, and this case was in Mike Lewis’s hands.’

‘Not entirely. We did have Hedges, but you pissed him off so much he wasn’t interested. Since Rebekka Jordan’s name came into it you’ve been on Mike’s back
so—’

He interrupted. ‘You want to step forwards? You’re the DCI on the Rebekka Jordan enquiry, you want to put yourself forwards? Do you? NO, bet your sweet arse you don’t want to.
The reason I’m here tonight is so we can discuss—’

She went back at him angrily. ‘You aren’t discussing it. You’re telling me that Mike is going to be the scapegoat because somebody has to be held responsible for Oates’s
escape. Too damned right I am not holding up my hand, but I will support Mike in this.’

‘Let me finish, for Chrissake! What I wanted to discuss with you was keeping a bloody united front, everybody singing off the same hymn sheet so that there’s no one person
who’ll be singled out.’

She leaned back in her chair, knowing she had pushed the right button. Langton was basically making sure that he, as the most senior officer at the quarry, was not going to take the flak for the
shit that had already hit the fan, and he wanted to find some way of sweeping the whole mess under the table.

Langton spread his hands out and, calming down, said they should now go over all the details that led up to Oates being released from his handcuffs not once but twice.

‘It seems to me the main issue is whether the decision was right to get Oates out the second time, especially with the bad weather conditions and related safety issues,’ Anna
suggested to Langton.

‘The weather changed for the worse after the decision was made . . .’

‘Yes but you made it, not Mike,’ Anna reminded Langton.

‘I know, but none of you disagreed, and how could we have guessed what would happen next?’

‘Well, there’s a lot of the day’s events on video so it might be worth going over it . . .’

‘Well I hope the cameras were off when I head-butted Kumar.’

‘You did what?’ She was astonished.

‘I slipped in the mud,’ he said, smiling.

‘You know, your car was parked right across his and he couldn’t back out; he added to the chaos around Oates because he kept hooting his car horn. I wish I’d seen
it.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s another point to make, but another is the intrusion of the press helicopter. I want whoever authorized that to give us the person tipping them off about the
entire operation. We can lean on them as part of the screw-up.’

‘I already checked out the helicopter’s logo. News Flight Aviation – they’re contracted by independents or do film for themselves and sell the footage on. Whoever it was
must be getting a big backhander from the aerial pictures sold to the press, never mind the TV. We all suspect that Kumar is leaking the information – proving it is a different
matter.’

Langton nodded and then said they should get on with their so-called hymn sheet. He wanted all those involved to be aware that there could be a major enquiry, so they should be primed up and
ready.

They sat together, smoking and drinking, making notes, and only when he was satisfied did he call it quits, saying that she could go home.

‘Don’t you have one to go to?’ she joked.

He nodded to the bottle.

‘Last thing I need is to be picked up over the limit.’

She left him in Mike’s office, wondering if, like the old days, he was going to do an all-nighter. She was, as ever, impressed with his stamina – he was smartly dressed as always,
albeit with a six o’clock shadow, but she wouldn’t put it past him to have his shaving equipment in his briefcase.

Anna got into her car and could see that Langton’s Rover was still filthy, unlike her own Mini. She tried to calculate when Langton had taken a break. He had been at the site when the
bodies were uncovered, then at Scotland Yard over Oates’s escape, and had then gone back to the quarry, leaving only at dawn. He had been at the hospital with her to see Barolli, and she knew
he had spent time at the mortuary with the pathologist. She couldn’t imagine when and if he had slept at all. She was used to him being a night owl when she had worked alongside him; they had
all joked about his laundry and dry-cleaning bags stacked in his office.

She tried not to think about him. She hoped that the promotion he had hinted at was on the cards this time round, that it might be the reason he was putting so much time in, desperate to get
that next rank, plus there was a big difference between a chief super’s and a commander’s pension. Deep down, Anna also believed that the Langtons of the force were now few and far
between. He wasn’t quite old school like her father, he was the next generation, but as he was coming up for retirement age she suspected that he did not want a blemish on his hard-fought-for
career. She knew of a few incidents that were certainly more than blemishes, but that was yet again part of Langton’s character. He did bend the rules; he did unleash his fury and was
unafraid to have a go at the Kumars of this world. There was no other officer she had worked alongside that had gained the respect of everyone who had worked with him.