A Rush of Blood

Fifty-seven

Chief Constable Bob Skinner gazed at his bare-chested reflection in the mirror of the bathroom in his office suite. He had almost finished shaving, apart from his top lip. ‘Tell me this is all a bad dream, and I’m going to wake up soon,’ he said to the man who stood in the open doorway.

‘If that’s an order,’ Mario McGuire replied, ‘I’ll obey as always. But when you do, the guy will still be dead.’

Skinner scraped off the last of the cream with his razor, and wiped his chin with a hand towel. ‘We are sure it’s Ken Green himself in the car, are we?’ he asked, as he smoothed a men’s moisturiser into his face.

‘Boss, this is George Regan we’re talking about, not some rookie plod making assumptions. He knows Green; he’s been cross-examined by him a few times in his career, as most of us have. The body’s pretty banged up, so he didn’t twig at first sight, but when he was told whose motor it was, he got back down and took a closer look. That’s who it is; no doubt.’

‘So what are we doing about it?’

‘We’re treating it as a suspicious death. The man left his office saying that he was coming here, to Fettes, to see Arturus Luksa, in custody, yet he wound up dead in his car in the wilds of East Lothian. Maybe it was an accident, but after the way the Gerulaitis case is turning out, that’s pretty low down my list of possibilities. I’ve told George to have the road closed off at either end, but there’s been no radio chat on this, so I don’t expect any press to turn up. From what he tells me, though, it will be a bugger of a job to get the body out of there, let alone the car.’

‘That’s true,’ Skinner concurred. ‘I know that area. I take my kids exploring over there sometimes. Anything south of the A1 is another world; you could meet dinosaurs over there and not be surprised. The roads are primeval too; there’s barely room for two cars The way you’ve described the scene, it’ll take a crane to lift that Jaguar, but I can’t see you getting one down there.’

‘That’s what fire and rescue say too. They’re talking about asking the military for help by lending us a helicopter. The plan will be, get it out of there, transfer it to a lorry on the nearest accessible area and take it to the lab for examination by Dorward’s lot.’

The chief opened his wardrobe, in which he kept his uniform and a few items of civilian clothes, and selected a linen shirt. ‘And the body?’ he asked.

‘I’ve told George to make sure that it’s extracted very carefully by the paramedics, once the fire team has cut an exit route, so that there’s as little additional damage as possible. Professor Joe and his bright young things did well on Gerulaitis; we’ll see what they can tell us about the way Green died.’

Skinner buttoned his shirt, tucked it into the beige jeans he was wearing, selected a soft black leather jerkin from the rail, and closed the wardrobe door. ‘What do you reckon, Mario?’ he murmured, as he stepped back into his office. ‘What’s up here? Let’s think this through; let’s look at things as they happen. Tomas Zaliukas kills himself, less than a week after he brings his brother over from Lithuania, apparently to sort out some trouble. Jonas had a heavy-duty military career, so he’s not been imported as a diplomat. Agreed?’

‘For sure.’

‘What’s the first thing he does? He has Valdas, a nervous Valdas according to our witness, call a meeting of the managers, and he says to them that the imported Estonian girls have to be withdrawn from the massage parlours, like yesterday. Linas Jankauskas questions him, and Jonas drops him like a side of beef. What does that tell us?’

‘It says to me that Tomas might not have known about Valdas importing the women after all, and that when he found out, he hit the roof.’

‘Yes, I agree. But how did he find out? And when he did, why didn’t he simply square his cousin up himself? This is still the old Tommy Zale we’re talking about, the man who, legend has it, once cut a guy’s hand off with a chainsaw just for copying his tattoo. He might not have been hands on in the sex business, but he was still capable of taking Valdas into a small room and beating the shite out of him. Yet he didn’t, or if he did, he didn’t stop there. No, he called for his brother, a guy formidable enough to reduce a roomful of fairly hard guys to respectful silence. Then there’s Desperate Dan. Who the fuck is he? Where did he come from?’

McGuire sighed. ‘As of now, we still have no idea,’ he admitted. ‘Maybe, but we know one thing about him. He had the clout, even with Jonas in town, to call the managers together again. . before they even knew that Tomas was fucking dead. .’ as he spoke, he stabbed his desk several times with his forefinger to emphasis the point, ‘and tell them that he was the new man in authority, with a letter from the newly headless Tomas to prove it. The same day, he took Anna Romanova from Linas’s place, over his dead body, and he dropped her off at the nearest surgery. . and that, my friend is the piece of the puzzle I don’t understand. The other eight girls have been made to disappear, yet Desperate Dan dumped Anna Romanova in our lap. Why the fuck did he do that?’

‘He could have thought she was too far gone to be any use to us,’ the head of CID suggested.

‘That’s possible, I’ll grant you. However, it may also be the case that he didn’t care, because he thought that all she could lead us to was Valdas. And if he knew that Valdas wasn’t going to be around much longer. .’

McGuire’s eyes gleamed. ‘Yes, yes indeed.’

‘Look,’ said Skinner, ‘the way I see it we have two possibilities here. Tomas was in trouble; it got too much for him and he killed himself. Jonas wasn’t able to prevent that but he’s blaming people, specifically Linas, who’s been playing the silly bugger with his girl, and Valdas. So he’s been settling up before going back home. He killed Linas, without witnesses, and he tortured and killed Valdas; his wife, being there, had to go with him. I could buy into that; the man has an engineering degree, he’d have known how to set the fire that was supposed to have killed them. He’s got away with it, too. Your woman Kerr’s theory, it’s a good one, I’ll grant you. But do we have any witnesses placing Jonas at the scene?’

‘No,’ the chief superintendent conceded.

‘And in a burned-out house will we find any traces of him?’

‘No chance.’

‘In which case we’ll never even get him to court. . if it was him. As I said, I’d go for that. . but for one thing, or person, or ex-person: Ken Green. If Ken Green’s death was a genuine accident, you could probably persuade me to go with the Jonas theory and close the book on that side of the business. But if it wasn’t, then what possible reason could Jonas have had to kill him? Mario, until you can prove to me that Green was going too fast on a dangerous road and skidded off, through that fence and into that quarry, I’m going to assume that he had help. And I’m going to ask, why?’ He smiled. ‘Specifically, right now, I’m going to ask you why.’

McGuire sat in the edge of the chief’s desk. He closed his eyes, and sank into thought. Half a minute passed, more; then he opened them again wide. ‘What Desperate Dan said to the managers: he told them that while he’s the new guy they report to, he isn’t the ultimate boss. There’s somebody else.’

‘Good, you agree with me. So my alternative to the Jonas option is this. That person, whoever he might be, is very shy. But three people must have known who he was: Tomas Zaliukas, Valdas Gerulaitis, and Ken Green. What did Ken Green do for Tomas?’ Skinner asked, but without waiting for a reply, he continued. ‘He helped him set up Lituania SAFI, the Uruguayan offshore company. And who was involved in that? Tomas and Valdas we know of, but was there a third person?’ He frowned as his mind worked recalling details from briefings he had been given. ‘Wait a minute,’ he murmured. ‘Green told Sauce that Tomas used Regine as a shareholder in the offshore business, because there had to be two. Right?’

‘Yes,’ McGuire agreed.

‘Then he lied to the lad,’ Skinner exclaimed. ‘Listen, Tomas’s original will left his share in the company to his wife. He couldn’t have done that if she’d been a shareholder already. So yes! There is somebody else; there has to be, he’s listed on the confidential shareholder register out in Uruguay, and Ken Green was so keen to keep the fact from us that he told porkies to a police officer.’ He chuckled ‘No, before you suggest it, there’s no point in you going out there because the names are legally protected from intrusion even by the Uruguayan authorities, let alone us. David Mackenzie checked that out for me yesterday. So what does Green’s death mean?’ he challenged. ‘I reckon it says that there’s nobody left alive to tell us who the mystery man is.’

‘So any way you look at it,’ said McGuire, quietly, ‘it’s a dead end.’

‘Yes, but that’s only one road. Let’s see what the autopsy on Green shows up, and what our guys can find in his car, but we still have plenty to work on. Look for Jonas; if he turns up back in Vilnius, we need to know. Find Desperate Dan; we’ve got a solid description of him. And not least find those women and, through them, find the missing girls.’

‘If they’re still alive.’

‘Granted. We can only hope that they are. Mind you, I’ve got no idea where you start, I admit.’

‘With the mini-bus they took them away in,’ said the head of CID. ‘Ramanauskas told us it was silver, although he had no idea of the make or model. We’re looking at street camera footage for Wednesday morning; if we find any possible vehicles we’ll show them to him.’

‘Good, but something else; we’ve been thinking locally about this from the off. I want you to check out whether Lituania SAFI has other properties anywhere else in Scotland. You crack on with that, and as you do, I’ve got business of my own to attend to. The massage parlours are key to the whole business, we’re agreed, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, that being the case, I’m going to talk to the man who sold them to Tomas Zaliukas in the first place; my old sparring partner, Lennie Plenderleith, the beneficiary of Tony Manson’s estate.’ He grinned. ‘Now bugger off, or I’ll be late picking up my daughter.’