Blind Fury (23 page)

“Unless he fancied looking at it himself, or it was a dead one,” Ron joked.

“It was actually on a woman, a murder victim.”

“Bloody hell! Well, it’s unusual for a woman, but then it takes all sorts. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been asked to ink on some women’s bodies.” He suddenly leaned back and wagged his finger. “You know what it could be? And I couldn’t tell from the photographs, I’d have to see it on the skin to be sure, but . . . it could be something that was inked over another tattoo. To get them lasered off is quite painful, and we do quite a lot of covering up—you know, the guys get a girlfriend’s name done, then they get ditched, so they want it changed.”

“Could you tell, if you saw it on the body, whether it had been covering another tattoo?”

“Maybe, or you could ask someone with more experience. That might be a better way to check it out.”

Anna thanked Ron, who handed her his card, saying that if she ever wanted a tat, he would give her a good price.

The victim had been held at a mortuary close to where the body had been discovered. When Anna returned to the incident room, she tried without success to speak to the previous murder team’s DCI. Ron’s suggestion had made her wonder if the team had gone to any lengths to ascertain whether this was ever tested. Just as she was leaving him a message, Barolli signaled to her. The van driver who had discovered Estelle Dubcek’s body was in interview room two. As Langton wasn’t at the station, Barolli was to conduct the interview.

Brian Collingwood was twitchy, picking at his awful acne spots. In front of him lay his statement. Barolli tapped it with his finger.

“The reason you have been called in, Mr. Collingwood, is because there seems to be some doubt over your original statement.”

“I don’t believe this! I should have just driven on,” the man complained in a Birmingham accent. “I’m taking time out from my work again, you know.”

“Well, let’s make this as short as possible,” Barolli said. “Mr. Collingwood, you stated that you parked on the hard shoulder, as you needed to relieve yourself.” Anna didn’t even look at him but concentrated on her notebook.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Can you tell us exactly what happened?”

Collingwood sighed. “I should have stopped at the service station, but I didn’t, and then it was too late to go back, right? So I pulled over onto the hard shoulder and went to the hedge. I did what was needed, and as I was turning to walk back to me van, I saw the girl’s legs.”

“From the hedge?”

“Yeah, and I called the police. I was there for three hours, telling everyone what I just told you again.”

“The problem is, Mr. Collingwood, the hedge is next to a wide ditch. It must have been difficult to see the body from there unless you already knew about it.”

The young man went pale behind his blotches. “I am just telling you what I saw,” he muttered. “I did my duty and called the police on my mobile phone.”

“Why are you lying?”
Barolli was relentless.

Anna looked up and could see that Collingwood was sweating.

“I am telling you the truth,” he said obstinately.

“No, you are not. Now, you may have a totally innocent reason for not wishing to tell us the truth, but now is the opportunity to do so before this goes any further, do you understand? You could be charged for withholding evidence.”

“I never did anything wrong! I swear, I never done anything wrong.”

“But you admit you have lied?”

Collingwood chewed at his nails, looking down, and the sweat glistened on his forehead.

“As I said, I am sure you have a very good reason, and you are here just helping our inquiries. You are not under arrest. All we need from you is the truth about what exactly happened . . .”

Collingwood still wouldn’t look up.

“Did you see something, anything suspicious—a vehicle, a car, a person? Come on, lad—let’s have the truth now.”

Collingwood took a deep breath. “All right, this is what happened. I did drive into the London Gateway Services. I was looking for someone I’d seen around there, but I’d not been that way for months, maybe even longer.”

“Who were you looking for?”

“A—a friend.”

Anna opened an envelope and took out Margaret Potts’s photograph. “Is this your friend?” she asked gently.

Collingwood bit at what remained of his thumbnail. “Yeah, that’s her. I’d met up with her a few times over the years.”

Anna laid the photograph faceup on the table. Barolli shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Mr. Collingwood, you could be getting into real hot water here. Maybe we need to get you a solicitor.”

“I never saw her, I don’t need no solicitor, I’ve done nothing.”

“This woman was murdered, Mr. Collingwood!”

“No, she wasn’t the girl that was lying there.”

“We know that. So if you also know that, then you had to have got close to the victim in the field, a lot bloody closer than standing pissing behind a hedge.”

Collingwood at last gave it up. He said that he just felt like seeing Maggie, that he had on various occasions paid her to give him oral sex, and on a few other occasions he had driven up the back lane and they had full sex. He knew she worked the service station and would often be behind in the lane waiting for customers, so he had driven there. When he had been unable to find her, he had reversed and driven back the way he had come, but he’d started becoming bogged down in the mud and grew concerned that if he kept on the back road, he’d be in trouble.

“So I was doin’ a U-turn to head back to the London Gateway service station and drive in via the dirt-track road onto the M1 when I saw the girl. I could see her across the field. She was lying there, half in and half out of the ditch. At first I thought it was Maggie, you know, so I got out of me van and walked up the track. I got a few yards from her and could see it was this young girl. I didn’t get any closer. It was the way she was lying, see? I knew she was a goner.”

He went on to explain that he returned to the motorway but felt so bad about what he had seen that he parked up on the hard shoulder and called the police.

“I swear before God that’s all I done. I got a seventeen-year-old daughter meself, and I kept on thinking about that poor kid dumped in the field, so I done my duty.”

They went over his new statement time and time again, but Collingwood swore that he had not seen any other vehicle, nor had he seen anyone near the body or in the lane. He added that on other occasions there had been a bunch of travelers hanging out by the barns. He also admitted that when he had full sex with Margaret Potts, she had used an old caravan parked by the barns. She would often take her customers there. He didn’t think it belonged to anyone, and it was never locked. He also said that he had not seen Margaret in a long time because he had been driving a different route.

“How long, Mr. Collingwood?”

“Two years, maybe even more. She mostly worked nights, that’s what she told me, but I just chanced that she’d be working.”

“How much did she charge you?” Anna asked.

Collingwood said that for a blow job, it was ten pounds, but if it was full sex, she charged twenty-five. Barolli glanced at Anna, unsure why she was so interested in the money.

“Have you any idea how many clients Margaret would have in a day or night’s work?” Anna asked.

“Not really, but she had a lot of regulars. Well, she told me she had, but I wouldn’t know.”

“You ever see anyone else she went with?”

“No, and I wasn’t what you’d call a regular. It was months in between times, and like I told you, I’d not seen her in years.”

“Did she ever tell you she’d been beaten up?”

“No. She was well turned out, kept herself clean.” Collingwood sighed. “She was a good sort.”

“‘She was a good sort,’” Barolli mimicked later, when the van driver had been allowed to go home. “Dear God, having that spotty twat crawl all over you—what a wretched way to make a living.”

Anna sat at her desk working up the report of the interview, tapping her teeth with a pencil. “You know, if she was working most nights, she had to have hoarded some cash. Otherwise, what did she do with it all? She didn’t pay rent, she dossed down in hostels. We found no savings accounts in her name. I think I should have another meeting with Emerald Turk, only this time I want her brought in for questioning.”

Barolli said he’d organize it.

“She had Margaret’s suitcase,” Anna reminded him, and he nodded.

“Probably be another waste of time, though. Same with that Collingwood; we gained nothing new, apart from Maggie sometimes worked the day shift as well, but she might have changed to only nights, who knows. I bet you won’t get anything from the blue-blanket victim, either.”

“True, there’s nothing as yet, but I’m waiting for the DCI who led the inquiry to get back to me in connection with her tattoo.”

Barolli laughed. “You got a big break on that previous case with the actress—the killer had her face tattooed on his back, right?”

“Yep, but this is different. I think the lizard tattoo may have been inked over a previous one. I’ll just have to wait to find out.”

“Be good if it was her name and address.” Barolli sniggered.

“We should be so lucky.”

Anna hoped that Ken would call her, but he didn’t, and she spent the evening at home looking over all her notes from the previous Emerald Turk interviews. She was at her desk early the following morning.

When she got in, Mike Lewis was at Barbara’s desk, making a call to Mr. Rodgers, who was beginning to think he was being investigated for fraud. He had insisted that all his tax and VAT payments were in order, then contradicted this by saying that it would be difficult for him to go back five years to present them with all his receipts and orders. He was growing agitated, saying that when the firm moved from London to Manchester, he didn’t have the space to retain all the old order files.

Mike Lewis tried to explain to him, as diplomatically as possible, that they were not investigating any taxation or VAT fraud, they were simply attempting to trace someone who might be of interest to their inquiry and who might have purchased some Swell Blinds.

Mike was trying to be patient but became alarmed when Mr. Rodgers asked if this was all connected to John Smiley.

“You know, he’s a trusted employee. If you are trying to find out whether he has acted in any way that is detrimental to Swell Blinds, then I will have to let him go. Is that what this is all about?”

“Please, Mr. Rodgers, we have no intention of damaging Mr. Smiley’s exemplary work record. All we are basically interested in is tracing a possible witness who may have ordered a set of blinds from your company during the few years you were based in London; this would be before you moved to Manchester.”

It took a while longer before Mr. Rodgers promised to do what he could. After he hung up, Mike tapped the phone and said to the others, “I hope we don’t get that poor bastard fired and then have nothing on him. Rodgers says they don’t have that many records from London, as they don’t have the storage space.”

Barbara had a thought. “Mike, remember that old lady called Wendy Dunn who worked for the company for many years? She ran the reception at the Hounslow office: she might be able to help.”

“Well, get on it, then. We seem to be getting our thumbs right up our arses. If Langton keeps putting the pressure on me, I’ll have to tell him to back off. We’re going up one blind alley after another.”

“Blind! Swish ones! Haw haw.” Barolli ducked the empty coffee cup thrown by Mike.

DCI Vince Mathews, who had led the inquiry into the murder of the Jane Doe wrapped in the blue blanket, finally rang Anna back. He had a strong northern accent and spoke loudly.

“Her body was released after the second postmortem, and the coroner gave the go-ahead for burial. The local undertakers and our local council arranged a pauper’s grave.”

“Was her body embalmed?”

“No, love, cremated, and to be honest, after all this time, if we’d have embalmed her, the skin would be like leather, too shriveled for any light-source examination of the tattoo.”

Disappointed, Anna thanked him and was about to hang up when he said, “Have you got all the photographs? We took the tattoo from every side and angle.”

“I believe so,” Anna said.

“Thing is, love, the human eye doesn’t pick up anything that might be beneath the tattoo.”

“Did anyone use the light-source tech units? Only I know they use infrared lighting.”

“No, and we were discussing taking the tattoo—you know, cutting it out—but as we’d had no one come forward after the news coverage, we didn’t think it would be worth it.”

“Thank you for getting back to me.”

Before he could say anything else or call her “love” again, Anna replaced the receiver. Frustrated but not giving up, she called Pete Jenkins at the forensic lab. He agreed to see her in the early evening and asked her to bring as many photographs as possible.

Anna grabbed a late lunch before the interview with Emerald Turk. Barolli warned her that the woman was a foul-mouthed bitch today, but Anna pointed out that was nothing new.

Emerald was sitting in the interview room swinging one leg over the other. She looked smart, as her hair had been styled and bleached very blond. She wore thick false eyelashes and had on oyster-pink lip gloss that matched her pink tracksuit top.

“You got a lot of nerve bringing me in. I presume it’s down to you, right?” She jerked her head toward Anna as she sat down in front of Emerald at the interview table. “I told you everything—this is harassment. I had to get someone to mind me kids and make their tea so I could get over here. If you keep on wasting my time, I’m gonna write to the newspapers.”

“Thank you for agreeing to come in,” Anna said quietly.

“I didn’t. I was told that if I didn’t get in the fucking patrol car, I’d be fucking arrested, and the two blokes wouldn’t tell me what it was all about, just that I was wanted for questioning, and now, seeing you, I know it’s bloody Margaret Potts again, isn’t it? I wish to God I’d never met her.”

Anna let the tirade go on until Emerald went quiet. “Would you like a glass of water?”