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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.’
    He opened the file and removed a stack of photocopied papers.
    ‘I led the investigation. These are just a few samples of the thousands of statements. It was beyond belief that she seemed to have simply disappeared off the face of the earth, and after a year, one of the most frustrating years of my life, I had no suspect, nothing. Eventually I had no option but to cold-case the enquiry and keep an open-ended investigation. Since then, nothing has surfaced, not even a tip-off, no gossip, no prisoner coughing up to a cellmate … that was, until this guy Henry Oates was picked up.’
    Anna watched as he opened a pillbox and took out two tablets, which he swallowed with water before he continued.
    ‘Henry Oates claimed that Rebekka Jordan was his first victim and Julia the second. He got the time frame right for Rebekka, and if Julia is in fact Fidelis Flynn then he was right there as well.’
    ‘You said that in interview he told Mike Lewis he had made it all up for a laugh.’
    Langton leaned back, closing his eyes. ‘I think the son of a bitch said that because Kumar told him to and he also advised him to say that he knew about Rebekka Jordan because of the press coverage.’
    Anna was slightly thrown by Langton’s comment. ‘Soare you saying Kumar is aiding and abetting Oates by telling him to lie to the police?’
    He opened his eyes and leaned forwards. ‘Not directly, no. Kumar’s not that stupid, but Oates is a bit dense and obviously open to suggestion. Second interview he said that not only had we fitted him up with the Justine Marks murder but we would fit him up with Rebekka Jordan’s as well. Now that stinks of suggestion by Kumar!’
    ‘Yes I agree, but if that is the case then it also suggests that Kumar thinks Oates may be telling the truth or he simply doesn’t want his client to drop himself further in the shit for crimes he may not have committed.’
    ‘Whose side are you on?’
    ‘Yours of course, but without further reliable evidence you know his admission is worthless.’
    Langton sifted through a thick dossier and took out a single page. ‘We had used every angle possible: TV re-enactments of her last sighting, girl dressed in the identical clothes, et cetera. But we did retain one piece of information – it’s small and it could be inconsequential, but we had thousands of sickos calling up claiming they’d seen her, knew where she was. I don’t have to tell you, you know what it’s like, but you also know they all had to be checked out, so we never revealed the fact that Rebekka was wearing a pink Alice band on the day she disappeared. In the photographs you can see she had that long fine silky hair, but her mother always said Rebekka hated it over her face and she knew that on the day she last saw her, Rebekka wore the Alice band to the stables and would have taken it off to wear her riding hat, then replaced it to go home.’
    Langton went on to say that Rebekka’s riding hat was never recovered. She would have been carrying it homewith her that day, a fact that was revealed to the public in the hope that it might have been found and so given some indication of where she might have been abducted or dumped. It was obvious his recall of the case was