Watching the Dark (Inspector Banks Mystery)

by Robinson, Peter

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Banks. He knew that Corrigan was trying to rile him, or scare him off, by showing that he knew where Banks lived, which he had no doubt checked up on after Bill Quinn’s murder, but he was damned if he was going to rise to the bait. ‘It’s about DI Quinn. Bill Quinn.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Corrigan scratched the side of his nose. ‘Poor Bill. Tragic. Tragic. I understand it happened in your neck of the woods. I should imagine that’s why you’re investigating the case and not the locals here?’

  ‘Got it in one,’ said Banks. ‘But I shouldn’t worry too much. DI Quinn might be dead, but he’ll be replaced so quickly you won’t even notice it’s happened. I understand he was causing you a few problems?’

  ‘Problems? Bill? Not at all. I enjoyed our conversations, though I must say he was a rather dour man. It was hard to get a laugh out of him. Still, an intelligent man. Well informed. Well rounded, too. I like a man who has an interest in outdoor pursuits like fishing and gardening, don’t you, Mr Banks? I think it adds character, dimension.’

  ‘Frankly,’ said Banks, ‘I couldn’t give a toss. What I’d like to know is where you were last Wednesday evening between about eleven and one in the morning.’

  ‘Me? I’m assuming this is to do with Bill’s death, but I’m surprised you’re asking where I was. Surely if I had anything to do with what happened – and I assure you, I did not – then I’d hardly do it myself, would I? Do I look like an assassin?’

  ‘Assassins come in all shapes and sizes,’ said Banks. ‘And it’s murder. Not just death. Bill Quinn was murdered. I think we’d be best calling a spade a spade.’

  ‘As you will. Plain speaking. I’m all for that.’

  ‘What kind of car do you drive?’

  ‘A Beemer. Some think it’s a bit flash for these parts, but I like the way it handles.’

  ‘So where were you?’

  ‘At home, I should think. Certainly nowhere near St Peter’s.’

  ‘But you knew where Bill Quinn was?’

  ‘Everyone knew where Bill Quinn was.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘No.’

  Banks suspected he was lying. ‘Where’s home?’ he went on.

  ‘Selby.’

  ‘Any witnesses?’

  ‘My wife, Nancy. Lily and Benjamin, the kids, ten and twelve respectively. Quite a handful.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘How about Curly out there?’

  ‘We don’t live together.’

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘Curly!’ Corrigan called.

  Curly stuck his shiny head around the doorway. ‘Boss?’

  ‘Mr Banks here wants to know where you were last Wednesday night.’ He glanced over at Banks, an amused expression on his thin pale face.

  ‘At the infirmary,’ Curly said.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Bumped into a lamppost. They kept me in overnight for observation.’

  ‘We can check, you know.’

  ‘Then check.’ He lowered his head. ‘You can still see the bump.’

  Banks saw it. ‘Ouch,’ he said. ‘Nasty one. Dissatisfied client?’

  Curly grunted and walked away.

  ‘So, as you can see, Mr Banks,’ said Corrigan, showing his palms in a gesture of frankness, ‘we have nothing to hide. Our consciences are clean.’

  ‘I can’t see how that could be,’ said Banks, ‘when you prey on the most vulnerable members of the community. You’re nothing more than the school bully demanding cash with threats in the playground.’

  ‘Unfortunately, there will always be the weak, and there will always be the strong,’ said Corrigan, ‘just as there will always be the poor and the rich. The poor are always with us. Didn’t Jesus say that, or something very much like it? I know which I’d rather be in both cases. Do you, Mr Banks?’

  ‘Misquoting the scriptures doesn’t help your case,’ said Banks. ‘Besides, I think it’s more a matter of the decent and the morally bankrupt, and I know which I’d like to be. But that’s just me.’

  ‘Oh, we have an outraged moralist here, do we? Yes, I remember I’d heard that about you. One of those religious coppers, are you? I provide a service. Do you think these poor vulnerable people, as you choose to see them, are any more decent than the rest of the rabble? Well, let me tell you, they are not. They think this country is the land of milk and honey. For a start, they’re greedy. They have no money, no jobs, they’re already in debt up to their eyeballs, but they want that new flat-screen television, they want the new car, their wives want to shop somewhere other than Primark for their clothes and their children’s clothes. They are also lazy, but they still want to be able to go out to fancy restaurants for dinner, and the younger ones want to go clubbing. All that takes money, and I supply it. I’m doing them a service.’

  ‘You make it sound very generous, Mr Corrigan, if it weren’t for your rates of interest.’

  ‘High risk, high interest. A businessman has to make a living.’

  ‘And the occasional broken leg? What happens when they can’t pay, and you come around asking for the money?’

  ‘Now, what good would my clients be to me if they weren’t healthy enough to work, should an opportunity and inclination present itself? Ask yourself that, Mr Banks. Yes, we have had to administer a gentle reminder on occasion, as an example, let’s say, but is that so different from any other line of work? Examples must be made. The message soon gets around.’

  Banks had dealt with criminals like Corrigan before. They don’t really see themselves as criminals, or else they are so cynical about society and human nature that it doesn’t matter to them what they are, as long as they have the power and the money. On the surface, everything is all very cosy and upper-middle class, ponies and piano lessons for the kiddies, cashmere sweaters, Hugo Boss suits, Beemers and Range Rovers, golf club membership, perhaps even a friend or two on the local council. Underneath, it’s another matter. A trail of misery and woe, broken bodies and trampled souls going back as far as the eye can see. Someone has to pay for the Corrigans of this world to live in luxury, after all, whether they be junkies, gamblers or just poor sods who have fallen for the whole consumer society deal hook, line and sinker. But there was no point in saying it; there was no point arguing.

  ‘Tell me what you know about migrant labour camps,’ said Banks.

  ‘Only what I read in the papers. People come over here seeking for jobs, unskilled workers, asylum seekers, illegals, and they don’t always find one. Then they start whining about how badly done to they are. Well, that’s a big bloody surprise isn’t it, given that half our own people can’t find a job either?’

  ‘You mean that sometimes they start out in debt to someone like you, are made to work at jobs no one else wants to do, forced to live in squalid dormitories for exorbitant rents?’

  ‘You’ve been reading the Guardian, haven’t you? No wonder your heart’s bleeding all over your sleeve. I told you, I know nothing about them except what’s on the news, and I can’t say I pay I much attention to that. If they come over here stealing our jobs, they get what they bloody deserve.’

  ‘What about the people who bring them here? The agents? The gangmasters? The staffing companies? You must have some contacts with them?’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean.’

  Banks sensed that he was lying again but moved on quickly, anyway. ‘Ever heard of a place called Garskill Farm?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said Corrigan. ‘It sounds a bit Dales-ish, though. Is it somewhere near you?’

  ‘Close,’ said Banks. ‘We just found a body there.’ He slipped a picture of the victim out of his briefcase and put it on the table. ‘Recognise this man?’

  Corrigan examined it. ‘No. Not looking very healthy, though, is he?’

  Banks followed it with a blow-up of the girl Quin
n was with in Tallinn. ‘How about her?’

  ‘Nope. Wish I did, though. She looks good enough to eat.’ He ran his pink pointed tongue across his upper lip.

  There was no evidence that Corrigan trafficked in young girls or acted as pimp, so Banks couldn’t really push him on any of this. It had been a long shot, anyway. All of it. Corrigan was a villain, no doubt, legally and morally, and Quinn had been on to him. But had Corrigan murdered Quinn, or had him killed? Had Quinn been in Corrigan’s power and tried to escape? And the man at Garskill Farm? What part had he played? There were still too many unanswered questions.

  Leaving the rest of his coffee, Banks stood up. As soon as Curly heard the chair scraping against the stone floor he was in the doorway again. Corrigan gave him an almost imperceptible signal, and he stood aside.

  ‘It’s been a pleasure, Mr Banks,’ said Corrigan. ‘Next time you come, let’s make an occasion of it. Have a real drink. They’ve got a very nice selection of single malts in the main bar. You should enjoy the ten-year-old cask strength Laphroaig especially.’

  Banks smiled. ‘Your information’s a bit out of date, Corrigan,’ he said. ‘I’m more of a red wine man, these days.’ Then he left.

  Annie had experienced an extraordinary amount of satisfaction after bollocking Lombard and Haig for doing a half-arsed job on A. Le Coq, but now she was feeling guilty. It had been like shooting goldfish in a bowl. After all, they were just probationers, still wet around the ears, transferred in from elsewhere to help out. And they had done a lot of the shit work. For all the jokes made at their expense, it can’t have been a lot of fun spending day after day trawling through sleazy Internet sites searching for a face.

  On the other hand, if they didn’t have what it took to carry out a simple Internet search, a no-brainer, then it was best they should find out now, rather than later, when they had more responsibility and could do more damage. They would get over it and move on. They might even make decent detectives one day. At least now they were checking the Estonian escort sites.

  Though Annie had been to Tallinn for a dirty weekend with a DI from Newcastle four years ago, she knew very little about the place. They had done some sightseeing, but not much, sat at tables outside bars in an old part of the city drinking beer – A. Le Coq, as it happened – and eating pasta. The rest of the time they had spent in the hotel room having sweaty sex.

  To Annie, that whole part of the world was tainted with the old Soviet curse, and she assumed that the Baltic states were an extension of Russia when it came to crime and Russian Mafia activity. Drugs, people-trafficking and illegal labour scams would be right up there. Perhaps Quinn got involved in something like that, and the Russians were behind it? Weren’t they behind almost everything illegal these days? The girl herself could be Russian. There was no way of telling from the photographs, but she did have that certain sad and tragic aspect to her beauty that Annie had associated with Russian women ever since she saw Doctor Zhivago on late-night television. It was one of Banks’s favourite movies, she knew, but that was because of Julie Christie.

  Anyway, there was no point in speculating further. Whatever his motive, and whoever he was, Quinn’s killer had been in the woods at St Peter’s four days ago. They had a few solid leads to him now – the forensics on the tyre tracks and fibres, Quinn’s involvement in the Rachel Hewitt case, and now the blown-up part of one of the blackmail photos showing an A. Le Coq beer mat. She had Haig and Lombard checking if it was sold in other Baltic countries, too, or anywhere else in such quantities as to justify handing out free beer mats to bars – she wasn’t going to make the mistake of assuming too much at this point – but given that Rachel Hewitt had disappeared in Tallinn, and that Quinn had spent a week there working on the case there with the locals, she felt pretty certain about it.

  There was very little about the Rachel Hewitt case in DC Gerry Masterston’s research so far, or in Quinn’s old files, which had arrived in the early afternoon. It was hardly surprising, really, Annie thought, as he had been only marginally connected with it. The real stuff would be in Tallinn. In Estonian. Whether it would be possible to get hold of those files if she needed to, she had no idea. In the meantime, she could at least start digging a bit into the background of what happened on that night six years ago.

  Rachel Hewitt was to be maid of honour to her best friend Pauline Boyars at her wedding at St Paul’s Church in Drighlington on 5 August 2006. Before that, from 21 to 24 July they were going to Tallinn with four other close female friends for a hen weekend. The girls, all about nineteen years of age, were excited about the trip. They booked their cheap EasyJet flight early, and made sure they all got rooms at the Meriton Old Town Hotel, which someone told them was very comfortable and very close to lots of bars and clubs. To save money, the girls asked for twin beds and doubled up; Rachel shared with Pauline.

  On the Friday they arrived, the girls met up in the hotel bar for a drink at six o’clock, then walked into town to find somewhere to eat. It was a hot evening, but they were early enough to get a table outside and enjoy some ‘authentic’ Estonian cuisine of pork in beer, and elk sausage. The idea was to have a relatively civilised and sedate Friday night out, which is exactly what they did, returning to the hotel around 11 p.m.

  Saturday was for sightseeing and shopping, then came Saturday night, the big night itself, party time. They all got dolled up in their micro-skirts, spangly tops and fishnets, put on a bit of war paint and headed for the bars and clubs. At least they weren’t wearing bunny ears and tails, or little whiskers painted on their cheeks, as far as Annie could gather from the reports. They started with a few drinks in the hotel bar, then hit the town. After stopping at a few other bars, they ate steak and frites and drank wine outside at a restaurant, and after that things started to get a bit hazy.

  Annie realised that she would have to go through the individual statements made by each of the girls before she could build up a clear picture of the order of events, but according to the newspaper and Internet reports, the girls went on to a couple of dance clubs, getting rowdier as the evening wore on. They were seen talking and dancing with various groups of boys over the course of the evening. Pauline was sick in the street, but soon recovered enough to go on with her friends to another bar on the main square.

  Naturally, the boys flocked around them, their predatory instincts sensing the lack of inhibitions that comes with drunkenness, expecting easy pickings. According to all the accounts, though, there was no trouble. At least all the girls agreed on that. They moved on to yet another bar with a group of German youngsters they had befriended earlier at a nightclub, and it was maybe twenty minutes or so after that when Pauline began to wonder where Rachel had got to.

  They checked all the rooms and toilets of the bar they had just arrived at, but she was nowhere to be seen. One of the others thought she might have been in the toilet when they left the previous bar, and may have missed their leaving, but she was equally sure that they’d told her where they were going. Pauline argued that they can’t have done, as they didn’t decide where they were going until they got outside, and it was the Germans’ idea, anyway.

  Somehow, Rachel had become detached from her group.

  Pauline asked one of the German boys to accompany her back to the previous bar, but in the winding streets of the Old Town they couldn’t remember exactly where it was, so they eventually gave up. They tried Rachel’s mobile, but all they got was her answering service. The police discovered later that Rachel had forgotten her mobile, left it in her hotel room.

  At this point, Pauline said she assumed that Rachel would find her way back to the hotel, or get a taxi to take her there. They didn’t know the city well, having been there only a day, but although it was winding and confusing, the Old Town wasn’t very big, and Pauline thought that anyone wandering around for long enough was bound to return to the place they started from eventually. Besides, Rachel marched to the beat of her own drummer, and whatever she was up to, she
would come back when she was ready.

  Even so, Rachel’s defection put a bit of a damper on the night, so they all returned to the hotel, disappointing the German boys. They expected to find Rachel slumped in the bar, or passed out in her room, but when Pauline went back to her room to lie down, she wasn’t there. She said the room started spinning, and she was sick again. Then she fell asleep, or passed out, and when she awoke it was daylight. There was still no sign of Rachel. She felt awful; her head ached; her stomach churned, but despite the ravages of the hangover, concern for her friend gnawed away at her. It wasn’t like her to stay away all night. Pauline started to think that Rachel must have got lost somewhere and maybe ended up at another hotel, or maybe got caught up in a group and gone to a party. At worst, she worried that her friend had hurt herself, got hit by a car or something, and was in hospital. She went down to the hotel reception and asked to speak to the manager. The young assistant manager who came out to talk to her was concerned enough to bring in the police, and thus the whole nightmare began. Of course, the girls had drunk so much and visited so many bars and clubs that it took the police close to two days to get any sense of where they had been and what they had done, and by then, anyone who might have been there on the night in question was long gone.

  Rachel Hewitt was never seen again, and no clues to her whereabouts were ever discovered.

  Annie put aside the clippings and rested her head in her hands. Christ, she thought, what do you do? As a policewoman, she had seen the worst in human nature, and she thought that if something like that had happened to a friend of hers, she would have been down to the cop shop like a shot screaming for some action. But would she?

  There had been no real reason to assume that anything bad had happened to Rachel. She sounded like a bit of a character to start with, up for adventure. Annie remembered when her best mate from school, Ellen Innes, had disappeared on a night out in Newquay. It wasn’t exactly a foreign country or anything, but there were some wild pubs, and things could get pretty crazy there on a Friday and Saturday night. Annie and her other two friends searched, but they couldn’t find Ellen in any of their usual haunts, so they went home, assuming she would come back when she was ready. Annie went to bed without calling anyone.