A Rush of Blood

Forty

‘What’s gonnae happen, ma’am?’ Charlie Johnston asked, as they stood in the small Stockbridge terrace, looking across the street towards the double upper colony house that was the address of record for the manager of the massage parlour in Raeburn Place.

Mary Chambers checked her watch. ‘In about four minutes,’ she told the veteran, ‘Detective Superintendent McIlhenney’s going to come on radio and give us the go. When that happens we go straight up those steps and invite Mr Arturus Luksa to accompany us back to Torphichen Place.’

‘Dae we cuff him?’

‘That’ll depend on his attitude.’

‘The punters’ll no like this, ye ken,’ Johnston sighed mournfully. ‘All the massage places bein’ shut.’

‘Does that mean you approve of prostitution, Charlie?’

‘That hardly matters, ma’am, does it; whether a tired old plod’s for it or agin it. There’s been hoors in Edinburgh since the first ships came intae Leith. . maybe before that. . and there always will be. Better indoors than up against the rough-cast walls, that’s all Ah’ve got to say about it.’ She saw him frown, his face yellow in the sodium lights. ‘But when it involves druggin’ fifteen-year-olds and puttin’ them on the game, that’s another story.’

‘Where did you hear that?’ she demanded.

McIlhenney had decided that the uniforms involved in the arrest need not be told the full story behind the raids, in case it led to an excess of zeal. ‘The priority, Mary,’ he had said, ‘is to bring them all in quietly and in one piece.’

Johnston smiled, his head tilted slightly. ‘I pick things up, ma’am, that’s all. I suppose that’s why I had a call from the ACC this afternoon. See these houses,’ he carried on, in one of the least subtle changes of subject she had ever heard, ‘they call them colonies. D’ye ken why that is?’

The superintendent knew that a thirty-year veteran with a secure pension was not about to answer any question that he chose not to, so she gave up. ‘Can’t say I do, Charlie,’ she replied.

‘It’s because of the way they were designed, in a sort of beehive style. They were built by a cooperative, for working people, in the second half of the nineteenth century, and intae the twentieth. There’s over two thousand of them across the city. Folk go on about Edinburgh bein’ the Old Town and the New Town, but they forget about these. Bloody brilliant, they-’

The crackling of the radio stopped him in mid-sentence. ‘All units move,’ ordered a voice, metallic but unmistakably that of Neil McIlhenney. The two officers reacted immediately.

‘There’s a light on upstairs,’ Chambers pointed out.

‘Do ye think he’s got a girl up there?’ Johnston asked.

‘We’ll soon find out.’ She led the way briskly up the flight of stone stairs that led to the beehive house, the PC in her wake. He was panting as she rang the doorbell.

The door was opened by a woman, pretty, petite, dark-haired, expertly made up and clad in a red sheath dress. ‘You’re early,’ she began. ‘I wasn’t expecting. .’ Her voice tailed off as she saw the uniforms.

The superintendent noted a wedding ring. ‘Mrs Luksa?’

‘Yes. What can I do for you?’ Her voice was assertive, just short of aggressive. Both officers knew instinctively that she’d greeted police at her door before.

‘Is your husband in?’

‘Yes, but he’s busy. He’s upstairs putting our son to bed. We’re going out: I thought you were the babysitter.’

‘Ask him to come down, please.’

‘No! Look, it’s not convenient. Go way; come back in the morning.’ She made to shut the door in their faces, but Chambers slammed her meaty right shoulder into in, knocking it wide open and sending the smaller woman flying.

As she hit the floor, a man appeared, dressed in a white shirt, open-necked, dark trousers, and black patent shoes, bounding down the stairway at the back of the hall. ‘Arturus Luksa?’ the superintendent shouted.

They expected him to go to his wife’s aid, but instead he turned at the foot of the stair and disappeared through a door.

‘He’ll get away,’ Chambers shouted.

‘No, ma’am, there’s only one door in these places.’

They followed him, the senior, yet younger, officer in the lead, into a small, well-equipped kitchen, just as Luksa closed a drawer and turned to face them, a twelve-inch knife in his hand. ‘You bastards!’ he hissed. ‘You come into my home, but you don’t leave it!’ He lunged at Chambers, thrusting the blade not at her chest, but above her stab vest, at her throat.

She froze, seeing her death coming at her.

Later she realised that everything must have happened inside two seconds. Charlie Johnston moved alongside her, drawing and extending his baton, and in the same movement lashing it across Luksa’s wrist and, at the very instant its tip pierced the superintendent’s skin, sending the blade flying, so hard that it bounced off the tiled wall on to the work surface. It was spinning crazily as he whipped his weapon on to the forehand and cracked it into the side of the attacker’s knee.

The Lithuanian fell to the floor, screaming and clutching his leg. ‘Their fucking footballers do the same every time they get hit,’ the PC grunted, as he rolled him on to his face, then sat on his legs and cuffed his hands behind his back. ‘Makes me glad I’m a Hibby,’ he added as he stood.

Chambers stared at him, feeling a warm trickle of blood running from her wound, down her neck and into her shirt. Her temporary paralysis over, she found that she was shaking. ‘Charlie,’ she gasped, as she fought for control over her terror and her bladder, ‘where did you learn to do that?’

‘In thirty years on the job, ma’am, you pick up a few tricks. Pity we’re no’ still using the old truncheons. This bastard would have had two fractures wi’ one o’ them.’ He smiled at her. ‘Do you no’ want to sit down?’

‘I daren’t,’ she told him, honestly. ‘If I did, it might be a while before I could stand up again.’

As she spoke, they heard a whimpering from the hall. ‘Then can I suggest, ma’am,’ said the PC, gently, ‘that you sit the wife down in the front room, calm her, then verify there really is a kid upstairs and no’ another poor wee Estonian lass.’

Silently, she left to follow his advice, as Johnston produced an evidence container from his pocket, another surprise that she noted mentally, picked up the knife carefully, so that he neither left a print nor wiped her blood from the blade, and bagged it.

When she was gone, he hauled Luksa to his feet. ‘You might think we’ve finished our business, son,’ he whispered in his ear. ‘Well, that depends on you. If you’re quiet as a fucking mouse all the way back to our station, Ah might not tell the rest of the lads there what you just tried to do. But just one word out of you, and Ah will. They won’t be pleased, ye ken; oh, they will not. We all like Mary, every one of us. We’ve got this guy McGurk.’ He whistled, softly. ‘You’ll no’ believe how fuckin’ big he is.’