Blind Fury (4 page)

“No, she had a pimp and said the motorways were not her style.”

“I’d still like to talk to her.”

“Why?”

“To try to get a handle on who Margaret Potts was. On the whole service-station game. I’m not trying to tread on anyone’s toes here, Paul, but you’re all sort of ahead of me.”

“Help yourself.” He shrugged. “I doubt you’ll get anything more than we did, though. She’s a right tough cow, and tracking her down was a headache.”

Barolli’s tracing of Emerald Turk’s whereabouts had been a problem because she changed flats or rooms constantly, but eventually, he’d got a contact address through Social Services and her phone number via Strathmore Housing Association. Emerald had two children, so he was able to gain more information, as the children had been fostered out twice. Now that she had a council flat, the kids had been returned to her, and for the past two years, Social Services had seen no signs of neglect on their home visits.

Anna did not make an appointment with Emerald but decided to call on her unannounced and see if she would agree to talk. She drove to Hackney and found the address on a high-rise council estate. Emerald lived on the third floor. The lift was not working, so Anna walked up. From the amount of garbage strewn in the corridors and urine stinking out the stairs, she didn’t think that by any standards this was a well-appointed flat, as Social Services had claimed.

Emerald lived in number 34. Anna rang the bell, waited, and then rang it three more times before the door was finally inched open.

“Emerald Turk?” Anna asked.

“Yeah.”

Anna showed her ID. “Can I come in and talk to you?”

“What about?”

“There’s no problem, Emerald. I’m simply attached to a team investigating the murder of Margaret Potts.”

The chain was still on the door as the woman looked at Anna and grumbled, “Listen, I already told the cops every-thin’ I knew. I got nothin’ more to say, so piss off.”

“Please, Emerald, I just want to talk. We’ve not been able to move the investigation forward, for lack of evidence. I’m new to the inquiry and just wanted to—”

“Like I said, I got nothin’ to tell you.”

“Just give me a few minutes, please. You knew Margaret, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, and I told ’em everything, so fuck off.”

Anna couldn’t even see what Emerald looked like, as the door was almost closed. She wedged her shoe inside the door frame. “She was murdered, Emerald. All I want to do is just try and find out who she really was. You knew her, so you can help me with this. Please let me in. I don’t want to have to come back.”

There was a short silence. Anna would have given up, but then the chain was unlinked and the door opened wider.

“All right, you’d better come in, then. If this place smells cops, they’ll get nasty, and I don’t want no trouble from me neighbors.”

Emerald stood back to allow Anna to enter. She was tall and skinny with a pale, narrow face, and she was wearing an expensive-looking gray velvet tracksuit with large fluffy rabbit slippers. “You’ll have to come through to the kitchen,” she said. “I’m ironing.”

Anna followed her along a toy-strewn hallway and into a modern, well-equipped kitchen. It was bright and clean, with long white blinds at the window. Dishes were stacked tidily on the draining board. Emerald picked up the iron and nodded for Anna to take a stool by a breakfast counter. There was a basket of clean clothes beside the ironing board.

“This is very nice,” Anna said, looking around.

“Yeah, all new mod cons, and I’m doin’ me best to keep the place spic-and-span. Those nosy cows from Social Services drop in whenever they feel like it, and I ain’t gonna give them any reasons for takin’ me kids off me again.”

“Are they at school?”

“Yeah, little local primary. They’re there, thank Christ, until three in the afternoon.”

Anna looked at the fridge, which was covered with bright-colored plastic magnetic numbers and letters. There were also numerous children’s watercolor paintings stuck on a wall with Blu-Tack. One had big orange splashes of paint, and “Mummy” was painted as a stick figure with big feet.

Anna shifted her weight. The high stool was uncomfortable, and her tight skirt kept riding up her thighs. Stashed beneath the breakfast bar was a big red plastic bucket full of dirty nappies, and it smelled, as the lid was left off. Emerald caught Anna looking at it and gestured for her to put the lid on. She explained that her youngest child was still a bed wetter and that these were nighttime Pull-Ups that had to be put out with her recycled items. From the smell of urine that wafted in Anna’s face, they hadn’t been put out for a while. She secured the lid and inched it farther away from her stool.

The iron hissed steam as Emerald pressed pillowcases. She was fast, far more adept than Anna. “I got a babysitter helping me out of an evenin’.” The woman continued ironing while she lit a cigarette from a packet taken out of her tracksuit pocket. “And I don’t smoke in front of the kids.”

Anna smiled, “I’m not with Social Services. As I said, I am on the inquiry relating to Margaret Potts’s murder.”

“I’ve not read anythin’ more about her,” Emerald commented. “Shame, ’cause she was a real nice woman. In fact, this is her tracksuit. She left a suitcase full of her gear with me, you see. Well, she wouldn’t know I’m wearin’ her things, would she, but I think of her often.”

“I know what she did for a living,” Anna said quietly.

“In which case you probably know what I do. I got a bloke that takes good care of me, not like Maggie. She had it rough due to her age, but she was a good person and didn’t deserve to end up the way she did.”

Emerald smoked and continued ironing as Anna asked if she could explain how Margaret worked.

“She’d sort of got her own patch out at the London Gateway Services. She’d travel there by bus or sometimes thumb a lift, then she’d chat to her regulars—truckers, mostly—but sometimes she’d pick up a punter in a car.”

“Did she do her business in the car parks?”

“She had to be careful, you know—the security blokes could give her a real hard time. I think she’d bung them cash to lay off her, and then she’d just either do it in the lorries’ cabs or travel up to the next service station—the one at Toddington, ’cause that has a bridge over the north-and southbound services, then she’d do the same thing there, coming back on the opposite side.”

“Always at night?”

“Not always. Sometimes she worked a day shift, but she didn’t like it. Well, you know—it was a bit obvious what she was doin’, and they’d move her on or call out the cops.”

“Did she ever talk about any of her clients?”

At this, Emerald laughed. “Nah. I doubt that’d be a popular topic of conversation. She was always knackered and slept late. One time we shared a place, but she got behind in the rent, so I left. She’d turn up sometimes wherever I was and kip down, but to be honest, I never really liked it, and these housing associations think you’re renting out a room if you got anyone stayin’.”

“But you liked her?”

“Yeah, I liked her—but I used to find it depressing, like I was lookin’ at what could happen to me all the time, know what I mean? And then I had a spot of trouble—the bloke I was with at the time was doin’ drugs and they took me kids off me, but I never done crack or brown. Maybe smoked the odd spliff—who doesn’t?—but I left the hard stuff alone.”

“What about Margaret?”

“Yeah, she’d take whatever she could lay her hands on—coke, mostly—and she’d drink. Can’t blame her, really, having to drag her arse out to the friggin’ M1 most nights, and sometimes it was freezing cold. She got knocked ’round a couple of times as well.” Emerald sighed and dug into her laundry basket.

“Did she ever report it?”

“Nah. She was on the game—you get used to it, but you know, some of them wouldn’t want to pay. Some bastard chucked her out of his cab once.”

“Did she tell you about it, like who had done it?”

“No, just waited until her black eyes healed up.” Emerald sighed more loudly. “I said all this before, you know. I’m just repeatin’ myself.”

“Did she have a pimp? Someone looking out for her, maybe?”

“No, she was a loner. Like I said, she wasn’t young and knew all the tricks, so why shell out her hard-earned cash?”

“But you do.”

Emerald’s face tightened. “I’m in a different league ’cause of me responsibilities. I work out of a massage parlor, I’m not touting for business on the effing motorway, and my man takes good care of me.”

“So she worked solo . . . What about other friends?”

“I never knew them. Listen, Maggie was a tough old boiler. She knew the risks, and she’d got the number of the blokes that had knocked her around, and like I said, she didn’t always go with the truckers. Sometimes she was flush from a few punters she’d had in posh cars. She looked out for herself, and she even took down the license numbers.” Emerald gave a strange laugh. “Said she couldn’t remember their faces, but she’d remember their reg numbers—had ’em all written down.”

“What, in a diary or notebook?”

“Yeah. Reckoned if they got nasty, she could tip off friends to beat them up.”

“You mean other working girls?”

“Nah, strong-armed blokes. We all know a few. A couple are ex-coppers workin’ for bailiffs who can run a trace on license plates so they can get their addresses.”

Anna could hardly contain herself. “You wouldn’t know where this notebook was kept, would you?”

“No idea, but it could have been in her stuff, I suppose. Did they find her handbag? It’d be in that, I expect.”

“No. There was nothing to identify her—we ID’d her from her fingerprints.”

“Oh, right. She’d done a few stretches.”

“Would it be among the things you said she’d left with you?”

“No, I never saw it. There was just clothes and bits and pieces.”

“Did you mention that you had some of her belongings when you were previously questioned?”

“Yes. The police looked through it all back then. To be honest, at the time I’d forgotten I had the suitcase. Well, I moved around a lot before I got this place. I even had gear stashed all over London, but when the Social Services found this flat for me, I collected it all. A few times she turned up, but like I said, I didn’t like her bein’ here when it had all been done up nice.”

“Could I see the case?”

Emerald lit another cigarette. “I don’t have it no more,” she said, and shrugged. “It wasn’t worth keeping.”

“But you said it had good clothes in it, like that track-suit?”

Emerald unplugged the iron, mumbling, “I gotta go and do some shoppin’.”

“You just threw it out?”

The young woman turned on Anna angrily. “Yeah. Like I said, it wasn’t worth keeping, and your lot didn’t want it, so I chucked it out onto a skip. There were just some blouses and skirts and shoes and this tracksuit, all right? There was nuffink of value.”

Anna could feel Emerald’s growing animosity from the way she banged the ironing board closed. It showed she was getting her temper up.

“I’m sorry if you think I am accusing you of anything, because I’m not. It’s just that if we could find Margaret’s notebook, it would be of great value, as we would be able to question the men she picked up. I’m not interested in anything else that was in her suitcase.”

“Well, there was nuffink else. Now I gotta go out.”

Anna stood up and placed the stool under the breakfast shelf. “I really appreciate you giving me your time, Emerald. By the way, is that your real name?”

“I wasn’t christened with it, but me great-grandmother worked as a cleanin’ lady for a high-society woman called Emerald. She’d given her some nice things, and it’s me favorite color. Turk is the name of my father, but it was never on me birth certificate because he pissed off before I was born.” Emerald stood with her hands on her hips. “Anything else you want to know?”

“No. Thank you for seeing me.”

Heading back along the rubbish-filled corridor, Anna suspected that Emerald was lying about the contents of the suitcase, but there was little she could do about it now, as the original investigating team had already looked through it and found nothing of importance. She had a feeling, if she was correct and Emerald did still have the suitcase, that it would be thrown out as soon as she left. There was nothing for it but to return to the car and set off back to the station.

The moment she’d checked that the policewoman’s car had gone, Emerald was on her hands and knees beside her wardrobe, dragging out boots and shoes as she reached for the suitcase. It was a cheap make, and the zipper had already been broken when she had used a pair of pliers to unlock the small padlock holding it shut. Margaret’s name was printed on a travel label attached to the handle.

Opening it up on her bed, Emerald started to remove the few items she’d left inside. Tossing them out of the way, she felt along the lining, digging inside the side pocket, and took out a small red notebook. She didn’t even look at it, but put it into her tracksuit pocket. Next, she stuffed the suitcase into a black plastic binliner, tying it at the top. To begin with, Margaret’s suitcase had also contained two thousand pounds in ten- and twenty-pound notes, and a red velvet jewel case. Inside this there had been two small diamond rings, a gold moonstone pendant, looped gold earrings, and a thick gold bangle. Emerald had kept the gold bangle but got five hundred and ten pounds for the jewelry from a guy she knew in Berwick Street Market. She’d put the money to good use, buying the fridge-freezer, the kitchen stools, and the steam iron. She had intended getting the zipper on the suitcase fixed, but now she just wanted rid of it.

An hour or so later, Emerald carried the bag out of the flat. She had not far to walk before she saw a half-filled skip near a building site and threw the bag into it with some relief. She then hurried off to the local Tesco to pick up some groceries for the kids’ tea. By the time she’d fed and bathed her two children, it was time for her to get changed and ready for work. Her babysitter arrived, and Emerald went off to the massage parlor, where she could forget all about the events of the afternoon.