Watching the Dark (Inspector Banks Mystery)

by Robinson, Peter

  The countryside rolled by outside the car window, forest and farmland, along with the occasional village and small town. The woods were thick with evergreens, Banks noticed, which must make it beautiful in winter, especially under a blanket of snow. Everyone was quiet, perhaps contemplating the hours ahead, or thinking about the past. He recalled his telephone conversation earlier with a slightly hung over Annie. She seemed pleased with the way things had wrapped up in Eastvale. He hadn’t known then, of course, that he would be close to the end of his own investigation in Tallinn.

  Viktor Rebane had told Banks that his son had not taken Rachel Hewitt to a party in Tallinn, but to a lake house, which happened to be in an area of small wooded lakes called Võrumaa, in the far south of the country, about a three-hour drive from the nightclub. Joosep often held late night parties there, parties that sometimes went on for two or three days. Cocaine and amphetamines kept people awake, and barbiturates put them to sleep. The lake house belonged entirely to Joosep, Viktor had stressed. Nothing was in his name, and he had never been there. No doubt he had his own secret playgrounds.

  Banks couldn’t help but wonder whether Rachel had quickly sobered up when she found herself being driven out of the city, far away from everything she knew, unless Joosep had somehow drugged her the way Larisa had drugged Bill Quinn. Rohypnol, or some such thing. Or had she agreed to go? Was it adventure she was seeking? Did she really think it would be fun? By all accounts, Joosep Rebane was a rich, handsome and charming young man, with rock-star charisma and a fancy silver Mercedes. Rachel wasn’t a party girl, according to everyone who knew her; she wasn’t promiscuous, but she was spontaneous, and she was certainly attracted by wealth and its trappings. Did she believe that Joosep Rebane was the Prince Charming she had been looking for?

  Immediately after Viktor and the no-necks had left Paat, Banks had phoned Ursula Mardna, who had pinpointed the location of the lake house for them and said she would arrange for a local CSI team to get over there and start work immediately. If Banks wished, he could set off from Viimsi and meet up with her at the scene.

  Merike had a little trouble finding the particular lake once they had left the main highway, and they spent some time driving along unpaved roads through thick forest, stopping to read signs, before they arrived at the end of a long, winding entrance road that led to the simple wooden lake house, with a lawn stretching down to the water’s edge. Banks couldn’t see any other cottages around, though there were a few outbuildings that clearly belonged to the main house. It seemed the ideal, isolated place for Joosep Rebane’s antics.

  The path to the house and lake was taped off, and a surly uniformed officer stood on guard. Erik tried to talk to him but got nowhere. Fortunately, Ursula Mardna arrived within half an hour of them and sorted everything out. Erik and Merike were not allowed past the tape, though, only the police, and that infuriated Erik, as he had come so far. He stayed in the car for a while, sulking and smoking with Merike, then they walked as close as they could get. No doubt, Banks thought, he would keep his eyes and ears open for a story, and his mobile phone would have a decent camera. Banks had no problem with the story being told, and he doubted very much that Ursula Mardna would. She was assuming control now, directing the CSIs. If her initial failure in the Rachel case hadn’t done her career much harm, finally solving it after all these years could only do it good.

  The CSIs were busy inside the house, and outside two of them were digging up areas of the lawn they had decided offered the most potential for buried bodies. Viktor had said Joosep told him he had buried Rachel’s body in the garden, but not exactly where. Banks wondered why he hadn’t just dumped her in the lake, but dead bodies in the water all float eventually, and perhaps he had worried that there was more chance of someone seeing her, even in such an isolated place as this. Others must live not so far away, and surely ramblers, cyclists or boaters came by occasionally.

  Banks and Joanna stood on the deck with Ursula Mardna, watching over the scene. A small motorboat lay moored to the dock at the end of the garden, alongside a rowboat. The opposite shore was about a quarter of a mile away, and as far as Banks could see, there were no lake houses or dwellings of any kind over there. It seemed as if Joosep and his friends had the lake to themselves. Banks could smell the fresh pine and hear the birds singing up in the trees.

  There were no signs of recent inhabitation, the Crime Scene Manager told Ursula Mardna; in fact, he said, there were no indications of anyone having being there at all recently. Other than the occasional discussions between CSIs, it was perfectly quiet, much like Banks’s own cottage by the beck outside Gratly. The lake house itself was large enough for four bedrooms upstairs and a poolroom in the basement, and the outbuildings were fitted with bunks for extra guests.

  The main floor consisted of one large open room incorporating living area, dining table and kitchen. It smelled musty and stale, as if it had been locked up for a long time, and dust motes danced in the rays of sunlight as Banks walked the uncarpeted floor. A few rugs had been thrown here or there, but mostly it was bare boards. There was a wood-burning stove in the living area, which must have been nice and cosy on a winter’s night. There were a few battered armchairs, a decent stereo set-up, along with a pile of punk and heavy metal CDs, a collection of hash-pipes, a large flat-screen TV with DVD player and a pile of martial arts movies and Korean bootleg porn. The walls were covered with stylised prints from the Kama Sutra mixed in with cubist and abstract expressionist works.

  Banks was happy to go outside again, and when he did, one of the CSIs digging in the garden called out. Banks and Joanna hurried over with Ursula Mardna to join him, as did several of his colleagues, standing around the edge of a three-foot deep pit. Banks could see Erik straining his neck behind the tape, no doubt snapping away with his smartphone camera.

  The CSI, a forensic archaeologist, Ursula Mardna explained, carefully brushed away soil from an empty eye socket. The bones had darkened from years underground, where various compounds had leached into the soil. The CSI worked carefully with his brush, and Banks and Joanna watched as the skull slowly came into view. It was going to take a long time, he explained, so there was no point their standing over him. He would call them when he was finished, then would begin the difficult and painstaking process of getting the body from the earth to the mortuary. Only the photographer remained as the archaeologist continued his delicate work.

  Banks, Joanna and Ursula Mardna paced the deck as they waited. Someone had a flask of hot coffee, and Banks was grateful for the loan of a plastic cup to drink from, even though it was a warm day, and he would have preferred a cold beer. It was at times like this that Banks also wished he still smoked. When Ursula Mardna brought out a packet of cigarettes and a small tin to contain the ashes, so she wouldn’t contaminate the scene, he was tempted to ask her for one, but he controlled the urge.

  Everyone seemed vaguely interested in the arrival of the English detectives, especially in Joanna Passero, casting them curious glances every now and then, but nobody paid undue attention to them. Fewer people seemed to speak English here than Banks had encountered in Tallinn. It was early evening, and though it was far from dark, the shadows were lengthening over the water, and the light through the trees was taking on that muted, filtered evening quality.

  Eventually, the archaeologist and his assistants called the three of them over. The skeleton Banks looked down on could have been male or female as far as he was concerned, though the pathologist, who also now arrived at the graveside, quickly assured them it was female.

  When Banks and Joanna stood at the edge of the shallow grave with Ursula Mardna, Banks knew he had found what he had come for, though he felt no sense of triumph, just a kind of sad relief. It was impossible to see the yellow colour, of course, but fragments of the dress still clung to the darkened bones, as did the white open-toed high-heeled shoes, though they were no longer white, and pieces had disintegrated. There were also the remains of a small handba
g, a metal clasp and decayed leather strap. Everything looked as if it might have been tossed on top of the body, and Banks wondered if Rachel had been naked when she was buried.

  After all the photographs had been taken, and soil and vegetation samples carefully removed and packaged, one of the CSIs very carefully retrieved the handbag. The fabric had rotted, but some of the contents were still intact: a tube of lipstick, a tattered, mostly rotted leather purse, a plastic hairbrush, keys, some loose coins, mostly Estonian kroon, along with some British pounds, and a Meriton Hotel ballpoint pen. If there had been anything else, it had decomposed over the years, like the flesh.

  The pathologist knelt by the body and borrowed the CSI’s brush to clear more soil from the neck area. After much umming and ahing, in addition to the use of magnifying glass and a delicate physical examination with gloved fingers, he stood up. Banks heard his knees crack. The man spoke with Ursula Mardna in Estonian. She turned to Banks and said, ‘He cannot say for certain, but he thinks she was strangled. There are many small bones broken in the throat.’

  ‘However she died,’ Banks said, ‘somebody buried her. There’ll be an investigation, I assume?’

  Ursula Mardna nodded. ‘Of course.’

  Banks asked whether he could examine the purse, and after a quick glance at Ursula Mardna, who nodded briefly, the CSI handed it to him, after first having him put on a pair of protective gloves. It wasn’t because of fingerprints, Banks knew – none would survive after so long – but simply crime scene protocol.

  With Joanna Passero by his side, Banks opened the purse carefully. The one thing you could usually depend on surviving most of the elements except fire was plastic, and sure enough, there it was. Or there they were. Tesco, credit and debit cards, Co-op, Boots, Waterstone’s, and half a dozen others. All in the name of Rachel Hewitt.

  He had found her.

  The last thing Banks took out of the purse, stuck in the slot behind her credit card, was a small laminated card inscribed with an image of a man in tails and a top hat helping a voluptuous woman into a coach. Or was he pushing her?

  Chapter 14

  Late June sunshine flooded the market square as Banks looked down from his open office window on the shining cobbles, smelling coffee and freshly baked bread, listening to the ghostly harmonies of Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Awakening from the iPod dock. The gold hands against the blue face of the church clock stood at a quarter past five. A group of walkers dribbled into the square in ones and twos, gathering at the market cross after three or four hours out in the dale, all kitted out with the latest boots, red and orange anoraks, rucksacks and walking sticks, trouser legs tucked into their socks. One of them was clearly the leader, and he carried an Ordnance Survey map in a clear plastic cover around his neck. Already the little wooden platform and tables with umbrellas had been set up on the cobbles outside the Queen’s Arms, reminding Banks of his evenings in Tallinn, eating out in the Old Town with Joanna Passero.

  It seemed like years since then, but it was only a month and a half. Annie was back at full throttle, as if she had never been away, especially as she had solved Banks’s case while he had been off tilting at windmills. She also told Banks with great glee that she had got a letter in very basic English from Krystyna, who was now living in Krakow and working in a traditional Polish restaurant, studying English in her spare time.

  Joanna Passero was still at County HQ, about to leave Professional Standards for Criminal Intelligence. Banks thought often about their trip to Tallinn, the city, the people they had met, the discovery by the lake in Võrumaa. They never had got to see the Danse Macabre. Another time, perhaps.

  As Banks had expected, Joanna’s report on Bill Quinn leaked to the press, and there had been a minor furore about policemen and prostitutes. But the brouhaha hadn’t lasted long; celebrity phone-hacking had once again taken over most of the media’s attention.

  Erik Aarma’s story, which appeared in late May over two weekly issues of the Eesti Telegraaf, did a great deal to restore Bill Quinn’s reputation. Erik opened with the murders of Quinn and Mihkel Lepikson, then worked his way through the migrant labour scam, Corrigan’s shooting, and all the way back to the disappearance of Rachel Hewitt, making connections with Joosep and Viktor Rebane wherever he could legally do so. Soon the article appeared in translation, sometimes in digest form, in newspapers all over Europe. After all, Rachel’s disappearance had been a major story six years ago, and had been kept very much in the public eye since then by her parents’ efforts. Though many of the players had to remain anonymous, there could be few readers – in Tallinn, at any rate – who could remain in any doubt to whom Erik was referring when he wrote of a rich and wild young man and his wealthy businessman father.

  Viktor Rebane died of lung cancer in Tallinn in the first week of June, just after the article appeared. His son did not appear at his funeral. The following week, a body was pulled out of the Neva river outside St Petersburg with two bullets in the head, and there was little doubt in anyone’s mind that it belonged to Joosep Rebane, a conclusion soon borne out by DNA analysis. His criminal masters had clearly taken the moral high ground when they learned that he had been responsible for the death of an innocent young woman. They had no doubt already known he was something of a liability, Banks thought, and his days had probably been numbered anyway.

  Ursula Mardna came out of the whole affair triumphant, her earlier lack of vigilance forgotten, and Toomas Rätsepp was prosecuted for a number of serious offences under Estonian corruption and bribery laws.

  Banks returned to his desk and picked up the three sheets of paper he had received in the post that morning, along with a brief covering note from Erik explaining that he had received the letter in response to his article, and Merike had translated it from the Russian. The quiet music, with its drifting harmonies, long notes and high strings, seemed both peaceful and tense at once. Banks sat down, sipped some lukewarm tea and read:

  Dear Mr Aarma,

  It was with great interest and curiosity that I read your article in a national newspaper recently, and I feel it is my duty to clarify one or two important points for you. Why now, you may ask, after so long? I have no excuses except cowardice and self-interest for not coming forward until now. You say in your article that though certain facts are clear, perhaps nobody will ever know exactly what happened at the lake house in Võrumaa on that July night six years ago. But that is not true. For, you see, I was there.

  I worked at a nightclub in the Old Town of Tallinn. It had no name, and we called it simply The Club. I was sharing a flat with another young woman who worked there, a rather naïve Russian-speaking Estonian girl called Larisa, who was not at work on the night I am about to describe.

  There was a crowd, or a clique, at The Club, centred around Joosep Rebane, son of Viktor, one of The Club’s owners. You refer to both these men in your article, or at least it seems to me from your descriptions that they could be nobody else. Joosep had that ‘aura of glamour’ you mention, of the movie star or rich playboy, about him. He did not work. He did not have to. He had money. He was intelligent, but not well read or educated. He had charisma, but it was laced with cruelty. He liked to humiliate people, exercise his power over them, and yet people gravitated towards him, especially women. Why? I can’t explain. I couldn’t then, and I can’t now. The excitement? The edge of danger he always seemed to generate?

  On weekends, we would often congregate at The Club and then go somewhere else later. The core group was five or six strong, and sometimes others joined up with us later, came from outside the city, even from as far as St Petersburg and Riga. Sometimes Joosep would drive us all down to his lake house in Võrumaa. There we were so isolated we could do anything, and we did.

  One night in July six years ago – I do not remember the exact day of the week, or the date, but your article says it happened between Saturday, 22 July and Sunday, 23 July, so I must trust you – a young girl walked into The Club just as we were about to lea
ve. The girl was drunk. She looked lost. Joosep immediately sensed she was vulnerable, and he went to her to ask if he could help. She was just his type, a blonde vision in a short yellow dress, full lips, pale skin. I could not hear all their conversation, but soon he had persuaded her to have a drink, into which I thought later he must have put some Rohypnol, something he had done before, even when the girls were willing.

  When we all went outside – there were I think five of us by then – Joosep tried to get the girl into the car. She did not want to come with us at first, but Joosep is very persuasive. The drug had not started working by then. Joosep said we would go to a party at his flat nearby for a while, and then he would drop her off at her hotel. She seemed to like this idea, or at least appeared half-willing, and Joosep bundled her into the back of the car. Then we were off. No party. No hotel. But the lake house. Võrumaa.

  I do not remember much about the journey. I think the English girl whimpered a little as she realised we were leaving the city, then she fell silent. I know that Joosep had to practically carry her out of the car when we arrived, and he immediately put her in one of the outbuildings. I have no recollection of him coming back to the main building. It was after four o’clock in the morning by then and starting to get light. We were all somewhat the worse for wear. Time did not matter. We would often sleep for a few hours, then start a party at ten o’clock the following morning, or three in the afternoon, if we felt like it. Sometimes people would turn up unexpectedly, and we would have a party to welcome them. There was always lots of booze and drugs. And sex. That night I believe we smoked one joint, then everybody passed out quite quickly. There was always tomorrow.