All that Glitters

by Les Cowan

  “Detective Chief Inspector Stevenson is going to be chairing this,” DI Thompson informed them as they walked down the corridor. “He’ll handle the rest of the introductions. This has been a funny one – started off a suicide and some kiddy pics well within a DI’s remit, and it’s been moving up the food chain ever since. Now it’s at DCI. Where it’s going to end up goodness knows.”

  It was a long time since David had been in such a high-powered meeting. Sometimes in Madrid he had to advocate from recovering drug addicts at police or court meetings but not so far in Scotland. Now there was a DCI at the head of the table, the Procurator Fiscal next to him, the pathologist next to him, and a bunch of detectives he’d never seen before, as well as Thompson and Carmichael. A couple of civilian IT staff and a financial crime analyst made up the numbers. Most surprising was to see Sandy Benedetti dressed in an immaculate business suit and tie, sitting with a pile of papers in front of him. They glanced briefly at each other and nodded as David sat down. Thompson had told him on the way that Sam Hunter had been offered the chance to come in and say a few words but not surprisingly had declined. The police liaison officer who had been keeping in contact with her came on her behalf and would report back. David and Gillian seemed to complete the attendance list.

  Stevenson started without further ado. He was a big man, and everything in his manner said that he was used to being in charge. It looked like the main function of any team Stevenson led was to jump when he said jump. A variety of reports had been circulated – though not to David or Gillian – and after introductions there was a quick run around the table to see if anyone wanted to elaborate. Most diplomatically declined or added just a word or two for clarification. Finally, Stevenson closed the folder in front of him, pushed his chair back a bit, and took a sip of water.

  “So, what are we looking at here?” he asked, though it wasn’t a question he expected anyone else to answer. “Death in suspicious circumstances – an unlawful killing, I think we’re agreed.” He glanced at the fiscal, who nodded cooperatively. “And another attempted on Sunday night. A bunch of obscene images doing the rounds, including to our own officers.” Here he looked pointedly at the IT team, who had the grace to look down and shuffle some papers. “Mr Benedetti, I believe you have been suspended by your employer pending the outcome of proceedings. But in the meantime you are offering assistance to the investigation. Is that correct?” Sandy nodded dutifully but without much enthusiasm. “We’ll hear more from Mr Benedetti in due course. And Reverend Hidalgo and Dr Lockhart – we need to express our appreciation to you both for what you’ve been through. If it hadn’t been for you we wouldn’t even be at this point, which brings me” – David noticed the operative “me” rather than “us”, as Stevenson paused for a second to consult a sheet in front of him – “to Mr Daniel McGuire, aka ‘Spade’. Now, Mr ‘Spade’ has declined to attend today and there’s nothing we can do to oblige him, but he has spoken to our IT team and I think you can speak for him. Yes? Good. We’ll come to that later.

  “To summarize: we have a body constituted as a church – Power and Glory – which has, until recently, held an account at Salamanca Bank. Mike Hunter noticed it was at variance with what it should have been to the tune of about £20 million. He tried to investigate but PGC were alerted to the fact; we all know with what results.” Sandy studied the papers in front of him as if they were his rich Italian aunt’s last will and testament.

  “At the present time the account in question is virtually empty, the church is closed, properties previously occupied by the lead pastor, one Maxim Blatov, and his assistant Mikhail Lubchenco, are now vacant. DS Quinn, I believe you’ve been doing previous searches?”

  “Yes, sir,” a ginger-haired man next to David spoke up nervously. “We ran the names and descriptions and anything comparable. Not much came up until Mr Benedetti mentioned a conference he’d attended where a similar case was described. We’ve been in touch with Greater Manchester and managed to track it down – different names, but we’re sure it’s the same two men, same MO – sorry, modus operandi – a church as a front. First of all it seemed they were content with some small-time drug dealing, which was laundered through the church weekly offerings. Then they began a prostitution ring. Finally they got careless and began posting flyers. In fact, a retired chief inspector got one on his car windscreen, took exception to it, and got in touch with former colleagues. Manchester were doing a zero tolerance campaign at the time and took a hard line. Blatov and Lubchenco were picked up, along with some strong-arm guys, and ended up with two years and eighteen months, respectively. Six girls from Eastern Europe were found in a locked tenement half starved to death. They were eventually offered asylum on account of what they’d been through. Blatov and Lubchenco were deported when their sentences had expired, both back to Belarus.”

  “So that’s it in a nutshell,” Stevenson summed up in a satisfied tone. “That’s what Blatov and Lubchenco have been linked to in the past. However, just to put it into context: DI McIntosh, you’ve been doing some research in this field. Can you run us through why you think people trafficking is the big ticket now rather than drugs?”

  A young-looking man in noticeably more casual dress than the rest of the CID cohort stood up and made his way to the end of the room.

  “Thank you, sir. As some of you may know I’m doing a criminology thesis on this right now.” An inward groan from the older hands was almost audible; however, this was more in Gillian’s line and she perked up. Stevenson’s expression suggested he didn’t expect to be riveted by the presentation but was being obliged to tolerate it. McIntosh plugged his laptop into a data projector and pressed on.

  “I won’t take up time with the whole background, but just briefly…” Something was muttered to David’s right and he thought he could guess what it was. McIntosh looked up for an instant, took a deep breath, and pressed on, popping up a variety of bullet points, graphs, and tables as he spoke.

  “So, first of all, on the negative side, we think the drug trade in Edinburgh is more or less at saturation point right now. By that I don’t mean that everybody is using and there’s no further demand, but that given the economic recession, focused and effective policing, a number of gangs taken out of circulation – Reverend Hidalgo will know a bit about that – restriction of supply from international seizures, and health service harm-reduction programmes, we feel that things are more or less in balance and that it would be very hard for a new high-volume player to come into the market. Besides, £20 million-worth of new supply would certainly have been noticed at uniformed level as well as by ourselves. So we don’t think that PGC are primarily drug-related. The only other candidates that could possibly generate that kind of money would either be sex work or the arms trade. The arms trade is international, not local, and while vast sums are made these tend to be by traders supplying Afghanistan, Syria, and some African conflicts – so not likely to be happening in Edinburgh. This leaves the sex trade, which has been the main focus of my research.

  “The next question is, what’s going on in both supply and demand that might make the PGC operation feasible? Firstly, I’m suggesting that there is a general increase in demand throughout the Western world. Obviously, sex has been in demand and indeed on sale basically forever but we are currently seeing a massive increase in its commercialization, principally through the internet. Porn sites are ubiquitous, in many cases free, and becoming more and more extreme. What was once cutting-edge porn is now the norm and child porn images have emerged as the new extreme. Now there’s a national specialist agency tasked with trying to make sure these don’t become tomorrow’s new norm.”

  “Any references for that?” Gillian interrupted, apparently the only one in the room actually interested in what DI McIntosh was saying.

  “Certainly. Dr Gail Dines is a leading authority. I can give you more later. Anyway, the general thesis is that more men are using porn than ever before, and that generates a knock-on to grea
ter demand for live, paid-for sex as well. It’s probably all part of general consumerism but that’s another story. Police Scotland is responding to this, and as we all know there have been a series of high-profile prosecutions of sauna operators in the city over the past few years. We’re also taking a much harder line on the so-called ‘toleration zones’ for street workers, such as Salamander Street. So, to cut to the chase…”

  “Thank you, DI McIntosh,” Stevenson intoned, with ill-disguised sarcasm.

  “Yes, sir. To cut to the chase, the equation is that demand is increasing; we are putting more and more pressure on traditional sources of supply, so there is an opportunity to fill that with coerced sex workers trafficked particularly from Eastern Europe. The Schengen agreement has made travel within the EU much easier, so once traffickers can get the girls into the Schengen area then they are more or less free to move them wherever they want. Simultaneously, the economies of many former Warsaw Pact countries have more or less collapsed, creating an increased demand for a new life in the West and a corresponding increase in the black economy.”

  “So, we have criminals from Eastern Europe trafficking girls also from Eastern Europe into sex-mad Western Europe kept in locked houses because we’ve shut down all the saunas. That it?” Stevenson interrupted.

  “Yes, sir. I… eh … think that sums it up.”

  “Good. Now we can move on. As it happens we’ve had rumours of new sex premises from a number of sources, including internet chat. It all seems to add up. If the sums going through that account are all or mainly from prostitution then we must be looking at more than twenty girls. Mr Benedetti has told us about the more conventional activities of the church and I believe you’ve also visited, Reverend Hidalgo. Seems to be a very persuasive cover.

  “So, that’s what we know. Now, what we want to find out. DI Thompson, I think you’ve got something to guide us through that?”

  “Yes, sir.” Thompson stood up and made his way to the opposite end of the room from McIntosh’s presentation, where a flip chart stand that David hadn’t previously noticed was set up. Thompson turned the blank page over to a numbered list.

  “I’ve listed these more in time order than order of importance,” he began. “Number one: how exactly did Blatov and Lubchenco get child pornography images onto Mike Hunter’s computer? We have a general picture of that from Spade but we’d like more detail, such as the nature of the enterprise in Minsk that seems to own the IP address the trojan communicated with. We’ll have to liaise with the Belarusian authorities on that. Number two: exactly how was the murder carried out? Working hypothesis is that Mr Hunter was intercepted somewhere on his run, injected with a massive dose of insulin, brought back home, and hanged when he no longer had the capacity to resist. Hence no bruising to the body or signs of a struggle, no wounds, no poisons in the blood, and no murder weapon – other than a syringe and there’s plenty of them lying around in the street. Mrs Hunter actually came up with that scenario.” At this the locum pathologist had the grace to shuffle a bit and look embarrassed.

  “Number three: where did the money vanish to? I think the IT section have obtained permission to formally contract with Spade to look into that. He seems to be our best bet. Recovery of the cash is clearly part of the objective. Linked to that, number four, the whereabouts of Blatov and Lubchenco. Ports and airports are under observation. We have no indication that they’ve left the country but then no indication that they haven’t. Then, finally, how was that cash generated, and if it’s another prostitution racket with people trafficking thrown in, then where are these girls and are they at risk?” Thompson paused for a second for questions. There being none, he sat down and studied his notes.

  “So is that a fair summary, then?” Stevenson asked the room in general, hands clasped over a more than ample girth. “Before we go on to lines of inquiry and our strategy on this one we’re agreed on what we know, what we don’t know, and what we’re aiming for: the culprits, the cash, and whatever commodity they’ve been selling, in that order, ok?” Stevenson paused for confirmation but couldn’t resist a smile at the nice alliteration. He’d have to remember that one for the final report. Just as he opened his mouth to continue someone else spoke.

  “Actually, I’m not sure I can entirely go along with that.” David Hidalgo was a bit surprised by the sound of his own voice in a meeting where he’d been determined to keep quiet and let the cops get on with it.

  “Go on, Reverend Hidalgo…” Chief Inspector Stevenson said slowly, the soul of professional politeness but an edge of irritation in his voice. “What’s your problem?”

  David cleared his throat, took his glasses off, and gave them a wipe.

  “Well, I’m entirely an amateur in this and you might say only involved by accident; maybe it’s just a question of words.” David was sitting upright, leaning slightly forward, and speaking directly to Stevenson. It was clear this was no mere matter of terminology. There was an edge to his tone that struck a new note in the meeting.

  “If you’re right in saying that these guys have previously used a church to cover prostitution and people trafficking and there’s a good chance they’re doing the same thing here, then firstly I have a problem with the word ‘commodity’.” Stevenson raised one eyebrow. The rest of the meeting had suddenly woken up and was paying attention. The cops in the room were not used to seeing the boss challenged in a public setting. They watched Hidalgo to see what was coming next.

  “I appreciate you’re trying to cover whatever they’re selling – drugs, pornography, or sexual services – but in any of these cases I think we need to keep a focus that this is about people: the addicts, the children, the girls. I just think it’s unfortunate to call any of these ‘commodities’. I’ve worked with all of these sorts of victims. When you see what it does to them – one year, five years, even ten years after – then you stop thinking about it just as a matter of buying and selling.

  “And secondly…” This is great, Stevenson’s subordinates around the room were thinking. There’s more to come. This Hidalgo bloke was definitely not what they had expected from a minister. He spoke clearly, concisely, and pointedly and didn’t seem the least phased by the big man opposite.

  “Secondly, I’m not happy with that order of priority. To my mind the cash is the lowest priority and the victims are the highest. Of course the culprits need to be apprehended, but if we get the culprits and the cash but can’t help the victims, then as far as I’m concerned we have completely failed. The victims are the priority. To my mind, finding out who has been exploited and damaged and helping them matters much more than the money and even more than the perpetrators.”

  There was silence around the table. All eyes were on Stevenson as he fiddled with his pen. The rest of CID was enjoying the experience enormously. The DCI opened his mouth but a fraction of a second too late.

  “Actually, there’s one more point, if I may.” Now it was Gillian’s turn. This was just too good. Half of the team were already imagining the conversation in the canteen at lunchtime.

  “Go ahead, Dr Lockhart.” Stevenson was now almost speaking through clenched teeth.

  “Thank you.” Gillian smiled as sweetly as if she were presenting the weather. “It seems to me that there’s one other interest that hasn’t been mentioned at all. We almost had a second murder two days ago, a fact no one seems to be remembering.” One or two of the CID boys actually looked a bit mystified. A second murder? Who was that? Gillian pressed on.

  “This investigation wouldn’t be happening at all if it wasn’t for Sam Hunter’s insistence and what David and I have managed to find out. Now it looks like whatever else Blatov and Lubchenco are up to, David is persona non grata right now and just missed being a body, not a witness. I fully understand all the priorities you’ve been mentioning, but I have to say I’m somewhat surprised that security of a key player hasn’t even been mentioned. As I understand it the safe house was only supposed to be until today. I’d lik
e to know what you’re planning next.” David shifted a bit uneasily in his chair, cleaned his glasses again, but said nothing.

  “DI Thompson?” Stevenson deflected the question to his subordinate as if any omission was nothing whatever to do with him. Thompson in turn shuffled a bit.

  “Well, no particular plan, sir,” he fumbled. “I imagined we’d just continue with the safe house until we felt the risk had passed.”

  “Well, we appreciate that,” Gillian went on sweetly, “however, with respect, we’ve known that PGC is a front for something illegal and probably responsible for a murder for over a week, yet they still managed to clear out the account, post further images, and take a clean shot at David right in the middle of an active investigation. And I suppose everything in the case is going to be on computer. Well, there does seem to be at least a question over the security of the police network. Wouldn’t you agree?” She turned to the IT team leader who cleared his throat and was about to say something but didn’t get the chance.