‘Are you suggesting that Mr Oates is a necrophiliac, DCI Travis?’
‘I’m saying what the evidence suggests, Mr Kumar. Only your client knows the answer to that.’
‘I am bloody not.’
She turned and looked at him.
‘Do you know what Mr Kumar means, Henry?’
‘Yeah I know what the word means, and no way, screwing a dead body, do me a favour.’
‘Why don’t you tell us the truth about what happened that night? It may dismiss any ideas we have that you did have sexual intercourse with Justine after she was dead.’
‘She was alive when I fucked her.’
Adan Kumar could see that his client was becoming agitated and he turned to have a whispered conversation with him, holding his hand up to cover what he was saying. Oates leaned closer to him and then nodded. Anna promptly leaned towards Mike and whispered to him in a similar way, hiding her mouth by holding up her notebook.
‘Wait a minute,’ Oates said and pointed to Mike. ‘You know I’m telling the truth, she wanted to have sex with me.’
Kumar gestured for him to sit back, but Oates wafted his hand away.
‘I am not one of them sick perverts, she was alive. I never done it to her when she was dead.’
Langton pulled a chair in front of him to rest his leg on as Barolli passed him a coffee, asking, ‘What’s all this necrophilia stuff, what’s the angle?’
‘She’s needling him, she never said he’s a necrophiliac – Kumar did. Doesn’t like it though, does he?’ Langton sipped his coffee, watching the monitor closely as he knew exactly where she was leading Oates. Oates’s ego was such that he wouldn’t like the implication he was a necrophiliac. He liked women to know exactly what was happening as he first raped them and then killed them. The forensic evidence had shown he had abused Justine Marks only after he had raped her, possibly in anger that she was unconscious and didn’t respond to his violence. Anna and Mike’s intention was to draw Oates out into the open by firstly siding with him through empathy and then by Anna attacking his lies.
Langton couldn’t believe how well things were going. He watched with satisfaction the way Oates answered questions, unwittingly revealing his deep contempt for women.
‘He’s talking and reacting like Samuels said he would… didn’t think it would happen so fast. That bit with Kumar was something else.’
Langton sipped his coffee in satisfaction.
Like Langton, Anna was surprised how quickly Oates had opened up. He was very self-assured, almost cocky, yet agitated. She knew that Oates felt in control when Mike questioned him, but now that an object of his hate, a woman, had taken over, she was worried he might say nothing more, but Oates continued.
‘This is exactly how it went down. I liked the look of her, right? And seeing her walking all by herself was like an open invitation.’
‘One you took advantage of, didn’t you?’ Anna said encouragingly and Oates nodded, going on to explain how he had stalked Justine for only a matter of yards before he hit her on the back of the head with the spanner then dragged her into the van.
‘She was all dazed and her head was bleeding. I got her inside the van within seconds. In fact, if it had taken any longer someone could have walked past, a pub’s a busy place. I drove off sharpish, but she came round, started to scream and yell, and so I pulled over and parked and went to shut her up.’
He recalled very specifically how he had gripped her by the hair and hit her with his fist, rising out of his chair to demonstrate how he had shaken her and then thrown her hard onto the floor of the van. He banged his fist into his hand to imitate the sound as his face twisted into a grimace.
‘I didn’t want it to go down like that, I liked the look of her, but these things happen. I got stuck in and she started to come round again just as I was full on and I pulled her bra up round her throat.’
He raised his hands in a twisting motion towards Anna. She didn’t flinch, but kept up a steady gaze, nodding to encourage him to keep talking. He explained how he had realized she was dead and that it made him angry because he liked it when she struggled and had planned to have much more time with her.
Anna knew the next question could be a provocative one coming from her and at this point she didn’t want Oates to fly off into a rage, so she tapped Mike’s leg.
‘Angry enough to insert this inside her?’ Mike asked, placing the photograph of the spanner onto the table, and Oates nodded, puffing out his cheeks.
‘Yeah, that was a bit over the top, but she really pissed me off, dying like that. Anyway, I got back into the front, sat there for ages. I was in a quandary, understand me? I had to do something with her, I had to get rid of her, cos me mate wanted the van back.’
‘When did you wrap her body in the plastic bin liners?’
Oates sucked in his breath.
‘Oh right, I done that straight after, they was in the back with all the balloons and stuff. Sometimes they want about twenty of them blown up and these giant-size bags can hold up to ten.’ He gave a laugh.
‘I was doing some deliveries for me mate one time when I got out of the van with a bunch of them and off they go up in the air and I was running around trying to catch the strings. You gotta tie them in a special way so the knots come out easy, parents get pissed off if they can’t hand out a frigging balloon to each kid.’
‘Yeah I know, I’ve got youngsters – party bags, balloons. So, there you are with a van that needs to be returned – what were you planning to do with the body?’
‘Well, that was it, wasn’t it? Sitting like a prick when the coppers come and knock on me window.’
‘You must have had some plan for disposing of her, though?’
Oates raised his hand, pointing his index finger to the ceiling.
‘Felt the Lord looking down at me and I just wanted it to be over.’
In the viewing room Langton swore under his breath. He didn’t want the ‘good Lord’ coming into the interview – that, or any hearing bloody voices.
‘To be honest, I was relieved, you don’t go through something like that and live with yourself easily,’ Oates explained.
This was not going the way Anna had hoped, but Mike carried on with his questions.
‘That surprises me, Henry, you’re an intelligent man, you must have had some kind of plan in mind?’
‘Nope.’ He fell silent, licking his lips.
Anna kept her fingers crossed that Mike wouldn’t start to ask about the other victims; they had to know what he had planned to do with Justine first.
‘I’m glad, to be honest, glad it’s over.’ Oates appeared ready to carry on. ‘I’ve not been sleeping because of it, you know; it was something that took me over and I know by my admitting to doing what I did I will be in prison for a long time.’ He bowed his head and made the sign of the cross. ‘God forgive me.’
‘Well, Henry, I have to say I admire you for telling us the truth about what really happened to Justine,’ Mike said, managing to keep his voice sincere, ‘but just out of curiosity, though, let’s say the police hadn’t stopped you that night and you had the chance to dispose of Justine’s body, what would you have done with her?’
‘I just told you. I acted on impulse, it’s not as if I ever done anything like it before. It was something that happened and, like I said, the coppers caught me red-handed.’
Mike was now tired of being Mr Nice Guy, knowing as he did that Oates was playing games with them and enjoying every minute of it, and so he put down the pen, cap on, beside his notebook to indicate to Anna to take over.
Anna remembered what Edward Samuels had said about Oates not knowing all the evidence against him and to keep him guessing.
‘I overestimated you,’ she told him. ‘I imagined that a man with your experience and intelligence would have made a very clever decision as to where or how you would dispose of a body. Not somewhere where you worked or had visited – that would be plain stupid.’