She waved to the group and one man headed towards her as she took out her ID and held it up. Contrary to what Langton had expected, the man appeared to be very civil as Anna spoke to him. He saw her point to the wrecks and together they headed past the other men, whose sullen expressions never wavered, but at least they did not make a move as Anna struggled to keep her balance in the muddy field.
Langton leaned against the car, watching as bits and pieces of vehicles were tossed aside to open up an area around the rusty silver Jeep. It lay on its side, with no wheels, no seats or number plates, and it was heavily dented, with broken windscreen and headlamps, and one wing missing. He saw Anna bending down to where a number plate should have been, plainly keeping up a conversation throughout as the big man cleared as much away as possible for her to take a good look.
Eventually Anna returned and asked Langton if he had a couple of twenty-pound notes; her face was flushed as he opened his wallet and handed her two ten-pound notes and one twenty. She made her way back to the group, who were now talking animatedly to each other. There was a lot of nodding and pointing and then she was shaking hands and handing over the cash as the woman began to take in her washing.
Returning to the car, Anna tried to scrape the mud off her shoes, but gave up as Langton eased himself back into the passenger seat. When she finally got in beside him she was still flushed.
‘What did you need the forty quid for?’ he demanded.
‘Had to pay for information… and the vehicle. I’ll put money on it, that’s the Cherokee Jeep that was stolen six years ago in Cobham. I phoned the locals and they’re sending someone down to sit on it until the transport guys arrive. There are no licence plates, but we can get the forensic lab to check out the engine and chassis numbers while they give it a going-over.’
She started up the Mini, waved at the group of men, and then slapped the steering wheel with the flat of her hand before driving off.
‘I know I’m right, I know it. By the way, this is a legitimate site. They’ve been there for fifteen years, farmer leases them the land. I’d say it did have licence plates on it when they found it, but I wasn’t going to get into that with them. The main man, the one I was talking to, is called Reg Green; his son found the Jeep – wait for it – about five years ago.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘It was crashed into a tree. He said that whoever smashed it up also tried to set light to it, the back seats were melted, but the petrol tank didn’t blow. Two front tyres were buckled, the two rear ones he said had been slashed – whether that is true or not… probably sold them.’
‘Did he report it?’
‘What do you think? Of course he didn’t, he said he towed it back to the site. I’ve taken some pictures of it on my mobile.’
She was smiling and he couldn’t help but find it contagious. He rubbed the back of her neck with his hand, resting his arm along the seat.
‘Well spotted, Travis, but if you’ll just let me have a quiet word, not to dampen your enthusiasm in any way, but I would say finding a print, finding any evidence connecting that rusted wreck to Henry Oates will be a miracle. It is, I presume, the reason for your excitement that he possibly stole it, but without a witness it’s sup position.’
‘You are the one that always says there are no coincidences. Jeep stolen six years ago, same type of vehicle on false plates in Shepherd’s Bush the day before Rebekka Jordan disappears. Oates seen returning home covered in chalk dust. I think he drove it from Cobham to London and-’
‘All right, all right, just take things easy.’
‘But that is why no one has ever traced the Jeep and if Oates had met Rebekka when he worked on their garden-’
‘Shusshh, shusshh, just relax.’
‘I am relaxed,’ she snapped, but her hands were gripping the steering wheel. She also hated the way his hand was touching the nape of her neck and she shrugged it away.
‘You know to even attempt a search of the quarry is near impossible; it’d take hundreds of officers, let alone digging machinery, and it’s dangerous. We don’t have a shred of evidence, not one witness that saw Oates. Did you ask them if they’d seen anyone?’
‘Yes of course, but they only saw the smashed-up Jeep.’
‘They remember exactly when they saw it?’
She sighed for the second time, ‘At least five and a half years ago.’
She lapsed into silence as she followed the directions Reg Green had given her and eventually they saw signs for the M40. It was with some relief that she got onto the motorway at last.
‘Just an added thought. It’s a hell of a long way back to London from there,’ Langton murmured.
She made no reply because she knew it. All the same, Oates could have thumbed a lift or nicked another car.
It was almost four-thirty when they drove into the station car park. Mike had grown even more agitated having had to wait for them to arrive, but Langton didn’t bother going into detail about the discovery. Instead he ordered everyone to draw up chairs. By now the team had been joined by the ten extra detectives so the incident room was jammed.
The tension was running high, as it was very obvious that Langton and Mike were not on good terms. Langton, having already ordered his usual bacon and chicken roll with no tomatoes, sat himself between Mike and Anna in the centre of the horseshoe row of chairs that faced the newly enlarged incident board, which stretched for virtually the entire length of the room.
At four-forty-five Mike started the briefing. He began with the details of the investigation into the murder of Justine Marks and the discovery of Henry Oates in the children’s party van. The new members listened attentively. Next, Mike introduced Barolli, who stood up to take them through Fidelis Julia Flynn’s disappearance. As he talked he used an old chopstick to point to pictures of the recovered body encased in cement. Langton glanced over at Anna, but she was reading a text message. He couldn’t tell if it was important, but then he could see her replying. It irritated him that it could be personal rather than connected to the investigation. But he found it hard to fault her diligent detective work, since Barolli constantly referred to how DCI Travis had brought in result after result, such as the theft of the crucifix from the sports club Oates used. Barolli looked at Mike, who now stepped forwards and said that there was a lot of work to be done trying to trace the owners of the jewellery found in Oates’s squat but that he would discuss that later in the meeting. He now asked Anna to tell them about her investigation into the disappearance of Rebekka Jordan.
Yet again Langton was made more than aware of Anna’s competence as she took the floor with a very confident attitude. She was much more detailed than Barolli, listing her evidence in chronological order, starting with the discovery of the small doll’s head and leg, and the similar figures from the doll’s house. The contact with Andrew Markham led to the revelation that Oates had worked at the Jordans’ property and therefore could have met Rebekka. She reminded them of the confusing statement from Oates’s ex-wife, that he had told her he was ‘shovelling shit’, and she explained that Markham had used Oates to shovel out and clean a blocked septic tank. This then led to her discovering that a Jeep Grand Cherokee was reported stolen from Cobham in July 2006 on the same day Oates cleaned out the septic tank. Although the theft of the Jeep took place eight months before Rebekka disappeared, she had wondered if Oates could have changed the number plates, hidden it somewhere and used it when he liked.
‘This was important to me because to snatch a young girl off the streets without anyone seeing it and then transport her any distance would have required the use of a vehicle. Barbara ran some petrol theft checks for me over a one-year period after the vehicle was stolen. There were three in London matching the model and colour of the stolen Jeep and using the same false plates. Importantly, one of the thefts was in Shepherd’s Bush the day before Rebekka went missing.’