Peter Robinson - Watching the Dark

‘Poor sod,’ said Banks.

Blackstone raised his glass. ‘I’ll drink to that. And to life.’

They clinked glasses. One of the office girls smiled at Banks. ‘Birthday?’

‘Something like that,’ he said. The girls moved on to boasting about drunken exploits in Sharm-el-Sheikh, paying no further attention to Banks and Blackstone, who spoke quietly anyway. A gust of warm wind blew along the alley and carried just a hint of the summer to come.

‘There are a couple of things I’d like to know,’ said Banks, glancing around. ‘First off, it looked very much like a professional hit.’ Banks described what they had deduced so far about the crime scene.

Blackstone thought for a moment. ‘Well, if access was as easy as you say, anyone could have done it, though it would have had to have been someone who knew Bill was there, I suppose, someone who knew his habits and the lie of the land, or somehow managed to lure him down to the edge of the woods. And what professional hit man uses a crossbow? Have you considered an inside job, or helper, at any rate?’

‘Naturally,’ said Banks. ‘We’re open to just about anything at the moment, and we’ll be checking everyone out. But there are a few problems with that theory. How would someone on the inside get rid of the murder weapon, for example? As far as I’m concerned, the most likely scenario is that it was someone Quinn put away, a criminal with a grudge and a taste for revenge.’

One of the office girls lowered her voice, but not quite enough. ‘And the last night we were there Cathy pissed herself right in the main street. It was simply dripping down her legs. Like something out of Bridesmaids . Talk about embarrassed! Laugh? I nearly died. Jenny said we should find a Boots and buy her some adult nappies.’

‘Why do it at St Peter’s?’ Blackstone asked. ‘Have you thought about that? If someone wanted Bill out of the way, there must have been better opportunities, surely?’

‘Not necessarily, especially if timing was an issue. My guess is that it was easier. He was a sitting duck at St Peter’s. It might have been a bit harder to isolate him in the city. More chance of witnesses there, too. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an element of bravado. It probably appealed to the killer’s warped sense of humour to kill a cop in a place full of cops, even though they were disabled, or geriatric, for the most part.’ Banks paused. ‘But that begs a few questions.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like how did the killer find out Bill Quinn was at St Peter’s in the first place?’

‘It wasn’t a secret. I mean, anyone could have known, not only people on the inside with him, but others, friends, family, even his coll—’ Blackstone stopped, and his eyes hardened. ‘Wait a minute, Alan. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

‘We have to consider it, Ken. The possibility of a mole in Quinn’s team, someone in the department. There have been rumours, you know.’

‘You think it’s Bill? So what’s going to happen now? The works? Suspend operations, seize all the files? Send in Professional Standards or the Independent Police Complaints Commission?’

‘I hope it won’t come to that,’ said Banks. ‘We’re not sure about anything yet. All I’m saying is that it’s an angle we have to consider along with all the others until we can rule it out. Someone knew where to find him.’

‘Any trace evidence? Forensics?’

‘None yet. His pockets had been emptied, and his mobile is missing. We’re tracking down the provider, then at least we’ll have a list of calls to and from. The CSIs are working on the usual — footprints, fabrics, DNA, fingerprints. The area near the tree where they think the killer stood looks promising.’

‘So what do you want from me?’

‘Area Commander Gervaise will be asking for full details of Bill Quinn’s cases from the brass, and for a list of villains he’s put away, along with their release dates, but I thought I’d just pick your brains in the meantime, get a head start.’

Blackstone rubbed his cheeks. ‘Another drink first?’

‘Not for me, thanks, Ken.’

Blackstone studied the remains of his pint. ‘No. I suppose I can make do with what I’ve got left, too. Where to begin?’

‘Wherever you want.’

‘Well, Bill’s been around for a while. You’ll have quite a job on your hands going through the minutiae of his career.’

‘Let’s start at the top, then. Any counter-terrorism investigations?’

‘We try to leave that sort of thing to Special Branch. Of course, West Yorkshire can’t avoid getting in on the peripheries at times, especially in Bradford or Dewsbury and some parts of Leeds, but nothing comes immediately to mind. Surely you don’t believe this was some kind of a fatwa, do you?’

‘Just casting flies on the water.’

‘Aye. One thing I can tell you, though. It was Bill helped put away Harry Lake nearly twenty years ago. He was a young DS then, and it didn’t do his career any harm, I can tell you.’

Banks whistled between his teeth. Harry Lake was famous enough to have had books written about him. He had abducted, tortured and killed four women in the Bradford area in the early nineties, cut them up and boiled the parts. Like the even more infamous Dennis Nilsen, he was only caught when the body pieces he’d flushed down the toilet blocked the drains, and a human hand surfaced in one of his neighbour’s toilet bowls.

‘He can’t be out yet, surely?’ said Banks.

‘I don’t think he’ll ever get out. He’s in Broadmoor. But it’s worth checking. He always swore revenge, and maybe he persuaded some sick follower to do his dirty work for him? You know what it’s like. People like him get marriage proposals, offers of continuing his work for him. According to the prison governor, he gets plenty of those.’

Banks made a note. ‘There must be more?’

‘I suppose his other most famous case was his biggest failure. Well, not his really.’

‘Oh?’

‘The Rachel Hewitt business.’

‘Rachel Hewitt? Isn’t she that girl whose parents keep cropping up in the news, the girl who disappeared in Latvia, or wherever?’

‘Estonia, actually. Tallinn. Six years ago. Yes. And they were in the news again not too long ago. That phone-hacking inquiry. You might have heard. They’ve been complaining about being hounded by the media, phones tapped, private papers and diaries stolen and published. The sister went off the rails, apparently, and the press had a feeding frenzy.’

‘Bill Quinn worked that case?’

‘Bill worked this end, such as it was. Family and friends. Rachel’s background. The Tallinn police worked the actual disappearance. But Bill spent about a week out there liaising quite early in the investigation. Rachel was a West Yorkshire girl, from Drighlington, part of City & Holbeck Division, and he drew the short straw, depending on how you look at it. But with the local police running the investigation, and in a foreign country with different ways of doing things, he didn’t stand much of a chance. It was more of a show of strength and solidarity, really, and a bit of a PR exercise, if truth be told. Otherwise they’d have sent in a team.’

‘They didn’t?’

‘No. The British Embassy was involved, of course, but they don’t carry out criminal investigations in foreign countries. It was strictly Tallinn’s case. Nobody expected Bill to solve it where the locals had failed. That was back in the summer of 2006. As expected, he got precisely nowhere, but he did get his photo in the papers quite often, and he did a few press conferences with the parents of the missing girl.’

‘The Hewitts have had to use the media to keep their daughter’s name in the public eye, haven’t they?’