Backlash by Lynda La Plante Read Free Book Online Page B

morning. Julia was, as you rightly said, an exchange student from Dublin University.’
    ‘Someone told me but I can’t remember who.’ Oates then sat upright and looked Mike in the eyes.
    ‘You’ve never seen the poster until now. You knew about her because you met her, didn’t you?’
    ‘I think you said to me, DCI Lewis, that she was an exchange student.’
    ‘How could I tell you something I didn’t know, Mr Kumar?’
    ‘I made it up,’ Oates said and then asked to be taken to his cell. Kumar insisted that he needed to speak with him but Oates just stood up and walked towards the door, hurriedly followed by the solicitor.
    ‘What a good guess, Mr Oates. I will keep digging and finding more evidence against you and each time I do I will come back and interview you again. Interview terminated 10.45 a.m.’
    Mike turned on the ignition as Barolli got into the car beside him.
    ‘That bastard Kumar schooled him about Fidelis Julia Flynn. I wondered where on earth you were going with the interview but you really fucked him with her being an exchange student.’
    ‘Not as much as I hoped – it’s circumstantial and doesn’t take us much further,’ Mike pointed out, shifting into gear.
    ‘Do you think Kumar will prime him to say that he did meet Julia but didn’t kill her?’ asked Paul.
    ‘Kumar makes me want to puke. He knows Oates is lying but won’t encourage him to give it up. We need to find some direct evidence so we can get him out of prison and back in police custody for a few days. Then we can really put the pressure on him.’
    Mike knew it was going to be hard to report the outcome of their interview with Oates to Langton as they were no farther forwards with the Rebekka Jordan case. It was clear to both officers that Oates had met Fidelis Julia Flynn but they both knew that, without a witness, that fact alone, even if Oates admitted it, would never be enough to charge him with her abduction or murder.

Chapter Three
    A nna had spent most of Sunday night in bed reading the dense file on Rebekka Jordan, eventually falling asleep at around 3 a.m. A number of items were jumbled and she had carefully taken her own notes, marking down dates, times, interviews and witnesses, and read some of the hundreds of statements covering over twelve months. Langton’s scrawled writing was over many of the pages; some details were underlined or highlighted. There were also lots of photographs of Rebekka, her parents and siblings, and a thick dossier of press cuttings. There were DVD recordings of the CCTV footage and the television reconstruction, plus home videos from Rebekka’s family, which she had yet to watch.
    After the prison visit Lewis dropped Paul Barolli off at the station and told him to write up the Henry Oates interview report while he went to the pathology lab to collect the interim post mortem report on Justine Marks and get an update from the forensic department as well. He wondered whether he should phone Langton to tell him about the interview with Oates but decided that rather than keep calling him while he was off sick he would read the post mortem report and speak with the forensic scientistfirst so he could give as full an update as possible. He knew however that Langton’s main concern would be any developments in the Jordan case.
    On arrival at the lab Mike decided to go to the forensic department first to speak to Pete Jenkins, the lead scientist who was overseeing the Justine Marks case. He had examined her high-heeled leather boots, confirming that the direction of the scuffmarks was consistent with her being dragged backwards along the pavement. Justine’s silk skirt, torn blouse, tights and knickers were all stained with her blood, and they had found traces of Oates’s semen on the vaginal swabs. Strands of her hair were on the larger end of the heavy-duty spanner, along with Oates’s palm print on the shaft. The fact that there was no blood on that end of the spanner suggested