A Rush of Blood

Sixty-four

‘That was a real tragedy about Ken Green, wasn’t it, Jack?’ said

Frances Birtles, looking across her desk at her first visitors of her early starting day. ‘A sad loss to the legal profession. I’ll bet you lot’ll miss him too.’

McGurk studied her face for signs of irony, and found them in plenty. ‘I couldn’t possibly comment, Frankie,’ he replied, deadpan. ‘He’ll be one less rival for you at court, though. You won’t be shedding any tears.’

‘No, but purely because I never could stand the man. I could never quite get my head round the fact that he and I were members of the same profession,’ she confessed. ‘Ken’s main skill as a defence lawyer lay in bullying scared and vulnerable witnesses into uncertainty in their testimony and in putting the seed of doubt in the mind of enough jurors.’

‘I thought that was what you all did,’ Sauce Haddock ventured.

‘Who’s your monkey, Jack?’ the fair-haired solicitor asked, without even a glance at the DC.

The DS smiled. ‘I use him for bullying scared and vulnerable defence briefs. He had Ken Green falling over himself to give him information last week. Unfortunately, not quite enough information. Sauce won’t be that gullible again; once bitten, much less shy.’

‘I’d better take you two seriously then, given what happened to Ken.’

‘You always do, Frankie. You wouldn’t be selective with what you tell us, like he was.’

‘Don’t be so sure. You know the rules; it would depend on what’s privileged and what’s not.’ She smiled. ‘Fortunately for you, in this instance, I’ve been instructed by my client, Dr Plenderleith, to offer you full cooperation, and to answer your questions as best I can.’

She looked at McGurk, appraising him as he sat awkwardly in the red leather chair with the squab that was far too short. ‘What?’ he exclaimed.

‘I’m just trying to work out who’s the taller,’ she told him, ‘you or Lennie. The only thing I know for sure is that I’d like you both in my basketball team. Now,’ she continued, before McGurk could retort that as a former rugby player he considered basketball a game for Jessies, ‘you want to know about the sale of eight,’ she paused and gave a light cough, ‘massage parlours, left to my client as part of the estate of Mr Tony Manson, of which he was the principal beneficiary.’

‘Correct. I know it’s a few years ago, Frankie, but. .’

‘My firm’s records go back a few years, Sergeant McG, and so does my memory. Selling a consignment of eight quasi-legal brothels is a one-off for me, and it’ll remain so. What do you need to know?’

‘How was the money paid?’ Haddock asked. ‘In what form?’

‘In two tranches, simultaneously,’ she replied. ‘There was a certified cheque for a quarter of a million drawn on the personal account of Mr Tomas Zaliukas. The balance, the other half, was paid in Eurobonds.’

‘What was that source?’

‘I have no idea. Eurobonds are wonderful instruments for preserving your anonymity.’

‘Where did Ken Green say they came from?’

‘He didn’t; to be honest I’ve always assumed that Zaliukas funded the lot. He asked if that form of payment by his client would be acceptable. I had no reason to decline. If it had been cash, sure, I’d have needed rock-solid assurances that it wasn’t laundered money, but Eurobonds are as good as currency, better in that they don’t attract the attention that a suitcase of readies would. No, Constable Haddock, don’t look at me like that. You have to remember that when Ken Green made an approach to buy the properties he was acting on behalf of an offshore company. I didn’t know who its principal was, and he wasn’t obliged to tell me. The first I knew that Tomas Zaliukas was involved was when I saw that transfer coming from his account, and his name as authorised signatory on the deeds.’

‘But weren’t you suspicious?’ the DC persisted.

‘No. And why should I have been?’ she challenged. ‘Offshore companies exist; they’re not banned by international law, or by ours for that matter. My client wanted rid of those places as quickly as possible; that was his instruction to me. I thought it was going to be a long and tedious job, and that I was going to have to sell the places off one by one, so when Ken Green turned up offering to buy the whole lot at property valuation, I practically tore his arm off. My brief was to help my client dispose of some iffy property for a decent price and invest the proceeds in something blue chip. I did a good deal for Lennie, end of story.’

‘Nobody’s disputing that, Frankie,’ McGurk conceded.

‘Then why are you here?’

‘Because these places connect to the trail of deaths across the city last week. Zaliukas, his cousin Gerulaitis and his wife, are all out of the picture.’

‘A suicide and an accident, I read.’

The DS raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s how it looked. But the managers have all been told to close temporarily and there’s a new owner in place already. We’re wondering if he’s always been there. That’s why we’re interested in that quarter million in Eurobonds.’

‘Can’t you check the offshore company?’

‘No. The late Ken was smarter than you give him credit for. It’s based in a jurisdiction where we can’t get access to its records. Uruguay’s tighter than Switzerland. We’re going to Green’s office next, hopefully with a warrant, if our boss can talk a sheriff into giving us one. Maybe we’ll find something in Green’s files. I’m not raising my hopes too high, though, so think back, please; when you and Green did the deal, who else did you meet?’

‘I never met anybody else,’ Birtles told him. ‘I advertised the portfolio, Ken phoned me, and said that he wanted to talk about the properties, all of them. We had one meeting. I showed him my surveyor’s valuation, and I invited him to think about it and let me know. He called me a couple of days later, offered me half a million. . I’d quoted him six hundred thousand. I told him to put it in writing, he did and I accepted. That formal offer was the first time I’d ever heard of Lituania SAFI.’

‘Did you ever ask him who was behind it?’

‘Of course I did, Jack. I was curious; no argument about that.’

‘Did he drop any hints?’

The lawyer frowned, her eyes narrowing as if she was trying to place herself back in a conversation that had taken place seven years before. ‘No,’ she murmured. ‘When I asked him, he just smiled and said, “Men of substance and influence, Frankie.” That was all. But he used the plural; he definitely said that there was more than one.’

‘What do you know about Zaliukas?’

‘I never acted for him. I met him, though, early in my career, when I defended his cousin Gerulaitis on an assault charge.’ She smiled. ‘I got him off, but it wasn’t down to me really. When the victim went into the witness box and was asked to identify the man who attacked him, he pointed to one of the guys in the press box.’

‘Could Valdas have been a partner in the acquisition?’ Haddock asked.

She looked at the young detective. ‘Not a chance. That guy was a chronic gambler, and a bad one. He was perpetually skint in those days; Tomas even paid for his defence. He told me he wasn’t sure that it was money well spent. When I asked him what he meant, he said that it might have been kinder to let Valdas go to jail for a bit, and here I quote, “to give him a break from that fucking wife of his”. He was a funny guy; too bad he stopped seeing the joke.’