“But you found ways of cheating on her, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. That was some comfort, know what I mean?”
“I bet it was.”
“She got uglier and fatter. I never touched her after my daughter was born, and it worked for me — you know, that she was eatin’ for England.” He laughed. “It meant she didn’t get out of the house that much, and then we moved to Manchester, and I sometimes had to do the long hauls back and forth to London, and she couldn’t put her friggin’ clock on me just so long as I got home every night.”
“Let’s go back to when you lived in Kilburn, John.”
Listening to Smiley’s accounts of his marital life or lack of it, Anna began to understand what Langton was doing. By now Smiley seemed to feel as if he were talking to a friend. He never acknowledged Anna but kept his focus on Langton, unaware that the DCS was slowly drawing him out. He had even unwittingly admitted to killing Chrissie O’Keefe.
Because Gregson was not privy to the details of O’Keefe’s murder, he could not understand how Langton had trapped his client. He made copious notes, but every time he began to speak, Smiley shut him up with a sharp dig of his elbow. In the end, Gregson burst out, “Mr. Smiley, I really feel that we should ask for a moment in private to discuss the fact that we have not had any disclosure regarding this Chrissie O’Keefe.”
“Shut up. I don’t wanna listen to you. You’re too young to understand,” Smiley said rudely.
Langton gestured to Anna to open the file on Margaret Potts. She passed him the photographs. He selected one and placed it in front of Smiley. “You have admitted that you knew Margaret Potts, but can you elaborate on where you first met her?”
Smiley tapped the photograph. “I said before — King’s Cross station in a café. I used to have breakfast there, and she was a regular.”
“How long ago was this?”
Smiley puffed out his cheeks. “Be a good few years ago, maybe seven. I was still living in Kilburn, I remember that.” He repeated how Margaret had suggested he sell blinds to Emerald Turk.
Langton doodled on his notepad. “Yes, we know about you being in Emerald Turk’s flat, we know you were paying money to Margaret, but when did she start to really nudge you for more cash? It must have felt like you’d got hooked by another Sonja, right?”
“Right.”
“So what did she threaten? To tell your wife about your relationship?”
“Yeah, but that didn’t worry me, because we moved to Manchester.”
“But you have stated that you did have calls from her when you lived there. Your wife has also verified that she received a number of put-down callers.”
“Right. Yeah, sorry, I forgot, but like I said, I changed my number when we bought the house up there.”
Langton flicked through his notebook, muttering, “Hang on, John... I’m having trouble matching dates. You have admitted knowing Margaret Potts for around seven years...”
“Off and on, yeah.”
“It was about five years ago you fixed up the blinds in Emerald Turk’s flat, correct?”
“Yeah, give or take.”
“Help me out with this, John. You have also said that after that time you didn’t keep in touch with her, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“So the phone calls you received from her in Manchester would have started around about four years ago.”
“Yes.”
“So she did keep in touch with you, but she wasn’t making threats about calling Sonja, was she? She had something a lot bigger to hold over you, didn’t she?”
Smiley looked alarmed.
“It’s all right, John, I can understand what it must have felt like to have another woman threatening you. All I need to know from you is how the hell did Maggie find out about Dorota Pelagia?”
Langton was brilliant, the way he casually dropped in the name of the victim. Smiley didn’t even react to the name or say he didn’t know who she was. Langton removed Dorota’s photograph from her file and placed it in front of Smiley. “Sonja knew about her, didn’t she?” Langton continued in the same relaxed tone. “She was young, she was beautiful, and compared with Margaret and Sonja, she was fresh... lovely. How did you meet her?”
“I was at Victoria coach station — that was where I sometimes picked up Margaret. She often worked there, if not at the Gateway Services. She used to hang out there — you know, picking up punters — and I’d finished my deliveries, so I had time to spare and went looking for her.”
He licked his lips. “She was with her. Someone had nicked her bag — well, that’s what I was told — and Margaret said that if I was going back to Manchester, could I give the girl a lift.”
“This girl you are talking about, was it Dorota Pelagia?”
“Yes, I just said so. She was Polish, and I was able to say a few words to her ’cause I’d picked up some Polish from Sonja, and so I offered to give her a ride as far as Manchester.”
“Where was she going?”
“Liverpool.”
“Go on.”
“She got in, and she was lovely, I liked her. Then I said to her that if she could wait for an hour at the service station on the M6, I would be able to give her a ride all the way to Liverpool.”
Smiley said that he drove his Swell Blinds van back to Manchester, parked in the street next to his lockup, and then, using Dillane’s van, drove to collect Dorota, who was waiting for him.
“It was getting late. I’d been working all day. I’d left home just after four and had a long drive to London and then back to Manchester, and now I had to go to Liverpool. I knew I’d have Sonja after me, so I was a bit wound up.”
“Don’t tell me. After all you’d done, picking her up at the coach station, then driving back to take her to Liverpool, Dorota played hard to get. Is that what happened?”
“Too fucking right. Ungrateful little mare. I even said that as I knew she had no money, I’d give her a few quid, but she got nasty, pushing me away, treating me like shit, and I snapped. After all I’d done for her... so I kicked her out of the van. She was shouting and screaming at me, and I got worried someone might stop and ask questions.”
“You wouldn’t want that. Wouldn’t want any trouble that might get back to Sonja — right?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I was worried about. So I grabbed her and put my hand over her mouth, and I opened up the back of the van to stuff her inside.” He gave one of his strange laughs. “When I got back into the driver’s seat, she was trying to open the cage, crying and begging me to let her out, saying I could do whatever I wanted to her, but she didn’t want me to hurt her.”
“But you did, didn’t you?” Langton flipped over the murder-site photographs, and Smiley flinched.
Gregson leaned toward Smiley and said he should not answer, as it was admittance and—
Smiley pushed him away, saying, “Bollocks! It’s fucking obvious what I done. By the time I got home, Sonja was like a slavering bulldog. I’d have liked to put my hands round her thick throat, strangle her like I done the girl.”
Langton nodded encouragingly. Smiley then gave them the hideous details of how he had strangled Dorota with her own tights, stripped her naked, raped her over and over again, and then driven her body around for two hours before wrapping her in the blue blanket and tossing her body into a field. He had then returned home, dumping the dead girl’s clothes in a charity-shop doorway.
“You must have thought you’d got away with it?”
“Yeah, and I would have an’ all but for that bitch Margaret. I mean, they didn’t have anything on me, right — no witness, no nothing.”