Watching the Dark (Inspector Banks Mystery)

by Robinson, Peter

  ‘Come on, Pauline,’ Annie said. ‘Tell us about it.’

  ‘They didn’t believe us, you know.’

  ‘Who didn’t?’ Winsome asked, picking up the questioning again.

  ‘The Estonian police. Can you believe it? They thought we’d done it and hidden her body somewhere. They kept going on about it, asking us where we’d put her.’

  ‘That was probably one of the many theories they developed,’ said Winsome. ‘They have to cover all the angles, no matter how unbelievable some of them seem.’

  ‘But they never found anyone, did they? They never found Rachel. I think they decided it was us but couldn’t prove it, and they didn’t bother to look any further.’

  ‘This policeman I’m talking about, Bill Quinn,’ Winsome went on. ‘He was haunted by the failure to find her. We think he might still have been trying to find out what happened right up until the end, when he was killed last week.’

  Pauline stared down at her fingernails and nicotine-stained fingers. ‘I don’t get many visitors,’ she said. ‘You must forgive me. I seem to have dropped my social skills down the toilet.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Winsome. ‘Where’s your husband? Is he not around?’

  It could have gone either way, and Annie was mentally ready to give Winsome a bollocking later if it blew up in their faces, but Pauline actually softened. Her eyes dampened.

  ‘We never did get married,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that a joke, after everything that happened?’

  ‘Whose idea was that?’

  ‘Both of ours, really. But I suppose I started it. I stayed on in Tallinn. It seemed . . . I don’t know . . . disrespectful to leave before the police discovered anything. I couldn’t just leave Rachel like that, could I? But in the end I had to, or I’d still be there, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘So you postponed the wedding?’

  ‘At first, yes. It seemed the best idea.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘We just postponed and postponed for so long that in the end the whole idea lost its appeal. I was preoccupied with Rachel. I neglected Trevor. He found someone else. They got married two years ago. The old, old story. When I look back, we were way too young in the first place. Young love. What a joke.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Winsome.

  Pauline straightened up. ‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘I’m not. Good riddance. That’s what I say.’ She ran the back of her hand over her eyes and glanced from one to the other, then clapped her hands together, showering ash and spilling vodka on the already stained and threadbare carpet. ‘So, enough of this maudlin rubbish. What is it you want to know?’

  ‘First off,’ said Winsome, ‘about Detective Inspector Quinn. Do you have any idea why he would remain interested in the case, and why it might get him killed six years later?’

  ‘Absolutely none at all. I hardly saw him. I mean, I only talked to him once or twice. I know he saw a bit of Maureen and Luke, too. That’s Rachel’s parents.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve talked to them,’ said Winsome.

  ‘Well, we keep in touch, like, occasionally. I’m afraid there’s not much more I can add. But why do you think it was that? Rachel? Couldn’t there be many other explanations for why he was killed?’

  ‘We have our reasons,’ said Winsome. ‘Did you like Bill Quinn?’

  ‘Like? I never really thought about it. I must admit, I was a bit of a mess back then, and he was kind enough, his manner, you know . . . nicer than some of those Estonian cops. There was a bloke called Rätsepp. “Rat’s arse”, we called him. He was the one who kept going on about us doing it and dumping her body.’

  ‘They were probably all very frustrated,’ Winsome said.

  ‘I’m sure they were. Sexually, most like, the way some of them were giving us the eye.’

  ‘You don’t have to go to Estonia to find sexist cops,’ said Annie. ‘Come to Eastvale with me now, and I’ll show you a few.’

  ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘But I appreciate the offer.’ The kids started shouting down on the playing field, and Pauline went over to shut the back window. When she returned, she poured herself another shot of vodka to replace what she had spilled, and lit another cigarette from the stub of the old one. ‘Noisy little buggers,’ she said.

  ‘Whose idea was it to go to Tallinn?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Mine. I was the bride-to-be, after all.’

  So much for the idea that Rachel had arranged the hen weekend so she could meet up with a foreign boyfriend in Tallinn. She could have met someone between the decision to go there and the trip, but that seemed too much of a coincidence.

  ‘What was Rachel like as a friend?’ Winsome asked.

  Pauline paused. ‘Like? She was full of life, loved to help people, bright, beautiful, funny, stubborn, a bit wild sometimes, spontaneous. Christ, she was just nineteen, you know. What are nineteen-year-olds like? I don’t remember. Do you?’

  ‘Did you take drugs?’

  Pauline paused and looked at Winsome through narrowed eyes. ‘We might have done E once or twice, you know, at a club.’

  ‘In Tallinn?’

  ‘No way. Far too dodgy getting drugs off some stranger in a foreign city.’

  ‘Rachel?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In your opinion, was she likely to go off with a stranger in a car?’

  ‘Maybe, if it was a nice car and she liked the look of him.’

  ‘So what do you think happened to her?’

  ‘I think she got lost. Wandered off the beaten track. Some sick bastard abducted her, raped her, then killed her and buried her, or chucked her body in the sea, and it floated all the way to Sweden or somewhere.’

  ‘You don’t believe she’s alive? That she lost her memory, or decided to start a new life?’

  ‘No. That’s not Rachel. She loved her family and her friends. And her bloody budgie. If she was alive she’d have been in touch. She would have gone home. And this amnesia business is just a load of bollocks. I don’t blame Maureen and Luke for clinging on to hope, you know, but sometimes I find them a bit hard to take.’

  ‘And why haven’t the police found Rachel, or the person who abducted her?’

  ‘Because they’re useless.’

  ‘But you weren’t able to give them much help,’ Winsome went on. ‘From what I’ve been able to make out, it wasn’t until the following morning that you reported her missing, and then it took the police nearly two days to get any sort of coherent story out of you about where you’d been, who you’d talked to.’

  Annie had to give it to Winsome, she was coming along nicely, developing a tough edge. Many others would have shied away from asking an obviously disturbed person like Pauline those sorts of questions.

  To her credit, Pauline just shook her head sadly. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘since I came back from Tallinn, there isn’t a day gone by when I haven’t tortured myself with the same thoughts. If only we hadn’t forgotten her in St Patrick’s. If only we’d told her where we were going. If only she hadn’t forgotten her mobile. If only I had insisted right from the start that we call the police. If only I hadn’t passed out in my room. If only I hadn’t been so drunk and then so hung over I couldn’t remember a single useful snippet of information. If only. If only. If bloody only. And there isn’t a day gone by when I haven’t imagined what she went through, played the movie in my brain of what he must have done to Rachel, and how much pain and fear she must have suffered before she was killed. It varies a little each time, the details, but it’s basically the same movie.’

  ‘Any chance you would have recognised who did it in your movie?’ Annie cut in.

  Pauline looked at her in surprise. ‘That’s a bloody clever question,’ she said. ‘Nobody asked me that before. But I’m afraid not. No. He’s always just a vague shadow. It’s only Rachel I see clearly. One of the cops suggested it could have been someone we met during the course of the evening, but we danced with a lot of lads, and nobody stands out as
particularly weird. Still, they wouldn’t have to, would they? Don’t they always say it’s the boy-next-door type you have to watch out for?’

  ‘It was worth a try,’ said Annie. ‘I just thought it might have been someone you’d seen in the course of the evening, even just from the corner of your eye, and for some unconscious reason, you cast him in that role.’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. No.’

  ‘Were you aware of anybody following you, or paying undue attention during the evening?’ Winsome asked.

  ‘I’ve racked my brains to dredge up something time and time again, but I just can’t do it,’ said Pauline. ‘It makes me want to tear my hair out. We talked to a lot of lads that night. Just for fun, nothing serious. We danced, chatted, had a good time. I mean, I was getting married, so I wasn’t interested in other blokes. Rachel had just split up with shit-for-brains dickhead Tony Leach. The others, I don’t know . . . I don’t even know if I would have noticed if someone had been stalking us.’

  ‘Do you still see the others?’ Winsome asked.

  ‘No. Funny that, isn’t it? People used to say we were inseparable. Course, Janine topped herself. Took an overdose. That’d be three, four years ago now.’

  ‘Because of what happened?’

  ‘Boyfriend troubles, but that covers a multitude of sins, doesn’t it? She was always the sensitive one. Gillian’s all right. She got married last year, and she plans on turning herself into a baby factory. First one’s out already. She even sent me a wedding invitation and a Christmas letter. I think they’re living in Canada. Helen’s an alcoholic. I don’t know where she lives. On the streets in London, I think. And Brenda’s a social worker. She finally got it together after treatment. She’s discovered she’s really gay, so she’s shacked up with some African woman. Our Brenda. Sweet little naïve Brenda. Would you believe it? What a turn up.’

  Five young lives destroyed, Annie thought. Except maybe for Gillian and Brenda, who seemed desperately trying to put their lives back together, even if the paths they had chosen were difficult ones.

  ‘How bad was Rachel, really, that night?’ Winsome asked.

  ‘Well, she wasn’t totally legless. She was a bit wobbly, like, but she could have got back to the hotel on her own, or at least managed a taxi. She had some money. Other than that, it’s hard to say. Her judgement was probably a bit fucked up, but I think if someone had grabbed her, she’d have known what was happening. She was streetwise enough. She wouldn’t just have gone along with it.’

  ‘She would have struggled?’

  ‘And screamed. I think so. Yes. But if it was someone strong, with an open car door, or maybe even two people, there wouldn’t have been much she could do, would there? All he’d have to do was put his hand over her mouth and push her in.’

  ‘Is that how you think it happened?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘What happened in St Patrick’s?’ Winsome asked.

  ‘We were just talking to the German lads. They all spoke good English, and they had a great sense of humour. You don’t think that about Germans, do you, but they did. It was busy, but not as crowded or hot as that dance place we’d been to. Club Hollywood. I think we even had something to eat.’

  ‘A bit of an oasis, then?’

  ‘Something like that. A breather. Then we went off to another bar, and we were thinking of leaving there and going dancing again when I missed Rachel.’

  ‘It was you who noticed she was missing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘First we searched through the place we were in, then we went back to try to find her.’ Tears welled up in Pauline’s eyes. ‘Me and one of the German boys. But we couldn’t remember where we’d been, could we? We were too pissed. Neither of us knew the city, and we couldn’t find it again. We didn’t remember St Patrick’s until later. Too late.’

  ‘So what happened there?’ Winsome asked.

  ‘It’s all very vague, but I remember someone asked us to leave. Quietly, like. It was one of the places where they didn’t like English stag parties, or hens. They had a bit of a reputation for hell-raising by then.’

  ‘And did you leave?’

  ‘Yes. We might have given a bit of lip, I don’t really remember, but we left. That’s why we left. And Rachel had been flirting with the barman. Good-looking bloke. Australian. Can’t remember his name. Steve, or something.’

  ‘They’d been talking?’

  ‘Flirting. On and off. I mean, he was really busy, so he couldn’t just stand there and chat, but I remember myself thinking, I’ll bet she’s back here again tomorrow.’

  ‘Did you tell the Estonian police this?’

  ‘Yes, of course. When I remembered. But it was too late by then. When I asked them about it, they said the barman was gone. They didn’t know where. Back to Australia, I suppose. Anyway, they couldn’t trace him, so that was that. Dead end.’

  ‘Do you think he had anything to do with it?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Pauline. ‘I mean, he was working, wasn’t he? He couldn’t just disappear. And the police said he didn’t have a car. It was just that he might have known where she’d gone, that’s all. Rachel might have said something to him.’

  ‘Maybe she arranged to meet him later,’ said Winsome, and she and Annie looked at one another. The three of them sat silently for a moment, thinking over the implications. Winsome seemed to have covered just about everything, Annie thought. She couldn’t think of anything else to ask. Pauline’s company was becoming depressing, and the messy flat oppressive.

  ‘We should be off now, then,’ Winsome said. ‘Thanks for your time, Pauline. I’m sure you’ve got work or something.’

  ‘Work? Huh. That went the same way as marriage.’

  ‘You packed it in?’

  ‘Sort of. Though I think they made the final decision for me. I’d got my A levels, but I wanted to start work – like Rachel – and I got a job with Debenhams. In management, not shop floor. Anyway, it was a start. Sort of a management trainee. I got transferred here after things started to go off a bit in Bradford, then . . . I don’t know. Couldn’t keep up my concentration. Still can’t. It was rude of me, I know, but I didn’t even offer you a cup of tea. Sure you won’t stay and have one?’

  Annie could see the desperation in her eyes, but she didn’t feel she could stand another fifteen or twenty minutes in this mausoleum of guilt and shame. Luckily, Winsome must have agreed, because she was the one who refused the offer of tea, gently, and led the way out.

  Erik Aarma had agreed to meet Banks and Joanna in the hotel lobby at five o’clock, and they spent the time in between talking to Rätsepp and meeting Erik going over their notes and clarifying theories. Both agreed that Rätsepp hadn’t been much use and had told them nothing Annie hadn’t already gleaned from reading over Quinn’s files.

  It had taken a long time to set the investigation in motion, Banks thought, but that was more than likely for the reasons Rätsepp had given: the memory of the girls, or lack of it, being paramount. For a start, the police didn’t hear about the disappearance until the following day, and the girls were unable to give an accurate account of where they went, what they did and who they talked to, even on Monday morning. Thus, Rachel had been missing for close to thirty-six hours before anything approaching an investigation stumbled into motion. By then, of course, the rest of that night’s revellers were long gone.

  Perhaps if one of the girls had pushed a little harder a little sooner and reported Rachel missing to the police the night she had got lost, rather than the following morning, something more might have been done. But that was a long shot. Rachel was nineteen, hardly a minor, and there was no guarantee that the police would start an immediate all-out search for her. Most likely they wouldn’t, unless they had good reason to think something had happened to her. It was natural enough to think that she may have simply wandered off, or met some young man, and would turn up by morning. It is all very well
to apportion blame in retrospect, but at the time, nobody thought for a moment that they were never going to see Rachel again, that she was about to disappear from the face of the earth. You don’t plan for these things; nobody is ever prepared.

  Erik Aarma was a big bearded bear of a man with piercing blue eyes and straggly, ill-cut hair, wearing a baggy checked work shirt and jeans. He was carrying a scuffed leather satchel of the kind Banks used to carry back and forth to school every day, in the days before rucksacks became de rigeur. He wished he had kept his now; it looked cool.

  Erik lowered his bulk into the semicircular Naugahyde chair and apologised for being late. He gave no reason, and Banks suspected he was a person who was rarely on time. They ordered coffees and quickly got down to business. Joanna had agreed to make notes, so she took out her notebook and pen. Erik’s English was excellent, and it turned out he had worked in London on the Independent for a few years. Banks was wondering if he would ever run into an Estonian who needed a translator. That reminded him to get in touch with Merike soon.

  As a rule, Banks didn’t trust journalists; in the past they had screwed up so many of his cases in the name of people’s right to know. But he felt he had no choice as far as Mihkel and Erik were concerned. They were his only allies, and Mihkel was dead. Bill Quinn had clearly trusted Mihkel enough to become friends with him. This from a man who, according to his own daughter, didn’t have many friends outside work, followed solo pursuits, preferred his own company. Now Banks was in a position of wanting to trust Erik a lot more than he had trusted Toomas Rätsepp. He hoped his faith would be justified.

  Erik’s handshake was firm, and his anger and sadness over the loss of his friend and colleague clearly genuine. ‘I do not know how I can help,’ he said, glancing from Banks to Joanna and back, ‘but I promise I will do what I can.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Banks said.

  ‘Poor Merike. She must be heartbroken.’

  ‘She was very upset, yes,’ said Banks. ‘Perhaps you’d like to call her?’