‘And?! What do you mean “and”?’
‘The guy was trapped behind a locked door, Joe,’ McGuire reminded him. ‘He must have gone frantic battering it, trying to get out. Surely hand injuries aren’t surprising?’
‘These are. If he’d done that, I’d have expected fractures, rather than dislocations, or certainly as well as, but there are none, none at all. And why are only seven fingers damaged? In your scenario he’d have been battering so hard that . . .’ Hutchinson stopped, and McGuire heard a sigh. ‘OK, I suppose that under oath I’d have to concede that was possible. But there’s another thing, his right hand seems to have been slightly larger and more muscled than the left, indicating that he was right-handed. So, if the injuries were sustained as you suggest, why was the left hand more badly damaged than the right?’
‘So what are you saying to me? What’s your clever student’s hypothesis? ’
‘That these injuries were not self-inflicted,’ the pathologist declared.
‘Could he have been in an accident before he died?’ the head of CID asked him.
‘And sat down at the supper table as if nothing had happened? Don’t be absurd. He’d have been in extreme pain; he’d have been unable to hold his cutlery. And by the way, neither victim had eaten anything for some time before death. If they were at table when disaster struck, then they must have been saying grace. Mario, this man was tortured; that’s what I’m saying to you . . . although not to a jury, not without qualification, at any rate.’
‘Immediately before death? You are quite certain?’
‘Yes. There is evidence of fresh bleeding within the displaced joints.’
‘Fuck!’
‘Now that’s the reaction I was expecting.’
McGuire ignored the professor’s exclamation. ‘Back to the cause of death, Joe. You said smoke inhalation?’
‘Yes. They suffocated. Was the room carpeted?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it must have been treated with some sort of compound, for the traces in their lungs were thick and black. Alternatively, was there furniture in the room? Armchairs, sofas, with big cushions? I’ve seen photographs but I couldn’t discern anything.’
‘No.’ The head of CID hesitated. ‘Joe,’ he murmured into the phone, ‘you realise you’re standing everything on its head, don’t you?’
‘There’s nothing I like better.’
‘Then why am I not surprised? Report please, Prof, to the last detail. Everything you’ve just told me, and you’d better give me a statement from the clever Ms Kneilands as well to back it up.’
‘Soonest. God,’ the old man chuckled, ‘I love my job.’
‘What the hell was that?’ asked McIlhenney, as his colleague ended the call.
‘Gold dust, chum. Absolute gold dust. Hang on.’ He scrolled through his directory for the fire and rescue switchboard, then pressed his call button. ‘Frances Kerr, please,’ he said as he was connected. ‘Tell her it’s DCS McGuire.’
‘Be patient,’ the investigator said as she came on line, but with a smile in her voice ‘You’ll have your report this afternoon.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he told her. ‘Frances, straight up, what odds would you give me against smoke inhalation being the cause of death in both cases?’
‘Honestly? Five to one, but I wouldn’t advise you to take the bet.’
‘Then don’t go into the bookie business, for that’s exactly what it was. They both inhaled enough thick black smoke to kill them before the fire did.’
‘There was nothing in that room to produce thick smoke of any colour.’
‘You sure of that? No treated carpet, upholstery?’
‘There was nothing of that nature, I promise you.’
‘In that case, it looks as if they were killed somewhere else, and left where they were, before the fire was started.’
‘Hold on, I’m dead right about how the fire started.’
‘Then somebody’s an expert. Did your sniffer dogs do their stuff?’
‘Yes,’ the fire investigator declared, vehemently. ‘They went all over the room; not as much as a bark.’
‘Then get them back, and get yourself back along there too, please, soon as you can. If you need help from our people, call them in without bothering to refer back to me. I need you and those dogs to go over the whole damn house. Something else happened there, Frances, something we don’t know about. I need you to tell me what it was.’
Fifty-three
‘What time do you think you’ll be home?’ Aileen asked as she slipped her car key into the ignition.
‘Not too late, I hope,’ said Bob. ‘You can still come with me, you know.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks; I’ve got some paperwork to get through and if I can do it tonight it’ll free up some time at the weekend. Plus, the kids need some time too. And anyway,’ she added, ‘you’ll have your big kid to keep you company.’
‘Are you still going to Glasgow for your constituency surgery tomorrow?’
‘I have to, otherwise the voters will be forgetting what I look like.’ She looked up at him. ‘You did know what you were signing up for when you married me, didn’t you?’
‘Just as you did with me. We’re a popular couple, eh, if you know your classics; politician and policeman, woman of the people and man of the people.’
He closed the door gently, watching her with a smile as she reversed out of the visitor parking space and drove down the slope towards the exit, reflecting on the twists and turns that life can bring. They had met for the first time in the building behind him, when Aileen had been deputy Justice Minister in a previous Scottish administration, before the fall of Thomas Murtagh, MSP, her predecessor as First Minister, and her own rapid rise to the top job. He had been attracted at first sight. His marriage to Sarah had been far down the road to failure at that time, but his secret suspicion, voiced only to Aileen herself, on their brief honeymoon, was that he would have fallen for her even if it had been stable.
‘In that case, Skinner,’ she had replied, ‘you’d have had no chance. I’d my reputation to consider.’
‘True?’
‘No; not for a second.’
Bob Skinner did not do guilt, as a rule, but he still felt a few twinges over Sarah. He recognised that he had put as many holes in their marriage as she had. If he had made more allowances for the fact that she was an American in an alien world . . . If he had been willing to put her first . . . There had been an occasion when he had been invited to dinner by a friend from the US Embassy, and had been offered, straight out, there and then, a two-year secondment to the FBI with the possibility of a permanent post. That would have put him in a whole new world, but he had turned it down flat, without even mentioning it to his wife.
His fluttering conscience did not stop him from being happy, though. His one concern was that Sarah should find her own contentment and so when he had learned, not from her, but from his son Mark, that she had ended her last relationship, it had set him worrying.
He was still thinking of her, and of what might be in her mind, as he walked back into the command corridor and saw Superintendent David Mackenzie emerge from Gerry Crossley’s room, his uniform military sharp as ever, a folder in his hand. He had seen changes in people over the years, the evolution of Maggie Steele from serious, solitary young detective into an all-round officer destined for a chief constable’s chair, perhaps his own when he was done with it, and the growth of McGuire and McIlhenney from knockabout comedians into the most formidable detective duo in the country, but no metamorphosis pleased him more than that of the man formerly known as Bandit. When he had transferred from Strathclyde CID, at Skinner’s instigation, he had been brash, occasionally over-confident, but brilliant. His work with the drugs squad had been outstanding. Yet what he . . . but no one else . . . had seen as a failure on a dangerous operation had led him into a crisis of self-doubt, and on to the inevitable crutch of alcohol that had put his career in danger. Skinner had been advis
ed to tip him over the side, to retire him early on health grounds, but he had refused. He had still seen a spark, somewhere deep in the ashes, and so he had brought Mackenzie close to him, and had been rewarded by his complete reinvention of himself, as administrator rather than detective, and as a man of substance rather than of image.
‘You after me, David?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Chief,’ the superintendent replied.
‘Come on then.’ He led the way into his office, with a nod to Crossley, who handed him some internal mail as he passed. He dumped it in his in-tray, dropped into his seat, and motioned Mackenzie towards the one opposite. ‘Shoot,’ he said. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s about the task Neil McIlhenney passed on to me,’ the superintendent replied, laying his folder on Skinner’s desk.
‘Oh yes. Sorry I didn’t brief you myself, but I had a few things piling up at the time. Have you got a result already?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well done; that’s sharp.’
‘I had cooperation at the other end.’
‘So Jonas Zaliukas has got a record.’
‘Yes, Chief, but not the kind you mean. When I put the request to the Lithuanian justice ministry, they came back very quickly and passed me on to the defence ministry. Jonas Zaliukas joined the army as a regular eleven years ago, after graduating from university with an engineering degree. He didn’t join the sappers, though; he did officer training and was posted to a front-line infantry regiment. You might think that being a foot soldier in a Baltic nation would have been fairly boring, but five years ago, Lithuania committed troops to a UN force that was sent into the Congo to put down a genocidal civil war, and he was second in command. It got pretty bloody; Zaliukas’s CO was killed, he took over and was involved in some very fierce fighting before the rebels were subdued. They stayed there for another eighteen months, before they were withdrawn. A few months after that, Major Zaliukas, as he was then, resigned his commission.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘He said he’d seen enough blood. He was offered a desk job, but he turned it down. Since then he’s been in the property development business; he has a company of his own, and his brother Tomas is listed as a director, but not as a shareholder.’
‘So why’s he here, I wonder?’ the chief constable mused.
‘That I don’t know for sure. However, he’s still an officer in the army reserve, a colonel now; last week, he advised the ministry that he’d be unavailable for an indefinite period, citing family problems as the reason.’
‘Family problems, indeed! And a whole week ago. Do we have a physical description of this man?’
Mackenzie nodded. ‘Better than that.’ He picked up the folder he had brought with him and handed it across the desk. Skinner opened it; the top sheet was in Lithuanian, but the figures ‘1.79m’ and ‘87kg’ were clear enough. He flicked it over and saw a figure of a man in uniform: narrow waist, wide shoulders, a calm face with sharp features and eyes that gave nothing away.
‘One thing’s for sure,’ he murmured. ‘This bloke’s no cowboy.’
Fifty-four
‘Look,’ the man barked, as Neil McIlhenney and DI Becky Stallings walked into the interview room at the rear of the ground floor of the Torphichen Place police office. ‘What is this? You lifted us last night for no reason. I told you that, and now you’ve done it again. You turn up with a warrant to search my flat and you bring me here. This is pure harassment.’
‘No,’ said the detective superintendent, cheerfully. ‘We’re well short of harassment, aren’t we, Inspector?’
‘Absolutely, boss. Harassment’s when we keep you all night before we get round to interviewing you, and check on you every hour in your cell, to make sure you haven’t topped yourself and also to make sure that when we do get around to talking to you, you’re well and truly knackered. We haven’t got around to that yet, but it could happen.’
‘So let’s see,’ McIlhenney continued. ‘The recorder is running, yes?’ Stallings nodded. McIlhenney identified both of them, and stated the place, date and time. ‘We haven’t met before,’ he said, ‘so for my peace of mind as well as for the tape, you are Mr Marius Ramanauskas, yes?’
The detainee nodded. He was a fat man, but with Popeye forearms and heavy shoulders that marked him out as potentially formidable. He wore a dark suit, with a pale blue shirt and a matching tie that might have been satin.
‘I need you to say it,’ the superintendent told him.
‘Yes, I am Marius Ramanauskas and where’s my fucking lawyer?’
‘Lady present, sir.’
‘I don’t see any,’ Ramanauskas muttered. ‘Where’s my fucking lawyer? Where’s Ken Green? I told you to call his office an hour ago.’
Stallings leaned forward. ‘We did, Marius. But you should watch less telly. This is Scotland, with its own quirky little system, which I just love, after years in the Met. You have the right to a private interview with a solicitor before you go to court, but you don’t have the right to have him in here.’
‘And in any event,’ McIlhenney added, ‘if Mr Green is anywhere right now, he’s up at the Sheriff Court representing your friend Mr Luksa, on a charge of the attempted murder of a police officer. Mind you, last I heard he didn’t seem too keen to act for him either. Now: let’s focus on the business at hand, shall we? Where are the Estonian girls you and Valdas Gerulaitis smuggled into this country?’
Ramanauskas shook his head. ‘What’s this fairy story?’ He laughed. ‘What girls are these you’re talking about?’
‘It’s not just me that’s talking. Your pal Luksa’s been marking our card. About three months ago, Valdas Gerulaitis went to Tallin, in Estonia, and recruited nine young girls, with the usual promises of jobs that pay big money. He drove them down to Holland in a closed van . . . no problem in these days of open frontiers in Europe . . . where they were transferred to a lorry, and driven on board a ferry to Newcastle. We’ve done some checking up on you, Marius, and it hasn’t taken us long to discover that you hold a valid heavy goods licence. When we do some more investigating, we’re going to place you on that ferry, in late October, and we’re going to identify the lorry you drove. You’d probably taken a legit cargo out and registered the vehicle as empty on the way back, for customs clearance. You and Valdas transferred the girls into another van as soon as you got off the ferry, and he took them on to Edinburgh, where they were shared out, like cattle, among you massage parlour managers. That’s what happened; that’s what we know.’
‘Then prove it,’ the man challenged. ‘With poor Valdas dead, from what I read in this morning’s paper, you’ll have trouble.’
‘I don’t think so. You forgot about Anna Romanova.’
‘Who?’
‘The girl Linas Jankauskas had. She’s under our protection, and I’m bloody sure she’ll identify you as the fat man she saw when they switched vehicles in Newcastle. And we can identify you as the man who’s been housing the other eight girls for the last three months, in your flat in Scotland Street, while they’ve been broken in as prostitutes. We haven’t finished going over the place yet, but we’ve found enough female traces on your bedding, in your bathrooms and in the rest of the house to nail you for sure. We’ve been talking to your neighbours; you couldn’t expect them not to notice, Marius. One of them complained to us that it was like living above a girl backpackers’ hostel. We’re not done either; we’re also going to crawl over every one of those massage parlours, so that we can match samples and identify where each girl worked. On top of all that we’ve found drug paraphernalia in the flat. I’m sure we’ll tie that to some of the girls as well. You are done, pal. You would not believe how done you are.’
‘Bollocks,’ Ramanauskas muttered, but his eyes were fixed on the table.
‘I’m impressed by your command of English,’ the superintendent snapped. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen, Marius. You’re going to sign a statement admitting to being involved in people tra
fficking, or else.’
‘Or else what?’
‘Or else I’m going to let you go.’
‘Uh?’
‘You heard me, I’m going to kick you out of here on your arse.’
‘What game are you playing with me?’ the man exclaimed.
‘No game. It might have escaped your notice, but Lithuanians are becoming an endangered species in Edinburgh. First poor old Tomas, your boss, shoots himself, then somebody very skilled breaks Linas’s neck for him. To top it off, somebody kills Valdas.’
‘What you talking about? Valdas died in a fire in his house, the papers say.’
‘Yes, but not accidentally, we don’t think. We suspect that he was murdered, and his wife too. Before I came in here I had a call from my boss, and we now have a new theory that we’re running. Goes like this. Jonas Zaliukas, Tomas’s brother, with serious combat experience in Africa, is in town, and he is holding you guys, that’s to say so far Valdas and Linas, responsible in some way for Tomas killing himself. It looks as if Valdas was tortured before he died, so we reckon that Jonas now knows about your involvement as well. I don’t know what he’s got planned for you, but I’m damn sure it won’t be pretty. So, Marius. What’s it to be? Your choice.’
Ramanauskas stared at Stallings. ‘He wouldn’t do that, would he, lady?’
She threw back her head and laughed. ‘So I’m a lady all of a sudden. Oh yes, he would. He’d even issue a press statement saying that you’d been interviewed and released without charge. It would be like tying a label round your neck. Jonas is bound to know by now that you’ve been lifted. For all we know he’s waiting for you to step outside. Do you fancy your chances against him?’ The prisoner paled. ‘No,’ she murmured, ‘I thought not.’
‘Tell us about Jonas,’ said McIlhenney. ‘When did you first meet him?’
‘Just over a week ago,’ the Lithuanian replied. ‘Thursday, last week. Valdas told us all to meet him, in Portofino, the restaurant, in the morning before it opens for lunch. When we did, there was this man with him; youngish bloke, cool.’
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