‘I suppose you want me to tell you everything I know?’ said Merike, with a hint of irony. Her husky voice was only slightly accented. If she was in her early thirties, Banks calculated, she would have been in her teens when Estonia won its independence from the Soviet Bloc. Old enough to remember life under the old regime. He found himself wondering what her childhood had been like.
‘Not everything,’ he said. ‘Just what you can. First, I’d like to thank you for coming forward and getting in touch.’
Merike seemed surprised. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Not everyone does. That’s all. Sometimes people just don’t want to get involved.’
Merike shrugged. ‘It was such a shock, seeing Mihkel’s photograph in the newspaper like that.’
‘What was your relationship with him?’
‘I suppose he was my boyfriend. My partner. My lover. I don’t know. With Mihkel it was always difficult.’
‘Why?’
‘He is the kind of person who comes and goes in your life. Sometimes he disappears for weeks, or months. At first, it used to drive me crazy, because he would tell me nothing, but now he tells — he told me — a little more, and we talk on the telephone.’
‘When did you last talk?’
‘On Tuesday. Tuesday evening, at about nine o’clock.’
Banks searched for a sheet of paper in his brief case and showed it to Merike, pointing to a number. ‘Is this yours?’
‘Yes, it’s my mobile number. It’s a pay-as-you-go I use when I’m over here. Cheap phone, occasional top-ups.’
‘Did you and Mihkel live together?’
‘No. I travel also, for my job, and we are never in the same place together for long enough. It would be too complicated.’
‘How long have you been seeing each other?’
‘Three years now.’
‘What are you doing in Manchester?’
‘I work as a translator. I’m on a two-week course at the university there. Almost finished.’ She glanced at Annie. ‘I just returned from a weekend retreat in the Lakes, and I haven’t seen any newspapers or television from Friday until this morning. Part of the course. It was beautiful. Much more grand than our Estonian lakes. But it rained a lot.’
‘It always does in the Lake District,’ said Banks. ‘Your English is excellent, by the way.’
‘Thank you. I lived in London for many years, in my twenties.’
‘Do you speak any other languages?’
‘German,’ Merike said, ‘Finnish, Russian, French and a little Spanish. I’m learning Italian. When you grow up in a small country like Estonia, you soon realise that nobody from anywhere else is going to understand you unless you speak their language. Who learns Estonian except Estonians?’
Who, indeed? Banks thought. He hadn’t even known Estonia had a language of its own. He had assumed they spoke Russian there, or perhaps some version of Polish. But languages were not Banks’s strong point. ‘Was Mihkel a translator, too?’
‘Mihkel? Oh, no. His English was very good, but he was no linguist. It seems so strange to be talking about him in the past tense. I must get used to it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Banks.
‘Mihkel knew the risks.’
‘What risks? What was he doing at Garskill Farm?’
‘Is that where he was when it happened? I don’t know it. I had no idea where he was, except that he was somewhere in England. It seemed so strange to be in the same country and not be able to meet. I couldn’t even telephone him. I had to wait for him to ring me.’
‘Mihkel phoned you from a public telephone box in Ingleby,’ said Banks. ‘It’s the nearest village to where he was found. It was about two miles away from where he was staying.’
Merike smiled sadly. ‘Mihkel walked four miles just to talk to me? I would never have thought it of him.’
Annie gave Banks a sharp sideways glance. He knew that she was hoping he wouldn’t spoil Merike’s illusion by telling her that she wasn’t the only reason Mihkel had walked all that way to the telephone. ‘Do you know what he was doing there?’ he asked.
‘He was on an assignment. Mihkel was a journalist. He specialised in investigative reporting. He was freelance, but he worked mostly for a weekly newspaper called Eesti Telegraaf. They specialise in the sort of articles he liked to write.’
‘What were they?’
‘In depth, usually about crime. He also contributed sometimes to a weekly column called “Pimeduse varjus”. In English it means “in the shadow of darkness”. Very sinister. The idea is looking into the darkness. Watching. It’s also about crime.’
‘Watching the dark,’ said Banks.
Merike flashed him a brief smile. ‘Ah, so you like Richard Thompson?’
‘Yes, I do. Very much.’
‘I like that,’ she said. ‘A policeman who admires Richard Thompson.’
‘His father was a Scotland Yard detective,’ Banks said. ‘And a lot of his songs are about murders.’
‘I didn’t know that. About his father, I mean.’
‘My own son’s a musician,’ Banks went on, unable to stop himself, now he felt he was bringing her out of herself a bit, and enjoying the way the gypsy eyes were seeing him in a new light, not just as some faceless authority figure. ‘He’s in a group called The Blue Lamps.’
‘But I know them!’ said Merike. ‘Their new CD is wonderful. The best they have ever done.’
‘Brian will be pleased to hear that.’ Banks felt proud, but he could tell from the waves of impatience emanating from Joanna Passero that she wanted him to get the interview back on track. It was one reason he hadn’t wanted her around. She didn’t understand how important it was to find some common ground with the interviewee, to forge a bond. She was used to interviewing dirty cops, where there was never any possibility of her creating a link because it was an adverse situation from the outset. Annie had been more impatient and aggressive in her interview techniques at first, when she had come from Professional Standards, despite the courses she had taken, but she had learned over the years since then. She knew how Banks operated.
Their food arrived. As they were getting it sorted out, Merike excused herself and went outside for another cigarette. When she came back, they were eating, and her henna hair was damp with drizzle.
Merike sipped some wine and made an apologetic shrug in Banks’s direction. ‘Can’t smoke anywhere these days, even in Estonia.’
‘So what assignment was Mihkel working on at Garskill Farm?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know any details, except that he told me before he left it was something to do with migrant labour, and he wasn’t sure how long he would be away. That was typical Mihkel. He didn’t even dare to take his mobile phone for fear of what would happen if they found it. Not so long ago, a Lithuanian journalist disappeared while he was working on a similar story, all because they found a mobile with a built-in camera among his belongings.’
‘How did Mihkel deliver his story to the newspaper?’
‘I assume he gave it in short pieces to his editor over the telephone. So I am sure he didn’t walk four miles only to talk to me, however gallant it sounds. Though I would like to believe he did. He might have risked writing some things down if he had a good hiding place, in the lining of his clothes or somewhere like that.’
Banks glanced at Annie, who shook her head. They would have taken his clothes apart already, and had clearly found nothing. If Mihkel had hidden any notes, then his torturers had found them first.
‘Why was it so secret?’
‘The people who run these things are all connected with very powerful and dangerous criminals. It’s not a one-man operation. Everything must be in place. Every step of the way must be planned. It takes capital, organisation, enforcement, and the ones in the best position to do that are organised gangs. There is much at stake.’