Blind Fury Page 11

  Anna shrugged. “He did admit to caring for her. Maybe it was more than that. Let me see what else I can get out of him.”

  Returning to the incident room, Mike gave a briefing and the update of the interview with McKinney. His description of exactly how Margaret Potts worked the service stations added nothing new to their inquiry. Margaret would usually be hanging around the lorry parking area and was a well-known fixture, as McKinney had admitted seeing her there on numerous occasions. Although he’d confessed to going with her only the one time, both Anna and Mike suspected that he might have lied.

  Tom had explained that she would wait for the men to come out from one or other of the cafés and then approach them as they returned to their trucks to offer her “services.” He had said he had seen her getting in and out of a number of vehicles over some considerable time. He also said that she would sometimes climb aboard and drive out with the driver to go to the next service station. She offered a blow job, a hand job, or full sex. It was all horribly seedy, and it would mean yet another round of officers interviewing truckers who were known to do regular stops.

  McKinney was unable to tell them how far up the motorway she would travel as she was picking the guys up at the London Gateway. She was wary about being caught by any of the security cameras, but if a john wanted full sex, then they would drive somewhere out of the way and she would go into the back of their cabs. She would then, they presumed, either go back home or return to work.

  During the briefing, DC Barbara Maddox listened, sighing inwardly at the awful way this woman had earned her living. She was certain that neither of the still unidentified girls would be working the same deal. Both were young, and the postmortem reports stated that they had been raped and strangled. The last victim’s hymen had visible tear damage, so it was possible she had been a virgin before the attack.

  Mike looked over the board and back to the team. “That’s it,” he told them. “Not much to go on, is it? Let’s hope we get something back from the next TV appeal for information on our two Jane Does.”

  The following morning, Anna, accompanied by Barolli, went back to the debt collection agency. She was not anticipating gaining anything more from Eric Potts and told Barolli to give her some breathing space.

  He bridled. “What do you mean?”

  “Just don’t get too heavy or interrupt too much. I want to take it slowly.”

  “Whatever.” Barolli got out and slammed the car door shut. He looked toward the fish-and-chip shop, which was closed, as it was only nine-fifteen. The seedy office door was also closed. It appeared the building had previously been used by a minicab company. Their cards and a torn plaque were hammered into the brick wall.

  “It’s up on the second floor,” Anna said.

  Barolli grunted, pressing the bell. “Doesn’t look as if they’re open for business.”

  Anna stepped back to look up to the dirty windows. “Light’s on. Ring again.”

  Barolli kept his finger on the bell for a few moments. There was a loud click, and the door opened automatically. Mrs. Kelly stood on the second landing, waiting for them to come up.

  “I’m just going out for some fresh coffee. Do you want to see my husband? Because he’s not coming in this morning.”

  Anna asked to see Eric Potts. Just as Mrs. Kelly began to say he was also not in the office, they heard heavy footsteps on the stairs behind them. It was Eric.

  Anna introduced Barolli as Eric unlocked his office, asking Mrs. Kelly to bring him coffee and a toasted bacon sandwich. He seemed slightly edgy, pushing open the door to walk in ahead of them.

  “I got a lot on today,” he said, taking off his coat and hanging it up on a nail hammered into a wall.

  “This shouldn’t take too long. It’s just I need to iron out a few things,” Anna told him.

  “I dunno what they could be, as I’ve already told you everything, and don’t think I liked giving up the names of the blokes that work for us here. It’s hard enough to earn a living right now, and I hope helping out Maggie isn’t gonna get me or them into trouble.”

  He sat at his desk. Anna took the only other available seat, leaving Barolli to stand by the door.

  “We traced the lorry driver, and I just wanted to clarify that it was you who talked to him and received money from him on behalf of Margaret.”

  “I admitted it, didn’t I? It was the big bloke that delivered watercoolers, right?”

  “Yes. He claimed that he only ever picked up Margaret that one time and, I would say, regretted it.” She smiled.

  Eric shrugged his massive shoulders.

  “I need to ask you about any other incident you personally handled,” Anna went on.

  “I just did it that one time for her. I’ve got too much on my plate to run around after anyone else. Like I said, a couple of blokes here did a bit of collecting for her, but not recently. It was all a long time ago. She’s been dead two years, for chrissakes.”

  “You cared for her, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but that was also a long time ago, and apart from the odd call, I hadn’t seen her. I also told you I didn’t want to be bothered with her anymore, as my wife didn’t want her at the house.”

  “These other times you saw her, where did you meet?”

  He sighed, saying that he had already mentioned meeting her in a café. He then remembered a couple of calls from her to his office and said he had met her at the same café by King’s Cross station.

  “She just needed money, as always. I think she used the station ladies’ room to wash up and sometimes left her belongings in the luggage lockers. It’s got to be at least eighteen months before she was murdered, and I told her then that I’d had enough of being a cash cow for her.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “Well, she looked pretty ragged, so much that I gave her more than I’d intended; plus, I told her not to come round to the house anymore.”

  “How did she react to that?”

  He sighed again, becoming visibly irritated. “She didn’t like it, because once we’d been intimate. She reckoned I’d always be an easy touch.”

  “Were you intimate with her during her marriage to your brother?”

  “Yes,” he snapped.

  “But you claim that you did not continue to have a close relationship with her after she left her husband.”

  “I maybe saw her a couple more times and had sex with her, but then I met my wife, and by this time I knew Margaret was on the game. I told you how I warned her to take care of herself, but she would still turn up after I got married, and eventually, my wife told me to get rid of her.”

  “Get rid of her?” Anna asked sharply.

  “Christ! By that she meant, tell her to stay away. We’d got a kid and another one on the way, so I was to tell her to stay out of our lives.”

  “Did Maggie ever make any threats?” Barolli leaned forward, resting his hands on the desk.

  “Threats? Like what?”

  “Well, if your wife didn’t like her and didn’t want her around, it seems to me that maybe she was jealous.”

  “She’s fucking ten years younger than Margaret was, and if you mean did she make threats to me, it would be ridiculous! She could see that she was just a slag and was after money, and she didn’t want me shelling out to her all the time.”

  “Did Margaret threaten to tell your wife that you’d been intimate?” Barolli was still leaning on the desk.

  “Hang on . . . just hang on a minute here. I know what you’re doing—you’re trying to make out that I had some kind of motive to kill Maggie, right? That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

  “Young wife, young family, and as you described her, a slag coming round hitting on you. I bet you didn’t like it, did you, Eric?” Barolli leaned in closer.

  “No, I fucking didn’t. I made sure she didn’t come to the house.”

  “So she did threaten to tell your wife?”

  Eric stood up, towering above Ba
rolli. “Listen, pal, are you looking for a smack in the face? I don’t like what you are insinuating. I’ve been honest with you about Maggie, but if you think I’d be worried about any threat she made to screw up my marriage, then you have got it wrong.”

  “But she did threaten? Come on, you must have been really pissed off after what you’d done for her.”

  “Please sit down, Eric,” Anna said quietly.

  Eric sat down in his chair. There was a long pause, and gradually, he calmed himself down. “As I said, you have got it all wrong, mate. Despite all the shit life had thrown at her, Maggie was one of the nicest women I’ve ever met, and she got upset when I told her not to come to the house. Yeah, okay, she did say something about my wife not really knowing how close we’d been and that I wouldn’t like her spilling the beans about us, but she promised that she wouldn’t come over again. She said we could just meet on the odd times, like in the café I told you about.”

  “So this last time you saw her, did you part on amicable terms?”

  Anna touched Barolli to warn him to move away from the desk.

  Eric nodded.

  “Didn’t you feel guilty about walking away from her? You knew she was desperate, had nowhere to live, and was working the service stations.”

  “Yeah, I knew, but like I also told you, I had warned her over and again not to take risks and said that if she was in real need, of course I’d be there for her. I just didn’t want her calling me at home or turning up whenever the fancy took her.”

  Again there was a lengthy pause, and then Eric addressed Anna. “I used to care about her, and all the bad times she’d been through with my arsehole of a brother, losing her kids, being knocked around, sometimes even hospitalized. Despite all that, I never saw her cry—she was a bloody punching bag, and yet she didn’t cry—but that last time I saw her, I turned round as I walked out of the café and she was crying. So yeah, I felt bad, and you can imagine how I felt when I found out she’d been murdered.”

  Anna stood up and thanked him for talking to them. As she made to head out, Eric pushed back his chair.

  “Instead of wasting time talking to me, you should be out there trying to find who killed her, because she didn’t deserve that. No way did she deserve that.”

  As they reached Anna’s Mini, Barolli received a call from the incident room. Anna sat waiting for him in the car. It had been, as she had anticipated, an unproductive interview, and they had not gained any new information apart from the fact that their victim had made some halfhearted threat—unless she had read Eric incorrectly and the threat was taken seriously by him, enough to make him want to get rid of Margaret permanently.

  Barolli got into the car. “A woman called in after seeing the TV requests for info. She reckons the last victim came into her charity shop and bought the jacket shown on the TV. It’s a cancer-research shop over in New Malden. Maybe it won’t be a wasted morning after all.”

  Chapter Five

  Anna and Barolli parked up in a side road by the Waitrose car park, then walked along New Malden’s High Street. There were numerous charity shops, and Barolli double-checked that it was a cancer charity, as there was a children-in-need shop and a heart-foundation shop all within a short distance.

  “Lot of Chinese live around here,” Barolli said as they passed a Japanese grocery shop. There were several sushi delis, and High Street was busy with the big department store called Tudor Williams. Every store appeared to be having a sale.

  The cancer charity shop was well positioned, with a window display of women’s clothes, china, and children’s toys.

  “Well, this looks affluent—must be all the Chinese,” Barolli waffled. “Those boots in the window look very small, don’t they?”

  Anna didn’t pay him much attention. It was a long way from Hendon and Ronald Kelly’s business. In fact, it was a village atmosphere. She gave Barolli a nudge, as he was still peering into the window display. They entered the shop.

  The assistant, Eileen Mayle, an elderly woman wearing a pink twinset with pearls, had eagerly written down all she could remember on a notepad while waiting. She could describe the redheaded victim, but as the police had shown her photograph on the TV program, they couldn’t rely on this too much as a positive sighting. However, she also spoke of the victim as having a strong accent, possibly Polish, and explained that the reason she recalled this customer was because she had tried to buy the jacket, which was priced at six pounds, with a fifty-pound note. The shop assistants always paid close attention to anyone trying to use fifty-pound notes, because they had been caught out a number of times. In the past, customers had bought a couple of small items for a few pounds and then, having taken their change, left the shop. Later, the notes had been found to be forgeries, so the staff now refused to accept them. The girl was even more memorable because she returned a while later with the correct amount of money to buy the coat.

  “Did you think it was a fake fifty-pound note?” Anna asked.

  “I couldn’t honestly say, and I didn’t have the marker pen to test it, so I couldn’t take it. She took a while to understand, as, like I said, she didn’t speak good English, and the reason I think she might have been Polish is because I had a cleaner from there once and the accents were similar.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “Yes, she seemed to be, and I’d never seen her before.”

  “Thank you very much, Eileen. You have been very helpful. If there is anything else you can remember, please call this number.” Anna passed over her card.

  “I’ve been trying to think of her name, because I wrote a note to keep the jacket for her, and in case I wasn’t here, I put it on the bag under the counter. I’ve been racking my brains to remember, because I’d pinned it to the bag, but she took it with her.”

  This was almost too good to be true.

  “And did you remember it?” Anna asked eagerly.

  “Well, not her surname, but her Christian name was Estelle.”

  The next port of call was the Polish embassy in Portland Place. Anna and Barolli sat in her Mini as they checked some facts about immigration. Barolli scrolled through the information.

  “They’ve got this Works Registration Scheme introduced in 2004 when the new countries joined the European Union. This allows the UK to monitor where citizens, say from Poland, are coming into our labor market. They’ve got to register under this scheme if they want to work for an employer.”

  “Well, let’s hope we get some luck with Estelle.”

  Armed with the photograph of their victim, Anna asked if the embassy personnel could assist in identifying her. It was a tedious interview, with a number of the staff who at first were certain she had never been to the embassy, and it was not until Anna asked if the bar and kitchen workers could also be questioned that they got a result.

  A waitress, whose English was poor, was brought to meet them as they waited in a small lounge. They used a barman to act as interpreter, as the girl became flustered when questioned. She was certain the victim was a girl called Estelle Dubcek who had worked as a relief waitress on two occasions. She did not know where she lived, and said that Estelle had not been at the embassy for several months, but she thought she was working as an au pair somewhere in Knightsbridge.

  Returning to the station, Barolli kept on moaning about how people would not come forward. If their victim was Estelle and she had worked in Knightsbridge, why hadn’t the host family made contact after the extensive press coverage? Anna asked Barbara to start checking all the domestic employment agencies in the Knightsbridge area, and at the same time to contact Interpol and Passport Control. By six o’clock they had no further development; it was yet another frustrating day.

  Just as Anna was getting ready to leave the station, Barbara received a call from a Mrs. Henderson who lived in Walton Street, close to Harrods. She said she had been contacted by the domestic agency she had used to hire an au pair for her two young children. The girl she had hired from the
agency had lasted only a few months before she had to return to Poland for a family bereavement. Knowing she was leaving her boss without help, the au pair had suggested a friend whom she had met at the Polish embassy. The girl was no longer working for Mrs. Henderson and had not been for the past few months, but she had been called Estelle Dubcek.

  Anna asked why the agency had made contact if the au pair did not come to her via them.

  “Because I complained about the original girl they sent to me, and they would have replaced her, but when I said I had already hired Estelle, they got quite unpleasant.”

  Anna arranged to call on Mrs. Henderson that evening. The house was impressive, and Mrs. Henderson, an American, was an elegant and rather brittle woman who explained to Anna that she and her family would be leaving England in two months’ time. The house was only leased, and the bank her husband worked for had recalled him to America.

  “My children have already left with their nanny. I used the agency for the au pairs to help her out mostly on the weekend, as that is her time off. But as I mentioned to you, I was not that happy with them, and they cost a fortune.”

  Mrs. Henderson gestured for Anna to sit down. It was a well-decorated large room with long bay windows overlooking Walton Street. The sofas and chairs were covered in pale yellow damask and matched the draped curtains. A large ornate fireplace with a fake log fire had a long glass-topped table in front of it, stacked with Vogue and Tatler magazines.

  “Can you tell me what you know about Estelle?”

  “Well, not that much, really. She was pleasant enough, but her English was poor, and to be honest, it wasn’t an ideal arrangement. And then when we got the news to pack up, I didn’t bother replacing her.”

  Anna showed her the photograph taken of the victim, but only a head shot. Mrs. Henderson recognized her straightaway.

  “Yes, that’s Estelle, she had long red hair. Has something happened to her?”

  “Yes, she was murdered.”

  “Oh dear God, that’s dreadful.”