A Rush of Blood

Fifteen

‘How are you doing?’ Bob Skinner asked his wife. ‘I’m ready to head home if you are. Gerry’s gone already.’

‘I’m almost done,’ she told him. ‘If you leave now, by the time you get here I will be.’

‘How’s your day been?’ he asked. ‘How did First Minister’s questions go?’

‘Are you telling me you didn’t even watch it on television?’

‘I couldn’t. I got tied up in a meeting, then I had to leave to meet Alex.’

‘You were better off with her. It was pretty dull today, no flashpoints. The BBC political editor’s going to say that we boxed a draw, but the truth is there wasn’t a blow struck on either side. How about you?’

‘Nice lunch. My kid’s got an extra glow about her. It’ll last for a while, and then she’ll work out what her next ambition is and set off in pursuit of that.’

‘Marriage and children, maybe.’

‘That’s well below the horizon.’

‘The right guy will turn up one day, you’ll see.’

‘As long as he’s not a cop. .’

‘Bob! That business with Andy is history; get over it.’

‘I am over it. As for forgetting it, no danger. Now go on, finish off what you’re doing and I’ll pick you up in front of the Parliament building in fifteen minutes or so. Wait inside for me, though. It looks colder than ever out there.’

He hung up, stood, and slipped on his jacket. He was almost at his door, when there was a soft knock and it opened. ‘Got a minute?’ Neil McIlhenney asked.

‘Yes, but only the one. What is it?’

‘Tomas Zaliukas. I’ve just had a report from Becky Stallings. She wants me to sign it off to be passed to the fiscal. You started this off, so I thought I’d better run it past you.’

‘What does it say?’

‘Read it for yourself.’ The superintendent handed him a printout of Stallings’ email.

Skinner glanced through it, then read it for a second time, more closely. ‘No doubt about the suicide, then.’

‘No. The note on the computer more or less caps it. Plus, when we did a full search of the house we found a floorboard in Zaliukas’s study that had been taken up. There was a box of shotgun ammo hidden between the joists, and it wasn’t full.’

‘And the note points to the motive.’

‘That’s right; depression, over Regine leaving him.’

‘You know me and guesses, my friend. I’ve never minded following them up, but I bloody hate including them in submissions to the Crown Office. Young Haddock’s note says Alex told him that he made a material change to his will yesterday, Tuesday. One day later, that will’s in effect. In it, he left everything else to the wife and kids, except those massage parlour properties. Why not?’

‘They’re brothels, Bob.’

‘And Regine could have sold them if she wanted out of that business. But he left them to his cousin’s wife. Why? Could he have been screwing her?’

‘According to McGurk and Haddock, even the cousin must have to pluck up his courage to do that.’

‘OK, there has to be another reason, as yet unknown, so this report is incomplete. On top of that, there’s Ken Green; I hate it when that bastard’s involved. I hate it even more when he suddenly starts being cooperative with a raw young DC.’ He handed the report back to McIlhenney. ‘Don’t let Stallings submit this to the fiscal, not yet. We’re not done.’

‘But what else can we do?’

The chief constable smiled. ‘There’s these two seagulls, out in Gullane. Every day in the winter, when the weather’s frosty, like it is just now, they appear on the green. . us Motherwell boys don’t have lawns. . in front of our house, and they drum their feet on the ground, pit-pat, pit-pat, pit-pat, just like that, until their food supply sticks its head out to see what all the fucking noise is about. That’s what we can do, Neil. You tell Becky and her boys to get back out there and drum up some worms.’