Watching the Dark

by Peter Robinson

  ‘Bill Quinn worked that case?’

  ‘Bill worked this end, such as it was. Family and friends. Rachel’s background. The Tallinn police worked the actual disappearance. But Bill spent about a week out there liaising quite early in the investigation. Rachel was a West Yorkshire girl, from Drighlington, part of City & Holbeck Division, and he drew the short straw, depending on how you look at it. But with the local police running the investigation, and in a foreign country with different ways of doing things, he didn’t stand much of a chance. It was more of a show of strength and solidarity, really, and a bit of a PR exercise, if truth be told. Otherwise they’d have sent in a team.’

  ‘They didn’t?’

  ‘No. The British Embassy was involved, of course, but they don’t carry out criminal investigations in foreign countries. It was strictly Tallinn’s case. Nobody expected Bill to solve it where the locals had failed. That was back in the summer of 2006. As expected, he got precisely nowhere, but he did get his photo in the papers quite often, and he did a few press conferences with the parents of the missing girl.’

  ‘The Hewitts have had to use the media to keep their daughter’s name in the public eye, haven’t they?’

  ‘It’s a two-edged sword. You don’t get owt for nowt from those bastards.’

  ‘And what role did Bill play?’

  ‘As I said, he was just a glorified consultant, really.’

  ‘He’s not been implicated in the hacking business?’

  ‘Bill? Good lord, no. Though some days it seems we’ve all been tarred with same brush.’

  ‘So it’s unlikely to be connected with his murder?’

  ‘I can’t see how it could be. Nothing’s changed. Rachel still hasn’t been found. Her parents insist she’s being kept alive somewhere, but we’re all pretty certain she’s dead. Thing is, it haunted Bill. I don’t think he ever quite got over not solving it, not finding her. He was convinced she was already dead, of course, but I think he wanted to provide the parents with some sort of explanation, proof, some positive outcome. A body, for example.’

  ‘Anything else I should be looking at?’

  ‘Just the usual. Dozens of petty villains, domestic killings. What you’d expect from a long career in detective work. He’s put away burglars, murderers, muggers, embezzlers, gangsters and hard men. None of them stand out much except for Harry Lake, and maybe Steve Lambert, that big property developer, the one who paid someone to murder his wife about three years ago.’

  ‘I remember that one,’ said Banks. ‘Didn’t he claim someone broke in, and she was stabbed while interrupting a robbery?’

  ‘That’s right. Appeared to have a watertight alibi, too. The usual citizens above suspicion. But Bill stuck at it, followed the money trail, found the bloke he’d hired, along with a strong forensic connection to the scene. It was a solid case in the end, and Lambert went down swearing revenge.’

  ‘But he’s still inside, isn’t he?’

  ‘If he hired someone to kill his wife . . .’

  ‘Long tentacles?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind. Mostly what we should look at first, though, is anyone he put away who’s actually come out recently, and anyone he’s pissed off who’s still wandering free.’

  ‘There’ll be a few. I’ll see if I can narrow things down a bit for you.’

  ‘Appreciate it, Ken.’

  ‘All this . . . Sorry. Bill was a mate, that’s all. It’s getting to me.’

  ‘I know, and I’m sorry, too. What about more recently? What was he working on when he died?’

  Blackstone finished off his drink and stared at the empty glass. ‘Well, as you know, he was off duty for a couple of weeks with his neck problems before he went into St Peter’s, and before that he had a couple of weeks leave after Sonia . . . you know. Before that he was working with a specially formed city-wide team of detectives on a long-term surveillance and intelligence-gathering mission.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Just the tip of the iceberg. It started with a gang of loan sharks. They operate around the poorest estates in the city, mostly targeting new immigrants, as often as not illegals, asylum seekers or unregistered migrants who still owe a bloody fortune for their staff agency fees, transport, lodgings and food. And, in some cases, for the risk of smuggling them in. Some of them live in dormitories in converted barns, or what have you, outside the city, but a lot of them have managed somehow or other to get hold of council houses, illegal sublets from fellow countrymen, mostly. Of course, the jobs they were promised and had to pay so much for didn’t materialise, or they ended up cleaning out pig sties or public conveniences for ten quid a week. Unless they’re attractive girls, of course, and then . . .’

  ‘I get the picture,’ said Banks. He thought once more of Quinn’s photographs, the young girl, and how she reminded him of a young girl some years ago, involved in the case during which his brother had been murdered. That girl had been trafficked from Eastern Europe, along with many others. It still went on.

  It was going to be tricky, broaching the subject of Quinn’s infidelity and susceptibility to blackmail to Ken, but it had to be done, gently or otherwise. Sometimes, Banks felt, it was best to jump right in and dodge the retaliation, if it came. ‘We found some photos of Bill Quinn with a young girl – and I mean young, Ken – hidden in his room.’

  ‘Sexual?’

  ‘Well, they weren’t taken at a vicar’s tea party.’

  ‘And what do you make of this?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but blackmail comes to mind.’

  Blackstone thrust his head forward. ‘Are you suggesting that Bill was in someone’s pocket?’

  ‘No. I’m asking you if you think it possible that he was being blackmailed. I assume that he wouldn’t have wanted his wife to know, and I doubt that he’d have said anything to his friends.’

  ‘Sonia? She’d have kill— No, he wouldn’t have wanted her to know. Sonia was a naive, trusting soul. Bill was always very protective towards her. He genuinely loved her. Something like that . . . well, it would have devastated her. And if you’re asking does it surprise me that he had a bit on the side, yes it does. Very much.’

  ‘Nobody’s judging him, Ken.’

  ‘But they will. You’re starting already.’

  ‘Ken, I’m investigating his murder. I need to know. Surely you, of all people, can understand that?’

  Blackstone ran his hand over his sparse hair. ‘Shit. OK. I know. It just . . .’

  ‘Did he play away from home?’

  ‘No. I was only away from home with him once. A conference in Lyon, France. Interpol. Christ, he was only human. He’d look, like the rest of us. Married, but not dead. He’d watch them walk by, sitting at a cafe or somewhere, look a bit wistful. We both did. For crying out loud, there are lots of pretty girls in Lyon.’

  ‘But he didn’t get up to anything?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Would you have known?’

  ‘I wasn’t his keeper, if that’s what you mean. We didn’t share a room. We weren’t together twenty-four hours a day. But no, I don’t think he did. I think I would have known. When were they taken, these pictures?’

  ‘We don’t know. Has he been anywhere since his wife died? Any conferences, holidays?’

  ‘Are you bloody joking, Alan? It was only a month ago. The man was shattered. A wreck. There’s no way anything like what you’re talking about happened between Sonia’s death and now.’

  ‘OK. Appreciate it, Ken. Was he working undercover on this loan-sharking case?’

  ‘No, it was all quite open and above board. The chief villain’s a bloke called Warren Corrigan. Small-time crook, really, or at least he started that way. Has his office in the back room of a pub called the Black Bull in Seacroft. Fancies himself as a sort of latter-day Kray. You know, man of the people, pillar of the community, tray of tea from Mum. We’ve got him down for a few assaults, demanding mon
ey with threats and so on, but nobody will talk. Everyone’s too scared. We’ve got two bodies already that we’re not entirely sure he didn’t have something to do with, but we can’t prove anything.’

  ‘Bodies?’

  ‘Yes. Suicides. They finally cracked under the pressure of their debts, according to friends and family. But more than that, nobody will say. The most recent was a trafficked Romanian girl with needle marks up and down both arms. Fifteen years old. The girl. She couldn’t turn enough tricks to pay the interest. We’ve been trying to contact her parents.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Banks. He thought of the girl in the photographs again. At least from what he had been able to make out, she seemed healthy enough, and most likely older than fifteen, though sometimes it was hard to tell. No visible needle tracks, but then the quality of the photo wasn’t that sharp. ‘Does this Corrigan have any connection with the people-trafficking, the drugs?

  ‘Not that we can prove,’ said Blackstone. ‘But it seems more than likely. It’s one of the things Quinn and the team were checking out.’

  ‘Would he have had a good reason for wanting Quinn dead?’

  ‘I can’t see it. Killing a cop seems a bit extreme.’

  ‘Did Corrigan know the team was on to him?’

  ‘He knew. At this stage, it was all a bit of a cat and mouse game to him.’

  ‘Are you working this case, too?’

  ‘No. Bill and I chatted about it once in a while over a pint. Shop talk.’

  ‘Who’s on his team?’

  ‘Nick Gwillam’s probably the one you want to talk to,’ said Blackstone. ‘Trading Standards, Illegal Money Lending Unit. There’s a bloke from SOCA and a couple of DCs, too, but Gwillam’s your best bet. He worked closest with Bill on it.’

  ‘Can you fix up a chat? Just informal at this stage.’

  ‘He’s off until Monday, but I’m sure I’ll be able to arrange something. I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Thanks, Ken. I know this is tough for you. Has Corrigan uttered any threats against Quinn specifically, or against any members of the team?’

  ‘Not that I know of. He’s too smart for that. At least, Bill never mentioned it. We’ve had him in for questioning a couple of times, so he knows he’s on our radar, and I helped out on one of the interviews. Played the good cop. It didn’t work. Slippery bastard. Cocky as hell. I wouldn’t put anything past him. But he may be a bit . . . I don’t know . . . too overconfident to feel the need to eliminate Bill. I would imagine Corrigan always believes he’ll come out on top without having to do anything but intimidate his powerless victims on the estates. Or get someone else to do it. He’s not exactly a hard man, himself. And if he did do it, you can be sure he’s got a solid alibi. Probably having dinner with the mayor or someone.’

  Banks had come across villains like Corrigan before. They were bottom-feeders, parasites who exploited the poorest, most vulnerable members of society. His victims were unskilled labourers or jobless workers far from home, often from very poor communities, with no means of returning and nowhere else to go; they were frightened people who didn’t even speak the language or understand the terms of interest being offered, living constantly under the threat of violence to themselves or their families. And people like Corrigan always seemed to get away with it.

  ‘Can you put together a preliminary file on this Corrigan for me?’ Banks asked. ‘Links to Quinn, to any informants, undercover officers, members of the trafficking chain, that sort of thing. If you think it’s just the tip of the iceberg, it could be a big operation, and there could be enough at stake to drive someone to murder a copper.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thanks, Ken. Is there any way this Corrigan could have known Quinn would be at St Peter’s for two weeks?’

  ‘Not unless somebody told him. For all I know, Bill might have told him, himself. Or one of the team members.’

  ‘Why would anyone do that?’

  ‘Like I said, it was all a bit of a game to Corrigan, and Bill played along sometimes in the hopes of getting some titbit out of him. You know, how’s the family, how’s that bad neck of yours coming along. All very pally, the veneer of civilised conversation.’ Blackstone snorted. ‘Sometimes I think we should have just gone in with the rubber hosepipes.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Banks. ‘But one way or another we’ll get to the truth.’

  ‘And if anyone on Bill’s team was responsible for tipping off Corrigan as to his whereabouts,’ Blackstone went on, ‘I’ll have his balls, civilised conversation or not. Have you considered that it might have been the girl herself? The one in the photographs you told me about? As I remember, there was a girl with a crossbow in a James Bond movie once. Not that I use those things as my yardstick for real life, you understand, but it’s a weapon that could be as easily used by a woman as a man.’

  ‘We’re keeping an open mind. For Your Eyes Only. That was the movie.’

  ‘I can never remember titles. You’ll keep me posted on developments?’

  ‘Will do.’

  Blackstone glanced at his watch. ‘I’d better get back.’ He touched Banks’s shoulder briefly. ‘Take care.’

  Banks’s conversation with Blackstone had depressed and exhausted him. It was a sudden and unwelcome reminder of the filth and sewage he had so often had to wade through in his job. The depth of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man never ceased to amaze and appall him. It had been a quiet winter, and since the escapade with Tracy and Annie, life and work had generally been ticking along at a manageable, if rather dull, rate. Now this: a potentially compromised cop murdered, a thug running riot with the law. Still, this was what he had signed up for, not sitting at a desk making budget cuts or fudging crime statistics.

  He finished his drink and realised that he had better call in at Bill Quinn’s home in Rawdon before heading back to Eastvale. Before he went, though, he felt he needed a treat, the way his mother always used to buy him a toy soldier or a Dinky car after a visit to the dentist’s. He had no one to buy it for him – his mother was in Peterborough, unless she and his father had taken off on another cruise – but he could do it himself. He bought a lot of stuff online these days, given that he lived in such a remote place, but it was always a treat to go into a real record shop or bookshop and browse around the piles of special offers and racks of new releases. This time, after half an hour in HMV, he came out with Kate Royal’s A Lesson in Love, Martin Carthy’s Essential two CD set, and a DVD box set of the first season of Treme on sale for fifteen quid.

  Banks pulled up outside Bill Quinn’s home in Rawdon early that afternoon. There was quite a mix of houses in the area, he had noticed, trying to find his way after the satnav had given up. Bungalows rubbed shoulders with brick terraces, and they, in turn, stood alongside detached and semi-detached houses with lower halves of exposed stone and upper halves fake Tudor, dark beams and white stucco. Quinn’s semi must have cost a bob or two, Banks thought, but it probably wasn’t out of his price range if he had bought at the right time, and if his wife had also worked. Two kids at university wouldn’t help, though, especially these days. Still, it was too soon for theories about Quinn’s financial situation; they should have his bank account details as well as his mobile phone log before too long. For now, they were interested in anything that seemed out of place.

  The search team was already at work, and Banks recognised DS Keith Palmer, the officer in charge, who was standing in the doorway. ‘Anything yet?’ Banks asked.

  Palmer led Banks into the house, where officers were busy searching through the sideboard drawers in the front hall. ‘Not yet,’ Palmer said, leading him to the kitchen at the back. ‘But you might find this interesting.’

  One of the small glass panels on the door had been broken, and the door itself was an inch or so ajar. It had to be connected with Quinn’s murder, Banks thought, otherwise it would be too much of a coincidence. Banks glanced at the floor and saw the glass fragments scattered over the fak
e wood finish. ‘There’s no mess, except in Quinn’s study,’ Palmer went on, ‘and even that is pretty orderly. Whoever did this probably knew what he was looking for. Want the guided tour?’

  ‘Sure.’ Banks glanced around the kitchen. Washed dishes were piled neatly in the metal rack on the draining board, small sandwich plates, cups and glasses. The rubbish bin was full of discarded takeaway containers, and the green box by the door held mostly empty Bell’s bottles. Banks followed Palmer.

  The living room was neat and tidy, as Palmer had indicated, though there was a thin layer of dust on the mantelpiece, and Banks guessed that while Quinn had kept things more or less in order, he hadn’t taken much of an interest in housework since his wife’s death. There was a small bookcase in the hall which held a number of angling, football, gardening and cooking DVDs, a few movies that had been given away in the Sunday papers over the past year or so, and several books, mostly on Quinn’s hobbies, but mixed in with book club novels with titles like Twiddling my Fingers in Timbuktu, Dwarf Throwing in Darwin, or Blowing Eggs in Uzbekistan, nestling beside a couple of well-thumbed Mills and Boons.

  Upstairs were four bedrooms, the smallest of them set up as a study. The cabinets and drawers stood open, covered with fingerprint powder. A cheap inkjet printer sat on the desk. Banks glanced down at the power socket bar and saw one charger plugged in that wasn’t connected to anything. ‘Laptop?’ he asked Palmer.

  ‘Looks that way. If so, it’s gone.’

  ‘Any signs of a desktop?’

  ‘No. That was it.’

  ‘Bugger. No files, no emails, nothing.’

  ‘We could access the server. There could be emails stored there. But someone’s been thorough. If there were any portable storage devices, flash drives and the like, they’ve also been taken.’

  ‘Any prints?’

  ‘Only Quinn’s.’

  ‘I’ll have a closer look here later. Let’s move on.’

  Two of the bedrooms were obviously the children’s, and had been for a number of years. Now that they were both grown up, they probably just stayed there when they came back from university for the holidays. One was a light airy space containing a storage unit stuffed with old dolls and a bookcase full of classics. Banks pulled out a copy of Middlemarch and saw the inscription, ‘To Jessica with love from Auntie Jennifer on your 15th birthday.’ Banks whistled between his teeth. Reading Middlemarch at fifteen was pretty good going; reading Middlemarch at any age was pretty good going. Like most people, Banks had watched it on TV.