by Alex Gray
The television programme had suggested that she might be involved in her ex-husband’s death, but how could that be? If Marianne had hoped to continue at university as normal surely she would be afraid of detection in such a public place as this? The psychologist stopped at the edge of the pavement across from the main university gates and stood still, staring into the sky, quite unaware of the curious glances he was receiving from passers-by. Motivation was everything in a crime, he told himself. Why a person chose to commit an evil deed said so much more about them than the deed itself. If Marianne had killed her own husband then what could her motive have been? She had been legally divorced from Scott so she did not need to be rid of him to marry this Shafiq, whoever he was. Yet, she had thanked Solly for … for what? Suggesting that she rid herself of some bad
dreams? In the clear light of this autumn day such a notion seemed absurd, but, until he knew more, Doctor Solomon Brightman could only theorise about the reason behind Marianne’s change from the timid student she had been into the vibrant woman he remembered from the bookshop. And was that simply down to finding the right man to love? SoIly noticed the orange lights of an approaching taxi and he stepped forwards on to the road, one arm raised. Perhaps it was a little rash of him, a little presumptuous, but it had to be done. ‘Into town, please,’ he told the driver. Then, stepping into the cab, he gave him the address of Lorimer’s divisional headquarters. Sitting back, SoIly stroked his beard thoughtfully, wondering what sort of reaction his unexpected appearance would provoke.
Lorimer sat on the edge of a desk, facing the members of his team. All of them had been brought up to date with the Crimewatch results. There had been some tuts of disapproval as the team learned that one of Scott’s neighbours had phoned in, distraught yet full of apologies, telling them that she had gone into the house to tidy up, as she had put it. Hadn’t meant to cause any bother. The mystery of the neatly made bed was a mystery no longer. That was one box at least that could be ticked. But the best result had been the Asian’s call and now Lorimer was relating Amit Shafiq’s part in the investigation. ‘We’ve got him under surveillance partly for his own protection,’ he explained. ‘After what happened to Jaffrey we can’t afford to take any risks,’ he said gravely. ‘Hopefully the people who were Brogan’s associates will make contact with him, but that may take time …’ he broke off as the door to the room opened and a harassed looking uniformed officer entered, a familiar figure in her wake.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but he wouldn’t listen when I said you were in a meeting . .
`Ah, Lorimer,’ Solly neatly sidestepped the woman and came forward, beaming as though the senior officer would be equally delighted to see him.
‘Doctor Brightman,’ Lorimer replied formally, sliding off the desk and taking the man’s outstretched hand. ‘We are, as you see, in a meeting . .
Solly looked around him, nodding at the officers he knew well. ‘Yes, yes, that’s fine. I thought it best to come right away, you see. There’s such a lot you all have to know,’ he told them, standing just in front of Lorimer as though to take his place, a strategy that was quite deliberate on the psychologist’s part. ‘Forgive the sudden interruption,’ he added, glancing at Lorimer with a sweet smile that he knew was not nearly apologetic enough. ‘But I have information relating to the disappearance of Marianne Scott.’ He turned to Lorimer again. ‘Or should I say, Marianne Shafiq?’
It gave the psychologist a moment of satisfaction to see Lorimer’s jaw drop at the mention of that name.
‘How did you know. . ‘Your good people came to see me, remember?’ Solly waved a hand in the direction of Irvine and Fathy. ‘I was made aware of the fact that you were looking for one of my students, a young woman whom I had come across by chance during the summer vacation,’ Solly continued, drawing Lorimer to his side as he addressed the assembled officers. ‘I had been puzzled for some time by something that she said to me,’ he went on. ‘Something rather strange.’ He paused and looked at them intently while they waited, most of them accustomed to the sudden little silences in the psychologist’s flow.
Perhaps,’ he said, turning to catch Lorimer’s eye, ‘it might be easier to understand if I begin at the beginning.’ He took off his spectacles and polished them with the end of his tie, looked to see that they were clean, then replaced them. ‘Marianne Scott began studying with me a year ago. She was a mature student but the difference in her age was not what marked her out from the rest of her class.’ There was complete silence as Solly continued, the officers keen to hear whatever new information he might have. ‘Marianne was a very quiet, withdrawn sort of creature. One who liked to keep to the back of a seminar, remain unnoticed,’ Solly said, nodding his head as though he were trying to recall her exactly. ‘I remember her as a plain looking woman; hair pulled back from her face, no make-up, rather drab, actually,’ he said, a note of apology in his voice as though he were stating some political incorrectness. ‘With hindsight, I think that this was a deliberate ploy on her part.’ The quizzical looks that were directed towards him made SoIly nod once more.
‘When I saw her a few weeks ago, she was a different person altogether. Vibrant,’ he murmured to himself. ‘That’s the word I keep coming back to. It means being full of life and energy,’ he explained. And she was. Her hair was long and loose, that lovely Titian red … she wore something brightly coloured … I can’t recall just what it was… but it was her expression that stays in my mind most of all,’ he said, folding his arms across his chest. ‘She was so full of animation, excitement, joy. . Solly broke off again but this time Lorimer filled the pause. ‘How is this supposed to help us find the woman?’ he asked, a note of irritation in his voice. ‘I was coming to that,’ Solly replied mildly. ‘She said she had
something to thank me for,’ he told them. ‘Her exact words were, I’ve a lot to thank you for’ He nodded again, this time unsmiling. ‘Later I was to find out that I had met her just one day after the death of her ex-husband,’ he said. There was a murmur amongst the officers who did not notice the psychologist’s sigh as he spoke. But Lorimer had heard it and came to stand beside his friend.
‘You know something about all of this, Solly, don’t you?’ Lorimer asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied sadly. ‘You see,’ he continued, ‘I fear it may have been something I said that prompted Marianne Scott to have her husband killed.’
‘What?’ one officer asked, clearly incredulous at the psychologist’s statement. Others began to frown and mutter amongst themselves.
‘Okay, let Doctor Brightman explain,’ Lorimer waved an authoritative hand, silencing the officers’ reaction. Solly began to describe the scene he had remembered from the seminar on dreams, taking care to repeat his own words, explaining why he had said them. ‘It was a careless, throwaway remark,’ he shrugged. ‘Something to elicit a laugh. But I fear that the woman may have taken it seriously. You see,’ he broke off again, his gaze sweeping the room, ‘I think she was haunted by particular dreams of her own death. I believe,’ he continued, ‘she may have thought her ex-husband was going to kill her.’
A derisive snort came from the back of the room and a male voice called out, ‘Well, if you saw her having so many mood changes she probably was a bit unstable. Do we know if she had mental health problems?’ ‘Problems?’ another voice burst out. ‘Of course she had problems!’
Everyone turned to see IX: Annie Irvine standing, red-faced, her eyes bright with anger. ‘Do any of you know what it’s like?’ she asked, thrusting her hands forwards in appeal. ‘Day after day after day not knowing if he’s going to be behind you in the street or the bus or a queue at Starbucks? Jumping every time the phone rings in case it’s another load of filth you have to hear? Leaving the home you love just to get rid of him. . Tears were streaming down the policewoman’s cheeks now but she seemed totally unaware of them. ‘You don’t know, do you, any of you?’ she said, whirling to look at her fellow officers in turn. ‘Marianne Scott was probably
out of her mind with the strain of it all. Being hounded like that must have been bad enough, but to be unable to sleep because of him infiltrating her dreams…’ She broke off in sobs and Fathy came to stand beside her, proffering a large white handkerchief. There was an uneasy silence as several of the officers eyed her curiously, others too embarrassed at her outburst to even look in her direction. ‘Is that why you joined the police force?’ Solly asked kindly and nobody was surprised when Annie Irvine nodded, hand holding Fathy’s handkerchief to her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she gulped, ‘I shouldn’t have . . ‘No, don’t apologise,’ Lorimer told her. ‘Perhaps we need to understand a little more about Marianne Scott and her ex husband in order to see how Doctor Brightman’s story is possible.’ ‘Maybe it was the only way she could imagine being rid of him,’ DS Cameron suggested. ‘And if she was having such awful, recurring nightmares, she probably wasn’t what you would describe as being in her right mind,’ Fathy put in.
‘If what we have heard is true, and remember it is only a theory — we can’t present something like Doctor Brightman’s notions as hard evidence — then this woman may need help,’ Lorimer said. ‘We need to look into old hospital records, see if there is anything that might suggest injuries from abuse by the husband. She deliberately absconded from what Shafiq saw as a place of safety. Now why is that, do you think?’ There was no answer from the room.
‘Well,’ Cameron said at last. ‘If she knows that her brother is being sought by the police, surely it follows that she’s afraid we’ll bring her in too.’
‘She’s still hiding,’ Annie said firmly. ‘She may have thought that everything in her world was working out when you saw her,’ she nodded towards Solly. ‘Thought she could sleep peacefully at last.’
‘Well, let’s hope that Shafiq might lead us to her. No matter what he says, I think someone in the Asian community may have a good idea of her whereabouts,’ Lorimer said firmly. ‘Brogan’s links involve his sister, I’m sure of that.’
Billy sat on the edge of the bed and wept, his shoulders heaving as the sobs racked his body. If only … he sighed, remembering the words of his mum. If only you were more like your sister, she’d scolded him on a daily basis. Instead of running with that bad crowd. Poor old Mum had succumbed to the cancer that had ravaged her body, long since, dying in that hospital where he had rarely visited, knowing he was unwelcome, the black sheep of the family. He hadn’t been able to face that, either, had he? It had always been the same: he’d run away from anything hard. Had she always seen him as a bad lad? Probably, he thought, tears of remorse trickling down his face. Dogging off from as young as ten, trying
dope before he’d even reached the end of primary, selling it by the time he was in high school. And while Marianne sat and passed all of her exams Billy Brogan had been receiving a different sort of education altogether. How to hustle, how to drive a good deal, how to ingratiate himself into an established group of businessmen.
Until that time when someone had been stabbed in a fight amongst a rowdy lot of football casuals, out of their heads on a mixture of booze and drugs. That had been the end of it for da, hadn’t it? There was no welcome home for his boy after that.
Billy Brogan had been lifted with the rest of them, thrown into the cells for a night he didn’t ever want to repeat. The threat of a longer spell in prison had driven him into the army and into the company of men who seemed to understand how he felt about life. Many of them were from far more impoverished backgrounds than he was, Billy remembered, shivering as he sat with the sheet wrapped around him. Guys who thrived on three decent meals a day, loved the camaraderie and even took to the harsh discipline as though they had been waiting for someone to give some form or structure to their lives. Even in the scary situations when lives were on the line (and sometimes blown away, though you never dwelt on that) Private Billy Brogan had seen lads who’d once been young hoods like himself turn into brave and honourable men. If only he’d stayed in the army … Meeting Stevens had been the turning point for him, though. The older man’s biting cynicism had made him laugh. Had made them all laugh, some uneasily, as he recounted stories about picking off his human targets out on patrol. At first Billy had thought the man’s tales a load of bullshit, but gradually he’d realised that Stevens was not just a trained sniper, but that being good at killing was something of which the man was inordinately proud.
‘Found my vocation, haven’t 1, Billy boy?’ Brogan remembered him saying after one particularly bloodthirsty patrol when several young Iraqis had fallen under Stevens’ fire.
‘When this is all over, I’ll be coining it, won’t I?’ And when Billy had asked him ‘How?’ Stevens had told him.
‘Once a killer, always a killer, Billy boy. And there’s plenty will pay for me to do jobs they can’t or won’t do themselves, know what I mean?’
If only he hadn’t kept in touch with the hit man. If only he had ignored Marianne’s pleas for help. If only bloody Ken had let her go … There were so many if onlys in his life, Brogan thought wearily, wiping his eyes with a corner of the sheet. Now it looked as though he’d have to face all the bad choices he had made.
‘Hello?’
The door opening made Billy look up, startled out of his thoughts.
A woman dressed in white, with a veil billowing over her shoulder, had entered the room and was advancing to him. Billy pulled the sheet more closely around his body, suddenly shy. ‘Who ur you, hen?’ he muttered, his Glasgow accent sounding suddenly strange to his own ears.
‘It’s all right,’ the woman said and Billy felt a sudden relief at her English accent. ‘I’m your nurse. I’m here to help you.’ She smiled, seeing Billy’s uncertainty. ‘Glad you’ve woken up at last. You’ve been sleeping for quite a long time, you know. We were worried that you might have had a more severe head injury,’ she nodded, glancing at his bandaged skull. ‘Now just sit back against the pillows while I change that dressing.’
Brogan pushed the breakfast tray to the foot of the bed with a
sigh. Funny how a decent bit of food and the prospect of some
fresh clothes could make you feel less desperate. He’d been picked up off that back alley and taken to the hospital, one British citizen robbed and beaten; no identity since all of his personal things had been stolen. All but his mobile phone and that hadn’t helped them much since it appeared that he hadn’t stored any numbers. Brogan had breathed a sigh of relief when the nurse had told him that, her pretty face creasing in a frown. He needed to keep certain things to himself, especially now. Things like Marianne. What was happening to his sister? Connie, his nurse, had promised that a car would be made available to take him to the British Consul. Did he feel up to it, though? Thinking of Stevens’ threatened deadline, Billy had assured her he was feeling brand new, thank you, barely concealing the panic he really felt. Now all he had to do was dress in these borrowed garments and head off to where someone could help him sort out this mess. The sunlight filtering through the blinds reminded Brogan of the glare of the African sun beating down outside on these foreign streets. Only they were the streets of Algiers, not Morocco. Stupid, stupid, he berated himself. Only a moron would make a mistake like that, he’d told himself more than once. Palma, Mallorca was a very long way from Las Palmas in the Canary Islands and the nearby Moroccan coast. And he deserved to be punished for such stupidity now. Brogan took a deep breath. He was done with running away from his responsibilities. Now he had to get back home as soon as he could. No matter what the final consequences.
M
arianne woke with a start. Somehow she had slept through the night with no dreams to disturb her for once. Was it because she was so exhausted, physically and emotionally, or had she simply found that reality was far more terrifying than all the images that had swirled uncontrollably around her brain? Max (she couldn’t stop thinking of him as Max) was not in the hotel room. The bed they had shared was neatly made, but not by one of the hotel staff. He had made sure of that,
letting the Do Not Disturb notice dangle from the door knob outside. Hearing their sexual frolics night after night must have made the staff think they were newlyweds or something, Marianne realised. Had it all been a ploy, then? Had Max bedded her to make the hotel think they were on their honeymoon? He’d certainly beguiled her into imagining that all of these endearments and caresses had been real. She bit the inside of her lip, trying not to cry, but the gaffer tape caught at her skin, tightening its grip. The hit man had secured her to the only wooden chair in the room, one she’d sat on in front of the mirror to brush her hair, put on her make-up. He had set it deliberately away from a wall so that Marianne could not thump her elbows or wrists against the adjoining rooms. Nor could she tilt it over, making it crash to the
floor, he’d seen to that, too, roping the back of it firmly to the brass bed ends.
She swallowed hard, feeling the dryness in her throat. How long had it been since she had drunk anything? Hours and hours, she told herself, glancing at the television’s digital clock. Despite that, she badly needed to pee. Marianne closed her eyes and began to pray. Please, please let Billy come home. Would Billy come back, bringing the money that Max asked him for? Or would he leave her there, running away from something difficult as he usually did? That’s not fair, a little voice reminded her. He helped you to get rid of Ken, didn’t he?
Marianne shivered, remembering the nightmares and the days when she had been too scared to turn around to see Ken following her, stalking her wherever she went. She’d been terrified he’d get hold of her once again; torture her in those insidious ways he had devised. No matter how often she changed her address he had always seemed to find her. I’ll sleep like the dead once he’s gone for good, she’d told Billy once, and her brother had laughed at the phrase.