by Alex Gray
‘The last time I was here it was to investigate the death of a nurse, Kirsty MacLeod,’ he continued, still gazing at her face, her penetrating eyes.
She closed them and opened them again. Was she trying to blot out the memory of that night? He hoped she wouldn’t, for his sake and for Kirsty’s.
‘May I ask you about that night?’
Phyllis frowned at him as if he’d said something out of place so he added quickly, ‘Look, I know you can’t talk to me, but I’d like to think we can communicate all the same. Give a nod if you mean ‘yes’. Close your eyes if it’s a ‘no’. Can you do that?’
There was a tiny movement of the woman’s head that Lorimer took to be a nod. Lorimer turned to Annie, who was busy unpacking the video camera she’d brought.
‘We’d like to make a recording of this interview. It’s a little unorthodox, perhaps, but then your situation is, let’s say, a bit different.’
The woman had her gaze trained on his, he noticed. She could hear him, no bother, then. But just what was going on behind that steady expression?
‘PC Annie Irvine recording in the Grange clinic for neural disorders. DCI Lorimer interviewing Mrs Phyllis Logan. Date and time preset,’ Annie’s voice broke into his thoughts. OK, this was it.
He took a deep breath before asking, ‘We need to know exactly what took place in the clinic on the night that Kirsty died. And I’d like to know if you heard anything.’
The nod she gave was quite definite now and her eyes were staring at him, huge and fearful. She’d heard something all right. Lorimer edged his chair closer to the bed. He spoke slowly and deliberately, watching Phyllis’s every reaction. Her eyes flickered once in Annie’s direction then passed back to him as if she was indifferent to the presence of the camera.
‘Right, now. Did you hear anything unusual outside your door on the night of…’
Lorimer broke off. The woman in the bed was making high-pitched mewing sounds, as if she was trying to tell him something. Tears threatened to spill over from those huge eyes.
Lorimer leant closer. ‘You heard something?’
Phyllis gave a nod. Her eyes were round and staring.
‘Was it a sound like something being dragged past your door?’
Again that tiny jerk of the head meant yes.
‘Did you hear any noises coming from the far end of the corridor?’ The woman’s brow furrowed for a moment.
‘A noise like something heavy falling down a flight of stairs?’
She gave another frown then shut her eyes quite deliberately before nodding again.
Was she telling him ‘Yes and no’? How the hell could he draw out all the details? For a second Lorimer clenched his teeth in frustration. Then he looked at the woman in bed. Dear Christ! If this was how he felt what on earth must it be like for her? He breathed in and out, deliberately relaxing himself before continuing.
‘Did you hear a door banging shut? A heavy door?’
The nod confirmed her answer this time.
Lorimer paused, still holding her eyes in his, trying to see what she had seen.
‘Phyllis, did you hear footsteps coming back along in this direction?’
Lorimer watched as her mouth worked noiselessly, trying to form words that nobody could hear. A plaintive sound came from within her, repeated over and over again as her head tilted up and down in agitation. Then suddenly her eyes flitted past him and stared wildly at the door, making Lorimer turn to see who had come into the room.
There was no one there. What was she trying to tell him?
He could feel a growing excitement inside as he asked her, ‘Phyllis. I want you to think very carefully before you nod again. Did you see anybody in here just after you’d heard the noise of the door banging?’
Her eyes switched back to his. He could see the sigh unfold in her chest as if she’d been waiting for this question that he’d finally asked. She gave a nod.
‘That’s ‘yes’, Phyllis. You’re telling me that you saw someone in here that night?’
The nod came again but Lorimer could see the strain on her face. The effort of making even these small movements was exhausting the sick woman.
‘Was it anyone you knew?’
Her eyelids fluttered. Was that a ‘no’ or was she simply unable to keep her eyes open?
‘Did Leigh Quinn come into your room that night?’
The movement of the woman’s head was imperceptible. Not a nod at all, more of a gesture of inquiry as if she was puzzled by the question.
‘Phyllis. Did a man come into your room?’
She nodded but the movement was clearly an effort as her head hung forward, its weight drawing Phyllis’s face towards the sheets.
‘Was this man a stranger to you, then?’
Had she nodded? He couldn’t be sure.
Lorimer gazed at her wasted body. Could he really put his faith in this invalid? A niggle of doubt began to bother him. Was she a reliable witness? Should he even be questioning her like this?
Lorimer’s eyes travelled back to her face. The body might be wasted but here was no doubting the intelligence locked inside that impaired nervous system. As Phyllis’s eyes met his, he realised that he had no need to doubt her. That steady expression told him that she was willing him to see whatever she had seen.
‘Did he speak to you?’
Lorimer saw the muscles in her face twitch as a spasm passed through them. Her eyes widened in fear but her head nodded forwards.
‘And threaten you?’
Her eyes bored into his as she gave a nod.
Lorimer glanced up at Annie Irvine. They were on the brink of something momentous.
‘Phyllis. Do you believe that you saw the person who killed Kirsty MacLeod?’
There came a small weeping from the woman in the bed, tiny stifled cries as the tears flowed down into the pillow. Slithers of mucus dropped from her open mouth. For an instant Lorimer stared at her, absorbing her grief. Then he felt in his pocket for a clean handkerchief. Folding it around his index finger, he wiped away the tears. Carefully he gathered up the wet trails hanging from Phyllis’s mouth and dried her chin.
Her breath shuddered suddenly. Lorimer’s simple actions seemed to have calmed the woman. Her head was drooping low and she looked awkward, propped up on a bank of pillows that no longer gave her any support. Lorimer didn’t hesitate. He knew he was probably breaking all sorts of rules, nevertheless he thrust an arm around the exhausted woman’s shoulders then pulled her further down into the sheets until her head was resting against the pillows once more. Well, he’d broken rules before and, hell, all those leading questions might be thrown out in a court of law anyway.
This video could turn out to be a total waste of time. Lorimer sat back looking at the patient. Her body was rigid with pain. It was not only pointless but cruel forcing any more out of her now. Besides, she’d given him plenty to work on already.
‘DCI Lorimer terminating the interview,’ he said. He heard the buzz from the video camera as Annie retracted the zoom and ended the recording. He was pretty sure that there were several leads he could follow from what Phyllis had given him. part of him wanted to be up and off to study the footage they’d just recorded but there was something he had to do first. Right now he had a duty to protect this vulnerable witness.
‘Ask Mrs Baillie to come back in here, would you, Annie?’
As the policewoman left the room there was a low moan from the woman in the bed. Lorimer returned to his place beside her and took her hand. It felt cold and bloodless.
Phyllis turned her head away from him and then moved it back to look into his eyes, making sure he was watching her. Then she turned once more, staring at the large vase of flowers set on top of her locker.
‘Is it the flowers, Phyllis?’ Lorimer felt the cold hand in his, motionless. She continued to stare at him, then, imperceptibly, she nodded.
Suddenly Lorimer realised what it was she had been trying to tell him. The
flowers!
‘Did the man take a carnation from your vase, Phyllis? A red carnation?’
The woman gave Lorimer a long hard stare then, quite deliberately, nodded her head, once, in definite affirmation.
Her shoulders relaxed in the sigh that followed. Now she really had expended all her energy. Her eyes closed and Lorimer heard her breathing steadily until he was sure that she had fallen asleep.
‘You may also think you have a witness statement from the Logan woman but it might be quite inadmissible in a court of law, you know,’ Mitchison continued, the finger wagging just a fraction too close to Lorimer’s face.
‘If you would just take a look at the recording, sir?’
Mitchison gave a theatrical sigh, ‘Oh, very well, then. Let’s have a look.’
The Superintendent watched as Lorimer slotted the tape into the video machine. The two men listened as Annie Irvine’s voice began the interview. Lorimer stared at the face on the screen. He had every detail of the tape off by heart now. There was no interruption from Mitchison as they listened to the recording. At last it was over and Lorimer looked questioningly at his superior.
Mitchison was frowning at the empty screen, an expression on his face that Lorimer couldn’t quite fathom. It was almost human, he thought cynically.
Finally the Superintendent broke the silence between them. ‘She’s a very sick woman,’ he began to say, slowly.
‘Yes, she is,’ Lorimer replied. There was no point in denying it after what they’d both witnessed on the tape.
‘I wonder if the courts would consider her a reliable witness?’ Mitchison seemed to be asking the question of himself. Then he shook his head. ‘Oh, I don’t know. We’d need all sorts of expert medical witness statements to back up the validity of this statement. If you can even call it that.’
Lorimer clenched his fists out of sight, under the desk. Would Mitchison try to stop the tape being used as evidence after all her efforts? He mentally rewound the video, seeing the woman’s anguished face. It took all his powers of restraint to keep the passion from his voice.
‘Sir, although she has no power of speech, she’s no dummy. Mrs Baillie can vouch for her mental health.’
Mitchison’s face twitched as if a spasm of annoyance had passed over it. For a moment he didn’t speak but simply continued to stare at the blank screen. Lorimer wondered what was going on in the man’s mind. At last Mitchison swung around in his chair, his usual expression of superiority back in place. ‘Oh, very well, let’s get on with it. But I have to warn you, Chief Inspector, I’m really expecting some results now. There have been too many man hours frittered away on this case already.’
Lorimer took a deep breath. ‘I’ll be showing this to Dr Brightman, sir.’
Mitchison looked askance at his DCI. ‘Our criminal profiler? Why not. He hasn’t come up with anything yet, has he?’ he asked, as if Solomon was yet another tiresome burden he had to bear.
‘No, sir,’ Lorimer lied, his fingers crossed under the table. Let Solly’s theory about two killers simmer for a bit, he decided.
Having Mitchison’s blessing about Phyllis Logan meant more right now, especially with the idea that had taken root in his brain. If Solly was correct and a killer was closer to home than they thought, then Phyllis Logan might be in more danger than they imagined.
Solly re-crossed his legs thoughtfully. They had watched the video footage twice together now and he’d not offered any comment. He could feel Lorimer’s eyes burning into him, waiting for some word of encouragement.
‘Well, what do you make of her?’ Lorimer asked, obviously bursting for a response from the psychologist.
Solly shook his head slowly, tugging absently on the curls of his beard. Then he sighed. ‘What a terrible imprisonment for her. To be so confined. Just like poor Nan Coutts. Yet she must have developed an inner self.’ He spoke softly, almost to himself as he stared at the screen. ‘She’s been terrorised all right, though, don’t you think?’ he added, turning to make eye contact with Lorimer.
‘Oh, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Only by whom? That’s where our problem lies. Leigh Quinn was my first thought, but now I’m not so sure. It’s certainly a man, so we can eliminate the female staff and patients from the scenario along with the cleaners and other women. Including Mrs Baillie,’ he added.
Solly tried to hide a grin. The director of the Grange had ruffled DCI Lorimer’s feathers considerably during the investigation. And there was still that question mark hanging over the finances of the clinic.
‘Phyllis Logan’s been there long enough to know the staff and long term patients by name, surely,’ his voice trailed off and Lorimer was left watching him as Solly’s face took on the dreamy attitude with which he was becoming so familiar. There was something brewing in that brain of his.
‘I took a long walk around the whole area,’ Solly began. ‘It struck me that somebody walked straight into the Grange and straight out again the night that Kirsty was murdered. I think we’re pretty much agreed that this killer knows his way about. He knew Brenda’s movements too. There’s a coolness about his character. He has something to do with the clinic, that’s clear enough to me. He can disappear into the background like so much wallpaper. Nobody sees him as out of place.’
‘Nobody seems to have seen him at all except Phyllis Logan!’ Lorimer protested.
‘I wonder,’ Solly mused. ‘Brenda Duncan and Kirsty MacLeod were doing their usual rounds, checking up on the patients. They had to go into everybody’s room, isn’t that so?’
Lorimer nodded, puzzled. They’d been over this again and again. What was Solly getting at now?
‘Well, it’s a pity we can’t ask either of them, but I wonder…’
Lorimer bit his lip impatiently.
‘The patients on suicide watch have a designated nurse with them during the night, don’t they?’
‘Yes,’ Lorimer frowned. What was he trying to say?
‘Well, suppose one of them left their post for a bit? Both they and their patient would be vulnerable, wouldn’t they?’
‘Vulnerable to what?’
‘Suspicion, of course!’ Solly exclaimed, surprised that Lorimer hadn’t followed his line of thought. ‘And I don’t see any of the nurses owning up to being away from a patient’s bedside when that would provide a perfect alibi, do you?’
‘But, hold on, let’s look at this another way. Say you’re right and there’s one killer of prostitutes who likes to hang around Queen Street station then another who bumps off two nurses, what about motive? Are we looking for two nutters, d’you think?’
Solly shook his head. ‘Whoever murdered Kirsty and Brenda knew exactly what they were doing and why. The real problem is how they came to find out about the signature.’ Solly looked hard at the policeman. ‘Rape can escalate into murder. The women in Queen Street may well have been raped. Sexual activity was present in both cases.’
‘But they were prostitutes! Of course there were signs of sexual activity!’
‘But neither Kirsty nor Brenda were assaulted like that. He simply walked up and strangled them. The element of shock was that they knew their attacker and trusted him.’
‘Would they have trusted a patient?’
‘That depends. If they knew him well enough, yes. Still considering Leigh Quinn?’
Lorimer’s face twisted in a grimace. It fitted almost too neatly: a depressive who had some sort of flower fetish. But why would he have killed Kirsty? He’d liked her. And Brenda Duncan? What possible reason could he have had for stalking her home like that? Lorimer shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he sighed. ‘He had no grudge against either woman as far as we know.’
‘Interesting you should use the word grudge. Something may have happened to poison a mind already holding a grudge. Something that triggered off this chain of events.’
Lorimer reached forward to eject the tape. The MS patient had given them both plenty to think about.
&n
bsp; Solly would try to develop his profiles while his own team would continue the painstaking work of crosschecking the background of every man connected to the Grange. And now that included every member of the team itself.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Father Ambrose let his spectacles fall on top of the evening paper. Four women had been strangled now and still he sat here worrying about them. Praying too, he admitted, but he would have done that anyway. The picture in the evening paper showed a young woman smiling into a camera. The headline had shouted out her crime, and his. Poor child, he thought, to have stooped so low. The journalist had painted a life of drugs and deprivation. Father Ambrose could imagine what that might have been like. One of his parishes had been in the inner city, long ago, before they’d torn down the sagging tenements and given people decent homes. He’d been party to some terrible confessions in those days, he remembered.
It was the flowers that had first bothered the priest. Red carnations slipped between the praying hands of a killer’s victims. There had been a shiver of unease to begin with until memories came flooding back, memories of other hands that had selected the choicest blooms. A vivid picture of a body in a coffin came back to him, the flower like a gash of blood against the whiteness of the shroud. The hands that had placed those flowers had been clasped in prayer each day, right by his side. Until the scandal that had shocked them all.
Father Ambrose picked up the paper with shaking hands. He knew what he must do. All along he had known it, but he’d suppressed that event over the years until it had almost ceased to exist. Now he had to face the truth.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lorimer could have gone home but tonight he just didn’t feel like sitting staring at the television while Maggie was up to her eyes marking these interminable papers. So here he was, waiting to be served in the canteen. The fluorescent bulbs glared overhead, at odds with the spring light that poured into these upstairs windows. Mitchison could make a start by saving dosh here, thought Lorimer moodily. Like the waste of money Maggie was always going on about in her school where the heating was kept turned up all year round, even in the holidays. Maggie again. He must stop thinking about her.