Anna nodded. The ground was still muddy, but he cautiously continued walking to where the body had been lying. He shouted to her again. “Anna, go back to the car, give me a toot on your horn when you see me.”
She did as she was asked and stood by the side of the Mini, waiting. It was some while until his head appeared over the hedge. She pressed the horn.
“Now sit in the car and use the horn again when you can see me,” he called out.
It was not easy to catch a glimpse of him until he was heading toward her from behind the hedge. She tooted the horn.
Langton got back into the car, and she switched on the ignition, but he put his hand over hers. “Wait a minute. Just let me think for a second.”
He was silent, staring toward the hedge. Then he reached behind him and picked up the file of photographs and studied those taken of Estelle’s body at the murder site, looking up at the hedge row.
“I want that guy Collingwood brought back in to check his statement; my gut feeling is that there’s something he’s leaving out.” Langton whistled through his teeth. “Our killer knew he couldn’t be seen from the hard shoulder, and the small dirt track that was used for all the forensic vehicles runs alongside almost up to the hedge, right?”
“Yes. It was very muddy and quite narrow.”
Langton muttered to himself. “I want you to head off the motorway and backtrack to the lane the team used. I need to have a look at it.” He took out a small black notebook and started jotting down something, but she couldn’t tell what.
It took quite a while to drive to the next junction, and then find the nearest turn to take them back in the direction of the crime scene. It took even longer going down the back lanes until they came to the small opening for the track that led across the side of the field to the murder site. Anna could feel the wheels of her Mini dragging through the deep muddy ruts and pulled up. “I think I should stop here. We’ve had more rain, and the last thing we need is to get bogged down.”
He nodded, getting out, and she watched him walk up the lane, skirting puddles and then crossing to where the body had been discovered. When he returned, his shoes were caked in mud, and her carpet on the passenger side was soon covered. She now had to reverse down the lane. When they reached the broken gate at the entrance, Langton asked her to drive back in the opposite direction.
“That part of the lane is very rough, and I don’t think we could use it. All the police vehicles came the long way round,” Anna pointed out.
“See how far you can get,” he snapped.
Anna was loath to head along that route, as it was muddy, with deep tracks making ridges that she had to bounce over. Langton rolled down his window, telling her to stop as he looked up to the trees above. Then he told her to continue.
“We could get bogged down, you know,” she said crossly.
“Yeah, yeah, keep going.”
She did so at a snail’s pace, the car jolting and bouncing while the mud splashed as high as the windows. She was growing increasingly annoyed, only too aware that the traffic officers had warned everyone to stay clear as the lane was such rough going; they had posted specific directions to use the way she had driven in. She was about to insist on turning back when the lane widened and a cinder track appeared. Although there were many potholes filled in with rocks and stones, it was a much easier surface to drive on.
“Keep going,” Langton said again, jotting down the mileage in his book.
To Anna’s surprise, the lane got wider, and after a sharp right turn, there were wooden boards that led onto a small tarmac lane, clearly used to lead to some outbuilding. Langton gestured for her to keep going, so she drove on for a couple of miles, passing a barn and more outbuildings, and then they were on a wider road again. On one side was a hedgerow. At one point there was a wide gap rutted with heavy tracks.
“Turn in there,” Langton instructed.
They drove through and came out at the far side of the truckers’ parking section at the service station.
Langton got out, and Anna could see him talking to a man sitting in his cab eating a hamburger. She saw him gesture toward the way they had come. After more conversation, he returned to the car.
“Okay, let’s go back the way we came and join the motorway there,” he said, and slammed the door shut. He sat with his notebook out and jotted down page after page before he whacked it against the dashboard. “The killer came that way. He drove from the truckers’ area into that lane. He’s someone who knows this area, knows he could get to that field to dump the body and not be seen from the road. The time code of the CCTV footage of Smiley’s van meant he was parked in the truckers’ stop, but the body was discovered hours after he had left. His van is not that big, so he could have easily driven the route we came. Some of the trees have branches broken, so if it wasn’t him, it could have been someone with a fair-sized vehicle.”
Langton continued to explain his theory as Anna headed back to the M1. He was certain the killer had the girls in his vehicle; perhaps they were already dead and he needed a place to dump their bodies. Langton now doubted that their victims were ever seen at the service station — they could have been trussed up in the back of the van.
“What about Margaret Potts? She was seen there and was a regular.”
“Yes, I know, but that truck driver told me that some of the girls service their customers out in that lane — said he’d heard about a few men backing out into that dirt track so they could do the business — and I’d say Maggie Potts would have known that area.”
Langton got on the phone to the incident room. He wanted all the outhouses and barns they’d seen across the fields searched, and anyone working there questioned regarding any vehicles driving down the back route. Anna mentioned that Smiley’s van was in pristine condition when Barolli checked it out. If he had driven down that back lane, he would have gotten scratches from the overhanging trees.
Langton called the incident room again, this time asking them to check out the size of any truck that would get damaged and then to compare that to the dimensions of Smiley’s van.
“Do you think the killer kidnapped the girls?” Anna asked.
“Yeah, possibly. I don’t know.”
“Margaret Potts is the odd one out, then, isn’t she?”
Langton nodded, knotting his string impatiently. “She comes two years before Estelle is murdered, and then we have Anika Waleska between them.”
When Anna mentioned that Joan had brought up a file of another unidentified victim found four years previously, Langton was immediately back on the phone, asking for details. He said little but listened for some considerable time, grunting and barking out instructions for the team to keep digging up more cases with the same MO. He snapped off his phone. “I think our killer’s been at this for a long time, so we might get more. In fact, I am bloody sure of it. Joan’s come up with a girl between twenty and thirty, never identified.”
“Found at a service station?” Anna asked.
“Yeah, Newport Pagnell, naked and wrapped in a blue blanket.”
“That’s not the same MO as ours,” Anna said.
Langton raised his hand, wagging his index finger. “Four years ago! Maybe the killer switched his style, and you know” — he chewed at his pencil — “what if Margaret Potts recognized him, maybe had shagged him before? We need to open up that early case.”
“With no clothes, just a blue blanket, there’s even less to go on than with Anika and Estelle.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He went back to his notebook, flicking the pages back and forth while his right foot twitched. “Smiley went to work in Manchester five years ago, so it’s in the time frame. What we need to do is look around and see what we can dig up on him when he worked in London.”