by Tana Collins
‘Well, his parties were legendary, apparently. There used to be talk at the golf club. I always wondered why they clammed up when they saw me.’ Bingham pursed his lips.
He looks like the boy in the school playground nobody wants to play with, thought Carruthers.
‘I’ve been such a fool.’ Bingham seemed to collapse into his chair. ‘Have you ever lived a lie?’
Carruthers thought about it. Wasn’t sure what Bingham meant. He started to wonder just how much Bingham had drunk.
‘I know what you think of me,’ Bingham said. ‘You think I’m a social climber,’
Carruthers shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘I–’
‘Golf club membership, exclusive parties. It’s all bloody Irene. It’s what my wife wants. I’m trying to fit in with the type of husband she wants me to be. I despise myself for it and it’s not working. I’m not happy.’ Bingham seemed to collapse forward, head in hands.
Carruthers was gobsmacked. He didn’t know what to say.
Bingham raised his head. ‘It was fine until I got promoted to superintendent. Suddenly my wife decided we weren’t moving in the right circles. She wanted me to take up golf. I hate bloody golf.’
So Bingham wasn’t a social climber at all. It was his wife who was. Carruthers had been right about one thing, though. Bingham really did use his office as a refuge from his marriage.
‘I want to take up a hobby of my own choosing,’ he continued.
Carruthers was intrigued. ‘What would you choose to take up?’ he asked.
‘Metal detecting. And do you know, Jim?’ Bingham picked up his glass and toasted Carruthers. ‘I’m bloody well going to. Irene can stuff her bloody golf and parties. Look where it’s got me. Cavorting with bloody criminals. That’s where. Well, that will be the end of any more dreams of promotion for me. I might as well just count the days to my retirement.’
‘Talking of criminals,’ said Carruthers. ‘What about Barry Cuthbert?’
Bingham shrugged. ‘Well, Barry Cuthbert won’t be going anywhere for a few days. Don’t think it’s very likely to have been staged. Do you? I mean the man’s got a fractured cheekbone.’
‘Do you think they were trying to kill him?’ asked Carruthers.
‘Well, if they weren’t, they might now. After all, they know we’re onto him. It depends whether they think he might talk. I’m afraid I agree with you that that assistant gamekeeper… what’s his name?’
‘Joe McGuigan.’
‘Yes, Joe McGuigan has most likely been killed by the Estonians. Still need to find the murder weapon.’
‘Maybe it’s been thrown into the sea,’ said Carruthers. Suddenly he had a thought. ‘Would Cuthbert be the sort of man you could strike a deal with? To save his own neck, I mean.’ He had no liking for Barry Cuthbert at all, but he was the only link they had to the prostitution ring and the art thieves. He was their only chance to stop both.
‘I don’t know him that well,’ admitted Bingham, ‘but I imagine he’s the sort of person whose true loyalty is to himself. I’m sure he’d do anything to save his own neck.’
‘We could offer him police protection?’ said Carruthers, trying to think.
‘I want you to go back to the hospital,’ said Bingham. ‘Interview him again. Lean on him if you have to. In the meantime, I’m going to apply to the Procurator Fiscal for a search warrant for Cuthbert’s place. We need to find some concrete evidence linking him to the robberies. The most likely place to start is his estate.’
Carruthers stood up. Nodded. ‘Good plan,’ he said. He placed his whisky glass on the table. ‘I’ll head back to the hospital after I phone the police station in Tallinn again.’ Shit, can I actually drive after that whisky? He wasn’t living in London anymore. Scotland had an almost zero tolerance to drink driving. You couldn’t have as much as a single pint. So that would be a no then, although his glass wasn’t empty. ‘I need to talk to someone about this girl, Marika Paju. Maybe they think she’s in the UK. Perhaps she was the one who made the anonymous call?’
‘That doesn’t make sense if she did. Why put her parents through all that misery? She’d have known they would have to fly over to identify the body.’
Several hours later, Carruthers was sitting slumped over his phone back at his desk. He was exhausted. With young Daniel’s help he’d made another call to Tallinn but had got nowhere.
Daniel had spoken to an officer whose English had been perfect so he’d passed the phone to Carruthers. Unfortunately that had been the only positive thing about the whole call. The young officer, who hadn’t introduced himself, had told Carruthers that the only case Mikael Tamm had been investigating when he’d been killed had been a local drugs ring. He also told Carruthers he’d never heard of a man called Aleks Voller or a woman called Marika Paju. Carruthers had asked to speak with Janek Kuul to be told he no longer worked at the station. He had been transferred. When he’d pushed the Estonian the man had told Carruthers to leave the matter alone then hung up. Carruthers had sat back, deeply perplexed.
Carruthers phoned the hospital later that afternoon to find that Cuthbert had taken a turn for the worse and had been put into a medically-induced coma.
Edgy and exhausted, Carruthers grabbed his jacket and headed home. Mercifully, the rain had dried up but the wind still buffeted. It tugged at his clothes as he walked to the car. He picked up a takeaway and ate it in his comfy armchair while he drank a beer. He listened to the wind whistling down the chimney breast. He wondered if that was their short summer now over. Taking a slug of the beer, he put the bottle down too heavily. He stared morosely at it as bubbles fizzed out of the glass neck and over the side. He watched it pool on the little wooden table beside him before he stood up with a sigh and walked into the kitchen to grab a paper towel. As he mopped up the liquid he glanced at his watch.
‘Aw, fuck,’ he said. He put his hand over his mouth. Leapt up and grabbed the mobile that he had left in his jacket pocket in the hall. Found he had three missed calls, all from his mother. He was supposed to be eating supper with them this evening. He’d forgotten to cancel. Letting out a long sigh he gripped the phone and rang her.
13
His mother’s hurt voice was still ringing in his ears the next morning. Carruthers banished it and stared morosely into his black coffee. He knew he should really call Alan himself and explain why he hadn’t turned up at the family meal but the truth was that Carruthers didn’t enjoy talking to his brother. Since his brother’s heart attack he had found Alan unresponsive and sullen on the few occasions he had tried to talk to him.
He forced his mind onto the case of the dead woman on the beach and the link between her and the Estonian Mafia. He puzzled over the conversation he’d had with the young Estonian police officer the day before. He recalled Mikael Tamm’s instruction to trust no one and to talk only to him. With Tamm dead and Kuul supposedly transferred, Carruthers wondered who he could trust now.
Surely Tamm must have had friends at the station. Not everyone could be corrupt or too scared to talk. Carruthers picked up a pen and started tapping it on his desk. There must be someone in whom Tamm confided. Then he remembered towards the end of the call Tamm had been laughing with another officer. What was his name? Hadn’t he said something about sharing an inappropriate joke with a friend? You wouldn’t share a joke like that with someone you didn’t trust, would you? What the hell had the man’s name been?
Just as he was making the decision whether to get a coffee or go healthy and grab a bottle of water, his phone rang. The voice was familiar but the information unexpected. ‘Mackie here, Jim. Toxicology results have come back on the dead woman. I thought you’d want to know straight away. She had a high level of diazepam in her system.’
‘Consistent with a suicide?’ asked Carruthers, chasing away all thoughts of his brother.
‘Or murder. If someone was trying to get rid of her it would have made her pretty groggy.’
The day passed in a flurr
y of phone calls and paperwork and ended with Carruthers feeling frustrated that there had been no breakthrough.
That night he was restless, he tossed and turned. At least his knee didn’t bother him though. He woke up at 5am with the first light of dawn. As he was lying in bed it suddenly came to him. The man’s name. At least his first name. Gunnar. It had been Gunnar.
Carruthers got up and started to pack a bag. Threw in pants, socks and a couple of T-shirts. Decided the only way he was going to find out what was going on was to fly to Tallinn. God only knew what Bingham would say, no doubt he’d start banging on about budgets, but Carruthers would worry about that later.
He hardly noticed the change in weather as he drove to the station. The wind had finally abated and the sun bathed the ancient town walls in light.
The first thing Carruthers did when he got to the station was to call the hospital. No change. Cuthbert was still in a coma while the swelling on his brain subsided. Bingham had stepped up security and he had round-the-clock surveillance.
Next, Carruthers called Tallinn Police. Took a punt on getting someone young enough to speak good English. He was in luck. He asked to speak with Gunnar. Hoped there was only one Gunnar at the police station. Surprisingly he was put straight through.
‘Gunnar?’ Though there was no response, Carruthers knew someone was on the line. He could hear muffled background voices and a phone ringing in the distance. ‘I am Detective Inspector Carruthers.’
‘Yes, I am Gunnar Aare.’
It was going to be an awkward conversation but Carruthers pushed on. ‘I know you are a friend of Mikael Tamm and that he’s been killed. I’m calling from Castletown Police Station in Fife, Scotland. I’m on the hunt for Aleks Voller but when I spoke with a colleague of yours yesterday he said there was nobody known of that name. Mikael believed our two cases are linked and that Voller is currently in Scotland.’ Carruthers opened his buff file and spread the photographs of the dead woman in front of him. ‘A young woman was found dead on a beach here, a gamekeeper’s been shot dead and we have a number of art thefts we’re investigating. We believe they are all linked.’
‘This woman,’ said Gunnar lowering his voice and speaking quickly. ‘You think she’s Estonian? What did she look like? Did she have blonde hair and a tattoo on her ankle?’
‘Yes, blonde hair, blue eyes,’ said Carruthers hurriedly. He was sure he was on the verge of a major breakthrough and didn’t want to lose the momentum. He stared at the photograph of the dead blonde woman as he gave details of her height and weight to the Estonian.
‘Oh, my God,’ wailed Gunnar. ‘The description does sound like Hanna. How did this woman die?’
Carruthers sat bolt upright. ‘What? Do you know her? We don’t know who she is. We thought she was a runaway turned prostitute by the name of Marika Paju but it turns out she isn’t.’
‘Look I can’t talk. Give me ten minutes and your phone number. I’ll phone from down the road.’ Carruthers hurriedly gave the man the number. The line then went dead.
Carruthers waited, anxiously tapping his fingers on his desk. Ten minutes later Gunnar phoned.
‘If it is who I suspect it is, she’s one of us. Her name is Hanna Mets.’
Carruthers grabbed a pen and made a note.
‘She’s a police officer with us who’s been working undercover on the trail of the Vollers.’
Carruthers felt a fleeting moment of irritation. Why were the Fife Police not advised?
‘Listen,’ said the Estonian, ‘I can’t be away from the station for too long. We’ll have to set up another time for a longer conversation. But at the station I have to be careful. I can’t talk to you there.’
If you can’t speak about police business at the police station, thought Carruthers, where else would you be able to speak about it? This man Aare was every bit as paranoid as Mikael Tamm, as scared as Kuul. Carruthers decided to run the thought of his trip to Tallinn past the Estonian. ‘I was thinking of flying over.’
There was a moment’s hesitation the other end of the phone. ‘Yes. This would be excellent,’ said Aare. ‘I’ll meet you at the airport. If you like, I’ll get you booked into the Hotel Viru. It’s very central. How soon can you get a flight?’ he urged. ‘I will explain everything but it’s complicated. It’s best you are here. And soon.’
Despite it being Carruthers’ idea, he felt it was suddenly moving too swiftly. He felt he was being left behind. ‘If work allows and I can get a flight, I will be there tonight.’
Once the line went dead, Carruthers Googled the Hotel Viru. He found it had been the Russian headquarters of the KGB during their occupation of Estonia. He supposed that it was the perfect place to book in a visitor. After all, it was the first place to expect to be bugged so presumably the last place for those doing the present day bugging to look. He then Googled flights, found one leaving from Heathrow later that day.
He went in search of Bingham, found him in his office, once again buried under paperwork. If anything the pile seemed bigger than last time. Carruthers tapped on the door.
‘Sir, I want to fly out to Estonia.’
Bingham looked up, frowning.
‘Hear me out,’ said Carruthers, raising a hand to block an objection. ‘I know this won’t be popular. Something’s happening in Estonia and it’s affecting Scotland. It’s connected to the death of the girl on the beach and the art robberies.’ Carruthers went on to detail everything that had been revealed in his conversations with Estonia. ‘A man called Gunnar Aare wants to meet with me. He thinks we can help each other. He was a friend and colleague of Mikael Tamm.’
Bingham took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘This is most unorthodox. Why the hell didn’t we get informed if there’s been an undercover Estonian police woman operating in Fife? I don’t like it, Jim.’
‘If we do nothing, we’ll like it even less. I think this Estonian prostitution gang are trying to get a foothold in Fife. My gut feeling is they’re behind the heists. I can get a helluva lot more information about them from Tallinn than I can here in Castletown.’
Bingham cracked his knuckles. ‘We have neither proof nor evidence. Surely an Estonian prostitution gang would target Glasgow or Edinburgh. The big cities? Why on earth would they come to Fife?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ said Carruthers. ‘However, let’s be honest. Scotland generally isn’t great at combating this type of crime. It’s obvious we lag behind England. We’ve only had one conviction for human trafficking up here, yet as we both know this country makes up ten per cent of the UK population. Our agencies have got to get a lot better at tackling the problem.’
Bingham put his glasses back on.
‘We also both know,’ said Carruthers, pushing on, sensing a weakness in Bingham he could exploit, ‘that the number of women from Central and Eastern Europe working in Scotland’s sex trade has rocketed in the last ten years.’ Carruthers could see Bingham was thinking. The thought had occurred to Carruthers that if they brought this gang down what a coup it would be for Bingham. Perhaps this feather in his cap would save his faltering career and he’d be back in the running for promotion.
‘You asked why Fife?’ said Carruthers. ‘Perhaps it’s all to do with connections. A lot of these girls will be moved from city to city, town to town. The man who got flown into Cuthbert’s estate, Aleks Voller, he’s at the centre of it. I believe Barry Cuthbert was working for him and Voller in turn is working for the Estonian Mafia operating out of Tallinn.’
Bingham took off his glasses and put the tip of the glasses into his mouth. ‘Carruthers, this is starting to sound like something out of The Thirty-Nine Steps. You’ll be talking about spies and espionage next. And as I said earlier, if an undercover Estonian police officer was operating here in Fife why the hell weren’t we told about it?’
Carruthers’ thoughts exactly. He wondered if the dead girl really was an undercover Estonian police woman. Once again his mind turned to the high l
evels of drugs in the girl’s body. If the woman really was an undercover officer, murder was looking much more likely than suicide.
Carruthers thought about Aare talking about walls having ears in the police station over in Tallinn and thought it might come to that. Who did the ears belong to, though? ‘Do you know much about the situation in Estonia?’ asked Carruthers.
‘Had a wonderful city break a few years ago with Irene. There’s lots to recommend it as a travel destination but I know organised crime is getting a foothold.’
‘I suppose places like Estonia are vulnerable,’ said Carruthers. ‘Cut off from the Western world for so long. It must be strange suddenly having open borders.’
‘And with open borders, social rules are relaxed,’ said Bingham. ‘Along with an influx of new people come new ideas. All of which seems to have given local and foreign criminal organisations a ridiculous amount of freedom to operate.’ Bingham cracked his knuckles. ‘There’s always danger when you’ve got countries that have undergone drastic political, economic and social change. On top of that,’ he added, ‘you’ve now got corrupt officials and politicians. Criminal networks, I am to understand, now operate at the very top.’
‘Look, about me going to Estonia,’ said Carruthers. ‘It would just be for a couple of days. Three at most. Just until I get a handle on what’s going on.’
‘You need to leave this to Interpol. And, Interpol aside, how can I say yes?’ said Bingham. ‘With you gone and no DCI the most senior rank at the station will be a DS. What good’s that in the middle of a murder enquiry? Anyway, I need you here supervising the search of Cuthbert’s place once the warrant comes through.’
‘Fletcher is more than capable of doing that. In fact, we have two highly capable DSs in Fletcher and Watson. And as you said yourself, given your social connections with Barry Cuthbert we now have one superintendent with a flagging career.’ He saw Bingham wince. Decided to push his advantage. ‘If I can break this case by going to Tallinn, how good is that going to make you look? So, look at it this way – can you afford to say no?’
