He was still thinking of her, and of what might be in her mind, as he walked back into the command corridor and saw Superintendent David Mackenzie emerge from Gerry Crossley’s room, his uniform military sharp as ever, a folder in his hand. He had seen changes in people over the years, the evolution of Maggie Steele from serious, solitary young detective into an all-round officer destined for a chief constable’s chair, perhaps his own when he was done with it, and the growth of McGuire and McIlhenney from knockabout comedians into the most formidable detective duo in the country, but no metamorphosis pleased him more than that of the man formerly known as Bandit. When he had transferred from Strathclyde CID, at Skinner’s instigation, he had been brash, occasionally over-confident, but brilliant. His work with the drugs squad had been outstanding. Yet what he. . but no one else. . had seen as a failure on a dangerous operation had led him into a crisis of self-doubt, and on to the inevitable crutch of alcohol that had put his career in danger. Skinner had been advised to tip him over the side, to retire him early on health grounds, but he had refused. He had still seen a spark, somewhere deep in the ashes, and so he had brought Mackenzie close to him, and had been rewarded by his complete reinvention of himself, as administrator rather than detective, and as a man of substance rather than of image.
‘You after me, David?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Chief,’ the superintendent replied.
‘Come on then.’ He led the way into his office, with a nod to Crossley, who handed him some internal mail as he passed. He dumped it in his in-tray, dropped into his seat, and motioned Mackenzie towards the one opposite. ‘Shoot,’ he said. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s about the task Neil McIlhenney passed on to me,’ the superintendent replied, laying his folder on Skinner’s desk.
‘Oh yes. Sorry I didn’t brief you myself, but I had a few things piling up at the time. Have you got a result already?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well done; that’s sharp.’
‘I had cooperation at the other end.’
‘So Jonas Zaliukas has got a record.’
‘Yes, Chief, but not the kind you mean. When I put the request to the Lithuanian justice ministry, they came back very quickly and passed me on to the defence ministry. Jonas Zaliukas joined the army as a regular eleven years ago, after graduating from university with an engineering degree. He didn’t join the sappers, though; he did officer training and was posted to a front-line infantry regiment. You might think that being a foot soldier in a Baltic nation would have been fairly boring, but five years ago, Lithuania committed troops to a UN force that was sent into the Congo to put down a genocidal civil war, and he was second in command. It got pretty bloody; Zaliukas’s CO was killed, he took over and was involved in some very fierce fighting before the rebels were subdued. They stayed there for another eighteen months, before they were withdrawn. A few months after that, Major Zaliukas, as he was then, resigned his commission.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘He said he’d seen enough blood. He was offered a desk job, but he turned it down. Since then he’s been in the property development business; he has a company of his own, and his brother Tomas is listed as a director, but not as a shareholder.’
‘So why’s he here, I wonder?’ the chief constable mused.
‘That I don’t know for sure. However, he’s still an officer in the army reserve, a colonel now; last week, he advised the ministry that he’d be unavailable for an indefinite period, citing family problems as the reason.’
‘Family problems, indeed! And a whole week ago. Do we have a physical description of this man?’
Mackenzie nodded. ‘Better than that.’ He picked up the folder he had brought with him and handed it across the desk. Skinner opened it; the top sheet was in Lithuanian, but the figures ‘1.79m’ and ‘87kg’ were clear enough. He flicked it over and saw a figure of a man in uniform: narrow waist, wide shoulders, a calm face with sharp features and eyes that gave nothing away.
‘One thing’s for sure,’ he murmured. ‘This bloke’s no cowboy.’
Fifty-four
‘Look,’ the man barked, as Neil McIlhenney and DI Becky Stallings walked into the interview room at the rear of the ground floor of the Torphichen Place police office. ‘What is this? You lifted us last night for no reason. I told you that, and now you’ve done it again. You turn up with a warrant to search my flat and you bring me here. This is pure harassment.’
‘No,’ said the detective superintendent, cheerfully. ‘We’re well short of harassment, aren’t we, Inspector?’
‘Absolutely, boss. Harassment’s when we keep you all night before we get round to interviewing you, and check on you every hour in your cell, to make sure you haven’t topped yourself and also to make sure that when we do get around to talking to you, you’re well and truly knackered. We haven’t got around to that yet, but it could happen.’
‘So let’s see,’ McIlhenney continued. ‘The recorder is running, yes?’ Stallings nodded. McIlhenney identified both of them, and stated the place, date and time. ‘We haven’t met before,’ he said, ‘so for my peace of mind as well as for the tape, you are Mr Marius Ramanauskas, yes?’
The detainee nodded. He was a fat man, but with Popeye forearms and heavy shoulders that marked him out as potentially formidable. He wore a dark suit, with a pale blue shirt and a matching tie that might have been satin.
‘I need you to say it,’ the superintendent told him.
‘Yes, I am Marius Ramanauskas and where’s my fucking lawyer?’
‘Lady present, sir.’
‘I don’t see any,’ Ramanauskas muttered. ‘Where’s my fucking lawyer? Where’s Ken Green? I told you to call his office an hour ago.’
Stallings leaned forward. ‘We did, Marius. But you should watch less telly. This is Scotland, with its own quirky little system, which I just love, after years in the Met. You have the right to a private interview with a solicitor before you go to court, but you don’t have the right to have him in here.’
‘And in any event,’ McIlhenney added, ‘if Mr Green is anywhere right now, he’s up at the Sheriff Court representing your friend Mr Luksa, on a charge of the attempted murder of a police officer. Mind you, last I heard he didn’t seem too keen to act for him either. Now: let’s focus on the business at hand, shall we? Where are the Estonian girls you and Valdas Gerulaitis smuggled into this country?’
Ramanauskas shook his head. ‘What’s this fairy story?’ He laughed. ‘What girls are these you’re talking about?’
‘It’s not just me that’s talking. Your pal Luksa’s been marking our card. About three months ago, Valdas Gerulaitis went to Tallin, in Estonia, and recruited nine young girls, with the usual promises of jobs that pay big money. He drove them down to Holland in a closed van. . no problem in these days of open frontiers in Europe. . where they were transferred to a lorry, and driven on board a ferry to Newcastle. We’ve done some checking up on you, Marius, and it hasn’t taken us long to discover that you hold a valid heavy goods licence. When we do some more investigating, we’re going to place you on that ferry, in late October, and we’re going to identify the lorry you drove. You’d probably taken a legit cargo out and registered the vehicle as empty on the way back, for customs clearance. You and Valdas transferred the girls into another van as soon as you got off the ferry, and he took them on to Edinburgh, where they were shared out, like cattle, among you massage parlour managers. That’s what happened; that’s what we know.’
‘Then prove it,’ the man challenged. ‘With poor Valdas dead, from what I read in this morning’s paper, you’ll have trouble.’
‘I don’t think so. You forgot about Anna Romanova.’
‘Who?’