Mike looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes.”
Anna went into the ladies’ room, washed her face, and combed her hair. Resting her hands on the sink, she tried to think how they could put more pressure on Smiley. She closed her eyes, wondering if it was possible they had it wrong. Langton had warned her it was going to be tough to break Smiley — but what if the man were innocent?
She looked up and stared at herself, then folded her arms. If, as Langton had said, Sonja was the means to open him up, Anna had tried and failed. But could she put more pressure on, using Sonja as bait?
Anna had five minutes to spare, so she went into the incident room to talk with Barbara. Smiley’s house was still being searched, but to date, no evidence had been forthcoming from either his home or the rented garage. They had also found nothing incriminating in Smiley’s locker at his workplace.
“What did he do with the victims’ clothes?” Anna said, more to herself than Barbara. She crossed to the incident board and looked at the faces of the murdered women.
“You’ve only one found naked, and that was Dorota Pelagia.” Barbara stood beside her.
“You know, in the Fred West investigation,” Anna mused, “one of his victims’ mothers called at his house, asking about her daughter, and Rose West was wearing her slippers.”
“Yeah, well, with Sonja being the size of a house, I doubt if she’d fit anything from our victims.”
“It was just a thought,” Anna said, knowing she was grasping at straws. Missing were the new shoes described by Eric Potts and worn by Margaret the last time he had seen her, but then they didn’t know if they had all her belongings, especially since Emerald Turk had taken some and dumped the rest.
Mike appeared and told Anna that he was ready to start the interview again. “Not looking good, is it?” he said quietly as they made their way back to the interview room.
“Nope, but we’ll keep going. They’ve nothing new from his house,” Anna told him, sitting at the table.
“Do we go for Dorota Pelagia now or keep on with Margaret Potts?”
“I’ve changed my mind about Dorota. Let’s stay on Margaret for a while longer. We can maybe tire him out.” She smiled encouragingly.
“Or, more likely, we’ll get tired out.”
Smiley looked refreshed and had the audacity to say he had enjoyed his lunch. Mike warned the man that he was still under caution. Just as they were about to begin, Anna’s phone vibrated. She took it out and glanced at the text message, then showed it to Mike.
“Mr. Smiley, I am going to ask that another officer continue this interview. Please excuse me.”
Anna stood up as Mike spoke into the tape recorder to say she was leaving the room. She hurried to the adjoining room to find Barolli and Barbara sitting with Sonja Smiley. Anna drew Barolli into the corridor and asked him to join Mike. She gestured at Sonja through the small window in the door. “When did she arrive?”
“Just now. Turned up out of the blue. They called me from reception to go and collect her. She’s a nasty piece of work.”
“Right. Let me have a go at her, and you follow Mike’s lead, okay?”
“I have conducted an interview before,” Barolli said sarcastically.
Anna hurried into the incident room to ask Joan for a copy of all their victims’ photographs. She then returned to interview room. Anna took a deep breath and walked in as Sonja turned to face her. She was wearing what looked like a floral tent and had sweat stains beneath her armpits. Folded over her knee was a raincoat.
“I want to know what is going on,” the woman said forcefully. “Nobody is telling me anything. I want to know why you’ve got my husband here and why you’ve got men searching my house from top to bottom. What is going on?”
Anna sat opposite Sonja. “Your husband has been arrested,” she said calmly.
“I know that, and if you try to tell me it’s to do with his not changing the registration on his van, then you must think I’m stupid. I know he thinks I am, because that’s all he’s told me. You don’t take a man away in handcuffs just for that, so now I want to know the truth.”
“Your husband has been arrested in connection with four murders.”
Sonja’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“It is obviously serious, and he is being interviewed.”
“Murders? John? That’s preposterous. He’s never done anything like that! You’ve got it wrong.”
“Then perhaps you can help me. Would you agree to answer some questions?”
“I want him to have a lawyer.”
“He has one. If you feel it necessary, we can also bring one to be privy to this interview, but as you are here of your own free will and just offering to assist my inquiry—”
“What do you want to know, because I am telling you now, John never done a bad thing in his life.”
Anna smiled and said. “Do you have the photographs, Barbara?”
DC Maddox passed over a file, and Anna placed it on the table. “I am going to ask if you recognize any of these women. May I call you Sonja?”
“Are you serious? He’s here about four murders?”
“That is correct.”
“I am telling you that we have never spent a night apart, not since we were married. I know everything about him.”
“But you didn’t know he had a van parked in a private garage. It used to belong to Michael Dillane.”
“Oh, him, he’s no good, that one. I won’t let him in the house no more. He gets John drunk, takes him pub crawling. I won’t have it.”
“But you didn’t know about the van, did you, Sonja? So perhaps there is a lot else about your husband that you don’t know. For example, did you know he was making a considerable amount of money doing private jobs?”
“What private jobs?”
“He uses the blinds that are customers’ returns and sells them at a cheaper price.”
“No, that’s not true, because Arnold Rodgers wouldn’t allow that. I know he’s very strict. You got that wrong.”
“Your husband paid Michael Dillane seven hundred pounds cash for his van, Mrs. Smiley. He has been earning quite a lot of extra money for years. In fact, he was working on one of those private jobs when he met Margaret Potts.” Anna withdrew Margaret Potts’s photograph and laid it flat on the table in front of Sonja. “She was a prostitute, and your husband has already admitted to having sexual intercourse with her and to paying her.”
“I’ll bloody kill him!”
“We believe, Mrs. Smiley, that your husband killed her.”
The sweat lay in beads across Sonja’s top lip. It trickled down her neck, and she was obviously uncomfortable, as she kept on patting her face with a crumpled tissue.
Out came the photographs of Anika Waleska, Estelle Dubcek, and Dorota Pelagia. Anna placed them in a row on the table. “Do you recognize any of the girls?”
Sonja blew out short sharp breaths, and now the perspiration was pouring off her, the crumpled tissue sodden.
“These girls are Polish. Have you ever met any of them?”
“No.” Her voice was hardly audible.
“Have you ever heard your husband discuss meeting Polish girls?”
“No.”
“We believe, Sonja, that your husband killed these girls also.”
Her small round eyes were so pain-racked that Anna felt sorry for her and offered her a bottle of water.
“Thank you.” Sonja unscrewed the cap and gulped the water. Her hands were shaking.
“There is a possibility, however, that we could be mistaken. Perhaps you could help us clear a few things up.”