The Bird That Did Not Sing

by Alex Gray

  Pinder gave a sigh and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘The Glasgow Commonwealth Games.’

  Lorimer looked at the man in disbelief, but Pinder’s face was all seriousness.

  ‘That’s almost a year away. Why do they think…?’

  ‘Haven’t been told that. Someone further up the chain of command will know.’ Pinder shrugged. ‘Perhaps you’ll be told once you liaise with Counter Terrorism.’

  Lorimer turned to take in the scene of the explosion once more, seeing for the first time the enormous area of burning countryside and trying to transfer it in his mind’s eye to the newly built village and arenas in Glasgow’s East End. He blinked suddenly at the very notion of carnage on such a vast scale.

  ‘We can’t let it happen,’ Pinder said quietly, watching the tall man’s face.

  Lorimer gazed across the fields to the line of rounded hills that were the Campsies. Glasgow lay beyond, snug in the Clyde valley; on this Sunday morning its citizens remained oblivious to the danger posed by whatever fanatic had ruined this bit of tranquil landscape. He had asked why the local cops hadn’t taken this one on, and now he understood: the threat to next year’s Commonwealth Games was something too big for that. And since the various police forces in Scotland had merged into one national force, Detective Superintendent William Lorimer might be called to any part of the country.

  ‘The press will want statements,’ Pinder said, breaking into Lorimer’s thoughts. ‘It’s still an ongoing investigation. Don’t we just love that phrase!’ He gave a short, hard laugh. ‘And there is no loss of life, so we can try for a positive slant on that, at least.’

  ‘They’ll speculate,’ Lorimer told him. ‘You know that’s what they do.’

  Pinder touched the detective superintendent’s arm, nodding towards the figures milling around on the fringes of the fire. ‘Apart from you and me, there is not a single person here who has been told about the background to this event. So unless the press leap to that conclusion by dint of their own imagination, any leak can only come from us.’

  When Lorimer turned to face him, the uniformed officer was struck by the taller man’s penetrating blue gaze. For a long moment they stared at one another, until Pinder looked away, feeling a sense of discomfort mixed with the certainty that he would follow this man wherever he might lead.

  Wouldn’t like to be across the table from him in an interview room, he was to tell his wife later that day. But there on that lonely stretch of country road, Martin Pinder had an inkling why it was that the powers on high had called on Detective Superintendent William Lorimer to oversee this particular incident.

  He was no stranger to the big hall in Pitt Street, once Strathclyde Police Headquarters; it was the place he had briefly hung his hat when heading up the former Serious Crime Squad. Nor was he unused to sitting at this very table, peering down at the crowd of newspaper reporters thronging the hall. It was scarcely midday, and yet here they all were, eager for a statement from the man whose face had often graced their broadsheets as they reported on the various crimes to blot their fair city.

  The statement had been prepared by himself and Martin Pinder, sitting in the Lexus at the scene of the explosion. To minimise the incident would give rise to the notion that something was being hidden, and that was a path they didn’t want any inquisitive journalist to go down. On the other hand, seeing a senior officer like Lorimer might rouse their curiosity further. In the end, they had decided to express outrage at the idiocy of whoever had planted the bomb and emphasise the sheer luck that nobody had been hurt.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Lorimer began, pausing as the babble of voices hushed and every pair of eyes turned towards him. ‘This morning around five a.m. there was a large explosion in a wood close to the village of Drymen. Firefighters were immediately called to the scene and have extinguished the ensuing blaze.’ He looked up, scanning the upturned faces, wondering at the thoughts buzzing inside their heads. ‘We are grateful that, despite the proximity to the West Highland Way, there was no loss of life, but it is with regret that I have to announce that this section of the famous walk has been closed until the damage to the woodland has been cleared. There is an ongoing inquiry into the exact nature of the explosion, but at present we are working on the assumption that it was caused by some sort of home-made device.’

  He stopped for a moment to let the murmuring break out. Plant the idea of daft wee laddies messing about in the woods, Pinder had suggested. A prank that went wrong. Lorimer had raised his eyebrows at that, but so far it seemed to be working.

  ‘The main road should be accessible later today and diversion signs have been put in place until then. If you have been listening, you will know that the radio stations are issuing regular bulletins to that effect,’ Lorimer told them, managing a smile.

  He folded his hands and nodded, the signal for a forest of hands to be raised.

  ‘Any sign that it’s terrorist activity?’

  Right off, the question he had expected.

  Lorimer’s smile broadened. ‘It has all the hallmarks of a home-made bomb,’ he reiterated. ‘Something that anyone could get off the internet.’

  ‘You think it was done by kids?’ someone else demanded.

  ‘There were no witnesses to whoever planted the explosive device,’ Lorimer said, adopting a bored tone, as though he had explained this several times already. ‘So we cannot rule out any particular age group.’

  ‘But it might have been?’ the same voice persisted.

  ‘It would be entirely wrong for me to point a finger at the young people in the community,’ Lorimer said blandly, knowing full well that they were scribbling down that very thing as he uttered the words, and mentally apologising to any computer-geeky schoolboys in Drymen.

  ‘How much damage has been done?’ one female reporter wanted to know. Lorimer told them, giving as many statistics as would satisfy a readership hungry for facts.

  What he did not tell them was the way the clouds of ash had settled on his hair, the whiff of burning birds and animals discernible through the acrid smell carried on the morning breeze. Nor did he describe the scar on the hillside, a mass of blackened tree trunks instead of the once graceful outline of pines fringing pale skies to the west. And there was certainly no mention of any further threat to the good citizens of Stirlingshire or their near neighbours in the city of Glasgow.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The letter, when it came, had the typewritten address of the Stewart Street police office rather than his home on the south side of Glasgow. Lorimer picked up the long, bulky envelope, curious about the handwritten word Personal on the top left-hand corner. He tore it open with the sharp metal letter-opener given to him by an ex-SAS soldier turned crime writer, its twisted shaft crafted in the man’s own workshop. Lorimer’s face expressed resignation at what was probably just another missive full of political invective against the police in general: it was one of the several things that a detective superintendent with his public profile had to endure. But the envelope’s thickness both intrigued him and made him cautious as he felt along its length for any device that it might contain.

  The letterhead bore a familiar crest and Lorimer smiled to himself as he skimmed the covering letter, immediately banishing any suspicious thoughts. There were several pages, not clipped together, giving details of the other invitees, the hotel and a route map to get there, probably shoved into every invitation regardless of the recipient’s proximity to the venue. Sitting back in his chair, Lorimer read the letter again. A school reunion. To take place next spring. Would he like to attend? The policeman’s first instinct was to bin the whole lot. As if he’d have the time for something as inane as that! But as he continued to read to the end, a small frown appeared between his blue eyes.

  Vivien Gilmartin. The surname was unfamiliar, but Vivien…? Could it be the same person he had known all those years ago? Turning to the pages of names, Lorimer’s eyes scanned the list. There it was, Vivien Gilmar
tin, née Fox!

  For a moment he let the papers slip on to the desk, his eyes seeing beyond the four walls of the Stewart Street office to a place and time that seemed to rush back at him with an intensity that took his breath away.

  Vivien. Foxy, they’d called her, not only because of the obvious surname but for her mass of glorious red hair.

  He’d slipped his teenage fingers through those tresses in his first fumbling attempts at sex, believing himself to be in love. And tall, lanky William Lorimer and his red-haired girl had listened over and over to the words of cheesy pop songs and his mother’s ancient collection of vinyl as though they had been penned just for them.

  It had been the summer before his final year at Glenwood High school, a time of waiting for exam results, walking through the park on hot dusty days, dreaming about the future. He was going to become a famous art historian. Travel the world, maybe. Vivien would be somewhere in his plans, a vague figure but one he was sure of back then, in that idyllic time of carefree youth when everything was possible.

  Her own plans had involved the theatre. That was something he could not fail to recall. And when she told him that RADA had accepted her and she was leaving Glasgow for faraway London, he had felt nothing short of betrayal. How could she abandon him? Why not take up the offer of a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, as it was then known? He was destined for Glasgow University; they could be together!

  Alone in his bedroom he had indulged his sorrows in the words of an Incredible String Band song, wallowing in its poignancy. At the time it had seemed so apt. Now, many years on, he hardly remembered the lyrics; something about first love, young love: wasn’t that right? What came after that? He had forgotten much of the rest except the lines referring to a girl’s long red hair that had fallen on to the boy’s face during their first kiss. Was that a real memory?

  The telephone ringing on his desk brought Lorimer back to the present, and as he picked up the handset, the contents of the letter were pushed to one side.

  Moments later he hung up again with a sigh. This was the day when the new alarm system was to be installed, and the engineer would require access to his office in half an hour. Minimum disruption, they’d all been told, but he doubted that. Still, the security of Police Scotland had to be maintained and upgraded to meet these new national standards.

  Lorimer looked again at the papers lying on his desk, memories of the people he used to know swirling in his brain. He’d never kept up with the old gang, eschewing Friends Reunited and Facebook, preferring the caution of anonymity given his chosen profession. And now, as if the years had been peeled away, he had this burning curiosity to know what had become of them. What has become of Foxy? a little voice teased him.

  It had all been so long ago, that summer he wanted to forget and the terrible months that had followed. He’d been in the art studio in late September when the head teacher had drawn him into the upstairs corridor with the news about his mother’s death. A brain aneurysm, something sudden and unforeseen.

  As the son of aged parents, Lorimer had never known his mother as a quick and graceful woman, the person so many of her friends had described at Helen Lorimer’s funeral. Dad had died when he was just a wee lad, the sixty-a-day habit ruining his lungs, cutting off his life far too early, leaving his teacher wife to struggle on as best she could. And so, at eighteen, the tall young man who would become a detective in the city of Glasgow had grown up fast, leaving behind all his dreams, which included a red-haired girl and their cosmopolitan future together.

  There was a slip at the foot of the page for current home address and dietary requirements, plus a box to tick if he decided to go to the reunion. It was the work of a minute to fill it in and stuff it into the ready-stamped envelope addressed to Mrs Vivien Gilmartin. For a moment he paused, the return letter in his hand. Then, with a careless flick, he sent it spinning to his out-tray, turning his attention to the report on the Drymen explosion.

  He would likely hear nothing more about the bombing incident after today. Once the report was sent to Special Branch, his part in the sorry affair was over. And there were plenty of other crimes in this city to capture his attention, Lorimer told himself, tapping out the words on his keyboard.

  Life would continue as before, the threat of a mad bomber something to be filed away under August 2013. The detective superintendent felt no undue premonition of disaster, neither to his city nor to himself.

  What William Lorimer could not know on that August morning was that several malignant forces were already at work, insidiously preparing to wreak havoc in the very fabric of his life.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Peter Alexander MacGregor scrolled down the page to read the final instructions. Everything seemed to be accounted for: the fares were paid, the passports up to date, accommodation taken care of. All he had to do was remember to get Joanne to pack his kilt carefully in layers of tissue paper and they would be off. He sat back, suddenly feeling every one of his sixty-eight years. Too much working in the garden yesterday, he told himself, knuckles kneading the base of his spine; he’d been overzealous clearing the winter debris from the paths after the gale that had swept up the coast. Peter heaved a sigh, looking round the old wood-panelled study. He’d be glad when the winter was over and he could sit in the garden enjoying a fine spring day, listening to the bell birds annoying his chooks. From the window he could see the wind blowing leaves high into the air, hear the rain rattling against the pane, a loud reminder that their Antipodean winter was reluctant to let go. He sighed again and closed his eyes, trying to imagine what it might be like in Scotland right now. It was seven p.m. here in Melbourne, so it was still early in the morning back there. And still summertime.

  The trip was months away, but even now Peter felt a frisson of excitement at the thought of travelling through the old country. To attend the MacGregor Gathering was one of his life’s ambitions, but to do so in a year when the Scottish government was having a Homecoming, the city of Stirling celebrated seven hundred years since Bannockburn and Glasgow was hosting the Commonwealth Games… well, it all seemed too good to be true. He sat forward and blinked at the screen again, then scrolled back up, anxious not to have missed any small detail before he finalised the whole thing. That they had never met his host shouldn’t matter; the man was another MacGregor after all, and the Scots were famous for their hospitality.

  As his finger hovered above the send button that would signal his acceptance, Peter MacGregor felt a sudden sense of unease. What if something went wrong? What if either he or Joanne fell ill during the months away? What if his neighbour forgot to water the plants?

  ‘Cup of coffee, darling?’ Joanne was at his shoulder, smiling down on the page, her face lighting up when she saw what he was about to do.

  He couldn’t disappoint her, wouldn’t wipe away that expression of delight for anything.

  ‘Sure thing. Just be a minute.’

  And as his finger pressed the send button, that small action sealed a fate that neither of them could possibly have imagined.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  April 2014

  ‘“April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land”,’ Maggie quoted. ‘Why does T. S. Eliot say it is the cruellest month?’ she asked the class of fourteen Sixth Years, who were all looking at her intently.

  One hand shot up and Maggie struggled to hide a smile. Imogen Spinks reminded her so much of Hermione, the swotty character from Harry Potter, even down to the mass of mousy curls cascading down her back.

  ‘Anyone?’ Maggie offered, giving the rest of them time to answer.

  ‘Yes, Imogen,’ she said at last, to a quiet undertone of groans from some of the others. She swept a cross look at the class, as if to say you had your chance too.

  ‘He thinks that the growth of lilacs is an irony after the carnage and death of the Great War,’ Imogen said. ‘Ironic things can be cruel,’ the girl added thoughtfully.

  �
�What is it with him and lilacs?’ Jeremy Graham’s grumble issued from the back of the classroom, making the other students turn round.

  ‘How d’you mean?’ Sarah Gillespie asked, flicking the black hair out of her heavily mascaraed eyes.

  ‘Well he’s always on about lilacs, isn’t he? That wumman who had lilacs in her room, twisting them in her fingers?’

  ‘Bet that made a right mess on the carpet,’ Janice Gallagher suggested, provoking some mild laughter from the girls.

  ‘Our lilac tree isn’t usually out till May,’ Kenny McAlpine said. ‘So he’s got that wrong, hasn’t he?’

  ‘The south of England is at least six weeks ahead of us,’ Imogen said pointedly, giving the boy a withering look. ‘And to suggest that anything Eliot wrote was wrong shows just how little you know about him!’

  Maggie hushed the protests that followed the girl’s remark. Imogen, who was the first of Maggie Lorimer’s pupils to have been accepted for the University of Cambridge, could be a real pain in the neck, but she was very well read and certainly knew her stuff. Just like Hermione, a small voice teased, forcing the teacher to smile even as she tried to bring the lesson back to order.

  ‘Eliot was an extremely well-educated man,’ Maggie agreed. ‘Erudite, one might say.’

  ‘Do we write that one down?’ Sarah asked. ‘And look it up?’

  Maggie nodded, but already the pupils (with the exception of the already erudite Imogen) were consulting dictionaries and writing down the definition. It might be old-fashioned, but she had schooled them all to look up words they had never used before and write them in a notebook, insisting that a wider vocabulary was a huge asset to them all. It had taken a while since the beginning of the academic year, but now finding dictionary definitions and using new words had become second nature to them. And from the eager way they pored over the dictionaries, Maggie knew they actually enjoyed it.