Anna called in Langton to sit with her as Ella put pieces of the jigsaw together, although some Anna had already determined. When asked her name, she had said it was Ella Orso, and when this was questioned, she shook with nerves. She wept throughout and crumpled the tissues provided in her hands. She had a terrible air of defeat; her body sagged, her voice was scarcely audible. After being given some tea and treated kindly, she stuttered that her name was Ella Sickert.
She admitted that Joseph Sickert was her husband. He had come to England five years before her. When shown the photograph found in his clothes, she sobbed heartbrokenly. She had seen neither child since they had been brought to England; she had been told that her sons were with a good family and being educated. Joseph had promised to send money from his wages. She waited for years, but none ever came.
‘Did you see your husband?’
Ella looked to the floor. Anna persisted, asking if Joseph Sickert had made contact with her. They did not think she was going to be able to continue, but she straightened up and pushed herself back in the chair.
‘Mrs Orso took me in when I arrived in England. I was told that Joseph would come to see me, but he was working. They said I had to give it time. I was always worried about my boys, but Mrs Orso said I was not to keep asking: I was in the UK illegally and I should be grateful to have a roof over my head.’
‘So she knew you were an illegal immigrant?’ Langton asked.
‘Yes, sir — and Joseph and my sons.’
‘So you never saw him?’
The woman began to cry. She explained that one night, two months ago, she had been told to stay in her room; from the window, she had seen her husband with two white children. Mr Orso had been very angry and there was an argument in the hall. Ella left her room and ran down the stairs. Joseph had tried to get to her, but she had been taken back. She said he had looked sick, hardly recognizable. She had not seen him or the children again, but knew the others were searching the woods for them. She said that Mr Johnson had punched her husband, and made the children cry.
She remained silent for a moment and then looked up. ‘I heard Joseph asking for Mr Camorra: he made threats and he was very angry. He was asking him about our boys, they were only seven and nine years old. He kept on saying, over and over, “Where are my boys?’”
Anna asked for a blood test. There were tears in her eyes; it was so pitiful. She found it hard to produce the photograph of the child’s torso.
‘We think your son was murdered,’ Langton said gently.
Ella gasped. If she had been defeated before, she now sat in mute grief.
‘We do not know the whereabouts of your other son, but we hope we will be able to trace him.’
Ella nodded, but she was staring at the wall. A steady stream of tears ran down her cheeks and one hand rested on the photograph in the plastic evidence bag.
An officer came and took a swab from Ella for DNA testing. She was left in the interview room while one of the clerical staff tried to find a hostel where she could remain in protective custody until the trial. Once Ella had given her evidence, she would be handed over to the Immigration Services for a decision.
The Desk Sergeant had never in his entire career known so much action. The car park was filling up with an array of expensive vehicles, as Emmerick Orso’s legal representatives arrived. They were each allowed to speak to their clients in private before the murder team interrogated them. All three would then be taken before magistrates, as Langton was not prepared to let them go after the obligatory thirty-six hours: he wanted a three-day extension, as the preparation for the interviews would be lengthy.
At ten o’clock that night, the team was released. They all needed to recharge their batteries: it had been an exhausting day and evening. The lawyers could sit with their clients through the night, if they wished: the team all needed time to recuperate. None had expected to sleep, but even Langton had crashed out without his usual handful of sleeping tablets.
The next morning, each prisoner was led out, handcuffed to an officer, and driven to court to go before the local magistrate. The amount of work to organize this had been a major headache, but it gained Langton three days for further questioning, due to the severity of the charges laid against them.
Harry Blunt and Frank Brandon were set to prepare the list of charges that would be brought against Camorra. Mike Lewis, with assistance from a Fraud Squad officer, began to plough through the mass of paperwork they had accumulated against Emmerick Orso. The paper trails were so complicated that even to pin down the ownership of the house in Peckham took half an hour. They wanted to know just how much he was involved with Camorra; if he did own the house, then he would have been privy to the flesh trade and barbaric murders that had taken place there.
Camorra refused to eat the food offered, insisting it was his right to send out for a proper breakfast. He appeared not to care about the charges mounting up against him; quite the reverse. He was cocky and kept on calling out to Orso, who remained silent, determined to distance himself from Camorra as much as possible.
Langton had decided they would go for the weakest link first, the one who appeared to be most agitated: Johnson.
He sat sweating and twisting his hands. His solicitor tried to calm him, as Langton told Johnson that he had been identified as the man who had visited Courtney Ransford in Parkhurst prison and had passed poison to him to be given to Eamon Krasiniqe. Johnson would therefore be implicated in Krasiniqe’s murder.
He interrupted. ‘Listen, I just work for Orso, right? I do what he tells me to do. I was told to take the stuff in; it was nothing to do with me, I just carried out orders. If I didn’t do what he wanted…’
‘So are you saying that Emmerick Orso handed you these rock cakes?’
‘No, he didn’t give them to me. I had to go to Peckham and collect them from Camorra. I didn’t know what shit was in them; I swear before God, I didn’t know. I am not going down for this. I just did what I was told to do.’
Langton sighed. ‘Yes, but who told you to do it?’
‘Camorra — well, my boss sent me over there. He said Camorra needed to sort something out. It was connected to this guy Arthur Murphy, that was all I knew. I swear before God I didn’t know it would send the kid crazy.’
‘Did you know Arthur Murphy?’
‘No.’
‘How often did you go to the house in Peckham?’
Johnson gasped, taking short sharp breaths; his eyes bulged.
Langton tapped his pencil on the table with impatience. ‘Did you go on a regular basis?’
‘No, no, I didn’t. It belonged to Eugene Camorra.’
Langton turned to Anna. ‘Eugene Camorra? You sure about that?’
‘Yeah. He uses a lot of other names, but that’s the one I know him by. Eugene, that’s his real name.’
‘Do you know what the house was used for?’
‘No.’
‘So how often did you go there?’
‘Not recently — I didn’t go there recently.’
‘Well, if you didn’t go there recently, when did you go?’
‘Few years back.’
‘One? Two? How many years back?’
‘Listen, Eugene was doing stuff there. He’s a freak. I mean, sometimes I’d go, you know, for sex — but not recently.’
‘Sex?’
‘Yeah, he had girls working for him.’
‘What girls?’
Johnson was now sweating; he used the same box of tissues that poor Ella had plucked at to wipe her face. ‘Oh shit, every time I open my mouth I feel like I’m digging myself into a hole, but I done nothing.’