‘Just this. Two women, and a man involved with a degree of caring in his make-up; I think you’re looking for a family.’
‘You reckon? That’s a good start. If you’re right, and they were operating within my force’s area, I believe I’d know about them. I may need to broaden this investigation.’
‘Good luck,’ Lennie told him. ‘Other than that I can’t help you. From the sound of things I’m the only guy who’s made out of this business, having sold off those seedy places and bought a very nice flat with the half million I got for them.’
Skinner stared at him. ‘Half a million,’ he repeated. ‘Our information is that Zaliukas only paid half that amount for them.’
‘Well, he didn’t, I promise you. You can check the public registers, or save time by calling Frances Birtles. She’s still my lawyer. Looks as if you have proof, Bob. Zaliukas did indeed have a partner.’
Sixty-two
‘I can’t believe they painted it magnolia,’ Paula Viareggio exclaimed as she gazed at the Great Hall of Stirling Castle from the western ramparts.
‘It’s not magnolia,’ Mario laughed. ‘It’s . . . it’s . . .’ He gave up the search for an alternative. ‘Although I’ll grant you it’s pretty close.’
‘Whatever it is, it’s garish.’
‘Maybe so, but if you take a look at the guidebook, you’ll see that they reckon that’s how it looked when it was built.’
‘When was that?’
‘About five hundred years ago.’
‘They had magnolia paint five hundred years ago? Did they have builders’ merchants as well?’
‘I suppose they must have, of a sort. I’ll tell you what they did have, for sure, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: pretty much constant wars. This place wasn’t built for show. It was a citadel, even more so than Edinburgh Castle. It was besieged so often they probably had greasy spoon carts down below, flogging bacon rolls to the enemy while the Stuart kings went hungry inside.’
‘You know, for a detective, you’ve got a vivid imagination.’
‘Only off duty.’
She took hold of the lapels of his car coat, pulled his face down towards her and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Mario, love of my life,’ she murmured, ‘you are never that.’
‘I try, honest.’
‘I know you do. Don’t worry, it’s what knew I’d be in for, the day I decided that what the rest of the world thought didn’t matter, set against you and me. Anyway, I’m not exactly a lady of leisure either.’ She took his arm and led him towards the hall. ‘Did you spot anything interesting in that car you looked at?’
‘Nothing that caught my eye.’
‘Was it all bloody?’ she asked, with a mock shudder.
‘Surprisingly not; considering that the guy was crushed in it, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of blood. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of anything.’
‘What were you hoping to find?’
‘Hoping? Nothing specific. Expecting? Maybe some indication that there was somebody else involved; the accelerator wedged down, Green’s foot tied to it. But there was nothing like that, nothing to suggest that it was anything but an accident.’
‘Wife?’
‘No, he was divorced; for the second time. Our Ken had a reputation with the ladies.’
‘I wonder how many will turn up at his funeral?’
‘Not as many as there’ll be polis reading the name on the coffin plate to make sure he really is dead.’
‘Not one of your favourites, then.’
‘No. There was always a whiff about Green. Most of us couldn’t see much difference between him and his clients.’
They stepped inside the Great Magnolia Hall, and as they did, McGuire’s mobile sounded. ‘Sorry, love,’ he said, taking it out under the disapproving stare of a castle custodian. ‘Yes, Joe,’ he answered.
‘God, Mario,’ the pathologist exclaimed, ‘you’re good.’
‘Top notch,’ he agreed, ‘but caller ID helps. How are you doing?’
‘I’m doing fine. However, the Humpty Dumpty on my table is not. I had him X-rayed. His skeleton’s like a jigsaw puzzle, consistent with the photographs that were taken at the scene. All his major organs are crushed, and his heart and lungs are torn by rib fragments. If you’re looking for a specific cause of death, one that couldn’t be challenged under cross-examination, I don’t think I’m going to be able to help.’
‘That’s in line with what out lab people are saying too. The car wasn’t tampered with in any way.’
‘So I hear. You asked me to tell you that this wasn’t an accidental death, chum. I’m afraid I can’t.’
‘Fair enough. Thanks for making the effort, Joe.’
‘My financial pleasure,’ the professor replied. ‘That said . . .’
The pause grabbed McGuire’s attention. ‘What?’
‘There is one head injury that seems slightly different, in that there was a little more bleeding there than in other injury sites. It might have been caused by Mr Green’s head hitting the window frame on impact, but then again, it might not.’
‘So you are saying . . .’ the head of CID began.
‘No, I’m not. For me to make an absolute determination, I’d actually need to take his head off and fit it into that section of the vehicle. Unfortunately, I can’t do that. I had images emailed to me by your people, and they show that in getting him out of there, the crucial area was cut through when they took the roof off, and twisted beyond recovery. Anyway, it was only an outside chance, unlikely to be definitive.’ He sighed, frustrated. ‘So, the verdict has to be that our Green died in the act of proving that Jaguars can’t fly.’
Sixty-three
Alex frowned as she looked at her father, sat in a chair in the garden room. ‘What do you want me to say, Pops?’
‘Nothing that you don’t want to,’ he replied. ‘I’m just telling you what happened after you stomped off last night.’
‘I didn’t stomp off!’ she protested, indignantly.
‘It looked like a stomp to me, kid, but I’m not blaming you for it. Andy was pushing his luck in showing up where he did, although I concede that his gamble paid off.’
‘I wonder who told him you’d be there.’
‘She’s in the kitchen, helping Seonaid make the supper.’
‘Seonaid’s four, Pops; I know you think she’s a prodigy, but not even Jamie Oliver started that young. Are you serious? Aileen told him?’
‘Yup. She confessed as soon as I got home last night. Andy called her and asked for her help to put things right between us. She suggested that he just turn up here, at the house, but he didn’t want that, in case there was a row in front of the kids. So she told him about the Torphichen office disco.’
‘Are you mad at her?’ his daughter asked.
‘She was afraid I would be . . . but I’m not. I couldn’t be, ever. The truth is she was right; apart from the professional side of it, he and I needed to sit down together. There are times when I need to be protected from myself.’
‘Maybe I do too.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve done some daft things in my life,’ she pointed out, ‘almost invariably involving men, the daftest of all being that which caused the bother between you and Andy in the first place.’
Her father smiled, gently. ‘If that’s true it’s in the blood. You’re talking to a three times married guy who’s had a couple of indiscretions himself. I’d prefer to say that most of the time you’ve been unlucky. I’m the one who’s been stupid, and a bloody sight more indiscreet than you.’
Alex winced. ‘You’ve never broken up anyone’s marriage, though.’
‘Nah.’ Bob shook his head. ‘I know it’s easy for you to accuse yourself, and in part you’re right. You knew Andy was married and yet you and he . . .’ He left the sentence unfinished. ‘Karen would have been within her rights to slam the door on him there and then, but she didn’t. She took time to think the situ
ation through properly and when she had done, she came to the conclusion that the easy thing to do would have been to forgive him for the one slip he ever made in their marriage, but that the right thing was to face up to the fact that there was more fundamentally wrong with it than that. She wasn’t happy before the thing with you muddied the waters. And neither was Andy. When they got together, they were both wounded people, for different reasons, and they were good for each other’s recovery. But they got married far too quickly; if they’d taken time to let the icing harden on the cake, they might not have. Then the family came along, Andy got deputy chief rank, and . . . they drifted apart. You might have been a catalyst, but all you did was spark a reaction that would have taken place anyway.’
She looked at him. ‘Andy told you all this last night?’ she asked.
‘No. Karen did. I phoned her as soon as I left the disco, before I drove home. We had a long chat, and she told me everything she was feeling. She doesn’t blame you, not any more. In fact . . .’ He stopped short.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘It’s out of the bottle now; tell me.’
‘She said,’ he continued, a little reluctantly, ‘that the two of you should never have split up in the first place.’
‘Is that what you think too?’ she challenged.
‘What I think doesn’t matter. All I know is that a relationship counsellor could write a bestseller on the emotional history of you and Andy Martin. It’s what you and he believe that counts.’
‘I can’t speak for him,’ she said. ‘I’m not even sure I can speak for myself. What I do know is that when we did break up, acrimoniously, the underlying cause was a lack of communication. We were engaged, I got pregnant by mistake, and I had a termination without telling him. He went crackers, and I told him where he could shove his ring. We didn’t talk to each other, before or during the disaster. He had his assumptions about me and motherhood, that he never put into words, but they were wrong. I knew enough about him to realise that if I’d told him I was expecting and what I planned to do about it, the row would have been just as big as it eventually was. I couldn’t take the chance that he’d pressure me into having the baby, so I had the abortion without telling him.’
‘And now?’
‘Now? I’m more mature than I was then; in the same situation I’d tell him, and then go ahead and do the same thing whether he liked it or not. Look, Pops, I know you’re getting round to asking me whether he and I are likely to get together again, but don’t, please don’t. The truth is that apart from that specific, just as there was something else wrong between Andy and Karen, there was another problem with the two of us, the same thing that went wrong between you and Sarah. He and I were both far too career-obsessed at the time to have been even thinking about domesticity. Well, I still am, and from what you’ve told me about the way his marriage has worked out, so’s he. I might be strongly attracted to him, I might love him, but where we were before, I’m not going back there, no way.’
‘I don’t imagine he’d fancy that either.’
‘I’m not going to call him, Pops,’ she vowed.
‘And he says he’s not going to call you. So there you are, it can stay in the past.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re both going to be living in the same city, but it’s a big place.’
‘It’ll need to be. OK, you’ve told me. Thanks. Now, how’s today been?’
‘Interesting. I went to see an old acquaintance, in the nick, somebody who once did business with your firm’s late client, Mr Zaliukas. What he told me makes me all the more pleased that Mitch has the sense to move you off that account. We are going to have to look at those companies, to check on the amounts that moved out of there and into Tomas Zaliukas’s pocket.’
Alex’s eyebrows rose. ‘Indeed?’ she murmured. ‘Mitch is going to love that.’ She paused. ‘But you won’t find anything; nothing that you shouldn’t, at any rate.’
‘Maybe not,’ Bob conceded, ‘but we’re going to have to look. There are some numbers that don’t add up.’
Sixty-four
‘That was a real tragedy about Ken Green, wasn’t it, Jack?’ said
Frances Birtles, looking across her desk at her first visitors of her early starting day. ‘A sad loss to the legal profession. I’ll bet you lot’ll miss him too.’
McGurk studied her face for signs of irony, and found them in plenty. ‘I couldn’t possibly comment, Frankie,’ he replied, deadpan. ‘He’ll be one less rival for you at court, though. You won’t be shedding any tears.’
‘No, but purely because I never could stand the man. I could never quite get my head round the fact that he and I were members of the same profession,’ she confessed. ‘Ken’s main skill as a defence lawyer lay in bullying scared and vulnerable witnesses into uncertainty in their testimony and in putting the seed of doubt in the mind of enough jurors.’
‘I thought that was what you all did,’ Sauce Haddock ventured.
‘Who’s your monkey, Jack?’ the fair-haired solicitor asked, without even a glance at the DC.
The DS smiled. ‘I use him for bullying scared and vulnerable defence briefs. He had Ken Green falling over himself to give him information last week. Unfortunately, not quite enough information. Sauce won’t be that gullible again; once bitten, much less shy.’
‘I’d better take you two seriously then, given what happened to Ken.’
‘You always do, Frankie. You wouldn’t be selective with what you tell us, like he was.’
‘Don’t be so sure. You know the rules; it would depend on what’s privileged and what’s not.’ She smiled. ‘Fortunately for you, in this instance, I’ve been instructed by my client, Dr Plenderleith, to offer you full cooperation, and to answer your questions as best I can.’
She looked at McGurk, appraising him as he sat awkwardly in the red leather chair with the squab that was far too short. ‘What?’ he exclaimed.
‘I’m just trying to work out who’s the taller,’ she told him, ‘you or Lennie. The only thing I know for sure is that I’d like you both in my basketball team. Now,’ she continued, before McGurk could retort that as a former rugby player he considered basketball a game for Jessies, ‘you want to know about the sale of eight,’ she paused and gave a light cough, ‘massage parlours, left to my client as part of the estate of Mr Tony Manson, of which he was the principal beneficiary.’
‘Correct. I know it’s a few years ago, Frankie, but . . .’
‘My firm’s records go back a few years, Sergeant McG, and so does my memory. Selling a consignment of eight quasi-legal brothels is a one-off for me, and it’ll remain so. What do you need to know?’
‘How was the money paid?’ Haddock asked. ‘In what form?’
‘In two tranches, simultaneously,’ she replied. ‘There was a certified cheque for a quarter of a million drawn on the personal account of Mr Tomas Zaliukas. The balance, the other half, was paid in Eurobonds.’
‘What was that source?’
‘I have no idea. Eurobonds are wonderful instruments for preserving your anonymity.’
‘Where did Ken Green say they came from?’
‘He didn’t; to be honest I’ve always assumed that Zaliukas funded the lot. He asked if that form of payment by his client would be acceptable. I had no reason to decline. If it had been cash, sure, I’d have needed rock-solid assurances that it wasn’t laundered money, but Eurobonds are as good as currency, better in that they don’t attract the attention that a suitcase of readies would. No, Constable Haddock, don’t look at me like that. You have to remember that when Ken Green made an approach to buy the properties he was acting on behalf of an offshore company. I didn’t know who its principal was, and he wasn’t obliged to tell me. The first I knew that Tomas Zaliukas was involved was when I saw that transfer coming from his account, and his name as authorised signatory on the deeds.’
‘But weren’t you suspicious?’ the DC persisted.
‘No. And why should I
have been?’ she challenged. ‘Offshore companies exist; they’re not banned by international law, or by ours for that matter. My client wanted rid of those places as quickly as possible; that was his instruction to me. I thought it was going to be a long and tedious job, and that I was going to have to sell the places off one by one, so when Ken Green turned up offering to buy the whole lot at property valuation, I practically tore his arm off. My brief was to help my client dispose of some iffy property for a decent price and invest the proceeds in something blue chip. I did a good deal for Lennie, end of story.’
‘Nobody’s disputing that, Frankie,’ McGurk conceded.
‘Then why are you here?’
‘Because these places connect to the trail of deaths across the city last week. Zaliukas, his cousin Gerulaitis and his wife, are all out of the picture.’
‘A suicide and an accident, I read.’
The DS raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s how it looked. But the managers have all been told to close temporarily and there’s a new owner in place already. We’re wondering if he’s always been there. That’s why we’re interested in that quarter million in Eurobonds.’
‘Can’t you check the offshore company?’
‘No. The late Ken was smarter than you give him credit for. It’s based in a jurisdiction where we can’t get access to its records. Uruguay’s tighter than Switzerland. We’re going to Green’s office next, hopefully with a warrant, if our boss can talk a sheriff into giving us one. Maybe we’ll find something in Green’s files. I’m not raising my hopes too high, though, so think back, please; when you and Green did the deal, who else did you meet?’
‘I never met anybody else,’ Birtles told him. ‘I advertised the portfolio, Ken phoned me, and said that he wanted to talk about the properties, all of them. We had one meeting. I showed him my surveyor’s valuation, and I invited him to think about it and let me know. He called me a couple of days later, offered me half a million . . . I’d quoted him six hundred thousand. I told him to put it in writing, he did and I accepted. That formal offer was the first time I’d ever heard of Lituania SAFI.’
20 - A Rush of Blood Page 28