They expected him to go to his wife’s aid, but instead he turned at the foot of the stair and disappeared through a door.
‘He’ll get away,’ Chambers shouted.
‘No, ma’am, there’s only one door in these places.’
They followed him, the senior, yet younger, officer in the lead, into a small, well-equipped kitchen, just as Luksa closed a drawer and turned to face them, a twelve-inch knife in his hand. ‘You bastards!’ he hissed. ‘You come into my home, but you don’t leave it!’ He lunged at Chambers, thrusting the blade not at her chest, but above her stab vest, at her throat.
She froze, seeing her death coming at her.
Later she realised that everything must have happened inside two seconds. Charlie Johnston moved alongside her, drawing and extending his baton, and in the same movement lashing it across Luksa’s wrist and, at the very instant its tip pierced the superintendent’s skin, sending the blade flying, so hard that it bounced off the tiled wall on to the work surface. It was spinning crazily as he whipped his weapon on to the forehand and cracked it into the side of the attacker’s knee.
The Lithuanian fell to the floor, screaming and clutching his leg. ‘Their fucking footballers do the same every time they get hit,’ the PC grunted, as he rolled him on to his face, then sat on his legs and cuffed his hands behind his back. ‘Makes me glad I’m a Hibby,’ he added as he stood.
Chambers stared at him, feeling a warm trickle of blood running from her wound, down her neck and into her shirt. Her temporary paralysis over, she found that she was shaking. ‘Charlie,’ she gasped, as she fought for control over her terror and her bladder, ‘where did you learn to do that?’
‘In thirty years on the job, ma’am, you pick up a few tricks. Pity we’re no’ still using the old truncheons. This bastard would have had two fractures wi’ one o’ them.’ He smiled at her. ‘Do you no’ want to sit down?’
‘I daren’t,’ she told him, honestly. ‘If I did, it might be a while before I could stand up again.’
As she spoke, they heard a whimpering from the hall. ‘Then can I suggest, ma’am,’ said the PC, gently, ‘that you sit the wife down in the front room, calm her, then verify there really is a kid upstairs and no’ another poor wee Estonian lass.’
Silently, she left to follow his advice, as Johnston produced an evidence container from his pocket, another surprise that she noted mentally, picked up the knife carefully, so that he neither left a print nor wiped her blood from the blade, and bagged it.
When she was gone, he hauled Luksa to his feet. ‘You might think we’ve finished our business, son,’ he whispered in his ear. ‘Well, that depends on you. If you’re quiet as a fucking mouse all the way back to our station, Ah might not tell the rest of the lads there what you just tried to do. But just one word out of you, and Ah will. They won’t be pleased, ye ken; oh, they will not. We all like Mary, every one of us. We’ve got this guy McGurk.’ He whistled, softly. ‘You’ll no’ believe how fuckin’ big he is.’
Forty-one
‘What have we got, Neil?’ asked Skinner, as he, McGuire and
McIlhenney sat around the conference table, each clutching a soft drink can, taken from the fridge in the corner of his room.
‘We’ve got next to nothing, boss. We have ten managers in custody in various offices; the party line seems to be that the places are closed as a mark of respect to Tomas, but they’re not saying anything else. We’ve found none of the eight girls that Anna says were brought to Edinburgh with her, and at first sight there’s no evidence in any of the massage parlours that they were ever there. Naturally, the guys deny all knowledge of them.’
‘You’re one Lithuanian short, aren’t you?’ McGuire remarked.
‘No, we’ve got a full complement. The eleventh, Arturus Luksa, is on his way here; we’ve got to handle him differently.’
The chief constable frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Because he came within an instant of burying a knife in Mary Chambers’s throat. He’s going to be done for attempted murder. In the circumstances, I didn’t think it would be wise to leave him locked up at Torphichen Place.’
‘He might not be too safe here either. What happened?’
‘From what Mary’s been able to tell me, the guy bolted, they cornered him in his own kitchen and he came at her with a blade. She might well have been a goner if Charlie Johnston hadn’t knocked it out of his hand, just in time, and subdued the guy.’
‘Charlie Johnston?’ an incredulous McGuire exclaimed. ‘The Charlie Johnston?’
The superintendent nodded. ‘The only one we’ve got. He’s spent thirty years on the force trying not to be noticed and now he’s going to retire as a hero.’
‘Is Mary OK?’
‘She’s got a cut on her throat; it’s superficial, although it was very close to an artery, according to the doctor who patched her up. Charlie really did save her life.’
‘Then he’s in for a big fat commendation for bravery,’ Skinner declared. ‘And if he takes the job he’s being offered in the press office, I might stick him a couple of points up the salary scale as well.’
‘What’s Royston going to say about having him on his team?’ McIlhenney asked.
‘Fuck all, because it won’t be his team.’
‘Jesus, boss, you didn’t fire him, did you?’
Skinner snorted. ‘No, he fired us. He says he’s been head-hunted, and he’s taking it; a new challenge, all that crap.’
‘What’s better than here? Strathclyde, I suppose.’
‘He wouldn’t tell me, and I didn’t press him, but there’s no vacancy there. It could be commercial, or local government. The truth is, I don’t give a bugger. I’ll let him go right away and put a sound pair of hands in there from the uniform side. . Ian McCall maybe. . to hold the fort until we can find a professional replacement.’
‘What about your night?’ the detective superintendent inquired. ‘Where’s Gerulaitis? Have you got him locked up here too?’
The chief constable and the head of CID exchanged glances. ‘He’s cooling his heels, you might say,’ McGuire volunteered. ‘In the morgue: him and his wife. While we were going to pick him up, they were dying in a house fire.’
‘Jesus. Not accidental, surely?’
‘Man, I can understand why you sound sceptical, given the circumstances. So are we, but the first fire and rescue investigator on the scene went straight to a wine cooler, a mini-fridge thing, and focused on that. Her first thought is that the fire started there, and that it could well have been an accident. The couple appeared to have been trapped in the kitchen, with only one way out, and that door was locked. When the fire people found what was left of it, and the frame, there was no key in it.’
‘It’s been a bad week for the Lietuvos group,’ McIlhenney murmured. ‘A suicide and a fatal accident. What’s next?’ As Skinner glared at him, out of the chief’s sight McGuire raised his eyebrows and put a finger to his lips. ‘What?’ he protested.
‘As of this afternoon, Neil, my daughter is running those companies, temporarily.’
‘But not the massage parlours?’
‘No.’
‘So don’t worry. There’s no problem with the pubs or the development business.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Logic, and you’ll say the same if you look at it objectively. You know what I think? Zaliukas didn’t know Gerulaitis was running the girls. When he found out. .’
‘He was so upset that he shot himself? The Tomas I know would have killed Valdas, not himself.’ Skinner frowned. ‘There has to be something behind it, yes. According to what Regine told Alex, it had nothing to do with her, but I still haven’t a fucking clue what it is. Unexplained suicides happen, accidents happen, and somebody wins the lottery every week. Those are facts, and you have to acknowledge them. But what I do not believe is that twelve massage parlour managers shut down their knocking shops as a mark of respect for a man who didn’t even want to be seen as owning them.’