‘That’ll disappoint Alex. When I spoke to her earlier she was quite taken by her new role.’
‘Oh, I know she is. But I also know that she was shaken when I told her that Gerulaitis and his wife were dead . . . not because she felt at risk herself, simply because she’d met them both a few hours before, and then to think of them like . . .’ He shuddered.
Aileen reached out and touched his arm. ‘Bad, was it?’
He nodded. ‘There are aspects of our job that can be pretty hard to take, but when you see the things that the fire and rescue people . . . women as well as men now . . . have to deal with.’
‘You don’t need to be doing that sort of stuff now, you know,’ she pointed out.
Bob chuckled. ‘You mean I could lead from the back? No, I don’t think so. When you persuaded me to go for the chief’s job, or when I persuaded myself . . . to be honest I can’t remember which it was now . . . it was on the basis that nothing was going to change. My dear friend and soon to be near neighbour Sir James did things his way. Jimmy would have parted with his lunch on the spot if he’d seen what Mario and I had to look at earlier on, but he was a great chief constable nonetheless, the best this city’s ever had. I’ll handle it the way I think I can do it best, and if I can be half as good as he was, that’ll still be pretty damn good.’
‘Love, you’re not getting any younger. You look knackered. That last birthday, the one you wouldn’t let anyone mention . . .’
‘What your birth certificate says and what your body says do not always coincide. Given the day I’ve had I’m entitled to look beat up, but I don’t look any worse than any of my officers, least of all Mary Chambers, who almost lost her life tonight.’
‘Yes, how is she? Do you know?’
‘I looked in at Torphichen Place on the way home,’ he replied. ‘She says she’s OK, and she looks it . . . but she hasn’t had the night-mares yet.’
‘Does she have anyone to hold her hand in the dark?’
‘I don’t think so, not right now. There’s someone new, I believe, but not in residence, not a bidey-in.’ He refilled both of their glasses, killing the bottle of Shiraz, pushed himself off his stool and slid an arm round her shoulder. ‘Come on,’ he said, and led her through into the garden room. ‘Speaking of holding hands in the dark,’ he murmured, as they settled into the sofa that faced the moonlit Firth of Forth, ‘my mind goes back to something that somebody said to me yesterday.’
‘About what?’
‘About you. About us.’
Aileen pressed herself against him. ‘Sounds intriguing.’
‘Maybe. Or maybe you’ll pour that Aussie red over my head. You and me, my love, have we ever really sat down and talked about having a family of our own?’
He heard her sudden intake of breath. ‘We’ve discussed it,’ she whispered.
‘In a roundabout way, I agree, and what you’ve said is that we’ve both got high-pressure jobs, and I’ve made some joke about having loads of kids as it is. But have you ever said to me, “I don’t want to have a baby, ever?” Have you?’
‘No. I’ve never put it as directly as that.’
‘Well, do it now. As who-the-hell-was-it said, tell me what you want, what you really . . .’
‘. . . really want?’ She finished the line, then sat up straight and turned to look him in the eye. ‘You know what they say about politicians?’ she asked, then continued without giving him the chance to reply. ‘That we’re all devious and deceitful, and that’s on our good days. I try not to be, Bob, honestly I do, and I believe that in my public life I succeed. But at home, a new wife, a new stepmum with a new family, sometimes that’s not so easy. The fact is, I’ve been meaning to start this conversation myself for a while, and it’s my fault that it’s taken Maggie Steele . . . I’m sure that’s who you meant . . . for it to happen. I should have raised the subject about three months ago, in fact, for that’s how long I’ve been off the pill.’
He laid his head back and gazed at the ceiling, silently, his face impassive.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, quietly. ‘It was rotten of me, totally irresponsible; it’s just that . . . the first time I saw Maggie’s baby, I got incredibly broody. Until then I didn’t appreciate what the word meant. I’ll go back on it,’ she declared. ‘Right now, I’ll go back on it.’
He looked back towards her, cupped her face in his left hand, and kissed her. ‘No,’ he whispered, ‘no, you will not. I love you like crazy, my purpose in life is to make you happy, and if that’s what you want, I can only do my feeble best to make it happen.’ He grinned. ‘As you pointed out, I am getting on a bit.’
They sat in silence for a while looking out on the great river. ‘Bob,’ she whispered, eventually, ‘leading from the front is good. I suppose that’s what I do in my job. But I don’t take physical risks like you’ve done in the past. Will you promise me at least that those days are gone?’
‘As much as I can. I won’t charge any more barricades, I promise.’
‘That’s as much as I can expect out of you, I suppose. I don’t know why, but I find myself thinking of that woman you mentioned, Regine, the Lithuanian man’s widow, and how she must feel.’
‘Yes,’ said Bob, ‘I’ve been thinking about her too, strangely enough. I’m not entirely sure how she is feeling, and that’s what I find intriguing. She told Alex that she’d been about ready to come back to Edinburgh. Yet now he’s dead, she doesn’t seem to want to come near the place.’
‘But when Alex spoke to her, it was to break the news of her husband’s death. The woman would be in shock, in no state to make decisions.’
‘She was in a fit state to decide on the spot to keep her husband’s businesses out of cousin Valdas’s hands, and to appoint her lawyer to run them in her stead . . . a young lawyer she’s never even met. I’ve met Regine myself a few times over the years; in Indigo, and once at a business dinner she attended with Tomas. She’s a very together lady . . . and there’s something else. She loved that club more than any of their other places, yet she doesn’t want to come back to make sure it’s OK. She doesn’t even seem to want to come back to bury her husband.’
‘She will, Bob, she will. Give her a couple of days. Right now . . .’ she took his hand and stood, drawing him with her, ‘. . . how about we find out how feeble your best really is?’ She winked at him, provocatively. ‘Or are you too tired?’
Forty-three
George Regan wiped the last trace of shaving gel from a corner of his moustache, and buttoned his shirt. He fixed his tie, looking in the mirror when he was finished to check that the knot was to his satisfaction, then stepped back into the bedroom from the shower room.
‘Fastidious bugger, aren’t you,’ said Jen, not unkindly, tying the green dressing gown which hung loosely about her shoulders.
‘One of us has to be,’ he retorted, casually . . . then snapped his mouth shut, as if that might pull his words back in, but they were gone, out there in the air beyond recall, doing their insidious damage.
‘I’m sorry,’ she replied, quietly. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be as lively as you want. I’m sorry if I’ve let myself slip. But I do try, George.’
He put his arms around her. ‘I know you do, love, and I shouldn’t have said that. I’m not getting at you, honest. The fact is, I’m worried sick about you. I see you fading away, day by day, and it’s gutting me. I’ve been hoping that my new job and the move to Longniddry would help, but it hasn’t, has it?’
‘It will do.’ She pulled away from him, brushing strands of grey-streaked, lustreless hair from her forehead. ‘Let me go, now, and I’ll make your breakfast.’
He watched her as she left, not quite shuffling but on the way there. Jen was still two years short of forty, but, he thought, if she was ever to be put in a police line-up for a witness, they would have to look for women pushing fifty to accompany her. It had almost happened too; there had been a shoplifting incident in the local co-op that had taken a bit o
f string-pulling by Neil McIlhenney, at area manager level, to make go away.
Five years earlier, losing a child had been the worst thing George had ever imagined. What he had not ever imagined was that it would happen to Jen and him. But it had, and it had taken half of their lives too. Fastidious? Yes, he was, and he had become so; it was his conscious way of cutting himself off from the man who had suffered all that pain. He tried hard to see someone else in the mirror . . . yet he never quite succeeded, for all the cotton-rich shirts, the silk blend suits and the inherited Crombie overcoats.
Jen had gone in the opposite direction. In the aftermath of their son’s death he had suggested that they might try for another child; her fury had been so terrifying that he had never thought to hint at it again. Since then she had withdrawn more and more; she was a soul cast adrift, and her physical being seemed to be disintegrating a little more each day. Their lost boy was a taboo subject, for all that his presence hung around her like a shroud. There was no possibility of another child because they never had sex; the last time had been months before, and then she had been so rigid that he had stopped halfway through. He wanted to help her, but she seemed to have moved beyond his emotional reach, and no more counselling was going to do any good.
She was at her best when she was busy. Jen herself might have gone to the dogs, but the house was as pristine as George. She fed him well too. When he joined her in the kitchen, the kettle was boiling, the toaster was loaded and she stood cracking two eggs into the frying pan. He went to help her, but she told him to sit down, so he did, at the kitchen table, switching on the radio as he passed.
It was tuned to Forth Two; Jen’s day-time companions were Bob Malcolm and Spike Thomson. ‘And now Forth news,’ a female voice announced. ‘Police in Edinburgh are remaining tight-lipped about a series of raids carried out across the city yesterday evening, believed to be related to the sex trade. This follows the discovery in Leith yesterday afternoon of the body of massage parlour manager Linas Jankauskas. Detective Chief Superintendent Mario McGuire, head of CID, later confirmed that his death is being treated as murder.’
Indeed? Regan thought. Makes me all the happier I’m out here in my nice county backwater.
‘Edinburgh fire and rescue officers confirmed late last night that two people, believed to be husband and wife, died last night in a fire in a house in Cramond. Investigators are provisionally linking the tragedy to faulty wiring on a kitchen appliance.’
‘Did you hear that?’ he asked Jen, as she buttered his toast . . . all she ever had for breakfast was tea and a yoghurt. ‘I’m going to check every plug in this kitchen.’
‘You needn’t bother,’ she replied. ‘I do that all the time. Everything’s perfectly fine.’
‘That’s good to know.’ She laid his breakfast before him, on a tray. ‘What are you doing today?’
‘Oh, just the usual. This house takes a lot of looking after, you know.’
‘And so do you, love. Why don’t you get on the bus, go up to town like you used to? Hit the shops, give the credit card a battering. Look what’s happened since you stopped going to M&S and Debenhams; the whole economy’s fucked.’
She smiled, kindly; she had always been kind. ‘I think it’s taken more than me to do that,’ she said. ‘If it’ll make you happy, I’ll see if I can get an appointment at the hairdresser.’
That would make me very happy, George thought, but before he had a chance to say so, his mobile sounded. He picked it up, instantly fearful that he was about to be called into Edinburgh to help with Operation Whatever-the-hell-it-was, but when he checked the number he saw that the caller was within the county.
‘Regan,’ he answered, curious.
‘Detective Inspector,’ a man said. ‘This is Andrew Fairley, Witches’ Hill golf club. Sorry to be on so early, but something else has happened. It’s . . . ah, I’m still trying to take it in. I’d be grateful if you could come to the club, as soon as you can.’
Forty-four
‘Ah’m a masseuse, mister, that’s all,’ Maxine Frost insisted, standing in front of her fireplace, cigarette in hand. ‘If you got my name and address from the massage parlour, you’ll know that.’
‘Mrs Frost,’ Jack McGurk told her, ‘we’re not bothered about what you do at work. If you say you’re a masseuse we’ll take your word for it, without even asking who or what you massage, or what with. We want to know about other people who might have been in business at your place, specifically teenage girls, not Scottish, from eastern Europe.’
‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’
‘We’re on about kids who were lured away from their home in Estonia and put to work in brothels in Edinburgh,’ Sauce Haddock snapped. ‘Is that specific enough for you?’
‘I don’t work in a brothel. I’m a masseuse.’
‘Where did you train?’
‘College.’
‘Do you have a certificate?’
‘You don’t get certificates. It was a night class.’
‘I’ll bet it was,’ said McGurk. ‘How many people work at your place?’
‘I dinnae ken. We work shifts. We set our own hours, like. We’re self-employed. ’
‘Is that so? What’s your tax reference number? Come on, tell us; one call to the Inland Revenue and we can find out.’
‘Aw, come on,’ the woman protested. ‘This is polis harassment.’
‘Absolutely, Mrs Frost,’ Haddock agreed, cheerful once more. ‘Now are you going to talk to us, because my sergeant here’s Plymouth Brethren, and he’d really love to make that call.’
‘Ah’ll bet he would, the bastard. He looks just like one o’ them too. Kent it as soon as Ah clapped eyes on him.’ Pause. ‘OK, there was a girl that didnae speak English. She came in about three months ago.’
‘What age, do you reckon?’ the DC asked.
‘Sixteen or seventeen, eighteen tops. But if you’re sayin’ she was forced on the game, you’d be wrong. I didnae see her every day like, but she settled in pretty quick. She had her regulars after a few weeks. There’s one guy used tae come in and ask for Miss Head; ye can gather from that she was versatile. We wound up callin’ him Mr Head.’
‘Where can we find her?’
‘She stayed wi’ Marius, the manager, as far as Ah kent. He’s got a big flat, down Scotland Street. Ah was at a party there one night; nice place.’
‘How big?’ McGurk murmured.
‘Like Ah said, big,’ Mrs Frost retorted.
‘How many could it sleep?’
‘As many as ye bloody like, just aboot. It’s got four bedrooms. Why?’
‘Do you know if she was the only girl who stayed there?’
‘How the fuck would Ah?’
‘Fair enough,’ the DS conceded. ‘When did you see her last?’
‘Three days ago. Mr Head was in. The same night Ah got the call frae Marius, telling me the place wis shuttin’ for a while.’
‘Is that all he said?’
‘Aye. It was sudden, like. Ah finished about ten, and Ah was barely home when he phoned us.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Haddock interrupted. ‘Did you say that was three nights ago? Tuesday?’
‘Aye.’
‘Did Marius say why it was closing?’
‘No. Ah asked him, like, but he telt me to mind my own fuckin’ business if I wanted tae get back there.’
‘Did he say when that would be, when you would be back?’
‘A few days, maybe a week; that was all.’
‘OK.’ The DC looked up at his sergeant, who nodded.
‘That’s all you can tell us, Mrs Frost?’ he asked.
‘That’s it. Now will you please fuck off back tae your prayer meeting?’
McGurk grinned. ‘I hope you’ve got another merry quip for the tax man when he comes calling,’ he chuckled, as he headed for the door.
‘Marius,’ he muttered, when they were back on Dalry Road. ‘He was the guy that Becky lifted, wasn’t he?�
�
‘That’s right. He came along quietly, she said, and even invited them to have a look round. No girl there last night or she’d have found her.’
‘No.’ The sergeant frowned, dark and menacing. ‘He came quietly . . . unlike that bastard that put the nick in Mary Chambers’ throat. I’d like to know where he is right now.’
‘You and our entire station,’ Haddock agreed. ‘I’m not surprised they moved him. I heard it was a headquarters car that picked him up.’
McGurk whistled. ‘In that case he’ll have to take his chances with the Twins. He may wind up wishing that he’d stayed with us.’
‘They wouldn’t, would they?’
‘No, but I’ll bet they scare the shite out of him anyway.’
The young DC pondered Arturus Luksa’s predicament for a few moments. ‘There was something else in there,’ he continued. ‘Did you pick it up?’
‘What?’
‘Maxine said that she got her call from Marius three nights ago, right?’
‘Yes, agreed. So?’
‘So when did Zaliukas kill himself?’
The DS’s eyes widened. ‘A few hours later; you observant young sod. So what do we read into that? Tomas Zaliukas shut down the massage parlour operation, and then he went out and killed himself?’
‘That’s one possibility, but what if it was someone else gave the order?’
‘Who, Valdas?’
‘That’s the obvious assumption. Too bad we won’t be able to ask him.’
McGurk shrugged his shoulders. ‘Personally, I find it hard to grieve about that, especially since we’ve got eleven massage parlour managers in custody who know the answer to the question.’ He started to walk back towards Haymarket. ‘Whatever, Sauce, that’s above our pay grade. All we can do is get back to the office, feed in what we’ve picked up, and maybe suggest that forensics take a look at the Marius guy’s place in Scotland Street, to see if there’s any evidence of the Estonian girls having been kept there, and if we’re lucky, evidence of where they’ve gone, or rather, been taken. But what it all amounts to is a singular lack of progress for all the effort of the last twelve hours or so.’
20 - A Rush of Blood Page 18