“Like what?”
“The last time we were there, he said we should concentrate on a victim called Margaret Potts. He kept on and on about there being a witness.”
“Witness to what?”
Anna explained briefly the situation with their case, concluding, “So, Margaret Potts is the odd one out, in that she had no Polish connection, unless...”
“Unless what?”
“Unless she saw the killer or knew him. The other girls were young and attractive, unlike her. She was a hardened prostitute.”
“But why the interest in Welsh?”
“Because he has contacted the incident room, especially me, and keeps on implying that he has information.”
“Could he have?”
“I doubt it. He’s been in prison for the time the murders were committed. There was a possibility that he talked to another prisoner who may have been released, and that was why he kept on with saying that he knew something... but we’ve run checks as far as is possible and come up with nothing. Next, he says he can get into the mind of the killer, being one himself; it’s all really tedious, because he’s such a loathsome creature, but we have to deal with it just in case.”
Ken ordered two cappuccinos and said that he would be glad when he’d done his time at the jail, as sometimes it felt as if he, too, were a prisoner.
“You know something I can never understand?” he added. “You have these animals like Fred West — how many young girls did he murder? — and yet they just disappeared without a trace, one after the other, even his own daughter.”
“That’s what is really difficult with our case. Fred West’s victims were girls who wouldn’t be missed — well, most of them. They went to his house of their own accord. It was as if he could pick out the ones no one would care about or report missing. We, by contrast, have two beautiful girls, and yet we can find no one who noticed their absence, no one who cared enough about them to report them missing. Even if they were, as we suspect, coming into the UK without the proper paperwork, it’s hard to believe they could be picked up and murdered.”
“You think they knew their killer?”
“We’re trying to find some kind of link.”
Ken signaled for the waitress to get the bill, and Anna leaned forward to touch his hand. “I’m sorry, we shouldn’t have gotten into my work.”
“Yes, we should. I’m going to have to if we see each other, just like I can have a good moan to you about my job. I didn’t want to interrupt you talking, it’s just that I’ll have to ride back tonight, as I’m on early call tomorrow morning.”
“What time will you have to leave?”
He leaned over to kiss her and grinned. “Got a couple more hours yet.”
The flat felt horribly empty after Ken had left. Anna cuddled the pillow he had used, wishing he were still beside her, missing him badly already. It had been such an innocent, lovely day, and for once she fell into a deep long sleep. It wasn’t until she was dressed and ready to leave for the station the next morning that she picked up her mobile. There were four calls from the incident room. She replayed them as she headed down to the garage. Two calls were from Barolli, asking her to contact him; the third call was from the Polish translator, asking Anna to call her; and the fourth was from Mike Lewis, and his message was terse.
“Call me back when you pick this up — urgent! I think we’ve got our bride.”
Chapter Ten
Where the fuck have you been all weekend?” Barolli greeted her angrily.
“I was with friends. I didn’t expect to be needed, and if you ever speak to me like that again, as your superior officer, I will place you on a disciplinary report.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you’d have your mobile with you. It came in late Saturday night.”
“Have we an identity? Mike said something about you’d got the bride.”
“He was being diplomatic, since you did all the tattoo business, but as no one could get hold of you and your landline is screwed...”
“I had to get a new number, unlisted. I’ll give it to the office manager. So — have we got the girl identified?”
Barolli got out two sheets and said they had two girls who fit the description; both had been married on the same day, both were dark-haired and in their early twenties. “Mike is checking them out now. He’s in with the interpreter, who, I’ve got to say, worked her shriveled butt off all weekend.”
Anna took off her coat, wanting to hear more details, but Barbara signaled that there was a call for Barolli on line two.
“You look very refreshed,” Barbara remarked to Anna.
“Thank you.”
“Have a nice weekend?”
“Yes, I did, actually.”
“Joan and me have square eyes, but we’ve finished the entire load of Swell Blinds contacts and—”
Barolli gave a yell as he placed down the receiver. “The anonymous caller just rang the TV station — she has agreed to come in to see us. Bloody marvelous! It’s all happening this morning!”
He went off whistling as Anna checked her voice mail and opened up her computer. She jumped when Mike Lewis’s office door banged open and he strode over to the incident board, prodded the picture of the victim from the blue-blanket case, and began to write: Bibiana Nowak married Marek Ryszard in Krakow and number two is Dorota, who married Stanislav Pelagia in Warsaw. Both girls were aged twenty-two in 2002, both were dark-haired and around the same height, five feet five, again matching our victim, and neither has been seen for some time.
Anna joined him and asked if both girls were still married. It was more likely their victim was either divorced or separated, since the wedding date on the tattoo had been covered up.
“We’re just running checks, but because we’ve got blurred e-mail pictures, it could be either one of them.”
Fifteen minutes later, they received information that they could delete Bibiana Ryszard. She had been traced so was still alive and still married.
Half an hour went by before they received the news that Dorota Pelagia had still not been traced, but they had tracked down her husband. He was in prison and had been for seven years, charged with armed robbery.
The officials in Poland were trying to locate Dorota’s family. Coming in via e-mail were two pictures of the young woman on her wedding day. She was wearing a short white dress and white shoes and stood holding a small bouquet. She looked shy and had a sweet soft smile. Her husband, Stanislav, towered above her, very broad-shouldered, with dark brooding looks. E-mails were crisscrossing back and forth as the team waited for further results.
“It’s her,” Anna said firmly. She picked up the photo of the victim taken at the mortuary, pinned it beside the wedding picture, and then did the same with the murder-site photographs. “They should get on to Customs, Passport Control, run the name to see if and when she might have entered the UK.”
But Passport Control had no record of a Dorota Pelagia entering the UK, and they had gone as far back as 2003.
Further details were fed back to the incident room. Stanislav Pelagia had been arrested in March 2003, accused of domestic violence; he was released when his wife dropped the charges. Two further incidents had been recorded, and in each case no charges were brought.
“If Stanislav went to prison in 2003, we’ve got all the years since then in which she could have left him and arrived in England,” Anna said to Barolli; she was standing by his desk.
“We’re waiting to see if they can get any DNA for us to double-check that we’ve got the right girl. We can’t go ahead and ask people to come forward with information if we’re not one hundred percent sure she’s our victim.”
Barbara joined them. Now they had further details. Dorota had a sister living in Warsaw who claimed not to have seen her for between six or seven years. She knew Dorota had left her husband after his arrest. The family had been very much against the marriage, as Stanislav had a history of drug abuse, and they virtually cut off Dorota when she defied them and went ahead.