A Rush of Blood

Thirty-seven

‘Yes, I met with him, Pops,’ Alex replied. ‘I don’t think he enjoyed our discussion, but he cooperated. But beyond that, I can’t talk about him. You know that.’

‘You can’t talk about Valdas Gerulaitis, your client. But you can help us trace Valdas Gerulaitis, wanted by the police for trafficking teenage girls from Estonia to Scotland for the purpose of prostitution.’

‘What!’

‘You heard me. Have you seen today’s edition of the Evening News? There should have been a piece in it about us trying to identify a young girl who was found drugged in Leith yesterday.’

‘Yes. I saw one of the office copies; I read that story.’

‘She’s one of them. Anna Romanova, a nice kid, according to Griff Montell and Alice Cowan, lured from a convent orphanage in Tallin, thinking she was going to be a housemaid in Scotland. Her description of the shitbag who recruited her matches your client to the very head and shoulders, so they say.’

Sat behind his steering wheel, he listened on his mobile to his daughter’s breathing, on hers. ‘What do you need?’ she asked, after a few seconds.

‘Are you still in the office?’

‘Yes.’

‘An address, that’s all. His phone’s ex-directory. There are places we could go to find out, but if you have his home details that would be quicker.’

‘One minute.’ She was gone for around half that time. ‘He lives in Cramond,’ she said. ‘No street number, just a name. His house is called “Vilnius”, and it’s in Poacher’s Close.’

‘I know where that is; not far from Tomas Zaliukas. He was in Gamekeeper’s Row, and of course his place had to be called “Lietuvos”, hadn’t it.’

‘Pops, when you arrest this man, will you be holding him?’

‘By the balls, as tight as we can, but I don’t know for how long.’

‘What about his wife?’

‘No reason to. Why do you want to know?’

‘I’ll have to arrange a replacement for Valdas, to take over his book-keeping. Even if you have to release him, I’m going to suspend him. I’ll ask the firm’s auditors to send me someone along, and I don’t want her getting in the way.’

‘Do you want me to tell her not to go to the office tomorrow?’

‘No, I’ll do that myself. If you let me know when you’ve left the house with Valdas, I’ll call her then.’

‘Will do. So long.’

He ended the call and slid his gear stick to D. As he drew away from the kerb, he told McGuire of their destination. ‘Will he still be there, boss?’ the head of CID mused. ‘If he’s seen the News as well, and read about the girl, won’t he have realised we’d be after him once she’d started to talk?’

‘Could be,’ Skinner agreed, ‘but he was in his office three hours ago, when he had his meeting with Alex. I reckon if he was going to do a runner, he’d have been gone by then. You heard what I said to Alex; it’s no certainty we’ll be able to keep him in custody for any longer than a day. He must be confident, and I may know why.’

‘Why should he be? Why shouldn’t we be able to charge him and have him remanded?’

‘Work it out, man,’ the chief said as he headed for the western outskirts of the city. ‘At this moment, we have the testimony of one girl that Gerulaitis was her procurer. That won’t be enough. If we’re going to convict him, we’ll need corroboration; the word of a fifteen-year-old who’s spent the last three months drugged isn’t going to be enough on its own. We’ll need at least one other girl to back up Anna’s identification. . assuming that she’s able to pick him out herself when we stick him in a line-up. Trouble is, at this moment, we only have her. The more I think about it, the fact that he was in his office as usual this afternoon gives me an uncomfortable feeling that when Neil’s crews knock down all those doors, they might not find much worthwhile behind them.’