Watching the Dark (Inspector Banks Mystery)

by Robinson, Peter

  Chapter 12

  Stone walls do not a prison make / Nor iron bars a cage. The lines from the old poem came to Banks as he got out of the taxi in front of Patarei. Perhaps in some cases, that was true, he thought, but nobody had mentioned it to the builders of this prison. Beyond the rusted, graffiti-covered gates, a guard tower stood commanding a view over a prison yard overgrown with weeds and scattered with rubbish. The long grey brick building stretched alongside it.

  Banks followed the signs to what he thought was the entrance, all the while keeping his eyes open for a tail. But he saw no one. Eventually he came to the entrance. Beside it stood a small ticket office in which an old woman sat alone. She took some euros from him, gave him a guidebook, then smiled, showing a relatively toothless mouth, and pointed the way in. Banks thought she was probably the first Estonian he had met who didn’t seem to speak English. Perhaps she didn’t speak at all.

  Though it was warm and sunny outside, the interior of the old prison was dank and chilly. There were puddles on the floors and damp patches had discoloured the walls and ceilings. In places, the whitewash and plaster on the arched roof and the institutional green paint on the walls had peeled away to expose red brick underneath.

  And the place smelled. Probably not as bad as when it was a functioning prison, but it smelled. Damp. Rot. Sweat. Fear.

  Banks was alone, or so he thought until he walked into one of the cells to get a better look and saw a young couple already there, guidebook in hand. They might have been a honeymoon couple, handsome young man and pretty girl, and Banks wondered what the hell they were doing visiting such a place. They smiled, and he smiled back.

  On the wall of the cell were head-and-shoulders shots of young girls, along with a few nude models. Further along the corridor, Banks passed what must have been an office. It was impossible to get in the doorway now, as it was piled almost to the top with rubbish, mostly old telephones, radio parts, bits of desks and chairs, papers, various broken circuit boards, and in front of it all, a rusty old mechanical typewriter. Banks crouched and saw that the keyboard was in Cyrillic script.

  The next floor seemed to be have been devoted almost entirely to the prison hospital. The cells were larger, more like wards for ten or twelve people, with tubular-metal frame beds and thin stained mattresses. It reminded him of Garskill Farm. In the doctors’ offices, medical forms, sheets of handwritten figures and old newspapers still littered the desks, next to old typewriters, again everything in Russian. One of the newspapers had a colour photograph of a beach and palm trees on the bottom corner, and Banks guessed it was probably an advert for vacations in the sun.

  Worst of all were the operating theatres. Metal gurneys slatted like sinister beach recliners stretched under huge bug-eyed lamps beside old-fashioned machines with obscure dials and buttons, like something from a 1950s science-fiction movie. The glass-fronted cabinets still housed bottles of pills, phials, potions and boxes of ampoules and syringes. The tiles had come away from the walls in places to reveal damp stained plaster. The dentist’s chair with the old foot-pedal drill just about did it for Banks. He moved along quickly, tasting bile.

  He had been wandering for about fifteen minutes and was standing in an eerie room with splotchy brown and red walls when it happened. The sudden but surprisingly gentle voice came from behind him.

  ‘They say it was used as a pre-trial holding facility, but have you ever seen an execution room in a pre-trial facility?’

  Banks turned. The man behind him was youngish, mid-thirties perhaps, prematurely balding, with a goatee beard and moustache. He was slightly taller than Banks, and skinny, and he didn’t seem in the least threatening. Banks recognised him immediately as the man who had been following him around Tallinn.

  ‘You get my message, then?’ he said, in heavily accented English.

  ‘Who are you?’ Banks asked.

  ‘My name is Aivar Kukk. I was policeman many years ago.’ Even though he spoke softly, his voice still echoed in the cavernous corridors of the decaying prison.

  ‘Why have you been following me?’

  ‘To make certain that you were not being followed by Hr Rätsepp or his men.’

  ‘And am I?’

  ‘Not that I have seen. Perhaps he does not see you as much of a threat.’

  ‘To him? I’m not.’

  ‘But you may be when we have finished talking. Even so, I do not think it is Hr Rätsepp you need to fear. Shall we be tourists? This is an interesting place. The execution room was used before it became a pre-trial holding facility, of course. It was first a sea fortress, but is most famous as Soviet-era prison. Many were executed and tortured here. Now art students work on projects, and there are exhibition openings and many other functions. People even get married here. It was to be an art college, but nobody can get rid of the damp.’

  There seemed to be no one else around except the young couple about fifty yards down the corridor, Banks thought as he walked along with Aivar Kukk. He wondered if the young couple were thinking of getting married here. The arched corridors seemed to stretch on and on ahead for miles, and the chilly damp had seeped into his bones. Banks gave an involuntary shudder. ‘I can believe it. So what’s all the cloak-and-dagger stuff about?’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘I mean why the note, and following me. And why meet here?’

  ‘We will not be disturbed. You were not followed here. Patarei has just opened again for the tourist season. Nobody will come here at this time. Do you not think it is an interesting place?’

  ‘All prisons give me the creeps.’

  ‘This one certainly should.’

  As they walked and talked, Banks wasn’t paying quite as much attention to the crumbling decor and the claustrophobic cells, but in some places he noticed there was so much graffiti and paint splashed over the walls and floors, as if someone had let loose a bunch of drunken art students. ‘How did you know I was here in Tallinn?’ Banks asked.

  ‘I read what happened to Bill Quinn in the English newspaper, and then Mihkel Lepikson. I knew it would be a matter of time. If nobody came soon, I would have sent a message. I still have friends in the department and at newspapers. We meet, drink beer, gossip, and they keep me informed. Tallinn is small city. Estonia is small country. Is not too difficult to know when a policeman comes from England, or what he is doing here.’

  ‘And what am I doing here?’

  ‘You are looking for killer of Bill Quinn and Mihkel Lepikson.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Is not difficult. You have talked with Toomas Rätsepp, Ursula Mardna and Erik Aarma.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes. You are looking for Rachel Hewitt.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I saw you go in club, remember? Club with no name.’

  Banks tried not to show how perplexed he was by all this. ‘Seeing as you know so much of my business,’ he said, ‘perhaps you can tell me where Rachel is?’

  ‘I am afraid I cannot. I do not know.’

  ‘Then why are we here?’

  ‘Please come here,’ Aivar said, entering another open cell with rows of bunk beds in it. Banks followed him over to the window and saw through the bars the beautiful pale blue waters of the Baltic dancing with diamonds of sunlight, the undulating line of a distant shore across the bay. It made him think what the view must have been like from Alcatraz. He had looked out on the prison island from Fisherman’s Wharf just last year, but he hadn’t taken the boat out and seen the San Francisco skyline from the inside. He hated prisons, and he wouldn’t have come here today if he hadn’t been curious about the note.

  ‘I think that must have been the greatest punishment of all,’ said Aivar. ‘To look on a view like that and to be locked in a cell.’

  They remained silent, admiring the view that had represented unattainable freedom to so many. ‘I can help you,’ Aivar said finally. ‘I was junior investigator. I work
with Bill Quinn on original case.’

  ‘I know,’ said Banks. ‘Ursula Mardna told me.’

  ‘Ursula Mardna was good Prosecutor. Toomas Rätsepp was lead investigator. Boss. I was junior. But I work with Bill, all night we are asking questions, walking streets, just two, three days after girl disappear, as soon as we have some information where they had been drinking.’

  ‘What really happened?’

  ‘I have never told anyone.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Fear. First for my job, then for my life. But now it is too late.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I no longer have anything to fear. Nothing anybody does can stop truth coming out now. Too many people know things. Too many people are asking questions. Murder was a desperate move.’

  ‘We think Bill Quinn was killed because his wife died, and he got in touch with Mihkel about what really happened over here. There were photographs,’ Banks said. ‘A girl. Bill. Here in Tallinn. He was blackmailed. With his wife dead, they didn’t matter.’

  Aivar gazed out over the water, a sad, wistful look in his eyes. ‘So that is what it was,’ he said. ‘I wonder how they get to him. They cannot use the same threats they use with me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Let’s walk again.’

  They left the cell. Banks just caught from the corner of his eye the figure of a blonde woman disappearing into a cell several yards away. Joanna Passero. Aivar clearly saw her, too. ‘Your colleague?’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Inspector Passero.’

  ‘A good idea. I approve. I do the same in your position. Perhaps she need to learn how to keep better hidden, but let her follow. Very beautiful woman, is she not?’

  ‘What happened?’

  Banks saw a small room off to the side that looked as if its walls had been splashed with blood from a bucket. Someone had drawn red hearts and written LOVE in big dripping red letters. In the old library, there were still books on the wooden shelves, piled haphazardly, all in Russian, or so it appeared from their covers. On one window ledge stood a big old reel-to-reel tape recorder, its innards partially exposed. And everywhere the damp and the smell.

  Aivar leaned against a rickety wooden desk. ‘We walk around Old Town, Bill and me, asking questions. Tuesday night. We know they are in St Patrick’s bar because girls have remembered some things. That is last bar they are all together. Australian boy, bartender, he tell us he see Rachel leave after her friends and turn in the wrong direction. I think he likes her, so he quickly runs after her to warn her, and he sees her turn corner into side street. Not far along is nightclub with no name, where I see you.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Outside is a car, very expensive car. Mercedes. Fill whole street.’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘Silver grey. Barman, his name is Steve, he sees Rachel go in club. He thinks to go after her, then he thinks perhaps she meet someone, she is not so lost after all.’

  ‘He was sure it was Rachel?’

  ‘She wears short yellow dress. Blonde hair. He can see.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Banks, glancing towards the window. ‘I knew there was something about that place.’

  ‘You have hunch, yes?’

  ‘Something like that. So what happened?’

  They left the library and walked back down the arched brick corridor. There was no sign of Joanna, but Banks knew she was not far away. Not that it mattered now; he didn’t feel he was in any immediate danger.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Aivar. ‘It was late. We go in club, but nobody knows anything. No silver Mercedes. Nothing. Do not like cops. We report to Investigator Rätsepp in his office, and he says to leave it with him. Next day. Next day. Nothing happen. We hear no more. When I ask, he tell me it was not a good lead, that barman was mistaken. We look for Steve again, even though Rätsepp says not to, but we cannot find him. His friend in St Patrick’s tell us he return to Australia.’

  ‘So let me get this clear,’ said Banks. ‘You get a lead to where Rachel went after St Patrick’s, probably the last place she was seen alive. You take it to your boss. He tells you to leave it with him. It evaporates.’

  ‘I am sorry?’

  ‘It disappears. Nothing more is done. No follow up.’

  ‘It disappears. Yes. Goes nowhere. No further action. Hr Rätsepp insist.’

  ‘Did you talk to Bill about it?’

  ‘Next day, I try. He is very quiet. Says Rätsepp must be right and barman must be mistaken, and it is not worth following. I do not understand. We are both excited when we talk to Steve. Then Rätsepp call me in his office and tell me I must never question his orders or judgements if I care about my career. I do care then, but not later. I leave after a year. Second day I am at home, two men come and, how do you say . . . they beat me up.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘Not so badly I need hospital, but they know how to hurt. Then they tell me if they ever find out I mention Rachel case or club again, they will kill me. I believe them.’

  ‘So you told no one until now?’

  ‘No. I get job in tourist business. Learn better English. Mind my own business. Keep my head down. But I never forget.’

  ‘Did Ursula Mardna know?’

  ‘No. I do not believe Rätsepp tell her.’

  Banks felt some relief that his suspicions about Ursula were probably wrong and not everyone on the case was bent or intimidated. But she hadn’t known about the lead. Rätsepp hadn’t passed it on to her. It stopped with him, and he was Rebane’s man.

  They passed the execution room with the hole in the floor, where the Russians used to hang people before the Second World War, before the Nazis took over for a few years. Banks had had enough of Patarei by now and suggested they get out of the place. Aivar said they must leave separately, as they came.

  ‘There is just one thing,’ Banks said as they shook hands.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The silver Mercedes. I don’t suppose the barman got the number?’

  ‘Only part.’

  ‘Did you ever find out who owned it?’

  Aivar shuffled his feet in the grit. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘That was another reason to do as Rätsepp told me.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I cannot help be curious, so I check. Not so many silver Mercedes. A name comes up.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Banks. ‘Joosep Rebane.’

  ‘No. It was Viktor Rebane. His father,’ he said, then he turned and walked off towards the exit.

  Krystyna looked a little nervous, as well she might, thought Annie, as she sat in front of the large screen television and watched the VIPER display. With any luck, she was about to identify Robert Tamm as the man who came by Garskill Farm on Wednesday morning over a week ago, the morning that Mihkel Lepikson was murdered. She had already identified Roderick Flinders as the man who had abducted her, tied her up, gagged her and locked her in the basement of his house. Flinders was in custody, and a whole range of charges were being prepared against him. The CPS was having a field day. Annie and Winsome thought they would let him sweat for a while longer before talking to him. All the better to let him contemplate his options, which were getting more limited by the hour.

  Of course, Krystyna’s identification wouldn’t prove that Tamm murdered Mihkel Lepikson, only that he was at Garskill Farm on the morning in question, but taken in concert with the rest of the forensic evidence, including fabrics and the DNA tying him to woods where Bill Quinn was murdered, and the tyre tracks and fingerprints in the glove compartment of the rented Ford Focus tying him to both crime scenes, it would go a long way towards helping convict him. The Glasgow police had found a crossbow in Tamm’s cellar, too. So Krystyna was about to bear witness against a hardened hit man.

  Luckily VIPER, the Video Identification Parade Electronic Recording, had replaced the old line-ups, where a witness walked in front of a row of people of similar description to the suspect and picked out
the guilty one. She didn’t have to face that sort of confrontation with Tamm. But she was nervous, nonetheless, especially after her experience with Flinders.

  Eventually, it turned out to be a simple matter. He was the fourth individual to be displayed on-screen, and she recognised him immediately. Every little helped. The Glasgow police had located Tamm and picked him up easily enough, and the two officers who delivered him to Eastvale had seemed happy to dump their prisoner and head off for a night on the town on expenses. Annie wished them luck. She knew what a night on the town in Eastvale was like. Glasgow, it wasn’t.

  Krystyna had returned with Annie to the Harkside cottage on Sunday night after a mandatory stop at the hospital for a quick examination. She was no worse for wear, but a little tearful and contrite. Annie had pampered her with a long bath, pizza, wine and television. Krystyna had even learned a few more words of English, and, to Annie’s eye at least, she was putting a bit more meat on her bones with every meal. At Annie’s suggestion, Krystyna had actually telephoned her parents in Pyskowice, and there were more tears and talk of reconciliation and going home, or so Annie gathered the from the tone, and from Krystyna’s sign language at the end of the conversation. Krystyna seemed more cheerful after the phone call, at any rate, though Annie had a feeling that she wouldn’t stay very long in a small town in Silesia. But she did hope that perhaps the next time Krystyna left home, she would do it the right way, with a real job in hand. There might even be something in Eastvale to suit her, if she improved her language skills.

  Leaving Krystyna with Winsome in the squad room, Annie took Doug Wilson with her – he needed the experience – and they went into interview room three, where Robert Tamm was sitting as still as a meditating monk, and as expressionless as a stone.

  Annie spread her files on the table and leaned back, tapping her pen on the metal surface. ‘Well, Robert,’ she started. ‘Quite a pickle you’re in, isn’t it?’

  Tamm said nothing. Whether he understood her or not, she couldn’t tell. She thought ‘in a pickle’ might be too obscure an expression for a foreigner. ‘You’re in a lot of trouble,’ she said.