He rested his arm along the back of her seat. ‘I’m looking forward to confronting the little creep.’
Anna betrayed nothing, but she was amazed that he had already appointed himself to lead the interviews.
‘Did Mike agree to it?’
‘Course he didn’t. This is a very big case for him, but you know experience will out. Anyway, at first I’ll just be monitoring how it goes from the viewing room. If there’s a problem I’ll step in. I would say it’s going to be a very long hazardous interview, minefield time. If Oates starts losing it, you’ll have to be ready to deal with it and calm the waters.’
He fell silent, leaning back against the headrest and closing his eyes, so that she thought he was asleep. Eventually she took the turn off the M40 towards the chalk pit, her satellite navigation directing her.
‘Christ, doesn’t that voice send you crazy?’
He tapped the small screen.
‘Bloody dangerous things, you know. If you look to see if you are on the right road following that little red arrow you could have a crash.’
‘That’s why you follow her instructions.’
The chalk quarry was much as depicted in the photographs on the computer, but far far larger, in fact dauntingly huge. They drew up beside a security gate and it took a while before a guard came up to the red-and-white pole. Langton lowered his window and showed his ID, explaining briefly that he would need to talk to whoever was in charge as he was from the Metropolitan Police murder enquiry team.
Anna got even more of an eerie feeling as she drove down a long dirt track towards a cinder block that housed the offices. Numerous trucks were being driven to and fro, loaded up with crushed chalk. A huge conveyor belt was shifting blocks above the pit into a hanger.
‘My God, the size of the place,’ Langton said quietly. Whether or not he felt the same skin-prickling sensation as Anna, she couldn’t tell, but the sheer vastness of the quarry was in itself intimidating. It transpired that the manager was not available, but one of the workers showed Anna and Langton various maps, on which he indicated a vast disused part of the quarry. It would take considerable time to be shown around everywhere and they would also need overalls and boots. Gradually Langton raised the possibility of someone entering the quarries without supervision. They were told that at night the place did have a semblance of security, but to secure the entire area would be impossible. The entrance they had used was supervised, but even that was difficult. The CCTV cameras were in position to cover working areas, which were sealed off to the public by wire fencing. They were very wary of anyone dumping waste, but they had had no recent problems.
‘Tell me about the disused quarry – can anyone have access to it?’
‘Yes, but it’s a sort of nature reserve now, what with the pond and all the trees. Sometimes we get kids in messing about on mountain bikes.’
Langton hesitated, but time was pressing so he decided to elaborate on the reason for their visit: the possibility of someone burying a body. Because of the size of the place it looked as if it could be easily done. Now, armed with this added information, the young man called up his superior and asked for permission to drive Langton and Anna to the disused quarry.
As they returned to Anna’s car, Langton was silent, rubbing at his hands; the feeling of chalk grit made them dry and itchy. What they had seen was a vast empty quarry, a steep cliff of reddish clay and a cavernous pit the size of Leicester Square. Explosives had blasted away the old track into the basin of the pit, leaving it impossible to get down there without safety equipment.
Woods bordered a high ridge, and to detect visually if anything had been buried there would be almost impossible. Potholes three and four feet deep were half filled with water and chalk-covered rubble, like waves of foam in the ocean.
‘Take the back route, see what that wooded area looks like from the road,’ Langton instructed. Anna was loath to do so as it meant leaving a tarmac surface and going onto a dirt track with deep ruts full of mud.
‘I’m never going to get the car clean,’ she groaned.
They moved slowly, bumping and dipping, and Anna swerved as much as possible to avoid the potholes.
‘It’s further than I thought,’ Langton said irritably.
‘Do you want me to turn back?’
‘No. Keep going, it looks less bumpy further along.’
There was a field on the driver’s side with a wire fence and barbed wire threaded in loops along the top, rusted and with many gaps revealing rotting wooden posts that had fallen down.
‘This must have been one of the lanes they used to get to the old quarry,’ Langton said.
Anna made no reply, becoming more uptight the further they went. They rounded a bend, from where they could see that the track continued up ahead for miles and now the edge of the wood was coming into view on the passenger side.
‘Here’s the wood,’ Langton pointed out, and Anna sighed with relief as the dirt track opened onto what had once been a tarmac lane, but which was now in almost as bad shape as the track. There were wide cracks and plenty of dips, but at least they were no longer churning through old deep muddy lorry tracks. The wood became denser, and here a wire fence had been erected around it, then the road widened. Old signs read ‘No Admittance, Private Property’, yet still they drove on before coming to a crossroads. Left would be virtually heading into the wood itself and turning right looked as if it might lead back to the main road.
‘I think we should go straight on here,’ Anna said, moving the car forwards along the lane.
Langton nodded. His knee was clearly bothering him as he kept on rubbing it.
‘Well that was very informative,’ she said sarcastically.
‘I tell you what is – what a place to dump a body. It’d never be found and you could come this way…’ He indicated the track ahead.
‘You’d have to know the area quite well.’
‘Yeah, but nevertheless, drive up to the wood, climb over that fence and you’d get to the disused quarry.’
They continued to drive and now Anna was able to pick up speed as the road, although rough, was smoother, even though grass sprouted up between the cracks in the tarmac. They drove past derelict huts and old troughs, and rather unnecessarily she murmured that at one time this must have been farmland.
Anna braked suddenly, so unexpectedly that Langton lurched forwards, swearing. The road had opened out onto a field where a number of small camper vans and trailers were grouped, with broken-down vehicles littered behind the trailers. Two grey thickset tethered ponies grazed beside a moss-covered horsebox. Near the horses was a precarious pile of scaffolding poles and orange cones. As she slowly passed the entrance to the field she could see washing lines filled with clothes. She reversed to bring the Mini directly up to the entry to the site.
‘What, what?’ Langton demanded as he lowered his window.
‘Do you see it?’
‘What, for Chrissake, what? It’s just a gypsy camp.’
Anna got out and went over to the old barred gate. She pointed to a pile of vehicles, many minus wheels or doors, some on their side, others stripped down, most rusty. Car seats were stacked up next to the wrecks.
Langton eased himself out, glad to be able to straighten up.
‘I’m sure I’m right,’ she said.
‘About what? We’ve obviously got them irritated, they’re coming out of their trailers.’
Three men were standing staring towards them, their expressions and folded arms making it clear that they didn’t like the intrusion. Then a woman came out and gestured towards Anna and Langton, and then she too folded her arms.
Anna leaned towards Langton.
‘Between the wrecked green van and the red car on its side, isn’t that a Cherokee Jeep?’
‘I dunno. I can only see a door hanging off. Anna!’
‘Stay here – the ground is too uneven and muddy for you. Let me talk to them.’