She went into the incident room to mark up the timeline. It was quiet, unusually so for such a big investigation. They had three dead women with no connection bar the fact that they were murdered close to motorway service stations and were believed to have been killed by the same man.
As Anna underlined in red the three missing days, Barbara joined her, wondering if it was possible that their victim had been held captive by the killer.
“It’s possible,” Anna agreed. “From what I can gather, she didn’t take much luggage, maybe just an overnight bag, and could have started out hitchhiking a lift to Manchester.”
“Barolli’s checking out a white van that was on the CCTV footage at the service station used by Margaret Potts. It’s a Ford Transit van and—”
“When did this come in?” Anna looked over at Barolli, who was on the telephone at his desk.
“They got it on three different dates,” Barbara explained as she pinned up the black-and-white photographs.
Barolli finished his call and hurried to join them. “Okay, things are moving. From the license plate, the Transit van belongs to a John Smiley — I’ve got an address for him in Kilburn. Joan’s just checking it out and running him through the national computer to see if he’s known to us.”
Just as they felt they had a break, Joan discovered that the address was for a rented property, and the suspect had moved out five years previously. She could find no police record on file, but from local agency inquiries, they learned that John Smiley was married with two young children.
The neighbors and other residents at the address in Kilburn could give little information to Barolli. His last call was to the landlord, who lived in a house opposite. The man was able to tell them that Smiley was a good tenant, and when his lease was up, he moved out. The landlord had not met his wife but knew the children had been at a local school. He remembered the white van, as it was parked in the residents’ bays, but couldn’t give any details about what work Smiley did. Pressed by Barolli, who said that surely Smiley must have given some details about his work when he took over the lease for rental, the landlord said he had paid a substantial cash deposit.
The next interviews were at the local school, which provided little more than the information that the two Smiley children, Stefan and Marta, had attended the nursery section, and then the eldest moved up to the primary school. The headmistress, a precise woman in her late forties who was wearing thick brown stockings, was able to give a description of Mrs. Smiley as a pleasant and caring woman. She would always bring both children to school in person and was always present at any prize-giving, Nativity play, and so on. She had never met the children’s father and was sad when she learned they would no longer be pupils. She couldn’t recall if she had been told where the family was moving, and then she stopped and thought for a moment.
“I think Mrs. Smiley was Polish, so perhaps they moved back there. We have so many nationalities at our school that it’s sometimes hard to remember.”
“And you have no idea what Mr. Smiley’s work entailed?” Barolli asked.
“No, I’m afraid not.”
Afterward, Anna sat with Barolli in the patrol car. They were disappointed, especially Barolli, who really thought they’d got a breakthrough.
“Maybe we have, you know. It’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it, that our victim was Polish and so was Smiley’s wife,” Anna said.
“We don’t know that for sure, but we can check with Births and Marriages.”
Returning to the station, Anna left Barolli to mark up the new development. Joan was working on tracing any parking tickets or traffic violations that involved Smiley and the Transit van. It seemed impossible that in this day and age a family could uproot itself and disappear, and yet by the end of the day, they still had not discovered the whereabouts of John Smiley and his family. They were running checks through school registers in and around the Kilburn area, Social Services, employment agencies, the Polish embassy, voting registers. Anna was concentrating on vehicle license and taxation. John Smiley could have sold the Transit van, but it was still registered to him under his old address. If Smiley still owned the van, it would by now require its motor official tax, so that was another avenue to check out. It was tedious, frustrating work and occupied almost everyone on the murder team.
The following morning, there was still no news. Mike Lewis was getting a lot of pressure from Langton, but they were coming up with one dead end after another. During the briefing, which left them all depressed, they got a surge of energy when a call came in from the TV Crime-watch team. They had hoped to get a result, but they were stunned by just how good a result it was. A woman caller who refused to identify herself said she was certain the murdered girl was called Anika. She didn’t know her surname but thought she’d worked in a Turkish restaurant in Earl’s Court.
Mike Lewis and Barolli headed out, leaving Anna to continue trying to trace John Smiley. Midmorning, they still had no result, and she was glad to leave her office to interview Estelle’s uncle, who had come down from Manchester by coach.
Andre Dubcek was a small man but overweight, bordering on obese. He was wearing a crumpled cheap navy suit, the buttons of his shirt straining over his stomach. He sat with a cup of coffee, and when Anna entered the interview room, he jumped to his feet to shake her hand vigorously.
As the station was not that old, the interview room walls were not the usual cold shade of light lavatory green, but were a warmer color, with deep cream and pinkish brown overtones on the ceiling. There was the obligatory bare table and two chairs side against one wall, close to the tape recorder. There were also — and not in use for this interview — the cameras positioned high up on the wall and focused on the seating area.
Anna drew out a chair and sat opposite Andre. He had a strong accent but a good grasp of English. He explained that he was Estelle’s father’s brother. Anna noticed his thick stubby fingers as he made a lot of wide-handed gestures.
“I am shocked, so shocked. I have brought some photographs that I have, but only from when Estelle was a child.”
Anna looked through them and could see what a pretty girl Estelle had been. Andre pointed out who was who, and kept repeating it was sad that he had not had more contact with his niece. Estelle’s father had died young of lung cancer, and her mother had remarried and, sadly, died in childbirth, when Estelle would have been twelve years old. She had subsequently been brought up by her grandparents, and then when they had passed on, she was virtually on her own.
“I never write, just maybe a card at Christmas. We were so far away, and I have children and a business here, and times are very hard.”
Anna let him talk on until she felt he was relaxed enough to talk about the telephone call from Estelle. He said his wife had answered, and she had been excited, passing the phone to him. He gave one of his flat-handed gestures.
“Maybe I was not as much. I thought Estelle would be asking for money for a ticket, but then she said she was in London. She wanted to visit, meet my wife and her cousins, and... well, yes, it was for money. She said she had no place to live and wanted to maybe find work here with me while she learned English.”
Andre had agreed that she could stay with his family and, if possible, he would find her work in his bakery. He recalled the date she had rung: the day before she met with Petrovich. She had said she would call when she got to Manchester, as she wasn’t sure if she could afford the train fare.
“I told her to get a coach, because it’s much cheaper, and she said she would maybe do that... and I never heard from her again.”