Watching the Dark

by Peter Robinson

  In the morning, after a few frantic phone calls between the girls’ parents, it transpired that Ellen had simply felt tired and decided to go to sleep on a quiet bench by the harbour. She was none the worse for wear, except for a bad hangover and a stiff back. Her parents gave her a strict curfew, and that was the end of the matter. But Annie thought of the things that could have happened, things that probably had happened to Rachel Hewitt. Of course, she realised that she had the benefit of hindsight and the experiences of twenty years as a police officer.

  She didn’t blame Rachel’s friends. Anyone in their position, and their state of mind, would have done the same as they did. And the odds were that if Pauline had insisted on calling the police when she got back to the hotel that night, they would hardly have combed the city for the missing girl. At most, they might have done a sweep of some of the most popular bars, checked the hospitals for accident victims and scoured a few patches of open ground in case she’d nodded off somewhere, but they were hardly going to pull out all the stops for a nineteen-year-old foreign tourist missing a couple of hours at most. They would most likely have assumed that she went off with some boy and was happily screwing her brains out somewhere. In the morning she would be back. Police thinking could be very basic, Annie knew. Especially male police thinking.

  Whether she was pregnant when she came back, had been infected with some STD or HIV, or whether she had tried to say no but had been too drunk to resist, was not their problem. Annie understood that much. The police couldn’t be the moral touchstones or guardians of the world, and to be honest, nobody would want or expect them to be. It was pointless trying to assign blame, except to whoever it was who had taken and hurt Rachel, for Annie was sure that was what must have happened. As sure as she was that Rachel Hewitt was dead. She could only hope it had been quick and painless. Annie sighed. Time to check and see if there was any progress on the Estonian mobile number called from Ingleby.

  She turned to see Joanna Passero standing behind her, all blonde hair and elegant curves. Why did her appearance always make Annie feel so dowdy and tomboyish?

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘Just fine and dandy.’

  ‘Are you in pain? Ca—’

  ‘I’m fine. Is there something you want to tell me?’

  Joanna seemed taken aback. Annie was aware of the harshness of her tone, and blamed it mostly on the dark place her mind had been wandering in when she noticed her standing there. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was just . . . the Rachel Hewitt case.’

  Joanna glanced at the computer screen, which showed a photograph of a smiling Rachel under the heading ‘West Yorkshire Girl Disappears in Estonian Hen Weekend Tragedy’.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Did you once know someone who disappeared like that?’

  ‘We’ve all worked on cases,’ said Annie. ‘It’s nothing personal. Just empathy. Anyway, I’m sorry I was rude just now. Did you have something to tell me?’

  Joanna pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘I’ve just got back from the post-mortem with DS Jackman,’ she said. ‘It was pretty straightforward, really. The man was definitely drowned, and Dr Glendenning is pretty certain he was drowned in the trough of water at the scene. They have to do various tests on the samples to be absolutely certain, of course.’

  ‘Was drowned, rather than just drowned?’

  ‘That’s how it appears. There were bruises on the back of his neck, on his upper arms, and on his shoulders. There were also marks on his wrists, where they had been bound with some sort of cord. The lab’s working on the fibres. Somebody held him under the water deliberately. He struggled. And Dr Burns was right, he was definitely waterboarded first.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, the poor sod,’ said Annie.

  Before meeting Nick Gwillam, Banks ate lunch by himself at the Pizza Express behind the Corn Exchange and allowed himself a small glass of Sangiovese to wash down his Sloppy Giuseppe. He had considered giving Ken Blackstone a call to see if he was free for lunch, but decided that after his session with Corrigan he preferred his own company for a while. Talking to Corrigan, he thought, had probably been a waste of time, but as with so many similar conversations, he could only know that in retrospect. Just another in the long line of sad, tired, cocky, depressing villains that seemed to be Banks’s daily round.

  Corrigan was small-time, though there was a chance he had connections with some big players in the people-trafficking world, whose victims provided him with his victims, and whom he helped keep in bondage. Essentially, he was a parasite on the bigger organism, but many animals willingly went through life with millions of parasites living on their skin or inside their bodies. It became something of a symbiotic relationship. There was always room for a bit of give and take in the world of crime. Especially take.

  But that didn’t mean Corrigan had anything to do with Quinn’s death. Curly’s alibi would be easy to check out, so easy it had to be true, and Corrigan’s would be impossible to break, even if it were a lie. No doubt he had other minions capable of doing the job for him, and they should be easy enough to round up, but so far his little gang had no history of crossbow use, or of murder. He certainly intimidated people who owed him money, resorted to threats and even to violence on occasion, but he had never, as far as they knew, killed anyone yet. A dead debtor might well be a lesson to the rest, as Corrigan had pointed out, but he was also a loss of income. Why start the killing with a cop and bring down the heat? He was surely under enough pressure already, with the citywide investigation into his operation, and the suicides that could possibly be linked to it. If Corrigan had had Bill Quinn in his pocket, was somehow tied in to the photos and the blackmail, then it now appeared that there was a definite Estonian connection, too. Curiouser and curiouser.

  After Banks had finished his lunch, he wandered up to Call Lane, then down Kirkgate. Hands in pockets, walking slowly and taking in the colours, sounds and smells, he cut through the indoor market with its white-coated barkers and stalls piled with scaly fish, marbled red meat and bright shiny fruit and vegetables. No matter how fresh everything was, there was always a faint smell of decay underneath it all.

  He came out by the back of the bus station to Millgarth, at the bottom of Eastgate. Though the day had clouded over, it was still warm, and was quickly getting more humid. There’d be more rain before nightfall, Banks was sure.

  When he presented himself at Millgarth, Nick Gwillam came down to meet him and, not surprisingly, suggested that he’d like to get out of the office for a while, so why didn’t they go for a coffee? Banks had had enough coffee for the day, but he was quite happy to enjoy an afternoon cup of tea. They ended up sitting outside the Pret A Manger on the corner of Lands Lane and Albion Place, opposite WHSmith.

  ‘So, you want to talk to me about Bill?’ said Gwillam, with a large latte and an egg salad sandwich in front of him.

  ‘You worked with him closely, I understand?’

  ‘Recently, yes. I suppose you know I’m only temporary up here? A civilian, really. Trading Standards.’

  ‘Yes. But you worked on the Corrigan case with DI Quinn?’

  ‘For my sins.’

  ‘I just had a word with him, and he seemed to know a fair bit about me. Where I live. What I drink. I wonder how he could have found out all that?’

  Gwillam leaned back in his metal chair and regarded Banks through narrowed eyes. He was tall and lean, with cropped dark hair already thinning and turning grey around the edges, like Banks’s own. He wore a pinstripe suit, white shirt and an old club or university tie. Finally, he let out a chuckle. ‘Oh, he played that little trick on you, did he?’

  ‘What trick?’

  ‘See, it’s a thing of his. A little trick he likes to play. He rattles off bits and pieces he knows about you. Tries to shock you. I assume he knew you were on the case, Bill’s murder, so he’d find out a bit about you.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s where he gets his information that interests me. He also kn
ew that Bill Quinn was at St Peter’s.’

  ‘There was no secret about that. Everybody knew where Bill was. Everybody who had any sort of connection with him, at any rate. He probably told Corrigan himself.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘No specific reason. Just in conversation.’

  ‘Do you think he also happened to mention where I live and the name of my favourite tipple?’

  ‘Everyone knows you’re a single malt man.’

  ‘I must say you’re very nonchalant about this. But the questions remain. Where does Corrigan get his information, and what else does he do with it other than show it off to impress visiting coppers?’

  ‘Are you suggesting that Corrigan gave away Bill’s whereabouts to someone who wanted him dead?’

  ‘It’s possible, isn’t it? He has to be connected to some pretty violent people in his line of work. If DI Quinn had found out too much, or crossed someone . . .? But it’s just another theory. One of many, unfortunately.’

  Gwillam sipped his latte. It left a faint white moustache on the top of his lip. ‘Corrigan talks to a lot of people, mixes a lot,’ he went on. ‘People talk to him. Tell him things. He listens. He’s a like a jackdaw going after silver paper, and he remembers, he absorbs information like a sponge. Sorry about the mixed metaphor, but I think you know what I mean.’

  ‘Anyone could have told him?’

  ‘Yes. Even Bill himself.’

  ‘And Corrigan could then have passed on the information to anyone, himself?’

  ‘Yes. For any reason, or none at all. If he did pass on Bill’s whereabouts, it might not have necessarily seemed significant to him at the time. He might simply have done it in passing.’

  ‘OK,’ said Banks. That meant there were two strong contenders for telling the killer where Quinn was staying: the Garskill Farm victim, under torture, and Warren Corrigan, for any, or no, reason at all. Banks also realised with a shock that he had been as guilty as anyone else of giving Corrigan information. At the end of their conversation, he had intimated that he didn’t drink Laphroaig any more, which was only partly true, but that he was more of a red wine drinker, which was wholly true. He had intended it as a put down of Corrigan’s out-of-date source in information, but he realised that through his own showing off, through his need to get one up on Corrigan, he had actually fallen into the trap and told him something he didn’t know: that Banks was a red wine drinker. It didn’t matter, had no real significance, at least none that he could see, but it shed some light on the way Corrigan worked, and some of the snippets he picked up were clearly very useful indeed.

  ‘What more can you tell me about Corrigan and his business?’

  ‘My interest is mostly in the loan sharking, of course, but we also think he’s in a bit deeper with the whole people-trafficking and migrant labour business. It’s quite a wide-reaching racket. Has to be. There are agents and runners all over the place. Even Customs and Excise and Immigration officers have to be paid off to turn a blind eye. There are fake visas, passports, too. But it’s a connection that’s hard to prove. He’s nothing if not cautious.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘Not yet, at any rate.’

  ‘Prostitution?’

  ‘He’s clearly got contacts among the pimps, but we don’t think he’s one, himself. Probably thinks it’s beneath him.’

  ‘And gouging the poorest of the poor isn’t?’

  ‘What can I say? Blokes like Corrigan have a skewed version of morality.’

  ‘You’re telling me. So how deep is he in it? How high up?’

  ‘That’s what we’re not sure of. We’ve seen him once or twice with a bloke called Roderick Flinders. Flinders runs a staff agency. Rod’s Staff Ltd. Get it?’

  ‘“My rod and my staff”? Cute. What do they do?’

  ‘They provide cheap labour to whoever wants it, no questions asked. They deal mostly in asylum seekers, illegals of various kinds, unskilled migrant workers. Place them in shit jobs for shit pay.’

  This was the kind of thing Penny Cartwright had told Banks about on Saturday night, the factories where no questions were asked. ‘Illegal work?’

  ‘Sometimes. You could certainly argue that it’s slave labour. Below minimum wage.’

  ‘The same people Corrigan preys on himself?’

  ‘The very same. It would be to his advantage, wouldn’t it, to be sure of the supply, know what’s heading his way? It makes sense. Helps him expand his markets. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. We suspect that Flinders also helps fix forged temporary work permits for asylum seekers. In some cases he’s even got hold of faked passports, which is a bit more difficult, but not so much as you think. He’s part of a chain that starts with the agents in the various countries involved and continues through drivers, gangmasters, employers, people who rent out the accommodation, and the rest of the hangers-on. Everyone takes a slice except the poor sod doing the work. It’s a pretty big operation. That’s why Trading Standards is involved.’

  ‘Why hasn’t this Flinders been arrested?’

  ‘He’s slippery. Got a smooth front, clever lawyers, and nobody’s been able to come up with any hard evidence on the other stuff. Besides, the ones watching him are still excited about where he might lead them. Sometimes I wish we could just seize his phone records and bank accounts, but even I know these buggers are too clever. We’ve got no cause, for a start. And they use encryptions and untraceable mobiles and numbered bank accounts in countries that don’t care where the money comes from.’

  ‘He and Corrigan are mates?’

  ‘That’s right. Dinner. Drinks. Holidays in the sun.’

  ‘And Bill?’

  ‘Me and Bill were just keeping an eye on Corrigan, having the occasional chat, hoping to hook something a bit bigger.’

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘With Corrigan? About eight months.’

  Banks mulled over what he had been hearing. If Corrigan had these links to organised crime, there was clearly a chance that he was, indirectly or otherwise, behind Quinn’s killing, or at least that he knew more about it than he was willing to admit. Quinn could have been bent, as Joanna Passero seemed to think, and suddenly become a liability. But where did the Rachel Hewitt case fit in? What was the connection? And the girl in the photo? Or was all that simply a red herring? Surely it couldn’t be? There was definitely a forensic link between Quinn’s murder and the murder at Garskill Farm, and there was a link between the two victims; they had spoken twice on the telephone. There was also a possible connection between the Garskill Farm murder and Estonia.

  ‘Just out of interest,’ Banks asked, ‘does Corrigan have any connections with Estonia?’

  ‘Estonia? Not that I know of,’ said Gwillam.

  ‘Maybe through the migrant labour scam? Through Flinders?’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible, but I’ve never seen or heard anything.’

  ‘I was just thinking about the Rachel Hewitt case. Bill Quinn worked on that. He even went to Tallinn in the early stages.’

  ‘You think there’s a connection?’

  ‘I don’t know. Right now, we’re just looking more closely at the Hewitt case for various reasons, but as far as I know she was simply an innocent English girl who disappeared abroad. No body has ever been found. But that was six years ago. Where was Corrigan then?’

  ‘No idea, but I don’t think he was on anyone’s radar that long ago. Maybe mugging old ladies and robbing sweet shops.’

  ‘It might be worth checking.’

  ‘Bit of a long shot.’

  ‘I know.’ Banks sighed. ‘That’s the way everything seems in this case. I’m just hoping one of them will hit the mark. Even if Corrigan wasn’t involved, he might be doing business with people who were. Did Bill ever talk about Rachel?’

  ‘Not much. It was long before my time, and way out of my areas of interest. It came up once or twice in conversation, but you soon got the sense that it wasn’t
a good idea to mention it. Bill didn’t like to talk about it. He’d get all broody.’

  ‘Why do you think that was?’

  ‘He felt he’d failed the girl.’

  ‘But he never really got a chance to succeed.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. He was just that kind of copper. Took it personal, like.’

  ‘But why?’ Banks paused to collect his thoughts. ‘This is something that puzzles me. Everybody I talk to tells me Bill Quinn was haunted by the Rachel Hewitt case, that he felt he failed, but in reality he didn’t have very much to do with it. Why did Bill Quinn care so much? He spent a few days in Tallinn, that’s all, surely more of a public relations exercise than anything else, by the sound of it, and when he comes back it’s as if his life has been blighted by the whole thing. Why?’ He wasn’t going to tell Gwillam about the added complication of the mystery girl and the photos, clearly taken in Tallinn, too, which might go some way towards explaining Quinn’s obsession.

  ‘Like I said, he was that kind of copper,’ said Gwillam, through tight lips. He pushed his cup aside. ‘And I’ve worked with all types. Bill took everything seriously. And he happens to have a daughter about the same age as Rachel. He doted on Jessica. Now, if you don’t mind . . .’

  ‘Work to do?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Gwillam got up and walked down Lands Lane, turning left on Bond Street, out of sight among the crowds of shoppers. Banks swirled the remains of his tea and mulled over what he had just heard. He’d been searching for connections and finding too many, each of which seemed to cancel out or contradict the other. He remembered Annie telling him what she had heard at St Peter’s about Quinn’s overriding sense of guilt. He had been out on surveillance when his wife died, and that kind of thing could eat away at you. Every copper had missed something important in his family life because of the job – an anniversary party, kid’s graduation, a birth, a wedding, even a funeral. Most learned to live with it, but it dragged some of the best men and women down.