Lynda La Plante: Backlash

By the time her fiancé Ken had been killed, she had already moved away from Maida Vale to live in a top-floor modern apartment at Tower Bridge. His death had hardened Anna and she had formed a protective shell around herself. She kept her distance, allowing no one to get close, and was loath even to mention what had occurred. Langton had encouraged her to go for promotion to Detective Chief Inspector, a process that had been time-consuming, but Anna had no outside interests other than her health club. She was gaining a reputation as a very dedicated officer with her tough no-nonsense attitude and almost obsessive attention to detail, which had paid off, and she was firmly on the fast track, particularly in her new role.

Anna Travis had won respect from each of the various murder squad teams she had worked alongside, and yet it was only Langton with whom she continued to have a strong emotional bond, one she doubted she would ever break. They had been through too much on both a personal and business level. Even so, having had no contact with him for some considerable time, she felt a slight trepidation meeting him at his home. Since their break-up, Langton had married his second wife, adopting her daughter Kitty, and had a son with her, called Tommy.

Anna had only ever met Langton’s wife, Laura, once many years ago, and it had been very difficult as at the time she herself had been very enamoured with Langton and very young. She subsequently became personally involved with him after he had left Laura and, when their relationship didn’t work out, he had, or so she presumed, returned to be with Laura again. Attempting to discover anything further about Langton’s personal life was difficult, since he was very private and most of what she did know had come via incident-room gossip, rarely from Langton himself.

She rang his doorbell and then had to wait at least five minutes before he answered the intercom and buzzed her in. Her mind raced with all their past history as she moved slowly up the stairs to the second floor, where the front door to his flat was open. She gave a polite knock and entered.

The flat was a jumble of kids’ toys, tricycles and skate-boards, and propped on a hook on the wall was Langton’s racing bike. Anna called out, at which there was a bellow from Langton telling her he was in the bedroom. Unsure of the layout of the flat, she walked into the main living room, which was yet another jumble of children’s toys, including a large doll’s house, which lay on its side with miniature furniture littered around it.

‘There’s some coffee on in the kitchen if you want one,’ he called out. Anna found the kitchen, which was in the same state as the rest of the flat. There was dirty crockery stacked in the sink, with empty containers of microwave and takeaway meals spread out on the table. She rinsed a mug clean and then looked around for the coffee percolator.

‘What are you doing?’ he shouted.

‘Getting a coffee, do you want one?’

‘No.’

Carrying the mug, Anna walked along the narrow corridor. One door was open and it was obviously Kitty’s bedroom, judging from the pink duvet left on the floor alongside various clothes. She pushed open the next door with her elbow and walked into the master bedroom. It was huge with high ceilings, a massive double bed with a carved headboard and fitted wardrobes, but like the rest of the flat it was untidy.

Langton was wearing a threadbare blue dressing gown and a T-shirt. One leg was propped up on a stack of pillows and sporting a plaster cast from mid-thigh down to just above his ankle. He was unshaven, which made his face look sallow, and he had dark circles around his eyes. Littered over the bed were stacks of files, with more loose on the floor, and he had a notebook open with a pencil stuck behind his ear.

‘Sit down. Chuck everything off and sit on the bed.’

‘Where’s Laura?’

‘In the country with the children for the school holidays. Said she might pop home for the weekend, but I had to get them out of the way. They prefer it there anyway.’

‘Don’t you have anyone cleaning or cooking for you?’

‘No. I send out for takeaway or microwave what I need. Look, don’t start… I know the place is a tip and she’ll sort it when she gets here. Half the stuff needs to be chucked out anyway; it’s like a minefield out there.’

‘I saw the doll’s house.’

‘I fell over it last night.’

She sipped her coffee; it was tepid. She noticed an array of dirty coffee mugs and bottles of pills on the bedside cabinet.

‘Well I’m here. Was the operation a success? I thought maybe something had gone wrong.’

‘It’s excruciatingly painful and I can’t – or I’m not supposed to – walk until it’s all set, or the plaster has dried or whatever, but that’s not why I wanted to talk to you. You seen anything of Mike Lewis?’

‘No.’

‘He’s on a murder enquiry; woman found in the back of a van, Justine Marks, uniform patrol caught the guy red-handed with her body trussed up along with kids’ entertainment gear. His name’s Henry Oates, no previous record, admitted to killing her but claims it was an accident. They’ve not got the full post mortem report yet so no exact cause of death but from an early overview it appears that she was struck from behind, dragged off the street into the back of the van then probably raped. But that’s not the reason I wanted to talk to you either.’

He hardly drew breath in his agitation, at times shifting his weight as if to relieve the pain in his knee, and moaning as he reached over for a dog-eared file at the end of the bed.

‘During the first interview, this Oates character claimed that he had killed before, a girl by the name of Julia, said it was around eighteen months ago. Mike tried to get more out of him but his brief Kumar interrupted the flow, advised no comment and demanded a private consultation.’

‘That’s always been Kumar’s tactic when his client’s in a corner,’ Anna remarked with a shrug of her shoulders.

‘Second interview Oates said nothing more except that he had made it all up for a laugh. Anyway, he was charged with the body in the van and remanded in custody.’

‘Do you think he was lying then?’

‘I don’t fucking know, that’s Mike’s problem, but since Oates was charged they found a possible “Misper”. Irish girl called Fidelis Julia Flynn, been missing for eighteen months and liked to be called by her middle name.’

‘Well that’s something solid to work on, so what’s the problem?’

‘Would you stop interrupting and listen? That case isn’t my main concern, this one is.’

He flipped open the file and passed a photograph to Anna.

‘That is Rebekka Jordan, aged thirteen, went missing five years ago, and this prick Oates claimed that he also killed her.’

Anna looked at the photograph and in the back of her mind she did vaguely recall the case. Rebekka was exceptionally pretty, with straight blonde hair worn past her shoulders, and she was wearing a white shift dress. Langton took out more photographs, of Rebekka laughing with a pet poodle, standing by a pony, on a horse wearing jodhpurs and a velvet riding helmet and holding a large cup and a rosette. The more photographs Langton passed her, the more Anna began to remember the case, in particular that it still remained unsolved and had been headed up by Langton. Rather than interrupt she decided to act as if she was unaware and let him continue.

‘Rebekka was last seen at four-thirty on March 15th 2007. She walked out of the riding stables in Shepherd’s Bush and headed for the Tube station; her parents lived in Hammersmith. It was only two stops, but no one saw her on the Tube; no one had seen her since that last moment she left the stables, which was caught on CCTV footage. She never returned home.’