Langton let him talk on as he gave the sign to Anna to prepare the file of victims’ photographs.
“Yes, that is one of the reasons we’ve asked you to come in to talk to us, Mr. Smiley, and thank you for agreeing to do the identification video.”
“I was told I didn’t really have any option, and then I thought if I refused, it would look as if I was hiding something.”
“You were,” Langton said quietly.
Smiley looked confused.
Anna took out the mug shot of Margaret Potts and the pictures given to them by Eric Potts. “You denied that you had ever met this woman.”
“Right. Yes, that’s true.”
“No, it isn’t.” Langton leaned back in his chair. “Mr. Smiley, we have a witness. You apparently hung some vertical blinds and some wooden slatted blinds in her flat.”
“No. I don’t handle the vertical blinds.”
“But you do measure and hang the slatted wooden blinds.”
“Yes — that’s my job. I measure first, then the blinds get made, then I go and put them up. I’ve told you all this.”
“We know what you do, Mr. Smiley, but we also know that you were in a flat in Hackney and were paid in cash to—”
“Hackney? When was this?”
“Five years ago.”
“Five years? No way. We’d already moved the business to Manchester by then, and I don’t recall ever doing work in Hackney — definitely not in a cash deal. I don’t handle the money side. Arnold Rodgers, my boss, sends out the invoices, and customers pay him directly.”
“We have a witness, Mr. Smiley, and this woman” — Langton tapped Margaret Potts’s photograph — “Margaret Potts was inside the flat, so you have lied, and you did meet her, didn’t you?”
“No, I swear on my life, I never met this woman, just like I said when I was last here. I never met her, and I know what type of woman she is, and I wouldn’t give her the time of day.”
“What happened, John? You were there doing your job, and she was sleeping, woke up, maybe she was wearing a sexy nightdress and you got talking...”
“I never met that woman.”
“It’s pointless to lie. We know she was in that flat, we know you were there, and we have a witness who says not only did she see you there, but she also handed you cash. Why are you lying?”
“I’m not.”
“I’ll tell you why. You are ashamed of what went on between you. Did she come on to you? Offer you sex, offer to give you a blow job, strip for you? Come on, John, we know you met her, it’s useless to lie about it. Did you fuck her, John?”
“No, I did not! I never met that woman, and whoever it is saying that I did is the liar, not me. I’m married, I’ve got two kids, and I wouldn’t want to go with a slag like that. And I wouldn’t do any cash deals — it’s more than my job’s worth, ’cause I’ve worked for Mr. Rodgers for ten years, and I wouldn’t jeopardize that.”
“You couldn’t resist her, could you?”
“I never touched her.”
Langton sighed, picking up the photographs. He then gestured to Anna to lay down the photographs of the Polish victims. “Maybe you wouldn’t want to admit screwing someone like Margaret Potts, but these girls, look at them, they’re young and they’re beautiful. What about them, eh?”
Smiley was sweating but holding firm. “No. I never knew any of them, and that’s the honest truth. Now, you can keep asking me over and over, but you can’t get me to admit nothing, ’cause I am telling you the truth.”
Langton swung back in his chair, smiling. “No, you are not. We have a witness, John. We know you were in her flat in Hackney, and we know she paid you cash. I think you then paid that cash to screw Margaret Potts.”
“No, I did not.”
“So you admit you were in this flat in Hackney?”
“No.”
“John, let me help you out here. I can understand why a man like you doesn’t want to admit to having sex with a prostitute. You have a wife, and from what I saw of her, she’s the kind of woman who wouldn’t understand why you’d get your dick out for such a tart. She looked the type that would give you hell if she found out, so I can understand why you are lying. But you see, John, because we have a witness, it’s possibly going to turn into something more serious than you just taking your trousers off.”
Langton clicked his fingers for Anna to show Margaret Potts’s photograph again. “This woman was murdered, John, strangled and raped, and these three young girls” — he slapped the table with the flat of his hand — “were also murdered — so you see how serious it is if you are lying about just getting screwed?”
Smiley had sweat beads over his forehead and upper lip.
“If you just admit it and say to me, ‘All right, yeah, that’s what happened. I paid her twenty quid and she went down on me. I finished the work and then I left,’ that will be the end of the story. But because you lie and say you’ve never even met her, you have to see that from my side, it looks suspicious, doesn’t it? It looks to me like you might have another reason for lying — and that reason could be that you killed her.”
Langton leaned on his elbows. Smiley had his head bowed.
“You could also be lying about not knowing these young girls, and because of that simple lie, you’ve gone and got yourself into a shedload of trouble. The reason for that one little lie is because you also knew every one of these girls.”
“I don’t like this,” Smiley said, with his head still bowed.
“I don’t like it, either, John.”
Smiley eventually looked up. “I want a lawyer, because you are not asking me about why I was at that service station; you tricked me, and this isn’t about that at all. You’re trying to make out that I’ve done something terrible.”
Langton began to restack the photographs.
“You never said who this witness was,” Smiley went on. “Who is she? What’s her name? I’ve got a right to know who’s saying these things about me.”
Langton stood up. “‘She,’ Mr. Smiley? Very well, we’ll get you a lawyer. Might be a bit of a wait. Would you like another coffee?”
“No.”
Langton nodded to Anna, and she stood up.
“See you later, Mr. Smiley,” Langton said briskly.
They left him sitting mopping his head with a handkerchief.
Walking along the corridor, Langton turned to Anna. “What do you think, Travis?”
“Not sure.”
“I am.” Langton paused and gave her a sidelong look. “Because we’ve got that lady Emerald Turk, we can keep him here for further interviews. I want him to stew, because it’s all we’ve really got to hold him on.”
“I’ll get a lawyer sorted out.”
“Wait a second. He’s lying — right? You telling me you don’t think he’s the killer?”
“I’m not saying anything. The man is terrified of what his wife will say if he’s going to be held in custody. But even if we get him to admit that he did know Margaret Potts, we have no evidence that he killed her or the three Polish girls.”
“You ever think that maybe he’s wily enough to know that if he admits to knowing Margaret Potts, he had to have also seen or known about her working the service station?”
They continued down the corridor, and this time it was Anna who stopped.
“All along we’ve kept on saying that Margaret is the odd one out — that she’s older, tougher, and more worldly than the other three victims.”
“Yes — and?”
“We would need to prove that Smiley didn’t just see her once but that he kept on meeting up with her at the service station or elsewhere, because she wasn’t murdered until two years later. Emerald Turk puts him in her flat bloody years ago, near Christmas 2005, so even if he admits that he did meet with her that one time, we have a very long gap in between.”