‘I know but I don’t think he was really concentrating on what I was saying, especially if his drug dealing was on his mind.’
‘Kumar called,’ Mike said gloomily. ‘He wants Oates reassessed by the prison psychologist. I think he’s trying to get the suicide watch extended so we can’t interview him. I don’t want to be caught out; we need to look at all the evidence together then get Oates back in police custody for interview.’
Anna shrugged. She felt like the investigation was beginning to stall but she knew that it could move rapidly forward if they could only get Oates to open up and reveal more about his crimes.
‘Have you thought any more about the Behavioural Investigative Adviser?’
‘I’m not sure. Langton was dead against it…’
‘What have we got to lose?’
‘Well for one it could all backfire on us if the BIA thinks Oates is nuts. I don’t want all our time and effort wasted.’
‘How about we ask him to stick to advice on an interview strategy only?’ Anna suggested.
‘Who’s the best?’
‘Guy called Edward Samuels, doctor of psychiatry, works at the Bethlem Hospital. I’ve not met him personally but I have heard him lecture and also recommended him on a few cases; he’s a cool customer with a lot of experience. Feedback’s always good…’
‘Then go ahead, unless Langton disagrees – I’d run it by him.’
‘Yeah, right, I’ll do that,’ Anna said with sarcasm and laughed.
‘Sorry, stupid suggestion. We’ll keep it to ourselves for the time being then. I’ll make DVD copies of the interviews with Oates and all the relevant statements and get them couriered over to Samuels.’
‘Thanks, Mike, I appreciate your help. I’ll ring him and brief him on the case and what we need,’ Anna said.
Glad that Mike had agreed with her, she couldn’t help wondering if he would back her if and when Langton found out.
‘By the way… sorry for interrupting you during the meeting yesterday. What you had to say was a leap forward for the investigation, but you do go the long way round to get to the good bits.’
‘You know me, Mike,I like everyone to know all the facts.’
While Mike headed off to the canteen for breakfast, Anna took the chance to use his office phone to speak to Samuels. After a lengthy conversation she went back to her own desk in the main office to try and concentrate on discovering how long Oates had lived in the basement squat. She knew from his ex-wife that he had at one point lived in Brixton, and basically survived off benefits and working odd jobs for cash in hand. She and Joan contacted social security, employment and National Insurance records, finding that Oates had been working the system and making various claims for years.
During the initial search of Oates’s squat the scene of crime officers had removed a stack of claim forms and old rental receipts dating back years. Joan and Anna set to work to try and make sense of them all. Anna couldn’t believe how long Oates had worked the system; the number of different addresses, let alone assumed names, made it difficult to compile a straightforward list. He appeared to be able to move from one area of London to the next, constantly claiming unemployment and benefits in a variety of names. It seemed from the dates on the seized documents that he had stopped making false claims three years ago. Did he think he was about to be caught or had he become bored, she wondered. What amazed Anna was that Oates, over a five-year period, was always one step ahead of the authorities, and had never been arrested for any benefit fraud offences. She wondered if they had all underestimated Oates’s level of intelligence – clearly he was clever and able to plan his crimes.
To discover how long he had lived in the basement took yet another round of calls by Joan. The house was under a protection order and had been empty for six years; numerous squatters had lived in the property, so to try and trace anyone who could confirm just how long Oates had been there seemed impossible. There were old computer records of the police being called out, as neighbours across the street had made complaints about squatters on a number of occasions. These were from six years ago, shortly after the owners had moved out and the squatters moved in.
‘You know, I’m going round in circles, because Oates’s squat was due for demolition and the houses either side are also under the same order, so he could have been ejected and then moved back into the basement after things calmed down,’ Joan said to Anna.
Anna sighed, and suggested they get some of the team over there to ask the local residents if they could recall seeing Oates.
The dental records for Fidelis Julia Flynn had now arrived at the mortuary, where the forensic odontologist was taking dental X-rays from the body for comparison. It had taken hours of painstaking work to excavate the body from its concrete tomb. The remains, now laid out on the mortuary table, had been cleaned, with the last residues of cement carefully washed away. The remnants of clothing had been removed and parcelled up ready to be sent to the forensic lab: scraps of wool, one boot, part of a sleeve from a blue anorak and fragments of material from what might have been a skirt or jeans.
They had measured the body and determined that their victim was five feet six, and the shoulder-length hair, which had now been washed through, was clearly auburn and still reasonably undamaged. They had recovered a small gold crucifix on a chain still snagged to one of the woollen remnants. It had been swabbed for DNA, photographed and then put in an evidence bag so Barolli could take it away with him to show Fidelis’s two known boyfriends.
The forensic pathologist could not determine time or cause of death because of the level of decomposition. Although there didn’t appear to be any broken bones or stab wounds he couldn’t rule out the use of a knife and also suggested she might have been strangled or suffocated to death.
Mike had put off contacting Fidelis’s parents until the odontologist had checked out the dental records. Finally, at five that afternoon, he had a confirmed match, and not only from the dental records: the DNA comparison to her parents showed that the remains were those of Fidelis Julia Flynn.
They now had evidence that Oates had worked at the construction site on both the day before and after their victim went missing. What they did not have was any witness that saw him with Fidelis.
By six that evening the team of three detectives had returned from interviewing the residents in Oates’s street. Shown a photograph, one neighbour was able to confirm that he did live in the basement, and she could give an exact date she knew him to be living there because he had helped her husband put up new gates. Oates had been living in the basement for even longer than they had anticipated, for at least five and a half years, because the gates had been bought in March 2007. She also said that he came and went and was sometimes absent for days or even weeks on end, but as he was no trouble and often helped wash cars for cash, no one bothered making a complaint about him. She had never seen Oates with any children, and as far as she could recall she’d never seen anyone else entering or leaving with Oates. She also implied it was disgusting that the house had been left unoccupied for so long because the owners were waiting for planning permission to demolish all three buildings and build a block of flats. She had never seen Oates with a car, or a Jeep, but claimed he was always helpful and pleasant and had shovelled up the snow from her pathway the previous year.
Although the evidence linking Oates to Rebekka Jordan and Fidelis Julia Flynn was mounting, they still had no eyewitness who had seen Oates in the company of either girl. The hope of finding any forensic evidence from Fidelis’s remains or clothing that might implicate him was slim.
‘Could he have killed Rebekka in the squat?’ Anna wondered.
Barbara pointed at the photographs of the house, boarded up on three floors.