Blind Fury (11 page)

“Thank you, but I doubt it will be necessary. Do you employ a lot of ex–army officers?”

“Yes and no. Got a couple on the books along with ex-coppers, but not all of them are regulars like Eric. I bring them in when I’m overloaded. Funnily enough, right now we’ve got a shedload of work on. Eric’s out with two guys this morning, showing them the ropes. There’s a lot of outstanding debts at the moment, with nonpayment of rent a big problem.”

At that moment, Mrs. Kelly tapped on the door and popped her head round to say that Eric had returned and was in his office.

Anna stood up. There was nothing more she could gain from Mr. Kelly, but as she walked to the door, she paused. “The ex–police officers you employ—I’d appreciate you giving me their details before I leave. Thank you.”

Eric Potts bore no resemblance to his brother, Stanley. He was six feet tall and muscular, with sloping shoulders, a man who obviously did weight training. He was wearing a charcoal-gray suit and a white shirt and a smart tie, and his handshake was strong. He offered Anna a cup of coffee, which she declined. He had a flask in front of him and a mug, along with a sandwich. Unlike his boss’s desk his desk was devoid of anything else, and the office was much smaller. The window behind him had a broken blind and looked as if it had not been washed for years. The other odd thing about his office was that it smelled of room spray—or it could have been his cologne; whatever, it was strong and obliterated the smell wafting up from the fish-and-chip shop.

“Your boss speaks highly of you,” Anna said pleasantly, taking a seat in front of him.

“Well, so he should,” Potts replied. “I’ve worked for him for eight years, and I don’t think he’s lifted his butt off his office chair once in all that time.” He grinned to reveal very white teeth; he was really quite a handsome man. His hands were large, and the knuckles looked like those of a boxer’s. In fact, a slightly crooked nose gave him the look of one.

“I met your brother,” Anna said quietly.

“Stanley,” he said as softly. He sighed, shaking his head. “One of life’s losers, I’m afraid. Never held a job, and if he did any work, it’d be down the betting shop. He was addicted to gambling and drinking—and he and I fell out years ago.”

“You knew his wife.”

“Margaret. Yes, I did. I know what happened to her, but the sad thing was, no matter how many times you’d try and tell her to stop what she was doing, she just wouldn’t listen.”

“You knew she was a prostitute?”

“Yes.”

“So you kept in touch with her after she left your brother?”

“Yes. Not on a regular basis, though. Years could pass and I’d not hear from her, then she’d turn up.”

“At your home?” asked Anna.

“Yes. Usually when she was broke or needing a place to stay for a while. It caused problems with my wife, as they didn’t get along; plus, I’ve got two kids, and often she’d be the worse for wear on drink or drugs, so eventually, I had to put a stop to her coming round.”

“Did you still see her?”

“A couple of times she’d call me and I’d meet her in a café, but I hadn’t seen her for almost a year before I read about her being murdered.” Unlike his brother, Eric appeared genuinely upset talking about it.

“No one ever approached you to ask about her?”

“No. Why should they? Like I said, I hadn’t seen top nor tail of her for more than a year. Last time we met, I gave her some money. I said to her it’d be the last and that I couldn’t go on shelling out to her, as I had my own commitments, and I warned her again that she could end up in a bad way doing what she was doing.”

“What exactly did you think she was doing?”

“Come on, love.” Eric gave Anna a weary look. “She was a tart and getting on in years—not that she didn’t try and keep herself looking good. She did, and when she was young, she was a real looker. How she got involved with my brother was always beyond me. You know about him, do you?”

“I know he spent time in prison.”

“Not that. The way he knocked her around and he mistreated their kids. He was a useless husband and father. When she left him, her kids were taken into care, thank Christ, but she herself had taken enough.”

“Did she run to you?”

“Me? No way! I was married, remember? She took off with some other tosser who put her on the streets.” Eric wiped a hand across his face. “You couldn’t say anything to her about him or about what he was making her do. She was, to my mind, caught in a vicious circle, beaten up by her husband and then knocked about by this creep. Got what he deserved in the end, though—died of a drug overdose.”

“Stanley implied that you and Margaret were lovers. In fact, he blamed you for breaking up his marriage.”

Eric changed color. Opening one of his desk drawers, he took out a small bottle of brandy, removed the top, and poured two measures from the lid into his mug. He gave a rueful smile and replaced the bottle. “That idiot accused everyone of screwing her—me, his neighbors, Uncle Tom Cobleigh. But she was a decent girl, and whether or not we had a bit of thing is neither here nor there. I cared about her, I always did, and that’s why she felt she could come to me when she was in trouble.”

“Did you know she was working the service stations?”

He nodded.

“And do you know how she would travel to them? I presume she didn’t have a car.”

He shrugged. “I think she’d catch a lift, maybe, but I couldn’t say for sure, ’cause by the time she was ducking and diving with the bloody truckers, I’d given up trying to help her. All I know is she’d pull in the blokes at the service stations, do whatever to earn a few quid, then come back by morning.”

“But you did help her, didn’t you?”

“I said I gave her a few quid now and then, yeah.”

“No other ways? I know Margaret kept a logbook of her punters’ car and lorry registrations, and if they didn’t pay her or knocked her around, she’d get help in tracing them.”

“I don’t want to get into this.” He put his big hands up.

“Mr. Potts, Margaret’s body was found dumped in a field beside the M1 motorway. She’d been raped and strangled. There was no handbag, nothing to identify her but her fingerprints from police records. We have no suspect and no witnesses—but what if one of the men she was able to get revenge on killed her? If you know anything about any of the men she picked up, it won’t get you into any trouble, but we would like to question them as possible suspects.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Look, a couple of mates—ex-coppers—helped out, and yeah, we did pay the blokes a visit, but not for a long time. Like I said to you, I’d not been in contact with Maggie for a year or more before she was murdered.”

“Do you still have the information?”

“No. Got rid of it as soon as it was done.”

“What about friends of Margaret’s? Do you know anyone I could talk to that she knew well?” Anna wasn’t going to give up.

“No. Listen, I might sound like a right dickhead, but you can only go so far with someone, know what I mean? She had her head kicked in, and the bloke threw her out of his cab. I got his company address from my pals, and I called on him. I gave him the same medicine he gave to Maggie, and he handed over fifty quid. I was having problems with the wife not wanting her staying on our couch, but she was a right mess—black eyes and a broken nose. I said to her that this time that was it: I wasn’t gonna do it again, and she had to straighten out her life—go into a hostel, anything but stop living the way she was.”

“She didn’t want to report it?”

“No way, not with her record.”

“So when she wasn’t staying with you, where did she live?”

“Rough. There’s a place she used in the West End—you know, book in for the night, or she crashed out with one or other of the other women she knew, but I didn’t know where, and I never met any of her so-called friends. I say
so-called
because they were always nicking her things. Not that she had much, just bits of jewelry from my mother.”

“Did you ever meet a woman called Emerald Turk?”

“No.”

“Margaret had a suitcase. Did she bring it round to your place when she stayed?”

“Suitcase? Yeah, I think she had one, although she’d use the lockers at one or another station for most of her belongings. She never had much. Not that she didn’t try and keep herself clean. When she stayed at my place, she was always in the bath and washing and ironing, another reason the wife didn’t want her around.”

It was totally unexpected: Eric suddenly put his hands over his face and wept. He then took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes and blew his nose. “Fucking tragic life,” he said shakily. “And don’t think I haven’t felt like shit sometimes, ’cause she didn’t deserve to end up the way she did.”

He opened the same drawer and rifled through it for a moment. He brought out a small, cheap folding frame with two photographs inside it. He opened it and passed it to Anna. “That was Maggie when I first knew her.”

The photograph was of such a pretty woman, smiling at the camera, wearing a white cotton dress and sitting on a park bench. In the opposite frame, facing her, was a picture of a young Eric in army uniform. “I loved her once,” he said softly.

Anna returned to the incident room. With her she had the name of the company and driver that Eric had “seen to,” and two names of ex–police officers who worked sporadically for Ronald Kelly. She doubted they would gain any vital information regarding Margaret Potts’s killer, but what they might succeed in was getting a clear indication of exactly how she worked her stretch.

They still had two victims unidentified, so until they knew who the girls were, the team was concentrating on Margaret’s murder for clues. They did not know if either of the young victims was a prostitute; all they had was that they were killed in the same way and possibly from thumbing a lift at a service station.

Writing up her report of the day’s interviews, Anna was furious to be told by Mike Lewis that Langton had given the go-ahead for yet another prison visit to Cameron Welsh. She would have to drive all that way again with Barolli first thing in the morning, and the governor had agreed to allow them to interview Welsh out of his cell in the open section of the secure unit.

Anna passed to Joan and Barbara the ex–police officers’ names and contact numbers, plus that of the lorry driver who had mistreated Margaret Potts. She suggested that one of the team get on it straightaway, adding sarcastically that it might just give them the lead they needed, rather than wasting time with Welsh.

It was after ten that evening when Langton rang Anna at home. He said he’d read her report and that her diligence, as always, had paid off. It would be an even better result if the ex-cops were able to give them the names of more punters Margaret Potts had been seeing; they could haul them in for questioning.

“The more insight we get into how she worked and from which service stations, the better, so I’ll handle the talks with the cops. I’ll be able to put the pressure on them . . .” He paused. “Are you listening?”

“Yes. I actually would have liked to talk to the lorry driver myself, but as I’ll be schlepping all the way to Barfield Prison again . . .” Anna was tired and didn’t bother hiding how she felt.

“Eh, eh, don’t get uptight with me. I know you don’t like it, but it’s you he wants to talk to. I think if he has anything worth our while, you’ll be the one to get it. That’s the reason I want you back at the prison.”

“You are more optimistic than I am. I personally think this is just feeding his grotesque ego.”

“Maybe, but let’s see how this visit pans out.”

“Okay,” she said flatly.

“Everything else all right with you?”

“Yes. Thank you for asking.”

“Good night, then. Oh, I’m having another go at asking the public to help identify our Jane Does. We’re running a slot on
Crimewatch
again.”

“That’s good. ’Night.”

“’Night.”

Anna replaced the receiver and got into bed, conscious that the case was presently going nowhere, even with her added information. It would, she knew, open up if they could just identify their victims. As it was, the entire focus was on Margaret Potts’s murder, a case that was virtually cold before she even came on board.

As she had felt on previous murder inquiries, the more she delved into a victim’s past life, the more the character became visible, almost alive. Margaret Pott’s life had been miserable. The thought of this woman with no place to live, carrying her worldly possessions around in a suitcase and sleeping in hostels and wherever she could get a bed for the day to make ready for the next night’s hideous work, was unbearably depressing. The poor woman had lost her children and, Anna felt, was so worn out by abuse that even though she had been warned over and over again of the dangers, she continued risking the only real possession she had: her own life.

Chapter Four

T
he drive felt even longer, and Barolli yet again slept most of the way. They went through the same security searches, and this time the governor was present and had asked to see them in his office. He said he wasn’t too happy about allowing them to interview Welsh in the communal area of the secure unit, and that the other prisoners held there were not to be locked in their cells. He explained that the other three had made vociferous complaints about being locked up to enable one prisoner to talk to the visitors, and it was a problem for him to show Welsh too many privileges.

“Do it for one, and everyone wants the same treatment. Right now the secure unit is running smoothly, and I don’t want it disrupted. You have to understand that the men held there are not necessarily the worst offenders, but offenders we think are a risk if placed on a main wing of the prison. They have too much money, for one thing. A drug dealer inside is always a kingpin because of what he can arrange to be brought in; you would be amazed at what lengths they can go to in order to supply drugs inside the prison.”

Barolli was surprised, asking if they were allowed money in the unit or even in the main prison.

“No. It’s what contacts they have on the outside. Money can buy deals, big bribes to pay for visitors to bring in their drugs, which are then passed on to whomever. The Mafia-connected prisoner has been with us for seven years, and he also has access to big money: we’re concerned that he could engineer and fund escapes. It’s not the cash they have inside that matters—it’s what they have access to
outside.
”

“Cameron Welsh’s cell is well equipped,” Anna observed.

“He’s another one. We do allow them to have their own computers, but these are monitored, and he insists on certain foods. To be honest, it’s easier for us to let him order them in through the prison shop rather than have the extra people needed to cook for him. All deliveries are obviously carefully checked, and we have regular cell sweeps, more so in the secure unit, as the inmates there all have various electronic gadgets, from stereos to TVs, but again, everything is carefully monitored. Likewise the guards. We have a big turnaround so that no officer can get too close to an inmate or vice versa. And as I said, the prisoners in there have access to money, so we keep a watchful eye on the teams working alongside them.”

Anna glanced at her watch. The governor seemed to wish to keep them in his office, while she just wanted to get the visit over with and drive back to London. Barolli, however, was listening intently and asking so many questions that Anna could have kicked him. Now they’d got on to a famous vicious serial killer and how much fan mail he received every month, let alone gifts and marriage proposals.

“I think we should see Mr. Welsh now,” she interrupted as Barolli was asking about what kind of woman would want to be married to such a man.

“You’d be surprised,” Hardwick told him, ignoring Anna’s request, “but as I have said, we monitor everything that is sent in to them. There are children’s toys sent into a pedophile, if you can believe it—sickens me, but they come in by the sackload. Teddy bears, little dolls.” He shook his head. “We have a clearout every few months and pass them on to children’s homes.”

In the incident room, Langton, accompanied by Mike Lewis, had tracked down the ex–police officers. Mike was virtually silent throughout the interviews as he watched Langton work each man over, repeating that he wasn’t there to get them into trouble with the law, even though he was aware they had broken it. All he wanted was the name of any person they had traced for Margaret Potts. They could either comply, or if not, he could get unpleasant, implying that as ex–police officers, they could go to prison for illegal use of classified information. He pointed out that it could have a chain reaction, as every person they had asked favors from, employed with the Met or working at DVLA, could lose their jobs.

By midmorning they had gained only four names and addresses, and these were not felt to be of much use, as they covered a period of six years. By midday the team had traced a lorry driver and a traveling salesman. Both had agreed to come in to the station to be questioned. The police were unsuccessful with the other two, as they no longer lived in England.

“I really think we should go to the secure unit,” Anna interrupted Hardwick again, and this time she got her way. Two officers took them through the maze of corridors, out past the main prison exercise yard and into the secure unit. They went through security checks, as before, to reach the secure unit’s recreational area. Four officers were present, reading newspapers, and they stood up to meet Anna and Barolli. They had arranged a table with one chair on one side and two on the other, near the exit into the unit’s exercise area. They offered tea or coffee, but both declined, Anna eager to get on with the talk.

Anna sat beside Barolli, removing files, a notepad, and pencil from her briefcase. The guards did not return to reading their papers but stood at various points in the room.

“He obviously knows we’re here,” Anna said, irritated by the delay.

One of the guards positioned by the aisle leading to Cameron’s cell announced that he was coming.

The prisoner strolled toward them.

“Good afternoon,” Welsh said, smiling as if joining friends in a tearoom. He carried a notebook and loose foolscap pages. “I presume I sit here.” He gestured to the vacant chair opposite Anna and Barolli.

Welsh was as perfectly groomed as before and this time wore his hair loose. It was thick and silky-looking, and he had a habit of tossing his head back and running his fingers through it to move it away from his face.

“Did you have a good trip up here?” he asked, sitting down and placing his notebook and papers in front of him, along with four sharpened pencils. These he laid out in a neat row. “There’s not a lot in the papers about our case,” he said, pointedly looking at Barolli and not at Anna. “All gone quiet, I suppose. Well, let’s see what we can do about that. Have you any developments that I should know about?”

“We’ve been following your suggestions after our last visit,” Barolli began.

Anna could barely stand it. Barolli appeared to be inflating Welsh’s already enormous ego.

“Good. Now, what I’ve been doing is studying maps of the motorway and circuitous routes, specifically focusing on ones possibly used by your killer.” Welsh laid out in front of him printed pages of maps, placing them side by side along the length of the table. “The red markings pinpoint the CCTV cameras.”

“We are aware of these routes and their security cameras,” Anna said coldly.

For the first time Welsh turned to look at her, but she held his gaze, and he turned back to pick up his notebook.

“It is imperative you discover how Margaret Potts traveled to the service stations. It’s possible she knew her killer, had even
serviced
him before.” He gave a soft laugh, amused by his wordplay, but as neither Barolli nor Anna reacted, he shrugged.

“Have you talked to any other women working the same way as your victim? They would certainly know her routine.” He glanced up. “Well—have you Anna?”

“We have interviewed a number of girls, but none knew her well or could give us her usual routine.”

Welsh’s pleasant manner dropped, and he pointed at Anna. “You should stop being so protective of your precious position, Detective Travis, and start listening to me. I believe the killer knew Margaret Potts. She was not a young woman; she’d worked the service stations for years, correct? She wasn’t a young druggie, wasn’t stupid enough to go with any punter, she’d check them out first. You think about getting up into a trucker’s cabin and giving him a blow job, even traveling with maybe more than one so she’d give it to both of them. They have beds or bunks for long haul, so she’d know which of the vehicles were a safe bet and not visible to the coppers or security guards. On the other hand, if it was just some punter in a car she’d clocked in the car park, she’d suss them out before plying her trade.” Welsh sniggered. “Let’s face it, the sort of punter that wants to do business with an old slag in a service station car park or on the hard shoulder of a motorway is more than likely to be a married man who isn’t getting it at home. Who’s to know what he’s been up to? His family couldn’t find out, as there’d be no trace on his credit cards; she was paid cash and not a lot, so they go on their way, and nobody is any the wiser.”

“That could possibly fit the profile of Margaret Potts, but we have two other victims, both young.”

“True enough,” Welsh agreed, “but as you don’t even have these two girls identified, you have no alternative but to concentrate on the first victim. I have another idea that you should look into because it’s possible, as I have said, that Potts knew her killer. What if he was closer to home than you have contemplated?”

“She was almost living rough,” Barolli said.

“She couldn’t live rough all the time—she had to have some bolthole she’d go to, and if you go back and check for someone she knew, you may find a motive to kill her.”

“What could be the motive?” Anna asked. She was reluctantly intrigued, as she was the only person who had met the ex-husband and his brother.

Welsh rocked back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Excitement, if it was someone who had a grudge against her, even hated her for what she was, a cheap whore. He knew how she earned her living, and he waited, tracking her moves, becoming more sexually aroused by what he was intending to do. Stalking her, watching her picking up clients, enjoying the risk it would be to surprise her. This excitement can last for months, and . . .”

He opened his eyes. His face was impassive, but his eyes were alert like an animal’s. “I know this excitement,” he said. “I’ve experienced it, and it is very, very pleasurable to keep your victim in sight, knowing what you intend to do to her: wrap your hands around her neck and strangle the life out of her, rape her. She will be yours to do what you want with, and that is also a sexual turn-on, to know what is coming.”

Anna opened her briefcase, replacing her notebook. She’d heard enough. She suspected he had an erection beneath the table, as all he was describing was his own sickness, his own pleasure in committing the murders for which he was in prison.

“He watched her,” Welsh went on, “and could even have offered her a lift to go to work. It seems no one saw her on the night of her death, correct? So this would be the night he planned to kill. He could have made some excuse that he needed to go up north on business. She might even have known that he wasn’t living in London. So that could be another clue: did she know someone who traveled around a lot? It could even be someone close to her—a husband, a lover, someone from her past.”

Anna felt the chills; could it have been one of the brothers? But she remained silent.

“You say she had no place to live, but if she was working the stations night after night, then she had to have earned quite a substantial amount. Did she pay it over to a pimp? Have you found any bank accounts,
post office
savings accounts? Did she have money? Was it worth killing her for? Any jewelry? It’s a motive that could link with the possibility that she knew her killer and they knew what she was worth.”

Again, Anna recalled that Emerald had said Margaret worked alone and had no pimp but relied on her contacts, her brother-in-law, looking out for her. There was also the stylish tracksuit that Emerald was wearing, the suitcase full of clothes that she had said were not worth anything. What if there had been more, like the diamond ring her husband had said belonged to his mother. Could Margaret Potts have had more possessions than they had estimated? She had the sense that Cameron Welsh was able to read her mind, and he was touching on possible motives that no one else on the team had considered.

Barolli had started to act edgy, as they were constantly being monitored by the other inmates. They would come and stand a few feet away from them, staring at Welsh and then Anna. The officers would gesture for them to move away. None of them spoke, which was also unnerving. If anything, they appeared to be slightly afraid of Welsh, who would glance at them and toss his hair away from his face. None of the officers seemed to like the fact that the three of them at the table occupied a lot of the space in the recreation room. Twice, one or another prisoner had walked out into the exercise yard and stood gazing into the room, leering at Anna.

“Do you have anything further to discuss? We don’t have much longer,” Barolli said. Anna had kicked him under the table. She wanted to leave, but by this time so did he.

“I would appreciate it if you left me the files on the investigation to date, as I need more to work on,” said Welsh. “So much of what I have said is pure conjecture, and I think I could be of further assistance.”

“I’m afraid that will not be possible,” Anna said, placing her briefcase on her knees, ready to go.

“Why not?”

“They are highly confidential, and I think we have given you more than enough time. The reality is that
you
have given us nothing that we are not already privy to and working on.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said angrily.

Anna stood up. “Whether or not you believe it is immaterial, but thank you for your time.”

Barolli rose to his feet. “We do appreciate the trouble you’ve taken, Mr. Welsh. You have done a considerable amount of work, and I feel sure, although the team is working along similar lines, we will be taking on board all your suggestions.”

Barolli signaled for the unit guards to call the main prison so they could be led out. Welsh was furious. He swept all his papers onto the floor and yet remained sitting. “That’s it, is it?” he demanded.

The officers moved closer, and one told him to pick up the papers. Instead of doing so, he got up and walked swiftly away, returning to his cell.

Driving back, Anna was unable to keep her anger in check.

“Whatever you may think, it was another waste of time. As if we haven’t considered everything he told us.”