20 - A Rush of Blood

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Why should I do that?’

  ‘Work it out.’

  ‘I help you, you maybe forget about my mistake with the lady?’

  ‘That would be the obvious.’

  ‘I’m sorry, mister. I dunno why I did that.’ He smiled, as if it would make a difference. ‘They came into my home. I have a temper. Sometimes I’m a nutter.’

  ‘I’ve met a few of those. So what’s it to be?’

  ‘I dunno. Can I trust policeman?’

  ‘That’s for you to decide. You can trust any jury in the land to convict you, and any judge to give you at least twelve years. That’s a certainty.’ Pause. ‘Tell me about the girls.’

  ‘What girls?’

  The man glared. ‘Not a good start, chum. Kids from Estonia. Young girls. We’ve confirmed that at least three of them are under sixteen. We know that they were brought in by Valdas Gerulaitis, Tomas Zaliukas’s cousin. As far as we can gather, Valdas never did anything that Tomas didn’t want him to do, so my assumption is that he was behind it. That disappoints me too, by the way; I trusted Tomas to stay legit, more or less. I never thought he’d have got involved with something as low-life as people trafficking.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Luksa. ‘Tomas never came near the massage parlours. And I don’t know about no girls either.’

  ‘Bollocks, of course you do. Don’t lie to me, you’re not good enough at it.’

  ‘OK, OK! I hear about them, but they didn’t give me one. My place is close to your headquarters; that’s why. Too risky, he said.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘Valdas.’

  ‘So Valdas was involved with the massage parlour business.’

  ‘We send all the cash to him.’

  ‘Cash?’

  ‘The money we take from the girls.’ The interrogator nodded, waiting. ‘Look, the way it works,’ Luksa continued, leaning forward as if he was imparting a confidence, ‘everybody pay to come in; they pay for a massage, twenty quid, that’s the minimum, and a sauna, that’s another fiver. That goes through the till if it’s cash, but usually it’s credit cards. What happens with the girls, that’s different; cash only.’

  ‘Who sets the price?’

  ‘We do, the managers. Fifty quid a fuck, seventy quid a blow job. Other things . . . a hundred, but that’s up to the girls.’

  ‘What’s your cut?’

  ‘Straight sex they keep twenty quid, blow job, they keep twenty-five. Anything else, they keep forty per cent.’

  ‘And the rest went to Valdas?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are the girls happy with that?’

  ‘Who gives a shit whether they happy or not? They go on the street, pimps take them over or you lock them up, or both. With us they’re safe. We’re licensed, remember.’

  ‘OK, so you’ve got them over a barrel . . . or maybe over a massage table. But are you happy with it?’

  ‘Me? I do what I’m told.’

  ‘I’m sure you do, Arturus, but let’s look at the corporate you, the business as a whole. Were Valdas and Tomas happy with those margins?’

  ‘Valdas never complain to me; Tomas I never see, never hear from. So how would I know?’

  ‘I suppose not. Let’s move on then. On Wednesday, every one of your places was closed. As a mark of respect, some of your colleagues in the other places have told us. By the way, those colleagues have all been released on bail; they’re home with their families. So go on, tell me; is that what happened, you all got together and decided that’s what you should do?’

  ‘No. I get phone call, Tuesday night. Tell me some shit going to hit fan and that we all have to shut down till the smell clears.’

  ‘Tuesday? Are you sure it was Tuesday?’

  ‘Of course I sure. How many days are there in the week?’

  ‘Who called you? Valdas?’

  ‘No, it was Jock.’

  ‘Who the hell is Jock?’

  ‘That not his real name, it’s only what we call him. He’s Lithuanian. His real name is Jonas; that’s like John in our language, so some of us boys, we call him Jock.’

  ‘I don’t remember anyone called Jonas on the list of managers that I saw.’

  Luksa stared at him. ‘He isn’t a manager; he’s Tomas’s own guy.’

  ‘He’s a new one on me. Tomas must have kept him close.’

  ‘As close as blood. He’s Zaliukas also; he’s Tomas’s brother.’

  ‘His brother?’

  ‘Yes. His younger brother.’

  ‘How much younger?’

  ‘Maybe ten years. Guy maybe about same age as me and I’m thirty-two. ’

  ‘How long has he been in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Not long. He arrived last week; I never heard of him before that.’

  ‘Well, thanks Arturus. You’ve actually told me something I didn’t know.’

  Luksa gazed across the table, expectantly. ‘When I go,’ he ventured, ‘will you protect me from Valdas? If he finds out I tell you anything . . . Tomas was a fair guy, but Valdas, he’s different.’

  ‘It seems like Gerulaitis hid a lot of stuff behind that false front I’ve been told about,’ the interrogator mused. ‘You needn’t worry about him,’ he said. ‘He’s no longer your problem. He and his wife are cinders. Anyway,’ he stood, his grey hair reflecting the light of the naked bulb, ‘you’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘But you said . . .’ the Lithuanian protested.

  ‘No. As you said . . . can you trust a policeman?’

  Forty-nine

  ‘You did leave him in one piece?’ Neil McIlhenney ventured.

  ‘Of course,’ Skinner grunted. ‘His trust in the basic goodness of his fellow man might be damaged beyond repair, but everything else is just as it was when I walked into the room. There was a time when that might not have been the case, but that’s all history now. You and Mario are free to interview him whenever you like.’

  ‘Mario’s up at the mortuary, for the Gerulaitis autopsies. We’ll do it as soon as he gets back.’

  ‘Fine. There aren’t too many questions to be asked other than why did you do it? The answer is probably because he knew all about the girls being imported and was scared that he was going to be done for it whether he’d had one at his place or not, but he isn’t going to admit that, not yet. Ken Green’s his lawyer; he isn’t going to say anything with that guy sitting alongside him. You’d better call him, and tell him he has a client in bother. Charge him quick; get him in court this afternoon, so he can be remanded in custody.’

  ‘Will do. What did you get from him? Anything much?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m not sure what to make of it. The “mark of respect” story is cobblers. The managers were all told to close down on Tuesday night.’

  McIlhenney nodded. ‘Yes, I know. Young Sauce got that from a hooker . . . ouch, sorry, non-PC; a sex worker . . . that he and Jack interviewed.’

  ‘Good for the boy. Maybe he knows what to make of it, for I don’t. They were all told to close before Tomas shot himself. Naturally, they all denied any knowledge of trafficked girls . . . all but Luksa, who’d have coughed up anything to get himself off an attempted murder charge. He says he didn’t have a girl, but it’s a fair bet that all of those who had were told to move them out of there.’

  ‘One of the managers has a flat, McGurk and Haddock found out. It’s down in Scotland Street, and from what they were told it was big enough to have housed all the girls, apart from Anna Romanova. I’ve told them to get a warrant and get in there pronto.’

  ‘Good move.’

  ‘One other thing from the interviews we’ve done so far . . . not with the managers, but with the local talent who worked there. None of the very few who were willing to talk to us about newcomers from eastern Europe gave any indication that any of the others had been drugged, or abused.’

  ‘Were they being paid?’

  ‘None of them could tell us that either. Where the Estonian girls were involved, th
e manager took the money. But my guess is that they were, enough to keep them happy.’

  ‘Yes,’ Skinner agreed. ‘I’ve got a scenario forming in my head. From what Luksa said, Valdas was running the massage parlours . . . that might explain why Tomas left his interest to Laima. But he got greedy. He worked out that if he replaced the Edinburgh ladies with cheap, young, foreign imports he’d have complete control of his workforce and his profits would go way up. I suspect that’s what he was starting to do, but I don’t believe that he’d asked Tommy for the OK first. The way I see it, Tomas found out.’

  ‘And Valdas killed him?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said quickly ‘Tomas shot himself. There’s no doubt about that, none at all. No, something else happened.’ Pause. ‘Neil, I want you to do two things. Have Stallings and her team follow up on this Scotland Street flat and squeeze the owner hard. If those girls were billeted there as McGurk and Haddock seem to think they might have been, he’s likely to know where they went.’

  ‘And the second?’

  ‘Ask David Mackenzie, from me, to get in touch with the Lithuanian equivalent of our Justice Department, and find out everything they’ve got on one Jonas Zaliukas, age approximately thirty-two.’ The superintendent’s eyebrows rose. ‘That’s right,’ the chief confirmed, ‘Tommy had a wee brother. Then have our people spread that name around town, and go back to those ten managers we’ve bailed, and see what they come up with.’

  ‘Do we want to know anything in particular?’

  ‘Absolutely. It might be worth knowing whether he bears any passing resemblance to Desperate Dan.’

  Fifty

  ‘Is there a pogrom under way, by any chance, Detective Chief

  Superintendent?’ the tiny pathologist asked. ‘We seem to be going through the Lithuanian population at a rate of knots.’

  ‘I’ll grant you, Joe,’ Mario McGuire conceded, ‘that God doesn’t appear to be on their side this week.’

  ‘Nor mine,’ said Professor Hutchinson. ‘With the exception of the late Mr Jankauskas, whose neck was broken manually, as cleanly as any hangman could have done it, they have tended to be particularly messy.’

  ‘You can confirm what we thought about Linas?’

  ‘Absolutely. It was very quickly, and very expertly done; no chance that it could have been accidental. There’s not a mark on him, not a single bruise.’

  ‘Are we looking for more than one person?’

  ‘All I can tell you is, not on the evidence of my examination.’

  ‘Will your report say any more than that?’

  Hutchinson shook his head. ‘Very little. He had several things shortly before he died; a raw onion, a pork pie, two bottles of lager, and sexual intercourse. He smoked too much, but used no other drugs that I could find. He was suffering from a small tumour, undetected, I assume, on the frontal lobe of his brain that would have caused him a lot of trouble in the year or two before it killed him. He had poor personal hygiene and his dentist will not notice his passing, not having seen him for several years. Your man was murdered; we wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but I can’t feel too sorry for him.’ He frowned. ‘The two I’m working on now, however, they have got to me, particularly the gentleman. In all my career I have never received someone here on two successive days, walking in on Wednesday, and wheeled in last night. It hasn’t helped me to remain dispassionate.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ said McGuire, sympathetically. ‘Can’t you get someone else to do the examinations?’

  ‘As dear Sir Magnus, God rest him, used to say, I’ve started, so I’ll finish. Anyway, I’m being assisted by students. While I’m out here talking to you, they’re furthering their education.’

  ‘How far have you got?’

  ‘I can give you a cause of death, in each case. If dead people can be lucky, they were. Asphyxiation, caused by the inhalation of thick, toxic smoke; I imagine that the fire and rescue people told you to expect that.’

  ‘Actually they were fairly non-committal.’

  ‘Not like them, but never mind; that’s what saw them off, for sure.’

  ‘How about identification? You’ve taken samples, I’m sure; we may have to match them against personal items from the house. We’ve been going over what’s left of it.’

  ‘Not necessary. Your CID colleagues have been hard at work; they found dental insurance membership when they looked the place over and your Inspector Stallings reported it to me. I’ve got their dental records, and they match. There is also the fact that the male victim was wearing Mr Gerulaitis’s trousers when he died, to judge by the melted credit cards that we found in the charred wallet in his pocket, once we had prised it out of his incinerated thigh.’ Pause. ‘Are you going to tell me why your department is so interested in accident victims?’

  ‘Let’s just say that we had a special interest in Valdas.’

  ‘And have you found anything to further it?’

  ‘No,’ the head of CID admitted, ‘but we’re still looking.’

  ‘And that’s what we’re doing,’ Joe Hutchinson declared. ‘I must get back to my grim workplace and see what my would-be successors have found. One thing I can tell you, though, that may be of mild interest. Wednesday’s guest on my table had a very distinctive tattoo at the top of his right arm. Because of the way he was lying, that part of Mr Gerulaitis is reasonably well preserved, and it appears that he had its match, apart from the name at its heart. Both he and his cousin loved their wives, I think, and both visited the same tattooist.’

  ‘Incurable romantics, eh,’ McGuire muttered.

  ‘No, Mario,’ said the old pathologist. ‘There’s one event that cures everything.’

  Fifty-one

  ‘Should we be doing this?’ Aileen asked.

  Bob shrugged, and frowned, quizzically. The gesture emphasised the scar on his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. It was shaped like a slash mark in a web address, and was one of several in his body, although the rest were hidden from sight. Occasionally, a stranger would ask him about it, and he would fob them off with one of a range of stories of childhood falls, or freak sporting injuries. His closest colleagues knew the truth . . . Mackie and McGuire had been there the night he had acquired it . . . but they kept it to themselves. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he told her. ‘This might be the senior officers’ dining room and I’m at the top table, but it’s just another staff canteen. We pay for our meals, and for our guests. Parliament doesn’t sit on Fridays, but you’re still busy nearly all the time. This is the first chance we’ve had in weeks to have lunch together, just you and me, no kids. Plus, I’m going to the Torphichen Place do tonight, so we won’t be eating together then.’

  ‘But what would the tabloids make of it if they knew?’

  ‘Bugger the tabloids. Anyway, there’s nothing for them to make. This facility isn’t subsidised.’

  ‘Are you certain?’

  He laughed. ‘I run this place, don’t I? I’ve made damn sure that all the overhead costs are factored into the prices, including the energy and Maisie’s wages. We are not leeching off the council tax payer, I promise you.’

  ‘If you say so.’ She shifted in her chair.

  ‘You don’t approve of this, do you?’ he challenged. ‘Go on, admit it; your socialist conscience makes you feel uncomfortable eating in a place that isn’t open to everybody.’

  She smiled, awkwardly. ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Do you think the same thought hasn’t occurred to me?’ he asked her, quietly. ‘It did, years ago, when I reached the rank that opened it to me. I wondered then whether this sort of privilege belonged in the modern police force. Well, now I’ve reached the position where I could, if I chose, close it down and send all the chief officers and superintendents down to the main canteen, where they can queue up like everybody else and pay a lot less for their grub . . . which they can do anyway, if they choose.’ He glanced around. ‘I don’t see Neil and Mario here; that’s probably where they are. But
am I going to shut it? No, of course I’m not. This isn’t Mao’s Red Army; we have a rank structure, and if rank has its privileges, then they’re a pretty good incentive to aspiring cops. We all worked our way in here, everybody in this room. One or two unworthy people might have been slipped the key in the past, but those days went even before Jimmy Proud’s time.’

  ‘You actually have keys to here?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Don’t be daft; that was figurative. There’s another thing about this place. There’s more shop talked here than there is football. It’s a good environment for senior people to discuss policing issues, in private.’

  Aileen surveyed their fellow diners. There were a dozen other people in the room, in groups of three and four, all male apart from the only other twosome, Maggie Steele and Mary Chambers, who sat at a table in the furthest corner.

  Bob seemed to read her mind. ‘And yes,’ he said, ‘there will be more women here in future, on merit. By the time I leave this post, your gender might be in the majority. Then again they might not, but my point is that there’ll be nothing holding them back. We have no glass ceilings; they’re all shattered. If you’re good enough you’ll have the chance to get here; part of my job is talent spotting and when I look at someone all I see is a cop. I’m not concerned with how you urinate, or with your skin tone, or which team you bat for; I’m looking at ability, that’s all. Jeez, look at Mary over there; she’s a gay woman from Glasgow and here she is at the top table in the Edinburgh force. When I joined, she wouldn’t have got within a mile of this place on at least two of those grounds, and maybe all three.’

  ‘How is she, after her escape?’ There was a sticking plaster over the wound on the superintendent’s neck. ‘I didn’t expect to see her today.’

  ‘She had the option, I promise you. I spoke to her myself and told her that she could take a week off to recover, longer if she needed it. She told me that a couple of large measures of eighteen-year-old Auchentoshan had done the job.’