A Rush of Blood

Twenty-one

‘If all customers were as soundly based as the two Lietuvos companies, Detective Constable,’ said Andrew John, ‘the banking sector would never have run into difficulties. Guys like me would still be carrying our bonuses home in bloody wheelbarrows, instead of praying that we can get out of here with our pension funds still intact.

‘In the old days, Tomas Zaliukas was the sort of customer we didn’t want. Cash rich, sure-footed in the licensed premises he bought and always with the knack of picking the right area on the property development side. We made money out of lending in those days, but Tomas never needed to borrow much, not in the long term.

‘Today, guys like him are like gold dust: loads of cash on deposit, property assets that are worth four times our exposure with him, and income to service his loans umpteen times over.’

Haddock let out an involuntary sigh, then hoped that it had not carried across the desk. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘you’ll keep the business.’

‘I can only hope so. For all that he was always on about his roots, Tomas had more sense than to go anywhere near the Lithuanian banks. His cousin might take a different line.’

‘It won’t be his decision,’ the young detective commented, then paused as he realised what he had let slip.

‘You mean Gerulaitis won’t inherit anything? That means it all goes to Regine?’

‘Please, Mr John,’ Haddock begged, ‘forget I said that. I shouldn’t have.’

‘That’s all right, it’s gone already. I’ll give you one in return. I’d rather have one Regine than a hundred Valdases.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because she exudes integrity. Valdas, on the other hand, is one of those guys. . Let’s just say that if I was forced to invite him for dinner, we’d be keeping all the good stuff well out of sight. Under Tommy’s eye, he was fine, but Tomas never let him out of his sight either. He told me as much; he said once that when the kids were babies, and Regine had her hands full, Valdas asked him if he could manage Indigo, for a change of scenery. He fobbed him off by telling him he was too valuable where he was, and paid him off with a pay rise, but the real reason was that if he had put him in there, he’d have to employ an accountant just to make sure he didn’t bleed the place dry.’

‘Do you think he could have been up to something and Mr Zaliukas found out?’

‘I don’t, because even Valdas is bright enough to have known that he wouldn’t get away with it. Tomas was better than that; he had some nose for business. He took me with him once to look at a pub he was thinking about buying. It was unofficial, of course; we went in as punters on a Friday night and spent a couple of hours there. When we came out, Tommy told me straight off what the place should be doing in profit and what it was actually doing, in other words, what the staff were ripping out of it. When he put his auditors in to do due diligence on the place, they found that he’d been spot on, both times.’

‘So that’s why his pubs make so much money; because he could spot all the scams?’

Andrew John frowned; his left eye twitched. ‘Yes. That and. .’ He looked Haddock in the eye. ‘You’re not going to hear this, any more than I heard what you said about Tomas’s will, right.’

‘Absolutely, sir.’

‘OK, we all know what Tomas got up to when he was younger, don’t we?’

Haddock nodded.

‘So did you ever ask yourself, when he went legit, what happened to his boys, the “associates” he brought over from Lithuania?’

‘Well,’ the DC replied, ‘I didn’t, because it was before my time.’

‘Let me tell you. They went into the pubs, but later when he bought the massage parlours, most of them became managers and the licensees of record. In other words, they never went away, and they were as close to Tomas as they’d ever been. If you look at all the years he’s been in the pub business, you could probably identify the few people who’ve ever been caught stealing from him just by cross-referencing the names of his bar staff with admissions to A and E.’

‘Wow!’ the young detective exclaimed. ‘Didn’t that make you uncomfortable about having him as a customer?’

The banker smiled. ‘No, it made me very careful always to spell out every clause and condition of every deal we ever did.’

‘Those places,’ Haddock ventured. ‘Do you know where the money came from to buy them? The lawyer involved was vague on the subject.’

‘It was kosher,’ John replied at once. ‘Tomas paid himself a dividend from Lietuvos and that’s where it went. As for Ken Green, he’d have asked no questions; that’s the way he is.’

‘Can you tell me how much?’

‘I can find out. So can you, by pulling the accounts for the right year, but I can probably do it quicker. But tell me. Why do you want to know? Tomas shot himself, didn’t he?’

‘For sure.’

‘But you don’t know why?’

‘No.’

‘Why do you need to?’

‘Because someone way, way above my pay grade does.’

‘If that’s who I think it is, say no more. I’ll call you when I’ve got that figure for you.’