A Rush of Blood

Twenty-four

‘How did you get on with the banker?’ Becky Stallings asked, watching Haddock from the doorway of her small office, as he hung his coat on the stand in the corner of the CID room.

‘Fine, boss,’ he replied, casually, as he took his seat. ‘I thought bank managers were all stuffy beggars, but Mr John’s not like that. He was very helpful.’

‘Hey,’ Jack McGurk laughed, ‘we should send you out on your own more often. Yesterday you had that fucking weasel Ken Green eating out of your hand, and today you’ve got a banker being nice to you. When you say he was helpful, does that mean he told you the time for free?’

‘He told me a damn sight more than that.’ He glanced at Stallings. ‘Boss, if you were hoping that Zaliukas had money worries we didn’t know about, you can forget it. The man was both cash-rich and asset-rich: minted, end of story.’ He paused. ‘Mr John liked him, too; he didn’t say so straight out, but he told me some stories about him that made me think they’d got on. He was wary of him, though.’

‘In what way?’ the DI asked.

Haddock frowned, searching for the words to explain himself. ‘The feeling I have,’ he began, ‘is that Zaliukas was regarded by a lot of people as someone who’d been a seriously wide guy in his youth, but who’d managed to leave all that behind and reinvent himself as a successful, respectable law-abiding businessman, and that when he bought those eight massage parlours, it was no more than a good property deal. Am I right?’

Stallings nodded. ‘I never met the man, but yes, that’s the picture that I’ve formed from what the bosses have said about him.’

‘Well, from what Mr John told me, I have a feeling that he didn’t change as much as they thought. Everything I’ve heard, from what Alex Skinner said about Willie Conn, her predecessor, from Andrew John himself, and even something I didn’t hear, just a feeling I picked up from Ken Green, makes me feel that the people who actually knew him, and worked with him, still regarded him as a man who shouldn’t be messed with.’

‘Are you saying that he was involved in organised crime all along?’

‘No, I’m not saying that. But we do know that he once ran a gang of Lithuanian hard men, and that he placed a lot of those guys in the legitimate businesses that he acquired or built up over the years.’

‘Apart from Indigo,’ McGurk cautioned. ‘As I understand it, his wife ran that place from the start.’

‘She’s been gone for a week or so,’ Haddock pointed out. ‘I wonder who’s been running it since she left.’

‘Dunno. Valdas Gerulaitis maybe?’

‘No danger. Tomas didn’t trust him. According to Mr John, Valdas once asked if he could have that job, but his cousin told him that he was too valuable at the centre of the business. The truth was he kept him there so that he could keep an eye on him. I reckon he kept an eye on everything. I reckon that his leisure company is as profitable as you’ve probably found out by now that it is, Jack, from those annual accounts that are lying on your desk, because there was virtually none of the pilfering that’s endemic in that industry. Why? Because Zaliukas could spot it whenever and wherever it happened and anyone he caught wound up in the Royal.’

‘I suppose you can prove that,’ the DS challenged.

‘I’m told that I can, if I want to, just by trawling the admissions record.’

‘This from your friendly banker?’ asked McGurk. Haddock was silent. ‘So what did you give him in return?’

The detective constable’s face reddened. ‘Nothing on purpose,’ he replied. ‘I let slip that Valdas isn’t going to inherit any of the Lietuvos businesses, that Mrs Zaliukas and the kids are.’

‘Oh shit!’ McGurk whispered.

‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ said the young man. ‘It was an accident; and Mr John can be trusted. No harm will come of it.’

‘That’s not what I meant, Sauce. If Gerulaitis is bent, will Regine be at risk when he finds that out? That’s what I’m wondering.’

‘I doubt it; he wouldn’t have been expecting them to come to him. But it could explain why Tomas left his interest in the massage parlours to his wife, though. . indirectly, it goes to Valdas. A wee sweetener, maybe; a loyalty bonus.’

‘You think you’ve had a great morning, Sauce, don’t you?’ Stallings chuckled.

‘I wouldn’t say that, boss.’

‘Just as well, for neither would I. I send you out to find something that will let us consign this investigation to the bin, once and for all, and you come back with an even clearer picture of a man who’s rich, successful and completely in control, the unlikeliest of suicides.’

‘I don’t think he was a suicide,’ Haddock told her, bluntly. ‘I don’t think he killed himself.’

‘Aw, Jesus,’ McGurk guffawed. ‘Sauce, get a grip. I know you’re a detective, that’s your job, but sometimes you have to admit to yourself that there’s fuck all to detect! I’ve seen what’s left of Tomas Zaliukas. So has Neil McIlhenney, so has Mario McGuire and so has Professor Joe Hutchinson, the most eminent forensic pathologist in Scotland. Every one of us believes that Zale blew his own fucking head off. Maybe you and I should go along to the mortuary right now, so that you can take a good look for yourself.’

‘Somebody doesn’t.’ The murmur was so quiet that it failed to carry across the room.

‘What?’

‘I said that someone doesn’t believe it. Why else would our report have been kicked back last night?’

‘The chief can be a stickler,’ McGurk countered, ‘but he hasn’t seen the body either.’

‘Then maybe we should take him with us next time we go to the morgue. How about you give him a call and ask him if he wants to come? D’you fancy that, Sarge?’

‘I’d do it in a second if I thought it would help get your head out the clouds.’

‘Boys, boys, boys, boys, boys!’ Becky Stallings called out, as the two glared at each other. ‘Sauce,’ she said, ‘you’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re outvoted. . or you would be if this was a democracy. It’s not, and that’s why we’re still chasing this fucking rabbit. Jack, I agree with you. From everything I’ve heard, any fiscal would sign this off as self-inflicted. But all we can do right now is follow current orders, continue to investigate, and complete as full a background report on the victim as we can pull together. When we re-submit it, as we will when I decide we should, it’ll offer no conclusions. It’ll say that all lines of inquiry have been exhausted, and let Him Upstairs make of that what he will. Agreed?’ She stopped abruptly. ‘What the hell am I saying? Yes it’s agreed, because it’s what I say will happen.’ She looked at McGurk. ‘Jack, have you finished going through those accounts?’

‘Yes, and they’re like Sauce said: the companies, Leisure and Developments, are both rock solid. The auditors’ reports are glowing.’

‘And there’s no link to the massage parlour business?’

‘None that I can see.’

‘I know where the purchase money came from,’ Haddock offered. ‘Zaliukas took a dividend; all above board. I had a call from Mr John while I was on my way back here confirming the amount: a quarter of a million.’

‘Thanks for that,’ said the DS. ‘There is something interesting about that side of our man’s life, though. I’ve been checking with the city council’s licensing people. It seems that the purchase from the Manson estate was just the start; since then Lituania SAFI’s been expanding its holdings, buying up similar premises, then leasing them to individuals who take over the licenses. There are fifteen of these places in the city. Guess how many Zaliukas’s company owns now, Becky?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Twelve, all leased to people with Lithuanian names. They read like a fucking football team. The company seems to have been working towards a monopoly. I’ve spoken to the owners of the other three, the ones it doesn’t have. They’ve all had approaches within the last six months from the same bloke.’

‘Who?’

‘Ken Green.’

‘These approaches; were they proper?’

‘From what I’ve been told, yes. All he asked was if they’d be interested in selling. Incidentally, all three owners were at pains to tell me that they do not provide additional services, so to speak.’

‘Did you believe that?’

‘Sure. It would be too easy for us to check, so why should they lie? The media assume that all private massage parlours are brothels, but it’s not true. There are people who only want their backs rubbed.’

‘Mmm,’ Stallings mused. ‘Maybe the theory about Zaliukas wanting to change the places he bought wasn’t true after all.’

‘No maybe about it, surely? If he’d ever intended to legitimise the businesses, he’d have bought them through Lietuvos Leisure, would he not? Anyway, back to these three; one of them was fairly recent, so there’s been no follow-up, but in the other two cases, each owner had a visit a few weeks after from another man. No threats were made; it was all friendly. Chunky offers were made for the businesses, and they were told they’d stay on the table till they were ready to accept.’

‘Who made these offers? Who was the friendly visitor? Do we know? Was it Zaliukas?’

‘No. It was Valdas.’

‘Was it, by God,’ the inspector hissed.

‘He’d only have been doing that with Zaliukas’s approval,’ Haddock declared.

‘Maybe yes, maybe no,’ said McGurk. ‘But we do know for sure that he lied to us about his involvement. We also know, Sauce, that your pal Ken Green only volunteered as much as you knew already. They both need follow-up visits, but we’ll do it together this time.’

‘Do that,’ Stallings agreed, ‘but first, check out some of these places. It seems that we’ve got an ethnic group operating under a very clever and well put together front. The head’s been cut off; let’s see if we can find out how the body’s reacted.’