Whether Pauline overindulged in the services downstairs, Annie had no idea, but she was certainly on the large size, and her complexion was pasty and spotty, as if she ate too much fatty food. Her hair was lank and uncared for, and her nails bitten to the quicks. More signs, Annie thought, that Pauline Boyars had very much let herself go. She was only twenty-five or — six, but she looked over thirty.
The flat was untidy, with clothes lying on the floor, piles of gossip magazines and unwashed dishes, but it didn’t have that all-pervasive smell of fish and chips Annie had expected. Several windows were open, and she could hear kids playing football in the small park at the back. Didn’t anyone go to school any more?
Pauline cleared some newspapers from a couple of chairs, and they sat down. She didn’t apologise for the mess, the way many people would have done, but lit a cigarette and sat on the sofa, leaning forward, elbows resting on her knees. ‘What’s it about?’ she asked.
‘It’s about Detective Inspector Bill Quinn,’ Winsome said.
‘Sounds familiar. Refresh my memory.’
‘The detective from Leeds who worked on Rachel’s case?’
‘Oh, yes. I remember him. Worse than useless, like the rest of them.’
‘He’s been murdered,’ said Winsome.
‘It didn’t do anybody any bloody good, though, did it?’ Pauline went on, as if she hadn’t heard. Her right foot was tapping the whole time they were talking. ‘It didn’t bring Rachel back, did it? If you’re going to be asking me about all that stuff, I need a drink. I won’t offer you any because you’re on duty, and because I don’t have much left.’ She got up and poured a hefty shot of vodka into a tea mug.
‘Pauline, we’re hoping you can help us here,’ said Winsome, in her most soothing voice. ‘Getting drunk won’t help.’
‘Are you crazy?’ She held out the mug. ‘You think this would get me drunk? If only. What do you want to know?’
‘You might have read in the papers that Bill Quinn was killed a few days ago, and his death was suspicious. We’ve been assigned to investigate.’
‘Well, bully for you. It was probably some vicious tattooed drug-dealing Hells Angel he put away years ago.’
‘That’s one possibility,’ said Winsome. ‘But another is that his death was somehow connected with what happened to Rachel.’
‘Nobody knows what happened to Rachel. That’s the bloody point. She might as well have been abducted by aliens.’
Annie saw that Winsome was struggling with Pauline’s hostility, so she gave a quick signal and cut in. ‘You were there that night, Pauline? What do you think happened?’
Pauline stopped tapping her foot and gazed at Annie. Then she stubbed out her cigarette and gulped some vodka. The foot started tapping again. ‘What good would it do to go over it all again? Don’t you think I’ve been over it a million times with the bloody Estonian police, and with your mate Quinn?’
‘I’m sure you must have,’ said Annie. ‘But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it? Maybe over the years you’ve remembered things you didn’t say then?’
‘Remembered? Some hope. Forgotten, more like. I didn’t remember much in the first place. That was the problem.’
‘It’s not surprising,’ Annie said. ‘You were out celebrating. Having a good time. You couldn’t have had any idea what was going to happen.’
Pauline stared at Annie again and sipped more vodka, then stared into the depths of her mug.
‘I’m not judging you, Pauline,’ she went on. ‘I’ve been in this job long enough to know that the best will in the world can’t stop a criminal getting his way. And I’ve been pissed often enough to have done more than a few things I’m ashamed of.’
‘So why do you do it? The job, I mean.’
‘Now there’s a question. I wish I knew the answer.’
Pauline managed a brief smile, which changed the whole structure of her face and showed a flash of the beauty that might still lurk under the ravaged surface. She lit another cigarette.
‘Come on, Pauline,’ Annie said. ‘Tell us about it.’
‘They didn’t believe us, you know.’
‘Who didn’t?’ Winsome asked, picking up the questioning again.
‘The Estonian police. Can you believe it? They thought we’d done it and hidden her body somewhere. They kept going on about it, asking us where we’d put her.’
‘That was probably one of the many theories they developed,’ said Winsome. ‘They have to cover all the angles, no matter how unbelievable some of them seem.’
‘But they never found anyone, did they? They never found Rachel. I think they decided it was us but couldn’t prove it, and they didn’t bother to look any further.’
‘This policeman I’m talking about, Bill Quinn,’ Winsome went on. ‘He was haunted by the failure to find her. We think he might still have been trying to find out what happened right up until the end, when he was killed last week.’
Pauline stared down at her fingernails and nicotine-stained fingers. ‘I don’t get many visitors,’ she said. ‘You must forgive me. I seem to have dropped my social skills down the toilet.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Winsome. ‘Where’s your husband? Is he not around?’
It could have gone either way, and Annie was mentally ready to give Winsome a bollocking later if it blew up in their faces, but Pauline actually softened. Her eyes dampened.
‘We never did get married,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that a joke, after everything that happened?’
‘Whose idea was that?’
‘Both of ours, really. But I suppose I started it. I stayed on in Tallinn. It seemed... I don’t know... disrespectful to leave before the police discovered anything. I couldn’t just leave Rachel like that, could I? But in the end I had to, or I’d still be there, wouldn’t I?’
‘So you postponed the wedding?’
‘At first, yes. It seemed the best idea.’
‘So what happened?’
‘We just postponed and postponed for so long that in the end the whole idea lost its appeal. I was preoccupied with Rachel. I neglected Trevor. He found someone else. They got married two years ago. The old, old story. When I look back, we were way too young in the first place. Young love. What a joke.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Winsome.
Pauline straightened up. ‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘I’m not. Good riddance. That’s what I say.’ She ran the back of her hand over her eyes and glanced from one to the other, then clapped her hands together, showering ash and spilling vodka on the already stained and threadbare carpet. ‘So, enough of this maudlin rubbish. What is it you want to know?’
‘First off,’ said Winsome, ‘about Detective Inspector Quinn. Do you have any idea why he would remain interested in the case, and why it might get him killed six years later?’
‘Absolutely none at all. I hardly saw him. I mean, I only talked to him once or twice. I know he saw a bit of Maureen and Luke, too. That’s Rachel’s parents.’
‘Yes, we’ve talked to them,’ said Winsome.
‘Well, we keep in touch, like, occasionally. I’m afraid there’s not much more I can add. But why do you think it was that? Rachel? Couldn’t there be many other explanations for why he was killed?’
‘We have our reasons,’ said Winsome. ‘Did you like Bill Quinn?’
‘Like? I never really thought about it. I must admit, I was a bit of a mess back then, and he was kind enough, his manner, you know... nicer than some of those Estonian cops. There was a bloke called Rätsepp. “Rat’s arse”, we called him. He was the one who kept going on about us doing it and dumping her body.’
‘They were probably all very frustrated,’ Winsome said.