By the time Collingwood returned to the station, he had a statement from Frank Jones and the dates and times he had rented one or other of his vans to O’Reilly over the last two years. He claimed that he only ever did business with O’Reilly himself, and it was always a cash deal, never having met anyone from the framer’s shop.
Chapter 31
In the incident room, Jack was working through another set of statements, court dates and magistrates’ schedules, trying hard to stay awake. Laura on the other hand couldn’t sit still, she was so frustrated with the Jason Marks case.
‘That slippery lawyer of his is going to spring him, even though he was caught on camera red-handed. He’s got previous, I just know it.’
‘Why don’t you just let it go,’ Jack said.
Laura showed no sign she’d heard him. ‘I’m going to have one more search. I’d really like to get one over that bloody woman.’
Laura went off to the records department as Jack continued working at his desk. He would have to have a meeting with DCI Clarke to talk about the overload of cases instigated by Armani’s gang strategy.
Laura logged into the main records computer and immediately noticed that Jack Warr had also been down there recently, as everyone using the computer had to log the date and time of access. Curious to know what he had been checking out, she brought up the old case that both of them had worked on. It had been a major double operation with the drug squad and Ridley, investigating the murder of an elderly woman. She was fast forwarding through details about the lengthy search for a suspect, Adam Border, the victim’s son. About to close the file, she stopped, as photographs of Border from childhood to his teenage years came up on the screen. She sat back, frowning, moving the curser back and forth until she enlarged one profile, the teenager wearing a baseball cap. Laura suddenly remembered having déjà vu at Fulham station as she looked at the photograph of a man wanted for questioning in connection with the murder at the framer’s shop. It was Adam Border.
At the same time, O’Reilly was being brought up from the cells and taken into an interview room. Morrison was waiting for him. After Collingwood had gone through the usual preliminaries, Morrison told O’Reilly he was under arrest on suspicion of aiding and abetting Kurt Neilson in the murder of Detmar Steinburg, perverting the course of justice and assaulting Ester Langton on the night of the art show in the Steinburg gallery.
‘Right, Norman, let’s start from what happened on the night of the 14th. You have previously claimed that you were in Southampton all afternoon and evening, but we now know that was a lie. So tell us exactly what occurred that evening.’
‘Right, I had only just arrived. As far as I was concerned, I’d missed the pick-up for the crates. Then I got a call, saying it was urgent I return to London.’
‘Who was the caller?’
‘It was Kurt Neilson, and he was blazing angry because I had locked the door into the main sales room of the shop. I’d left the back door open to the yard because a market stall-holder used to leave her trestle table in the shop for her to set up on the Saturday.’
Morrison tapped the table with a pencil. ‘But you knew you were not returning that Saturday.’
‘That’s right, but I forgot, and to be honest, I was nervous because I was worried about not making it to Southampton in time for the collection. I had already had a run-in with Kurt on Friday morning. He had this cross delivered, enormous bloody thing, and it was taking up a lot of space in the shop. I had asked when it was being moved out. I never knew, you see, when I’d get a delivery of frames, they could come without any warning, and that’s another reason I left the yard gates open because they sometimes delivered them at night.’
‘Get back to the Friday, Mr O’Reilly.’
‘Right, well, he’s screaming at me that I was going to be out of a job because he’d left some important invitations in the shop when he’d been there earlier, and I was even more stressed because I’d forgotten I’d picked them up and put them into my big shoulder bag.’
‘Friday, Mr O’Reilly. I’m getting impatient.’
‘I drove straight there. I needed this job — it was good money, and I made good time; the doors to the yard were open, and I drove in. I had the keys to the front of the shop — it’s a heavy-duty lock because that’s where the good frames and paintings are kept.’
‘Which entrance are you talking about? The main door of the shop or the internal one?’
‘Both have strong locks and there’s a bolt on the main front door. Portobello Road can be a dodgy place, thieves’ll break in if you’re not careful. The back’s all storage, so leaving that open is less of a big deal really. You can’t get into the main part of the shop through the yard, you need to go through an inside, locked door.’
‘So, you were there to open the internal door, right?’
‘Yes, exactly. But Kurt had smashed in the door from the yard, so I got out of the van and walked in. He must have used a jemmy or something. Anyway, he was in there, and he looked madder than ever. I was shaking when I searched in my bag for the keys because no lights were on, and I said I’d got the invitations and...’ He paused.
‘Go on.’ Morrison leaned forwards over the table.
‘He said he needed me to do something for him. He said he had some cash, but there would be a lot more. He said he would pay fifty thousand quid if I agreed to help him. I mean, that is a lot of money. I asked how I could trust him for that amount of money, and then he switched the light on.’
If O’Reilly was acting, Morrison thought he was doing it very well as his whole body was shaking. He tried to catch his breath, opening and shutting his mouth like a fish. Morrison glanced at Collingwood as they waited.
‘The floor was covered in blood, pools of it. I mean, it was everywhere, and that’s when I saw his suit was splattered with it. He said if I cleared the place up, he’d pay me the fifty grand. There had been some sexual thing that had got out of hand...’
‘Did you see the victim?’
‘No, well, not exactly. There was a rolled-up carpet in a corner. It could have been in there.’
‘So, what happened next?’
‘I had some containers of bleach, and I got a mop and buckets and started cleaning whatever I could and then used a hose pipe that was attached to a tap in the yard. I was out in the yard brushing the water down the drain, then, when I went back in, the carpet had been moved into the main shop because he’d opened the door. I was still spraying more bleach everywhere and using the mop to wipe down the walls. It took about two hours before he was satisfied, and then he said that I’d done a good job but there was one more thing I had to do.’
O’Reilly was sweating, constantly wiping his face with the back of his hands. Morrison passed him a bottle of water. He drank a few gulps before putting the bottle down.
‘I had to get rid of the carpet, and he handed me this carrier bag full of stuff, he said not to chuck it all in the same place but to spread it around. I heaved the carpet into a dumpster in White City as I was heading back to Southampton. I was driving around looking for somewhere else and was at Shepherds Bush... there were a lot of waste bins, so I reckoned it would be as good as anywhere. I parked up and opened the back of the van. The bag was full of bloodstained clothes, and that’s when I had second thoughts. I reckoned I should keep them as evidence if Kurt didn’t pay up, so I would have a bargaining chip.’