Smiley went on to explain how, unbeknownst to him, there had been a Crimewatch program on TV, asking for anyone with information to come forward. Dorota’s photograph had also been published in the newspapers.
“I was still not worried, and then that bitch calls my office and says she wants to talk to me.”
“Margaret Potts?”
“Yeah, her. She didn’t have me home number ’cause, like I said, I’d moved to the house in Manchester. She only called the friggin’ office! — She said she wanted a lot of money ’cause she recognized Dorota, and she also said she knew I had this blue blanket in me van because we’d had sex in the back once and she said it smelled of dogs. She was a wily bitch, and she put two and two together. So I agreed to meet up with her.”
“How much money did she want?”
Smiley shook his head. “She’d always hit me up for a tenner or twenty here and there, over not tellin’ Sonja about us, but this time... Jesus Christ! It started with a couple of hundred, then it got to more, and she threatened to go to the police. It was a fucking nightmare, the bloody Sonja scenario all over again.”
Langton glanced at Anna and passed her a note that said, Time frame.
Anna asked if the time Smiley had been at Emerald Turk’s flat to fix the blinds was when the payments had started.
“No, it was after, but when I was there, she hit me up for a couple of hundred. She said she needed the money to pay for something to do with her kids. Lousy mother, her kids were both fostered out. I told her I didn’t have it, but she said I’d better find it. I gave her about a hundred that time, and we arranged to meet. I said I’d give her the rest then. I never intended to pay her another penny, but the bitch called my workplace again, so I met up with her in the café, and this time she fuckin’ asked for a thousand quid ’cause she said she knew about that girl.”
He shoved a finger at the photograph of Dorota. This tied in with Margaret’s new clothes and the visit to her children.
“So when was the next time you met up with Margaret?”
Smiley frowned, obviously trying to recollect the date. He hunched his shoulders and then said it was maybe months after he’d met her at the café. They had met at the service station, and he had given her five hundred, saying he didn’t have the cash to spare. Margaret wasn’t satisfied and said she wanted more. It was another six months before he had yet another meeting with her and passed her money. He was tight-lipped with anger, saying that Margaret wouldn’t stop pestering him and he was worried about her contacting him at his workplace. In the end, he had told her that if she gave him some time, he’d save up and give her one final payment of another five hundred pounds in March.
Anna held up her hand. “These meetings that took place between you, are you saying they came after she called Swell Blinds — or did she have another way of contacting you?”
He hesitated and then went into an elaborate, rambling account of how he used to call a pay phone at the Gateway Services, and if Margaret was around, she’d pick up.
“If she wasn’t doing business, she’d hang around the pay phones, keepin’ warm, actin’ like she was usin’ them so they wouldn’t move her on. There was an Indian bloke that worked the coffee bar at night, and she used to jerk him off for a cup of coffee and a snack, then clean herself up in the ladies’ toilets.”
“So, on the occasion when she was waiting for more money, where did you meet Margaret?”
Smiley said that sometimes she would use an old caravan parked at the back of a slip road near the service station. When he saw her there, they would have sex, and previously, he paid her between twenty-five and thirty pounds. He would park some distance away, walk up the lane, and wait until he knew she wasn’t with any of her regulars.
“I waited until I knew she was alone. I then went and drove the van right up to the stinking caravan, and she came out all smiles.” He mimicked her voice. “‘You got my money, honey?’”
He sniggered, saying he’d told her it was in the back of his van in a cardboard box. He described how he’d opened the back doors, and when she had leaned in, he’d pushed her inside with his foot. He then slammed the doors on her and locked them. He was still smiling as he described driving around with her. “Just like that Polish bitch, she was trying to unlock the cage.”
He wasn’t sure where he stopped. It was dark and would have been a good few miles beyond the London Gateway Services.
“I said to her that if she kept her trap shut, I wouldn’t harm her, and she sat quiet in the back of the cage. No more swearing and cursing. Then I helped her out like a real gentleman. I said to her I was joking and that the money was in the glove compartment. When she opened the passenger door to get to it, I came up behind her. First I got her by the hair, then I pulled her down. I wanted to stamp on the bitch’s face...”
They were forced to listen to more grotesque details of how Smiley had raped and strangled Margaret and then left her body in a field before he drove back to Manchester. He was now enjoying himself, as if the admittance of the murders were some achievement that no one had recognized.
Langton smiled and held up his hand. “That was three you got away with, John — Chrissie, Dorota, and Margaret Potts.”
“Yeah, and I can tell you I had a few sleepless nights — you know, waiting and worrying that I might have left DNA — but I was certain I got no witnesses. Nobody ever saw me with Margaret, so I felt like I’d had a lot of luck. I used to clean me vehicles with a special high-powered spray, always very careful.”
“Yes, and your wife didn’t have a clue, either, did she?”
“No. And you know something? I started to enjoy having a double life. I liked earning the extra money she knew nothing about. I liked looking at her and saying I’d be late home and then getting this adrenaline rush from what I was doing. I felt like I was untouchable.”
“But you were clever. You didn’t get rash, didn’t attempt to commit another murder for quite some time, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I’m an ex-Para, watch my own ass, never give nothing away, but I used to have the biggest hard-ons just thinking about what I done. It was enough. I even let Sonja wank me off a couple of times because I could remember what it felt like when I squeezed their throats and my dick was inside them. When I tightened their stockings round their necks and they gasped, it was the biggest orgasm I’d ever had. I just kept spewing out like a volcano.”
It was all directed at Langton. Smiley hardly, if ever, acknowledged that Anna was in the room, but now he glanced toward her and apologized. “Sorry, love.”
Anna was repulsed by him. His face was shiny with sweat as he gloated, and spit formed at the corners of his mouth. His big hands constantly made the gesture of clasping his victims’ throats and squeezing, or his fists clenched as he demonstrated garotting.
“So what happened, John? It started to fade, the excitement, the memories. You wanted to feel that adrenaline rush again, that volcanic orgasm?” Gregson was showing his inexperience as he didn’t attempt to stop Smiley, but sat in shocked silence.
Anna could see that Langton was encouraging Smiley to continue his disgusting admittance of how he killed.
“Yeah. I started to need it again. I am a hard worker, and with that bitch at home, I started to feel the lack of excitement. It got to be almost an obsession. I was like a hunter looking for prey — that was how I saw it. I was a hunter, and even that thought would give me a hard-on.”
Langton almost snapped his fingers at Anna to bring out their next victim. She moved quickly to open the file on Anika Waleska and placed the photograph in front of Smiley.