Blind Fury Page 7

  She was even more puzzled and glanced at Mike Lewis, who was leaning against the wall, his hands stuffed into his pockets.

  “Maybe not,” she said.

  Langton stretched back in his chair and puffed out his breath. “I’ve got a lot of cases I’m overseeing, but this one causes me the most concern. Three dead women estimated to have all been killed by the same perpetrator—and from the MOs, it’s maybe more than estimated—but nevertheless, we have no leads connecting each victim. Hard to, when two remain unidentified. All we know for sure is that Potts was earning her keep shagging punters from the service stations, but whether or not the other two girls were also on the game . . .” He shrugged. “Then we have this creep Cameron Welsh. Now, if he is tugging our strings out of a misguided ego trip and he just wants to prove something to himself, do we dismiss him out of hand? What if he does have information? What if he could, as he said, get into the mind of our killer?”

  “I very much doubt that,” Anna said, but she sensed what was coming and wouldn’t look at Langton.

  “We have to go back,” Langton said, “and this time I will allow him to look at the postmortem report and—”

  “You may be right, but I hope you don’t want me to go and see him again.”

  “Sorry, but I do. He wants to interact with you. In Barolli’s report, he said Cameron turned his chair away from him so he wouldn’t have to look at him, and directed his entire conversation to you.”

  “Well, yes, he did, but I’m female, and I think he just wants to get his rocks off having me there.”

  “Fancies you, does he?”

  She was getting angry. “I wouldn’t know what that sick twisted creep felt about me, but I would prefer it if someone else went to talk to him.”

  Langton stood up. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do: you go and visit him again and see what he comes up with. If you are unable to deal with it, then we’ll arrange for one of the others to be with him.”

  “It’s not a question of me being unable to deal with it. I just feel uncomfortable and would prefer not to be the one to interview him again.”

  “You won’t be alone; Barolli will accompany you. I’ve already arranged it with the governor.”

  Anna stood up. “So I don’t have an option?”

  “Afraid not. Drive up there first thing in the morning. That’s all. Thank you.”

  Anna wanted to slam the door of the office, but instead, she walked out with her hands clenched, trying to control her temper. In the incident room, she told Barolli they were on another scheduled visit to Cameron Welsh, and he swore.

  “It’s a bloody waste of time, didn’t you tell Langton that?”

  “Why don’t you tell him?” Anna snapped, then added that perhaps he shouldn’t, as Langton didn’t like the fact that he hadn’t found the suitcase belonging to Margaret Potts.

  Barolli was still bad-tempered when Anna collected him the following morning. He remained silent for a long time, obviously furious at having to take the long journey again and the fact that he had let himself and the team down by not interviewing Emerald Turk well enough. The team still had no result in tracing the ex–police officers who were used by Margaret Potts to get back at the men who had beaten her up. The consensus was that even if they did trace them, they doubted it would progress their case. Langton, however, had insisted they continue in case one of the men picked up by Potts was their killer.

  Anna and Barolli arrived at the prison and went through the same lengthy procedure. This time they did not meet with the governor, as he was unavailable. There were four different officers working inside the secure unit, and they were concerned that the three other men held there didn’t like being locked up in their cells to allow Cameron to speak to his visitors.

  Welsh was sitting in the same position behind the bars in his cell, with his hair tied back in a ponytail. He was as immaculate as ever and again offered them still or sparkling water. Both refused, keen to get on with it and to leave as soon as possible. Welsh seemed to detect that Anna did not wish to speak to him. She sat, lips pursed, as Barolli passed through the bars a copy of the first file from the pathologist. This contained on-site photographs of the victims and detailed reports from the postmortems.

  This time Welsh acknowledged Barolli, smiling and thanking him for the file. He edged his chair around to his desk and sat looking intently at each photograph. He made copious notes, and Anna became impatient, glancing at Barolli, who lifted his eyes to the ceiling. On this occasion, they heard the odd catcall from the other inmates, jeering and shouting abusive remarks about Welsh being a squeeler, but Welsh ignored them, as did Anna and Barolli.

  Barolli glanced at his watch. Without looking up, Welsh said quietly that he was sorry for keeping them waiting, but he wished to make a thorough investigation if he was to assist them. He placed to one side the first file and requested the forensic reports. Yet again he spent ages on every page and made many notes. Anna forced herself to calm down and use the time to observe Cameron from her position outside his cell.

  First she looked over the hundreds of books, noting that they were all in alphabetical order as well as arranged by size. There were many psychology, forensic, and medical manuals, and numerous volumes of true-life crime, legal textbooks, and court trials. She could see no modern novels, but two shelves contained classics, and these were alongside well-known playwrights—Ibsen, Chekhov, Shakespeare—and some of the book covers appeared to be old, perhaps secondhand, bought online or possibly from specialist journals. She paid attention to the shampoos and lotions, expensive ones, the conditioners and facial creams and suncreams and fake tanning lotions. His toothpaste was a whitener with bleach, and he had an old-fashioned boracic-powder tin. His battery toothbrushes were lined up like soldiers, as were his battery shavers and various aftershave lotions.

  Barolli yawned loudly, and Welsh looked up, then returned to his notebook. He picked up a battery sharpener and started sharpening his pencils.

  “Your killer is obviously working on long-haul drives for some kind of trucking company. The times of the murders are important. He is a night driver, as it is unlikely that any victim was killed in daylight.”

  “We are already covering that line of inquiry,” Anna said sharply.

  “Good. I thought you would be. Are you focusing on the tarts who hang out at the motorway service stations?”

  “Of course.”

  “I hope you’ve put up warning notices. These girls are like wasps—swat them away, but back they come, and I think . . .” He tapped his whitened teeth with the eraser on the end of his pencil. “I think he’s killed more than these three girls. Oh yes. This man has been busy for a long time.”

  “Please pass the files back,” Barolli said.

  Cameron reluctantly collected up all the papers and photographs. “I’d like to keep them,” he said.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Anna told him.

  “Pity. I need more time with them.” Welsh handed the files to Barolli, ignoring Anna. “Can’t you get permission from DCS Langton?”

  “No.”

  “You can go, then. What I will begin working on until your next visit is the routes, and I will have more details for you after that.”

  Anna had her hand resting on the bars, waiting as Barolli replaced the files in his briefcase. It was only a fleeting touch as Cameron trailed his fingers across hers, but it sent shock waves through her.

  “Sorry,” he said, smiling.

  Anna wanted to tell him in no uncertain terms that no way would she be returning to see him! She was even more sure it was a waste of time, since he had told them nothing new or added anything of any value to their case. All it had done was give him the sick pleasure of gloating over the pictures of the victims.

  Driving back, Anna and Barolli got into a heated argument, as he felt they had gained useful information.

  “Like what?” Anna demanded.

  “For one, that there cou
ld be other victims, so we check back into cold cases; and second, he was right on the button for checking out long-distance lorry drivers; and third, that they would be working nights.”

  Anna angrily retorted that they were, in case he hadn’t noticed, already doing exactly that, and Welsh had given them nothing new whatsoever.

  “Okay, but you tell me how he knitted it all together—from what? Newspaper coverage? He may have even watched Crimewatch, but he was, to my mind, quite informative.”

  Anna decided not to get into any further arguments with Barolli, who had started to annoy her. She was glad that he slept for the rest of the return journey.

  Anna had just finished writing up the report of the meeting when Barbara tapped her on the shoulder to say there was a call for her from Cameron Welsh.

  “Let Barolli take it—say I am not available,” she said crossly, but Barbara explained that Cameron had insisted he speak to her directly.

  “Tough. Just who does he think he is? Please, Barbara, tell him I am not available, and if he has anything to say, let him talk to Barolli. I refuse to speak to him.”

  Anna waited, watching as Barolli took the call. He said little, making notes and recording their conversation. When he replaced the phone, he turned to Anna. “Listen to this.”

  “I’m all ears,” she said tetchily.

  Cameron Welsh didn’t like the fact that Anna had not taken his call, since, as he had said to Barolli, he was attempting to fast-track her career. Barolli had laughed and joked that perhaps Cameron could fast-track his, and it appeared to amuse the man, because he went on to discuss his theories at length. He suggested that the murder team should focus their inquiries on companies that delivered into, not out of, London. This was due to the fact that the victims were discovered near motorway service stations that had a drive-over or bridge from one side of the M1 to the other. So their killer, he estimated, would pick up his target from the services before the one nearest to where the victim was discovered, not the one closest, which he believed the police were currently focusing on.

  Anna was tapping her foot with impatience.

  “He said he’d have more details when he’d finished working on his profile of the killer,” Barolli went on, “and would require us to visit again.”

  “This is preposterous! As if we haven’t considered that possibility, even more so as we know that Margaret Potts picked up her clients and then returned via—”

  Barolli interrupted her. “Yeah, yeah, I know, but we’ve not considered that he picked them up on his way into London.”

  “Because we’ve concentrated on where the bodies were found, not on the other side of the motorway heading into London.”

  “But what if he was delivering into London and picked up the girls then? He could hold them in his vehicle, then dump them when he was leaving. Bodies could have been held by him for days.”

  Anna sighed, still not in any way impressed. “Fine, go along with it, and rope in more officers to make further inquiries, but I sincerely believe he is bullshitting us.”

  Barolli didn’t, and he went in to talk to Mike Lewis about the phone call. Mike listened and was almost as doubtful as Anna, but Barolli was insistent that, given time, Welsh could bring them something. He informed Lewis that Welsh had requested another opportunity to look over their files.

  “Tell you what, Paul, bring up the old files on Cameron Welsh and look at Travis’s connection to him, and then we’ll talk to Langton and see what he thinks we should do.”

  Mike Lewis and Barolli went over the arrest and interrogation of Cameron Welsh.

  “Jesus, he was a sadistic bastard. No wonder Travis doesn’t like having to confront him. Maybe she’s right. This could all be a ploy done to give him some perverse satisfaction.” Mike sighed.

  “I don’t agree. I think he has given us some informative material, and you have to understand that he’s not kept the files—so what if he does know a lot more and is stringing us along?”

  Mike was still uncertain but eventually agreed to instigate further inquiries focusing on trucking companies delivering into London on a regular basis.

  Due to the massive stack of information that resulted, the team was inundated. Mike had a meeting with Lang-ton, who was as dismissive of Cameron’s input as Anna, until the thought occurred to him that Cameron’s psychobabble about getting into the mind of the killer might also be a cover-up.

  “Could Welsh have had an interaction with another prisoner, one who was released and fitted the time frame?” Langton wondered.

  “Well, we got a list of prisoners, but according to the governor, Welsh is a real loner and never shared his cell,” Mike pointed out.

  “Maybe, but what about when he was held before his trial? It would mean a lot of digging back, but as we’ve still got no identification on two victims, we’re gonna have to get out the spades.”

  Anna had not spoken to Langton, but she knew he had been discussing the latest visit to Barfield with Mike Lewis, and when they had the next briefing, she was certain he was going along with the idea that Welsh had information. She sat at her desk listening as Mike told them he wanted a check on all the inmates and prisoners held with Welsh before his trial who could possibly have had a conversation with him.

  “We’re grasping at straws here, but we have to look at the possibility that someone may have admitted to Welsh that he was the killer and that he got away with it. This prisoner would have had to be released for the time frame of the murders, so it does at least cut down a lengthy elimination process.”

  With the paperwork piling up from the new lines of inquiry, the team was kept busy, and they had yet to identify the two victims. Knowing that Anna was not happy about the focus on Cameron Welsh, Mike asked her to come into his office.

  “Listen, I know how you feel about this, Anna, but stay with it. We have to work together.”

  “Fine, but do you mind if I focus on Margaret Potts?” Anna didn’t want to be uncooperative, but she could barely contain her exasperation. “I don’t think we have covered the only identified victim’s background. I want to go back to Emerald Turk, and I still think we should continue trying to trace the guys she used to help her out when she was knocked around.”

  “Okay by me, and we’ll keep our heads down trying to come up with a possible connection from inside the prison,” said Mike, knowing that he had to keep working on all the possibilities.

  Anna sifted through the previous records of Margaret Potts. On file they had three arrests for prostitution, and backtracking through the court appearances, Anna saw that one of the fines had been paid by a Stanley Potts. They knew she had been married, and that she had two children taken into foster care, but they had never interviewed anyone save Emerald Turk. Anna went over the list of prostitutes who had been arrested alongside Potts and could know more about her, and she checked to see if any of them had ever worked service stations. It was painstaking work, and she knew it could well prove to be not worth the effort.

  To track down Stanley Potts took almost the entire afternoon. He had been in Parkhurst Prison when Margaret’s body was discovered and had refused to be interviewed. He had subsequently stayed in numerous hostels and halfway houses, moving around almost as much as Emerald Turk. But at last Anna got a recent address from a probation officer who, although no longer in contact with Stanley, recalled him moving into shared accommodation with two other ex-prisoners.

  It was late in the afternoon by the time Anna left the station.

  The shared accommodation was a run-down semi-detached in Camden Town. The three-story house had been divided into four flats, and Stanley Potts was listed on the bell at the front door in flat 2. There were other names scribbled beneath his, and it looked as if numerous people had lived or were living in flat 2. When Anna rang the bell, it took a fair while before she heard footsteps. Finally, the door opened a few inches.

  “Good afternoon. I am Detective Travis, and I am looking for a Stanley Potts�
�I believe he lives here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he here now?”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  Anna showed him her ID. “I would really appreciate you talking to me, as I am on the team investigating Margaret Potts’s murder.”

  “Can’t help you, love. I was in prison and hadn’t seen her for years before that.”

  “Yes, I know. This would be just for me to get an insight into her background. You were married?”

  “I just told you, I got nothin’ to say. I’d not set eyes on her for years.”

  “Could we just talk? I won’t take up much of your time. It’s just that there are a few things you might be able to help me with,” Anna persisted.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, her friends . . .”

  “I don’t know any of them.”

  “Please, Mr. Potts, could we do this now, because I don’t want to have to ask you to come into the station.”

  The door opened a fraction more, and Anna could get a look at him. The man before her didn’t resemble the mug shot from the files. He was square-faced and unshaven, with thick, gray-flecked curly hair, and it looked as if he had speckles of paint in it, with even more specks over his dirty shirt.

  Stanley was about five-eight, solid with a beer belly, and his trousers were held up by a broad leather belt. He had on old worn carpet slippers with no socks, and there were more signs of paint splashes on his dirty trousers.

  Anna followed Stanley down a dimly lit hall with bicycles chained up along the wall, alongside an old-fashioned Hoover.

  “In ’ere,” he said as he reached a door.

  The room was dark, with an old horsehair sofa and chair and a threadbare carpet. On a coffee table were the racing papers, cans of beer, and overflowing ashtrays; stacks of newspapers lay on every available surface. The room smelled of beer, stale tobacco, and curry.