‘We try to stay on good terms with the media,’ said Maureen, ‘but it’s difficult sometimes. They can be very intrusive, as you know, if you’ve been reading the papers and watching TV lately. They’re your best friend and helper one minute, then they turn on you the next. We’ve tried being as polite and informative as we can, but then they turned on us for being too cool and unemotional, not being passionate and anguished enough, for not crying all the time. Honestly, sometimes you just can’t win.’
Annie had read the stories in the papers about their recent testimony in the hacking inquiry, about how an unscrupulous reporter had hacked into their private telephones and hounded their remaining daughter, Heather, stealing her diary. At one point, this same reporter had even ‘borrowed’ Maureen’s journal and reproduced sections of it in the newspaper, her deepest fears about her missing daughter, a breakdown of communication with her other daughter, her feelings of despair and thoughts of suicide. It had been headline news – MOTHER OF MISSING GIRL ON SUICIDE WATCH – but then so had their evidence against the reporter and his editor later, at the official inquiry.
Heather Hewitt, Annie knew, had gone off the rails at some point during the six years her sister had been missing. Excerpts from her diary showed a troubled teen upset and worried about her big sister, but feeling increasingly neglected, sidelined and unloved because all her parents’ energy went into the Rachel Foundation, and all their time into finding Rachel. It seemed to her that they didn’t care that they had a living, breathing, troubled daughter right there who needed them. Heather felt that they wished she had been abducted instead of Rachel, and in her worse moments, she even believed she had heard them saying that, whispering it at night when she was lying in bed trying to get to sleep. She had turned to drugs, become publicly addicted to heroin. From what Annie knew of heroin, it was hardly a surprising choice. Heroin offers a deluxe escape, takes away all your problems, all your worries, all your fears, and wraps you in a warm cocoon of well-being until it’s time for the next fix. Hallucinatory drugs throw all your perceptions into disorder and all your fears and worries back at you in the form of nightmares and rising paranoia, and amphetamines and Ecstasy keep you on the move, keep you running, dancing, sweating, feeling good. But only heroin takes all the pain away. The closest Annie had come to truly understanding that feeling was with some of the morphine-derived painkillers they had given her in hospital when she was at her worst.
‘How is Heather?’ she asked.
Maureen’s face clouded. ‘She’s progressing,’ she said. ‘I know people said we were being cold and cruel having her put away like that, especially after they leaked her diary in the papers, but the institution was a good idea, for a while at least.’
‘Until she’s ready to face the world again,’ added Luke.
‘Yes,’ agreed his wife, nodding. ‘Do you know, she’s just the age Rachel was when she went missing.’
Annie let the silence stretch for a respectful moment, then she took a photograph of Mihkel from her briefcase. ‘Have you ever seen this man?’ she asked the Hewitts.
They both studied the photo closely, then Luke said, ‘I think so. Can you tell us his name?’
‘Mihkel,’ said Annie. ‘Mihkel Lepikson.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Luke glanced at his wife. ‘Don’t you remember, love? He’s that nice Estonian journalist who came to see us with Inspector Quinn six years ago.’
‘That’s right,’ Maureen said. ‘He was writing about the case back in Tallinn. We’ve kept him up to date, too, over the years. He’s written updates on the story, tried to help as best he can. They’re not all rotten. Reporters.’
‘He was nice, you say?’
‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘Not like the others. At least he was straight with us, and he didn’t write about our private grief, or apparent lack of it. It was the case that interested him, the search for Rachel, what might have become of her.’
‘Did he have any ideas?’
‘None that helped,’ said Maureen.
‘Have you ever seen him again recently?’
‘Not for years. But we’ve had emails and telephone conversations. He’s been helping us to keep Rachel’s name out there, and he usually sends us a clipping if he’s written anything about her in his paper. It’s in Estonian, of course, but you can still see it where he mentions her name, and he writes out a nice translation for us. It’s very difficult when you’re so far away. People forget so easily. We’ve been meaning to get in touch with him.’
‘I’m afraid there’d be no point,’ said Annie. ‘He’s dead.’
The Hewitts looked at one another in shock. ‘Dead? But . . . how?’
‘He was also murdered. Shortly before Inspector Quinn, we think.’
‘But why? He seemed such a nice young man.’
‘Well, his business is a dangerous one. He worked on exposing crimes and criminals, and they don’t like it when someone does that. There were probably a lot of people had it in for him because of the things he wrote.’
‘About Rachel?’
‘That’s a possibility we have to consider. Do you have these clippings? Could we take them with us and have a look at them? We’ll make sure you get them back.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Maureen opened one of the filing cabinets and pulled out a red folder. ‘They should all be in here. Translations, as well. So you do think Mihkel Lepikson’s death had something to do with Inspector Quinn’s?’
Annie could have kicked herself. She had gone too far. She didn’t want to lie to the Hewitts, but she couldn’t tell them the whole truth, either. A good investigation depended on holding back information from the public. ‘It’s possible,’ she said. ‘We just don’t know. That’s why we’re asking all these questions. I know it must seem a bit strange to you.’
‘But don’t you see?’ Maureen went on. ‘If the two are linked, they might both have something to do with Rachel. It could all be connected. This could be the sort of lead we’ve been waiting for. They might have known where she is.’
‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up,’ Annie said.
‘Hopes? What else could I have except despair? Do you know, there isn’t a day goes by when I don’t imagine the terrible things that could have happened to Rachel over the last six years. That could be happening to her somewhere, even now. Her fear. Her pain. Her desperation. People doing terrible things to her. My little girl alone in the dark with monsters, abandoned. Believe me, I don’t sleep much any more. The nightmares are too frightening.’
Her husband touched her shoulder and said, ‘Or that she’s lost her memory somehow, and has forgotten about us, but is living her life happily somewhere. That’s what I try to think about, anyway.’
Maureen moved towards the doorway. ‘Come with me. Let me show you something.’
Annie raised her eyebrows and glanced at Winsome.
‘I mean it. Just follow me,’ Maureen said. Annie and Winsome did as they were asked.
Maureen took them across the landing and into another, smaller bedroom. ‘This is Rachel’s room,’ she said, in slightly hushed tones. ‘It’s ready for when she comes back. It’s always ready. I wash the sheets every week, and her clothes, even though she hasn’t worn them for a long time. It’s important to keep things clean. That’s hope. And when our daughter comes home at last, it will all have been worthwhile. I suppose you think I’m insane now, but I don’t care. It’s one of the things that keeps me sane. The hope.’
Annie took in the room. It was quite ordinary, not pink or black or anything you might expect from a teenager, thank God, but a neutral tone of blue, with a small writing desk and chair, television and CD player, a few CDs and books in an antique glass-covered bookcase. Posters of Coldplay and Franz Ferdinand adorned the walls. There was also a glossy picture of a sleek BMW standing outside an ugly art deco mansion. Someone, presumably Rachel, had written a thought bubble with the words ‘MINE ONE DAY!!’ in a Sharpie at the top. Annie smiled. Just under win
dow was a collection of stuffed and fluffy animals, clearly going all the way back to Rachel’s childhood. Very girly, she thought.
‘She loves fluffy animals,’ said Maureen, catching Annie’s expression. ‘Collected them. That’s Paddy.’
Annie glanced at the bed. A one-eyed teddy bear missing a fair bit of stuffing sat propped up against the pillow staring at them. It gave her the creeps.
‘Paddy was her first ever animal, when she was a baby. She took him everywhere with her. He was with her in Tallinn. In her hotel room. Inspector Quinn very kindly got him back for us. Paddy’s waiting for her, too. He was her good-luck charm.’
‘I see she liked cars, too,’ said Annie.
‘Oh, that. That was just a bit of silliness. I can’t understand what it was with her and fancy cars. That’s more a boy thing, isn’t it?’
‘Did Rachel still live at home when she . . .?’
‘When she disappeared. It’s all right, love, you can say the word. Yes, she did.’
‘Did she have a boyfriend?’
‘Not for a while. She’d been seeing Tony Leach for a couple of years, but they split up about a month before she went away.’
Annie remembered the name from Bill Quinn’s reports. ‘Was she upset about it?’
‘Of course. Two years is a long time. But she soon got over him. You do when you’re young, don’t you, though it seems like the end of the world at the time. She shut herself away in her room and cried for two days, then she put him behind her and got on with her life again.’
Maureen led them back into the office, but they remained standing. There wasn’t really an awful lot more to say. Annie got the names and addresses of Tony Leach and the five female friends who had been with Rachel on that fateful hen weekend, thinking one of the girls might know something and might have kept quiet for reasons of her own. At the door, she turned and asked the Hewitts if there was anything more they could tell her about Bill Quinn’s last visit to the house.
‘Like what?’ asked Maureen.
‘What sort of mood was he in?’
‘Well, he was very sad, of course. The poor man had just lost his wife. And he seemed distracted.’
‘Did he say anything odd or surprising? That sort of thing.’
It was Luke who answered. ‘He said one thing that struck me as odd when I thought about it later. We were talking about his wife’s death, and one of the comments he made was that it “changes things”. I’m sure one thinks many things about the death of a spouse, but “it changes things” seems an odd one to me. I mean, it’s sort of self-evident, isn’t it, so why say it? Probably nothing, but there you are. And he told us not to give up hope.’
‘Thank you,’ said Annie. She knew what Bill Quinn had meant.
‘You will keep in touch, won’t you?’ said Maureen. ‘If there’s anything . . .’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘What little secret would that be?’ Banks asked.
‘Nobody wants to stay in Professional Standards for ever. Annie Cabbot didn’t; I don’t. As you know, it’s not possible, anyway. There’s a strict time limit on the job.’
‘Don’t tell me you want to work Major Crimes,’ said Banks.
‘Well, I’d like something a bit more juicy than PS, yes, and something that earns me a bit more respect from my fellow officers.’
‘And this is a way of getting some on the job experience? In the back door, so to speak.’
‘Something like that. Believe or not, I asked for this job. I wanted the opportunity to work with you.’
‘You were out to get me from the start?’
‘No, you idiot. Stop it. I’m not out to get you, I’m out to learn from you. You might not be aware of it, but you have a reputation, whether you know it or not. Yes, you’re a bit of a maverick and all the rest, and as I’ve just found out, you have a cruel and selfish streak, too, but you’re generally thought of around the county as a pretty damn good detective. Just don’t let it go to your head.’
‘I should have known. Gervaise is grooming you. She’s—’
Joanna waved him aside. ‘She is doing no such thing. She gave me an opportunity to work with you, said if I was lucky I might pick up a few pointers on how a homicide investigation is conducted. That’s all.’
‘But she does know about your ambitions, and she was willing to encourage them?’
‘Area Commander Gervaise is an enlightened woman. We could do with more like her around the place.’
Banks liked and respected Catherine Gervaise, but he had never quite thought of her in that way. He sat in silence for a moment, digesting what he’d just heard, joining the dots. Why hadn’t he figured this out before, right from the start, at that meeting in Gervaise’s office? It gave him choices he hadn’t considered before. He could either continue being an arsehole and leave Joanna out in the cold, or he could make use of her, work her hard, test her skills, treat her as a member of the murder team and try to forget the Professional Standards angle, see if she had the makings of a good homicide detective.
But could she forget the Professional Standards angle? Banks doubted it. He didn’t care if she found out that Quinn was bent. If he was corrupt, then his corruption deserved to be exposed, especially if it had spread to others close to him and allowed a toerag like Corrigan to thrive. Besides, Quinn was dead. What could they do to him now except cloud his reputation? And what was a dead copper’s reputation worth to start with? The ones who found out would soon forget; the rest would neither know nor care. The ones who would be hurt most would be his two children, and they were grown-up enough, resilient enough, to deal with it in time. He already knew that Quinn had probably committed adultery with a woman young enough to be his daughter, and they would no doubt find out about that, too, one way or another. The point was, that he now had Joanna Passero to help him rather than hinder him, if he chose to include her. On the other hand, he was in a foreign land lumbered with an amateur wannabe, if he cared to think of it that way. But these days, he was more of a cup half-full sort of bloke. She had to have some skills he could use. And maybe she could learn.
The waitress came and asked them if they wanted any dessert. Neither did. Banks said they would just stick with the wine, and she smiled and went away.
‘So what you’re saying is that you want to work on all aspects of the investigation, not just the bent copper angle?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘So you’ll do what I say, follow my lead?’
‘Depends what you say, what the lead is. I won’t break any laws, and I won’t turn away from any law- or rule-breaking on DI Quinn’s part. I’ll still do my job.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Banks. ‘I can’t really explain why, but I can’t get the idea out of my mind that Bill Quinn may well have been killed not because of the photos or Corrigan, but because he found out what happened to Rachel Hewitt. And that finding out who killed him might depend on finding out what happened to her. Can you work with that hypothesis?’
‘If you think there’s a definite connection between the time Quinn spent here on that case and what happened subsequently,’ said Joanna, ‘then I’m with you. Let’s find out what it is. But we’re not here to solve the Rachel Hewitt case.’
‘It might not be so easy,’ said Banks. ‘I have a feeling that nobody around here is going to want to open up to us about it. Too much wound licking and mud slinging under the bridge, I’ll bet. We’ll see what we can get from this Toomas Rätsepp tomorrow. If he’s like most cops, it won’t be very much. Then we’ll have a chat with Mihkel’s editor, Erik, see if we can get him to talk a bit. Journalists are pretty simple souls really. They can be very closed mouthed, in my experience, but if they think you can do something for them – i.e., give them an exclusive – then they’ll bend over backwards to help you.’
‘What exactly are you after?’ Joanna asked.
‘Well, ideally I’d like to find Rachel Hewitt alive and well, take her home to her parents, br
ing her abductor to justice, solve Bill Quinn’s and Mihkel Lepikson’s murders and have their killer put away for life, then world peace would be a nice bonus. But in reality? First I’d settle for finding out who the girl in the photo is and having a good talk with her, see if I can find out who put her up to it. If she did set Quinn up, I very much doubt that it was her own idea. After that, we’ll see where that leads us.’
‘Do you think anyone knows?’
‘I think there’s a good chance that someone does, yes,’ said Banks. ‘It’s more a matter of whether we can get anyone to tell us. If Quinn and Mihkel stayed in touch over the years after they first bonded over Rachel – you know, went fishing together and so on – then I think there’s a chance that Quinn was going to meet Mihkel by the lake and tell him the truth about what happened here, and why. He may have been going to hand the photos over to him.’
‘But Quinn didn’t have the photos on him when he was killed.’
‘That bothered me at first. But remember the mysterious phone call from the pay-as-you-go mobile?’
‘Yes.’
‘What if Mihkel was forced to make that call, to change the time of the meeting or something, or even to arrange it, and what if the different number or something in Mihkel’s voice set off alarm bells, made Quinn suspicious?’
‘But he still went.’
‘Yes. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t on guard, though, cautious. But he clearly wasn’t expecting a crossbow bolt through the heart. He may have left the pictures back in the room until he was sure Mihkel was coming.’
‘That’s possible, I suppose,’ said Joanna. ‘Do you think this Toomas Rätsepp knows?’
‘Why would Rätsepp know? Quinn certainly wouldn’t tell him, and I doubt that anyone else would, either. He might be able to give us some general details about the direction of the investigation, but I wouldn’t expect much more from him. I still think Erik is our best bet, if he’s willing to help.’
Watching the Dark (Inspector Banks Mystery) Page 21