“What about Margaret Potts?” Anna gestured to the first victim. “I see the team interviewed a number of known associates. Did they give any indication of a usual night’s work?”
Barolli gave a shrug. “Yeah, but nothing that helped us. She worked between two motorway service stations. She’d either do the business in the guys’ lorries or hitch a ride, especially if there were two drivers, and she’d do the pair of them en route to their next stop, then get out and turn the same tricks on the other side. Been at it for years.”
“Can I talk to this girl?” Anna tapped the board where the name Emerald Turk was written up as helping inquiries. “Who is she?”
“Emerald — yeah, she shared a flat with Potts.”
“Is that her real name?”
“I doubt it.” Barolli gave a short laugh. “We had four different aliases for her, and she was a real bitch; didn’t give us much — just how Potts earned her money.”
“So she was doing the same circuit?” Anna persisted.
“No, she had a pimp and said the motorways were not her style.”
“I’d still like to talk to her.”
“Why?”
“To try to get a handle on who Margaret Potts was. On the whole service-station game. I’m not trying to tread on anyone’s toes here, Paul, but you’re all sort of ahead of me.”
“Help yourself.” He shrugged. “I doubt you’ll get anything more than we did, though. She’s a right tough cow, and tracking her down was a headache.”
Barolli’s tracing of Emerald Turk’s whereabouts had been a problem because she changed flats or rooms constantly, but eventually, he’d got a contact address through Social Services and her phone number via Strathmore Housing Association. Emerald had two children, so he was able to gain more information, as the children had been fostered out twice. Now that she had a council flat, the kids had been returned to her, and for the past two years, Social Services had seen no signs of neglect on their home visits.
Anna did not make an appointment with Emerald but decided to call on her unannounced and see if she would agree to talk. She drove to Hackney and found the address on a high-rise council estate. Emerald lived on the third floor. The lift was not working, so Anna walked up. From the amount of garbage strewn in the corridors and urine stinking out the stairs, she didn’t think that by any standards this was a well-appointed flat, as Social Services had claimed.
Emerald lived in number 34. Anna rang the bell, waited, and then rang it three more times before the door was finally inched open.
“Emerald Turk?” Anna asked.
“Yeah.”
Anna showed her ID. “Can I come in and talk to you?”
“What about?”
“There’s no problem, Emerald. I’m simply attached to a team investigating the murder of Margaret Potts.”
The chain was still on the door as the woman looked at Anna and grumbled, “Listen, I already told the cops every-thin’ I knew. I got nothin’ more to say, so piss off.”
“Please, Emerald, I just want to talk. We’ve not been able to move the investigation forward, for lack of evidence. I’m new to the inquiry and just wanted to—”
“Like I said, I got nothin’ to tell you.”
“Just give me a few minutes, please. You knew Margaret, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, and I told ’em everything, so fuck off.”
Anna couldn’t even see what Emerald looked like, as the door was almost closed. She wedged her shoe inside the door frame. “She was murdered, Emerald. All I want to do is just try and find out who she really was. You knew her, so you can help me with this. Please let me in. I don’t want to have to come back.”
There was a short silence. Anna would have given up, but then the chain was unlinked and the door opened wider.
“All right, you’d better come in, then. If this place smells cops, they’ll get nasty, and I don’t want no trouble from me neighbors.”
Emerald stood back to allow Anna to enter. She was tall and skinny with a pale, narrow face, and she was wearing an expensive-looking gray velvet tracksuit with large fluffy rabbit slippers. “You’ll have to come through to the kitchen,” she said. “I’m ironing.”
Anna followed her along a toy-strewn hallway and into a modern, well-equipped kitchen. It was bright and clean, with long white blinds at the window. Dishes were stacked tidily on the draining board. Emerald picked up the iron and nodded for Anna to take a stool by a breakfast counter. There was a basket of clean clothes beside the ironing board.
“This is very nice,” Anna said, looking around.
“Yeah, all new mod cons, and I’m doin’ me best to keep the place spic-and-span. Those nosy cows from Social Services drop in whenever they feel like it, and I ain’t gonna give them any reasons for takin’ me kids off me again.”
“Are they at school?”
“Yeah, little local primary. They’re there, thank Christ, until three in the afternoon.”
Anna looked at the fridge, which was covered with bright-colored plastic magnetic numbers and letters. There were also numerous children’s watercolor paintings stuck on a wall with Blu-Tack. One had big orange splashes of paint, and “Mummy” was painted as a stick figure with big feet.
Anna shifted her weight. The high stool was uncomfortable, and her tight skirt kept riding up her thighs. Stashed beneath the breakfast bar was a big red plastic bucket full of dirty nappies, and it smelled, as the lid was left off. Emerald caught Anna looking at it and gestured for her to put the lid on. She explained that her youngest child was still a bed wetter and that these were nighttime Pull-Ups that had to be put out with her recycled items. From the smell of urine that wafted in Anna’s face, they hadn’t been put out for a while. She secured the lid and inched it farther away from her stool.
The iron hissed steam as Emerald pressed pillowcases. She was fast, far more adept than Anna. “I got a babysitter helping me out of an evenin’.” The woman continued ironing while she lit a cigarette from a packet taken out of her tracksuit pocket. “And I don’t smoke in front of the kids.”
Anna smiled, “I’m not with Social Services. As I said, I am on the inquiry relating to Margaret Potts’s murder.”
“I’ve not read anythin’ more about her,” Emerald commented. “Shame, ’cause she was a real nice woman. In fact, this is her tracksuit. She left a suitcase full of her gear with me, you see. Well, she wouldn’t know I’m wearin’ her things, would she, but I think of her often.”
“I know what she did for a living,” Anna said quietly.
“In which case you probably know what I do. I got a bloke that takes good care of me, not like Maggie. She had it rough due to her age, but she was a good person and didn’t deserve to end up the way she did.”
Emerald smoked and continued ironing as Anna asked if she could explain how Margaret worked.
“She’d sort of got her own patch out at the London Gateway Services. She’d travel there by bus or sometimes thumb a lift, then she’d chat to her regulars — truckers, mostly — but sometimes she’d pick up a punter in a car.”
“Did she do her business in the car parks?”
“She had to be careful, you know — the security blokes could give her a real hard time. I think she’d bung them cash to lay off her, and then she’d just either do it in the lorries’ cabs or travel up to the next service station — the one at Toddington, ’cause that has a bridge over the north-and southbound services, then she’d do the same thing there, coming back on the opposite side.”
“Always at night?”
“Not always. Sometimes she worked a day shift, but she didn’t like it. Well, you know — it was a bit obvious what she was doin’, and they’d move her on or call out the cops.”