Blind Fury (37 page)

The big man gritted his teeth. “Yeah, yeah, I think so. It was a long time ago.”

“Another ex-Para.”

Dillane snapped his fingers and nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Great bloke, very experienced. Explosives expert—did thirteen years in the army, three in the Paras.”

“What was his name?”

Anna tensed up. This was the link that they had been waiting for. In the viewing room next door, Mike Lewis stood up, impatient to hear the name they were certain would be John Smiley.

“Is this connected to him?” Dillane asked. “Is this why I’m here?”

“Mr. Dillane, please give us the name of the ex-Para working with you on that Barfield run.”

In the viewing room, Mike Lewis turned toward the door as Langton walked in. They stood side by side. “They’ve been taking it easy with Dillane, but I think he’s just about to give up that John Smiley was with him.” Both moved a fraction closer to the monitor. On the screen, Dillane was cracking his knuckles again.

“Colin McNaughton. He’s still doing the same job, works for a company called Eagles, but he also does a lot of doors and celebrity hand-holding—drives him nuts.”

Barolli sighed, disappointed. Mike Lewis walked out of the viewing room. Langton kicked the vacated chair.

“You’re from Manchester?” Anna said, still speaking quietly.

“Used to be. Me and the wife live in Croydon now, have done for eight years. The parents died, and I sold their house.”

“When you did this trip or any trips to Barfield, did you return straight back to Croydon?”

Dillane shrugged, seemed a bit shifty. “We got overnight expenses, as it was a long drive there; from collection to drop-off, it could be anywhere between seven or eight hours.”

“So did you stay in a motel? I mean, you had your dog—right?”

“Like I said, we got overnight extra payment; mostly, the guys would claim it but drive back, like.”

“Did you?”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

“And on the occasion you were with Cameron Welsh . . .”

“I stay with a mate sometimes, and I stayed over with him.”

“What’s his name?”

“What’s this all about?”

“Just helping our inquiries, Michael. Who did you stay with?”

“Bloke I know lives in Manchester. Like I said, my parents’ place was sold up.”

“What’s his name?”

“John Smiley.”

Barolli closed his eyes. Anna kept her focus on Dillane. “With your dog?” she asked.

“Yeah. Nimrod was house-trained. Remember, I said he lived with me at home with the wife when I wasn’t working.”

In the viewing room, Langton was sitting with his full attention on the monitor.

“So you know John Smiley well?”

“Yeah. Fought in the Iraq war together—great bloke. We used to be close, but when he moved up north from London, I didn’t get to see him all that much.”

“Tell us about Mr. Smiley.”

Dillane leaned back in his chair. “He’s one of the best. We were in the same unit, and he was one of my closest mates. We did some drinking together at Aldershot. You know, I wasn’t married then, nor was he, and we’d party.”

“Tell us about when you stayed over at his house.”

“Not that much to tell you. We sank a few pints, talked about old times, and his wife cooked us dinner.”

“Go on.”

Dillane blew out his cheeks and then ran his hand over his shaved head. “There wasn’t a lot we could do. See, I’ve known him since we first joined up. I was with him when he met his wife, Sonja. She was a looker then, and she put it about a bit, I can tell you. Anyway, old John fell hook, line, and sinker for her. Nobody liked to tell him she was a slag. I don’t mean to badmouth about it, but none of us wanted to be the one to tell him she’d gone through the ranks. To be honest, I thought he’d sort of get over it, but the idiot went and married her. I didn’t see that much of him after we quit, because he was in London working for some company fixing up blinds—he got me and the wife some.”

“Go on.”

“That’s about it. I didn’t get along with Sonja, she was a moody cow, and Christ, she’d started to look like one. She’s enormous, and when I made a crack about her size, he went apeshit, so that time we didn’t part on all that good terms.”

“That time?” Anna repeated quickly.

“Yeah.”

“So you met up with him again?”

“Just the once, but not in Manchester. We had a pint together in London. Like I said, he’d got me a set of blinds, and he came and put them up for us.”

“When was this?”

“Be four years ago, ’cause I’d not got this job at the boot camp but was quitting security work and gave up Nimrod, like I told you.”

“What happened at this meeting?”

Dillane sighed and again rubbed his hand over his head. “I was short of a bob or two, and the wife was pregnant. I was gonna ask if John Boy could lend me a few quid.”

“Did he?”

“No. He said he was short himself. I gotta say, he’d always been a bit tightfisted, or careful with his cash. Anyway, we done a deal.”

Anna glanced at Barolli, and they remained silent.

“Is this about him, ’cause I don’t like putting him into anything,” Dillane said. “He was a great bloke and he did me a favor.”

“The blinds?”

“No, he bought me van for seven hundred quid. It wasn’t right for me if we were having a kid, and it still had the cage in the back, like. It was secondhand when I bought it, still had the logo on the side.”

“So John Smiley bought your van?”

“Yeah, paid me in installments, couple of hundred a week until it was done, and then he paid me a bit extra ’cause I drove it up to Manchester for him and left it in his garage.”

“Was he there when you left it with him?”

“No, he was working. I didn’t even see Sonja—just left the keys under the dashboard and got the train home.”

“Have you seen him since?”

“No. I got the job at the boot camp, so I’m away all week. Just come home on my days off and alternate weekends.”

“Could you give us the registration of your van and a full description of it?”

Langton headed into the incident room and gave instructions for the team to get on to checking out the white security van. If it was still registered to Michael Dillane at his home address, it would mean that John Smiley had never changed the ownership details into his name. Impatient as ever, Langton couldn’t bear to return to the viewing room but went straight into the interview room.

Dillane turned as Langton entered and took Barolli’s chair. Laid out on the table were the photographs of Margaret Potts.

Langton introduced himself, and Dillane straightened up, looking from Barolli, who stood by the door, back to Langton.

“Do you recognize this woman?” Langton asked.

“No, sir. I’ve just been asked. I’ve never seen her before in my life.”

Anna brought out the photographs of the three Polish victims, one by one, and Dillane glanced at them, shaking his head.

“No, I’ve never seen any one of them.” He looked at Langton. “I don’t understand what’s going on here. Why are you showing me these women’s pictures?”

“They were all murdered, Mr. Dillane.”

“Jesus Christ, you think I had something to do with them?”

“You are simply helping our inquiries. We really appreciate you coming in to talk to us.”

Anna asked where Dillane was on the dates the women’s bodies were found. Although the postmortem reports had been unable to give an exact time of death, they detailed as closely as possible how long the victims had been dead. Dillane was able to answer without hesitation, as he was working in Devon.

Anna collected the photographs and stacked them. The big man was pulling at his shirt front, looking hot and bothered. “You think I know anything about them? Is that why you’ve been questioning me? Let me tell you, if you’ve got John Smiley under suspicion, you’ve got the wrong bloke. He’s a diamond, and he helped me out of a very sticky patch.”

“What reason did he give you for buying your van?” Anna asked.

“Said he could use it for the small deliveries.”

“When you left it at his garage, what did you leave inside it?”

Dillane shrugged. “Nothing of any value—I even took the radio out. There was nothing in it.”

“What about your uniform?”

“Nah, didn’t leave that. He wouldn’t have wanted it.”

“What about something from your dog?”

“I think there was maybe a dog bowl and Nimrod’s old blanket still in the cage. I didn’t want them. I was very fond of that dog, and I think John said something about he’d maybe get a puppy for his two kids.”

Anna removed the pictures of the blue blanket found wrapped around Dorota Pelagia. “Was the blanket used by your dog like this one?”

Dillane leaned forward. “Yeah, blue. It was an old prison-issue blanket. It was in the van when I bought it off this other dog handler.”

Langton glanced at Anna. She replaced the photographs. Langton stood up and shook Mr. Dillane’s hand. “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Dillane. If you could just stay at the station while we check out a couple of things, then you’ll be free to go.”

Mike Lewis had confirmation that Dillane’s van was still registered to him. It had recently been issued a new MOT by a garage in Croydon, and the documents had been collected personally by a man they presumed was Dillane and paid for in cash, but when asked for a description, they described John Smiley. They were checking out the insurance, but there had been no parking or speeding fines issued.

Barolli had contacted the boot-camp authorities, and they were able to give Dillane a pretty watertight alibi for two of the victims, though not for Dorota Pelagia or Maggie Potts, as he was not working for them until two years ago. Their bodies had been discovered four and two years ago, respectively.

“What do you think, Travis?” Langton asked, looking at the incident board as the new data was being written up.

“I think he’s in the clear, but who knows? And he couldn’t remember the exact date he drove his van to leave with John Smiley.”

“Let’s just make sure we’re not letting him walk away. If he’s involved, it’s the two of them.”

Dillane had been given a mug of tea and a sandwich. As Langton returned, he rose from his seat.

“Stay sitting down, Michael, this isn’t going to take too long. We’ve checked with your boot camp, and they have agreed you worked there on the dates two victims were discovered, but you were not there for the murder of this woman.” Langton slapped down Margaret Potts’s photograph.

Anna took out the photograph of Dorota Pelagia. “Or this woman.”

Dillane blew out his cheeks.

“You may have a lawyer present if you want one.”

“I don’t need one,” Dillane said. “I never did anything wrong, and if you give me some time to think, I’ll try and remember where I was, but it’s not easy when it’s four years ago.”

Langton tapped the picture of Dorota Pelagia, saying, “She was Polish.”

“That doesn’t help me none. I dunno where I was four bleeding years ago right off the top of me head.” Dillane was rattled.

“Well, start thinking—maybe about this woman Margaret Potts, too. She was found two years ago on March fifteenth. Her body was dumped by the London Gateway service station—that any help to jog your memory? It was in all the papers, been on the news, crime shows . . .”

“I can’t remember. And I was working at the boot camp two years ago. What date was it again?”

“March fifteenth, 2008.”

•  •  •

In the incident room, everyone was waiting impatiently. The clock was ticking, and it was almost nine in the evening. Anna was growing tired; it had been a long session with Dillane, and it was getting tedious as he tried to recall where he was. Langton wouldn’t let him off the hook; he was putting on the pressure.

“Four women have been brutally murdered, Michael, and we have strong suspicions that you could be involved, especially with this girl Dorota Pelagia, as she was found with a blue blanket wrapped around her naked body, a blanket identical to the one that you described as being in the back of your van.”

“You think that John Smiley is up for this?” Dillane demanded. “Is that what you are keeping me here for? It’s not right. I’ve been racking me brains, and I honestly can’t remember where I was. Why don’t you let me ring me wife and ask her—” He suddenly clapped his hands to his head. “Maternity ward! Jesus Christ, how could I forget that? She was taken in on the thirteenth, had that preeclampsia thing and almost died. I was in Saint Mary’s Hospital.”

He leaned back and then did his familiar gesture of wiping his head. “Okay, that’s one—but four years ago? Maybe I was still working for the same security company, but I was getting pissed off because we was doing pop concerts, and some of the kids are like hyped-up chimps, hurling themselves at the stage. We had to take punches and kicks, they spit in your face and you can’t whack ’em, much as you’d like to—our job was to hold ’em back. I would have still had the van then, but you can’t have the dogs inside the venue, as they would go crazy. You can patrol on the perimeters.”

Again he clapped his hands. It was almost as if he were enjoying himself. “Fucking Take That, that’s where I was. They was doing a concert. There you go—I done it, and you can check that out, all right?”

“That’s fine, Michael, we’ll check it out. So around the time of this concert, you met with John Smiley to get some blinds put up?”

“Correct.”

“You said that you were a bit skint, is that right?”

“Correct again. They pay peanuts for these bloody concerts, and you come away bruised and kicked. It pissed me off, and it wasn’t worth the aggravation. Like I said before, the wife was pregnant with the first, not the second one, and I didn’t like it, but I asked John if he’d be able to lend me a couple of grand to tide me over.”

“He said he was short. He couldn’t have been that short, though, if he was able to buy your van—right?”

“Funnily enough, I thought that at the time,” Dillane agreed. He was calmer now. “What he said was, he had someone hitting him for money, so he had to do a lot of night work, like selling me blinds on the cheap.”

“Did he ever mention to you who was hitting him for cash, as you just described?”