The tech support officers were now ready to drill from the Pearsons’ bathroom into Mrs Douglas’s. It would be a very difficult process going through at floor level to come out in the corner wall beside the toilet and would take at least half an hour, maybe longer. By using a fish-eye camera lens on the end of a thin optical cable they would be able to check on her condition and most importantly see if she was still alive. It was considered too risky to drill into the living room to see what Oates was doing. Bradford had described how his deceased stepfather had suffered from arthritis and so a pulley on a ring with a hand bar had been installed for him to grip onto to heave himself in and out of the bath. The ring was secured to the ceiling and Oates had tied a dressing-gown cord to the pulley, looping it round his mother’s neck. She was balanced on a kitchen stool.
Keeping him calm, Anna and Mike sat with Timmy as he was given some very sweet coffee. He explained how Oates had found his mother’s bank statements and forced him to make the arrangement to withdraw the money and then collect it or he’d kill her. He cried, and then wept even harder when he said that he’d never forgive himself for not being there the night Oates had got into the flat. He’d been out betting on the dogs at Wimbledon race track until late, not returning home until after midnight. He’d lost all his cash and had had to walk from the track, which was the reason he’d been so late. Oates had rung the bell and his mother, presuming her son must have forgotten his key, had opened the front door without a second thought.
‘She’s in her nightie,’ he said pitifully.
‘She’s going to be okay, we’ll get her out. Has he got any weapons?’
‘He’s got a kitchen knife he carries around all the time. Ten grand – that’s all her savings, and you know if anything happened to her it’s not how I wanted to get my inheritance.’
Anna nodded. The over-anxious son was worried about his mother but also about losing her money.
Langton gestured for Anna to come over.
‘Hard to believe that in the middle of all this I get the hotel manager come up and give me the bill for the champagne and sandwiches the Pearsons ordered – bloody people…’
Langton held up the holdall containing the money.
‘Too dangerous to wire up Bradford so we’ve got a pin-sized microphone fixed to one of the studs on the base of the holdall. The tracker’s been taken out-’
‘There’s been some complications, sir,’ the technical support officer said as he rushed into the room. ‘The concrete is thicker and harder to drill through than we originally imagined so the team at the Pearsons’ flat will need another thirty to forty minutes before they can get a camera lens into the bathroom.’
‘We don’t have that long,’ Langton snapped.
The clock was ticking, and to keep Bradford in a calm state was far from easy. They simply didn’t have the option of waiting, and Bradford was told to be ready to return to the flat.
Mike whispered to Anna that he wasn’t sure Bradford was going to be able to keep himself together. She watched Langton yet again sit close to him and this time he really pumped him up.
‘This is a fight, Tim, you up for it? Can you go in there and come out on top? We need you and we’re doing it this way to protect your mum. You can save her, right? Look at me, Tim, you set to do this?’
Bradford nodded and he did seem to be up for it, licking his lips and nodding.
‘Okay, here’s the holdall with the money, the shoebox and the bag with the hair dye, you just act normal. Make sure you put the holdall down in the living room so we can hear everything. The sooner you hand this gear over to him, the sooner he’s gonna walk out and we’ll have him, okay?’
Bradford was driven up to the edge of the Kingsnympton estate, from where he then walked up to the flat with the moneybag, the boots and the hair dye. They watched him head towards the block, still with his baseball cap pulled down low, and he came into view once more as he headed along the corridor towards the blue front door.
‘Silver at the door, letting himself in now.’
On camera they could see Bradford putting the key into the lock and stepping inside.
Meanwhile the drilling continued. They were almost through the wall, the specialist silent drills working carefully and, inch by inch, following the pipeline, getting closer so they could finally see inside the bathroom.
Langton signalled that they had a pick-up from the microphone hidden in the holdall.
‘These my size?’
‘Yeah, you said ten and a half, right? Try them on.’
‘Very nice, they look like Doc Martens, don’t they?’
‘I need to see my mum.’
‘You’ll fucking see her when I’m ready. Now gimme the bag. I want to count the cash.’
‘It’s all there, ten grand. I done what you asked me to.’
There was then a long period where all they could hear was Oates counting the money. Langton had told Bradford to keep Oates talking but assumed that he was just sitting there paralysed with fear. There was no sound of a scuffle and it was nearly ten minutes before they heard Timmy’s voice again.
‘You got my leather jacket on.’
‘Yeah, and your trousers. Here, there’s a few quid for you.’
Oates laughed. In the hotel conference room everyone grew very tense as it appeared that Oates was preparing to move out.
‘I’m sorry to tie you up, Timmy, it’s just to give me time, right?’
‘You said I could see my mum, she’s fucking eighty-two years old.’
‘Once you get out of these ropes you can. I guess you’re hoping she’s still alive?’
They could hear Bradford start to cry. Oates told him to shut up and then asked where the hair dye was. Bradford told him it was in the kitchen in the Boots bag.
Langton got the signal that the drills were through the wall and the camera was being threaded through into the bathroom. On the small screen they could see Mrs Douglas hanging motionless from the pulley ring. The kitchen stool lay on its side and her feet were dangling inches above the bath. Oates, it seemed, had already murdered Timmy Bradford’s mother.
With Mrs Douglas obviously dead and Bradford’s own life clearly under threat Langton turned to Mike.
‘DCI Lewis, do we go in? Just give the signal.’
Mike nodded, and Anna knew yet again Langton was placing Mike in the driving seat.
‘Let’s do it.’
After such a tense long waiting game, the actual arrest was over very quickly. An SO19 officer used a hand-held metal battering ram on the front door and then threw in two thunder flashes, which went off with a massive boom, disorientating not only Oates but Bradford as well. Three more armed officers, one carrying a Taser stun gun, crashed into the flat, screaming out a warning that they were armed.
Oates was in the kitchen, red hair dye dripping down his face, the carving knife close to hand. As he turned towards them the officer with the Taser fired the dart-like electrodes into his chest, sending an electric current racing through his body. Oates’s muscles went into spasm and he collapsed onto the kitchen floor and was quickly handcuffed. Oates was taken to Hackney Police Station under armed guard in a police van using its blue lights and sirens along the route from the Kingsnympton estate.
Anna followed hard on the heels of the armed officers and went straight to Timmy Bradford. She tried to be as diplomatic and as caring as possible as she untied his hands.
‘I’m afraid your mother…’
‘What? Is she okay? Is she all right?’
‘No, I’m sorry, we’ll have a medical team in straight away-’ She didn’t get the opportunity to tell him as Bradford started to push past her, heading towards the bathroom.
The door was now wide open and the pitiful body could be seen hanging from the pulley ring. Bradford stood there, mouth opening and closing like a fish, his eyes wide in disbelief.