She was dressed and ready for action by seven-thirty the following morning, eager to get on with the interrogation of John Smiley. When she reached the station, Anna was surprised to see Langton already there. He had coffee and a toasted bacon sandwich, and as soon as he saw her, he asked for a word in Mike Lewis’s office.
“Listen, I’ve had a bit of a development,” he said. “I’m not going to make it this morning, so Mike will be in on the interrogation with you.”
Anna was disappointed. “Why not? You’re here now.”
“Yeah, but I have to leave soon — and you and I both know it’s going to be a long session with Smiley. I tell you one thing I’ve learned from this...”
“Just one?”
“Never let an effing rookie lawyer handle a big case. This guy James Gregson is a royal pain in the arse. You’d think he was representing Prince Charles, the way he’s carrying on.”
“Scared he’s going to make a mistake, I reckon,” Anna said thoughtfully. “For us, it might prove to be an advantage.”
“You all right to go in with Mike?”
“Of course I am, and don’t run him down. On the contrary, he needs all the confidence boosters you can give him. He’s had the carpet tugged a few times.”
“Maybe it doesn’t help, just how much you’ve come up with the leads that have assisted us in bringing in John Smiley.”
“It was teamwork, sir,” Anna said. Langton had reprimanded her enough times for not being a team player.
“I’ll talk to him before I leave,” Langton promised.
“Can I ask why you’re not staying?”
Langton nodded and referred to another case he had been overseeing.
“You read about the little girl nicknamed the Pixie? It started because her parents gave us a photograph of her dressed for a party; she was wearing a little pixie hat and green tights.”
“I know the case. She was found inside one of those huge waste bins, wasn’t she?”
“Yep, poor little lass. She’d been missing for four weeks.”
“In many ways I am grateful that I’m on this John Smiley case and not on a child murder. They’re always hard not to get emotionally involved in.”
“Yeah, and in this one, emotions are running to boiling point. We arrested the stepfather last night.”
“What?”
“Yeah. He cried a lot of crocodile tears on all the TV interviews, but I just had this gut feeling about him, and last night we nailed him. It was old Pete Jenkins who gave us the lead with just one fingerprint.”
“From the Dumpster?”
“Nope, off of little Pixie’s skin. He used the superglue technique and lifted it from her backbone. The man had denied being with her for the afternoon she went missing, and he’d been protected by the mother. So like I said, emotions are boiling over, but I want to lead the interrogation. Personally, I’d like to strangle him with my bare hands, but instead, I’ll make damned sure I break him.”
Anna knew that dealing with Langton at full throttle wouldn’t be easy; she’d seen him in action too many times.
“Did you also have a gut feeling about John Smiley?”
He nodded and then looked at her. “What about you?”
“To be honest, no, I didn’t, but there were just too many coincidences — and I know you don’t believe in them. That’s what kept me going.”
“You did good detective work, Travis. It won’t go unnoticed.”
“Thank you.”
“But you are going to have to break him — and I’d say over the Margaret Potts murder. We’ve not got enough on any of the Polish girls, apart from the blue blanket. Did you get his pal, the ex-Para, what’s his name?”
“Michael Dillane.”
“Right — did he get shown the blanket?”
She hesitated and shook her head. “No.”
“That should have been a priority.”
“I know, but—”
“Get it done. Once you’ve got Smiley admitting Margaret Potts’s murder, then you can backtrack to the other girls. It’s not going to be easy, even with the accumulated evidence. I would say if he’s not opening up, hit him with as much about his wife as possible — even implicate her somehow. She’s a real dog, but I think he has this fear of her disrespecting him, for some godly reason.”
“Right, but we do have strong evidence linking him to Dorota, the dog hairs and—”
“Not enough to make the charges stick. You will have to put the pressure on him to confess.”
She nodded and then was taken aback when he took hold of her left hand. “Still not wearing your engagement ring, I see.”
“I’ve not had time to pick it up.” Uncomfortable with the personal direction of the conversation, she gave Langton a brief rundown about Cameron Welsh’s latest antics, but he didn’t pay that much attention.
He looked at his watch. “I gotta go. As for Welsh, I’d put the bastard in a straitjacket and cart him off to Broadmoor and let them deal with him.”
“I think Ken is hoping they’ll move him this week.”
Langton stood up and picked up his raincoat, saying, “I’ll call later and see how you and Mike are doing.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
He came closer and touched her arm lightly. “Don’t let Smiley slither off the hook,” he warned.
“I don’t intend to,” she said, following him into the incident room as he headed for Mike, who had just arrived. She guessed he was perhaps taking her advice about giving Mike a boost, and she knew she was right when she saw Mike smile and thank him. Going over to Barolli, she asked him to get hold of Dillane and take him over to forensics to check the blanket for them and to confirm the matching dog hairs. She knew that Langton had been right: the evidence wasn’t strong enough.
Even though he had spent the night in a cell, John Smiley looked fresh. He was wearing a gray suit with a white shirt and dark tie. His hair was combed away from his forehead, showing his receding hairline. He was in some ways a good-looking man, but his face was heavily lined, and he was obviously nervous. As Mike reminded Smiley that he was still under caution, he gave small soft coughs, constantly clearing his throat and, with his right hand, straightening his tie. Mike motioned to the video cameras, explaining that the interview would be not only taped but filmed.
The first file was placed on the table by Anna; it was the investigation into Margaret Potts’s murder. She took out the photographs and placed them in front of Smiley.
“You have denied knowing this victim Margaret Potts. Do you have anything to say?” Mike demanded.
“No comment.”
Anna’s mouth tightened. If Smiley was to go down the “no comment” route with all four victims, it would be a very one-sided interview.
Mike continued. “We now have proof that you did in fact know Margaret Potts, and we have a witness who met you when you went to her flat to hang a set of blinds. This witness has also stated that she paid you in cash, and the same witness was able to pick you out of a video identification parade. Do you still insist that you did not know the victim?”
“No comment.”
“We also have three sets of prints from the same flat that have been matched with yours, Mr. Smiley, so to continue to deny that you were never at Miss Emerald Turk’s flat is a lie.”
“No comment.”
Mike plowed on. “We also know that you lied about not working in a private capacity using blinds from your company Swell Blinds, and that this money paid to you was never declared for any tax payments. We have been given a statement by a Mr. Michael Dillane that you also fitted blinds for him for a cash payment, together with one from a Mrs. Wendy Dunn, who recalls that you did work for her. You were seen on numerous occasions to remove the unwanted blinds from the Swell Blinds factory, leading us to believe that you did earn a considerable amount from these private negotiations.”