Blind Fury Read Online Free PDF Page B

tightened. “I’m in a different league ’cause of me responsibilities. I work out of a massage parlor, I’m not touting for business on the effing motorway, and my man takes good care of me.”
    “So she worked solo . . . What about other friends?”
    “I never knew them. Listen, Maggie was a tough old boiler. She knew the risks, and she’d got the number of the blokes that had knocked her around, and like I said, she didn’t always go with the truckers. Sometimes she was flush from a few punters she’d had in posh cars. She looked out for herself, and she even took down the license numbers.” Emerald gave a strange laugh. “Said she couldn’t remember their faces, but she’d remember their reg numbers—had ’em all written down.”
    “What, in a diary or notebook?”
    “Yeah. Reckoned if they got nasty, she could tip off friends to beat them up.”
    “You mean other working girls?”
    “Nah, strong-armed blokes. We all know a few. A couple are ex-coppers workin’ for bailiffs who can run a trace on license plates so they can get their addresses.”
    Anna could hardly contain herself. “You wouldn’t know where this notebook was kept, would you?”
    “No idea, but it could have been in her stuff, I suppose. Did they find her handbag? It’d be in that, I expect.”
    “No. There was nothing to identify her—we ID’d her from her fingerprints.”
    “Oh, right. She’d done a few stretches.”
    “Would it be among the things you said she’d left with you?”
    “No, I never saw it. There was just clothes and bits and pieces.”
    “Did you mention that you had some of her belongings when you were previously questioned?”
    “Yes. The police looked through it all back then. To be honest, at the time I’d forgotten I had the suitcase. Well, I moved around a lot before I got this place. I even had gear stashed all over London, but when the Social Services found this flat for me, I collected it all. A few times she turned up, but like I said, I didn’t like her bein’ here when it had all been done up nice.”
    “Could I see the case?”
    Emerald lit another cigarette. “I don’t have it no more,” she said, and shrugged. “It wasn’t worth keeping.”
    “But you said it had good clothes in it, like that track-suit?”
    Emerald unplugged the iron, mumbling, “I gotta go and do some shoppin’.”
    “You just threw it out?”
    The young woman turned on Anna angrily. “Yeah. Like I said, it wasn’t worth keeping, and your lot didn’t want it, so I chucked it out onto a skip. There were just some blouses and skirts and shoes and this tracksuit, all right? There was nuffink of value.”
    Anna could feel Emerald’s growing animosity from the way she banged the ironing board closed. It showed she was getting her temper up.
    “I’m sorry if you think I am accusing you of anything, because I’m not. It’s just that if we could find Margaret’s notebook, it would be of great value, as we would be able to question the men she picked up. I’m not interested in anything else that was in her suitcase.”
    “Well, there was nuffink else. Now I gotta go out.”
    Anna stood up and placed the stool under the breakfast shelf. “I really appreciate you giving me your time, Emerald. By the way, is that your real name?”
    “I wasn’t christened with it, but me great-grandmother worked as a cleanin’ lady for a high-society woman called Emerald. She’d given her some nice things, and it’s me favorite color. Turk is the name of my father, but it was never on me birth certificate because he pissed off before I was born.” Emerald stood with her hands on her hips. “Anything else you want to know?”
    “No. Thank you for seeing me.”
    Heading back along the rubbish-filled corridor, Anna suspected that Emerald was lying about the contents of the suitcase, but there was little she could do about it now, as the original investigating team had already looked through it and found nothing of