‘What?’ the superintendent exclaimed. ‘Do you want the paper trail to grind to a halt?’
‘Alan Royston, the force media manager, has a vacancy. While Charlie has a nose for gossip, he never gives anything away. He might be a good guy to have mixing with journalists.’ She sipped her tea. ‘OK, Charlie’s departure’s the highlight. What about the rest?’
‘We’ve been quiet. There’s been an increase in call-outs for shoplifting, a by-product of the economic slump, I suppose, but otherwise we’re not over-stretched.’
‘Got everything you need?’
‘Apart from a new building, you mean? That apart, for the moment we’re fine.’ She paused. ‘Ach,’ she resumed, ‘I go on about this place, we all do, but it works. We do a decent job here, so we can go on with it for a while.’
‘Don’t be too quick to tell me that, or anyone else in the command corridor. Do that and you’ll stay a low investment priority. Complain, Mary, complain.’
Chambers smiled. ‘If you insist. Charlie Johnson says that the gents’ toilets are what he’ll miss least about this place.’
‘That’s a surprise; he’s spent a good part of his career in there. But act on it; ask the guys, and if they agree, drop me a memo. If we refurbish the gents’, the ladies’ will be done at the same time, automatically. From what I remember, they’re not too fresh either. Right,’ she said, ‘that’s what you need. Now, is there anything you want to ask me?’
She waited. ‘Well,’ the superintendent replied, finally, ‘there’s the job, this job, the one I’m in. I’m still only acting divisional commander, and I’m way down the list for promotion to chief super. What’s my situation?’
‘That’s with Brian Mackie and the boss, but do you want it permanently? You have the option of going back to CID.’
‘I’d be a spare wheel there, in this division at any rate. Becky Stallings may only be a DI, but she’s bloody good; besides, with the new structure, and her reporting to Neil McIlhenney, my old job doesn’t seem to be there any more. So for now, if there’s a chance, I’d like to stay here.’
‘In that case, I’ll fix it. You’re right in that I can’t swing an early promotion, but I’ll speak to the chief, and tell him I want you here.’
Chambers looked at her gratefully. ‘Thanks, Maggie. I appreciate that; I’ve been feeling in limbo lately, at work at any rate.’
Steele looked at her. ‘I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t believe it was best for all of us; you, me and the force.’ Her expression softened. ‘Going back to CID, how’s young Sauce getting on? He’s been an unofficial protégé of mine ever since he was the rawest of probationers, under the warm and comforting wing of PC Johnston.’ She shook her head. ‘I still can’t get over my predecessor putting a rookie at risk by sending him out with Charlie.’
‘From what I see, and hear, he’s doing bloody well. Jack McGurk told me the other day that the lad keeps him on his toes, and Jack’s a hard guy to please.’
‘That’s good to hear. It doesn’t surprise me, though; that kid’s got “high-flyer” written all over him.’ She grinned, then performed one of her trademark switches of subject. ‘You’ve been in limbo at work, you said. Should I read anything into that, away from the office?’
For a few moments, Mary Chambers’ plain square face took on an expression that might almost have been described as coy. ‘Well,’ she began, ‘you know my relationship broke up a wee while back?’
‘Yes, I was sorry to hear it. I thought it was pretty stable.’
The superintendent shrugged her shoulders. ‘It had run its course. It was mostly my fault. Cop’s disease; I got so wrapped up in the job that I was never really at home, and my other half finally got fed up with it and found other interests.’
‘I know that one,’ Steele admitted. ‘It was what happened to Mario and me. So how are things now?’
‘Getting better. I’ve met somebody, somebody new.’
‘Good for you. Is it public knowledge yet?’
Chambers shook her head. ‘No, not yet. It will be soon, though; I’m planning to do something really reckless, and take her to the divisional dance on Friday. It’ll ensure a lively evening, if nothing else.’
‘I’ll look forward to meeting her.’
‘Are you going to be there?’
‘For a while. So’s the chief, each of us unaccompanied.’
The other woman looked alarmed. ‘Is he? Oh my God, I’m not sure I’m brave enough for that.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Steele declared. ‘One thing about Bob Skinner: he’s as liberal as they come . . . apart from where his daughter’s concerned, and there isn’t a cat’s chance in hell it’s her you’re taking to the ball.’
Six
‘This is a great day,’ said Bob, as he slid into his seat in the rooftop restaurant, and the waiter who had shown him to the table withdrew. ‘It’s barely ten years since we were sweating over your Highers results, and here you are with a partnership in one of the biggest law firms in Britain.’
‘Size matters, Pops,’ Alexis Skinner replied, with a grin. ‘In business law, at any rate. When I graduated, I seem to remember you wondering whether I might have been better joining a smaller practice. If I had I’d still be at least three years away from where I am now, and the money wouldn’t have been nearly as good.’
‘It was still a gamble, though.’
‘I was betting on myself. Yes, I might have stayed submerged in the talent pool, and never made it beyond senior assistant. Yes, I might have been a bigger fish in a smaller river, but if I’d settled for that, I’d always have been casting envious glances out to sea. Also, I’d have been doing broad-based work; I’d have been a general legal labourer, if you like, a bit of conveyancing, a bit of family law, a bit of litigation. In a big firm you can specialise, focus on what you’re best at . . . and I’m best at corporate law.’ She picked up the menu, then looked up at him again. ‘I could argue that I’ve followed your example.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that you could have been a chief constable years ago, if you’d been prepared to go to Dumfries, or Inverness, or Penrith, or Portishead. But you didn’t; you stayed in Edinburgh, where you could specialise in crime and where you could eventually carry that specialism into the top job, as you have done. You didn’t just do that either; along the way you’ve trained a whole line of cops in your own image, people like Maggie, Mario, Neil . . .’ She stopped short. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I know what you mean, and I also noted the name you left off that list . . . Andy Martin. Have you heard from him lately?’
‘No,’ said Alex, firmly. ‘I didn’t expect to, and I certainly won’t be in touch with him.’
‘Good; there would only be grief in it for you.’
‘I know it. Have you seen him since . . . since he and I managed to embarrass you?’
‘Not once; his chief constable always turns up at our association meetings when I’m there. He only goes when it’s just deputies involved. However I did hear that Karen had her new baby.’
‘What is it?’
‘A boy.’ He seemed to wince. ‘They’ve called him Robert, would you believe.’
‘Yes, I’d believe it. Did you acknowledge the birth? I mean did you send them a card, or a gift for the wee one?’
‘I sent Karen exactly the same thing I gave Danielle when she was born, an investment bond. Why should one kid be deprived because his dad is an idiot?’
‘And why should you be deprived, Pops?’ she asked, while studying the menu.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Andy was your closest friend. To my knowledge, he has never in his life said a word against you, and yet you’ve shunned him, twice, because of me.’
‘True, and while I’ve been known to give people a second chance, a third is out of the question.’
She shook her head, but cut off her retort as the waiter returned, pad in hand. They gave their orde
rs, and Alex chose a bottle of Martin Codax, a Spanish albarino that she knew her father liked.
‘Pops, you don’t need to be doing this,’ said Alex as the young man headed for the kitchen. ‘What happened was my fault rather than Andy’s. I was the one who left the curtains open and let those bloody photographs be taken. They never saw the light of day anyway; the court made sure of that.’
‘They were shown to me by a journalist, and that was enough. DCC Martin is a non-person for me, and for you, for that matter, since Karen’s let him off with a yellow card.’
‘Exactly, she has, but you’ve suspended him from your life, sine die.’ She smiled, to ease the tension that had developed between them. ‘Do you know what they call Andy in your force, Pops? Lord Voldemort . . . he who cannot be named. Yet it needn’t be like that.’
He shrugged. ‘But it is. Am I a rational man, our kid?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘No, only mostly yes. If someone hurts you avoidably, I get all irrational. It’s the way I am, and it’s how it is with Andy and me. Now, please; let’s change the subject. How’s your new pad suiting you?’
‘Excellent. I miss my flat beside the Water of Leith, but I couldn’t refuse the offer I got for it, not in the current market, and the new place was a steal. I would say I’ve traded up; living next door to the Parliament can’t be bad. I’ve always fancied a penthouse, so a duplex . . . that’s even better. I’m going to give Aileen a key, so she can nip in and have a quiet scream if things get too much for her.’
‘Do you miss the neighbours?’
‘Griff and Spring Montell?’ She wrinkled her nose in a gesture that was unmistakably dismissive. ‘Can’t say that I do. Detective Constable Montell: let’s say he had his uses, as an escort when I needed one, but he was bang out of order in not mentioning ever that he’d left an ex-wife and a couple of kids behind him in South Africa. She wasn’t even officially ex when we first . . . met, so to speak. He’s definitely off the list. As for his sister, I never really got to know her; we’d nothing in common, you might say.’
‘I might indeed,’ he chuckled. ‘No snags since you moved in?’
‘None at all, and the view . . . well, you’ve seen it; it’s fabulous, all across the Holyrood Park, and Salisbury Crags.’ She frowned, for an instant. ‘By the way, was something happening up there this morning? I couldn’t see very clearly because the fog was still hanging around, but there seemed to be screens up, right on the top of Arthur’s Seat. Have you heard anything?’
Bob nodded. ‘Suicide,’ he told her. ‘But it was very messy; not something we want to be talking about over lunch . . . or at all, for that matter.’
As he spoke, the wine waiter arrived; he presented the bottle, then opened it and waited for Alex to give it her approval. She nodded, then watched as it was poured. ‘What would Mum say,’ she asked, ‘if she was still around to see this?’
Her father smiled, and his eyes went somewhere else, more than twenty years back in time. ‘I can tell you exactly,’ he whispered. ‘She’d have said, “I’d prefer red.” A woman with views that were never left unspoken; and d’you know what?’ He focused once more. ‘I’m looking at her image right now.’
‘Indeed?’ she challenged. ‘There are those, Andy first among them, who would say that you’re looking in a mirror, and so am I.’
Seven
‘What are we doing here, Jack?’ DC Haddock asked his companion, as he slid his car into a residents’ parking space in North Castle Street, switched off the engine and displayed a card bearing the force crest and reading ‘Police business’. ‘This is supposed to be a suicide and we’re CID: uniforms should be doing this, surely.’
‘SOW,’ DS McGurk replied, as he unfolded his towering frame out of the passenger seat, looking bulkier than was usual, in a fur-lined leather jacket.
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
‘Senior Officers’ Whims. We’re here because Becky Stallings told us. She told us because Neil McIlhenney told her. He told her . . . either because it was his idea or because he got told himself, the latter I reckon, since I don’t see him volunteering us for this job. That leaves Mario McGuire, but he’s of the same mind as big Neil. There’s only one man who’s going to tell him what to do and that’s the chief himself.’
‘Is he subject to whims?’
‘Oh yes. I was his exec for a wee while, so I know that for sure. If the boss has an itch about something, it has to be scratched.’
‘So what do we do? All the DI said was to make inquiries.’
‘That means we do what we think best, and that is, what we bloody well like.’ He looked at a brass plate fixed to a fence outside a tall, terraced building, faced with grey stone, like much of central Edinburgh. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Lietuvos Leisure Limited. Lietuvos Developments Limited. The dead man’s companies. I wonder what the hell the word means.’
‘I looked it up,’ Haddock volunteered. ‘Dead simple; it’s Lithuanian for Lithuania. The late Mr Zaliukas seems to have been quite a nationalist, for all he lived here for more than half his life. What with this, and his tattoo . . .’ He paused. ‘We’re sure the body is him, are we? If the crest on his hand is all we have for ID . . . well, there could have been others like it in the Lithuanian community, couldn’t there?’
‘For a start, Sauce, the morgue told me that the body was carrying Zaliukas’s wallet, wearing his watch and had his car key in its pocket. The shirt it was wearing is monogrammed with the initials “T Z”. As for the tattoo, my old boss Dan Pringle once told me a story about Zaliukas. In the early days of his gang, back in the nineties, one of his guys got a bit uppity, saw himself as a rival. So he had the same national crest put on his own right hand. Tomas decided to make a point of his own; he removed the imitation himself, at the wrist, with a chainsaw.’
‘Jesus! Did the poor sod die?’
‘No. They put a tourniquet on and got him to the Royal in time. We were called, but the guy swore it was an accident; he said that he’d been lopping a tree and had slipped. As soon as he got out of hospital, he went back to Lithuania. Come on, let’s get inside; it’s fucking freezing out here.’
The Lietuvos office was in the basement level of the building. Seeing lights inside, the two detectives walked down the few steps from the pavement, only to find that the door was locked. McGurk pressed a button above the letter box. ‘Here,’ he muttered, as they waited, ‘I forgot to ask. Did you score last night?’
Despite the cold, Haddock felt himself flush. ‘Mind your own damn business, Jack,’ he retorted. ‘I don’t have to ask whether you did. You and Lisanne were all over each other.’
The big sergeant shrugged. ‘It’s allowed. She’s moving in with me. That was a right stunner you pulled, though. Are you seeing her again?’
‘You’ll find out on Friday, at the dance.’
As he spoke, the door opened. A frowning woman, on the lower edge of middle age, looked up at them. ‘What is it?’ she demanded, brusquely. ‘This is a private office. We do not see salesmen here.’
‘We’re not selling,’ McGurk told her, ‘and although we might look like them, we’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses either. People usually call us “The Polis”: CID.’ He showed her his warrant card. ‘Now are you going to let us into the warm, please.’
The guardian relented, she opened the door and let them step inside, into a small reception area with a desk and a door behind it: the sergeant had to duck to avoid the lintel. ‘What is wrong?’ she asked. ‘Has there been trouble at one of the pubs? Have we had a break-in? I’m sure if there had been, the manager would have reported it to us.’
‘No, that’s not it. Who’s in charge here?’
‘Mr Tomas Zaliukas, but he’s not in at the moment.’
‘Has he been in at all today?’
‘No, he hasn’t; I was expecting him, but he hasn’t arrived yet.’
‘Has he called in to say where he is?’
�
�No, but he wouldn’t. He doesn’t tell me of his every movement.’
‘In his absence, who’s in charge? You? Mrs . . .’
‘Mrs Gerulaitis. No, not me; I am secretary to Mr Zaliukas and to my husband, Valdas. He is Mr Zaliukas’s deputy, and so if anyone is in charge in his absence, it is him.’
‘Good,’ said McGurk, patiently. ‘Is he here now?’
‘Yes, but he is busy.’
‘So are we, but it’s necessary. We’ll be as quick as we can, I promise you, but we need to speak to him.’
The woman frowned. ‘Very well, I’ll tell him.’
‘Thank you.’ The sergeant sighed.
‘OK, OK!’ she snapped. ‘Wait, will you, while I see if he is available.’
‘Thank God you get a drink quicker than this in Zaliukas’s pubs,’ Haddock muttered, as she disappeared through the door at the rear of the reception area. He wandered across to a low table in the bay window of the office; the few glossy magazines that were scattered upon it were all in a language that he assumed was Lithuanian. There were no chairs, apart from that behind the desk; the comfort of visitors was not a priority.
Happily their wait was short. The door reopened, and a man appeared, tall, but still dwarfed by McGurk. He wore a two-piece, single-breasted suit with a pinstripe that seemed to emphasise his lean build. His hairline was receding, and a few grey hairs showed, to match the dandruff that lay on his shoulders like a gentle fall of snow. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, managing to smile yet look concerned at the same time. ‘Valdas Gerulaitis. What’s the problem?’
‘DS McGurk, and DC Haddock. I hope there is no problem, but we reckon we have some bad news for you. Can we go somewhere private?’
‘Sure. Come on though to ma office.’ The man’s accent was more Scottish than that of his wife, and his tone was friendlier. He led the way along a narrow corridor and into a room at the rear of the building with a view of a car park, bounded by a high, wire-topped wall.
20 - A Rush of Blood Page 5