A Rush of Blood

Thirty-six

‘Becky’s on her way, sir,’ Ray Wilding told Neil McIlhenney, almost as soon as he had stepped out of his car into the cold Leith evening.

‘No, she’s not,’ the detective superintendent replied. ‘I told her to stay away for now. We had four CID officers find the body. . I assume they’re still here.’

‘Yes, they’re canvassing the neighbours, to see if anybody got sight of this man. DI Dorward and his team are inside.’

‘Good, at least they’ve got something to do. You and I are here, and we’re going to be joined by others soon. If Becky had come as well, this would have started to look like a Police Federation picket line.’

‘Who else is coming?’

McIlhenney pointed. ‘They are,’ he said.

The sergeant turned to follow the direction of his finger, and saw the chief constable’s black Chrysler ease to a halt on the other side of the street. As Skinner climbed out, so did Mario McGuire from the passenger side.

‘Does this mean that Aileen’s stuck at the Parliament building?’ McIlhenney asked, as they approached.

The chief shook his head. ‘No, it’s a two-car day: most of them are. We leave a big carbon footprint, I know.’ He nodded briefly to Wilding. ‘Hi, Ray, how are you doing? Your people, and Becky’s, walked right into this one, didn’t they just. From what Neil told me, it must have been like a fucking rugby scrum when the four of them went through that door.’

‘I know, sir,’ the sergeant admitted, ‘but big Montell had just come from interviewing the girl victim at the Royal and his blood was up.’

‘It’s OK,’ Skinner told him. ‘I have daughters; I’d have been the same as him in that situation. It’s probably just as well for everyone except the victim that he was dead when they got in there. Come on; let’s take a look inside, see what we’ve got.’

He led the way into the tenement’s common stairway, and up to the flat. A uniformed constable guarded the doorway; he stood just a little straighter as they approached, then stepped aside to let them pass.

The chief constable stepped into the hallway, but went no further. ‘Arthur,’ he called out, ‘how are you doing in there?’

Moments later, Detective Inspector Dorward’s head and shoulders appeared round the doorway from the living area, clad in the usual protective tunic. ‘As well as can be expected, sir.’ He paused. ‘Jesus Christ, how many of you are there?’ he moaned. ‘I haven’t got enough tunics for you all. Look, his bedroom’s clear; the one nearest the door. Some of you wait in there, please.’

‘How do you know it’s his bedroom?’ Skinner asked.

‘All his stuff’s there.’

‘I suppose.’ He turned to his colleagues. ‘You three keep Arthur as happy as possible,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a quick look at the victim.’

As the three stepped out of the hallway, he moved to join the DI. Dorward opened his mouth, but he cut him off before he could speak. ‘No, Arthur, I’m not wearing a paper suit. My DNA’s on file if I leave any behind.’ He took care as he walked into the room, watching where he placed his feet, until he reached the dead man. ‘Do you know the full story of what happened here?’ he asked.

‘Aye, Chief. Montell and Cowan told me; I find myself a lot less sympathetic to this lump of meat than I might otherwise have been.’

Skinner leaned over the body. ‘Has the doc been yet?’

‘No, sir, but I don’t need anybody to tell me he’s fucking dead, or even what killed him. The pathologists can declare death, and join all the dots later on. I’ve got no doubt this was done manually, and I don’t see any possibility of an accident.’

‘No, me neither. Someone’s held him and snapped his neck.’

‘More than one person, surely.’

‘From what I’ve been told, no.’ Pause. ‘You are right, though, insofar as we can’t say that for sure until the pathologist gives us an exact time of death.’ He straightened up. ‘I’ll get out of your way, Arthur. You’re going to find loads of traces here, especially in that other bedroom. I want you to take special care over that. First and foremost we need to prove that the kid was actually kept here. Once we’ve done that, any of her abusers we can identify from the DNA database is going to be charged with rape, and with luck we will nail some. You’ll also find stocks of GHB, and who knows, maybe other date rape drugs. These were administered to the girl orally; if you can find a glass or cup with traces and her prints on it, also Jankauskas’s, that’ll help any prosecutions that might follow.’

‘Understood.’

The chief constable retraced his steps and joined McGuire, McIlhenney and Wilding in the dead Lithuanian’s bedroom. ‘Right,’ he said, briskly, ‘I don’t need to tell you guys that we have got some job on our hands. First we need to find this van driver, or whatever the hell he is. OK, I know we can’t rule out the possibility that Jankauskas died after he took the girl. . what was her name again?’

‘Anna,’ Wilding volunteered. ‘Anna Romanova.’

‘. . Anna, out of here, but the autopsy may do that for us. We also can’t assume that he acted alone, but Arthur may be able to tell us one way or the other. But we go for this man, big time, computer-generated image if we can get one, the lot.’

‘We should get one, sir,’ said the sergeant, explaining Sally Ross’s cartoon connection.

‘Good. Then find her, now, put her together with one of our programmers and see if she can come up with a likeness.’ He frowned. ‘But that’s not all. From what I’ve been told, there are eight other trafficked girls in this city, and we have to assume that they’ve all been forced into the sex trade, as Anna was. We need to find them, and we need to keep our fingers crossed that there aren’t even more of them out there. That means I want every one of Tomas Zaliukas’s massage parlours opened up, and I want it done within an hour.’

‘Does that mean we’ll need twelve warrants?’ McGuire asked.

‘Mario, we don’t need any fucking warrants. We now have clear evidence that serious crimes are being committed in these places, and that gives us the right to go in there forcefully. While we’re doing that, we’ll raid the homes of every one of the managers of record, simultaneously, and every one we catch will be arrested on suspicion of involvement in people trafficking.’

He stopped and looked at the Glimmer Twins. ‘Isn’t it fascinating, guys,’ he murmured, ‘that on the very day that Tomas Zaliukas took his own life, all this stuff started to blow up?’

‘Yes,’ McIlhenney conceded. ‘It’s as if he knew it was going to happen and couldn’t face the consequences when it washed over him.’

‘Mmm. Looks that way, doesn’t it? Too bad he’s not around to tell us.’ Pause. ‘But fortunately, someone else is. Neil,’ he said, ‘you’re in charge of the massage parlour operation. Get the managers’ addresses from the city council’s licensing office. Pull in uniforms from every city division; use Ray, Becky Stallings and the four officers you have here, and get the job done.’ His eyes shone. ‘While you’re doing that, Mario and I have another job to take care of. We’re going to pick up Valdas Gerulaitis, this Snowman as Montell and Cowan say the girl called him, and light a fire under him.’