Blind Fury

Chapter Twelve

As soon as Emerald opened her front door on Tuesday morning and saw Anna and Barolli, she shrieked, “I don’t fucking believe this! You have got to be joking.”

Anna showed the search warrant, but Emerald had already swung the door open wide.

“Bloody harassment, this is. Come in, make yourselves at home, why don’t you? Do what the hell you fucking like!”

“Can we go into the kitchen, please, and with you present.”

Emerald threw her arms up in exasperation, leading them into the kitchen.

Anna gestured at the vertical blinds. “I need to ask you a few questions about your blinds.”

Emerald’s jaw dropped. She looked at Anna and back at the blinds. “Eh? What you on about?”

“Can we sit down?”

“You can do tango dancin’ for all I care. What do you want to know about the blinds for? They don’t work. The kids pulled the cord and they’ve fallen down a few times, and the rod’s come away from the wall. Is this about damage or somethin?”

Anna perched on a stool while Barolli remained standing in the doorway. “I need to know exactly how long you have been living here.”

“Five-odd years.”

“When you moved in, were the blinds already in place?”

“They was, everythin’ was here, but the ones in the kitchen soon got broken, and then the ones in the box room fell down. I never even bloody touched them. I had a lot of aggravations with me central heatin’ and me gas cooker. I was gonna complain about the blinds as well, ’cause if they’d fallen on my kids, they could have cracked their heads open. Look, I’m not being made to pay nuffink, as it’s been bloody five years.”

“When you complained, did someone come round to fix them?”

Emerald shrugged, saying sullenly, “I never told them nuffink. It was me central heatin’ I was worried about, but I might have told the bloke they sent to look at the boiler... and he might have passed it on to the people at Strathmore. Yeah, they did send someone. Yeah, that’s right. I remember now.”

Anna stared at Emerald, willing her to help them. “It’s very important,” she said. “Can you recall who came to repair them?”

“Why?”

“It’s possible we are interested in talking to this person.”

“Well, I dunno, it’s a long time ago. He came twice or maybe three times, but you see, the kids were just small then.”

“Emerald, I’m not here for any other reason than wanting to know about the person who came to fix these blinds.”

The young woman took out a packet of Silk Cut and lit one, then she sat on one of the stools. “Jesus, let me think... I remember a bloke did come, but he said I’d need a new cord or something, or maybe the little chains had busted. They’re all linked with these chains, and he was here for ages.” She gestured at the kitchen window blinds.

“Can you describe him?”

She puffed out the cigarette smoke, thinking. “He wasn’t English, good-lookin’, I think... no, wait a minute. He took the ones from in ’ere away, and they was brought back by another geezer.”

“Did you talk to this second man?”

“Yeah. He done them up in here, and...” She frowned, inhaled, and blew out a cloud of smoke. “He also got us some new ones for the spare bedroom — not like these ones, different wooden ones. Said he had some the right size in the van.”

“Wooden slatted blinds?”

“Yeah, that’s right, but they fell down a couple of years ago, and I haven’t bothered to replace them. It’s just used as the box room now — the kids have it as a playroom.”

“Can you describe this man?”

“Not really. He was sort of tallish, dark-haired, and I had to go out, so I left him with...” She hesitated.

“Was someone else staying with you?”

“Oh, I’m with you,” Emerald sneered. “Those bloody Social Services — it was fucking years ago! They trying to prove I rent out a room, are they? Well, it’s not fucking true! I don’t, and I never have done.”

“Who was in the box room, Emerald?”

“Maggie, she was here — one of her drop-in and passing-out nights. She was here, so I left her to sort him out.”

“Margaret Potts was here in the flat when this man fixed the blinds?”

“I just said so, didn’t I? She was gone when I come home, and the blind was up. I paid him some cash before I left.”

Anna stood up and asked if she could see the box room. Emerald stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette and put the butt in the pocket of a bathrobe she was wearing. She hugged the gown closer, saying she was going to get dressed. “I took the kids to school and then come back for a shower, that’s why I’m in me dressing gown.”

“Just show us the box room, please.”

The room was packed mostly with what looked like broken toys. A small single bed had a box of LEGOs sitting on top of a stained child’s duvet. The only remaining part of the blind was a brown wooden pelmet; the rest lay in pieces on the floor.

“When did you see Margaret again?”

Emerald sighed and said she’d been over this time and time again, but she didn’t see her for ages after that. Folding her arms, she said that she had also told Margaret that she couldn’t stay. “I just didn’t like her turning up, usually stoned out of her head or drunk, and so I never saw her for ages. Next thing, she gets murdered. I told all this to you.”

“Do you remember the name of the company that fixed up your blinds?”

“No. Social Services and the housing association arranged it. They done the place up, all I did was pay this bloke a bit extra ’cause he said he could get a blind for this room on the cheap, and I didn’t want to involve the housing association again. I dunno who he worked for. I only met him the once, and that was for only a short while, ’cause I had to go out.”

“Did you see what vehicle he used to bring the blinds into the house?”

“No. I’m on the third floor.”

“Did Margaret ever mention talking to the man?”

“No. She’d gone when I got back — I just told you.”

Barolli asked if he could look around the rest of the flat, and Emerald told him he could do what he liked, then led the way back to the kitchen. Anna asked if Emerald would be prepared to come in to the station, where they would get a number of men on video. If she would agree, perhaps she could identify the man who was at her flat.

“Christ, this just goes on and on, doesn’t it? It was a long time ago, and like I said, I hardly spoke two words to him.”

“It’s possible that this man could have been involved in Margaret’s murder.”

Emerald relit the butt of her cigarette. “You know, I wouldn’t put it past Maggie to wake up and give the bloke a blow job if he paid her a few quid. She was like that.”

Anna next asked if Emerald could recall the exact date she last saw Margaret Potts — this would be after the time she had stayed in the box room — but Emerald was very vague. “Does it matter?” she asked.

“Yes, it does. Where did you see her?”

“Listen, I feel a bit bad about this, but I never actually saw her again. I remember she rang me up once, a long time after, and wanted to come over and collect her stuff, and I told her that I wouldn’t be in. I honestly didn’t like her coming here, and that was the last time I ever spoke to her. Poor cow was dead not long after that...”

“Did she say anything to you that concerned you, anything unusual?”

“I think she was drunk.”

“What time of day did she call you?”

Emerald wrinkled her nose and said that it would have been around nine in the evening.

“So was she calling you from the service station?”

“Might have been, I dunno. It was a pay phone — I remember that. This was all such a long time ago, it’s hard to remember. All I know is, I said she couldn’t come over.”

Anna nodded and made a few notes in her notebook. “I really need you to think about the date that Margaret stayed, when you left her here with this man fixing your blinds. It’s very, very important.”

Emerald leaned forward, tapping Anna’s knee. “I’ve remembered what she said when she got in touch. She said, ‘Have you got the Evening Standard?’ She sounded right pissed. Oh yeah, I remember now — that was the first call. It was earlier than what I said because I had to go out to work, but she did ring me again when I wasn’t at home. She left a message with the babysitter, saying again that she wanted to come over and pick up her suitcase. I never heard from her again.”

Anna made a note and underlined the word suitcase.

“I remembered that, but I’ll never work out what friggin’ date we had the blinds done.”

“Best to think back... how long had you been living here? Was it shortly after you moved in or a few months later?”

Emerald got up and opened a drawer in one of the kitchen cabinets. She rooted around in it, taking out a lot of leaflets from electrical appliances and insurance coverage of washing machines and TV sets. “Well, it wouldn’t be that long after I moved in, ’cause everythin’ was supposed to be finished, right?”

Barolli returned to hover in the kitchen doorway. Emerald sat down, placing all the leaflets on the table; many were still in their envelopes.

“I moved in here April 2005... that’s right, isn’t it? Been here five years now and...”

Anna was growing impatient as Emerald sifted through the guarantee forms and then shoved them aside. She returned to another drawer and took out a TV license then sat down again.

“Right: we’d not got a TV in, so this was after. It’s got to be that winter, but dunno which day. All I remember is, I didn’t have a TV then.”

“So when you moved in, the blinds were working. Think about how much time it had been after you said they were faulty and then got them taken away and brought back.”

“Bloody hell, I’m trying. Lemme get another fag.”

Back at the station, the team was buzzing when Anna, using a thick red marker, wrote down the date that Emerald’s blinds were repaired, that Margaret Potts was staying in her flat at the time, close to Christmas 2005, and that after she had left and a good time later, the following summer, Maggie had called her again.

“The date is near enough, and it took a long time working it out, but first Emerald had the kitchen blinds removed in November 2005, and then a different man returned the repaired blinds in early December. She didn’t recall much about him but said he was tall and dark-haired. She was yet again unclear how long it was until some months later, she received a phone call from Maggie Potts in which she mentioned something about the Evening Standard. Dorota’s murder was discovered in June 2006, so maybe Maggie had read the story and wanted to talk to Emerald about it.”

Anna gestured at the dead girl’s photograph and then moved on to Maggie Potts’s photographs. “Margaret Potts’s body was discovered in March 2008. This leaves quite a time gap between the phone call and her body being discovered.”

Anna looked over at Barbara, as she’d asked her to check the Evening Standard news coverage around the same time. Next she underlined the month when Swell Blinds moved to Manchester.

She turned to the team while replacing the cap on the marker, saying, “We need to get a video ID set up and bring in Emerald and John Smiley, because he is now back in the frame.”

Barbara had brought up the Evening Standard newspaper coverage and was scrolling through the lead stories. They all turned their attention toward her as she read that on June 15, 2006, the paper had issued a request for information connected to the body of a young woman found wrapped in a blue blanket.

The buzz was on, and Anna had to settle everyone down as they discussed the latest development. Dorota Pelagia’s body had been discovered four years ago. When Margaret referred to the newspaper article in her call to Emerald, did it mean she knew something about the killer? Did she meet John Smiley at Emerald’s? Had she seen him again at the service station? Was she perhaps in contact with him?

Mike Lewis had sat listening, and he now took over from Anna. “We are presuming a hell of a lot. If this is going to pan out and we can prove that John Smiley did meet Margaret Potts, then why wait so long before she got herself murdered — or, more to the point, why did he wait?”

There was a murmur around the incident room, suggestions flying from one person to another. Joan suggested that it was perhaps due to the fact that he had moved from London to Manchester, but she was ignored. Anna eventually quieted everyone.

“If we can prove that John Smiley did meet Margaret Potts, it shows he was lying about never seeing her — and why would he do that? Let’s get him back in and see what he has to say.”

Anna was just stepping out of the shower when her phone rang. It was Langton, and he was calling to congratulate her. She thanked him and said that she felt sure Emerald was still lying about the last time she had actually seen Margaret. She thought the lie might be connected to the contents of Maggie’s suitcase, since she was certain there had been money hidden inside, as well as a few pieces of quite valuable jewelry.

“She lied to me when I first interviewed her, because I think Margaret was more of a regular visitor than she likes to admit, but at least we’ve got this new connection, and maybe to John Smiley. If she can identify him, he moves back into prime suspect position...”

“We’ve never really had anyone else,” Langton said, yawning.

“But not until now do we have a possible connection to a victim.”

“Right. And yet again Travis uncovers it.” He sounded as if he had been drinking.

“I hope if we do move forward, we’ll have the finances and can keep the full team,” Anna said.

“Don’t tell me how to run the inquiry,” he snapped.

“I’m not, but you know we have a terrific team, and they have been working full-time for weeks.”

“Thank you for that information. Apart from that, how are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

She just wanted to get off the phone, but he continued asking about the new possibilities that might be opening up the case. Finally, he went quiet. Anna was at a loss as to what he expected from her.

“Okay, that’s it,” he said.

“Thank you for calling.”

“You know, you sound different. Want to tell me something?”

“No.”

“Okay. Good night.” He hung up.

She went to bed wondering what all that had been about, but she wasn’t prepared to divulge anything about Ken to him. She was different, she was more confident in herself because of her relationship, and she was determined to keep it private. She had always hated the gossipmongering that went on about her previous relationship with Langton, and the realization that she had at last moved on from his hold over her emotions felt good. She didn’t feel in any way that Ken had the same stranglehold; their love was somehow cleaner and gentler by far. She was loved, and it was special because she felt as if she could have another life apart from the Met.

As she got into bed, Ken called, and they spent over an hour chatting, neither wanting to end the call, wishing they were wrapped in each other’s arms.

“I’m looking forward to the weekend,” he eventually said.

It wasn’t until then that she told him about the new developments, hoping it wouldn’t mean she had to work instead.

“Whatever, let’s just try and see each other as soon as possible,” he told her. “I never stop thinking about you, missing you.”

“I miss you, too. I love you.”

“Take good care of yourself, Anna. Kiss you good night.”

“Good night.”

He laughed and told her to hang up because he couldn’t. She did and then curled up in bed thinking about him, wanting to be close to him, the call from Langton forgotten.

It took two days to organize and film enough John Smiley look-alikes in order to be able to hold the identity parade. Mike then rang Smiley, requesting him to come down to London to assist inquiries. If he’d refused, they would have been forced to arrest him and bring him to the station, but he agreed. Mike asked if he wished to have a lawyer present. Smiley hesitated, asking how long it would take, as he would have to get time off work. Barolli was listening in to the call on the speaker. Smiley didn’t sound scared, more confused than anything.

“Is this still about my van and me being seen at the service station?”

“Yes. We need to eliminate everyone seen in a vehicle there on that day.”

When Mike Lewis replaced the receiver, Barolli sucked in his breath. “He could do a runner, you know.”

Mike shook his head, reminding Barolli that with two kids and an apparently oversize wife, it was unlikely; also, he knew that Langton was still using favors with the guys in Manchester, so if anything suspicious happened, they would make contact.

“To be honest, he seemed more worried about taking time off work.”

“Yeah, I heard, and I’d say it has to be uncomfortable there with his boss. We’ve certainly been busy around him.”

“Well, if we can prove he lied... Travis seems to think Emerald can identify him, but she’s such a hard-nosed slag, I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“It’s all we’ve got.”

“I hear you.” Mike’s desk phone lit up; it was Barbara tipping him off that Langton had arrived in the incident room.

Langton was standing in front of the incident board, lecturing the team. “Do you know that a quarter of London’s population, over one and half million people, were born abroad? The biggest groups are Indians and Afro-Caribbeans, but the rest are Poles arriving in large numbers and seeking work, like our three girls.”

“I didn’t know we had that many,” said Mike.

“Well, we do, and I’m getting a lot of stick from the assistant commissioner that we are slacking in our inquiry. The last thing the Met wants is to be accused of sweeping this case under the carpet, never mind the pressure about going over budget. So, on one hand, it’s cut the costs, and on the other, get a friggin’ result.”

“Well, we might.” Mike took the chance to update Langton on the day’s latest news.

“Yeah, we’ll see how it pans out with the ID and if Smiley is still in the frame, but we need more,” Langton insisted. “Even if he did previously know Margaret Potts, we’ve got no fucking evidence he was our killer.”

“It proves he lied.”

“Not enough. Citizens Prosecution Service wouldn’t give us the nod to charge him on that.”

Mike sighed, unsure where all this was going, concerned Langton was hinting at replacing him.

“Get ready for a big press conference, Mike, and even if Smiley gets off the hook, we can say the inquiry is questioning a suspect. I don’t like being pushed by the top brass, so set it up.”

“Yes, Gov.”

“When Smiley comes in, I’ll handle the interview, along with Travis.”

“Whatever you say.”

Langton moved farther down the incident board. “Barolli interviewed Emerald Turk first, right?”

“Yes, Gov.”

“So we should have reached this conclusion about Smiley’s connection two years ago. Thank Christ for Travis. She came up with the tattoo to identify Dorota Pelagia, and if we’d had that woman Olga in earlier, we’d have had them all bloody identified.”

“We couldn’t put pressure on the television programmers. It works because the callers can remain anonymous, and it took a lot of stroking for them to keep asking for her to come forward. Three programs’ worth.”

“Yeah, yeah, and I’m not letting her walk away from running an illegal fucking domestic agency,” Langton said angrily. “Did her husband check out?”

“Yes.”

“What about other employees?”

“Her agency runs with just him and three other guys who decorate and do the heavy cleaning.”

“They checked out?”

“Yes.”

“So we’re back to John Smiley, whom we’ve had since Christ knows when as a possible suspect.”

“Yes.”

“YES! Well, pull your finger out, Mike, and either get the bastard sewn up or bloody move on. That prisoner Cameron Welsh has been bleating on about a witness. Seems the guy from behind bars can do more than any of you or your team. If need be, go back and talk to him again.”

Langton stormed off, leaving Mike standing like a spare part. He was about to return to his office when something caught his eye on one of the postmortem reports. He moved from one report to another, reminding himself how the description of the strangulation of each victim was similar; the women had been killed by stockings or tights wound tightly around the throat. Only with one victim, Estelle Dubcek, did the forensics suggest it may have been some kind of cord or thin chain, due to the indentations left around the jugular. The fact that they’d never found whatever the killer had used, plus the removal of all personal items such as the victims’ handbags, had not so far been an issue, but now Mike believed there was a lot more to it. He hurried over to Barbara’s desk.

“I want you to call Swell Blinds and ask them to send samples of the cord used on the wooden slatted blinds, plus the small link chains used on the vertical ones.”

Barbara pointed to the vertical blinds hanging in the incident room. “You mean those link chains between each strip?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I want, and I want them here as soon as possible. Bike them up, whatever is fastest.”

Mike went over to the window and checked the manufacturer’s name. These blinds were not made by Swell Blinds, but he didn’t think they would be all that different. He unhooked the chain from the lower section, leaving four strips turned flat against the window. He then put in a call to Pete Jenkins at the forensic lab and told him to expect a delivery, explaining that the chains might not have the same indentation, but a similar one could have been used to strangle Estelle Dubcek.

“Similar isn’t good enough, you know, Mike.”

“Yes, I hear you. You’ll be getting the real thing sent over later.”

“Okay, I’ll get on to it.”

“Thanks, Pete, and I’ll appreciate this is a priority.”

“Always is. Bye now.”

Smiley arrived in the early afternoon and was taken straight to the video recording room. He was wearing a suit with a white shirt and dark tie; he had also shaved, and his hair was combed back. Barolli reported that he was compliant, agreed to the video ID and did as directed, only talking about his concerns about how long he would be required, as he had to get back to Manchester.

At three o’clock, Emerald Turk was driven in to the station car park in an unmarked patrol car. She was taken into the video suite, and the two ID officers explained to her that she was required to look at all the men on the video. Each would hold a number. If she recognized the man who had fitted her blinds, she was to state his number. The team waited.

Emerald appeared to be enjoying all the attention, and as none of the team was allowed to speak to her, the two ID officers made a point of being patient and thanking her for her assistance. She watched the videos twice, and unlike most people in her position, she didn’t say a word. She was asked if she would like to view the entire tape a third time, but she said she didn’t need to see it again, as she was certain that number three was the man. Number three was John Smiley.

By four-thirty Smiley was sitting in an interview room. They had given him coffee and a sandwich, and he had hung his suit jacket over the back of his chair. Langton and Travis entered, and Langton asked if he would like to have a lawyer present.

Smiley shrugged. “Do I need one?”

“That is up to you, Mr. Smiley. You are here to answer questions and assist the inquiry. If at any time you feel you would like representation, then you may ask for a lawyer to be present.”

Smiley cleared his throat and then said that he had nothing to hide. All he wanted was to answer whatever questions they put to him and go home. “I shall have to make this time up at the weekend,” he fretted, “as my boss is starting to get uptight about everything. He called me in last week to say that he respected all the years I’d put in with the company, and I told him, I said to him, that this was all about me being parked in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Langton let him talk on as he gave the sign to Anna to prepare the file of victims’ photographs.

“Yes, that is one of the reasons we’ve asked you to come in to talk to us, Mr. Smiley, and thank you for agreeing to do the identification video.”

“I was told I didn’t really have any option, and then I thought if I refused, it would look as if I was hiding something.”

“You were,” Langton said quietly.

Smiley looked confused.

Anna took out the mug shot of Margaret Potts and the pictures given to them by Eric Potts. “You denied that you had ever met this woman.”

“Right. Yes, that’s true.”

“No, it isn’t.” Langton leaned back in his chair. “Mr. Smiley, we have a witness. You apparently hung some vertical blinds and some wooden slatted blinds in her flat.”

“No. I don’t handle the vertical blinds.”

“But you do measure and hang the slatted wooden blinds.”

“Yes — that’s my job. I measure first, then the blinds get made, then I go and put them up. I’ve told you all this.”

“We know what you do, Mr. Smiley, but we also know that you were in a flat in Hackney and were paid in cash to—”

“Hackney? When was this?”

“Five years ago.”

“Five years? No way. We’d already moved the business to Manchester by then, and I don’t recall ever doing work in Hackney — definitely not in a cash deal. I don’t handle the money side. Arnold Rodgers, my boss, sends out the invoices, and customers pay him directly.”

“We have a witness, Mr. Smiley, and this woman” — Langton tapped Margaret Potts’s photograph — “Margaret Potts was inside the flat, so you have lied, and you did meet her, didn’t you?”

“No, I swear on my life, I never met this woman, just like I said when I was last here. I never met her, and I know what type of woman she is, and I wouldn’t give her the time of day.”

“What happened, John? You were there doing your job, and she was sleeping, woke up, maybe she was wearing a sexy nightdress and you got talking...”

“I never met that woman.”

“It’s pointless to lie. We know she was in that flat, we know you were there, and we have a witness who says not only did she see you there, but she also handed you cash. Why are you lying?”

“I’m not.”

“I’ll tell you why. You are ashamed of what went on between you. Did she come on to you? Offer you sex, offer to give you a blow job, strip for you? Come on, John, we know you met her, it’s useless to lie about it. Did you fuck her, John?”

“No, I did not! I never met that woman, and whoever it is saying that I did is the liar, not me. I’m married, I’ve got two kids, and I wouldn’t want to go with a slag like that. And I wouldn’t do any cash deals — it’s more than my job’s worth, ’cause I’ve worked for Mr. Rodgers for ten years, and I wouldn’t jeopardize that.”

“You couldn’t resist her, could you?”

“I never touched her.”

Langton sighed, picking up the photographs. He then gestured to Anna to lay down the photographs of the Polish victims. “Maybe you wouldn’t want to admit screwing someone like Margaret Potts, but these girls, look at them, they’re young and they’re beautiful. What about them, eh?”

Smiley was sweating but holding firm. “No. I never knew any of them, and that’s the honest truth. Now, you can keep asking me over and over, but you can’t get me to admit nothing, ’cause I am telling you the truth.”

Langton swung back in his chair, smiling. “No, you are not. We have a witness, John. We know you were in her flat in Hackney, and we know she paid you cash. I think you then paid that cash to screw Margaret Potts.”

“No, I did not.”

“So you admit you were in this flat in Hackney?”

“No.”

“John, let me help you out here. I can understand why a man like you doesn’t want to admit to having sex with a prostitute. You have a wife, and from what I saw of her, she’s the kind of woman who wouldn’t understand why you’d get your dick out for such a tart. She looked the type that would give you hell if she found out, so I can understand why you are lying. But you see, John, because we have a witness, it’s possibly going to turn into something more serious than you just taking your trousers off.”

Langton clicked his fingers for Anna to show Margaret Potts’s photograph again. “This woman was murdered, John, strangled and raped, and these three young girls” — he slapped the table with the flat of his hand — “were also murdered — so you see how serious it is if you are lying about just getting screwed?”

Smiley had sweat beads over his forehead and upper lip.

“If you just admit it and say to me, ‘All right, yeah, that’s what happened. I paid her twenty quid and she went down on me. I finished the work and then I left,’ that will be the end of the story. But because you lie and say you’ve never even met her, you have to see that from my side, it looks suspicious, doesn’t it? It looks to me like you might have another reason for lying — and that reason could be that you killed her.”

Langton leaned on his elbows. Smiley had his head bowed.

“You could also be lying about not knowing these young girls, and because of that simple lie, you’ve gone and got yourself into a shedload of trouble. The reason for that one little lie is because you also knew every one of these girls.”

“I don’t like this,” Smiley said, with his head still bowed.

“I don’t like it, either, John.”

Smiley eventually looked up. “I want a lawyer, because you are not asking me about why I was at that service station; you tricked me, and this isn’t about that at all. You’re trying to make out that I’ve done something terrible.”

Langton began to restack the photographs.

“You never said who this witness was,” Smiley went on. “Who is she? What’s her name? I’ve got a right to know who’s saying these things about me.”

Langton stood up. “‘She,’ Mr. Smiley? Very well, we’ll get you a lawyer. Might be a bit of a wait. Would you like another coffee?”

“No.”

Langton nodded to Anna, and she stood up.

“See you later, Mr. Smiley,” Langton said briskly.

They left him sitting mopping his head with a handkerchief.

Walking along the corridor, Langton turned to Anna. “What do you think, Travis?”

“Not sure.”

“I am.” Langton paused and gave her a sidelong look. “Because we’ve got that lady Emerald Turk, we can keep him here for further interviews. I want him to stew, because it’s all we’ve really got to hold him on.”

“I’ll get a lawyer sorted out.”

“Wait a second. He’s lying — right? You telling me you don’t think he’s the killer?”

“I’m not saying anything. The man is terrified of what his wife will say if he’s going to be held in custody. But even if we get him to admit that he did know Margaret Potts, we have no evidence that he killed her or the three Polish girls.”

“You ever think that maybe he’s wily enough to know that if he admits to knowing Margaret Potts, he had to have also seen or known about her working the service station?”

They continued down the corridor, and this time it was Anna who stopped.

“All along we’ve kept on saying that Margaret is the odd one out — that she’s older, tougher, and more worldly than the other three victims.”

“Yes — and?”

“We would need to prove that Smiley didn’t just see her once but that he kept on meeting up with her at the service station or elsewhere, because she wasn’t murdered until two years later. Emerald Turk puts him in her flat bloody years ago, near Christmas 2005, so even if he admits that he did meet with her that one time, we have a very long gap in between.”

They continued to walk along the corridor, and Langton put his arm around her shoulders as he listened.

“If we can find out that Smiley was a regular client of Maggie’s, we have a phone call from her to Emerald in which she says something about the Evening Standard newspaper, but she also sounds drunk, so I’m not sure where I’m going with this.”

“Try me,” Langton said briefly.

“Okay. We’ve checked back to a possible day or night when the call was made from a pay phone, maybe at the service station. Margaret said she wanted to come over to Hackney to stay, but Emerald apparently refused. Anyway, the Standard ran a front page on the blue-blanket victim we now know to be Dorota Pelagia...” Anna stopped. “I haven’t got this sorted in my brain because of the odd time frame, but what if Margaret Potts read about the blue-blanket murder and worked out that it was connected to John Smiley?”

“Tried to blackmail him, something like that?”

“Maybe... so she had to be got rid of — which is why she is the odd victim out, so to speak.”

Langton had left his arm around her shoulder, and she found it a bit uncomfortable, but she wasn’t able to simply shrug him away.

“It’s possible,” Langton agreed. “I mean, she might not have known where Smiley worked, and had no means of contacting him until she saw him at the services, or alternatively, she was often in contact with him...”

Anna stepped away so he dropped his arm. “I think I need to go back and question everyone who knew her again, and that includes Emerald Turk. Again, this is something that’s just sort of clicked and...” She came to a halt.

“Yes? Share it.”

“Well, Emerald Turk was wearing an outfit she said had been left in Margaret Potts’s suitcase. It was a very expensive velvet-type tracksuit, and she also said there had been some other clothes.”

“Where’s this going?”

“Money. Everyone tells me that Margaret Potts never had anything and was always desperate for cash, but if she was blackmailing someone — John Smiley — she might have had cash, and she wasn’t seen around the service station a few weeks before her murder.” Anna sighed. “I really need to sit down with all my notes and work out the time frame for all this.”

Langton cupped her face in his hands, saying, “You take as much time as you need, sweetheart.”

It was as if he were about to kiss her. Quickly, she pulled back, and just in time, as Barbara appeared in the corridor, heading for the ladies’ toilets.

A lawyer was arranged for John Smiley, but it took over two hours for him to arrive. James Gregson was young and deliberated over virtually everything they told him. He expressed concern about the legality of holding Smiley in custody without formal charges, and Langton, taking the bit between his teeth, said they had direct witness evidence that Smiley knew and had met Margaret Potts. Gregson went off to speak with his client as Mike brought Langton up to speed about the possibility of the chain or cord from Swell Blinds being used to strangle the victims.

“Jesus Christ, when did you come up with this?”

“Looking over the postmortem reports. I’ve sent the link chain from the vertical blinds up in the incident room over to forensics, and we’re waiting on a delivery of the actual cord and chains used by Swell Blinds. They’re being brought down from Manchester.”

“Get them from Emerald Turk’s flat as well. She’s got both, hasn’t she?”

Mike hadn’t thought of that, and he flushed, but Langton dug him in the ribs.

“Now you’re cooking.”

Smiley was with Gregson for two hours, and it was now after seven-thirty. At eight o’clock Langton and Lewis informed them both that Smiley’s further detention for questioning had been authorized and they would continue the interview until the morning. Smiley was allowed to call his wife to let her know that he was to remain in custody overnight.

Langton made no mention to Gregson that they were waiting on a result from the cord and chains from forensics. It had been disappointing when Pete had called to say that the chain from the incident room was thicker than the indentations left on the victim’s neck; although it was similar, the small raised links were wider apart. As the items from Swell Blinds had now been delivered from Manchester, he would hopefully have a new and possibly different result by morning.