Joan asked if they were just to concentrate on the orders for the wooden slatted blinds, as they also had orders for the vertical variety.
“What are those?” Anna asked.
Joan pointed to the blinds along the incident-room windows — long strips of white canvas attached with thin chains and running vertically down the window.
“They let the light in or out, but they’re used mostly in offices or for dividing sections. Swell Blinds had some big orders; they were contracted by a couple of major housing associations, big-time. Some of the new council estates use them, maybe because they’re cheap.”
Joan continued to sift through the orders, and Mike suggested she concentrate on house calls rather than the housing associations. He then turned to see Anna writing up beneath their blue-blanket victim the date and design from Pete Jenkins.
Anna explained what Pete had done. Although the picture was very blurred, they could make out the scroll and bows. Mike peered at it. “What is it?”
Barolli joined them. “I think it’s maybe a wedding date,” he said.
“Or a birthday, christening — could be anything.”
“No, it has to be something the victim wanted covered — so if we go with a wedding date, it would make sense if it went wrong. That would be why she wouldn’t want it as a reminder,” Anna said.
“Okay, let’s get cracking on it,” Mike said. “Get on to the Polish embassy and see if they can direct us to whomever we need to contact regarding marriage licenses issued on that date.”
“It’s another link to our two Polish girls, Mike, and it could mean we do have a fourth victim,” Anna said.
“Yeah, yeah, but let’s keep it to this one. No more digging up any additional Jane Does; we’ve got enough cases.”
Barolli stomped over to Anna’s desk, his nose slightly out of joint. “Well, congratulations, Travis, you’ve done it again — but you know something? Cameron Welsh said there would be other victims, and if this one adds up, he’s right on the ball.”
“I am aware of that,” she said tetchily.
“Maybe we need another visit.”
Anna was about to say that if there was to be another trip to Barfield, she wouldn’t be the one to go, but then it would mean she could get to see Ken.
“Yeah, maybe we do,” she said, “but if you don’t mind, right now I want to get on with trying to identify the blue-blanket victim.”
The team, with extra clerical staff on board, began checking Swell Blinds’s customers. By lunchtime it was clear that customer after customer was not only satisfied with the company but praised their workmanship and John Smiley.
The Polish embassy gave Anna a contact in Poland who informed her that there were many churches and civil courts, and without the exact location, it would take considerable time to produce the names of couples who had married on that specific date. Frustrated, Anna sent e-mails with pictures of the victim in the hope that it would help identify her, underlining that they were interested only in women aged twenty to thirty.
Meanwhile, Mr. Rodgers was sending down as many customer-service records as he could from Manchester — so there would be even more to sift through. Mike had mentioned to him that his ex-employee Wendy Dunn had been helping with their inquiry, and Mr. Rodgers angrily said that he was aware of it but felt that she should have contacted him for permission.
“He spent a long time explaining to me that I would be able to see that his company was doing good work. He’s still nervous that we are doing some taxation investigation. Apparently, one of the reasons he downsized his company was that he lost one of his most lucrative orders, for Strathmore Housing Association, so I got a full account of how the housing associations were hand in glove with Social Services and that they weren’t averse to underhand dealing.” Mike flipped through his letter box.
“Like what?”
“According to Arnold Rodgers, these housing-association contracts are worth a lot of money. So you get builders, plumbers, everyone in the trade after the contracts. They need thousands of blinds or whatever made up for new estates or when they refurbish high-rise properties, and according to him, he lost the contract to a company that knew someone high up and were not professionals — you know, cutting corners.” Mike rubbed his fingers together to make the point.
Anna was about to ask how much the contracts were worth when her e-mail began bleeping. Coming in were copies of marriage documents and lists of couples married on the date in question and from different locations all over Poland.
By late afternoon, the hours the team had put in had produced nothing that added to the investigation. Everyone was feeling the pressure, even more so when Langton made an appearance. Mike took him over all the new developments and how much work it had entailed, but the only piece of new information he was interested in was the discovery of the date beneath the lizard tattoo.
Anna had requested a Polish translator, whose first act was to look at the drawings of the tattoo scroll. The woman told them it was quite common in Poland for the families to give to the couples a scroll with a heart and ribbons in memory of their wedding day. They often would have it framed with a wedding photograph. She said that she had personally never known any girl to have it made into a tattoo.
Langton cornered Anna and said affably that he wasn’t concerned that the translator didn’t think a bride would have the tattoo; she was all of sixty so could be out of touch with what any young girl would or wouldn’t do.
“Good work, though, and a slap in the face for that murder team. They could have taken it off her skin.”
“We’re getting a slew of couples from all over Poland who were married on that specific date.”
“Good. Keep at it — we need a result on her.”
Langton turned and signaled to Mike that he wanted a private word, and the two men disappeared into the office.
“I am going to have to halve the clerical staff, Mike.”
“But we need all the help we can get! Especially now that it’s official we’re taking on a fourth victim.”
“If that doesn’t bring us a result, I will have to cut back the team as well. The budget’s being swamped, and I can’t justify holding on to so many people. You’ve had eighteen officers, Mike, plus your key team, and it can’t go on.”
“We’re working flat out.”
“That may be so, but you’ve not brought anything to the table with regard to Anika Waleska or Estelle Dubcek, and the interviews with Margaret Potts’s relatives gave you nothing new. Thank Christ for Travis; she’s the only one so far who is using her initiative. That tattoo may open up this Polish connection.”
“It could also open up another heap of inquiries.”
Langton stood up. “If it does, that bloody Cameron Welsh was right: our killer could have been busy for years.”
“We’ve not come up with anything on John Smiley.”
“I know that,” Langton snapped, and headed for the door. “I’ve pulled in a few favors from Manchester to keep an eye on Smiley, nothing obvious, but he’s still, to my mind, a suspect, and as we’ve no one else even in the frame, we’d better go and visit Welsh again, so get that organized.”