‘I’ve just checked,’ Alice Cowan replied. ‘She’s stable, and more lucid, but she’s not responding to questions yet. The doctor in charge says we needn’t even try to interview her before this afternoon.’
‘That leaves you sat on your hands. Has the press office issued your public appeal yet?’
‘Yes, they put it out first thing this morning. It’ll be in the Evening News, and on broadcast media by lunchtime.’
Wilding frowned. ‘Couldn’t they have done it last night?’ he grumbled.
‘Alan Royston said it was too late to catch anything. He’s been around long enough to know what he’s doing, so I didn’t argue.’
The DS grunted. ‘Not everyone would agree with that. I’ve got a pal who works on local radio; he’d have put it on air straight away if he’d been given it. How did you word it?’
‘I didn’t; Griff drafted it.’
‘I put in as much as we want used,’ Montell offered. ‘Young girl, dyed blond, reasonably well nourished, possibly eastern European, brought into surgery after being found dazed and incoherent in the street nearby. Anxious to trace anyone with any knowledge of her, in particular the Good Samaritan van driver who brought her in, and maybe saved her life. OK,’ he said, ‘the last part may be an exaggeration, but it’s headline material.’
‘As in “Good Samaritan lifesaver vanishes”, you mean? Next thing you know the red-tops will be inviting the punters to buy him a pint when he’s found. There’s no mention of possible sexual assault, I notice.’
‘Are you kidding, Ray? Even if the guy is absolutely genuine, it’s odds against him coming forward. If I’d included that, there would be absolutely no chance.’
‘Yeah, granted,’ Wilding conceded.
‘One thing we have got, though, is a quick response from the lab. I hadn’t expected anything much today, but I’ve just had an email. Nothing firm yet, but interesting nonetheless. Apart from her slippers, all the girl was wearing was her cotton dress, a bra, and pants. She didn’t wash her knickers very often, and wasn’t too worried about getting stripped for action either, for they’ve found semen stains on both garments, from more than one donor. They’re not going into numbers yet, but either this girl was gang-banged, or. .’
‘She’s on the game,’ Alice Cowan declared. ‘Now there’s a surprise,’ she added, her voice heavy with irony.
‘In that case,’ said Wilding, ‘maybe some of the local girls will know who she is. Go ask some questions.’
‘Now?’ Cowan challenged. ‘Where are we going to find prostitutes at this time of day?’
‘The massage parlour girls you won’t find that easily, but there’s someone else you might ask. Have you ever heard of Joanne Virtue, Alice?’
The DC frowned. ‘I can’t say that I have. Who’s she?’
‘Big Joanne is the nearest thing we have to an oracle down here in Leith. She used to be a hooker herself, although she’s out of that life now.’
‘I take it Virtue was her work name,’ Montell said.
‘Nope,’ the sergeant chuckled, ‘it’s the one on her birth certificate. When she was on the street, they used to call her the Big Easy. Life throws up some oddities, and she’s one of them. Joanne’s never been an informer as such, as in grass, but if something happened that she thought was wrong, she’d tell us about it. Ask her if she’s heard about any new talent, maybe not being treated right, and see what she says.’
‘Where do we find her?’
‘At work, probably. After she passed on her street corner to a younger model, she managed a massage parlour for a while, for a wee hood called Kenny Bass. But she moved on from that. Last I heard she’d got herself a job as a receptionist with a funeral undertaker. Makes sense when you think about it. Who better to make that first, sympathetic impression on the newly bereaved than a retired whore with a heart of gold?’
Twenty-one
‘If all customers were as soundly based as the two Lietuvos companies, Detective Constable,’ said Andrew John, ‘the banking sector would never have run into difficulties. Guys like me would still be carrying our bonuses home in bloody wheelbarrows, instead of praying that we can get out of here with our pension funds still intact.
‘In the old days, Tomas Zaliukas was the sort of customer we didn’t want. Cash rich, sure-footed in the licensed premises he bought and always with the knack of picking the right area on the property development side. We made money out of lending in those days, but Tomas never needed to borrow much, not in the long term.
‘Today, guys like him are like gold dust: loads of cash on deposit, property assets that are worth four times our exposure with him, and income to service his loans umpteen times over.’
Haddock let out an involuntary sigh, then hoped that it had not carried across the desk. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘you’ll keep the business.’
‘I can only hope so. For all that he was always on about his roots, Tomas had more sense than to go anywhere near the Lithuanian banks. His cousin might take a different line.’
‘It won’t be his decision,’ the young detective commented, then paused as he realised what he had let slip.
‘You mean Gerulaitis won’t inherit anything? That means it all goes to Regine?’
‘Please, Mr John,’ Haddock begged, ‘forget I said that. I shouldn’t have.’
‘That’s all right, it’s gone already. I’ll give you one in return. I’d rather have one Regine than a hundred Valdases.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because she exudes integrity. Valdas, on the other hand, is one of those guys. . Let’s just say that if I was forced to invite him for dinner, we’d be keeping all the good stuff well out of sight. Under Tommy’s eye, he was fine, but Tomas never let him out of his sight either. He told me as much; he said once that when the kids were babies, and Regine had her hands full, Valdas asked him if he could manage Indigo, for a change of scenery. He fobbed him off by telling him he was too valuable where he was, and paid him off with a pay rise, but the real reason was that if he had put him in there, he’d have to employ an accountant just to make sure he didn’t bleed the place dry.’
‘Do you think he could have been up to something and Mr Zaliukas found out?’
‘I don’t, because even Valdas is bright enough to have known that he wouldn’t get away with it. Tomas was better than that; he had some nose for business. He took me with him once to look at a pub he was thinking about buying. It was unofficial, of course; we went in as punters on a Friday night and spent a couple of hours there. When we came out, Tommy told me straight off what the place should be doing in profit and what it was actually doing, in other words, what the staff were ripping out of it. When he put his auditors in to do due diligence on the place, they found that he’d been spot on, both times.’
‘So that’s why his pubs make so much money; because he could spot all the scams?’
Andrew John frowned; his left eye twitched. ‘Yes. That and. .’ He looked Haddock in the eye. ‘You’re not going to hear this, any more than I heard what you said about Tomas’s will, right.’
‘Absolutely, sir.’
‘OK, we all know what Tomas got up to when he was younger, don’t we?’
Haddock nodded.
‘So did you ever ask yourself, when he went legit, what happened to his boys, the “associates” he brought over from Lithuania?’
‘Well,’ the DC replied, ‘I didn’t, because it was before my time.’
‘Let me tell you. They went into the pubs, but later when he bought the massage parlours, most of them became managers and the licensees of record. In other words, they never went away, and they were as close to Tomas as they’d ever been. If you look at all the years he’s been in the pub business, you could probably identify the few people who’ve ever been caught stealing from him just by cross-referencing the names of his bar staff with admissions to A and E.’
‘Wow!’ the young detective exclaimed. ‘Didn’t that make you uncomfortable about having him as a customer?’