Barbara raised her hand and said that if Oates had gone to the site at night, thrown the body down the lift shaft and covered it with concrete the next day then surely someone would have noticed the new level the following morning!
‘Good point, Barbara, but the lift was already completed and in working order, so nobody ever had a need to look inside the shaft. Oates would have to have used some kind of transport to get the body to the site so he probably borrowed, or more likely nicked, a motor. Joan, I need a list of all lost or stolen vehicles in London on the day Fidelis went missing.’
Listening to Mike and watching the expressions on the faces of the team, Anna realized what she had missed while on Specialist Casework. She could once again feel the buzz of excitement and adrenalin rush through the room when an investigation suddenly made a major breakthrough. She hoped that what she was about to tell the team would add to the euphoria. Mike looked over to her as she came forward.
‘I have a big development. I went to Cobham to interview Andrew Markham who runs a garden design company. He excavated the garden for Rebekka Jordan’s parents.’
Anna pinned up the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures given to her by Markham.
‘There was this brick wall and tree that had to be removed before the builders could dig out the earth and lay the foundations for the extension. Mr Markham dismantled the wall brick by brick, they were Victorian and he decided rather than get rid of them in the skips he would retain them for himself to use in his work.’
She could sense a lack of enthusiasm around the room, and Mike pointedly looked at his wristwatch. She decided to get straight to the point.
‘This work was done late June or early July 2006, some four months prior to completion of the Jordans’ extension. Mr Markham identified Henry Oates as the man he paid to wheel out and load the bricks onto his van.’
There was a murmur from everyone and then silence. Anna, who now had their full attention, opened a bottle of water and sipped a few mouthfuls.
‘There’s more. Although Mr Markham was questioned about the disappearance of Rebekka, he had an alibi for the day she went missing, as did his two assistants, one of whom had already left for Australia. Bearing in mind that Oates was not a suspect at the time and Mr Markham had only ever met him briefly, it is, I suppose, acceptable that it was something he could forget. However, as soon as I showed him a photograph he was certain that Oates was the man he had hired, and was able to recall his Christian name.’
Barolli let rip applauding, and she held up her hand.
‘Markham said that Oates was in and out of the Jordans’ garden removing bricks and it was possible that Rebekka came into the garden while Oates was there as she often checked on her frogs when she returned from school.’
Anna told them about the two ponds, and that Markham had taken Oates back to his house in Cobham where he had helped unload the bricks. Markham then took him to the local train station and gave him extra money for his fare back to London.
‘Bloody hell!’ Mike shook his head angrily; he couldn’t believe that Markham had not come forward with the information years ago.
‘Okay, time frame. Markham first worked at the Jordans’ at the end of June 2006 and Oates helped with the bricks, he thinks, on a Thursday. It would be reasonable to assume that Oates may well have seen Rebekka in the garden.’
Anna was interrupted by Mike, who was now standing by the incident board. He pointed to Rebekka’s details.
‘Rebekka didn’t go missing until March 2007, so I don’t see how this fits.’
‘Can I just finish?’ she said irritably.
Anna continued, explaining that about two weeks after helping with the bricks Oates turned up at the Markham house looking for work at eight in the morning on a Saturday. He was asked to unblock the septic tank but during the morning Mrs Markham, Andrew’s mother, caught him in her kitchen. She thought he might have been looking for something to steal so she asked her son to get rid of him. Andrew Markham paid him and asked him if he wanted a lift to the train station, which he turned down, saying he would walk as it was a nice day.
‘Do the Markhams know if Oates had any contact with Rebekka around the time she actually went missing?’ Mike asked impatiently.
‘No. However-’
‘Then I really think we need to move on.’
Anna ignored Mike and continued. ‘Acting on the possibility that Oates may have stolen a car in order to return to London, I went to the local cop shop and spoke to the duty sergeant. She was not only interested in what I had to say but as it turned out was very helpful.’
It was clear to everyone in the room that Anna was not only having a dig at Mike for yet again interrupting her but her tenacity had obviously uncovered further evidence. She looked at Mike, who raised his hands apologetically and nodded his head for her to go on.
‘I asked the duty sergeant to check back through the records for any motor vehicles that were stolen within a two-mile radius of the Markham house from July to September 2006. The area is not a hotbed of crime and only one car was reported stolen on a Saturday, about two miles from the Markham house. It was a 2004 silver Jeep Grand Cherokee, which has never been recovered. The owners were away at the time when someone broke into their house, stole some property and the Jeep keys. The report also gave details of a man matching Oates’s description knocking door to door in the area looking for odd jobs to do.’
The room was very quiet apart from the clerical staff monitoring the phones. No one interrupted Anna as she pinned up a picture of a silver Jeep and wrote the registration number next to it.
‘Although no fingerprints were found at the Jeep owner’s house I think Oates may have committed the burglary and stolen the vehicle. As it was never recovered he could have sold it on, scrapped it or maybe dumped it somewhere. I know it’s a long shot but he might have decided to keep it for a while, which would mean putting false plates on it. We need to find out what happened to it.’
Anna instructed Joan to run a computer check on all crimes reported in the London area for one year from August 2006 where the words ‘Cherokee’ or ‘Jeep’ came up, and to firstly concentrate on any reports where such a vehicle had made off without paying for petrol from a filling station.
Anna knew this would not be an easy task but was encouraged when Barbara volunteered to help. Joan had just started to run computer checks on the suspect vehicle when her phone rang and she answered the call. She waved at Mike to get his attention.
‘They’ve uncovered the remains of a decomposed left hand,’ she whispered, handing him the phone.
Mike and Barolli headed for the multi-storey car park in a patrol car with the siren blaring. Anna, left in the incident room, felt exhausted. She sat at her desk, her head in her hands. Both cases were now being galvanized into action, and the evidence against Henry Oates as the killer of Rebekka and Fidelis was mounting up. The similarities in the two cases were coming together, and the incident board, with its coloured arrows linking Oates to each victim, was beginning to look like a Tube map.
‘Coffee?’ Joan placed a mug down on her desk.
‘Thank you. I need it.’
‘I was going to go home, but I want to wait to see if Mike calls in with an update. They said it was a human hand, but I don’t think they can tell if it was male or female.’