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.