The Silent Games

by Alex Gray

  ‘Please will you explain this, Mrs Gilmartin?’ Wilson asked smoothly.

  ‘For the damned tape!’ she snapped, throwing a glance at the older detective. ‘Oh, all right. Charles was a very greedy man, that’s something you have to understand about him.’ She turned back to Lorimer, eyes widening as though she could still persuade him to believe her. ‘It wasn’t just fame and prestige that he coveted, oh no, he had to have money and more money, even when his poor old mother died and left him a fortune. Set up this theatrical scheme to bring a troupe of actors over from Africa. Nigeria, to be precise. But of course there were always going to be youngsters involved, assistants paid for this, gophers paid for that. Rubbish, of course!’ She shook her head, making her long gold earrings swing from side to side. ‘Charles and that horrible man with the tattoos had an arrangement that he would supply young girls for the sex trade just in time for the Commonwealth Games.’ She gave him a look of disgust. ‘They’re not all coming over here to watch a whole lot of men running round a race track, you know.’

  ‘If you were aware of this, why didn’t you inform the police?’

  Viven Gilmartin looked down and began to pick at her fingernails.

  ‘Surely it would have been easier to leave your husband, ask for a divorce, tell the authorities what you knew?’ His voice was low and soft, a reasonable man asking a reasonable question.

  There was no answer, as the woman across the table continued to examine her perfectly manicured hands.

  ‘You wanted money too, didn’t you, Foxy?’ he whispered.

  Vivien’s head shot up at the old nickname.

  ‘You knew all about the plan to traffic young Nigerian girls into Glasgow, didn’t you? It was to have been another lucrative money-spinner. But that wasn’t enough for you, was it?’

  Her mouth remained tightly closed, though the look in her eyes told him his guess was correct.

  ‘You see, I think that when you found out the extent of the theatre costs, all you could see was that huge hole blown in your husband’s fortune,’ he continued, watching the green eyes glaring at him malevolently, like some cornered beast. ‘I think you wanted the fame and the fortune too,’ he continued. ‘Only fame had eluded you. Not because Charles Gilmartin had thwarted you in your career, but for the simple reason that you weren’t good enough.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘You see, we’ve spoken to the management of several theatre companies, and they all say the same thing. You never made the grade, did you?’

  Suddenly the woman’s eyes filled with tears and her expression hardened.

  ‘You could have divorced Gilmartin, but his fortune was tied up with the African scheme, wasn’t it? You wouldn’t see a penny of it. Unless you killed him before he could transfer the money. You see, we checked that too,’ he went on. ‘Had you waited any longer, your husband would have risked all his capital on this . . . venture, shall we call it? And you didn’t want that to happen, did you?’

  The woman opposite shook her head.

  ‘Speak for the tape, please,’ he ordered in a firm tone.

  ‘No, I bloody well didn’t!’ she yelled, the mask of respectability falling from her lovely face.

  Lorimer felt a pang of sorrow for the girl he had once known who had become this snarling, spitting wretch.

  ‘But I had you fooled for a while, didn’t I?’ she sneered. ‘Thought I was the poor grieving widow. Acted that part well enough, eh?’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Not so sure about that little wife of yours, though.’

  He could see a light from the kitchen as he closed the door behind him. There had been more questions, some of them yielding answers about the man he knew as Kenneth Gordon McAlpin, answers that were being investigated in several parts of the city even as the detective superintendent made his weary way back home.

  ‘Maggie.’

  She turned from the kitchen sink, a silent question in her eyes.

  Lorimer heaved a sigh as he took her into his arms.

  ‘She’s admitted it. Everything. How she did it, why . . . the way she planned it all down to the last detail. The school reunion, luring me in so she would be above any suspicion.’

  He drew back to look into Maggie’s eyes.

  ‘You didn’t fall for her act, did you, my darling?’

  ‘I never thought she was a killer,’ Maggie said at last. ‘But there was something . . . the way she was so possessive of you . . . I thought it was just jealousy on my part,’ she confessed.

  ‘It was more than that,’ Lorimer whispered. ‘The thing they call a woman’s intuition.’ He laughed softly. ‘That magical sixth sense we men lack at times. Ever think of changing careers, Mrs Lorimer?’ he added admiringly. ‘The police could use someone like you.’

  Later, as he slept by her side, Maggie gazed at her husband. The lines were still there and the strain across his brow. Would it always be like this? The endless search for clues leading to an arrest and hopefully a conviction? Or would this troubled man find peace somewhere? They had talked well into the night, Lorimer going over what had been said in the interview room, berating himself for his lack of insight, Maggie consoling him as best she could. Now he slept, but there was always tomorrow and the next day and the next, demands made upon him that would carve the signs of care deeper and deeper into the face of the man she loved.

  ‘She beguiled you,’ Maggie said quietly. ‘Perhaps she wasn’t such a bad actress after all.’

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  It was not unusual in her job to have to meet the police, but today was different, Gayle Finnegan realised. She had arranged a rota for all the staff to be interviewed, discreetly, as instructed, and in just over fifteen minutes it would be her turn to face the plain-clothes officers who had infiltrated the building on Albion Street. Routine, her line manager had said, but there had been a hint of anxiety on the other woman’s face.

  ‘Ms Finnegan?’ A tall young woman with cropped black hair stood smiling at Gayle. Her summer frock was Cath Kidston, Gayle realised, looking at the floral dress and the open-toed sandals. If this was how the police dressed nowadays for work, then perhaps the interview wouldn’t be too bad after all, she told herself, sitting down in the chair that the woman had pulled out for her.

  ‘Just a few routine questions. Gayle, isn’t it? My name’s Kate.’

  The handshake was warm, like the policewoman’s smile, and Gayle Finnegan nodded, relaxing into the chair, ready to answer whatever questions were necessary to complete this security check.

  There had been the usual things: home, hobbies, people she mixed with, then her relationship with Cam.

  ‘Anything unusual happen to you lately, Gayle? Anything odd?’ The woman smiled. ‘Silly wee things, even they can be significant.’

  The girl thought immediately of the red mobile phone covered in numbered stickers. But that wouldn’t be of any interest to them, would it?

  ‘Gayle?’ Kate, the nice police officer, was looking at her intently. ‘What is it? Something that bothered you?’ Her voice was kind, understanding. And at that moment, Gayle felt that Kate was just the sort of person she could confide in.

  She began to tell the officer about the discovery in their bedroom, how she had worried herself sick that Cam had another woman. Or other women. But he’d said it was to do with university stuff. He was always late home these days; the dissertation seemed to cause him to stay in the university library for hours on end.

  And had anything else changed? Kate had asked, and Gayle found herself confiding about how worried she was whenever her boyfriend had those terrible dreams, and yet they had never been happier together, no more fighting about how he thought the Games were a load of rubbish. Yes. He’d changed his mind about that quite suddenly, she’d agreed.

  The two Aussies had been extra nice to him tonight, Cameron thought, as he sauntered through the streets of Glasgow’s Merchant City, heedless of the people around him, blind to the giant green G of Glasgow 2
014 on every corner. Peter had insisted on picking up the bill for dinner, too. They’d wheedled it out of him, guessing that their tour guide was still a student, telling him how much they appreciated his services, even hinting that there would be a welcome any time he cared to venture Down Under.

  It was different now, he decided. They were real people, not an abstract concept. And he bit his lip as he considered how he was going to prevent Peter and Joanne MacGregor from being part of the catastrophe that was planned for the opening ceremony. He had to do it somehow, extricate himself from the plot to which he had so readily agreed all those months ago. As his feet took him towards Gayle’s flat, a place he regarded these days almost as home, Cameron Gregson never noticed the two men slipping out of a parked car and following him.

  Lorimer and two of Drummond’s men were waiting in the kitchenette, hidden from sight, as Cameron Gregson turned his key in the door of Gayle Finnegan’s flat. The girl had been taken for further questioning, her face stricken with anguish as Kate and another colleague had helped her into a waiting car.

  Gregson’s professor had been helpful when Lorimer had telephoned him, concerned that his postgraduate student had failed to make contact for several weeks. The final draft of his dissertation ought to have been submitted by now. What was its subject? Lorimer had asked, and the professor had told him, unable to see the expression on the detective superintendent’s face when he had revealed that the young man had been writing about the persecution of Clan MacGregor and its effect on Scotland’s destiny.

  Drummond’s eyes had lit up when the detective superintendent had relayed that particular nugget of information.

  ‘It fits,’ he’d said. ‘Everything his girlfriend told us points to Gregson being part of a conspiracy. How he asked her for inside information about the Games, his seeming change of heart. She’s been well and truly conned by this man,’ Drummond had declared. ‘And if we can access that mobile phone, then we may just be able to find the other members of the cell.’

  There were officers positioned outside the flat too, waiting to apprehend Gregson in case he made a run for it. But there was no need.

  ‘Cameron Gregson?’

  ‘Who the . . . ?’ The young man’s face paled and he began to back away, bumping into a chair then sinking into it as though his legs had given way.

  ‘We need to ask you some questions,’ Lorimer said, bending over Gregson, pinning him with his blue glare.

  ‘Let’s begin with a certain red mobile phone that we believe is in your possession . . .’

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  ‘I swear I never seen him!’ Harry Temperland spread his skinny fingers in a pleading gesture.

  ‘That’s not what Marlene McAdam tells us,’ Lorimer replied, one eyebrow raised in a sceptical gesture.

  The ageing tattoo artist’s head sank, his grey hair falling in straggles across the edge of the table. Lorimer waited. The man’s demeanour spoke of defeat already, and it simply required patience to bring out all the information he needed.

  ‘Said he’d kill me if I spoke to youse. Always banging on about a singing bird.’ He raised watery eyes to the detective superintendent. ‘Know what that means?’

  Lorimer nodded. To sing like a bird was to tell on your mates, and in some criminal quarters that carried a heavy penalty.

  There was a sigh, then Temperland pulled the chair a little closer to the table, his feet shuffling on the linoleum floor.

  ‘Met up with him some years back. We were doing a re-enactment up at Bannockburn. Took a shine to me, or so I thought at the time,’ he said darkly. ‘Then one day he appears at the studio. Talked about buying the place. Seemed to know an awful lot more about me and the business than I had let on.’ He glanced up at the detective. ‘Debts were crippling me.’ He shrugged. ‘Had a dealer who wasn’t prepared to give me any more credit, so I’d remortgaged it.’ He licked his lips, then stretched out a hand to take the plastic beaker of water that he’d been given earlier. A couple of sips and he was ready to continue.

  ‘Bought me out and kept me on as manager. Paid me properly too, I’ll give him that,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Wanted me to do all these tattoos for him, special things, Pictish mostly. Things that had meanings.’ His pale eyes looked beyond Lorimer for a moment as though he were imagining a time in pre-history when the swirling designs had been created.

  ‘Aye, and he wanted me to have a particular design tattooed on that black girl.’ He nodded, still avoiding Lorimer’s stare. ‘Said he’d be bringing in more nearer the time of the Games. Then Gilmartin arrived.’ He took another sip of water.

  ‘Seemed a nice man,’ Temperland mused. ‘Would never have thought he’d have had dealings with someone like McAlpin. ’Specially not in that line o’ business.’ He sighed again. ‘They’d met on the set of some film or other. Don’t know which one.’ He looked up at Lorimer. ‘Does it matter?’

  The detective shook his head. Let him just carry on talking, he thought.

  ‘Anyway, seems they cooked up this scheme between them. Gilmartin supplied the cash, McAlpin did the rest.’ He shrugged. ‘Never knew much about how they got the girls over here, but I did know that Gilmartin was planning to bring more over from Nigeria with a theatrical group. Then he died.’ He looked at Lorimer again.

  ‘I saw him that afternoon.’ He nodded. ‘Like Marlene said. McAlpin seemed happy enough afterwards. Nothing that would suggest he was about to do the man any harm. I mean, why would he? Kill the goose that laid the golden eggs?’

  ‘Where is he now, Harry?’ Lorimer spoke so quietly that for a moment the tattoo artist seemed not to have heard him.

  ‘Never knew much about his private life. Never seen him with a woman in tow.’ He shook his head. ‘If he isn’t at his house or that flat where he kept his girls, then I don’t know where he’d be.’ He looked straight at Lorimer. ‘Really I don’t,’ he added.

  ‘We can safely assume that McAlpin was dropped from the cell and that these five remaining numbers are used for contact purposes,’ Drummond told him.

  They were walking together in Kelvingrove Park, along a path that lay directly in front of Solly and Rosie’s house. Lorimer glanced upwards at the bay windows shining in the afternoon sun. He had kept so much of this case from his friends, and from Maggie, the need for absolute security precluding even those whom he knew he could trust.

  ‘What we don’t want is for any of them to go to ground, especially Petrie. He’s a slippery customer, good at covering his tracks, never in the same place twice,’ Drummond said, matching Lorimer stride for stride as they walked downhill towards the river.

  ‘Having Gregson’s mobile will enable us to pinpoint their location easily enough, though.’ He exchanged a grin with the detective superintendent. ‘We expect to have them all in custody by the end of today,’ he added.

  Lorimer did not reply. It was a strange thing to be part of such an important case and yet not to be in at the capture of these men. That would be carried out by MI6 operatives with the utmost discretion and without any assistance from Police Scotland. They had done their bit and Lorimer must be satisfied with that.

  ‘I wanted to ask you something.’ Drummond stopped and turned to the tall man by his side. ‘Wondered if you had thought any more about my proposal?’

  ‘Joining MI6?’ Lorimer smiled. ‘I’m flattered that you’d want me,’ he said.

  Drummond looked at him shrewdly. ‘You are exactly the sort of man we want, Lorimer. But I’m guessing you’ve made your decision. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lorimer looked back at the man and nodded. ‘I’ve already got the best job in the world,’ he said. ‘And I wouldn’t want to change that for anything.’

  ‘That’s the leader’s call.’ Rob Worsley picked up the red mobile telephone and looked across the room at McAlpin.

  ‘Don’t tell him I’m here,’ the big man hissed.

  Worsley glared back at him, the phone already pressed to his ear. ‘Numb
er Four,’ he said. Then, with a puzzled look, he took the mobile away and looked at it. ‘Died on me. Bloody battery must’ve gone,’ he said. ‘He’ll not be happy with that.’

  The explosives expert chewed his fingernail. None of them would be happy if they’d seen him last night, showing McAlpin his handiwork. Showing off after one too many whiskies, he thought guiltily. He’d allowed his pride to take over as he’d explained how the device worked, demonstrating the technical intricacies while thinking that a big bear like McAlpin was incapable of that sort of delicate work, no matter how interested he seemed to be.

  ‘Are you expecting a meeting, then?’ McAlpin asked.

  Worsley shrugged. ‘Yeah, sometime this morning. Never know where, though, do we? They’ll begin to wonder where I am when I don’t turn up,’ he said, gnawing his lip anxiously.

  A knock at the door made both men turn in alarm, exchanging worried looks.

  ‘Answer it, I’ll be in the kitchen,’ McAlpin commanded.

  The young woman at the door smiled sweetly, holding out a collecting tin for the Sick Children’s Hospital. ‘Care to help?’ she asked, looking up at the white-haired man on the doorstep.

  ‘Just a wee minute,’ Worsley replied. ‘Need to find some change.’ He’d turned to go back inside, ready to rummage in the pocket of a jacket that was hanging on the back of a chair, when he felt the gun in his back.

  ‘Turn around slowly and don’t make a sound,’ the young woman said quietly, her tone suddenly different. ‘There’s a car waiting outside. Walk slowly towards it and get into the back, understand?’

  Worsley nodded, his head spinning. The explosives were all in the back room, McAlpin in the kitchen. He cursed himself. McAlpin! It had to be him they were looking for, and now the big man had screwed the entire operation!

  For a moment he thought about making a run for it as the door opened wider, then, as two fit-looking men strolled towards him, one on either side, Rob Worsley knew it was time to admit defeat.