Joan was sitting with her coat on ready to leave when Anna got back from the canteen. She gave one of her flushed looks.
‘Both of those men have criminal records. Timmy Bradford, when he was a juvenile, for assault and burglary and a six-month sentence for handling stolen property. Ira Zacks has had a number of run-ins with the law. Ten years ago, again an assault charge. He apparently used too much force ejecting someone from a disco, but more recently he was flagged up by the Drug Squad. Suspected of being involved in a cocaine ring; they’ve been monitoring the gang for eighteen months.’
Anna sighed, resting her head in her hands. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. I should have checked them out earlier.’
‘It’s all right, Joan, don’t worry about it. I’m as much to blame.’
‘Here’s all the details and if you want the contact for the Drug Squad officer there’s his mobile and office number.’
‘Thank you.’
Joan hovered and asked if she could get off home and Anna nodded, more interested in reading the reports.
‘It’s just I have to do a grocery shop for my mother.’
‘Goodnight, Joan.’
Anna was furious at herself; it was a real oversight. But even knowing their backgrounds didn’t really change the fact they both denied seeing Henry Oates for a number of years. Unless of course they had both lied, but she could see no reason why, as neither would benefit from it. What concerned her was her lack of intuition. It was even worse that Mike Lewis had been onto Ira Zacks’ possible drug connection without even meeting him.
She opened a bottle of water and fished around in her desk for a packet of aspirin and took three. Sitting sipping the lukewarm water that had been on her desk all day she picked up the phone and rang the Drug Squad. The officer Joan had mentioned was not at work so she left a message, hoping that she hadn’t in any way compromised their operation by visiting Zacks at his home address. If she had, she knew Langton would go ballistic at her failure to carry out basic procedures.
The aspirins were beginning to do their job as she headed towards Hammersmith and the Jordans’ property. Was it coincidence that Ira Zacks lived not far from them?
‘Stop it. Just stop it,’ she told herself. She had to be in total control for her meeting with Stephen Jordan as she knew it would be wretched.
Stephen Jordan opened their front door a moment after she had rung the bell. ‘Emily’s out with some friends at the theatre,’ he said as he led the way into the kitchen.
Anna put her briefcase down on the granite-topped counter and then quietly told him how she had discovered the figures. She brought out the plastic evidence bag, laid out a piece of sterile paper and carefully removed the wooden pieces from their Perspex boxes, first the tiny head and then the leg.
‘Do you recognize these, Mr Jordan?’
He didn’t touch either, but stood staring down at them. After a long pause he had to cough before he could speak.
‘Yes. I carved them. They are made from plywood and the head I remember painting. See the small hole at the top of the leg? I used very fine pins from my wife’s sewing kit to attach them to the bodies.’
‘Are you absolutely certain? These are the ones you made?’
‘Yes, one moment.’
He quickly turned and she heard him running up the stairs. Although it was only a few moments it felt like an age before he returned. He held out in the palm of his hand two tiny dolls; one had on a little white dress and black painted shoes, her pigtails made of woven yellow cotton. The other doll was incomplete, just a head attached to a post, the face half painted.
‘I was working on these for Rebekka’s new doll’s house.’
He laid them down beside the head and the leg and they were without doubt identical in shape and size.
‘May I take these with me, Mr Jordan?’
‘Yes of course. I have more if you need them.’
‘No, this is enough.’
Anna carefully replaced the figures in the boxes, which then went into the evidence bag.
‘It’s almost over, isn’t it?’ His voice was hardly audible. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘This man, this suspect, it’s him, isn’t it?’
She closed her briefcase. ‘This is very incriminating evidence, but we have nothing to indicate that Rebekka did in fact have the figures with her on the day she disappeared.’
‘They’d fit in her pocket. She often used to take them with her to school.’
‘Yes I know, but this is not yet confirmation. Our suspect could say he found them.’
‘Oh God, it’s unbelievable…’
‘Thank you for seeing me, Mr Jordan, and I will be in touch as soon as I have anything further to tell you.’
He could hardly speak as he followed her down the hall back to the front door. Finally he choked it out:
‘I see her every day. I wake up and she’s standing out there on the path in the drive… Bye-bye, Daddy… that was the last time I saw her and I will live with that moment for the rest of my life… Bye-bye, Daddy…’
Anna gently touched his arm and could almost feel the grief that tortured him.
‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, Detective Travis. Thank you.’
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.’