Blind Fury

Chapter Seventeen

Barolli could feel the frustration emanating from Anna and Mike from his vantage point in the viewing room. He couldn’t understand why they didn’t move on to questioning Smiley about the other victims. So far, the man had not admitted to anything apart from having had sex with Margaret Potts on one occasion. Why did Anna keep returning to Smiley’s wife? Barolli’s train of thought was interrupted by Barbara saying that Michael Dillane had arrived.

Dillane was complaining about having to return to the station. It was his day off, and he’d promised his wife they’d go to Ikea to look at sofas. He felt that he had told the police everything regarding the sale of his van to Smiley. He began to get interested as they went through into the forensic department, however, and became quieter. Led to the table where the blue blanket was pinned out, he was invited to handle it if he wanted to. All they wanted to know was if he could identify it as the dog’s blanket he had said he left in the back of his van. They had already removed some dog hairs and tested them against dog hairs removed from the van while it was parked at Smiley’s garage. It would be a slower process to get them confirmed, but the team would be able to use this as leverage in questioning Smiley.

Dillane didn’t hesitate. He picked up one corner of the blanket that had a jagged edge where the prison stamp would have been, and said, “I cut this off. Did it with the wife’s scissors she uses for crimping or something — you know, the ones with the zigzag blade. Also, there’s a big stain to one side where me dog got sick. I washed it, but it was bright yellow, and the stain never come out. Gawd knows what Nimrod had been eating. Yeah, this is my blanket, all right.”

Barolli found Anna and Mike in the canteen on a lunch-break. “How’s it going?” he asked.

“Slowly,” said Mike.

“We got an ID on the blanket from Dillane. He is certain it was the same one he left in the back for his dog to lie on. They are still matching the dog hairs. Had to bring in a canine specialist unit for animal identification, but we can use the coincidence until it’s a positive match.” Barolli laughed, recalling that he had asked Dillane if they could also bring in the dog. He had said they’d have to dig him up, as poor old Nimrod had died about a year ago.

“Very funny.” Anna sighed. “So we move on to Dorota, but we were hoping to break him over Margaret Potts.”

“I know — I heard. I was in the viewing room, and you were getting nowhere fast, as far as I could see.”

Anna finished her coffee and pushed the cup aside. “We have to get him to confess, because we don’t have enough to charge him with the others. We don’t even know how he picked them up; all we’ve got is circumstantial evidence.”

“Should be enough, though. Christ, he puts on the uniform, they feel safe enough to get into that dog handler’s van and he kills them.”

“But we have no forensic evidence from the van that any of the girls were ever inside it. Has Pete matched any of the carpet fibers?”

“Not yet, and they stripped the van down; ditto the Swell Blinds vehicle. So far, nothing.”

“All we’ve got is that he has admitted having sex with Margaret Potts one time and never saw her again.” Mike sounded depressed.

“We go again and keep on going,” Anna said. “That little prick of a lawyer makes me want to slap him.” She stood up. “I’m going to have a wash and brush-up. We’ll reconvene in, what, Mike?”

Mike looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes.”

Anna went into the ladies’ room, washed her face, and combed her hair. Resting her hands on the sink, she tried to think how they could put more pressure on Smiley. She closed her eyes, wondering if it was possible they had it wrong. Langton had warned her it was going to be tough to break Smiley — but what if the man were innocent?

She looked up and stared at herself, then folded her arms. If, as Langton had said, Sonja was the means to open him up, Anna had tried and failed. But could she put more pressure on, using Sonja as bait?

Anna had five minutes to spare, so she went into the incident room to talk with Barbara. Smiley’s house was still being searched, but to date, no evidence had been forthcoming from either his home or the rented garage. They had also found nothing incriminating in Smiley’s locker at his workplace.

“What did he do with the victims’ clothes?” Anna said, more to herself than Barbara. She crossed to the incident board and looked at the faces of the murdered women.

“You’ve only one found naked, and that was Dorota Pelagia.” Barbara stood beside her.

“You know, in the Fred West investigation,” Anna mused, “one of his victims’ mothers called at his house, asking about her daughter, and Rose West was wearing her slippers.”

“Yeah, well, with Sonja being the size of a house, I doubt if she’d fit anything from our victims.”

“It was just a thought,” Anna said, knowing she was grasping at straws. Missing were the new shoes described by Eric Potts and worn by Margaret the last time he had seen her, but then they didn’t know if they had all her belongings, especially since Emerald Turk had taken some and dumped the rest.

Mike appeared and told Anna that he was ready to start the interview again. “Not looking good, is it?” he said quietly as they made their way back to the interview room.

“Nope, but we’ll keep going. They’ve nothing new from his house,” Anna told him, sitting at the table.

“Do we go for Dorota Pelagia now or keep on with Margaret Potts?”

“I’ve changed my mind about Dorota. Let’s stay on Margaret for a while longer. We can maybe tire him out.” She smiled encouragingly.

“Or, more likely, we’ll get tired out.”

Smiley looked refreshed and had the audacity to say he had enjoyed his lunch. Mike warned the man that he was still under caution. Just as they were about to begin, Anna’s phone vibrated. She took it out and glanced at the text message, then showed it to Mike.

“Mr. Smiley, I am going to ask that another officer continue this interview. Please excuse me.”

Anna stood up as Mike spoke into the tape recorder to say she was leaving the room. She hurried to the adjoining room to find Barolli and Barbara sitting with Sonja Smiley. Anna drew Barolli into the corridor and asked him to join Mike. She gestured at Sonja through the small window in the door. “When did she arrive?”

“Just now. Turned up out of the blue. They called me from reception to go and collect her. She’s a nasty piece of work.”

“Right. Let me have a go at her, and you follow Mike’s lead, okay?”

“I have conducted an interview before,” Barolli said sarcastically.

Anna hurried into the incident room to ask Joan for a copy of all their victims’ photographs. She then returned to interview room. Anna took a deep breath and walked in as Sonja turned to face her. She was wearing what looked like a floral tent and had sweat stains beneath her armpits. Folded over her knee was a raincoat.

“I want to know what is going on,” the woman said forcefully. “Nobody is telling me anything. I want to know why you’ve got my husband here and why you’ve got men searching my house from top to bottom. What is going on?”

Anna sat opposite Sonja. “Your husband has been arrested,” she said calmly.

“I know that, and if you try to tell me it’s to do with his not changing the registration on his van, then you must think I’m stupid. I know he thinks I am, because that’s all he’s told me. You don’t take a man away in handcuffs just for that, so now I want to know the truth.”

“Your husband has been arrested in connection with four murders.”

Sonja’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

“It is obviously serious, and he is being interviewed.”

“Murders? John? That’s preposterous. He’s never done anything like that! You’ve got it wrong.”

“Then perhaps you can help me. Would you agree to answer some questions?”

“I want him to have a lawyer.”

“He has one. If you feel it necessary, we can also bring one to be privy to this interview, but as you are here of your own free will and just offering to assist my inquiry—”

“What do you want to know, because I am telling you now, John never done a bad thing in his life.”

Anna smiled and said. “Do you have the photographs, Barbara?”

DC Maddox passed over a file, and Anna placed it on the table. “I am going to ask if you recognize any of these women. May I call you Sonja?”

“Are you serious? He’s here about four murders?”

“That is correct.”

“I am telling you that we have never spent a night apart, not since we were married. I know everything about him.”

“But you didn’t know he had a van parked in a private garage. It used to belong to Michael Dillane.”

“Oh, him, he’s no good, that one. I won’t let him in the house no more. He gets John drunk, takes him pub crawling. I won’t have it.”

“But you didn’t know about the van, did you, Sonja? So perhaps there is a lot else about your husband that you don’t know. For example, did you know he was making a considerable amount of money doing private jobs?”

“What private jobs?”

“He uses the blinds that are customers’ returns and sells them at a cheaper price.”

“No, that’s not true, because Arnold Rodgers wouldn’t allow that. I know he’s very strict. You got that wrong.”

“Your husband paid Michael Dillane seven hundred pounds cash for his van, Mrs. Smiley. He has been earning quite a lot of extra money for years. In fact, he was working on one of those private jobs when he met Margaret Potts.” Anna withdrew Margaret Potts’s photograph and laid it flat on the table in front of Sonja. “She was a prostitute, and your husband has already admitted to having sexual intercourse with her and to paying her.”

“I’ll bloody kill him!”

“We believe, Mrs. Smiley, that your husband killed her.”

The sweat lay in beads across Sonja’s top lip. It trickled down her neck, and she was obviously uncomfortable, as she kept on patting her face with a crumpled tissue.

Out came the photographs of Anika Waleska, Estelle Dubcek, and Dorota Pelagia. Anna placed them in a row on the table. “Do you recognize any of the girls?”

Sonja blew out short sharp breaths, and now the perspiration was pouring off her, the crumpled tissue sodden.

“These girls are Polish. Have you ever met any of them?”

“No.” Her voice was hardly audible.

“Have you ever heard your husband discuss meeting Polish girls?”

“No.”

“We believe, Sonja, that your husband killed these girls also.”

Her small round eyes were so pain-racked that Anna felt sorry for her and offered her a bottle of water.

“Thank you.” Sonja unscrewed the cap and gulped the water. Her hands were shaking.

“There is a possibility, however, that we could be mistaken. Perhaps you could help us clear a few things up.”

“I want to see him.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

“He didn’t hurt these girls. I know him — he couldn’t do anything bad. He is a good man.”

“Can you recall a few years back, probably shortly before you moved from London to Manchester — did you receive any odd phone calls?”

“How do you mean?”

“Perhaps asking for John or hanging up? You know the kind of thing, from a woman possibly.”

Sonja sighed and drank more water. “We had someone call a few times, but they hung up and we thought it was because we were in a rented flat. You see, we rented when we first moved to Manchester; we didn’t get our house for a few months.”

“Did this caller ring when John was at home?”

“Yes. He was angry because they called late and woke the children. He said it was someone getting the wrong number. I remember he told them not to call again.”

“Did the person call again?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Was it a woman’s voice?”

“Yes. Why do you want to know? It was before we moved to our house.”

“Yes, you said, and this would have been five years ago, correct?”

“I want to see my husband. I don’t like these women’s faces.”

Anna removed the photographs.

“You have said that John never spent a night apart from you in all the years you’ve been married.”

“Yes, even though it meant he would have to travel long hours. He always come home to me, so that is why I know this isn’t right. He has done nothing bad. I know this.”

Anna again placed down Margaret Potts’s photograph. “He has admitted to having sexual intercourse with this woman.”

“Take it away from me! I don’t believe he did that. She looks like a whore — you say she is one. He would never go with a woman like that, never, never.”

“Mr. Dillane inferred that when you were young and working at a bar in Aldershot, you were sexually permissive.”

Her fat hand smacked the table. “Not true. That man is a liar, a wicked liar. Why are you saying these terrible things about me, about my husband?”

“Because we have four dead women, Mrs. Smiley, and we have removed certain items from your house that link to their deaths.”

“No.”

“Why did your husband have a security guard’s jacket and cap hidden in a garage that he rented near your house?”

Sonja took a deep breath, her ample bosom almost pressed against the table.

“I don’t know nothing about that. What I do know is that friend of his, that Michael Dillane, he was a security guard, so they must have belonged to him, and he left them when he stayed one night.”

Anna realized that for all her sweating and nervousness, Sonja was quick to give a possible reason for the presence of the uniform.

“Why are you here, Mrs. Smiley?”

“Because I get a call from Mr. Rodgers. He said that he had taken enough from the police and that he could not keep John working for him anymore. I come to straighten things out with him. I not say no more until I speak to my husband. You got to let me talk to him.”

“I am afraid that won’t be possible.”

“You got no right to keep him here! I want to see him!”

“You can wait until the interrogation is completed, but it could be some time.”

“Then I wait. I have someone staying to look out for my children, so I wait.”

“Does your husband speak Polish?”

“A little. My mother had poor English, so we used to try and teach him, but he not pick it up. My children don’t speak it either, and...” She bowed her head and started crying. “I am sick with worry. Please let me see him.”

Anna left Barbara with Sonja and returned to interview room one. She tapped on the door and looked in. “Paul, can I have a word, please?”

Barolli stood up. Anna made sure that Smiley could hear even though she lowered her voice. “Mrs. Smiley is very distressed. Can you arrange for a cup of tea?”

Barolli nodded as Mike reported into the tape recorder that DI Travis had returned to the interview room.

“You got my wife here?” Smiley asked.

“Yes, she’s helping our inquiries.”

“She’s here? You brought her into the police station?”

“Yes, but she’s obviously distressed.”

Smiley stood up. “I have to see her.”

“Sit down, Mr. Smiley.” Mike gestured firmly to him.

“No, you can’t do this. I have to talk to her.”

“Sit down!”

Smiley slumped back in his seat and then asked his lawyer if it was right that they could bring in his wife and not allow him to see her.

“You can talk to her when we have finished the interview, Mr. Smiley.” Anna said as she took her seat as Mike passed over some notes from while she had been out of the room.

“She is being well looked after but is obviously frightened, and as she now knows that you were with Margaret Potts, she is helping our inquiry with regard to the other victims we also wish to question you about.”

“You had no fucking right to tell her anything, you bitch.” He jabbed a finger at Anna, his face twisted with anger. Gregson put a restraining arm on Smiley, trying to calm him down, but the other man jerked away from him in a fury. “I want to see my wife.”

“She also wants to see you. She’s been called by Mr. Rodgers, who has told her you can no longer work for Swell Blinds.”

“Jesus Christ.” Smiley was so pent up with anger that his whole body shook.

“She also told me that, contrary to what you have said, Margaret Potts made frequent calls to first your rental flat in Manchester and then—” Anna was lying, but it got a result.

“That is not true. She didn’t know!”

Anna glanced up as Smiley tried to explain.

“What I meant was, neither of us knew who the caller was. She, whoever it was, was obviously expecting to speak to the previous tenant, right? Then she’d put the phone down.”

“It was Margaret Potts, wasn’t it?”

He closed his eyes. Anna felt as if she were playing a game of poker, bluffing, but obviously doing it well.

“All right, yes, it was her.”

There was a long pause. Anna and Mike were exchanging looks, hesitant to begin drawing more from Smiley, hoping he would elaborate. He didn’t.

Gregson shifted his weight, alarmed as Smiley put his head into his hands. Eventually, Anna quietly suggested they start from the moment Smiley said he met Margaret at Emerald Turk’s flat. She had an intuitive feeling that something was wrong and was trying to quickly work out the time frame of when he had met Margaret, then relate it to the phone calls, but she couldn’t grasp what was confusing her.

“As I said before, she wanted me to give her a lift to the London Gateway service station. I waited until she was dressed, and then we went out to my van.” He paused and then smirked. “We were driving along, and she said the van still stank of dogs, so I said to her, ‘It takes one to know one.’” He gave a mirthless laugh. “Anyway, I dropped her off and went on to Manchester.”

“Just a second, Mr. Smiley. Earlier you stated that you were not using Mr. Dillane’s vehicle but the company Transit van, so kindly explain what you meant when you said Margaret said it stank of dogs.”

“Oh, right, sorry. I must have been confused. Yeah, now I remember it was Dillane’s van, and it did smell of his dog. I never got rid of the stink.”

Anna still had that niggly feeling but said nothing as Mike asked when Margaret had started to call him.

“She got my bloody number from my wallet, and she called a couple of times wanting to see me, but I always put the phone down on her. I didn’t want to ever see her again, and I obviously didn’t want Sonja to know what I’d been up to. When we moved to the new house, she couldn’t call me ’cause we’d got a new phone number.”

He said that was it and repeated that he didn’t see her again after that one time. Anna doodled on her notepad, unable to bring up what was lingering in the back of her mind, because it didn’t quite make sense. Margaret Potts was murdered two years or more ago, Dorota even longer. Margaret was making more money than usual and had been, they presumed, hitting John Smiley up for cash before he had purchased the van from Michael Dillane. Then it clicked. It was like a piece of jigsaw falling into place, and she was angry with herself for not grasping it sooner.

“You knew Margaret Potts before you met her at Emerald Turk’s flat, didn’t you? You lied when you said it was the first time you met her.”

She could almost see the wheels turning in Smiley’s head as he weighed the question and made a decision on how to answer. Mike Lewis was looking confused, as it was something he hadn’t even considered; this was completely out of left field. Like Anna, he waited for Smiley to answer.

“You got me there,” Smiley said, and he had that weird smirk on his face again.

“Where exactly have I got you, Mr. Smiley? Caught in yet another lie?”

“Yes.”

“Please don’t waste any more of our time. Just tell us how long you had known Margaret Potts before that meeting at Emerald Turk’s flat.”

He looked at the ceiling, thinking. “Maybe four years. I wouldn’t say I knew her — let’s say it was more of an occasional thing. It was often months in between meetings, and then it was only for one thing. I suppose you can guess what that was.”

“Sex?”

“Yeah. I also need to tell you that I liked her. Okay, she was cheap and she was fucked up — and she was always on the take — but at the same time, she had a kind of genuine niceness. She was always gonna clean her act up, but she liked the drink, she liked getting stoned out of her head, and she also liked sex in a big way.”

“Four years?”

He nodded, adding that it was about that, but he couldn’t be sure, as he saw her only infrequently.

“Where did you really first meet Margaret?”

He closed his eyes, remembering. “It was in a café opposite King’s Cross station. They do a good cheap breakfast there. Don’t know what it’s called, but that’s where she used to hang out.”

Smiley continued to recall the different places that he had subsequently met Margaret Potts; he reckoned that it was before she began working the service stations. He added that he met her there by accident, as he hadn’t seen her in months.

Anna wrote a note to pass to Mike. The body of Dorota Pelagia had been discovered four years ago. The time frame bothered her because Margaret Potts wasn’t murdered until two years after Dorota. Did she have a connection to Dorota? Mike glanced at her note. She had written, Firm up dates.

Anna remained silent as Mike took over.

“Go back to the time you met Margaret at Emerald Turk’s flat. Did you know that she’d be there?”

“Yeah, because I’d seen her recently. She told me about the blinds, though her mate didn’t know we were acquainted. It worked out okay for me because I’d been part of doing the housing association contract. I even gave her a cut of the cash Emerald Turk paid me ’cause of selling her the Swell Blinds for the box room. Maggie was hitting me for more and more cash; she even threatened to call my wife, and I’d had enough.”

“Can I clarify something, Mr. Smiley? Are you saying that Margaret was hitting you up for money during the entire time you knew her? From the meeting in the café?”

“Yeah. Not much — a few quid here and there. I paid her ’cause I didn’t want her callin’ Sonja, and like I said, it wasn’t that much.”

“You said Emerald did not know that you knew Margaret Potts?”

“No. It was gonna be convenient, ’cause we could have time to play some sex games in a bed; before that, I’d only ever done it with her in the back of the van. Listen, I’m tired, and I’ve got a headache.”

Anna knew how he felt. Her head had begun to throb just from trying to assimilate all the new dates and locations, and she began to also want to take a break. It was already after six. Smiley had started to droop, constantly rubbing at his face.

“So after that time in Emerald Turk’s flat, when did you see her again?” Mike asked.

“I never did. Next thing I knew, couple years later, I was reading that she’d been murdered, poor cow.”

This didn’t add up for Anna. She believed that it was after that meeting that Margaret had increased her blackmail demands of Smiley. It was getting to the point that they should move to question him about Dorota Pelagia, but Gregson asked that as it was late, they should break and continue the interview the following morning.

“I want to see my wife,” Smiley said.

“I am afraid that won’t be possible,” Mike told him.

However, Anna wanted to keep Smiley sweet, so she suggested they speak to their superintendent to see if a short supervised meeting could take place.

She and Mike left Smiley with his lawyer just as Langton walked out of the viewing room. He had just arrived so had not been privy to the interrogation.

After a brief discussion, he agreed that they should keep Smiley as pliable as possible for the following day, and if they let him see Sonja for five minutes, it might assist their interrogation in the morning, but he wanted him handcuffed. Smiley would be held in the cells overnight again.

Sonja Smiley was sitting with Barbara. Food cartons and cups of cold coffee littered the table. She turned expectantly when Anna entered.

“We have agreed to allow you to see your husband, Mrs. Smiley, but I will have to be present, and it can only be for five minutes.”

Sonja reached out to take Anna’s hand and grasped it tightly. “Thank you. I just want to say a few things to him.”

Anna felt sorry for her. The big woman seemed vulnerable; her face was swollen from weeping, her eyes redrimmed.

Barbara was eager to leave, as the body odor from Sonja was by now overpowering. “Can I go?”

“Yes. Sorry to keep you here for so long.”

“That’s okay.” Barbara jerked her head to ask for a private chat. “She’s been crying since you left, almost waded through a whole box of tissues. She didn’t talk much, kept going on about betrayal... how much she’d done for him... but she still managed to scarf down four sandwiches and a hamburger.”

“Thank you, Barbara. Right, you get home. I have to say I really need a break as well. I’m exhausted.”

Anna watched Barbara walk down the corridor at the same time as John Smiley left interview room one, accompanied by Mike and Barolli. He was handcuffed but was trying to straighten his tie and run his hands through his sweat-sodden hair.

Anna stood aside, pushing the door open wider for Mike to usher Smiley into the room. Sonja was like a sumo wrestler. Considering her size, she moved quickly and kicked her husband hard in the groin, then as he moaned, bending forward, she gave him an upper-cut punch worthy of Mike Tyson. His head jolted back as she came at him again with fists flying, catching him twice with well-aimed heavy punches before Barolli and Mike managed to drag her off.

Her face was red as she spat at him, then held between the two officers, she screamed, “You bastard! After what I done for you — well, now I make you pay. You got no home, no job, and you never gonna see your kids again. I hate you.”

Smiley burst into tears as he was helped to his feet. Anna was helping Barolli as Mike pushed Sonja into a chair; her chest was heaving as she tried to get her breath.

Smiley was taken down to the cells, still crying. His lawyer stood watching helplessly, obviously shocked by what had happened. Langton tried to put the lid on it all, ushering Anna into the room with Sonja as he headed off with Gregson. Barolli handed Sonja a cup of water, and she gulped it down. She then turned to Anna.

“I want to make a statement. I want a lawyer to be with me because I don’t want no trouble for me. I only want trouble for him, and I can give you plenty. I know things — very bad things.”

Anna’s headache was at full blast, and she felt sick but remained calm as she said that Sonja should stay with Barolli. She then hurried off to find Langton.

Langton listened as Anna repeated what Sonja had just told her. “Statement?”

“That’s what she said — and that she wanted trouble for Smiley, that she knew bad things—”

Langton put up his hand. “Okay, okay... let’s get her represented.” He glanced at his watch. “I dunno who we can get tonight, but we should do it ASAP, while she’s still spitting venom.”

“I’ll get on it.” In her state of exhaustion, the thought of yet another session was daunting.

“You don’t think she’s involved in the murders, do you?” Langton asked. “Did you bring her here?”

“No, she came of her own free will.”

Langton rubbed his head. “That might be a lucky break, because from what little I heard, it’s been a long, slow process with not much to show for it.”

Anna would have liked to add that if she’d had stronger backup, she might have gotten a lot further. Mike had felt like deadwood beside her sometimes. However, she said nothing, heading up the stairs to the incident room with a packet of aspirin.

It was another hour before a lawyer was found for Sonja Smiley. By now it was after seven o’clock. Moira Flynn was a forty-five-year-old experienced lawyer. Straightaway, she asked if Sonja wished a private discussion before making her statement. The woman refused, saying she wanted to get it over with, but after a moment, she asked if, by making the statement, she would be accused of anything criminal. Miss Flynn suggested that they have a conversation without Anna present.

There was another half-hour delay before Anna sat down with Sonja. The latter was nervous, and Anna was struck by how tense she was, yet determined to begin. Sonja sipped a glass of water, and Miss Flynn indicated that she should start.

Anna switched on the tape recorder, giving the date and time and location before asking Sonja to begin her statement. Sonja nodded and licked her lips.

“I met my husband when I was working in a bar in Aldershot. It was around the time of the Kosovo war, more close to the end of it, as the soldiers were all returning. My bar was popular with the Paratroopers, and some nights it was rowdy. The boys would let off steam and get drunk, but we tolerated it because the owner of the bar was making a lot of money. I was living in a rented flat — just two rooms — with my mother. She spoke little English and was quite poorly, and she had been doing housecleaning, but that had got too much for her, so we were dependent on my wages.”

Anna stifled a yawn; she couldn’t see where Sonja’s statement was leading. She began to concentrate on the woman in front of her, trying to keep up at least some semblance of interest. Sonja was obese and had a flat face and thin lips, and she had little or no expression, but she kept her chubby hands clenched. She was very different from the picture her husband carried, and yet Anna could sometimes see that Sonja had once been attractive by the way she spoke, and held her head up, and her eyes were a bright blue. There was a lightness to her, even though her belly hung low and her huge breasts pushed against the table, while her thick legs beneath the table were wide apart, her ankles swollen.

“I admit that I did have a few relationships with some of the soldiers, and I also admit that they sometimes gave me money, but I wasn’t a tart. I only went with the nice ones. I used to see John come into the bar with his mates. They’d often get drunk, but he was always a real gentleman. I liked him from the first moment I saw him. He asked me out for a date, a real one, wanting to take me to a movie, and he did come on to me, but I rejected him. I didn’t want him to think I was an easy lay. I wanted it to be different with him. I really liked him, and he came and met my mother and was kind to her.”

Sonja gave a long sigh, then sipped more water. Anna was taking sly looks at her watch, wondering how long the so-called statement would go on.

“I don’t know how much he cared for me, but we had several dates, and I still wouldn’t go to bed with him. He said it was all right, and he never pushed himself on me, he never tried it on like some of the other Paras. There was another barmaid, a blond girl called Chrissie. She was younger than me, and we were never friends, but we worked hard alongside each other, and she was popular. It was well known that she was no angel; she really put it about. One night John had come in with his friends, that Micky Dillane was one, and they were getting boisterous. We often had to call in the police or the army to haul the lads out... It was near to closing time — in fact, the boss had rung the bell to say last orders...”

She sipped more water. “On this night John was sort of ignoring me — well, it felt like he was — and at about eleven o’clock, I went out to the backyard with some bin bags to stack in the wheelie bins. They didn’t see me, and I was really hurt, because he was kissing Chrissie. She had her skirt pulled up, and he had his hands all over her. I thought she tried to push him off her, but it could have been my imagination. I was upset, and after I’d washed the glasses, I went straight home. Next lunchtime, Chrissie didn’t come in, and it made us short-handed. We called her flat but got no answer. When she still hadn’t turned up for the night shift, my boss was worried.”

Sonja licked her lips, and sweat trickled down her face. “They called the police, but nobody knew where she was. They asked me if I’d seen her, and I lied, I said I hadn’t, as I’d been busy in the bar all night. I never told them I’d seen her out by the bins with John. I just kept my mouth shut.”

Anna was on full alert, leaning forward.

“They kept on searching for her, and it was weeks later that her body was found. She’d been raped and strangled with her own tights. John and his cronies didn’t come back to the bar for some time, but when they did, I asked John to meet me after work. He agreed, and we met up in an all-night hamburger café. I said to him that I’d been questioned about Chrissie, and he went quiet. At first he hardly said a word, then I said to him that I’d seen them together on the night she disappeared. He was upset, begging me not to say a word, and if the police asked questions about him, would I say that when the bar closed, I was with him?”

She wiped her eyes. “They did ask me about him — they were asking about all the soldiers in the bar that night. I told them he was my boyfriend and that he’d been in the bar all night and then took me home.”

“You gave him an alibi?” Anna said quietly.

“Yes, I did. You see, I wanted to get married. I had my mother to look after, and it was hard for me, all on my own. I said if he wanted me to keep on lying for him, he should agree...”

She shrugged her wide shoulders. “We got married. I loved him. He was what I wanted, and when I asked him about Chrissie, he said that what had happened was an accident. She had come on to him, egging him on, and when he took her round back into the fields by the pub yard, she rejected him. He said he had squeezed her throat when he was trying to kiss her and suddenly realized she was dead, so he took off her tights and wrapped them around her neck. I didn’t understand but wanted to believe him — I needed to believe him. He was my way out of that stinking bar.”

“You never told this to anyone?”

“No, never, but even though I tried not to think about it, it was always somewhere in the back of my mind. It didn’t matter that Chrissie was promiscuous; I’d had plenty of boyfriends, too, and it was no reason for her to end up in that field.”

Sonja gave a helpless gesture. “What it did was make me cautious with John. I was so afraid he’d do it again. I was always wondering if he was seeing other women, it didn’t matter that we had two children. The fear was always sitting inside me, and I warned him that if he ever crossed the line, if I ever found out he was seeing other women, I’d report him. I kept him short of money, made sure he always came home to me because, yes, I was afraid he would do it again.”

She drained the water and set it carefully down on the table. “He has, hasn’t he? He betrayed me. All the years I’ve protected him and looked out for him, and he’s been with other women again.”

Tears welled in her eyes. Her grief was just for herself, not for any of her husband’s subsequent victims. Any sympathy Anna had felt toward her had evaporated. She spent some time getting the exact dates and location of the murdered Chrissie, whose surname Sonja thought was O’Keefe.

“I won’t get charged with anything, will I?” she asked, looking pleadingly at Anna.

Miss Flynn had not said one word, but she, too, looked to Anna for an answer.

“That will depend on whether your statement can be verified. In the meantime, we will begin checking out your information.”

Sonja looked up as Anna pushed back her chair. “It’s the truth, I swear before God, but I can’t protect him anymore. I never want to see him again, and he will never see his children again.”

She gasped for breath and gestured at herself. “This is what he did to me. I used to be such a pretty woman, but when you live with a secret like that, something has to give because of the guilt. I have hated myself, but you know... he has nothing, I know that now.”

Langton was sitting at Anna’s desk, having by now watched the entire video of her interrogation of John Smiley.

“Tomorrow I’ll be with you; we’ll do the interview together,” he said.

She rested her briefcase on the desk, and he reached for her hand, patting it lightly.

“It’s been a long day,” he said tiredly.

“Yes. How did your case go, the Pixie?”

“I got a full confession and more crocodile tears. The bastard.”

“Well, congratulations.”

He stood up and smiled. “We’ll get Smiley tomorrow, so go home and get a good night’s rest.”

“Good night, then.”

“Good night, Anna.”

She started to walk away and stopped. He rarely, if ever, called her Anna.

“Don’t you have one to go to?” she asked.

“One what?”

“A home.”

She caught a look in his eyes, a split second of pain, and then it was gone.

“Got a lot of catching up to do here. Go on, get out.”