Watching the Dark

Chapter 7

Banks and Joanna were barely talking when they got to the hotel. Banks had spent the long flight from Manchester to Helsinki listening to Arvo Pärt’s piano music and reading the only Estonian novel he had been able to find in Waterstones: Purge, by Sofi Oksanen. It was heavy-going at times, but absorbing nonetheless. Sometimes the engine noise drowned out Ralph van Raat’s delicate piano playing, but the noise-cancelling headphones Banks had bought at Manchester helped. Joanna had sat beside him with her laptop on the tray in front of her, to all intents and purposes working on a report. During the stopover at Helsinki, she went off to do some duty-free shopping, and Banks sat by the gate drinking a latte and reading his book, occasionally glancing out at the planes through the large plate glass window.

At the Metropol, there was a message waiting for them at reception. It read simply: ‘Lunch at Clazz tomorrow 1230. Tourists pay.’ The name was Toomas Rätsepp.

‘Cheeky bastard,’ said Banks. ‘Fancy a bite to eat now? Discuss strategy?’

Joanna shrugged. ‘Fine with me. Let’s just dump our stuff and get freshened up first.’

Half an hour later, map in hand, Banks led the way across a broad, busy avenue, where traffic swarmed and trams rattled by. They brought back childhood memories. There had been no trams in Peterborough, of course, and he was too young to remember the ones in London, but he was sure he had visited one or two cities with his parents and ridden on them. Leeds or Manchester, perhaps, where they had relatives.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous, bright sun low in a clear blue sky, with a faint half moon in the south. Banks hardly even needed his jacket, which he carried slung over his shoulder because he did need its pockets for his carefully stowed wallet, book, iPod, mobile, pen, notebook and various other bits and pieces. It was all right for women, he thought, glancing at Joanna; they had handbags. Bottomless pits, most of them. Some Frenchmen carried little leather bags with straps, too, but that trend had never caught on in Yorkshire. Banks just used his pockets.

Though it was still light, the evening shadows were lengthening in the cobbled streets of the Old Town, which were lined with three- or four-storey buildings with pastel facades of lemon, white, orange, pink or pale green, many of them cafes with tables outside. Some had ornate gables and dormers. Even narrower alleys led off to the left and right, some with signs above doorways indicating cafes or bars, others bare, perhaps with hidden cellar clubs, the kind you had to get text messages to know about. Most of the streets were free of traffic, though the occasional delivery van or utilities vehicle edged its way along, bouncing on the cobbles.

They reached a broad crossroads, almost a square in itself. There seemed to be a few cars and taxis around this area, though they all came to a halt and turned back about where Banks and Joanna were standing, by a large bookshop. Banks guessed that traffic wasn’t allowed beyond that point and, indeed, most of the streets were not wide enough for cars anyway.

On their left was the bookshop, and beyond that Banks could see the sign for Fish & Wine, which was recommended in his guidebook. Over the road was a grassy area sloping up to an ancient church. According to his guidebook, the church was called Niguliste and was famous for the medieval painting, Danse Macabre. By the sloping lawn in front of Niguliste, young people lounged around, smoking and talking, enjoying the early taste of summer, young girls in short shorts and skimpy tops, tanned tapered legs, henna or bottle-blonde hair.

The church stood in all its majesty, drawing the soft evening light to itself, the top of the white square tower pale orange in the glow.

Joanna stopped for a moment. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.

‘You religious?’ Banks asked.

She gave him a funny look. ‘No.’

‘Me, neither.’

All the outside seating at Fish & Wine was full, according to the waitress, but they managed to get a table at the end of a bench inside that was right next to the open doors of the side patio. It was a good spot, and they could see the edge of Niguliste and all the people walking by.

They made themselves comfortable and read the English language menu. Like most places in Tallinn, the restaurant had free Wi-Fi, and Joanna checked her email and text messages before slipping the phone back into her handbag without comment. Banks was curious as to what she was expecting, the way she seemed obsessed with constantly checking her phone. Was it something to do with the job? Coded messages from Professional Standards headquarters? Reports on his behaviour? If she wanted to tell him, he assumed that she would do so in her own time. They both ordered the turbot, along with a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Banks poured the wine. Joanna was wearing an off-the-shoulder frock with a gathered waist. During the flight, she had worn her hair tied back, but now she wore it piled up on top in elegant blonde tresses, the way it had been when he first saw her, showing off her long graceful neck to best advantage. She also wore some dangling silver earrings and a locket around her neck. She smelled of the hotel’s body lotion and shampoo. She must have checked the Tallinn weather forecast before setting off that morning to know what to pack, Banks thought. It had been raining in Manchester.

‘Travelled much?’ Banks asked, to break the tension that seemed to stretch between them like a taut elastic band.

‘I’ve never really been anywhere before. Well, I tell a lie. I did go to Barcelona once, and I’ve been to Italy, of course. But that was family, so it doesn’t really count.’

‘Your husband?’

Joanna nodded and twisted her wedding ring.

Sensing that she didn’t want to linger on the topic, Banks moved quickly on. ‘I’d suggest you do a bit of sightseeing, enjoy yourself. Did you bring your camera?’

‘No.’

‘You should have. You can probably buy a cheap one in any tourist shop.’

‘I’ll be too busy working. What are you trying to tell me?’

‘I just don’t think you’ll have a lot to do, that’s all. I’ve got two murders to investigate now, three if you include Rachel Hewitt, and I work better alone, without interference. I don’t need someone watching my every move, looking over my shoulder. Also, no foreign cop or prosecutor is going to talk to you. I’ll be lucky if they talk to me with you present.’

‘I—’

‘You’re Professional Standards. You do what you do.’

‘Can we clear the air a bit?’ Joanna said. ‘Why are you being so nasty to me? You don’t have a reputation as a particularly mean person, so why pick on me? I’m not here to investigate you. Is your ego so big you can’t get over that? I’ve been trying to work with you for six days, and if you’re not actively against me, you avoid me, you shut me out. You play silly practical jokes, and now you expect me to go off sightseeing while you do the real man’s work. You didn’t want me with you yesterday to interview Merike Noormets. You didn’t want me to come with you today to Tallinn. You ignored me throughout the entire journey here. You were surly all the way from the airport. What is it with you?’ She paused and gave him a level gaze.

‘It’s just that I can’t imagine what there is for you to do here, that’s all. Say we find the girl, say she admits she drugged Quinn and put him in a position to be blackmailed. So what? What does that prove? It certainly doesn’t prove he was bent, working for Corrigan or anyone else. To find out about that you’d need to be back in England. There’s nothing for you here is what I’m saying. I’m sorry.’

‘No, you’re not. You like to humiliate me and make me feel small. Fine. Go ahead if it makes you feel good. If it helps you to think I’ve got no feelings, that I’m just some sort of robotic persecutor of good honest cops. As a matter of fact, I do have feelings. If you prick me, I bleed. All right?’

‘All right,’ said Banks. ‘I mean it. I’m sorry. All I’m really saying is that I work better alone.’

The food arrived, and they paused to take a few bites before continuing their conversation. The turbot was good, Banks thought.

‘Well, I’m sorry, too,’ said Joanna eventually, ‘but you’re not alone on this one. The point is that I do the job I do, but it doesn’t define me. I am not my job. And I’m not made of stone. I meant it. You can be very hurtful, you know. Very cruel. That’s not in your file.’

‘Yet.’

‘See what I mean? The sarcasm. It’s nasty. Mean.’

It was what Winsome had said and, if truth be told, what Banks himself had felt. He didn’t know why he did it, but couldn’t seem to stop himself. He felt guilty and foolish now, but he saw Joanna in a new light. She was nobody’s fool. She said her job didn’t define her, and she was right. This was a living breathing person, with feelings, as she had made abundantly clear. But he still couldn’t forget that she was Professional Standards and, as such, represented a stumbling block to any success he might hope to have.

Joanna glanced around the restaurant, almost as if to check that no one was listening. Nobody was paying them any attention now, as far as Banks could tell. ‘I’ll let you in on a little secret,’ she said.

Annie and Winsome were skirting the southern edges of Leeds on the M62 towards the Drighlington exit. The Hewitts had agreed to see them that afternoon, intrigued by what little Annie had told them on the phone. ‘Poor people,’ Winsome had said. ‘I didn’t intend for them to get their hopes up. But they’ll grasp at any straw they think might help them find their daughter alive.’ And it was true. Pathetic, really, the little tremor of excitement in Maureen Hewitt’s voice the moment Annie mentioned she was from the police and wanted to talk about Rachel. If she were in Mrs Hewitt’s shoes, would she accept that her missing daughter was dead after six years? Would she hope that she was? Probably not, she realised. When you give up hope, what do you have left? At least if someone found Rachel’s body, her parents would know, would be able to bury her and move on with their lives, however painfully and slowly. Closure.

‘We’re almost there,’ said Annie, checking the signs. ‘Next exit. Get in the lane.’

Winsome edged the Toyota into the exit lane and turned off the motorway towards a large roundabout.

‘Not far now,’ Annie said.

She had read up as much as she could on Rachel Hewitt that morning. Nobody had done a psychological profile of the victim, but Bill Quinn had put together a thumbnail character sketch that described her as an intelligent girl, but given to occasional wild flights of fancy and impulsive behaviour, a social drinker, a loyal friend, a person who cared for other people and wanted to make the world a better place. Reading that last bit had made Annie feel like putting her finger down her throat and gagging. It sounded like one of those speeches candidates for Miss World or whatever beauty pageant contestants spout in their skimpy swimming costumes. World peace, save the children, the seals and the whales, feed the hungry and all that. But there was a hint of a dark side. Rachel was also a dreamer and something of a material girl. She harboured a fantasy of meeting her Prince Charming one day, but he would have to be rich. It was a common, and possibly dangerous, blend of naïveté and avarice.

Naturally, Quinn had been thorough in his investigation of Rachel’s friends and contacts. She could have been targeted for trafficking. Though she didn’t seem to fit the usual victim profile, it was a possibility no good copper would fail to check out. A foreign boyfriend woos her, swears undying love, and arranges to meet up with her in Tallinn, where they live blissfully together until he reveals his true self and tells her what she has to do to help repay his debts. What she will do, if she really loves him. Then the beatings, the rapes, the mental and physical abuse begin, the brainwashing. It happened all too often. But not, apparently, to Rachel. There were no foreign boyfriends in her life, no suspicious characters, no one who didn’t check out cleanly. It seemed she had lived an exemplary life with exemplary friends before Tallinn swallowed her up.

They found the house, a compact redbrick semi in a street of compact redbrick semis. There was nothing about it to distinguish it from the rest, no poster of Rachel in the front window or sign in the garden, only a beat-up old Astra in the drive, and a lawn that needed a bit of loving care. It was tragic in its ordinariness.

Annie rang the bell and the door was answered almost immediately by a woman she took to be Maureen Hewitt. She was about fifty, Annie guessed, rather on the tall, gaunt side, with a long face and fair hair tied back in a ponytail. She wore no make-up, but her complexion was good, though pale, as if she didn’t go outdoors very much. There was an unnatural, brittle brightness in her pale blue eyes that Annie found disconcerting. Someone who lived for hope, no matter what reality presented her with.

She led them to the front room, where her husband was sitting in an armchair.

‘It’s the detectives who rang earlier,’ she said.

Mr Hewitt got up and shook hands with Winsome and Annie. ‘Very pleased to meet you,’ he said. ‘Perhaps... some tea before we begin?’

For some reason Annie couldn’t quite work out, Mr Hewitt reminded her of a vicar — not quite grounded, but with a certain aura of authority, weight of sorrow and sense of purpose. He went and made the tea, and when it was done, Mrs Hewitt suggested they go into the ‘office’ as they were dealing with ‘official Rachel business’.

The office was in the spare bedroom, and this large room was the real heart and nerve centre of the operation, Annie felt as soon as she walked in, the mug of tea warm in her hand. In an odd way, the Hewitts seemed somehow more relaxed in the office than they had in their living room. Two of the walls were taken up by desks and office equipment. There were two computers, a fax machine, a photocopier, a couple of laser printers, two telephones, filing cabinets, and even a television tuned to a twenty-four-hour BBC world news channel that was on mute. Though the room was generally clean and tidy, there were piles of papers around, many of them flyers with Rachel’s picture and a plea for help, in various languages. Framed photos of Rachel lined the walls, from one of her in her mother’s arms shortly after she’d been born, to the slightly glamorous studio shot in her teens. She had a half smile on her face, lips slightly parted, and the diffuse, fuzzy lighting you get on glamour shots highlighted her spun-gold hair and her blemishless porcelain skin. Her features were delicate, finely chiselled, but not sharp or pinched, and her cheekbones were high. She looked a bit Nordic, Annie thought, and also a bit like a doll. Fragile, too. But there was more, beyond all that. The intelligent eyes, the serious girl behind the smile. The girl who cared, who wanted to do some good in the world, who wanted to be rich.

‘This is our operations centre,’ said Mr Hewitt, who asked them to call him Luke and his wife Maureen. ‘Please, sit down.’

In addition to the office-style chairs in front of the desks, there were a couple of small armchairs in the centre of the room, no doubt kept for interviewers and visitors just like Annie and Winsome.

‘You said on the phone you had some news,’ said Maureen Hewitt, hovering over them keenly.

‘Well, it’s not really news,’ said Annie. ‘But we do have a few questions for you. First of all, have you heard about Bill Quinn?’

‘Inspector Quinn,’ said Maureen. ‘Oh, yes. Isn’t it terrible? And he was so good to us.’

‘You knew him well?’

‘I wouldn’t say well, would you, Luke? But we knew him.’

‘Even after the investigation?’

‘We sent him bulletins, let him know what we were doing to keep Rachel’s name in the public eye. That’s all.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Let me think. It was shortly after his wife died, wasn’t it, Luke?’

Luke agreed. ‘About a month ago,’ he said. ‘Late March.’

‘What did he come to see you about?’

‘Nothing in particular,’ said Luke. ‘It was a bit of a puzzle really. Why he came. We hadn’t actually seen him for years. Not since he got back from Tallinn six years ago, in fact. He told us what had happened to his wife, of course, and we offered him our condolences, naturally. He was very upset. He said he envied us our strength and belief.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Well, I told him it hadn’t been easy. My wife and I are regular churchgoers, and we’ve had a lot of support from the parish, of course, but sometimes even faith...’ He shook his head. ‘There’ve been times when... Anyway, you don’t want to know about that. You know, a lot of people think we’re just keeping up a front, putting on some sort of a show, that we should long ago have let go and moved on.’

‘What do you think?’ Annie asked.

‘As long as there’s a chance that our darling Rachel is still alive, then we’ll carry on trying to find her,’ said Maureen. She picked up one of the flyers and handed it to Annie. ‘Look at this. Latvian. We had a sighting near Riga just last week.’

‘There must be a lot of sightings.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ said Maureen.

‘Fewer and fewer as time goes by,’ said Luke. ‘The hardest thing is to get anyone to take them seriously and follow up. That’s why it’s so important to keep her face out there, keep her name on peoples’ lips. We have to keep up the pressure, make sure nobody forgets. No offence, but we can’t depend on the police. You have other cases, other things to occupy your time. Rachel is all we have. It’s up to us to try to keep the investigation going at some level. People think we’re publicity seekers. Well, we are. But the publicity is for Rachel, not for us.’

‘We try to stay on good terms with the media,’ said Maureen, ‘but it’s difficult sometimes. They can be very intrusive, as you know, if you’ve been reading the papers and watching TV lately. They’re your best friend and helper one minute, then they turn on you the next. We’ve tried being as polite and informative as we can, but then they turned on us for being too cool and unemotional, not being passionate and anguished enough, for not crying all the time. Honestly, sometimes you just can’t win.’

Annie had read the stories in the papers about their recent testimony in the hacking inquiry, about how an unscrupulous reporter had hacked into their private telephones and hounded their remaining daughter, Heather, stealing her diary. At one point, this same reporter had even ‘borrowed’ Maureen’s journal and reproduced sections of it in the newspaper, her deepest fears about her missing daughter, a breakdown of communication with her other daughter, her feelings of despair and thoughts of suicide. It had been headline news — MOTHER OF MISSING GIRL ON SUICIDE WATCH — but then so had their evidence against the reporter and his editor later, at the official inquiry.

Heather Hewitt, Annie knew, had gone off the rails at some point during the six years her sister had been missing. Excerpts from her diary showed a troubled teen upset and worried about her big sister, but feeling increasingly neglected, sidelined and unloved because all her parents’ energy went into the Rachel Foundation, and all their time into finding Rachel. It seemed to her that they didn’t care that they had a living, breathing, troubled daughter right there who needed them. Heather felt that they wished she had been abducted instead of Rachel, and in her worse moments, she even believed she had heard them saying that, whispering it at night when she was lying in bed trying to get to sleep. She had turned to drugs, become publicly addicted to heroin. From what Annie knew of heroin, it was hardly a surprising choice. Heroin offers a deluxe escape, takes away all your problems, all your worries, all your fears, and wraps you in a warm cocoon of well-being until it’s time for the next fix. Hallucinatory drugs throw all your perceptions into disorder and all your fears and worries back at you in the form of nightmares and rising paranoia, and amphetamines and Ecstasy keep you on the move, keep you running, dancing, sweating, feeling good. But only heroin takes all the pain away. The closest Annie had come to truly understanding that feeling was with some of the morphine-derived painkillers they had given her in hospital when she was at her worst.

‘How is Heather?’ she asked.

Maureen’s face clouded. ‘She’s progressing,’ she said. ‘I know people said we were being cold and cruel having her put away like that, especially after they leaked her diary in the papers, but the institution was a good idea, for a while at least.’

‘Until she’s ready to face the world again,’ added Luke.

‘Yes,’ agreed his wife, nodding. ‘Do you know, she’s just the age Rachel was when she went missing.’

Annie let the silence stretch for a respectful moment, then she took a photograph of Mihkel from her briefcase. ‘Have you ever seen this man?’ she asked the Hewitts.

They both studied the photo closely, then Luke said, ‘I think so. Can you tell us his name?’

‘Mihkel,’ said Annie. ‘Mihkel Lepikson.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Luke glanced at his wife. ‘Don’t you remember, love? He’s that nice Estonian journalist who came to see us with Inspector Quinn six years ago.’

‘That’s right,’ Maureen said. ‘He was writing about the case back in Tallinn. We’ve kept him up to date, too, over the years. He’s written updates on the story, tried to help as best he can. They’re not all rotten. Reporters.’

‘He was nice, you say?’

‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘Not like the others. At least he was straight with us, and he didn’t write about our private grief, or apparent lack of it. It was the case that interested him, the search for Rachel, what might have become of her.’

‘Did he have any ideas?’

‘None that helped,’ said Maureen.

‘Have you ever seen him again recently?’

‘Not for years. But we’ve had emails and telephone conversations. He’s been helping us to keep Rachel’s name out there, and he usually sends us a clipping if he’s written anything about her in his paper. It’s in Estonian, of course, but you can still see it where he mentions her name, and he writes out a nice translation for us. It’s very difficult when you’re so far away. People forget so easily. We’ve been meaning to get in touch with him.’

‘I’m afraid there’d be no point,’ said Annie. ‘He’s dead.’

The Hewitts looked at one another in shock. ‘Dead? But... how?’

‘He was also murdered. Shortly before Inspector Quinn, we think.’

‘But why? He seemed such a nice young man.’

‘Well, his business is a dangerous one. He worked on exposing crimes and criminals, and they don’t like it when someone does that. There were probably a lot of people had it in for him because of the things he wrote.’

‘About Rachel?’

‘That’s a possibility we have to consider. Do you have these clippings? Could we take them with us and have a look at them? We’ll make sure you get them back.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Maureen opened one of the filing cabinets and pulled out a red folder. ‘They should all be in here. Translations, as well. So you do think Mihkel Lepikson’s death had something to do with Inspector Quinn’s?’

Annie could have kicked herself. She had gone too far. She didn’t want to lie to the Hewitts, but she couldn’t tell them the whole truth, either. A good investigation depended on holding back information from the public. ‘It’s possible,’ she said. ‘We just don’t know. That’s why we’re asking all these questions. I know it must seem a bit strange to you.’

‘But don’t you see?’ Maureen went on. ‘If the two are linked, they might both have something to do with Rachel. It could all be connected. This could be the sort of lead we’ve been waiting for. They might have known where she is.’

‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up,’ Annie said.

‘Hopes? What else could I have except despair? Do you know, there isn’t a day goes by when I don’t imagine the terrible things that could have happened to Rachel over the last six years. That could be happening to her somewhere, even now. Her fear. Her pain. Her desperation. People doing terrible things to her. My little girl alone in the dark with monsters, abandoned. Believe me, I don’t sleep much any more. The nightmares are too frightening.’

Her husband touched her shoulder and said, ‘Or that she’s lost her memory somehow, and has forgotten about us, but is living her life happily somewhere. That’s what I try to think about, anyway.’

Maureen moved towards the doorway. ‘Come with me. Let me show you something.’

Annie raised her eyebrows and glanced at Winsome.

‘I mean it. Just follow me,’ Maureen said. Annie and Winsome did as they were asked.

Maureen took them across the landing and into another, smaller bedroom. ‘This is Rachel’s room,’ she said, in slightly hushed tones. ‘It’s ready for when she comes back. It’s always ready. I wash the sheets every week, and her clothes, even though she hasn’t worn them for a long time. It’s important to keep things clean. That’s hope. And when our daughter comes home at last, it will all have been worthwhile. I suppose you think I’m insane now, but I don’t care. It’s one of the things that keeps me sane. The hope.’

Annie took in the room. It was quite ordinary, not pink or black or anything you might expect from a teenager, thank God, but a neutral tone of blue, with a small writing desk and chair, television and CD player, a few CDs and books in an antique glass-covered bookcase. Posters of Coldplay and Franz Ferdinand adorned the walls. There was also a glossy picture of a sleek BMW standing outside an ugly art deco mansion. Someone, presumably Rachel, had written a thought bubble with the words ‘MINE ONE DAY!!’ in a Sharpie at the top. Annie smiled. Just under window was a collection of stuffed and fluffy animals, clearly going all the way back to Rachel’s childhood. Very girly, she thought.

‘She loves fluffy animals,’ said Maureen, catching Annie’s expression. ‘Collected them. That’s Paddy.’

Annie glanced at the bed. A one-eyed teddy bear missing a fair bit of stuffing sat propped up against the pillow staring at them. It gave her the creeps.

‘Paddy was her first ever animal, when she was a baby. She took him everywhere with her. He was with her in Tallinn. In her hotel room. Inspector Quinn very kindly got him back for us. Paddy’s waiting for her, too. He was her good-luck charm.’

‘I see she liked cars, too,’ said Annie.

‘Oh, that. That was just a bit of silliness. I can’t understand what it was with her and fancy cars. That’s more a boy thing, isn’t it?’

‘Did Rachel still live at home when she...?’

‘When she disappeared. It’s all right, love, you can say the word. Yes, she did.’

‘Did she have a boyfriend?’

‘Not for a while. She’d been seeing Tony Leach for a couple of years, but they split up about a month before she went away.’

Annie remembered the name from Bill Quinn’s reports. ‘Was she upset about it?’

‘Of course. Two years is a long time. But she soon got over him. You do when you’re young, don’t you, though it seems like the end of the world at the time. She shut herself away in her room and cried for two days, then she put him behind her and got on with her life again.’

Maureen led them back into the office, but they remained standing. There wasn’t really an awful lot more to say. Annie got the names and addresses of Tony Leach and the five female friends who had been with Rachel on that fateful hen weekend, thinking one of the girls might know something and might have kept quiet for reasons of her own. At the door, she turned and asked the Hewitts if there was anything more they could tell her about Bill Quinn’s last visit to the house.

‘Like what?’ asked Maureen.

‘What sort of mood was he in?’

‘Well, he was very sad, of course. The poor man had just lost his wife. And he seemed distracted.’

‘Did he say anything odd or surprising? That sort of thing.’

It was Luke who answered. ‘He said one thing that struck me as odd when I thought about it later. We were talking about his wife’s death, and one of the comments he made was that it “changes things”. I’m sure one thinks many things about the death of a spouse, but “it changes things” seems an odd one to me. I mean, it’s sort of self-evident, isn’t it, so why say it? Probably nothing, but there you are. And he told us not to give up hope.’

‘Thank you,’ said Annie. She knew what Bill Quinn had meant.

‘You will keep in touch, won’t you?’ said Maureen. ‘If there’s anything...’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘What little secret would that be?’ Banks asked.

‘Nobody wants to stay in Professional Standards for ever. Annie Cabbot didn’t; I don’t. As you know, it’s not possible, anyway. There’s a strict time limit on the job.’

‘Don’t tell me you want to work Major Crimes,’ said Banks.

‘Well, I’d like something a bit more juicy than PS, yes, and something that earns me a bit more respect from my fellow officers.’

‘And this is a way of getting some on the job experience? In the back door, so to speak.’

‘Something like that. Believe or not, I asked for this job. I wanted the opportunity to work with you.’

‘You were out to get me from the start?’

‘No, you idiot. Stop it. I’m not out to get you, I’m out to learn from you. You might not be aware of it, but you have a reputation, whether you know it or not. Yes, you’re a bit of a maverick and all the rest, and as I’ve just found out, you have a cruel and selfish streak, too, but you’re generally thought of around the county as a pretty damn good detective. Just don’t let it go to your head.’

‘I should have known. Gervaise is grooming you. She’s—’

Joanna waved him aside. ‘She is doing no such thing. She gave me an opportunity to work with you, said if I was lucky I might pick up a few pointers on how a homicide investigation is conducted. That’s all.’

‘But she does know about your ambitions, and she was willing to encourage them?’

‘Area Commander Gervaise is an enlightened woman. We could do with more like her around the place.’

Banks liked and respected Catherine Gervaise, but he had never quite thought of her in that way. He sat in silence for a moment, digesting what he’d just heard, joining the dots. Why hadn’t he figured this out before, right from the start, at that meeting in Gervaise’s office? It gave him choices he hadn’t considered before. He could either continue being an arsehole and leave Joanna out in the cold, or he could make use of her, work her hard, test her skills, treat her as a member of the murder team and try to forget the Professional Standards angle, see if she had the makings of a good homicide detective.

But could she forget the Professional Standards angle? Banks doubted it. He didn’t care if she found out that Quinn was bent. If he was corrupt, then his corruption deserved to be exposed, especially if it had spread to others close to him and allowed a toerag like Corrigan to thrive. Besides, Quinn was dead. What could they do to him now except cloud his reputation? And what was a dead copper’s reputation worth to start with? The ones who found out would soon forget; the rest would neither know nor care. The ones who would be hurt most would be his two children, and they were grown-up enough, resilient enough, to deal with it in time. He already knew that Quinn had probably committed adultery with a woman young enough to be his daughter, and they would no doubt find out about that, too, one way or another. The point was, that he now had Joanna Passero to help him rather than hinder him, if he chose to include her. On the other hand, he was in a foreign land lumbered with an amateur wannabe, if he cared to think of it that way. But these days, he was more of a cup half-full sort of bloke. She had to have some skills he could use. And maybe she could learn.

The waitress came and asked them if they wanted any dessert. Neither did. Banks said they would just stick with the wine, and she smiled and went away.

‘So what you’re saying is that you want to work on all aspects of the investigation, not just the bent copper angle?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘So you’ll do what I say, follow my lead?’

‘Depends what you say, what the lead is. I won’t break any laws, and I won’t turn away from any law- or rule-breaking on DI Quinn’s part. I’ll still do my job.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Banks. ‘I can’t really explain why, but I can’t get the idea out of my mind that Bill Quinn may well have been killed not because of the photos or Corrigan, but because he found out what happened to Rachel Hewitt. And that finding out who killed him might depend on finding out what happened to her. Can you work with that hypothesis?’

‘If you think there’s a definite connection between the time Quinn spent here on that case and what happened subsequently,’ said Joanna, ‘then I’m with you. Let’s find out what it is. But we’re not here to solve the Rachel Hewitt case.’

‘It might not be so easy,’ said Banks. ‘I have a feeling that nobody around here is going to want to open up to us about it. Too much wound licking and mud slinging under the bridge, I’ll bet. We’ll see what we can get from this Toomas Rätsepp tomorrow. If he’s like most cops, it won’t be very much. Then we’ll have a chat with Mihkel’s editor, Erik, see if we can get him to talk a bit. Journalists are pretty simple souls really. They can be very closed mouthed, in my experience, but if they think you can do something for them — i.e., give them an exclusive — then they’ll bend over backwards to help you.’

‘What exactly are you after?’ Joanna asked.

‘Well, ideally I’d like to find Rachel Hewitt alive and well, take her home to her parents, bring her abductor to justice, solve Bill Quinn’s and Mihkel Lepikson’s murders and have their killer put away for life, then world peace would be a nice bonus. But in reality? First I’d settle for finding out who the girl in the photo is and having a good talk with her, see if I can find out who put her up to it. If she did set Quinn up, I very much doubt that it was her own idea. After that, we’ll see where that leads us.’

‘Do you think anyone knows?’

‘I think there’s a good chance that someone does, yes,’ said Banks. ‘It’s more a matter of whether we can get anyone to tell us. If Quinn and Mihkel stayed in touch over the years after they first bonded over Rachel — you know, went fishing together and so on — then I think there’s a chance that Quinn was going to meet Mihkel by the lake and tell him the truth about what happened here, and why. He may have been going to hand the photos over to him.’

‘But Quinn didn’t have the photos on him when he was killed.’

‘That bothered me at first. But remember the mysterious phone call from the pay-as-you-go mobile?’

‘Yes.’

‘What if Mihkel was forced to make that call, to change the time of the meeting or something, or even to arrange it, and what if the different number or something in Mihkel’s voice set off alarm bells, made Quinn suspicious?’

‘But he still went.’

‘Yes. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t on guard, though, cautious. But he clearly wasn’t expecting a crossbow bolt through the heart. He may have left the pictures back in the room until he was sure Mihkel was coming.’

‘That’s possible, I suppose,’ said Joanna. ‘Do you think this Toomas Rätsepp knows?’

‘Why would Rätsepp know? Quinn certainly wouldn’t tell him, and I doubt that anyone else would, either. He might be able to give us some general details about the direction of the investigation, but I wouldn’t expect much more from him. I still think Erik is our best bet, if he’s willing to help.’

‘What makes you think you can solve this after so long, when everyone else has failed?’

‘Because I’m better than them,’ Banks said, smiling. ‘Watch and learn. Seriously, though. A lot’s happened since then. Are you with me?’

Joanna rolled her eyes and laughed. Then she raised her glass and they clinked. ‘I’m with you. Seriously, though,’ she said, leaning forward. ‘I really don’t want us to be working at cross purposes here. I know what you think of me and my job, but we’re both concerned with catching Quinn’s killer, too, right? Are we OK on all this?’

‘We’re OK.’