‘I know it. Have you seen him since. . since he and I managed to embarrass you?’
‘Not once; his chief constable always turns up at our association meetings when I’m there. He only goes when it’s just deputies involved. However I did hear that Karen had her new baby.’
‘What is it?’
‘A boy.’ He seemed to wince. ‘They’ve called him Robert, would you believe.’
‘Yes, I’d believe it. Did you acknowledge the birth? I mean did you send them a card, or a gift for the wee one?’
‘I sent Karen exactly the same thing I gave Danielle when she was born, an investment bond. Why should one kid be deprived because his dad is an idiot?’
‘And why should you be deprived, Pops?’ she asked, while studying the menu.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Andy was your closest friend. To my knowledge, he has never in his life said a word against you, and yet you’ve shunned him, twice, because of me.’
‘True, and while I’ve been known to give people a second chance, a third is out of the question.’
She shook her head, but cut off her retort as the waiter returned, pad in hand. They gave their orders, and Alex chose a bottle of Martin Codax, a Spanish albarino that she knew her father liked.
‘Pops, you don’t need to be doing this,’ said Alex as the young man headed for the kitchen. ‘What happened was my fault rather than Andy’s. I was the one who left the curtains open and let those bloody photographs be taken. They never saw the light of day anyway; the court made sure of that.’
‘They were shown to me by a journalist, and that was enough. DCC Martin is a non-person for me, and for you, for that matter, since Karen’s let him off with a yellow card.’
‘Exactly, she has, but you’ve suspended him from your life, sine die.’ She smiled, to ease the tension that had developed between them. ‘Do you know what they call Andy in your force, Pops? Lord Voldemort. . he who cannot be named. Yet it needn’t be like that.’
He shrugged. ‘But it is. Am I a rational man, our kid?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘No, only mostly yes. If someone hurts you avoidably, I get all irrational. It’s the way I am, and it’s how it is with Andy and me. Now, please; let’s change the subject. How’s your new pad suiting you?’
‘Excellent. I miss my flat beside the Water of Leith, but I couldn’t refuse the offer I got for it, not in the current market, and the new place was a steal. I would say I’ve traded up; living next door to the Parliament can’t be bad. I’ve always fancied a penthouse, so a duplex. . that’s even better. I’m going to give Aileen a key, so she can nip in and have a quiet scream if things get too much for her.’
‘Do you miss the neighbours?’
‘Griff and Spring Montell?’ She wrinkled her nose in a gesture that was unmistakably dismissive. ‘Can’t say that I do. Detective Constable Montelclass="underline" let’s say he had his uses, as an escort when I needed one, but he was bang out of order in not mentioning ever that he’d left an ex-wife and a couple of kids behind him in South Africa. She wasn’t even officially ex when we first. . met, so to speak. He’s definitely off the list. As for his sister, I never really got to know her; we’d nothing in common, you might say.’
‘I might indeed,’ he chuckled. ‘No snags since you moved in?’
‘None at all, and the view. . well, you’ve seen it; it’s fabulous, all across the Holyrood Park, and Salisbury Crags.’ She frowned, for an instant. ‘By the way, was something happening up there this morning? I couldn’t see very clearly because the fog was still hanging around, but there seemed to be screens up, right on the top of Arthur’s Seat. Have you heard anything?’
Bob nodded. ‘Suicide,’ he told her. ‘But it was very messy; not something we want to be talking about over lunch. . or at all, for that matter.’
As he spoke, the wine waiter arrived; he presented the bottle, then opened it and waited for Alex to give it her approval. She nodded, then watched as it was poured. ‘What would Mum say,’ she asked, ‘if she was still around to see this?’
Her father smiled, and his eyes went somewhere else, more than twenty years back in time. ‘I can tell you exactly,’ he whispered. ‘She’d have said, “I’d prefer red.” A woman with views that were never left unspoken; and d’you know what?’ He focused once more. ‘I’m looking at her image right now.’
‘Indeed?’ she challenged. ‘There are those, Andy first among them, who would say that you’re looking in a mirror, and so am I.’
Seven
‘What are we doing here, Jack?’ DC Haddock asked his companion, as he slid his car into a residents’ parking space in North Castle Street, switched off the engine and displayed a card bearing the force crest and reading ‘Police business’. ‘This is supposed to be a suicide and we’re CID: uniforms should be doing this, surely.’
‘SOW,’ DS McGurk replied, as he unfolded his towering frame out of the passenger seat, looking bulkier than was usual, in a fur-lined leather jacket.
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
‘Senior Officers’ Whims. We’re here because Becky Stallings told us. She told us because Neil McIlhenney told her. He told her. . either because it was his idea or because he got told himself, the latter I reckon, since I don’t see him volunteering us for this job. That leaves Mario McGuire, but he’s of the same mind as big Neil. There’s only one man who’s going to tell him what to do and that’s the chief himself.’
‘Is he subject to whims?’
‘Oh yes. I was his exec for a wee while, so I know that for sure. If the boss has an itch about something, it has to be scratched.’
‘So what do we do? All the DI said was to make inquiries.’
‘That means we do what we think best, and that is, what we bloody well like.’ He looked at a brass plate fixed to a fence outside a tall, terraced building, faced with grey stone, like much of central Edinburgh. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Lietuvos Leisure Limited. Lietuvos Developments Limited. The dead man’s companies. I wonder what the hell the word means.’
‘I looked it up,’ Haddock volunteered. ‘Dead simple; it’s Lithuanian for Lithuania. The late Mr Zaliukas seems to have been quite a nationalist, for all he lived here for more than half his life. What with this, and his tattoo. .’ He paused. ‘We’re sure the body is him, are we? If the crest on his hand is all we have for ID. . well, there could have been others like it in the Lithuanian community, couldn’t there?’
‘For a start, Sauce, the morgue told me that the body was carrying Zaliukas’s wallet, wearing his watch and had his car key in its pocket. The shirt it was wearing is monogrammed with the initials “T Z”. As for the tattoo, my old boss Dan Pringle once told me a story about Zaliukas. In the early days of his gang, back in the nineties, one of his guys got a bit uppity, saw himself as a rival. So he had the same national crest put on his own right hand. Tomas decided to make a point of his own; he removed the imitation himself, at the wrist, with a chainsaw.’
‘Jesus! Did the poor sod die?’
‘No. They put a tourniquet on and got him to the Royal in time. We were called, but the guy swore it was an accident; he said that he’d been lopping a tree and had slipped. As soon as he got out of hospital, he went back to Lithuania. Come on, let’s get inside; it’s fucking freezing out here.’
The Lietuvos office was in the basement level of the building. Seeing lights inside, the two detectives walked down the few steps from the pavement, only to find that the door was locked. McGurk pressed a button above the letter box. ‘Here,’ he muttered, as they waited, ‘I forgot to ask. Did you score last night?’
Despite the cold, Haddock felt himself flush. ‘Mind your own damn business, Jack,’ he retorted. ‘I don’t have to ask whether you did. You and Lisanne were all over each other.’
The big sergeant shrugged. ‘It’s allowed. She’s moving in with me. That was a right stunner you pulled, though. Are you seeing her again?’
‘You’ll find out on Friday, at the dance.’