Quintin Jardine - A Rush of Blood

The three men shook their heads. ‘Nice shirt,’ Skinner remarked to Jonas Zaliukas, as the inspector left. ‘It looks brand new. Bit tight, though; maybe you should take it back and get a size bigger.’

The Lithuanian shrugged. ‘It’s OK,’ he murmured, with evident disinterest.

They stood in silence until Stallings returned, carrying two glasses, the whisky and a sparkling water for herself. The widow thanked her, and sank half of her drink in one swallow. ‘Where was I?’ she murmured. ‘Yes, the weekend. On Monday morning, just after ten o’clock, the doorbell rang. I thought nothing of it. I assumed that it was the postman, or maybe the friendly Englishman who lives a few doors up. But no, it was two other men, and they were not friendly. One was Dudley; I met him once a long time ago. The other was bigger, big strong man, with big chin. They pushed me into the house, then came in and closed the door. I told them to go or I’d call the gendarme, but Dudley just laughed. He told me we were all going, them, me and Aimée and Lucie. He was going to take us straight away, but the other man. .’

‘Henry,’ said McGuire.

‘His name is Henry? Ah. He is not a nice man either, but he’s nicer than Dudley; he let me take clothes for the children, and some toys and books. I asked him where we were going, but he wouldn’t tell me. They took us outside. . there was nobody in the street, but there never is. . and put us into the back of a car, a hire car with the label still hanging from the mirror. We drove for a while, until we arrived at a cottage on the far side of Agen, in the country, with nothing around it. There was another car parked outside, just like the first. When they took us inside, I saw they had food in bags on the table. I asked how long they were going to keep us there. Dudley said that would depend on Tomas. He said that if he did what he was told we would be home in a couple of days. If not. . He didn’t finish, but the way he looked at me, and the girls, made me very frightened.’ She shuddered, and winced, as if in pain. ‘Dudley is a very bad man.’

Skinner looked at her and sensed renewed hesitancy. ‘Tell us, please,’ he asked. ‘I think I know but we need to hear it from you.’

She nodded, and finished her whisky in a second swallow. ‘They gave us a bedroom and left us there. The girls wanted to know what was going on. I told them that these men were friends of Daddy’s and that they were going to look after us for a little while. I checked the window, of course, but it had been screwed shut. I thought about breaking the glass and maybe using a piece as a weapon, but with two of them that would have been hopeless. After an hour or so, they came back. They made us all sit on the bed. I asked the other man, Henry, how they had known where we were. He looked at me, and he said, “Valdas’s wife doesn’t like you. She knew where Tomas would have sent you. We only had to ask her the once.” That bitch Laima,’ she hissed. ‘Even if he hadn’t told me I’d have guessed quickly enough. Then Dudley took out a mobile telephone. “We’re going to make a wee movie,” he said, and he smiled, but in a horrible way. He pointed the phone at us, and he began to speak, in Lithuanian, very bad Lithuanian. I was surprised at first, but I remembered those two years at sea.’

‘You speak it yourself?’ Stallings exclaimed.

Regine stared at her. ‘Lady,’ she replied, ‘if you marry a man and you don’t learn his language, then you are a fool.’

‘Of course,’ said the chief constable. ‘But go on.’

‘When Dudley spoke, it was as if he was speaking to Tomas. “Here we are,” he said, “us and your three treasures. And this is what’s going to happen.” The other man stopped him there. He asked me if he could take the girls for a walk. Looking back, I took a big risk trusting him. He could have been a paedophile, anything, but something in his eyes told me that I could, and that I should get the children out of there. So I said yes, and I told them to go with him.’ She sighed. ‘And that left Dudley and me alone.’ Once again, pain flashed across her face. ‘As soon as they were gone, he switched on the phone again, and he began to speak again. “Tomas,” he said, still in his terrible Lithuanian, and I remember every word, “the big man says there’s a price for the crap that’s happened, and it’s you that has to pay it. Tomorrow, you’re to go to your lawyer and make whatever arrangements you need to, to transfer your holding in Lituania SAFI to another company, Scotland SAFI. Don’t you worry, we’ll know when you’ve done that. When you have, you’ll go to a public place. . and we’ll be watching you, don’t you worry. . and you will kill yourself. That’s what the man wants. If you don’t do it, then we’ll send your wife and your kids back to you in as many boxes as it takes, but it’ll be at least a dozen. And you know, the man always keeps his promises.” And then he stopped.’ She looked up at Skinner. ‘That’s why Tomas killed himself,’ she said. ‘To save our lives.’ She sat silent for a few seconds. ‘As soon as he’d brought the girls back,’ she continued, ‘Henry left in the other car, and he didn’t come back. Dudley locked us in our room, brought us food and let us out to go to the toilet when we asked, but he didn’t say any more to us. I didn’t want him to, because I was terrified. Two days later on the Wednesday he drove us back to Mezin and let us out of the car on the edge of the village. When he did that, I knew that Tomas was dead.’

Skinner nodded. ‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘that’s what I thought.’ As he looked at Regine once more, he seemed to share her pain. ‘But that’s not all, is it?’ he added.

The woman’s face twisted; her eyes screwed up tight. ‘It’s all,’ she cried, quietly.

‘Ah, but it isn’t,’ the chief constable went on, as his colleagues’ attention switched to him. ‘Dudley didn’t stop where you said, did he?’

Very slowly, Regine Zaliukas shook her head, and drew her right foot out of its fluffy slipper. Its middle toe was missing, the stump covered by a white bandage.

A small scream escaped from Becky Stallings; from McGuire a low animal snarl.

‘He set the phone,’ the woman told them, her voice almost a moan, ‘so that it filmed him as he did it, with a pair of garden clippers. When I had stopped screaming, he told me that if I did not give him Tomas’s number, he would cut off another. I did, of course. He sent the video to Tomas, and then he waited. After a few minutes his phone rang and it was Tomas. He put it on speaker so I could hear. He yelled at Dudley; he promised that he would take all ten of his, one by one, before he killed him. But Dudley said, “You won’t be able to do that, will you, because you’ll be dead.” And now he is.’ She slumped back in her chair, looked at Stallings, and held out her empty glass. ‘Please.’

‘I’m going to eat that bastard when we catch him,’ McGuire swore, as the DI headed for the kitchen.

‘My sentiments entirely,’ Skinner concurred. ‘Or they would be if Dudley was still fit for consumption. Somebody strung him up last night, in a barn,’ he put his wrists together above his head, ‘like that. Then he cut off all ten of his toes. When he was finished he put a shotgun in old Dudley’s mouth and pulled the trigger. When Henry Brown came charging on to the scene, like the Seventh Cavalry, armed with a big Colt handgun, he shot the legs out from under him, and then did the same to him.’ He looked at Jonas Zaliukas. ‘We found them maybe sooner than you expected,’ he said. ‘But it was still too late for us to trace your flight. You were back in France by that time. There’s a late evening service from Edinburgh to Carcassonne on a Monday,’ he explained to McGuire, and to Stallings as she returned with a refilled glass. ‘David Mackenzie found it when he checked all possible flights for me first thing this morning. Its passenger list shows a Colonel J. Zaliukas, travelling on a Lithuanian passport. Let me guess, Jonas,’ he said. ‘You bought the shirt at the airport when you landed.’