Blind Fury (12 page)

Barolli glared at her. “I disagree. What about the possibility that she knew her killer and—”

“I have already questioned her husband and her brother-in-law. In the meantime, because I did trace them, Langton is checking in to the possibility. We’ll get the information about who harassed our victim.”

Barolli shook his head. “Well, thanks for telling me.”

“He gives me the creeps, and you weren’t the one subjected to the ogling by the other prisoners. Twice he touched my foot under the table, and if you can’t see it, that’s all he is doing—making himself out to be numero uno in the secure unit.”

“I think he already is.”

“Now we’ve given him even more kudos. Well, you did—talk about stroking his ego!”

“Maybe if you did, we’d get more out of him.”

“He doesn’t have anything,” she snapped, hands gripping the steering wheel.

“You think what you like. I beg to differ.”

Anna was completing her report when Mike Lewis came over to tell her they had a Tom McKinney in the interview room.

“He’s a truck driver that Margaret Potts had dealings with. He still works for the same delivery company, which supplies watercoolers. His firm is based in Scotland and Manchester, but he does the long haul back and forth to London twice a week, delivering to Bayton grocery stores.”

“Did he admit to getting beaten up by her contacts at the bailiffs?”

“I’ve not talked to him yet, and there’s another bloke coming in later this evening—a salesman for a cosmetics company. Both of them had dealings with her, so we may be able to get a lead at least on how she worked her area of the service station. I want you in on the interview.”

“Can you give me a few minutes while I finish up the report?” asked Anna, pleased that she would be working on a line of inquiry unconnected to Cameron Welsh.

“Sure. How did it go?”

“Well, Barolli and I have different takes on it. Welsh did bring up the fact that maybe Potts knew her killer, could have been stalked by him. I might go and interview her brother-in-law and husband again, but to be honest, I didn’t get a feeling from either of them that they would want to kill her.”

“Okay. When you’re ready, I’ll see you down there—interview room one.”

Anna was eating a sandwich and carrying a cup of coffee as she headed for the interview room. Mike was already there, explaining to Tom McKinney the reasons they had requested him to come in for questioning. The man was huge, very overweight, and his body odor was so pungent that the small room reeked. He was sweating profusely, with his big hands laid flat on the table, as Anna was introduced to him.

“You do understand that you are simply assisting our inquiry?” Mike said.

Tom nodded, then wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I thought at the start it was about me driving license. I had a bit of a prang a few days ago, not my fault, but that’s why I came in.”

“But you now know we are asking you about a woman called Margaret Potts.”

Anna sipped her coffee. Tom looked from one to the other. “I don’t know who she is.”

Mike glanced at Anna. “She was a prostitute, and she was murdered.”

Tom’s mouth gaped. “You want to talk to me about
that
? I dunno her, I’ve never heard of her.”

“But you did know her, Tom,” Mike said quietly.

“No, no, I never even heard of her. I don’t understand what this is all about. I mean, why? Why you got me in?”

“Because we know that you picked her up at a service station and—”

“Hang on, when was this? I’ve been off sick for months and only just got back to work, and then I had this problem with a bloke in a Transit van. He bloody gave me a false address and—”

Anna showed him the mug shot of Margaret Potts, laying it flat in front of him. “This is Margaret Potts.”

He squinted at it and licked his lips, then shook his head, saying, “I don’t know her. I swear on my life I never met this woman.”

Mike explained patiently that they had a witness who had described contacting him for a specific reason: he had refused to pay Margaret Potts for her services and had been abusive toward her, and as a result, the witness had traced him via his license plate to his place of work and had a confrontation with him on behalf of Margaret.

“You paid him fifty pounds, didn’t you?”

Mike paused as Tom puffed out his cheeks, sweating even more, but eventually, he admitted to meeting Margaret Potts. “She called herself Maggie. I didn’t know her other name, but she didn’t look like that photo; she was all made up and fancied herself. She was an old bitch and with a mouth on her, and I did shove her out of me cab because first she said it was a tenner, then she said it was twenty-five quid. My wallet was on the dashboard, and she grabbed it, so that’s why I slapped her around and kicked her out. She wasn’t hurt, ’cause she stood there screaming abuse at me.”

“She has been murdered, Tom.”

“Fuck me, you can’t get me for nothin’ more than what I just said. She was a dirty whore that was always hanging out at the London Gateway Services. I’d seen her there loads of times on my way back to Glasgow. I used to make my deliveries and then grab a bite to eat there before I drove up the motorway.”

“How many times did you pick up Maggie?”

“Just that once. I swear before God it was just the once. I’m married, and if my wife knew I’d been with such a slag, she’d kill me. It was just that one time, and she set that bastard on to me.”

It took another half hour before they got the exact details of how he had been contacted by a big bodybuilder type. McKinney never even knew his name, but the man had called his company, and when he was next delivering to London, the guy had found out his destination and was waiting there for him.

“He threatened to tell me bosses about that tart and said if I didn’t cough up the cash, he’d make sure I’d never even be able to pick up a pack of fags. So I paid him, never heard nothing more.”

From his description of the bodybuilder, Anna was certain it was Eric Potts who had threatened him.

McKinney was released without any charges, and they opened the window to get some fresh air into the room.

“What do you think?” Mike asked, wafting a file in front of his face like a fan.

“I think I need to talk to Eric Potts again.”

“But that incident took place almost a year before she was murdered.”

“Yes, I know.”

Anna repeated to Mike her talk with Cameron Welsh and went into more detail about her meeting with Eric, who was now a possible, but doubtful, suspect.

“Would the brother-in-law have been stalking her? Doesn’t sound likely to me.”

Anna shrugged. “He did admit to caring for her. Maybe it was more than that. Let me see what else I can get out of him.”

Returning to the incident room, Mike gave a briefing and the update of the interview with McKinney. His description of exactly how Margaret Potts worked the service stations added nothing new to their inquiry. Margaret would usually be hanging around the lorry parking area and was a well-known fixture, as McKinney had admitted seeing her there on numerous occasions. Although he’d confessed to going with her only the one time, both Anna and Mike suspected that he might have lied.

Tom had explained that she would wait for the men to come out from one or other of the cafés and then approach them as they returned to their trucks to offer her “services.” He had said he had seen her getting in and out of a number of vehicles over some considerable time. He also said that she would sometimes climb aboard and drive out with the driver to go to the next service station. She offered a blow job, a hand job, or full sex. It was all horribly seedy, and it would mean yet another round of officers interviewing truckers who were known to do regular stops.

McKinney was unable to tell them how far up the motorway she would travel as she was picking the guys up at the London Gateway. She was wary about being caught by any of the security cameras, but if a john wanted full sex, then they would drive somewhere out of the way and she would go into the back of their cabs. She would then, they presumed, either go back home or return to work.

During the briefing, DC Barbara Maddox listened, sighing inwardly at the awful way this woman had earned her living. She was certain that neither of the still unidentified girls would be working the same deal. Both were young, and the postmortem reports stated that they had been raped and strangled. The last victim’s hymen had visible tear damage, so it was possible she had been a virgin before the attack.

Mike looked over the board and back to the team. “That’s it,” he told them. “Not much to go on, is it? Let’s hope we get something back from the next TV appeal for information on our two Jane Does.”

The following morning, Anna, accompanied by Barolli, went back to the debt collection agency. She was not anticipating gaining anything more from Eric Potts and told Barolli to give her some breathing space.

He bridled. “What do you mean?”

“Just don’t get too heavy or interrupt too much. I want to take it slowly.”

“Whatever.” Barolli got out and slammed the car door shut. He looked toward the fish-and-chip shop, which was closed, as it was only nine-fifteen. The seedy office door was also closed. It appeared the building had previously been used by a minicab company. Their cards and a torn plaque were hammered into the brick wall.

“It’s up on the second floor,” Anna said.

Barolli grunted, pressing the bell. “Doesn’t look as if they’re open for business.”

Anna stepped back to look up to the dirty windows. “Light’s on. Ring again.”

Barolli kept his finger on the bell for a few moments. There was a loud click, and the door opened automatically. Mrs. Kelly stood on the second landing, waiting for them to come up.

“I’m just going out for some fresh coffee. Do you want to see my husband? Because he’s not coming in this morning.”

Anna asked to see Eric Potts. Just as Mrs. Kelly began to say he was also not in the office, they heard heavy footsteps on the stairs behind them. It was Eric.

Anna introduced Barolli as Eric unlocked his office, asking Mrs. Kelly to bring him coffee and a toasted bacon sandwich. He seemed slightly edgy, pushing open the door to walk in ahead of them.

“I got a lot on today,” he said, taking off his coat and hanging it up on a nail hammered into a wall.

“This shouldn’t take too long. It’s just I need to iron out a few things,” Anna told him.

“I dunno what they could be, as I’ve already told you everything, and don’t think I liked giving up the names of the blokes that work for us here. It’s hard enough to earn a living right now, and I hope helping out Maggie isn’t gonna get me or them into trouble.”

He sat at his desk. Anna took the only other available seat, leaving Barolli to stand by the door.

“We traced the lorry driver, and I just wanted to clarify that it was you who talked to him and received money from him on behalf of Margaret.”

“I admitted it, didn’t I? It was the big bloke that delivered watercoolers, right?”

“Yes. He claimed that he only ever picked up Margaret that one time and, I would say, regretted it.” She smiled.

Eric shrugged his massive shoulders.

“I need to ask you about any other incident you personally handled,” Anna went on.

“I just did it that one time for her. I’ve got too much on my plate to run around after anyone else. Like I said, a couple of blokes here did a bit of collecting for her, but not recently. It was all a long time ago. She’s been dead two years, for chrissakes.”

“You cared for her, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but that was also a long time ago, and apart from the odd call, I hadn’t seen her. I also told you I didn’t want to be bothered with her anymore, as my wife didn’t want her at the house.”

“These other times you saw her, where did you meet?”

He sighed, saying that he had already mentioned meeting her in a café. He then remembered a couple of calls from her to his office and said he had met her at the same café by King’s Cross station.

“She just needed money, as always. I think she used the station ladies’ room to wash up and sometimes left her belongings in the luggage lockers. It’s got to be at least eighteen months before she was murdered, and I told her then that I’d had enough of being a cash cow for her.”

“How did she take it?”

“Well, she looked pretty ragged, so much that I gave her more than I’d intended; plus, I told her not to come round to the house anymore.”

“How did she react to that?”

He sighed again, becoming visibly irritated. “She didn’t like it, because once we’d been intimate. She reckoned I’d always be an easy touch.”

“Were you intimate with her during her marriage to your brother?”

“Yes,” he snapped.

“But you claim that you did not continue to have a close relationship with her after she left her husband.”

“I maybe saw her a couple more times and had sex with her, but then I met my wife, and by this time I knew Margaret was on the game. I told you how I warned her to take care of herself, but she would still turn up after I got married, and eventually, my wife told me to get rid of her.”

“Get rid of her?” Anna asked sharply.

“Christ! By that she meant, tell her to stay away. We’d got a kid and another one on the way, so I was to tell her to stay out of our lives.”

“Did Maggie ever make any threats?” Barolli leaned forward, resting his hands on the desk.

“Threats? Like what?”

“Well, if your wife didn’t like her and didn’t want her around, it seems to me that maybe she was jealous.”

“She’s fucking ten years younger than Margaret was, and if you mean did she make threats to me, it would be ridiculous! She could see that she was just a slag and was after money, and she didn’t want me shelling out to her all the time.”

“Did Margaret threaten to tell your wife that you’d been intimate?” Barolli was still leaning on the desk.

“Hang on . . . just hang on a minute here. I know what you’re doing—you’re trying to make out that I had some kind of motive to kill Maggie, right? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”