Watching the Dark (Inspector Banks Mystery) (37 page)

‘You’re right about that. She hadn’t much to say for the political system or the cleanliness of Havana. But she did love the beach and her Danielle Steele. And she phoned her mother every day.’

‘Dutiful daughter,’ Annie commented.

‘Look, I know some of this is coming out all wrong,’ said Tony. ‘But Rachel was a good person, despite it all, the ambition, the love of money. She had the biggest heart of anyone I’ve known. She’d do anything for you. She wasn’t greedy, and she wasn’t selfish. In the end, I suppose we just weren’t meant to be together.’

‘Did she make any friends over in Cuba, at the hotel, on the beach?’

‘Like who?’

‘Europeans, perhaps? Especially Eastern Europeans. Russians or Estonians, for example?’

‘Not that I know of. We pretty much stuck together the whole time.’ A sound came from the front room. ‘Is that Melanie calling?’

Annie heard the voice, too. ‘Sounds like it,’ she said. ‘I think it’s time for us to go now.’ She was certain that when Tony took in the tea they had prearranged some signal to bring the interview to an end, and this was probably it. Annie looked at Winsome, who just shrugged, and they followed Tony through to the front door, wished him and Melanie well, and left.

‘I am not at all sure how I can help you,’ said Ursula Mardna. The Office of the Prosecutor General was in a neo-classical style two-storey house on Wismari, a peaceful, treelined street, not far from the Parliament building and the British Embassy. The place was an old private house, and Ursula Mardna’s office had probably been the master bedroom. It was a large space, with all the trappings of an important and powerful government official. Banks had been watchful on their walk over there, and he didn’t think they had been followed. If his theory were correct, and Rätsepp had put someone on his tail to keep track of the progress of his investigation, then he probably already knew that Banks would be visiting Ursula Mardna this morning.

You couldn’t really compare the function of the Prosecutor here that closely to the Crown Prosecution Service back home, Banks thought. From what he had read, the relationship was a lot more complicated and political, rather than just a matter of decisions being made on whether there was enough evidence, and whether the evidence was good enough to merit a prosecution. The Prosecutor guided an investigation in a very hands-on way, including the collection of evidence and use of surveillance. In some ways, he imagined, the Prosecutor was more like the American District Attorney, but perhaps even more complicated. Prosecutors would also turn up at crime scenes. Of course, the disappearance of a young English girl in Tallinn was a high-profile case, especially when she hadn’t been found after several days, or years.

‘We’re just trying to cover all the angles we can,’ said Banks, ‘and you were instrumental in the Rachel Hewitt investigation.’

Ursula Mardna waved down Banks’s comment. ‘Please. It was not a most glorious success. I wake up still and think about that poor girl some nights.’ She had a strong accent but her English was clear, and for the most part correct. Banks placed her at about forty, or just over. That would have made her in her mid-thirties when she worked the Rachel Hewitt case. Quite young. It could have been a career-making case, if it had been solved. As it was, she didn’t seem to be doing too badly. She was stylishly dressed and attractive, with an oval face, lively brown eyes and reddish-blonde hair cut short and ragged around the edges, in a rather punkish, pixie style. She had no piercings that Banks could see, but wore some rather chunky rings and a heavy silver bracelet.

‘You don’t believe she might still be alive somewhere?’ he asked.

She gave Banks a pitying glance. ‘No more than you believe it, Hr Banks. Or you, Pr Passero.’

‘It would, indeed, be a miracle,’ Joanna said, and turned a page in her notebook.

‘We got most of the details from Hr Rätsepp,’ Banks went on, ‘but we were just wondering if you have a different view of things? Perhaps there were things he didn’t tell us?’

‘Toomas Rätsepp was a fine investigator,’ said Ursula Mardna. ‘One of our best. If he could not solve the case, nobody could.’

‘What about his team?’

‘Fine officers.’

‘So in your opinion, everything that could possibly be done was done?’

‘Yes. We were most thorough.’

Banks wondered about that. Rätsepp had said the same thing. He also had to keep reminding himself not to expect too much, that he was talking to a lawyer, basically, however high-ranking and however close her role was to that of the investigator. What was she going to say, that Rätsepp was a sloppy copper and the investigation was a shambles? No. She was going to defend her team, especially to an unwelcome foreign detective. ‘Do you remember DI Quinn?’ he asked. ‘That’s really who I’m here about.’

She tilted her head to one side. ‘Of course I do.’

‘What exactly was his role?’

‘His role?’

‘Yes. The part he played, his function in the investigation.’

‘Ah, I see. I think he was ambassador from the British police, no?’

‘But he must have got involved somehow?’

‘He was here for only one week.’

‘But quite soon after Rachel’s disappearance, I understand?’

‘Then you will also understand that there were many obstacles in beginning of the investigation. The girls, themselves, they could not remember.’

‘I understand that,’ said Banks. ‘Hr Rätsepp said the same thing. But DI Quinn was in at the start?’

‘You could say that. He was allowed to accompany a junior investigator to get some feel of the city, to observe the investigations we were starting to make.’

That was the first Banks had heard of it. Another thing Rätsepp had neglected to mention. In fact, he had told Banks and Joanna that Quinn had played no active role in the investigation, had merely attended meetings. ‘Who was this investigator?’

‘I cannot remember his name. It is so long ago.’

‘Would it be in your files?’

Ursula Mardna gave him an impatient glance and picked up the telephone. ‘It would.’

A short scattershot phone conversation in Estonian followed, and several moments later a young pink-faced man in a pinstripe suit knocked and walked in with a file folder under his arm. Ursula Mardna thanked him and opened the folder. ‘His name is Aivar Kukk. According to this file, he left the police force five years ago.’

‘A year after the Rachel Hewitt case. Why?’

‘To pursue other interests.’ She pushed the folder away. ‘It happens, Hr Banks. People are sometimes lucky enough to find out that they have made a wrong choice in life early enough to correct it.’

‘Do you have his address?’

‘I am afraid we do not keep up-to-date information on ex-police officers. Even if we did, there would be much red tape involved in giving it to you.’

‘Of course.’

She favoured him with an indulgent smile. ‘We have come a long way since the Soviet era, but red tape is still red tape.’

‘Never mind,’ said Banks. ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to find him if we need to.’

Ursula Mardna gave him an assessing glance, as if trying to work out whether he would be able to, or perhaps whether it mattered.

‘What were your impressions of DI Quinn, Ms Mardna?’ asked Joanna.

‘He seemed a good man. Very serious. Dedicated.’

‘Did he change at all during the course of the week he was here?’

‘Change?’

‘Yes. His attitude, his feelings about the case, his commitment, his mood. Anything.’

‘I did not see much of him after the first two days,’ she said, ‘but I did get the impression that he placed himself more in the background. Is that how you say it?’

‘He stood back?’ Joanna said.

‘Yes. When he started, he was so full of energy that he did not want to sleep. He just wanted to walk the streets looking for the girl. I suppose he became tired, and perhaps depressed when he realised there was so little he could do here. I think he perhaps lost hope.’

Or he gave up when someone showed him the compromising photos, Banks thought.

‘I suppose so,’ said Joanna. ‘It must also have been intimidating, a foreign city, different customs, different language.’

‘As you can see, the language is not much of a problem here, but the other things . . . yes. I think he came to feel, how you say, out of his depth? That things were best left to us. The locals.’

‘That would explain it,’ said Joanna, making a note.

Ursula Mardna seemed a little alarmed. ‘Explain what?’

‘The change in him.’

‘Oh, yes.’

Banks showed her a photograph of the girl who had been with Quinn. He hadn’t shown her image to Rätsepp because he hadn’t trusted him. While he thought Ursula Mardna might well be erring on the side of caution and self-protection in all her responses, he took that as the reaction of a canny lawyer, not a bent copper. But he still didn’t want her to see Quinn and the girl together. There was something rather too final and damning about that. ‘Do you recognise this girl?’ he asked.

She studied the photograph closely then shook her head and passed it back. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I have never seen her. Who is she?’

‘That’s something we would very much like to find out,’ said Joanna.

‘I am sorry I cannot help.’

‘Was there any possibility that Rachel Hewitt’s disappearance was connected with drugs?’ Banks asked.

‘Naturally, it was a direction we explored. We found no evidence of such a connection, but that does not mean there was none. Perhaps back in England. I do not know . . . Why do you ask?’

‘I suppose you kept, still keep, pretty close tabs on the drug-trafficking business around here?’

‘Tabs?’

‘Keep an eye on. Watch.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And there was no link between Rachel or her friends and drug smuggling?’

‘We did not reveal any such link.’

‘Could it be possible that any . . . er . . . uncovering of such a link might have been, shall we say, diverted, suppressed, avoided altogether?’

‘What are you saying?’

Banks leaned forward and rested his arms on the table. ‘Ms Mardna,’ he said. ‘I’ve worked as a police officer for more years than I care to remember, most of that time as a detective. I have worked undercover, vice, drugs, just about anything you would care to name, and if there is one thing I have learned, it is that there is
always
the possibility of corruption and intimidation, especially when drugs are involved, mostly because of their connection with organised crime. Now, can you honestly sit there and tell me there has never been a whiff of corruption in the Tallinn police?’

Her face reddened. ‘I cannot tell you that, Hr Banks,’ she said. ‘But I can tell you that in this case, the possibility of drugs was thoroughly investigated by Investigator Rätsepp and his team, and reviewed by myself. The girl had no connections with any of the known drug-traffickers at that time, and as far as I know, investigations back in Britain found no hints of any such a connection there either. All of which led us to believe,’ she went on, ‘even in the absence of a body, witnesses or forensic evidence, that we were dealing with a sex crime.’

‘Stands to reason,’ said Banks. ‘Attractive young girl, alone in a strange city. Odds are someone might take advantage of her. But why kill her?’

‘We worked on the assumption that whoever abducted her – or whoever she arranged to meet during the evening – also killed her to avoid identification and disposed of the body somehow.’

‘Why should somebody she arranged to meet do that?’

‘I can only speculate. Perhaps things went too far? Something went wrong? The girl became nervous, tried to back out? Protested, struggled. I do not know. There could be many explanations.’

‘And the body?’

‘Estonia is a small country, but there are many places to get rid of a dead body. Permanently. And before you ask, we did search as many of them as we could.’

Banks scratched the scar by his right eye. ‘It seems the most convincing scenario,’ he said. ‘In which case we’re probably wasting our time here.’ He gestured to Joanna and they both stood up.

Ursula Mardna stood up with them, leaning over the desk to shake hands. ‘You would never waste your time in Tallinn, Hr Banks. Especially as we have such wonderful weather this week. Goodbye. Enjoy yourselves.’

That, Banks thought, was what Rätsepp had wanted them to do, too. Have a holiday, don’t bother chasing ghosts. But it only made Banks all the more suspicious.

‘Since when have we been arresting people for begging in the street?’ Annie asked PC Geordie Lyttleton, who had just nipped into the Major Crimes office to report an incident.

‘Well we don’t usually,’ said Lyttleton, ‘but she was getting quite aggressive, ma’am. She scared the living daylights out of one old lady, following her down the street shouting some sort of gibberish after her.’

‘And what sort of gibberish did it turn out to be?’

‘Polish gibberish, ma’am. She can’t speak English. Jan from Traffic speaks a bit of Polish, though. His mum’s family’s from Warsaw. Anyway, he got it out of her that she has hardly eaten since last Wednesday. She lost her home and left her job. She was in a bit of a state. What she actually meant was that she was squatting up at some ruined farm and—’