Quintin Jardine - A Rush of Blood

‘Jimmy Proud, my predecessor, knew your grandad well,’ said the chief. ‘He liked him, but he reckoned that he’d evolved from a long line of brigands, and that you have a lot of his blood in your veins. He was right, and it’s brought you to where you are now.’

‘I’ll settle for that,’ the DCS confessed, ‘although I’m still surprised by it. When I was a detective constable, detective sergeant was the height of my ambition. I never dreamed I’d get any higher.’ He nodded towards the ceiling. ‘Thanks, Papa.’ He paused. ‘What did you want to talk about, boss?’

‘Zaliukas. I’m still thinking about him. That incident with Beppe could have shaken the last of the cowboy out of him; indeed I thought it had. He built his leisure chain still further, he went into property development, taking old, derelict buildings and restoring them; he won a lot of respect in the business community. There was even a feature on him in Insider magazine. He was about to be up there with the big boys. . and then he went and got himself kicked off the ladder. You know how, of course?’

‘Sure,’ said McGuire. ‘He bought Tony Manson’s massage parlours, from his estate, after his death. And when word of that got around, it reminded every one of those establishment figures who were just about to accept him of what he was and where he’d come from. He was back on the outside.’ He looked at Skinner. ‘Did you know that Beppe was offered those, by the selling solicitor?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘The daft sod was interested, but Nana Viareggio, my mother, and Paula all vetoed it. After that, Tomas Zaliukas bought them. Why, do you think? You’re right, it did cut across what he’d been doing up till then.’

‘I believe,’ the chief replied, ‘that he honestly thought they’d fit into the leisure business that he was creating. If he did, big mistake, Tomas. It wasn’t like buying an old pub and giving it a makeover. The customer base of those places was never going to change. There was a naivety about Zaliukas; he was a family man by this time, happy with Regine and Aimée, the first of his daughters. He may well have thought that there was a market for massage parlours, saunas, and general pampering. He may have thought that was what these places really did, even though he’d worked for Manson and seen them close up.’

‘Or maybe he just thought he could be anonymous,’ McGuire suggested. ‘I heard he set up another company to buy the places.’

‘Maybe, but whatever his motives were he wound up owning a chain of brothels, pure and simple. From being a fast-rising young tycoon, be became “the pimp” behind his back. Sure, he did spend money on the facilities, and he did employ a couple of people who actually were qualified masseurs, of both genders. But the same customers still went in there, with maybe an added twist. He had women turning up and booking the males, looking for the same special services. He had gay blokes going in expecting a hand job from them. Most of his new staff walked out; most but not all. So he gave in to the inevitable, and he ran the places as they’d always been run, on the borderline of legality, clean, but seedy, left alone because they bring prostitutes in off the street. I wonder if that had anything to do with Regine leaving,’ he mused.

‘Whether it had or not,’ said the head of CID, ‘his death isn’t something for us to follow up. The aftermath will be for Zaliukas’s lawyers. The man blew his brains out, unassisted; that’s how it was. Dorward’s people won’t find a scrap of evidence that says anything different.’

‘But he still has to be identified,’ Skinner pointed out. ‘From what you’ve said, he isn’t recognisable, and there won’t be enough left for a dental match-up either. His tattoo isn’t going to satisfy a court.’

‘We’ll get DNA from his car, or from his house, and we’ll match it to the body. That’ll do it.’

‘You’re probably right,’ the chief granted. ‘But the thing is,’ he continued, ‘I want us to investigate it. Unless the post-mortem shows up a credible reason, I’d like to know what it was that drove Tomas to do something as out of character as taking his own life. What’s the responsible division? Arthur’s Seat? Central, yes. I’d like you to have Becky Stallings and her team do some digging. They don’t necessarily have to go looking for Regine, but they should talk to his team, the people who worked for him, talk to everyone who had regular dealings with him. Find out if anything had happened lately, anything serious enough to make him do something as drastic as this.’

‘Is that really our business? We all have to prioritise, boss.’

‘It’s a sudden death, from gunshot wounds. We’re required to make a report to the fiscal, so that he can decide how to categorise it. That makes it our business; let’s just spend a bit more time on this than we normally would on a suicide.’

‘Even if it leads us nowhere?’

‘Even if. .’ he stopped abruptly. ‘My friend,’ he went on, ‘I might be the wearing chief constable’s epaulettes, but I’m still a detective, and I will be till I die. All my career, I’ve found success by following my instincts. This time they’re telling me there’s something not right here.’

Maggie Steele looked up at the façade of the divisional headquarters building in Torphichen Place. She had left her car in its secure park, but preferred to make her entrance boldly by the front door rather than casually by the back. She knew that word of her arrival would have been spread by the gate officer, but that made no difference. She remembered Skinner’s advice at the morning briefing, and wanted to gauge reaction as she walked into her old office for the first time as an ACC.

The grey stone pile was not impressive. It was an old structure, and if it had been purpose built, then it had been for an era long left behind by modern policing. Any newcomers looking at it would have been forgiven for doubting its fitness for purpose before ever stepping inside; indeed they would have been right. It was small, it was cramped, and it was yards away from the complex Haymarket road junction, making vehicle access a nightmare at the peak periods which seemed to be extending to fill most of the day. It was always a shade too hot or a shade too cold. There was nothing about it that did not need improvement.

And yet Maggie loved the place. Much of her police career had been spent there, in uniform and in CID. Its faults had been no hindrance to her rise through the ranks, and it had been the scene of the most unexpected yet uplifting turnaround in her personal life. It was where she and Stevie Steele had made their great discovery. Newly out of her unsuccessful marriage to Mario McGuire, she had been in charge of the Central CID office and Stevie had been her DI. They had known each other for years as friends and colleague. He had carried a reputation as something of a playboy, more because he had been attractive to women than from any headlong pursuit on his part, but it had meant nothing to her. He had been a nice guy and a good cop and that had been it. Until one night, one completely unexpected night when she had looked at him and everything, all her assumptions, all her certainties even, had been turned upside down. They became lovers, she fell pregnant, they were married, it was all unbelievable. . indeed, if not for Stephanie, she might have believed that she had imagined it all. Not too good to be true, but too good to last.

Life, she reflected, standing in that cold drab street, where the sun rarely shone in winter, is a series of judgement calls. We cross the road through traffic how many times a day? We flick how many switches that might be live, but are not? We drive through how many green lights trusting that we are not about to be T-boned by a skidding truck? Stevie’s fatal miss-call was to rush though a door in a cottage in Northumberland; the wrong door.