At last Gregson felt he should intercede, but Smiley shoved him in the shoulder. He patted the photograph with the flat of his hand. “Oh, yes. What was her name?”
“Anika Waleska,” Anna said.
He went into lengthy detail, describing how he had used the jacket and cap to appear to be a security guard, and how it helped that he was driving the dog handler’s van. He said that it had given him an added pleasure, targeting Polish girls. This was partly because of his hatred of Sonja but also, he was able to appear to be trustworthy, as he always mentioned that he was married to a Polish woman and that they had two children.
He had picked up Anika Waleska outside the restaurant where she worked. “I’d had a bite to eat there a few hours earlier, after I’d been on this bloody tricky job on Cromwell Road, and we’d chatted.”
Smiley said that he’d called home to tell Sonja he was still working on the job and not to expect him home until much later. He had said good night to his children and then sat waiting. He chuckled, saying that he always had to remember to toss his sandwiches away, as Sonja would even check the plastic container. Smiley started to give details of the corned beef and pickle sandwiches she’d make for his lunches, how much he detested the gherkins she wrapped in cling film.
“Anika Waleska...” Anna said, tapping the photograph.
Smiley closed his eyes and whistled. He said he had offered Anika a lift in the van, and she had accepted. She told him she was looking for work, as the room she shared was expensive and she was not earning enough money in the restaurant. She also said that she had worked like a slave for a domestic agency that had helped her to come to England, but after a few months, she quit because the work was so grueling, and as at the restaurant, the pay was poor. The woman who ran the agency had stolen, as the girl put it, a large slice out of her wages for rent.
Smiley lived up to his name, smiling all the time. “She could talk, this one, but she was pretty, and like I said, I could understand a lot of what she was saying because of picking up Polish from Sonja. I liked her so much I was thinking that maybe I should arrange to see her again — you know, like a girlfriend — but it didn’t feel right. I wasn’t getting the same rush, so I got as far as White City, where she had moved to, and I decided to keep her.”
He patted her photograph again. “She had no warning — took her by surprise, it did. She was about to get out, and I just hit her.”
Langton leaned toward him.
“Describe how you hit her, John. It must have been difficult to keep her from getting out.”
“Yeah. I just went like this.” Smiley swung his right hand toward Gregson, fist clenched, and pulled away just before striking. Gregson was so shocked, he almost fell off his chair.
“Wait a minute, John. If you were on the driver’s side, you couldn’t have hit her that way.”
“No, I did it with me left hand, just like this.” Smiley demonstrated clenching his left fist and giving a vicious side sweep with his arm extended. “She wasn’t expecting it. I got her right across the throat, and she sort of slumped over, out cold. I drove her away and kept checking she was out, I didn’t want her coming round. Then, when I got to a quiet area, I lifted her out and locked her in the cage at the back of the van.”
They had to listen to yet another hideous description of what he had done to Anika, raping her and dumping her body on the drive back to Manchester.
“I’d done it again, and there was nothing — no witness, even — and I was high as a kite. It had felt so good, and it was a couple of weeks before I started to calm down. I reckoned that I’d got it down to a fine art. This time I read all the papers about her body being found, and it was a real buzz to know I had done it and nobody could touch me.”
“So how long afterward did it all start up with you again?” Langton asked.
Smiley cracked his knuckles, pondering. “You know, it wasn’t like the previous times. When it started, I got a real rush from the waiting to see what happened, but when nothing did, I felt the need to make something happen, to do it again.”
Anna brought out the photograph of Estelle Dubcek. She passed it to Langton, and he laid it down in front of Smiley, who looked at it and then scratched his head.
“I think that was her. I wasn’t prepared. I’d been to London fixing up a couple of blinds, not for Swell Blinds but for people over in Shepherd’s Bush. They’d already had some fitted by the company, and they liked them, so they wanted to order more. I took the call, and I said that maybe as they were such good customers, I’d be able to make a deal with them — a cash deal. I was a bit pissed off because I had a lot of trouble making the blinds fit, it took me bloody hours, but I got three hundred quid. I was heading back toward the M1, and I stopped off at the Westfield shopping mall, Shepherd’s Bush. It was my daughter’s birthday coming up, so I went there to look for a present.”
They heard him describe how he had chosen a Barbie doll with a riding outfit and a pony. He wagged his finger. “Funnily enough, I remembered Margaret telling me she’d bought her kid a Barbie doll, so I reckoned I got the right present, and they wrapped it all up nice for me.”
He went quiet as if enjoying the memory of his daughter’s birthday and said that she had loved it; it was her favorite toy. He then recalled how Sonja had questioned him about where he had gotten the money and how he’d had a big row with her. “Can you imagine? She questioned me like a fucking Gestapo officer. Where did I buy it, how much did it cost, where had I gotten all the extra money?”
“But you were laughing inside, I bet. You had cash, you were making a lot of cash, and she didn’t have a clue, did she?” Langton was trying to ease him back into discussing Estelle Dubcek’s murder.
“No, I kept that well hidden. I just used to take all the aggravation.” Smiley was still looking angry.
“So when you met Estelle Dubcek, you had bought the present for your daughter, right? So you had a lot of cash to spare?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“You’ve got to understand, this time I wasn’t ready for it. I wanted to get back to Manchester in time for my daughter’s birthday, so I wasn’t intending to pick up another girl. I drove toward the M1, and just before you get onto the motorway, there’s a slip road. A lot of hitchhikers use it, they hold up placards saying where they want to go, and there she was, all on her own. She held a bit of cardboard with Manchester written on it.”
He laughed. “It was on a plate, right? And then talk about coincidence — she was Polish. I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t even have the cap and jacket on, and I just pulled up and said I was heading to Manchester and I could give her a ride.”
Estelle had gotten into the van, he said. Her English was not that good, so he had tried talking to her in what little Polish he could manage. At first she was pleasant, and then she said she wanted to get out at the next service station, as she needed to use the bathroom.
“She’d only bloody gotten in. Next thing you know, she wants to go to the fucking toilet.”
“You think that maybe she’d figured out that you couldn’t be trusted?”
Smiley shrugged. He now seemed loath to continue, biting his lip. Anna glanced at Langton, who gave a small shake of his head for her not to interrupt.
“I knew it was gonna be a problem. I’d thought about dropping her off at the London Gateway and driving on, but then talk about fucking coincidence. She says to me that she’s got an uncle in Manchester and that she’s gonna be working for him in his bakery. So not only was it a coincidence, her being fucking Polish, she’s only gonna work in the bakery that Sonja uses. It’s in the shopping precinct near our house. I couldn’t believe it.”