She was wearing the dead woman’s tracksuit.”
“You don’t think she’s still got the case, do you?”
“I might have, but she got quite agitated when I asked to see it, and said she’d thrown it out.”
“You think it’d be worth getting a warrant to search her place?”
“From the way she reacted, I’d say as soon as I left, she would have got rid of it, if she still had it.”
“Shit.”
Anna declined to add that he had missed the opportunity when he first interviewed Emerald. She was annoyed that the woman had lied to her, claiming that the suitcase had been checked over when she had been interviewed previously.
“We never found Potts’s handbag, and we didn’t even have a description of it.” Barolli grunted. “Maybe this notebook would have been in it.”
“Probably. She must have kept it on her if she was jotting down reg plates. Strange that she would—” Anna broke off as a new thought occurred to her.
“Would what?”
“Well, Emerald said she was a wily old girl, tough, very streetwise, and yet she gets into a car or a truck with the killer. So, he’s got to be someone she trusted enough or maybe had been with before.”
“Fuck! If only we had the bloody notebook,” Barolli said angrily.
“Well, we don’t, but there’s something else,” Anna said, then hesitated. “Again, this came from Emerald. She said that Margaret had contact with some heavy guys—ex-cops, she said—and they looked out for her.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, when she was roughed up, she never reported it to the police, but would use the heavy guys to get the addresses from the plates and leave it to them to deal out their own rough justice.”
Barolli pulled at his tie. “We’d better go back to Emerald Turk, search her place again, and see if she can give us some names.”
Anna agreed and suggested the men might work for bailiff companies if Emerald couldn’t or refused to help. Privately, she doubted that the woman would cooperate, but without much else to work on, they had to do something.
Barolli turned. Passing through the incident room was Detective Chief Superintendent James Langton. He waved at them both before entering Mike Lewis’s office.
“I wondered when he would show up,” Barolli murmured. “He won’t like this. Word is he’s up for the commander’s position, heading up Murder and Serious Crime.”
Anna said nothing, but for the first time in as long as she could remember, she hadn’t felt disturbed at seeing Langton.
“You didn’t get your promotion,” Barolli said suddenly.
“That’s a bit obvious.”
“Well, I’m in the same boat. I’ve been before the powers that be twice, and I just don’t seem able to crack it. It’s all the fucking diversity stuff that gets me.”
“Got me, too,” she said, smiling. This wasn’t actually the truth, since it had been Langton who had vetoed her promotion, but she no longer harbored any ill feelings toward him. On the contrary, she now realized he had been right, and she was not yet ready for promotion to detective chief inspector. But she fully intended to prove herself when the time came around again.
“This case isn’t going to do any of us any favors,” Barolli grumbled.
Anna wished he’d move off, but instead, he perched on the edge of her desk, his heel kicking against it.
“You going to see about getting a search warrant and interviewing Emerald Turk again?” she asked.
He sighed and then, thankfully, moved back to his own desk. “I’ll run it by Mike,” he said.
Anna turned as Barbara joined her, signaling to her that she was wanted in Mike’s office.
“You don’t think these Jane Does are maybe illegal immigrants, do you?” Barbara asked with concern. “If that’s the case, we’ll never get them identified. Maybe we should check around the embassies and clubs—churches, even.”
Anna picked up her notebook, saying, “I think that’s already in hand, Barbara. Did Mike say
Justine Dare Justine Davis