Blind Fury Read online

  “I would, yes, but can you tell me a little about Mr. Potts first?”

  “Ask my husband. I’ll just tell him you are here.” The woman glanced at the card Anna had passed to her and crossed a few paces to knock on one of the office doors. She gave a small smile. “One moment.”

  Mrs. Kelly was fast, darting into the office before Anna could say anything. She came out almost as quickly and held the door ajar. “Ron will see you, Detective Travis.”

  Ron Kelly was a short, squat man with a pair of wide red braces and checked trousers. The thick leather belt around his waist looked as if it held his girth in too tightly. His desk was filled with files and trays overflowing with papers. A computer took up most of the rest of the space on his desk. In here, the smell from the fish-and-chip shop was overpowering.

  “Sit down, love, I’m Ronald Kelly.” He was pompous, and when he stood to shake Anna’s hand, he seemed no taller than when he was sitting behind his desk.

  “Let me just say that Eric’s one of my most trusted employees,” he went on immediately. “He’s been with me for nearly eight years, so you won’t hear me say a word against him. Lovely bloke, he is—do anything for you, and he’s good at his job.”

  “I actually wanted to talk to him about his sister-in-law, Margaret Potts.”

  Kelly looked confused.

  “Margaret Potts was murdered, and I am investigating her death,” Anna explained. “I would just like to ask Mr. Potts some questions about whether he knew her well and could perhaps help me trace some of her friends. I was given Eric’s name by his brother, Stanley.”

  “I don’t know anything about the poor woman, but I know of the brother. I’ve not actually met him, but he’s a bad lot, by all accounts. I’m certain Eric has nothing to do with him. In fact, I’ve not heard him mention his name for a long time. He was in prison, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “So this poor woman was his wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “Eric’s not said anything to me about her, but then, he’s a private sort. We don’t mix socially, and he’s not in the office that much. Most of his work is out on the road, see.”

  “What work did he do before he came to your company?”

  “Army. He’d done twenty years’ service. I’ve been looking for his CV, but to be honest, after so many years working here, I couldn’t tell you where it is. I’ll get the wife to try and dig it out; she handles most of the paperwork.”

  “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

  The 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.