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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 theflow, 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