Quintin Jardine - A Rush of Blood

‘Yes I do,’ the chief retorted, as he lowered himself into a chair, ‘because this is a private meeting like you wanted, and we’re going to talk. I’m going to tell you what we know, and you’re going to listen.’

The man shrugged. ‘OK.’ He took a seat beside the window as Martin walked across to the fridge and chose a soft drink. ‘Shoot.’

‘I’ve been known to, but not today. That’s not something your people are much into either, not recently at any rate. They’ve used other methods. I want to show you some stuff. Andy, have you got that netbook?’

‘Yes, it’s here.’ Martin opened his attaché case and produced a small computer. He hit the space key and it awoke from slumber.

Skinner took it as he rose and crossed to sit beside McCullough. ‘Let me show you some photos, Cameron.’ He clicked a folder and a grotesque image appeared on screen, naked flesh, gore, bone. ‘That’s Tomas Zaliukas on the mortuary slab. . before they started to carve him up, but after he had done what he was compelled to do to save the lives of his wife and children.’ He clicked again and a slide show began. ‘That’s a man called Linas Jankauskas, after your brother-in-law broke his neck.’ Pause. ‘That’s Valdas Gerulaitis, after the fire.’ Pause. ‘That’s his wife.’ Pause. ‘That’s Ken Green, dead in his car, after Henry and Dudley had finished with him. We know they were in the cottage, by the way; we’d have them if they were alive.’ Pause. ‘Only they’re not. This is them as they were found, on Monday night, after Jonas Zaliukas had finished with them.’ Skinner held the photograph and zoomed in on it. As he looked at it, McCullough gave a short gasp, his first reaction. ‘See those things on the ground?’ the chief asked. ‘Jonas played a game before he killed them. This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed at home, and so on. He played it four times, once with each foot, and then he put them away. Did he tell you he was going to do that when he came to see you, Cameron?’

The man’s eyes locked on to Skinner’s. ‘What do you mean, came to see me?’ he snapped, but a second too late. ‘Pure fucking fantasy.’

‘Fantastic but true. Jonas paid you a surprise visit, at home, on Monday. You had no idea he existed, did you, or what he was. You and he had a chat, just like this one, and after that, probably in exchange for him agreeing to stop at the two of them, you set up your brother-in-law, and Dudley. You’re a seriously hard man, I know, but so’s Jonas. And you’re both realists, so you did a deal, the two of you. Why do I say this? Because Goldie told us that Henry took the call that sent him to the barn on his mobile, his shop-bought pay-as-you-go, no contract, anonymous mobile, the same as Dudley had, and the same as you’ve got so that we can never trace certain calls you might not want us to. Your privacy means everything to you, Cameron; you kill to protect it. Henry took your call, he put his phone in his pocket, he took a gun. . he must have sensed something was off, or you slipped him a signal in your instructions. . and he went to his death. How do I know that’s what happened? Because we never found their fucking phones, man, and we know for sure that Henry had his on him. Jonas took them away from the scene, and destroyed them, along with the legally held shotgun he took from his brother’s house and the shears he took from his garden shed. That was part of your agreement, no doubt. But no, Jonas never told you about his plans for their toes, did he, and he didn’t tell you about this.’

He closed the netbook, laid it aside and took a cellphone from his pocket. ‘This was Tomas’s.’ He found the video folder, hit the ‘play’ key and held it close to McCullough’s face. Neither he nor Martin could see the movie, although they had before, and they had heard the sound, the strange, unintelligible words, and then the endless, endless scream. As it continued the man seemed to press himself further and further back into his chair, his eyes becoming smaller and smaller as they screwed up tight. ‘I would like to believe,’ said Skinner when it was over, ‘that you didn’t order Dudley to do that. Otherwise I will have to consider very seriously letting Jonas know that you did, and then not giving a fuck when he comes back for you. If that happens, I doubt if he’ll stop at toes.’

‘That Dudley was a fucking animal,’ McCullough whispered. ‘Greedy, ambitious and a fucking animal. Henry might not have been too nice, but he had a soft side.’ He caught Martin’s incredulous stare. ‘Oh yes, and he showed it, losing it and killing that guy when he found what he’d done to that girl, then taking her to the doctor’s when she was supposed to go to the farm with the rest. A big mistake, as it turned out. But Dudley. .’

His face twisted, and in that expression Skinner and his colleague saw the heart and soul of Grandpa McCullough, the man within that he had determined to hide for good, at whatever cost. ‘My daughter actually wanted to marry the pig,’ he growled, ‘but I told her that would happen over his dead body.’

‘Your granddaughter took his name, though,’ Skinner countered. ‘She used it when she went to a club where everybody knows that a lot of cops hang out off duty, and picked up one of my young officers. She fucked him so enthusiastically that he thought nothing of telling her all about his day’s work, pillow to pillow, including the bit about the disposal of Tomas’s share in Lituania SAFI to a woman neither he nor anyone else could stand. His inspector brought him to see me this morning, after he’d discovered who she. . “Cheeky Davis”, she called herself. . really was.

‘Poor lad was in tears,’ he continued, ‘not because he thought his career was over. . which it isn’t. . but because he really did believe that she was the only woman he’d ever love. When you asked her to get close to the police in Edinburgh if she could, to check whether we’d bought the story of Tomas’s suicide, and the other accidents, you couldn’t have imagined that she’d pick up that piece of information, but what a bonus when you did. It meant that Dudley could torture Valdas to get Laima’s signature on a piece of paper signing her inheritance over to you.’ He smiled. ‘Yes, she’s a smart lass, all right. She was nearly rumbled last Friday, when Andy here turned up at a dance she was at with her lad. He’d have recognised her, of course, but she had the presence of mind to get them both out of there before he spotted her.’

‘My granddaughter is an independent young woman,’ McCullough murmured. ‘She makes her own choices. I’ve called her Cheeky all her life, and as for using the name of her mother’s partner, nothing unusual about that.’

‘No more unusual than driving robbery vehicles,’ Martin said. ‘And getting away with it, this time. The Crown Office have accepted Himes’s bargain. We can guess whose idea it was, too. You’re sending your own daughter to jail to keep her clear.’

‘Serves Inez fucking right, the idiot, for getting Cheeky involved in it. She’s going to blame Dudley though; she won’t get that long. And it was his idea; she told me the clown knew an assistant pro in the Czech Republic. They were going to send the stuff out there in a crate and he was going to flog it in his shop. Not to France, mind, not Germany, not Spain, where they’ve got real money. No, to the Czech Republic, where they’ve hardly got any fucking golfers. He might have been good at thieving, but when it came to business, brainless. .’ his eyes gleamed, ‘. . and now literally so, now that I come to think about it.’

Suddenly, McCullough sat upright, as if he was coming to attention in his chair. ‘That’s it, gentlemen,’ he announced. ‘This conversation’s at an end. I have another meeting.’