‘Leave no stone unturned, right?’
‘Something like that. We’re just trying to find reasons for what might have happened to Rachel in Tallinn, and falling foul of international drug-smugglers was one scenario. They can be very ruthless.’
‘When did you find out what happened?’ Annie asked.
‘I suppose it was about three or four days after she’d disappeared. A policeman came around. Uniformed. Wanted to know if I knew anything about where she was. Apparently DI Quinn was over in Tallinn then. He interviewed me in more detail when he got back a few days later, but I couldn’t help him.’
‘How did you react when you heard what had happened?’
‘I was gutted. Naturally. God, it was a terrible time. I went to see her parents, you know, just out of support and friendship, like, but they weren’t interested. I was yesterday’s news.’
‘How had you got along with them before?’
‘Well enough, I suppose. Or as well as anybody who wanted to steal away their precious little girl.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was weird. Sometimes it was like they didn’t want her to grow up, and she didn’t want to. She was very childlike in some ways. If ever she was away, she had to phone her mother every day. They were always lovey-dovey, you know, with pet names and lots of hugs and kisses. You must have seen those awful stuffed animals if you’ve been to the house. And there was a stupid budgie she doted on. She’d spend hours talking to the bloody thing. I never thought I’d be jealous of a budgie, but if I’d had the chance I’d have opened the front door and the cage.’ He smiled. ‘But it was just a facet of her, that’s all. The little girl who doesn’t want to grow up, but who wants to be rich, a Disney princess. But she was bright and ambitious, good at her job, and she could be ruthless if she needed to be. At the same time, she couldn’t cut herself loose from her mother’s apron strings. It sometimes seemed like a tug of war between me and them, with her in middle. In the end none of us won.’
It sounded like a nightmare to Annie, who had enjoyed a relatively liberal childhood in the commune. Admittedly, she had lost her mother at an early age, but there had been surrogates, even if there was no replacement. And her father Ray always did his best, even if he was a bit forgetful when he was ‘in’ a painting, as he used to say.
‘Did the two of you ever go away together?’ she asked.
‘Once,’ said Tony. ‘The year before... you know. We went on holiday together. Well, not just the two of us, a group, like.’
‘How did her parents react?’
‘They weren’t too keen at first, but Rachel was good at getting her own way. She probably had to promise not to sleep with me.’
‘Did she?’ asked Annie.
Tony gave a wistful smile. ‘It was one of the best times of my life,’ he said.
‘I’ll take it she did, then. Where did you go?’
‘An all-inclusive on Varadero Beach, Cuba. We’d been saving up for it. It was expensive, but worth it.’
‘Cuba hardly sounds like the sort of environment for a girl like Rachel,’ said Winsome.
‘You’re right about that. She hadn’t much to say for the political system or the cleanliness of Havana. But she did love the beach and her Danielle Steele. And she phoned her mother every day.’
‘Dutiful daughter,’ Annie commented.
‘Look, I know some of this is coming out all wrong,’ said Tony. ‘But Rachel was a good person, despite it all, the ambition, the love of money. She had the biggest heart of anyone I’ve known. She’d do anything for you. She wasn’t greedy, and she wasn’t selfish. In the end, I suppose we just weren’t meant to be together.’
‘Did she make any friends over in Cuba, at the hotel, on the beach?’
‘Like who?’
‘Europeans, perhaps? Especially Eastern Europeans. Russians or Estonians, for example?’
‘Not that I know of. We pretty much stuck together the whole time.’ A sound came from the front room. ‘Is that Melanie calling?’
Annie heard the voice, too. ‘Sounds like it,’ she said. ‘I think it’s time for us to go now.’ She was certain that when Tony took in the tea they had prearranged some signal to bring the interview to an end, and this was probably it. Annie looked at Winsome, who just shrugged, and they followed Tony through to the front door, wished him and Melanie well, and left.
‘I am not at all sure how I can help you,’ said Ursula Mardna. The Office of the Prosecutor General was in a neo-classical style two-storey house on Wismari, a peaceful, treelined street, not far from the Parliament building and the British Embassy. The place was an old private house, and Ursula Mardna’s office had probably been the master bedroom. It was a large space, with all the trappings of an important and powerful government official. Banks had been watchful on their walk over there, and he didn’t think they had been followed. If his theory were correct, and Rätsepp had put someone on his tail to keep track of the progress of his investigation, then he probably already knew that Banks would be visiting Ursula Mardna this morning.
You couldn’t really compare the function of the Prosecutor here that closely to the Crown Prosecution Service back home, Banks thought. From what he had read, the relationship was a lot more complicated and political, rather than just a matter of decisions being made on whether there was enough evidence, and whether the evidence was good enough to merit a prosecution. The Prosecutor guided an investigation in a very hands-on way, including the collection of evidence and use of surveillance. In some ways, he imagined, the Prosecutor was more like the American District Attorney, but perhaps even more complicated. Prosecutors would also turn up at crime scenes. Of course, the disappearance of a young English girl in Tallinn was a high-profile case, especially when she hadn’t been found after several days, or years.
‘We’re just trying to cover all the angles we can,’ said Banks, ‘and you were instrumental in the Rachel Hewitt investigation.’
Ursula Mardna waved down Banks’s comment. ‘Please. It was not a most glorious success. I wake up still and think about that poor girl some nights.’ She had a strong accent but her English was clear, and for the most part correct. Banks placed her at about forty, or just over. That would have made her in her mid-thirties when she worked the Rachel Hewitt case. Quite young. It could have been a career-making case, if it had been solved. As it was, she didn’t seem to be doing too badly. She was stylishly dressed and attractive, with an oval face, lively brown eyes and reddish-blonde hair cut short and ragged around the edges, in a rather punkish, pixie style. She had no piercings that Banks could see, but wore some rather chunky rings and a heavy silver bracelet.
‘You don’t believe she might still be alive somewhere?’ he asked.
She gave Banks a pitying glance. ‘No more than you believe it, Hr Banks. Or you, Pr Passero.’
‘It would, indeed, be a miracle,’ Joanna said, and turned a page in her notebook.
‘We got most of the details from Hr Rätsepp,’ Banks went on, ‘but we were just wondering if you have a different view of things? Perhaps there were things he didn’t tell us?’
‘Toomas Rätsepp was a fine investigator,’ said Ursula Mardna. ‘One of our best. If he could not solve the case, nobody could.’
‘What about his team?’
‘Fine officers.’
‘So in your opinion, everything that could possibly be done was done?’
‘Yes. We were most thorough.’
Banks wondered about that. Rätsepp had said the same thing. He also had to keep reminding himself not to expect too much, that he was talking to a lawyer, basically, however high-ranking and however close her role was to that of the investigator. What was she going to say, that Rätsepp was a sloppy copper and the investigation was a shambles? No. She was going to defend her team, especially to an unwelcome foreign detective. ‘Do you remember DI Quinn?’ he asked. ‘That’s really who I’m here about.’