Watching the Dark (Inspector Banks Mystery) (31 page)

Rätsepp held his hands open in a gesture of openness. ‘What more can I say?’

‘What do you think happened to Rachel, Toomas?’ asked Joanna, cappuccino in her hand. ‘Just out of interest.’

Banks was glad that Joanna had asked the question, feeling he was pushing a bit too hard himself. It was perfect coming from her. Rätsepp seemed to have forgotten her earlier insensitivity, because he favoured her with a condescending smile and patted her knee. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘you must know as well as I do that it cannot be good news. The most obvious theory is that someone take her, some stranger or someone the girls had meet earlier in some in nightclub or bar. Perhaps it is someone who has stalked them, or someone she has
arranged
to meet. We have no evidence of this, of course, and it poses many questions and many problems, but it is the best explanation.’

‘She must have been taken by car,’ Banks said. ‘Cars can get into certain streets of the Old Town, can’t they? I’ve seen them.’

‘Of course,’ Rätsepp agreed. ‘Certain streets, certain areas, mostly near the edges. There are many cars around Niguliste, for example, which is not far from the pub where she was last seen. Yes, you are right. It is likely that this person persuade her to get in car. Perhaps she know him from earlier and trust him. We do not know.’

Banks remembered the big bookshop, the grass slope and the church, the restaurant where he had eaten dinner with Joanna last night. They were just around the corner from there right now. Somehow, the area was taking on a greater significance in his imagination of what might have happened to Rachel. It was true that a lot of cars and taxis seemed to drop people off there and turn around. It was also quite likely that nobody would notice a girl getting into a car or a taxi. Even if someone was pushing her, it might easily appear he was helping her. ‘Did you talk to the taxi companies?’

‘Of course. We talk to all drivers who work that night. Nothing.’

‘Could one of them be lying?’

‘It is always possible. But we do our best.’

‘I’m sure you did, Toomas. I’m not being critical, believe me.’

‘Is all right. I believe she meet someone from earlier. Maybe from Club Hollywood, where they dance and drink before. Is near St Patrick’s. Perhaps he invite her to party or say he drive her back to hotel. She go with him. Then . . .’

‘Possibly,’ said Banks. He remembered Annie telling him that Rachel could be impulsive, and he knew only too well the bad misjudgements that can be made when drunk. ‘So, however it happened, you think it happened quickly. Someone got her out of there, abducted her, took her away from the Old Town and then . . .?’

‘Otherwise we would surely find body.’

Banks gestured around to the three- and four-storey buildings. ‘Some of these places must be like rabbit warrens inside,’ he said. ‘There must be old cellars, crypts, attics, places where nobody goes, places nobody’s been for centuries. You can’t have searched every nook and cranny of an area like this. Could she have been taken inside one of them?’

‘Is possible,’ said Rätsepp. ‘And there may be such places as you say. We cannot search every room in the Old Town with no information, but we make thorough search.’

‘Somebody must have seen something,’ Joanna said.

‘No, my dear. Do you think your people in Nottingham on Saturday night see something? A girl get in a car? Is that so unusual there people notice? No. I do not think so. It is not so strange. Do you not agree, Alan?’

‘The general public can be remarkably unobservant,’ Banks agreed. ‘Even when they’re sober.’ But especially, he thought, a milling, drunken crowd, as had probably been out on the streets of the Old Town at the time of Rachel’s disappearance. Rätsepp was right. You could probably commit a murder on the street on a night like that, and everyone would just assume it was part of the fun. Maybe that was what had happened. ‘Any other theories?’

‘We try to consider everything. Perhaps her friends somehow kill her accidentally? Perhaps she fall down some steps, or somehow poison herself through alcohol? They panic, get rid of body and lie. Or they have a fight and she is accidentally killed.’

Banks had a sudden flash of the office girls outside at Whitelocks talking of their exploits in Cyprus, laughing about a friend being taken to hospital for alcohol poisoning, joking about another girl who was so drunk she pissed herself in public. Was it only a week ago? Less, even. ‘And got rid of the body where?’ he asked. ‘You checked all the hospitals and searched all the waste ground and possible hiding places, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. That is problem with all theories, of course,’ Rätsepp said. ‘No evidence. No body. And girls do not have car. We even talk to car rent companies. Nothing.’

‘Any other theories?’

‘Well,’ said Rätsepp, scratching his head, ‘it is not a popular line of inquiry, but we think perhaps Rachel get involved in crime. In drugs, for example. Young girls do such things, for some boy they like, perhaps. They become mules, couriers.’

‘Did you find any evidence of that?’

‘None. But, of course, nobody wishes to think ill of Rachel, and it is not something people talk about. We have cases of foreign girls killed by drug-trafficking gangs they have become involved with, for stealing or for threatening to talk.’

‘So you still think there might be something in this?’

‘Is possible, yes.’

‘I was just thinking that drug-traffickers might also be the kind of criminals who would consider a hit on Quinn, if he was getting too close to the truth.’

‘It is professional job, Hr Quinn?’

‘We think so,’ said Banks. ‘Both killings.’

‘Then you can perhaps believe that some big drug-trafficker did not want to be named. That is another area you must investigate. I understand drugs are big problem in England.’

‘But why after so long?’

‘That I do not know. There could be many reasons. It take Hr Quinn so long to find him, perhaps? This could be “big story” for journalist.’

‘In all these possibilities you’re talking about,’ said Joanna, ‘Rachel Hewitt is dead. What if she’s alive? Is there anything that could explain what happened to her if she’s still alive and well?’

‘That is, of course, what her parents wish to believe,’ said Rätsepp solemnly, ‘and I do not want to rob them of all hope. But what is the explanation? She hit her head and lose her memory and wander off somewhere? Poland? Russia? She is working in flower shop in Minsk and married with two beautiful little children? Or she do not like her parents and run away from home? This the parents do not wish to accept. They must continue to believe their daughter loves them.’

‘What if she was abducted and forced into prostitution, trafficked?’ said Banks.

‘Again, is possible,’ Rätsepp admitted. ‘But we are not Albania or Romania. Estonia is not destination for such victims, and is not usually a source. Is a station on the way. Traffic passes through here to England and Finland and Sweden, from the east, from the south. Drugs. People. Girls. Illegal immigrants. So it is possible. But her parents and many others search over the years, send out pictures, and find no trace of her.’

Banks thought of Haig and Lombard trolling the Internet sites for the girl in the photographs with Quinn. He had decided not to bring her up with Rätsepp, after all; he didn’t trust the man enough. He would save her for Erik, Mihkel Lepikson’s friend and contact at the
Eesti Telegraaf
. He could think of no more questions.

Rätsepp seemed to sense they had got to the end of their discussion and glanced at his watch. ‘I must be leaving now,’ he said. ‘I have appointment.’ He took out his wallet and left a card on the table. ‘If you need to get in touch. Anything.’ He started to pull out some bills, but Banks held his hand up. ‘No, Toomas,’ he said. ‘Remember, tourists pay.’

Rätsepp laughed. ‘Ah, yes. Thank you very much. I hope to repay the favour in England one day.’ He stood up, bent gallantly to kiss Joanna Passero’s hand, gave Banks a quick salute, grabbed his jacket and disappeared into the crowds around the corner on Viru.

Pauline Boyars lived in a flat above a fish and chip shop on the Wetherby Road. She was at home when Annie and Winsome pressed her doorbell at half past two on Thursday afternoon, and she buzzed them up. The fish and chip shop was closed, so there was no smell of deep-frying, Annie thought gratefully. It was probably a good thing. Fish and chips was one of her weaknesses, and had played havoc with her fading dream of vegetarianism. At least most places didn’t use lard for deep-frying any longer.

Whether Pauline overindulged in the services downstairs, Annie had no idea, but she was certainly on the large size, and her complexion was pasty and spotty, as if she ate too much fatty food. Her hair was lank and uncared for, and her nails bitten to the quicks. More signs, Annie thought, that Pauline Boyars had very much let herself go. She was only twenty-five or -six, but she looked over thirty.

The flat was untidy, with clothes lying on the floor, piles of gossip magazines and unwashed dishes, but it didn’t have that all-pervasive smell of fish and chips Annie had expected. Several windows were open, and she could hear kids playing football in the small park at the back. Didn’t anyone go to school any more?

Pauline cleared some newspapers from a couple of chairs, and they sat down. She didn’t apologise for the mess, the way many people would have done, but lit a cigarette and sat on the sofa, leaning forward, elbows resting on her knees. ‘What’s it about?’ she asked.

‘It’s about Detective Inspector Bill Quinn,’ Winsome said.

‘Sounds familiar. Refresh my memory.’

‘The detective from Leeds who worked on Rachel’s case?’

‘Oh, yes. I remember him. Worse than useless, like the rest of them.’

‘He’s been murdered,’ said Winsome.

‘It didn’t do anybody any bloody good, though, did it?’ Pauline went on, as if she hadn’t heard. Her right foot was tapping the whole time they were talking. ‘It didn’t bring Rachel back, did it? If you’re going to be asking me about all that stuff, I need a drink. I won’t offer you any because you’re on duty, and because I don’t have much left.’ She got up and poured a hefty shot of vodka into a tea mug.

‘Pauline, we’re hoping you can help us here,’ said Winsome, in her most soothing voice. ‘Getting drunk won’t help.’

‘Are you crazy?’ She held out the mug. ‘You think this would get me drunk? If only. What do you want to know?’

‘You might have read in the papers that Bill Quinn was killed a few days ago, and his death was suspicious. We’ve been assigned to investigate.’

‘Well, bully for you. It was probably some vicious tattooed drug-dealing Hells Angel he put away years ago.’

‘That’s one possibility,’ said Winsome. ‘But another is that his death was somehow connected with what happened to Rachel.’

‘Nobody knows what happened to Rachel. That’s the bloody point. She might as well have been abducted by aliens.’

Annie saw that Winsome was struggling with Pauline’s hostility, so she gave a quick signal and cut in. ‘You were there that night, Pauline? What do you think happened?’

Pauline stopped tapping her foot and gazed at Annie. Then she stubbed out her cigarette and gulped some vodka. The foot started tapping again. ‘What good would it do to go over it all again? Don’t you think I’ve been over it a million times with the bloody Estonian police, and with your mate Quinn?’

‘I’m sure you must have,’ said Annie. ‘But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it? Maybe over the years you’ve remembered things you didn’t say then?’

‘Remembered? Some hope. Forgotten, more like. I didn’t remember much in the first place. That was the problem.’

‘It’s not surprising,’ Annie said. ‘You were out celebrating. Having a good time. You couldn’t have had any idea what was going to happen.’

Pauline stared at Annie again and sipped more vodka, then stared into the depths of her mug.

‘I’m not judging you, Pauline,’ she went on. ‘I’ve been in this job long enough to know that the best will in the world can’t stop a criminal getting his way. And I’ve been pissed often enough to have done more than a few things I’m ashamed of.’

‘So why do you do it? The job, I mean.’

‘Now there’s a question. I wish I knew the answer.’

Pauline managed a brief smile, which changed the whole structure of her face and showed a flash of the beauty that might still lurk under the ravaged surface. She lit another cigarette.

‘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.’