“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.
“You want to sit down?” He gestured to the armchair and sat in the center of the sofa. “Not found who done it, then?” he added.
“Sadly, no, we haven’t.”
He lit a cigarette, his fat fingers nicotine-stained and with black nails.
“You were married to Margaret?”
He nodded.
“Can you recall anyone who might be able to help me get to know her?”
“No. The prison governor told me she’d been bumped off. I read about it in the papers as well.” He didn’t sound particularly sad.
“During your time together, surely you must have met some of her friends, or someone she was close to and would have remained friendly with after you separated?” Anna suggested.
“No. What she did was her own business. She was useless. My kids were always filthy, and she never cooked, gave ’em Kentucky Fried Chicken morning, noon, and night. They was out of control — that’s why I kicked her out, then my kids got taken away. Best thing for ’em, ’cause she was no bloody good with them, and I was workin’, so I never knew they weren’t going to school.”
“Did you know Emerald Turk?”
“No.”
“Anyone you can think of that might be able to help me?”
“Nope.”
“Do you still keep in touch with your children?”
“No.”
“What about men your wife might have known?”
“She knew a lot, but I wouldn’t call ’em friends. She was a tart,” said Stanley matter-of-factly.
“I am especially interested in men she might have used to help her get her own back on a punter who didn’t pay. A couple of times she was beaten up, so she needed some help — you know, to pay them back.”
Stanley shook his head. The ash from his cigarette drooped to over an inch long. “Listen, love, me and Maggie parted ways and not on friendly terms. I was glad to see the back of her.”
“But you had feelings for her once. You paid a fine when she was in court for prostitution.”
He frowned and sucked in a lungful of smoke, then flicked off the ash onto the carpet. “Maybe I did — don’t remember. That’d be some time ago, and it could’ve been me brother. He might have helped her out, but not me.”
“Your brother?” asked Anna with interest.
“Yeah. He used to have a thing with her.”
“Would he have given your name to the court? It was a five-hundred-pound fine.”
“She probably paid him in kind, if you know what I mean.”
“Do you have his address?”
“No. We don’t get on — it’s obvious why. He’s a bastard, and he never helped me out. I’ve not seen him for more than five or six years.”
“What work does he do?”
“Works for a bailiff company, or he did. Like I said, I’ve not seen him. He was shagging her, though, like every man that come into the house.”
“What’s his name?”
“Eric.”
Anna stood up, eager to get away from the cigarette smoke and the stench of the flat. Stanley looked up at her and then jerked a thumb at a sideboard. It was hard to see anything for old newspapers and used food cartons. He shuffled over to it, throwing papers aside, opening drawers.
“Hang on a minute... I was wonderin’, was there anythin’ of value found after she was murdered?”
“Value — like what?”
“She had some nice jewelry. She got me mother’s diamond engagement ring, and by rights I should have it back, unless she sold it. Knowing her, she’d take the pennies off a dead man’s eyes, but it was a nice stone worth a bob or two, and I gave her a gold bracelet that cost me a few quid.”
“There was nothing. She didn’t have her own place when she was killed, but I think she left a suitcase with some contents, so I’ll make inquiries for you.”
Stanley opened a drawer and rooted through it, bringing out a dog-eared brown envelope. “You can have this — I got no use for it. It’s her birth certificate and crap.”
He passed Anna the envelope, but she didn’t open it.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Potts,” she said as sincerely as she could.
In reply, he plonked himself back down on the sofa, not bothering to show her out.
In her car, Anna opened the envelope. There was, as he had said, a tattered birth certificate, along with a few old photographs. Some were stained and creased. There were pictures of Margaret aged about seventeen, others of her holding two small toddlers. There was also a Valentine’s card. Anna was surprised by the scrawled writing and the flowery verse that said how deep their love was. It was signed, Loving you with all my heart, Stan.
Later that evening, Anna sat eating her supper at her kitchen table, looking at the contents of the envelope, the faded photographs especially. Her kitchen was compact, with a small breakfast bar and a more comfortable high stool than the one she had sat on at Emerald’s. She used her microwave oven more than her new gas one, and her fridge was small, fitted with a freezer compartment on the top. She’d made an omelette with salad and had stuck a list of groceries to the fridge door with a magnet. Her fitted cupboards had mostly tins of tomato soup inside. She was out of milk so had her coffee black.
She finished eating and placed her dirty dishes in the sink, washing them up before returning to look over the photographs. It was hard not to feel saddened by the knowledge of what had happened to these people. In one photograph, a young Stanley Potts stood with his hand resting on his wife’s shoulder. Her face had been scribbled over, perhaps by one of her children. Anna replaced everything in the envelope to take into the incident room the following morning. She was eager to get the team tracing Eric Potts; it was too much of a coincidence that he worked for a bailiff company. Perhaps this was the man to whom Margaret had turned when she needed help. He might also have contact with the ex — police officers. It could be the lead they so badly needed, at last.
After taking a shower, she checked her laundry basket, adding to the note on the fridge door that she had to remember to take in her laundry and collect the fresh sheets in the morning.
Anna had not been living in her flat that long, yet long enough to have made some kind of effort to make it less austere, but it never seemed to be a priority. There was the photograph of her beloved father by her bedside, and her dressing table contained a neat row of cosmetics and perfumes, but Anna even put her hairbrushes and combs in a drawer. In some ways the neatness was a comfort; it wasn’t obsessive, because when a case occupied her day and night, the laundry basket overflowed and she did leave clothes on the back of her dressing-table chair and the floor. Her lack of interest in any culinary attempts made her slack on her food shopping. The stations’ canteens were good enough. The one luxury she always made an effort with was pristine laundered cotton sheets and white duvet covers, with a matching white pillow; she also had numerous white cotton nightdresses. She delighted in slipping between the chilled, sweet-smelling sheets, and on this night, having felt she had made some breakthrough in the case, she fell into a deep sleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.