Blind Fury

by Lynda La Plante

  “Ah, don’t say that.”

  “Just joking, and well done. I know this dog-and-security-guard scenario came via you, so the romance hasn’t made you lose your touch.” He glanced at his watch and then turned to Barolli. “Soon as you get Dillane sorted, let me know. In the meantime, check out his boot-camp job, and everyone get ready to pull in John Smiley.”

  Barolli gave him the thumbs-up. There wasn’t one member of the team who didn’t feel the adrenaline buzz. As Langton had said, it had been a long haul up to this point.

  Ex-Sergeant Michael Dillane agreed to come in for an interview. He said it was convenient, as it was his day off and he had intended drive to London. Barolli had fudged the reason for the meeting, not wishing to tip him off in case he contacted John Smiley. All he said was that it was an urgent matter and concerned an ex-Para.

  At five-fifteen, Michael Dillane showed up. He was driving a beat-up white Ford Escort van, on which, by the sound of it, the exhaust was cracked. Barolli watched Dillane parking from the incident-room window.

  “You are not going to believe what this guy looks like. He’s wearing camouflage gear and a mountain hat.”

  Barolli hurried to the reception to bring Dillane to interview room one. Anna gathered the files, pleased that Mike Lewis had agreed she should conduct the interview with Barolli.

  “Your call on him, Travis, but I’ll be next door watching it go down on the monitors.”

  “I appreciate this, Mike. Thank you.”

  Michael Dillane was, as Barolli had described, wearing army jungle fatigues with a wide leather belt buckled too tightly. Not that he was overweight; on the contrary, he oozed muscles and had the sloping shoulders of a weight lifter. He was about five feet ten but had a huge presence and, as they were to discover, a personality that went with it. When he removed his wide-brimmed hat, he had a shaved head and sat with his legs spread wide apart, his feet encased in heavy studded boots. His thick hands had tattoos across the knuckles, and his shirt was open almost to his waist. He refused coffee but asked for a bottle of water.

  Barolli introduced himself and Anna, thanking the man for agreeing to come in and talk to them.

  Dillane lifted his hand and wagged a stubby finger. “Once a Para, always a Para, and if one of my mates is in trouble, I’m here for them.” He had round button eyes, a nose that looked as if it had been broken many times, and a wide wet mouth.

  “Tell us about this boot camp, Michael.”

  Anna was surprised by his thick Manchester accent.

  “It’s a private company, partly subsidized by the government. We take on real hardline kids that basically everyone else has given up on. We get junkies from wealthy families, gang members—you name it. We get the dross of humanity that’s between fifteen to twenty, and we kick them into shape—not literally, of course, but we get them into shape physically, and then the shrinks take over.” He smiled. “I do the physical. Nothing works better than exercise and routine.” He flexed his muscles. “So who’s the reason I’m here?”

  “We’ll get to that in a moment,” Barolli said, and then asked Dillane to go back to a period when he worked security.

  “I’ve done a lot. How far do you want me to go back?”

  “Maybe five years. You’ve worked for numerous companies?”

  “That’s true. You ever seen how many security companies are listed nowadays? Thousands of them, and mostly bloody amateurs, but I’m done with that. They don’t pay on time—real aggravation—so this job is working out well for me. It’s been two years now.”

  “Can you recall a period when you escorted prisoners, specifically to Barfield Prison?”

  “Yeah, I done that quite a bit. It was a long time ago, though, at least five or six years now.”

  “Do you recall driving a prisoner called Cameron Welsh?”

  He shook his head.

  “Went down for a double murder. Cocky bloke, well educated?” Barolli reminded him.

  “I dunno. To be honest, I never gave them much thought when I was working.”

  Barolli set down the mug shots of Cameron Welsh. Dillane picked them up and sucked in his breath.

  “He was driven to Barfield Prison with a Mafia guy,” Barolli said.

  “Right, yeah, it’s coming back to me . . .”

  “So you remember Cameron Welsh?”

  “More the Italian geezer. I remember him.”

  “Tell us what you remember.”

  “It was a right farce. The prison authorities were panic-stricken that the Mafia guy might be sprung, know what I mean? That he might have connections. He looked more like a weedy little bloke to me than some kind of godfather.” He frowned, cracking his knuckles. “Hang on—yeah. Now I think about it, that guy Welsh was in the first wagon, too; we were tailing them in the second with the dogs.”

  “You were a dog handler?”

  “That’s right. Nimrod, he was mine for nearly eighteen months. Fantastic animal and really intelligent. He could bring down an elephant, no problem.”

  “Your dog?”

  “That’s right. When I moved on, I was gonna take him with me, but he sort of belonged to the company. I mean, I had him at home with me when I was working for them, but when I left and went on to doing the doors, they kept him.”

  “So you had the dog for how long?”

  “I just said I had Nimrod for about eighteen months, and I tell you, when I walked away from the kennels, it broke my heart. He had this look on his face I’ll never forget—looking at me as if to say, ‘What’s going on? How come I’m not going with you?’ Broke me up.”

  “When you did the convoy to Barfield—”

  “Done quite a few runs there,” Dillane interrupted.

  “Can we concentrate on the occasion you drove to Barfield with the two prisoners Cameron Welsh and—”

  “He’s still there, isn’t he, this Mafia geezer?”

  “So is Cameron Welsh,” Anna said quietly.

  Dillane turned toward her. This was the first time she’d spoken. Up until this moment, he had directed his entire conversation toward Barolli.

  “Has this got something to do with him?” the big man asked. He looked from one to the other, his wide, flat face registering confusion. “What’s going on?”

  “Did you at any time have any conversation with Welsh?”

  “No, he was in the wagon up front.”

  “So you never spoke to him?”

  “No. When we got to the prison, we were out with the dogs as the two guys were led in, like, and he did come up to me. In fact, he was not really talking to me, he was interested in Nimrod, and I had to warn him to stay back. He was leashed—the dog, not the bloke!” He gave a loud chortle and then lifted a hand, gripping it into a fist. “Hadda hold on to him tight, like, almost as if he knew the bloke was a bad ’un.”

  “Cameron Welsh?”

  “Yeah, and he straightened up and stepped away, scared-like, you know? And that was about it.”

  “So you had no other interaction with Mr. Welsh?”

  “Nope, we were concentrating on the Italian, as he was terrified of the dogs. In some ways, it’s a bit of a performance, you know. They can snarl and growl almost on cue, and they were also ragged after a long drive ’cause we didn’t stop off or anything—we drove straight to the nick.”

  “The company you worked for has said that they were shorthanded on this occasion and that you brought in another dog handler to do the journey.”

  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 Smil
ey.

  “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?”r />
  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.