20 - A Rush of Blood

by Quintin Jardine

  Twelve

  As he stood in the entrance of the law office in Drumsheugh Gardens, waiting for the receptionist to finish her filing and acknowledge his presence, Sauce Haddock experienced a moment of uncertainty. Jack McGurk had sent him to Curle Anthony and Jarvis on his own, in the knowledge that he would be well received, but might Grey Green be a different matter?

  He knew from remarks dropped by colleagues, both uniformed and CID, that Ken Green was not regarded as a friend of the police, rather as a thorn in their side, or even, as Charlie Johnston had once put it, ‘shite on ma shoe’. His own acquaintance with the man, brief and at a couple removed though it had been, had been enough to mark the man down as abrasive. As the tight-suited clerk finally deigned to look in his direction, there was a moment when Sauce almost turned and headed back into the street.

  But it passed. He showed his warrant card to the woman. ‘DC Haddock, CID. I called fifteen minutes ago; Mr Green’s expecting me.’

  ‘Is he?’ she replied, not about to take his word. ‘Let me check.’ She turned her back on him and picked up a phone. ‘Gladys,’ he heard her begin. The rest was indistinct, but he passed the test. The guardian of the firm faced him once more. ‘Yes,’ she said, no more friendly than before, ‘he is. His secretary will be down to collect you.’

  Like a parcel, Sauce brooded. What a difference between this snooty cow and Alex Skinner’s PA. She’d been a right tasty lass, and friendly with it. But no sooner had her face appeared in his mind’s eye than it was replaced by another, that of Cheeky Davis. He realised that it had been all of ten minutes since he had thought of her. He smiled, looking forward to their date in the Drum, in George Street, that evening.

  ‘Mr Haddock.’ The voice from the half-landing of the panelled stairway brought him back to real time. He looked up, and as he did so he noted that for all its colourful name, the firm of Grey Green did not appear to favour the appointment of bright young things. ‘If you’ll come with me, Mr Green is waiting.’

  He took the steps two at a time until he had reached her, then let her lead him for the rest of the way. Double doors led into Green’s office. The lawyer stayed seated as Haddock entered, his back to a window overlooking the wedge-shaped gardens. He made no offer of a chair, but the young detective took one nonetheless.

  His host, mid-forties, dark-haired, clean-shaven, in a navy blue suit, three-piece, and striped shirt, eyed him up. ‘So what do you want from me, son?’ he asked, in a tone that said, I’m humouring you, for now. ‘Have we met?’ he continued. ‘If we have, I don’t recall it.’

  ‘We were in the same room once,’ Haddock replied, ‘but neither of us had anything to say to the other.’

  ‘And what do you have to say, or ask, now?’

  ‘Did you represent Tomas Zaliukas, occasionally known as Tommy Zale?’

  ‘I do represent him, yes,’ the lawyer replied, cautiously.

  ‘No, you did. He’s dead. He killed himself early this morning.’

  Green blinked, once, then again. ‘You’re joking,’ he exclaimed. It seemed to Haddock, in the light that shone from a tall lamp beside the desk, that his face was a few shades paler than before.

  ‘That’s not in my job description, sir. He put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.’

  ‘God!’ The solicitor shook his head, violently. ‘Jesus!’ Haddock sat silent, giving him the opportunity to invoke the Holy Ghost if he chose. ‘What made him do that?’ he added, eventually.

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to establish, sir.’

  ‘There’s no chance that he was . . .?’

  ‘No. Suicide is all we’re looking at. When did you last see him?’

  ‘About three months ago, the last time we had a licence up for renewal.’

  ‘Did he mention any worries he might have had?’

  ‘Tomas Zaliukas didn’t have worries. He gave them to other people.’

  Haddock was surprised. ‘Are you saying that your client was less than upright?’

  ‘I’m saying nothing for the record, either police or Daily, but come on, son, we both know where Tomas came from.’

  ‘Mr Zaliukas had no criminal convictions.’

  ‘All my clients are innocent, son, but they’re not always the sort of people you’d want your mother to meet.’

  ‘You represented him in relation to his massage parlour businesses, yes?’

  ‘I looked after the licensing of them.’

  ‘Did Valdas Gerulaitis have anything to do with them?’

  ‘He might have, he might not; I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you able to tell me about the history of your relationship?’

  ‘I don’t see why not, not now. You better write this down. It’s complicated.’ Haddock nodded, and took out a notebook. ‘Tomas came to me a few years back,’ the solicitor continued. ‘He told me that he’d been offered eight massage parlours and massage parlours by the executors of the recently deceased Tony Manson, but that when he’d asked Curle Anthony and Jarvis to advise him on the purchase, they’d given him the bum’s rush, but suggested that I might take a more liberal view of that sector. I did, I negotiated the deal for him and I handled the conveyancing and the transfer of the licences. If you don’t know, the council requires these businesses to have public entertainment licences.’

  ‘Yes, I know that. So, Mr Zaliukas bought the premises in his own name?’

  ‘No, they were bought through a company that I had set up for him.’

  ‘Which he owned.’

  Green smiled. ‘The company was formed and registered in Uruguay.’

  ‘Uruguay?’ the young detective exclaimed. ‘In South America?’

  ‘That’s the only one I know of, son. It has a very accommodating climate for this sort of transaction, even now that the G8 countries are starting to get tough with that sort of thing.’

  ‘I see. What’s the company called?’

  ‘It’s registered as Lituania SAFI. That stands for Sociedad Anonima Financeria de Inversion, and it’s the way a Uruguayan offshore company is described. The law there means that the shareholders in the business can stay anonymous, and so can its directors, or director, for you only need one.’

  ‘Mr Zaliukas was the director, I take it.’

  The solicitor nodded. ‘Yes, but not the only shareholder. In law, there must be at least two.’

  ‘Who’s the other?’

  ‘Regine, Tommy’s wife,’ he replied.

  ‘So she was involved in the massage parlours too?’

  Green’s brow knitted, for a second or two, as if he was considering the point. ‘Yes . . . but she didn’t know it,’ he added quickly. ‘He just used her name.’

  ‘Did she ever find out?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘She left him last week.’

  ‘Then maybe she did.’

  Haddock paused, considering everything he had just been told. ‘Am I wrong, Mr Green, but isn’t that set-up a hell of a complicated way of owning eight massage parlours?’

  ‘It might seem so,’ the lawyer conceded, ‘but it doesn’t cost very much to administer, and there are two advantages, which I don’t want you note down. One is that the company pays virtually no tax. The other, and more significant, is that if the policy of the council and of your force ever changed, and there was a determined investigation of the other activities that might or might not go on in these places, it would be bloody near impossible to convict anyone of living on the earnings of prostitution. OK, that’s the view of a defence lawyer,’ he admitted, ‘but I think you’ll find that the Crown Office would agree with me, and so would the court if it tried it on.’

  ‘Academic now, in Zaliukas’s case at any rate. But what about the money? Didn’t that come from the other businesses?’

  Green shook his head. ‘No, and CAJ will confirm that. Tommy told me it was all his. In truth, it wasn’t all that much. The executor was instructed by the sole beneficiary of Manson’s will to sell the
places for no more than the property value; he didn’t want any money from the value of the businesses.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  Green looked at him in surprise. ‘You don’t know?’ He smiled. ‘Ah, but you’re only a lad, right enough. His name’s Lennie Plenderleith, currently doing life in Shotts Prison for a couple of murders, and put there by your chief constable, Bob Skinner.’

  Thirteen

  ‘I need you to tell me everything you can remember about the van driver who brought the girl in,’ Griff Montell told the practice receptionist. Since stepping out of the consulting room, he had spoken to Rita Taylor, again, and two of her colleagues, without moving a step closer to identifying the man. Finally, it had occurred to Mrs Taylor that he should really be speaking to Sally Ross, who, she had said, was on the front desk at the time and who had probably seen more of him than anyone else.

  ‘Well, where is she?’ he had asked, his patience strained.

  ‘Oh, she’s gone for a dental appointment.’ Mrs Ross had saved the day by walking through the entrance door at that very moment.

  ‘He was tall,’ she replied. ‘How tall are you?’

  ‘Six three.’

  ‘Right, he wasn’t as tall as you, but I’d say still a bit over six feet. He had a moustache, dark like his hair, and he’d a big chin.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Hard to say, but older than you; probably over forty.’

  ‘Complexion?’

  The petite, golden-haired receptionist seemed surprised by the question. ‘Normal, I’d have said; his skin looked all right to me.’

  The DC smiled. ‘I didn’t mean that, Mrs Ross. What was his ethnic origin?’

  ‘Ah. He was white; he had quite a pale face, although he was one of those men who always look as if they need a shave . . . in fact maybe he didn’t have a moustache; I’m not sure now. That might have made me think he did. He was Scottish, of course; maybe not from Edinburgh, but Scottish.’

  ‘That’s good. How about the rest? Spectacles?’

  ‘No. He was heavily built, thick chest, bit of a tummy on him. It hung over the belt of his jeans.’

  ‘What else was he wearing?’

  ‘A check shirt, mostly red on a white background, and one of those sleeveless quilted things. What do you call them? Puffer jackets. That’s it. Blue, unzipped. His whole appearance, he reminded me of somebody, and I’ve just realised who it is. Desperate Dan.’

  It was Montell’s turn to look bewildered. ‘Who?’

  Mrs Ross stared at him, then chuckled. ‘Of course, you’re not Scots, are you, so you didn’t grow up with him, like us. Desperate Dan’s a cartoon character in the Dandy comic, a great big cowboy. That’s who the van driver looked like.’

  ‘When he brought her in, did he speak to you first?’

  ‘Yes. He told me that he’d almost knocked her down when she’d staggered in front of his van, that he hadn’t hit her, but that she still needed attention. He said she was ill, not drunk.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘She was barely able to stand, her eyes were all over the place and we couldn’t get a word out of her. My first thought when he half-carried her through that door was that she was totally plastered.’

  ‘And Nurse Chetty confirmed later that she had taken alcohol.’

  ‘Did she? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘No reason why you should. Sorry, I was thinking aloud, that’s all.’ He frowned. ‘What happened after that, Mrs Ross, after he’d told you what had happened?’

  ‘I came round from behind the desk, and got the girl into a seat, then I called for Sonya Chetty.’

  ‘And the man?’

  ‘He stood there and watched.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Hardly any time. As soon as I’d taken charge of the girl, and called for Sonya, he said that he had to get on with his deliveries, and he left.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you got a look through the window at his van, did you?’

  ‘No, but when he went out the door, he turned right, and there isn’t much of a view to that side.’

  ‘OK. That’s just about it, Mrs Ross. Only one more thing. When this happened, was the waiting area busy?’

  ‘No, it was empty. You’ve only got me as a witness, I’m afraid. Me and the driver, that is.’

  Which could be a problem, he thought, as he thanked her and walked back towards the consulting room. Alice Cowan was waiting in the corridor, just outside the door, with another woman, short and stocky, with greying hair. ‘This is Dr McNulty,’ his colleague told him. ‘She’s just completed the examination.’

  ‘What’s the score?’ Montell asked as he shook the doctor’s hand. ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘She’s going to be all right, but I’m going to send her to the Royal. She needs to be kept under observation for a couple of days, and I’d imagine you’re going to need to talk to her when she’s able. We’ve got nowhere else to send her anyway; we don’t know where she lives, or anything else about her.’

  The woman looked up at him. ‘You were right about her, Detective Constable. Whatever was in her stomach’s been absorbed into her bloodstream, but she has taken a drug, or more likely had it administered to her, along with alcohol. It might have been flunitrazepam, or Rohypnol, to give its commercial name, but it probably was GHB. Given to her for the usual reason as well. There’s no indication of forcible intercourse, not physically forcible at any rate, no violent rape, but she has been sexually active recently, and probably quite frequently. I’d suggest that you take her underwear for lab testing. Whoever’s done this to her has signed his name, good and proper.’

  ‘We’d want her clothing automatically, Doc, in a case like this.’

  ‘Sorry, of course you would,’ Dr McNulty conceded. ‘I’ve had it put in sterile bags for you.’

  ‘Thanks. Anything else you have to tell us?’

  ‘Two things. First I don’t believe this is a one-off experience. This girl has all the hallmarks of a regular drug user, she’s under-nourished, she’s dehydrated, and she’s physically weak. The first thing I’d look for in someone like her is heroin use, but I don’t see any sign of that . . . no needle marks, or any such. Blood tests will confirm this, and I’ve taken some for you, but I believe that she’s been on this drug over an extended period.’

  ‘And the other?’ Cowan asked.

  The doctor hesitated. ‘Understand,’ she said eventually, ‘this isn’t a medical opinion. It’s subjective, but looking at her features, I don’t think this girl’s Scottish, or British at all. She’s had some dental work, so maybe a specialist could give you a more informed view than mine, but me, I’d say this kid’s eastern European.’

  ‘If you’re right, I hope she speaks English when we get to interview her.’

  ‘Should one of us go with her in the ambulance?’

  ‘Not unless you want to sit looking at her for a day or so, till she gets her wits back. I’ll handle her admission from here. I’ll let you know what ward she’s in and you can send somebody up to keep an eye on her.’

  ‘Thanks, Doctor,’ said Montell. He took a card from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘Those are my numbers, office and mobile . . . although I’ll stay at my desk till I hear from you.’

  He let Cowan lead the way outside, through the waiting area, which had gained a few patients, and into the cold dark evening outside. ‘What do you think?’ he asked her as they reached their car.

  ‘The phrase “sex slave” comes to mind,’ she muttered, grimly, as she slid behind the wheel. ‘Looks to me as if some sicko bastard’s been keeping her under the influence of that stuff and using her as a toy.’

  ‘So how did she escape?’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t. Maybe the sicko bastard was the so-called van driver, having a crisis of conscience.’

  ‘That’s possible.’

  ‘Should we put a public appeal out for him, do you think?’

  ‘We should do
something, even if it’s only to have the media ask him to get in touch with us.’

  ‘How about a description?’

  ‘We might even be able to issue an artist’s impression.’ He grinned as he told her of his interview of Sally Ross.

  ‘Nice one,’ she laughed, as she started the engine. She made to engage gear, then stopped. ‘Do you want to carry on with that heart to heart we were having earlier?’

  ‘No,’ he replied. Her expression tightened, not quite imperceptibly. ‘Instead,’ he went on, ‘how about we pick up where I left off a couple of weeks ago? Ray Wilding told me that he and Becky are going to her divisional dance on Friday. Would you fancy the two of us joining them? It’s an open event.’

  ‘Let me think about it.’ She steered the car out into the traffic. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘I’ve thought about it. OK.’

  Fourteen

  ‘Uruguay?’ DI Becky Stallings exclaimed.

  ‘That’s what the man said, boss.’ Haddock grinned. ‘I don’t suppose . . .’

  ‘No, you don’t. If the need for a trip out there did arise, you are right at the back of the queue.’ She glanced at McGurk. ‘As for you, Jack, you’re too tall ever to be comfortable on a plane, so . . .’ The Londoner frowned. ‘Where is bleedin’ Uruguay anyway?’

  ‘East coast of South America,’ Haddock volunteered. ‘Jammed in between Argentina to the south and Brazil to the north.’

  ‘Hardly a day trip, in that case. Just as well this is an i-dotter.’

  ‘A what?’ McGurk drawled.

  ‘An i-dotter, a t-crosser, a routine inquiry allowing us simply to tell the procurator fiscal that Tomas Zaliukas partially decapitated himself while the balance of his mind was disturbed.’

  ‘Ah, but the problem is,’ the sergeant pointed out, ‘we can’t tell him that with any authority. Professor Joe says that he was in perfect physical health, apart from the bit of him that’s still spread over the hilltop. Also, I’ve discovered that he hasn’t been near his GP in seven years, since he and Valdas Gerulaitis had inoculations for a foreign trip.’