Watching the Dark (Inspector Banks Mystery) (23 page)

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 knew 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.

Banks glanced at his watch. Time to head back to Eastvale so he could check on developments there before the end of the day.

Chapter 6

On Tuesday morning, Banks was in his office early again, and this time the first to knock on his door was an excited Gerry Masterson brandishing a sheaf of papers, her wavy red hair cascading over her shoulders in all its pre-Raphaelite glory.

‘It’s not that there haven’t been a few crimes involving the use of crossbows,’ she began before even sitting down, ‘but nearly all of them are domestic, or they involve some nutter going on a spree and either getting caught or killed.’

‘And the ones that aren’t?’

‘That’s what’s interesting. I looked for a pattern.’

‘And did you find one?’

‘I found three unsolved murders overseas involving the use of a crossbow – same make of bolt used as in the Quinn killing, too, by the way – all in one way or another connected with the world of people-trafficking and illegal immigration.’

‘Now that’s interesting,’ said Banks, taking another sip of coffee. Masterson had brought her own mug with her.

‘I thought so. There was one in Vilnius, that’s in Lithuania, one in Amsterdam, and one in Marseilles.’

‘How hard is it to get a crossbow across European borders?’

‘Not very,’ said Masterson. ‘You probably wouldn’t want to carry one on a plane, but you could take it apart and put it in with your checked luggage. Or why not just buy a new one in each country, if you’re paranoid about getting searched? It’s not as if you need a permit or anything. However you look at it, it’s a lot less trouble than a gun.’