A Rush of Blood

Fifty-three

‘What time do you think you’ll be home?’ Aileen asked as she slipped her car key into the ignition.

‘Not too late, I hope,’ said Bob. ‘You can still come with me, you know.’

‘Thanks, but no thanks; I’ve got some paperwork to get through and if I can do it tonight it’ll free up some time at the weekend. Plus, the kids need some time too. And anyway,’ she added, ‘you’ll have your big kid to keep you company.’

‘Are you still going to Glasgow for your constituency surgery tomorrow?’

‘I have to, otherwise the voters will be forgetting what I look like.’ She looked up at him. ‘You did know what you were signing up for when you married me, didn’t you?’

‘Just as you did with me. We’re a popular couple, eh, if you know your classics; politician and policeman, woman of the people and man of the people.’

He closed the door gently, watching her with a smile as she reversed out of the visitor parking space and drove down the slope towards the exit, reflecting on the twists and turns that life can bring. They had met for the first time in the building behind him, when Aileen had been deputy Justice Minister in a previous Scottish administration, before the fall of Thomas Murtagh, MSP, her predecessor as First Minister, and her own rapid rise to the top job. He had been attracted at first sight. His marriage to Sarah had been far down the road to failure at that time, but his secret suspicion, voiced only to Aileen herself, on their brief honeymoon, was that he would have fallen for her even if it had been stable.

‘In that case, Skinner,’ she had replied, ‘you’d have had no chance. I’d my reputation to consider.’

‘True?’

‘No; not for a second.’

Bob Skinner did not do guilt, as a rule, but he still felt a few twinges over Sarah. He recognised that he had put as many holes in their marriage as she had. If he had made more allowances for the fact that she was an American in an alien world. . If he had been willing to put her first. . There had been an occasion when he had been invited to dinner by a friend from the US Embassy, and had been offered, straight out, there and then, a two-year secondment to the FBI with the possibility of a permanent post. That would have put him in a whole new world, but he had turned it down flat, without even mentioning it to his wife.

His fluttering conscience did not stop him from being happy, though. His one concern was that Sarah should find her own contentment and so when he had learned, not from her, but from his son Mark, that she had ended her last relationship, it had set him worrying.

He was still thinking of her, and of what might be in her mind, as he walked back into the command corridor and saw Superintendent David Mackenzie emerge from Gerry Crossley’s room, his uniform military sharp as ever, a folder in his hand. He had seen changes in people over the years, the evolution of Maggie Steele from serious, solitary young detective into an all-round officer destined for a chief constable’s chair, perhaps his own when he was done with it, and the growth of McGuire and McIlhenney from knockabout comedians into the most formidable detective duo in the country, but no metamorphosis pleased him more than that of the man formerly known as Bandit. When he had transferred from Strathclyde CID, at Skinner’s instigation, he had been brash, occasionally over-confident, but brilliant. His work with the drugs squad had been outstanding. Yet what he. . but no one else. . had seen as a failure on a dangerous operation had led him into a crisis of self-doubt, and on to the inevitable crutch of alcohol that had put his career in danger. Skinner had been advised to tip him over the side, to retire him early on health grounds, but he had refused. He had still seen a spark, somewhere deep in the ashes, and so he had brought Mackenzie close to him, and had been rewarded by his complete reinvention of himself, as administrator rather than detective, and as a man of substance rather than of image.

‘You after me, David?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Chief,’ the superintendent replied.

‘Come on then.’ He led the way into his office, with a nod to Crossley, who handed him some internal mail as he passed. He dumped it in his in-tray, dropped into his seat, and motioned Mackenzie towards the one opposite. ‘Shoot,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s about the task Neil McIlhenney passed on to me,’ the superintendent replied, laying his folder on Skinner’s desk.

‘Oh yes. Sorry I didn’t brief you myself, but I had a few things piling up at the time. Have you got a result already?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well done; that’s sharp.’

‘I had cooperation at the other end.’

‘So Jonas Zaliukas has got a record.’

‘Yes, Chief, but not the kind you mean. When I put the request to the Lithuanian justice ministry, they came back very quickly and passed me on to the defence ministry. Jonas Zaliukas joined the army as a regular eleven years ago, after graduating from university with an engineering degree. He didn’t join the sappers, though; he did officer training and was posted to a front-line infantry regiment. You might think that being a foot soldier in a Baltic nation would have been fairly boring, but five years ago, Lithuania committed troops to a UN force that was sent into the Congo to put down a genocidal civil war, and he was second in command. It got pretty bloody; Zaliukas’s CO was killed, he took over and was involved in some very fierce fighting before the rebels were subdued. They stayed there for another eighteen months, before they were withdrawn. A few months after that, Major Zaliukas, as he was then, resigned his commission.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘He said he’d seen enough blood. He was offered a desk job, but he turned it down. Since then he’s been in the property development business; he has a company of his own, and his brother Tomas is listed as a director, but not as a shareholder.’

‘So why’s he here, I wonder?’ the chief constable mused.

‘That I don’t know for sure. However, he’s still an officer in the army reserve, a colonel now; last week, he advised the ministry that he’d be unavailable for an indefinite period, citing family problems as the reason.’

‘Family problems, indeed! And a whole week ago. Do we have a physical description of this man?’

Mackenzie nodded. ‘Better than that.’ He picked up the folder he had brought with him and handed it across the desk. Skinner opened it; the top sheet was in Lithuanian, but the figures ‘1.79m’ and ‘87kg’ were clear enough. He flicked it over and saw a figure of a man in uniform: narrow waist, wide shoulders, a calm face with sharp features and eyes that gave nothing away.

‘One thing’s for sure,’ he murmured. ‘This bloke’s no cowboy.’