20 - A Rush of Blood

by Quintin Jardine

  Sixty-seven

  ‘What are you two doing here?’ Alex Skinner asked the two detectives as they stepped into the reception area of Curle Anthony and Jarvis, just as she was passing through. ‘If you want to talk to me about the Lietuvos companies, you’re wasting your time. Mr Laidlaw’s holding the reins on that business now, and he will be until a new chief executive’s appointed.’

  ‘Close,’ said McGurk, ‘but no cigar. We need to talk to one of your staff, Mrs McKean.’

  ‘I don’t smoke cigars, Jack, only good quality skunk.’ She smiled at the flash of alarm that showed for a second on Haddock’s face. ‘That was a joke, Sauce. Chief constables’ daughters do not smoke anything. Why do you want Marianne?’

  ‘It’s to do with her former husband.’

  She frowned, quizzically. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Wrong tense,’ Haddock told her. ‘Was. Now deceased; Ken Green.’

  Alex’s eyes widened. She gasped, and the young DC experienced another momentary flash, of lust. ‘Ken Green the lawyer?’ she repeated. ‘Marianne was married to Ken Green? No wonder she never talks about her private life.’

  ‘Does that mean you don’t know she has a son?’

  ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it. Ronnie might know, but she’s never mentioned it to me.’

  ‘Ronnie? Who’s he?’ McGurk asked.

  ‘She. Ms Veronica Drake, the partner she works for. Well, well, life is a never-ending run of surprises.’

  ‘Yeah,’ the DS drawled, ‘and we had a few of those on Friday night, didn’t we? First Montell having to be huckled off by your old man, then Andy Martin turning up.’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, big boy,’ Alex warned him, not wholly in jest. ‘I’m surprised you noticed anything, the way you and Lisanne were all over each other.’ She turned to Haddock. ‘And as for you, Sauce,’ she added, ‘you looked like all your Christmas days had come at once when that gorgeous piece of eye candy of yours whipped you off for an early bath. What did you say her name was again?’

  ‘Cheeky.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be; it was a straight question.’

  ‘That’s her name, Alex . . . at least it’s the name she goes by.’

  ‘Of course, how could I have forgotten that? How long has she been on the scene?’

  ‘About a week.’

  ‘My God,’ she exclaimed, ‘and you’re barely out of breath. You’re obviously smitten, the pair of you.’

  The young detective grinned. ‘Early days yet,’ he said. ‘I’m seeing her again tonight.’

  ‘If you’re finished in time,’ McGurk pointed out. ‘Our boss is on her way to France, so our shift might run on a bit, especially if we take any length of time out in Green’s cottage.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’ll text her if we look like running late.’

  ‘Green’s cottage?’ Alex repeated. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘East Lothian,’ Haddock volunteered. ‘A couple of miles south of Garvald.’

  ‘My home county. My dad and I went on a car treasure hunt when I was a kid, and the clues took us out that way. If we’d found an undiscovered tribe I wouldn’t have been surprised. You’d better get your inoculations before you head out there.’

  ‘We’ll need to get permission before that. That’s why we need to see Mrs McKean. We found a holder with a lot of keys among Green’s personal effects, and we’re hoping that one of them is for the cottage, but we need her OK as executor to open it.’

  ‘Then let’s find her.’ She turned to the firm’s receptionist. ‘Sonia, would you call Marianne McKean and tell her that the police are here and would like a word.’ She waved the detectives a quick farewell and walked off towards her office.

  McGurk and Haddock waited as Sonia picked up her telephone and made a call. ‘Marianne will be with your directly,’ she told them, as she replaced it in its cradle.

  They stood, looking in the direction in which Alex had gone, only to be surprised when a questioning voice came from behind them. ‘Yes, gentlemen?’ They turned to see a small woman with burnished auburn hair, wearing a grey trouser suit, walk through the door they had used. She caught their confusion at once. ‘I work in the other section of the office,’ she explained. ‘The corporate departments are over here; the rest of us in the overflow area. We call ourselves the peripherals. Is this about Ken?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ the DS replied. ‘We’re sorry for your loss.’

  ‘He isn’t my loss. He never was, in fact. The day I signed the divorce papers ranks as one of the best of my life.’

  ‘How’s your son taking it?’

  ‘Kenny’s shocked, naturally. It’s his first experience with death, so my husband and I are keeping an eye on him, but so far he’s bearing up. I gave him the option of staying off school, but he chose to go.’

  ‘Had you heard from Mr Green recently?’

  She seemed distracted for a second. ‘What? Sorry. No, not for a while, not for ages. Since the divorce our only contact has been to do with Kenny. In the early years, his dad used to take him to rugby internationals and the odd football game, but that fell away.’

  ‘Who’s organising the funeral?’

  ‘Why?’ she retorted. ‘I don’t see the police sending a wreath.’ She smiled, briefly. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t talk like that, otherwise you’ll be thinking I fixed his brakes. The sad fact is that even though he’s acquired another ex-wife since we split up ten years ago, I’ll have to organise it, or at least instruct the undertaker, since I’ve been informed that the bugger made me his executor, without even asking me. That Polish witch of a secretary of his called me about half an hour ago to tell me. I don’t mind, though; it’s better I look out for Kenny’s interests than anyone else does.’ She looked up at McGurk. ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘We’d like your permission to go into your hu . . . Mr Green’s cottage,’ he told her. ‘It’s in connection with a current investigation. We want to see certain papers and we have reason to believe they might be there. We’ve got a sheriff’s warrant, but it only covers his office.’

  ‘The cottage, eh,’ Marianne McKean said, a gleam in her eye. ‘God knows what you’ll find in there. I didn’t know the place existed until my lawyer did the property inventory for the divorce, and he was forced to own up to it. As soon as I found out, everything fitted into place. The meetings away from the office, the papers that should have been there but weren’t, the clients whose names . . . actually more often their initials . . . were in his phone book and his diary but never appeared in the practice accounts, the money held in the clients’ account for people who were totally fictitious, like we didn’t even have their addresses or any record of services provided. I was Ken’s secretary until I split up with him; I was always asking him about that stuff, but he always fobbed me off. I knew he had to have somewhere.’

  ‘Are you saying that Mr Green was bent?’ asked Haddock.

  She looked at him. ‘Ken? Bent?’ She laughed. ‘Bear? Woods? Shit? In business, he liked to give the impression that he was one of those guys who sailed close to the wind but never against it. He sat on Law Society committees, he kept a high media profile, and he never broke the rules in court, for all that he had a reputation as an aggressive cross-examiner. But all the time . . . Bent, no, no: that word doesn’t come close to describing him. Don’t even think of corkscrews either; that wouldn’t do him justice. He was the dodgy client’s lawyer of choice. The only thing that was straight about Ken was that he was resoundingly heterosexual. That place of his was a fuck-pit as well, not just for him, but for his pals. One of them confessed as much to me years afterwards.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, you can have my permission to enter the cottage. I’ll give you it in writing, just in case another Ken Green ever questions your right to have gone in there. Good luck; I hope you find what you’re looking for. In fact, since it’s going to be Kenny junior’s, if you want to clear all his dad’s crap out of the place you’ll be doing me
a favour.’

  Sixty-eight

  ‘This is all a bit sudden, sir, isn’t it?’ DI Becky Stallings ventured, looking at Mario McGuire across the low table in Edinburgh Airport’s executive lounge.

  ‘Welcome to Bob Skinner’s world, Inspector . . . and don’t call me “sir” when there’s just the two of us about. I’ve been answering to Mario all my life and I can’t break the habit. When the big man does decisive, nothing gets in the way. Still, this sets some sort of record, even for him; less than two hours after he gave the word, here we are waiting for our flight to be called.’

  ‘I don’t even know where we’re going,’ Stallings pointed out. ‘I know who we’re going to see, but when Ray asked me where, I couldn’t tell him. And I still couldn’t: you’ve got the boarding cards, remember.’

  ‘So I have, sorry.’ He took four slips from an inside pocket, and handed two over. ‘You’ll see that we fly to Charles de Gaulle and from there to Bordeaux.’

  She glanced at the cards. ‘Business class?’

  ‘David Mackenzie does all the chief officers’ bookings through a travel agency. They get us a good rate, plus an upgrade, ’cos we’re polis. It doesn’t cost the taxpayer any extra, if that bothers you.’

  ‘I’ll take it if it’s going,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’ve never flown in the posh end of the plane before.’

  ‘It won’t be that posh. A few extra chips with the meal and better wine . . . for you at any rate.’

  ‘Don’t you drink?’

  ‘McIlhenney would fall over laughing if he heard you ask that. It’s not that. When we get to Bordeaux, about five thirty if we’re on time, we pick up a hire car and drive down the autoroute as far as Agen, about an hour, hour and a half, then across country to the place we’re going. It’s called Mezin.’

  ‘Won’t it be dark by then? French time’s an hour on from ours.’

  ‘No problem. The car will have satnav.’

  ‘How’s your French? Mine couldn’t order me a sandwich.’

  ‘Not as good as my Italian, but it’ll be OK for our needs.’

  The DI sipped her coffee. ‘This might be an obvious question, but does this woman know we’re coming?’

  ‘Obvious but fair. The answer’s no, she doesn’t.’

  ‘Then how do we know she’s going to be there?’

  ‘The chief has checked that out, indirectly. He asked Mitchell Laidlaw, Alex’s boss, to call her and ask whether she’d be available tomorrow morning to receive some papers he has to send out to her. She said she would. It wasn’t a lie,’ he added. ‘He genuinely does need to send her some documents.’

  ‘I see. She’s there, but she’s not expecting us. I wonder how she’s going to react when we ring her doorbell, and flash our warrant cards.’

  ‘We can’t be flashing anything in France, officially. We should be checking in at the local gendarmerie, but until it has to be official, and let’s hope it doesn’t, we’re not going to do that. We’re just going to pay a private visit to the woman, that’s all; to check that she’s all right. How’ll she react? Regine’s a cool lady. She’ll handle it.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘I know her from seeing her around at Indigo; we’ve spoken a few times. There’s no reason why she should remember me though; that place is always packed.’ He glanced up at the information board. Their flight still showed ‘Wait in lounge’. ‘But what do you reckon, Becky? You’re a woman, what’s your take on her state of mind?’

  Stallings frowned. ‘Never having met her, or even heard of her until all this lot started, I’m not sure I’m the person to ask. We’re not like bees, us gals, we don’t have a swarm mentality. But based on what I’ve read up about her . . . She and Zaliukas were more than husband and wife, she was an important part of the entertainment side of his business. There doesn’t seem to have been any hint of marital problems . . . Jack and Sauce haven’t come across as much as the whiff of a scent of a bit on the side. Yet the week before last, she took herself off to France, back to her old home village with their kids. She flatly denied Gerulaitis’s story that there was a break-up, but a few days later Tomas shot himself, leaving a note on his computer, saying, “I couldn’t live without Regine and my kids.” Sounds like they had indeed fallen out. Then, when she was contacted and told that he was dead, she didn’t quite say, “So what?” but she didn’t do what you’d have expected either, that is, jump on the first available plane and go home. It’s a reasonable assumption that whatever had happened between them, she was pissed off with him big time, to let it carry on beyond the grave.’ As she spoke, the information screen changed, telling them that their flight to Paris was ready for boarding.

  ‘But could she really have been that mad at him?’ she continued. ‘Apart from the suicide note, all we know about the separation came from Valdas Gerulaitis, not the most trustworthy witness. But what if that was all a smokescreen? We know that there was trouble in the massage parlour business. What if that got so big it made Tomas get her and the kids out of the way, before it all blew up. If that was the case,’ she said, as she finished her coffee and rose to her feet, to follow McGuire out of the lounge, ‘did the danger end with his death? That’s the question that’s sending us over there, isn’t it? It could be that when she opens that door and we’re there, she’s going to be very pleased to see us.’

  Sixty-nine

  ‘I’m surprised we can get a mobile signal out of here,’ said Jack McGurk. ‘Alex Skinner wasn’t kidding when she told us this place was in the back of beyond.’

  ‘You’re in, though?’ Neil McIlhenney asked.

  ‘Oh yes, no problem about that. There’s just the one key, for a Chubb five-lever lock; not hard to match from the lot we took from Green’s office.’

  ‘What’s the place like?’

  ‘It’s quite a nice wee place. It’s called Moor Cottage. There’s a letter box on the road at the start of the drive that leads up to it, otherwise you’d never know it was here. The original building has two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom and a living area, with a conservatory on the back, but he’s built it out at the back, with another bedroom, en suite . . . complete with mirrored wardrobes, and a steam room, would you believe . . . and an office. That’s where we are just now.’

  ‘Have you found what you’re looking for?’

  ‘Not so far. We’ve been though his desk, but there’s nothing of interest there, apart from a photograph we found tucked away in a drawer of Green with a bird.’

  ‘Ex-wife?’

  ‘It’s not Marianne, that’s for sure. Can’t say about the second Mrs G. Sauce thinks it might be his receptionist, but it’s a pretty bad image.’

  ‘Bring it back with you anyway. Did he have a computer there?’

  ‘No, but there is a broadband connection, so maybe he had a laptop that he used when he was out here.’

  ‘It wasn’t in his car,’ said the superintendent. ‘I’ve seen the inventory. It could be in his Edinburgh house, I suppose.’

  ‘No,’ McGurk replied. ‘I spent a good chunk of my Sunday going through that. I’d have found one if it was there.’

  ‘Well, what else have you got?’

  ‘Old technology,’ the detective sergeant told him. ‘There’s a four-drawer filing cabinet, stuffed with papers, sorted in a way that might have made sense to Green but makes none to us. Sauce is still going through it, for the second time, but so far he’s found nothing that relates to Lituania SAFI, or to Zaliukas.’ He chuckled. ‘It is a fucking treasure trove, though. We’ve found some very interesting names in there. It’s like a who’s who of Edinburgh criminal society, and more than that. He’s been involved with other people, names you’d recognise but wouldn’t imagine associating with Ken Green. From the quick look we’ve had, offshore companies in out-of-the-way locations seem to have been a specialty of his. I can almost smell the laundered money.’

  ‘But there’s nothing on Zaliukas’s company,’ McIlhenney repeated.

/>   ‘No, sir, not yet.’

  ‘Even though there must be. Jack, are there any signs of forced entry?’

  ‘Not that I can see. The first thing we did was check the security of the place. The front door was a double locked when we opened it, most of the original windows are painted shut and everything at the back’s fairly modern and looks pretty much burglar-proof.’

  ‘Somebody’s been in there, though. I can feel it. Have you looked in any of the other rooms yet?’

  ‘Sure. We eliminated everything else before we started here. We’ve found his coat, his condoms, a vibrator, some ladies items, including exotic underwear, and two pairs of wellies, size ten and ladies size thirty-seven. All the business stuff is in the office.’

  ‘Are there any outbuildings?’

  ‘There’s a wooden shed. There’s nothing in it but folding garden chairs, a lawnmower, electric trimmer and some other implements.’

  ‘Take another look, there and outside. An uncle of mine had a place like that, away up in Ullapool, miles from anywhere. He had a fixation about getting there and finding that he’d forgotten the key, so he planked one in the garden. You might find that Green did the same thing. From what you say, everything in the shed’s summer stuff, so look for signs for something having been moved recently that shouldn’t have been, there and around the house.’

  ‘I’ll do that, sir, while Sauce finishes going though the filing cabinet.’ He paused. ‘What about these other papers? Can we take these with us?’

  ‘Are they evidence of crime?’

  ‘I suppose they could be. But we won’t know until we’ve studied them, will we?’

  ‘No,’ McIlhenney conceded. ‘In that case I’m not sure that we’ve got a legal right to remove them. I’ll need to take advice on that.’

  As he held his phone to his ear, a broad smile spread across McGurk’s face. ‘No, you don’t,’ he said. ‘We do have the right. Marianne McKean, Green’s executor, told us we could clear his stuff out of the cottage. She said we’d be doing her a favour.’