20 - A Rush of Blood

by Quintin Jardine

  After a further five minutes, ADO Hartil emerged from the partly ruined building and came towards him. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Under control; my boys and girls are just damping down now, and making sure there’s no risk of outbreak anywhere else in the place.’

  ‘Who called you?’ Skinner asked.

  ‘The place has a monitored alarm system, fire as well as intruder. Usual routine; they phone the householder first, then if he doesn’t reply, the keyholder and us.’

  ‘Which means that the place was empty?’

  ‘Usually that would be the case. Unfortunately, not this time. Did you say that you have an interest in the people who live here?’

  ‘In the husband, yes. My colleague and I came here to arrest him.’

  ‘Did he and his wife live here alone, or were there other occupants?’

  ‘My understanding is they have no kids. That’s all I can say. I’ve never met him, but my understanding is that he was around six feet tall, dark-haired. Wife, smaller, dumpy; both in their mid-forties.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not going to help us identify what’s in there, either of them.’

  ‘Shit. They’re both dead?’

  ‘Very. You want to see?’

  ‘No, but I’ll have to.’

  ‘Hold on then, till I get you some boots from our appliance.’

  ‘Make that two sets, please, and ask my colleague to join us. He’s round the front.’

  He waited by the pond, gazing at the house. On impulse, he took out his mobile, and pressed the last number he had called. ‘Pops,’ his daughter answered quickly. ‘Do you have him in custody?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘that wasn’t possible. I’m at his house, though; there’s been a fire.’

  ‘My God! Bad?’

  ‘Don’t look for him to be in the office tomorrow.’

  ‘You mean he’s been injured?’

  ‘Injured to a crisp, from what the fire chief’s been saying. I’ll give you the full story later. I have to go now.’

  He ended the call as Hartil approached, with Mario McGuire, and two pairs of thigh-length waders. The police officers struggled into them, leaving their shoes behind on the edge of the pond, then followed the ADO towards the wrecked house.

  The paused at the entrance to the conservatory; it had been reduced to a bizarre, windowless skeleton, with its UPVC frame buckled by the heat, and in part collapsed. ‘Everything in here was lost,’ said Hartil. ‘All this garden furniture’s supposed to be fire retardant now, but no fucking way was this lot. It went up like kindling, once the fire burned or blasted its way through from the big dining kitchen inside. That’s where we think it started. The householders seem to have been trapped in there.’ He shone a torch on a double-width doorway. Only the frame was left, and behind it, on the floor, they saw two forms, blackened, buckled, but still recognisably human. Skinner looked at them, and shuddered. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but no sound emerged.

  The firefighter allowed the chief time to compose himself. ‘Obviously,’ he continued, when he judged he was ready, ‘it’s too early to say for sure, but it looks as if they were caught between the advance of the fire and here. This must have been their only escape route, but it must have been locked. Poor bastards were trapped; their best hope was that the smoke got them before the flames reached them. Usually that’s what happens in a house fire, but not always.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you have any idea yet how it started?’ Skinner whispered.

  ‘No, it’s way too early even to take a guess. It’s down to our investigators to work that out.’

  ‘I’d like our people to be involved.’

  ‘Of course. Are you saying you suspect this might be arson, sir?’

  ‘In this investigation, Mr Hartil, I’m ruling absolutely nothing in and nothing out. What state’s the rest of the house in?’

  ‘Not as bad as it might have been. The fire travelled up the way as well, obviously, but we contained it before it compromised the structure of the building.’

  ‘That’s good. I want this place secured, and I’d like your people to mop up as best they can. Tomorrow morning, your forensic people and mine are going to be going through this with the finest toothed comb they’ve got.’

  Forty

  ‘What’s gonnae happen, ma’am?’ Charlie Johnston asked, as they stood in the small Stockbridge terrace, looking across the street towards the double upper colony house that was the address of record for the manager of the massage parlour in Raeburn Place.

  Mary Chambers checked her watch. ‘In about four minutes,’ she told the veteran, ‘Detective Superintendent McIlhenney’s going to come on radio and give us the go. When that happens we go straight up those steps and invite Mr Arturus Luksa to accompany us back to Torphichen Place.’

  ‘Dae we cuff him?’

  ‘That’ll depend on his attitude.’

  ‘The punters’ll no like this, ye ken,’ Johnston sighed mournfully. ‘All the massage places bein’ shut.’

  ‘Does that mean you approve of prostitution, Charlie?’

  ‘That hardly matters, ma’am, does it; whether a tired old plod’s for it or agin it. There’s been hoors in Edinburgh since the first ships came intae Leith . . . maybe before that . . . and there always will be. Better indoors than up against the rough-cast walls, that’s all Ah’ve got to say about it.’ She saw him frown, his face yellow in the sodium lights. ‘But when it involves druggin’ fifteen-year-olds and puttin’ them on the game, that’s another story.’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’ she demanded.

  McIlhenney had decided that the uniforms involved in the arrest need not be told the full story behind the raids, in case it led to an excess of zeal. ‘The priority, Mary,’ he had said, ‘is to bring them all in quietly and in one piece.’

  Johnston smiled, his head tilted slightly. ‘I pick things up, ma’am, that’s all. I suppose that’s why I had a call from the ACC this afternoon. See these houses,’ he carried on, in one of the least subtle changes of subject she had ever heard, ‘they call them colonies. D’ye ken why that is?’

  The superintendent knew that a thirty-year veteran with a secure pension was not about to answer any question that he chose not to, so she gave up. ‘Can’t say I do, Charlie,’ she replied.

  ‘It’s because of the way they were designed, in a sort of beehive style. They were built by a cooperative, for working people, in the second half of the nineteenth century, and intae the twentieth. There’s over two thousand of them across the city. Folk go on about Edinburgh bein’ the Old Town and the New Town, but they forget about these. Bloody brilliant, they—’

  The crackling of the radio stopped him in mid-sentence. ‘All units move,’ ordered a voice, metallic but unmistakably that of Neil McIlhenney. The two officers reacted immediately.

  ‘There’s a light on upstairs,’ Chambers pointed out.

  ‘Do ye think he’s got a girl up there?’ Johnston asked.

  ‘We’ll soon find out.’ She led the way briskly up the flight of stone stairs that led to the beehive house, the PC in her wake. He was panting as she rang the doorbell.

  The door was opened by a woman, pretty, petite, dark-haired, expertly made up and clad in a red sheath dress. ‘You’re early,’ she began. ‘I wasn’t expecting . . .’ Her voice tailed off as she saw the uniforms.

  The superintendent noted a wedding ring. ‘Mrs Luksa?’

  ‘Yes. What can I do for you?’ Her voice was assertive, just short of aggressive. Both officers knew instinctively that she’d greeted police at her door before.

  ‘Is your husband in?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s busy. He’s upstairs putting our son to bed. We’re going out: I thought you were the babysitter.’

  ‘Ask him to come down, please.’

  ‘No! Look, it’s not convenient. Go way; come back in the morning.’ She made to shut the door in their faces, but Chambers slammed her meaty right shoulder into in, knocking it wi
de open and sending the smaller woman flying.

  As she hit the floor, a man appeared, dressed in a white shirt, open-necked, dark trousers, and black patent shoes, bounding down the stairway at the back of the hall. ‘Arturus Luksa?’ the superintendent shouted.

  They expected him to go to his wife’s aid, but instead he turned at the foot of the stair and disappeared through a door.

  ‘He’ll get away,’ Chambers shouted.

  ‘No, ma’am, there’s only one door in these places.’

  They followed him, the senior, yet younger, officer in the lead, into a small, well-equipped kitchen, just as Luksa closed a drawer and turned to face them, a twelve-inch knife in his hand. ‘You bastards!’ he hissed. ‘You come into my home, but you don’t leave it!’ He lunged at Chambers, thrusting the blade not at her chest, but above her stab vest, at her throat.

  She froze, seeing her death coming at her.

  Later she realised that everything must have happened inside two seconds. Charlie Johnston moved alongside her, drawing and extending his baton, and in the same movement lashing it across Luksa’s wrist and, at the very instant its tip pierced the superintendent’s skin, sending the blade flying, so hard that it bounced off the tiled wall on to the work surface. It was spinning crazily as he whipped his weapon on to the forehand and cracked it into the side of the attacker’s knee.

  The Lithuanian fell to the floor, screaming and clutching his leg. ‘Their fucking footballers do the same every time they get hit,’ the PC grunted, as he rolled him on to his face, then sat on his legs and cuffed his hands behind his back. ‘Makes me glad I’m a Hibby,’ he added as he stood.

  Chambers stared at him, feeling a warm trickle of blood running from her wound, down her neck and into her shirt. Her temporary paralysis over, she found that she was shaking. ‘Charlie,’ she gasped, as she fought for control over her terror and her bladder, ‘where did you learn to do that?’

  ‘In thirty years on the job, ma’am, you pick up a few tricks. Pity we’re no’ still using the old truncheons. This bastard would have had two fractures wi’ one o’ them.’ He smiled at her. ‘Do you no’ want to sit down?’

  ‘I daren’t,’ she told him, honestly. ‘If I did, it might be a while before I could stand up again.’

  As she spoke, they heard a whimpering from the hall. ‘Then can I suggest, ma’am,’ said the PC, gently, ‘that you sit the wife down in the front room, calm her, then verify there really is a kid upstairs and no’ another poor wee Estonian lass.’

  Silently, she left to follow his advice, as Johnston produced an evidence container from his pocket, another surprise that she noted mentally, picked up the knife carefully, so that he neither left a print nor wiped her blood from the blade, and bagged it.

  When she was gone, he hauled Luksa to his feet. ‘You might think we’ve finished our business, son,’ he whispered in his ear. ‘Well, that depends on you. If you’re quiet as a fucking mouse all the way back to our station, Ah might not tell the rest of the lads there what you just tried to do. But just one word out of you, and Ah will. They won’t be pleased, ye ken; oh, they will not. We all like Mary, every one of us. We’ve got this guy McGurk.’ He whistled, softly. ‘You’ll no’ believe how fuckin’ big he is.’

  Forty-one

  ‘What have we got, Neil?’ asked Skinner, as he, McGuire and

  McIlhenney sat around the conference table, each clutching a soft drink can, taken from the fridge in the corner of his room.

  ‘We’ve got next to nothing, boss. We have ten managers in custody in various offices; the party line seems to be that the places are closed as a mark of respect to Tomas, but they’re not saying anything else. We’ve found none of the eight girls that Anna says were brought to Edinburgh with her, and at first sight there’s no evidence in any of the massage parlours that they were ever there. Naturally, the guys deny all knowledge of them.’

  ‘You’re one Lithuanian short, aren’t you?’ McGuire remarked.

  ‘No, we’ve got a full complement. The eleventh, Arturus Luksa, is on his way here; we’ve got to handle him differently.’

  The chief constable frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he came within an instant of burying a knife in Mary Chambers’s throat. He’s going to be done for attempted murder. In the circumstances, I didn’t think it would be wise to leave him locked up at Torphichen Place.’

  ‘He might not be too safe here either. What happened?’

  ‘From what Mary’s been able to tell me, the guy bolted, they cornered him in his own kitchen and he came at her with a blade. She might well have been a goner if Charlie Johnston hadn’t knocked it out of his hand, just in time, and subdued the guy.’

  ‘Charlie Johnston?’ an incredulous McGuire exclaimed. ‘The Charlie Johnston?’

  The superintendent nodded. ‘The only one we’ve got. He’s spent thirty years on the force trying not to be noticed and now he’s going to retire as a hero.’

  ‘Is Mary OK?’

  ‘She’s got a cut on her throat; it’s superficial, although it was very close to an artery, according to the doctor who patched her up. Charlie really did save her life.’

  ‘Then he’s in for a big fat commendation for bravery,’ Skinner declared. ‘And if he takes the job he’s being offered in the press office, I might stick him a couple of points up the salary scale as well.’

  ‘What’s Royston going to say about having him on his team?’ McIlhenney asked.

  ‘Fuck all, because it won’t be his team.’

  ‘Jesus, boss, you didn’t fire him, did you?’

  Skinner snorted. ‘No, he fired us. He says he’s been head-hunted, and he’s taking it; a new challenge, all that crap.’

  ‘What’s better than here? Strathclyde, I suppose.’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me, and I didn’t press him, but there’s no vacancy there. It could be commercial, or local government. The truth is, I don’t give a bugger. I’ll let him go right away and put a sound pair of hands in there from the uniform side . . . Ian McCall maybe . . . to hold the fort until we can find a professional replacement.’

  ‘What about your night?’ the detective superintendent inquired. ‘Where’s Gerulaitis? Have you got him locked up here too?’

  The chief constable and the head of CID exchanged glances. ‘He’s cooling his heels, you might say,’ McGuire volunteered. ‘In the morgue: him and his wife. While we were going to pick him up, they were dying in a house fire.’

  ‘Jesus. Not accidental, surely?’

  ‘Man, I can understand why you sound sceptical, given the circumstances. So are we, but the first fire and rescue investigator on the scene went straight to a wine cooler, a mini-fridge thing, and focused on that. Her first thought is that the fire started there, and that it could well have been an accident. The couple appeared to have been trapped in the kitchen, with only one way out, and that door was locked. When the fire people found what was left of it, and the frame, there was no key in it.’

  ‘It’s been a bad week for the Lietuvos group,’ McIlhenney murmured. ‘A suicide and a fatal accident. What’s next?’ As Skinner glared at him, out of the chief’s sight McGuire raised his eyebrows and put a finger to his lips. ‘What?’ he protested.

  ‘As of this afternoon, Neil, my daughter is running those companies, temporarily.’

  ‘But not the massage parlours?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So don’t worry. There’s no problem with the pubs or the development business.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Logic, and you’ll say the same if you look at it objectively. You know what I think? Zaliukas didn’t know Gerulaitis was running the girls. When he found out . . .’

  ‘He was so upset that he shot himself? The Tomas I know would have killed Valdas, not himself.’ Skinner frowned. ‘There has to be something behind it, yes. According to what Regine told Alex, it had nothing to do with her, but I still haven’t a fucking clue what it is.
Unexplained suicides happen, accidents happen, and somebody wins the lottery every week. Those are facts, and you have to acknowledge them. But what I do not believe is that twelve massage parlour managers shut down their knocking shops as a mark of respect for a man who didn’t even want to be seen as owning them.’

  ‘Let’s interview some of the women who work there,’ McGuire proposed, ‘and find out what they say.’

  Skinner nodded. ‘Do that for sure, but there’s another card we can play. This man who nearly killed Mary Chambers. He’s looking at an attempted murder charge. With a police officer involved? That’s a potential life sentence with a high tariff. It might make him more inclined to cooperate.’

  It was McIlhenney’s turn to glare. ‘You’re not thinking about doing a deal with him, are you?’

  The chief constable shrugged. ‘Needs must. Let him sleep on his predicament, Neil. I’ll have a word with him in the morning. Just the two of us; a quiet wee chat.’

  Forty-two

  ‘There’s no possibility of Alex being in danger, is there?’ Aileen asked.

  ‘No,’ Bob replied, perched on his stool at the breakfast bar, with a glass of dark red wine in his hand, ‘I don’t believe so, or by now I’d have done two things: I’d have insisted that she move out here with us, and I’d have called Mitch Laidlaw and asked him to get her out of it. Neil was right; if these two deaths are linked to Zaliukas’s business life then it’s to those massage parlours. Still,’ he murmured, ‘Mitch is a shrewd guy, and he values the reputation of his firm more than anything else. Sooner or later the press are going to start digging into Tomas’s entire career, and without the law of defamation to restrain them, since you can’t libel the dead, they’re going to print some garish stuff. It’s going to leave a bad smell around town, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he resigns the account, legitimate or not, and tells the widow Regine to find another administrator.’