Blind Fury (15 page)

“To date you have simply wasted our time, Mr. Welsh. You have given us nothing that we haven’t already—”

“I have now,” he interrupted her angrily.

She did not respond.

“I want you to come and see me again. It’s connected to a friend of Margaret Potts. She knows—”

“That won’t be possible.” She replaced the receiver and pulled out the cord in case he tried to call her again.

Even though Anna took a sleeping pill, sleep didn’t come easily. She tossed and turned. Cameron Welsh’s voice was playing over and over in her mind. She woke drenched in sweat from a nightmare, feeling his hands squeezing her throat. She sat up, taking deep breaths, trying to calm herself, but by calling her at home, he had invaded her privacy. It felt as if he were stalking her the way he had stalked his victims, and she was angry at herself for allowing him to have such power over her.

Not wanting to go back to sleep, she brought her briefcase into the bedroom and began to sift through all her notes pertaining to the previous interviews with Welsh. Although she refuted that he had given any conclusive information that moved the case forward, he had nevertheless underlined the importance of Margaret Potts’s relatives, which had eventually been, in some ways, productive. They had traced the man Potts had been abused by, but it had not resulted in tracing their killer, although it more or less confirmed how the dead woman worked the service stations. However, that wasn’t enough for Anna to believe Welsh truly had anything valuable to offer.

Anna arrived at the station early and went straight into Mike Lewis’s office. She told him about the phone call and explained how much it had bothered her. Mike suggested she change her number straightaway to unlisted. He then said he would contact the governor at Barfield to make sure Welsh was not allowed any further late-night calls unless monitored, and if he had a mobile phone, it was to be removed.

“It beggars belief if he does own one, but you never know what they can get permission to use nowadays.”

“That secure unit is like a holiday camp,” she snapped.

“Did you check the number?”

Anna shook her head and repeated what Welsh had said to her about having further information.

“Well, if there is another visit, you won’t be going. Either I or Barolli will go,” Mike reassured her.

“It’ll be a waste of time,” Anna grumbled. “It’s just supposition on his part, and I think he has a thing about me. It’s me he wants there to gloat over, and he’s started giving me nightmares. It’s that slimy voice of his.” She shuddered.

“What do you think he meant by this friend of the victim Margaret Potts?”

“Mike, we’ve interviewed her ex-husband, her brother-in-law, and Emerald Turk. She never had a regular place to live; she dossed down on their floors or in their spare rooms or used a hostel.”

Mike nodded, but then his phone rang, so Anna had to return to the incident room. She was writing up on the board the late-night phone call when Barolli joined her.

“Boyfriend called you at home, did he?”

“Very funny. I’ll be losing my sense of humor over Welsh. He sickens me.”

“What’s this about a friend of Margaret Potts?”

“He was trying it on, but if you want to act on it, go ahead. I am having nothing more to do with him. Besides, I want to work on finding out more about Estelle Dubcek.”

Mike joined them and said he had spoken to the governor of Barfield, and they were doing a strip search of Welsh’s cell. The prisoners were not allowed to make calls after nine-thirty, and Jeremy Hardwick was very certain Welsh would not have access to a mobile, as they were against prison regulations.

Barolli snorted, knowing full well that inside prison, a mobile phone went for a considerable amount of money, and far from being against regulations, they were passed around easily.

Relieved that she would no longer be forced into any meetings with Welsh, Anna threw herself into the next task. As they’d had such good feedback from the last television crime show, they were preparing to run again the requests for anyone able to identify the second victim. Barbara had compiled the list of the girl’s clothes and acquired exact copies ready for showing on the TV appeal.

Chapter Six

A
nna looked again at the information on Estelle Dubcek, the date she finished working for Mrs. Henderson, and the meeting with Mikhail Petrovich. Aware that Katia had told her she couldn’t stay there, Anna wondered where Estelle had slept. Her body was discovered wearing the jacket bought from the charity shop. She had left clothes at Katia’s and more belongings at Mrs. Henderson’s. Knowing when she purchased the coat, they were able to pin down the date she was in London. Anna calculated that three days were unaccounted for before the body was found. Had she gone to Manchester and been returning to London when she was killed? Yet her uncle had said she never turned up. It left Anna wondering if she should question Petrovich again. He could have lied, but she doubted he was connected to the murder. Then there was Katia; was
she
lying?

Anna sighed and started to think about Welsh’s phone call. Should she question Emerald Turk again? In many ways, she felt they had already covered her connection to Margaret Potts. She didn’t think that either Margaret’s husband or Eric Potts could give any further clues. It was obvious they needed a breakthrough, and it didn’t seem to be coming, no matter what direction the team investigated.

She went into the incident room to mark up the timeline. It was quiet, unusually so for such a big investigation. They had three dead women with no connection bar the fact that they were murdered close to motorway service stations and were believed to have been killed by the same man.

As Anna underlined in red the three missing days, Barbara joined her, wondering if it was possible that their victim had been held captive by the killer.

“It’s possible,” Anna agreed. “From what I can gather, she didn’t take much luggage, maybe just an overnight bag, and could have started out hitchhiking a lift to Manchester.”

“Barolli’s checking out a white van that was on the CCTV footage at the service station used by Margaret Potts. It’s a Ford Transit van and—”

“When did this come in?” Anna looked over at Barolli, who was on the telephone at his desk.

“They got it on three different dates,” Barbara explained as she pinned up the black-and-white photographs.

Barolli finished his call and hurried to join them. “Okay, things are moving. From the license plate, the Transit van belongs to a John Smiley—I’ve got an address for him in Kilburn. Joan’s just checking it out and running him through the national computer to see if he’s known to us.”

Just as they felt they had a break, Joan discovered that the address was for a rented property, and the suspect had moved out five years previously. She could find no police record on file, but from local agency inquiries, they learned that John Smiley was married with two young children.

The neighbors and other residents at the address in Kilburn could give little information to Barolli. His last call was to the landlord, who lived in a house opposite. The man was able to tell them that Smiley was a good tenant, and when his lease was up, he moved out. The landlord had not met his wife but knew the children had been at a local school. He remembered the white van, as it was parked in the residents’ bays, but couldn’t give any details about what work Smiley did. Pressed by Barolli, who said that surely Smiley must have given some details about his work when he took over the lease for rental, the landlord said he had paid a substantial cash deposit.

The next interviews were at the local school, which provided little more than the information that the two Smiley children, Stefan and Marta, had attended the nursery section, and then the eldest moved up to the primary school. The headmistress, a precise woman in her late forties who was wearing thick brown stockings, was able to give a description of Mrs. Smiley as a pleasant and caring woman. She would always bring both children to school in person and was always present at any prize-giving, Nativity play, and so on. She had never met the children’s father and was sad when she learned they would no longer be pupils. She couldn’t recall if she had been told where the family was moving, and then she stopped and thought for a moment.

“I think Mrs. Smiley was Polish, so perhaps they moved back there. We have so many nationalities at our school that it’s sometimes hard to remember.”

“And you have no idea what Mr. Smiley’s work entailed?” Barolli asked.

“No, I’m afraid not.”

Afterward, Anna sat with Barolli in the patrol car. They were disappointed, especially Barolli, who really thought they’d got a breakthrough.

“Maybe we have, you know. It’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it, that our victim was Polish and so was Smiley’s wife,” Anna said.

“We don’t know that for sure, but we can check with Births and Marriages.”

Returning to the station, Anna left Barolli to mark up the new development. Joan was working on tracing any parking tickets or traffic violations that involved Smiley and the Transit van. It seemed impossible that in this day and age a family could uproot itself and disappear, and yet by the end of the day, they still had not discovered the whereabouts of John Smiley and his family. They were running checks through school registers in and around the Kilburn area, Social Services, employment agencies, the Polish embassy, voting registers. Anna was concentrating on vehicle license and taxation. John Smiley could have sold the Transit van, but it was still registered to him under his old address. If Smiley still owned the van, it would by now require its motor official tax, so that was another avenue to check out. It was tedious, frustrating work and occupied almost everyone on the murder team.

The following morning, there was still no news. Mike Lewis was getting a lot of pressure from Langton, but they were coming up with one dead end after another. During the briefing, which left them all depressed, they got a surge of energy when a call came in from the TV
Crime-watch
team. They had hoped to get a result, but they were stunned by just how good a result it was. A woman caller who refused to identify herself said she was certain the murdered girl was called Anika. She didn’t know her surname but thought she’d worked in a Turkish restaurant in Earl’s Court.

Mike Lewis and Barolli headed out, leaving Anna to continue trying to trace John Smiley. Midmorning, they still had no result, and she was glad to leave her office to interview Estelle’s uncle, who had come down from Manchester by coach.

Andre Dubcek was a small man but overweight, bordering on obese. He was wearing a crumpled cheap navy suit, the buttons of his shirt straining over his stomach. He sat with a cup of coffee, and when Anna entered the interview room, he jumped to his feet to shake her hand vigorously.

As the station was not that old, the interview room walls were not the usual cold shade of light lavatory green, but were a warmer color, with deep cream and pinkish brown overtones on the ceiling. There was the obligatory bare table and two chairs side against one wall, close to the tape recorder. There were also—and not in use for this interview—the cameras positioned high up on the wall and focused on the seating area.

Anna drew out a chair and sat opposite Andre. He had a strong accent but a good grasp of English. He explained that he was Estelle’s father’s brother. Anna noticed his thick stubby fingers as he made a lot of wide-handed gestures.

“I am shocked, so shocked. I have brought some photographs that I have, but only from when Estelle was a child.”

Anna looked through them and could see what a pretty girl Estelle had been. Andre pointed out who was who, and kept repeating it was sad that he had not had more contact with his niece. Estelle’s father had died young of lung cancer, and her mother had remarried and, sadly, died in childbirth, when Estelle would have been twelve years old. She had subsequently been brought up by her grandparents, and then when they had passed on, she was virtually on her own.

“I never write, just maybe a card at Christmas. We were so far away, and I have children and a business here, and times are very hard.”

Anna let him talk on until she felt he was relaxed enough to talk about the telephone call from Estelle. He said his wife had answered, and she had been excited, passing the phone to him. He gave one of his flat-handed gestures.

“Maybe I was not as much. I thought Estelle would be asking for money for a ticket, but then she said she was in London. She wanted to visit, meet my wife and her cousins, and . . . well, yes, it was for money. She said she had no place to live and wanted to maybe find work here with me while she learned English.”

Andre had agreed that she could stay with his family and, if possible, he would find her work in his bakery. He recalled the date she had rung: the day before she met with Petrovich. She had said she would call when she got to Manchester, as she wasn’t sure if she could afford the train fare.

“I told her to get a coach, because it’s much cheaper, and she said she would maybe do that . . . and I never heard from her again.”

There was nothing more he could add. Anna could see he was distressed, as he kept pressing his hands flat on the table.

“I didn’t have no place to call her, no number. She contact me.”

“She rang you from a mobile?”

“I dunno, I never checked.”

“We got your number from a Mrs. Henderson whom Estelle worked for. Did you only ever receive the one phone call?”

“Yes, she call just once.”

•  •  •

Andre left the station shortly afterward to return to Manchester. It was yet another dead end. Anna made a note on the incident board regarding their interview, then returned to her desk to continue the search for Smiley. He might have gone abroad, but his van was obviously still in London, so they needed to discover if he had sold it. Anna made more calculations, comparing the dates from the CCTV footage of the parked van against the murders. Of the three different occasions, two matched the dates the last two victims were discovered, but there had been no signs of the van at the time of Margaret Potts’s murder.

Anna called across to Joan to ask if she would scroll through previous cold cases with a date similar to when the sightings of the van had been recorded.

“Christ, we don’t need any more bodies,” Joan grumbled.

“Just start on it, Joan, and if you don’t get anything from the service stations, search on.”

Anna’s desk phone rang; it was the headmistress from Smiley’s children’s school. Anna was surprised.

“The reason I am calling is because I was talking in the staff room after you had left, and one of our junior teachers, who’d been in the nursery section as a trainee, recalled Mrs. Smiley. She said she was Polish, and she also recalled her talking about some blinds—”

Anna interrupted. “I’m sorry, I am not quite following . . . Blinds?”

“Yes, you know—wooden slatted blinds. Mrs. Smiley apparently told her that her husband worked for a company that made them. They’re rather expensive and trendy, and they come in different shades of wood and various sizes.”

Anna clarified that they were window blinds, and she was told that the company made them to measure and fitted them.

It was too much to hope that the teacher recalled the name of the company, and she didn’t, but it meant they were another step forward.

Barbara wrinkled her nose at the news. “Blinds? Wooden blinds like in Switzerland at the skiing chalets?”

“No, for homes here, slatted blinds made to measure in wood. It’s got to be quite a specialist company, as they deliver and fit them. So start checking all the companies.”

Barbara and Joan worked together, literally going through every listed company in the Yellow Pages, on the Internet, and in the directory. While they were checking, Anna joined Mike and Barolli, who had returned from Earl’s Court. Their remaining victim had been identified by two waiters and the manager of the small restaurant. Her name was Anika Waleska; she was a Polish student who had worked for cash in hand four nights a week and the odd weekend as a relief waitress. They had no details of where she had lived, just a phone number. One night she had simply not turned up for work and had not been seen in months. The phone number was a mobile no longer in use and had been bought from a telephone warehouse.

The police began to check back with the Polish embassy in the hope that they could give more details. The incident room was hopping, with every telephone in use as thorough checks were made via Interpol and the UK border agency. They now had a link between their two young victims, as both were Polish—but that excluded Margaret Potts.

Joan got the breakthrough, and everyone went quiet as she had finally traced their only suspect. John Smiley worked for a company called Swell Blinds. They had moved from their warehouse in Hounslow to Manchester five years ago, and John Smiley was still employed by them. She had a contact number for him, as well as the address and details. The company still delivered to London and in fact did business all over the country. The blinds were handmade in a factory in Salford, near Manchester.

“Did you explain why we want to contact him?” Mike asked, worried that Smiley might be tipped off and disappear.

“No, I didn’t, because I know how important this could be, so I played it quite casual and just said it was a routine inquiry.” Joan gave a raised eye to Barbara, who hid a smile. Sometimes in his new position as DCI, Mike got under their skin. They were both old hands and knew enough of police procedure to act accordingly.

They had made big steps forward. Mike contacted Lang-ton to tell him that their third victim had been identified and the owner of the Transit van traced. Langton suggested they move on Smiley fast but keep it low-profile. No sooner had Mike replaced the phone than Joan was startled to receive a call from Smiley himself.

“Is he on the line now?” Mike asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll take it in my office.”

Everyone waited, and Mike eventually returned to the incident room.

“Well, Smiley by name and nature. Very helpful; said he’s delivering in London tomorrow and he’ll come in first thing.”