Blind Fury (21 page)

“Thinking of ordering some, are you?”

Langton laughed and stuffed the leaflets into the glove compartment. “Wouldn’t be my decision,” he said.

Anna said nothing. She found it rather a sexist remark, implying that he left any home decor responsibilities to his wife. He never talked about her or his children, preferring to keep his personal life private. In fact, Anna wasn’t even sure if he had remarried. She knew he had a stepdaughter called Kitty and a baby son, but it had been such a long time since he had mentioned the boy that she couldn’t recall his name. It was strange, because although they had been virtually closeted together for almost two days, she felt more distant from him than ever. It was further confirmation to Anna that whatever had gone on between them was no longer an issue, and more and more, she was starting to see him in a different light. It wasn’t that she didn’t like or respect him; it was the age gap—something she had never considered. Beside Ken, he had appeared so much older, which he was, and she realized how little, apart from work, they had in common.

“Your son is called Tommy, isn’t he?” she remembered.

Langton grunted in agreement but seemed disinclined to discuss it further. She tried again. “You must have little time to spare for the family.”

“Time enough. Is this SatNav thing working?” He messed the screen.

“Yes, should be there in two minutes. It’s 12 Buxton Avenue.”

Smiley’s house was only a few miles from the warehouse. The area was not that upmarket, with a lot of big council estates. They then branched off to a middle-class enclave of small semi-detached properties that looked almost identical but were better maintained.

Langton and Anna walked up the neat drive, noticing that the small square of grass looked freshly mow.

“We keep it very low-key,” Langton murmured as he rang the doorbell. Smiley answered and looked taken aback to see them both.

“Just need to straighten out a few things, Mr. Smiley, as we were in the area. You mind if we come in?”

“No, come on through.”

They followed him down a small narrow hallway, and he ushered them into his sitting room.

“Is your wife here?”

“She’s in the kitchen.”

Smiley gestured for them both to sit in the well-furnished room. The sofa was still covered in plastic.

“Sorry about that. It’s to keep the kids’ dirty feet off of it,” he explained, and tried to remove it, but Langton said not to bother. He settled himself in an easy chair while Anna perched on the arm of the sofa. Langton asked a few questions about the deliveries, and then he opened his notebook.

“Tell me, John, do you ever use that back lane behind the truckers’ stop at the London Gateway?”

“No, didn’t even know there was one.”

“I’d like to go over a few things about the two occasions we have your van on CCTV. Basically, if you can recall anything unusual, whether you noticed any of the trucks as being regulars . . . that kind of thing.”

“I gave all the details that I could remember at the station. I only stopped off for such a short time, you see, and never really paid much attention to any of the other vehicles,” Smiley repeated.

Langton took out Margaret Potts’s photograph. “You were shown this before, John, but I just want you to take another look, to make sure . . . Ever see this woman, John?”

Smiley took the photograph and again said he did not recall ever seeing her, unless she was up by the back lane they had described. If she was, he wouldn’t have taken much notice of her.

Too much information, Anna thought.

“Now, these two girls . . . The coincidence is they are both Polish, and I believe your wife is also Polish?”

“She is, yes, but I’ve never seen those two girls before. Like I said when I was at the station, if they were hitching a ride, I wouldn’t have stopped. I’ve never given anyone thumbing a ride the time of day.”

Anna watched John Smiley closely. Yet again he did not appear to be in any way distressed by their questions. He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans with brown suede boots. He was, she thought, as she had before, quite a good-looking, fit man. The combover was offputting, but he was attractive in a macho way. He was also very clean, as was clear from the condition of his nails and his hands. The room had a similar feel to Ken Hudson’s parents’ but was not as cozy. For a man with two children, there were no toys or children’s belongings anywhere.

“I’d like to meet your wife,” Langton said.

For the first time, Smiley was ill at ease. “I’ve not mentioned anything about this to her,” he said. “I don’t want her getting upset. You know, with your coming here, it looks suspicious, and even though I’ve got no worries, I don’t want her to think I’ve done anything wrong.”

“It’s just routine, and we’ll make sure she’s not worried. You’ve been very helpful, and I really appreciate your time.”

Smiley left the room and Langton glanced at Anna. He nodded to the mantelpiece showing a few photographs of the couple’s wedding and two rather stilted school photographs of their children.

Mrs. Smiley bore no resemblance to the pretty dark-haired girl in the wedding photograph, or the small picture Smiley carried of her in his wallet. She was about seventeen stone, with solid thick arms and legs like tree trunks. Her hair was cut short and worn in an unflattering style with a barrette on either side of a part. Her face was devoid of any makeup.

“This is Sonja,” Smiley said as he hovered behind her. She was almost as tall as he was, and he sort of skirted around her to stand by the sofa.

Langton introduced himself and then Anna. Sonja gave them a curt nod. “What is this about?” She had little trace of an accent and cold blue eyes.

“We are just making inquiries, investigating a case that we believe your husband may have information about.”

“What case?”

“A murder inquiry.”

She turned to her husband and then back to Langton. “Why do you want to talk to John?”

Langton explained that his Transit van had been parked in a service station close to where the murders had been discovered.

“Not one, then, more than one?” she asked.

“Yes, that is correct,” Langton said.

“Why do you think John can help you?”

“Because we are asking anyone we have on CCTV at the location to try and recall if they saw anything suspicious.”

“I don’t know anything about it, but my husband is a good man, and if he can, he will help you. Can you help them, John?”

“No, love. I only stopped off for a bathroom break, then, as usual, drove on. You know I like to get my deliveries over and done with as soon as possible so I can get home to say good night to the kids.”

“You also fit blinds, don’t you?” Anna asked him.

“Yes, it’s all part of the delivery. I take the measurements sometimes before the orders, and then when I deliver, I put them up. We’ve found it’s better if I get the exact size, as the blinds are made to measure. If they’re out by so much as half an inch, we have to take them back to the workshop.”

Langton showed him the photographs of Anika and Estelle once again. “Did you ever go to either of these girls’ homes to measure for blinds?”

Mrs. Smiley looked at the photographs left on the coffee table and then back to her husband.

“No. I’ve never seen them,” he replied.

“They were both Polish,” Langton said quietly.

Mrs. Smiley picked up one photograph after another and then shrugged. “I never seen them; they look very young.”

Langton then laid out Margaret Potts’s photograph on top of the others. “This woman was also a victim.”

“Why are you showing these pictures to my husband?”

“Well, we hope he might have seen them at the service station.”

She pursed her lips and then looked at her husband. “Did you see these women?”

“No, love. I’ve already told them that.”

Langton replaced the photographs in the envelope.

“Wait a minute.” Mrs. Smiley pointed to Margaret Potts’s picture. “This woman is older, different. Is she Polish?”

“No, she was from London.”

“She was a prostitute who worked the service stations, picking up men, often truck drivers.” Anna watched Mrs. Smiley as her mouth tightened into a hard line.

“I’ve seen her type in Aldershot, hanging round the soldiers on leave when they went to the pubs. Disgusting, they were. I worked in a bar for a while, and these women would drink themselves stupid.”

“But you have never seen this woman?” Langton persisted.

Smiley shook his head, and then Sonja folded her arms. “Have you got what you come for, then? Only being it’s John’s day off, I need him to do some shopping for me before the children get home for their lunch.”

“Do you have some of the blinds from the company?” Anna asked pleasantly.

“Yes, in the kitchen and bedrooms. We get them at cost price.”

“Could I see them?”

Sonja hesitated and then shrugged her wide shoulders, gesturing for Anna to follow her out of the room. The kitchen was orderly, with a pine table in the center and two place mats ready for the children’s lunch. They had all the modern conveniences, dishwasher and washing machine, deep freeze and fridge, and in the windows was a set of pale wooden blinds.

“I’d have preferred white, but they only do them in different shades of wood,” Sonja said.

The two women went up the stairs. There was a plastic runner all the way up and even on parts of the landing. Sonja was out of breath; she puffed and rattled as she gestured for Anna to go into the master bedroom.

“We got them in all the bedrooms. That’s ours, and then our son, Stefan, has the box room and . . . this is my daughter Marta’s bedroom.”

The room had pink walls, pink bedcovers, a pink carpet, and dolls and a dollhouse were stacked neatly against a wall with a big pink chest. The blinds were a darker brown in this room.

“Very nice,” Anna said. “She’s very tidy.”

“They both are. It’s no good having nice toys if they break them, so they’re taught to appreciate their things. My parents came to England with nothing. I never had such lovely things.”

“Your mother died a few years ago, didn’t she?”

Sonja glared at Anna. “How do you know?”

“Your husband told us when he came to the station.”

“I don’t understand. You’ve talked to him before, then, have you?”

“Yes, when he was in London.”

“I see.” She headed back to the stairs, grasping the banister rail, as she was so short of breath.

As they reached the hall, Langton was waiting. He smiled. “We’ll be on our way now. Thank you for your time, Mrs. Smiley.”

“Goodbye.” Sonja went straight to the kitchen, and John Smiley hovered to show them out.

“I’m sorry not to be of any help,” he said, and promised that if he remembered anything at all, he would call them straightaway.

Anna looked back at the house as she put her key into the ignition. “I bet she’s having a go at him. She didn’t know he’d been to see us in London. God, she’s an unpleasant woman, and that house is like a show home. Even the children’s rooms are in military order.”

“She’d scare the pants off me,” Langton agreed.

“She’s not very fit, either. Just moving up the stairs had her heaving for breath.”

Anna adjusted the rearview mirror as they saw John Smiley exit from his house carrying an array of empty shopping bags. “I bet she’s got him on a short rein. I didn’t get anything new from talking to him, did you?”

Langton made no reply. They drove in silence for a while.

“Back to the station, sir?”

“What?”

“I said, do I drive straight back to the station?”

“Yes.”

Anna wondered if he felt, as she did, that the whole trip had been a big waste of time, apart from enjoying Ken’s family. She began to replay in her mind the previous evening, wondering if she would get to meet up with Ken again. It had been a while since she had felt physically attracted to someone, and the fact that he wasn’t connected to the Met was a major bonus. None of the male officers she worked alongside interested her, apart from Langton. She began to calculate how many years she had been emotionally tied to him, to the detriment of ever finding herself a partner.

“He ticks all the right boxes,” Langton said quietly.

“Smiley?”

“Who the hell do you think I’m talking about?” he snapped.

“Unless we’re wrong and the boxes you are referring to are from Cameron Welsh, as I wouldn’t trust a word
he
says.”

“It’s not about trust; it’s his take on our killer, and it’s bloody close to John Smiley. That elephant-sized wife and that bloody sterile house, he must feel suffocated. He looked to me to be totally dominated by her. He must relish the trips away from home—I know I would.”

“But that doesn’t make him our killer.”

“Too many coincidences. Caught on camera at the service station twice, the sumo wrestler of a wife who just happens to be Polish, like two of our victims. Again, going over what Welsh said, Margaret Potts is the odd one out, a hardened tart. If he’s right, could she hold the clue? Could she be a witness? To what, I dunno.”

Anna concentrated on driving, glancing at the SatNav screen to make sure they were on the right route.

“Too many coincidences,” Langton repeated. “What about him saying there has to be a witness?”

“Doesn’t mean that we have one with this case. I am sure if you did a ratio check on nondomestic murders, but serial killers—”

“He was right, Anna, there
is
always a witness, and we need to find ours. Now, if it was Margaret Potts, we are going to have start backtracking.”

Anna sighed. They had already spent a long time gathering information on Margaret Potts’s background, and with a woman who had no permanent address, who had worked as a whore for so many years, it was going to be difficult to uncover anything that they had not already investigated.

“We have to find the link,” Langton persisted.

“But I’ve interviewed her husband, her brother-in-law, and this Emerald Turk woman. Maggie didn’t have friends, and she lived rough at hostels.”

“Find out how long Swell Blinds were established in West London. We want to go back over their records from before they moved to Manchester. So John Smiley pays house calls to measure the blinds: did Margaret Potts meet him then? Did she recognize him at the service station? We’ve only got two dates caught on CCTV footage, but what if he was more of a regular, one of her clients?” Lang-ton got out his piece of string and began twisting it around his fingers. “I agree with Welsh: this man has killed before those two Polish girls. We need to check out this new victim wrapped in the blanket. Dig around to see if we have any others, because I think we’re going to find them. If he was picking up victims before the company moved to Manchester, the time frame fits with a possible break in his sickness. Then he starts it again.”