A Rush of Blood

Eighteen

‘Jesus, Sauce,’ Jack McGurk laughed, ‘your eyes are like piss holes in the snow. Is this girl a vampire? Has she been draining your lifeblood?’

‘With respect, Sergeant,’ Haddock retorted, ‘mind your own business. Better still, shut the fuck up. I never said a word when you and Lisanne got together, even though I seem to recall you practically crawling in here a couple of times.’

‘He has a point,’ said Becky Stallings. ‘Cut the boy some slack. All his wet dreams seem to have come true. Now,’ she continued, ‘as I let you know last night, that job we thought was over has been chucked back to us for further attention. The problem I have is that I don’t know what else we can do.’

‘We could ask the French police to find Zaliukas’s wife for us,’ the young DC suggested. ‘That’s assuming she is in France.’

‘Her lawyer may have contacted her already, as Alex Skinner said she would. Even if she hasn’t, this is a civil matter, not criminal. If CID calls France and asks for help in tracing her, it might send out the wrong signals. She might wind up being arrested.’

‘We could look closer at his companies. Maybe they’re not as sound as Gerulaitis claims.’

‘That’s more like it. Pull the last three years’ accounts from Companies’ House and have a look. You know who they bank with, or so you told me, so have a word with his manager. And what about these massage parlours, or saunas, or whatever the hell they are? From what you said they’re all run independently by managers, but Zaliukas must have had regular contact with them. Talk to some of them, see what they say.’

‘What will we be looking for?’ McGurk asked.

‘Ideally, we’ll be looking for someone who tells us that Zaliukas confided in him recently that he was deeply distressed, that he was missing his wife more than he could stand, and that he couldn’t go on. We’ll be looking for any fucking thing that lets me throw this back at Neil McIlhenney with “Mission accomplished” stamped all over it.’