The Bird That Did Not Sing

by Alex Gray

  ‘Hi, how are you feeling?’

  Vivien lay on the bed, the duvet swept to one side as though she had only just woken up. Was she unaware of the way her silky dress had ridden up, showing more of her thigh than was decent? Or did that not matter because it was William Lorimer standing there, looking at the figure of the woman he had once known so intimately? Her red hair spilled over the pillow making her look like a wanton creature from a Pre-Raphaelite painting, and for a moment Lorimer experienced a flare of desire.

  ‘Hi yourself,’ she replied sleepily, green eyes narrowing as she looked at him.

  There was a silence between them as she studied his face as if looking for clues.

  ‘Maggie’s made some soup,’ he told her at last, wanting to break the spell that threatened to draw him in. ‘Coming downstairs?’

  Vivien simply smiled and lifted one small white hand, gesturing for him to stay.

  At that moment the telephone shrilled out.

  ‘Better go. Come down when you’re ready.’ Then, without another glance at the woman lying on the bed, he turned and headed downstairs, listening for the sound of his wife’s voice as the ringing stopped.

  ‘It’s for you. A Police Sergeant Clark?’ Maggie passed over the handset as soon as Lorimer entered the room.

  ‘Hello, Lorimer here.’

  Maggie watched the changing expressions on her husband’s face as he spoke to the officer from Stewart Street. Clark was not a name that Maggie Lorimer knew, so this was nothing to do with either Vivien’s case or the one that had recently taken her husband to the mortuary. She could see the furrow on his brow deepen as he nodded, not speaking much, just asking an occasional question and listening to the reply, giving nothing away. At last he put down the telephone and turned back to his wife.

  ‘I’d love some of that soup,’ he said.

  Maggie was putting the bowls into the dishwasher when she heard the woman’s voice.

  ‘Sorry. Must have fallen asleep again,’ Vivien was saying.

  ‘There’s plenty of soup if you fancy some,’ she offered.

  Vivien was fully dressed now, dark tights cladding her shapely legs, a cashmere wrap slung artfully across her shoulders. She gave a delicate shudder. ‘Sorry, couldn’t face anything to eat. A cup of tea, though?’

  Maggie nodded, turning to fill the kettle yet again. I have measured out my life in teacups and spoons, she said to herself, silently paraphrasing Eliot’s famous poem. Yet she did feel a rush of sympathy towards the red-haired woman for the news that her husband was about to impart.

  ‘Can’t you get this cat off my chair?’ Vivien was standing beside the rocking chair where Maggie’s mother had sat so often, Chancer purring loudly on her lap. She threw an angry look at Lorimer. ‘You know I hate cats,’ she said.

  In three swift strides Maggie crossed the room, scooped up the ginger cat and walked back to the kitchen, cuddling her pet, heart beating with a fury that she could not voice. My chair, indeed! She had been here a few days and yet already Vivien was acting as though she owned the place! It was hard, Maggie thought, to feel sympathy for this woman, especially when, as now, she caught her smiling up at her husband in a manner that caused the school teacher a pang of dismay.

  Soon have that wiped off your face, a bad little voice sounded in Maggie’s ear, making her feel shocked and guilty in equal measure. This wasn’t like her! What was happening to her normal kindly responses? She felt guilty tears spring to her eyes, and as she turned away to hide them, Chancer struggled out of her arms and fled into the garden. Maggie followed him into the dusky evening; she had no desire to witness the other woman’s anguish.

  ‘Vivien, sit down,’ Lorimer said.

  The red-haired woman’s face paled even more as she sank into the rocking chair.

  ‘It wasn’t suicide,’ Lorimer said bluntly. ‘Charles did not take his own life.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘There are several aspects of your husband’s death that indicate he was poisoned. And not by his own hand.’

  Vivien Gilmartin continued to stare at him, lips parting in a silent oh of disbelief.

  ‘A good friend and colleague of mine has been appointed as Senior Investigating Officer. Chap called Alistair Wilson. You’ll like him,’ Lorimer continued. ‘No-nonsense type of officer. Thorough.’

  Traces of colour swam back into the woman’s cheeks as he spoke. ‘You won’t…?’

  ‘I won’t be in charge of the case. Conflict of interest,’ he said. ‘After all, I might be cited as a witness to tell a jury where you were on the night of your husband’s death.’

  Vivien’s mouth opened and closed again and Lorimer could see her hands shaking on her lap. Her green eyes widened. ‘They don’t think I had anything to do with it?’ she gasped.

  ‘Of course not. But you do see that my involvement with the case can’t continue.’

  They stared at one another for a moment, then Vivien let her glance fall. ‘I’d hoped…’ She bent forward, burying her face in her hands, shoulders heaving with silent sobs.

  ‘Alistair will do a good job, don’t you worry. He’ll find out what happened to Charles,’ Lorimer assured her.

  But somehow the words that were intended to comfort only made the woman weep harder, a muffled sound of anguish escaping from behind her hands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The image of the dead girl’s tattoo had been thrown up on a screen in the incident room so that everyone could see its shape more clearly. The skin on her thigh had been torn or nibbled away, leaving a curled shape like the end of an old-fashioned coat hook, the sort that Lorimer remembered in the cloakroom of his primary school.

  ‘It’s been done in dark blue ink,’ he told the assembled officers. ‘Possibly some sort of Celtic symbol. Something for you to find out.’ He nodded towards the youngest member of the team, a dark-haired girl whose blush of pleasure made Lorimer smile. PC Kirsty Wilson might be fresh out of Tulliallan, the Police Scotland training college, but he had managed to pull strings so that she could be with them in Stewart Street during some of her probationary period. Having dropped out of her course at Caledonian University after the investigation into her flatmate’s murder, Kirsty was determined to make the police her career, following in her father’s footsteps.

  It had been a conscious decision on Lorimer’s part to select Alistair Wilson as the SIO in the Gilmartin murder case. Kirsty’s work should be kept strictly away from her dad’s during her time here, the Assistant Chief Constable had told him when the detective superintendent had called in the favour. And Lorimer agreed. It would do Kirsty no good to have her father looking over her shoulder all the time, and putting her on this particular investigation meant that Lorimer could monitor her.

  The detective superintendent continued to talk through the case of the unidentified body, giving all of the details that had emerged from the post-mortem, particularly the discovery that the unknown girl had been pregnant.

  ‘DNA database might throw something up. Could be lucky,’ he added with a shrug.

  There were nods from some of the officers around the room. It was a great piece of technology to have in their possession nowadays, though the details kept on the records were only of those persons who had committed a crime. Records of non-convicted persons had to be destroyed. The strength of opinion from the human rights lobby that dictated this process was not something that all serving police officers shared, some being of the belief that a national database ought to be set up with every single citizen’s DNA on permanent record.

  The other actions were handed out; some officers were to trawl the known haunts of prostitutes to see if any Nigerian girl fitted the description of the deceased, others to search immigration records as well as the DNA database.

  There were, thought Kirsty as she left the incident room, all sorts of ways of finding things out.

  A Google search soon came up with tattoo designs that had their origin in Celtic and Pictish art. She tr
awled through several possibilities, but one particular motif made her pause for a closer look. It was a triple spiral, the three black hooks entwined, reminding the young officer of the Manx symbol, though the flowing lines of this were prettier, she decided, turning her attention to the notes on one side of the page. A triple spiral represents the three powers of maiden, mother and crone, she read. It is a sign of female power and especially power through transition and growth.

  ‘Didn’t give you much power to protect yourself, did it, poor thing,’ Kirsty whispered, recalling the photographic images of the girl’s body taken at the scene and in the mortuary. She continued to read from the computer screen, one hand on the mouse, the other fishing for a piece of paper. There was something here that was worth noting down, she thought, just a few words but something she might want to remember even after printing off the whole page.

  One meaning, she scribbled on a notepad. Letting go, surrender, release.

  She sat back looking at her handwriting. Then, as though it really mattered, she drew the triple spiral as neatly as she could, shading in the lines. The words and phrases came in threes, Kirsty saw, and wasn’t three a mystical number? ‘A triple spiral,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Sounds like something one of those Commonwealth Games gymnasts would do.’

  Pleased with her little bit of research, Kirsty went back to the screen and keyed in tattoo artists, Glasgow. Just to see, she told herself. Perhaps one of them specialised in designs like these. And if so, chances were they might remember a young black woman who had asked for a triple spiral tattoo to be inked on her right thigh.

  ‘What d’you make of it?’ Rosie asked her husband.

  Professor Solomon Brightman paused, his arms full of the toys he had been clearing up from the lounge floor, to come and look at the paper Rosie was holding up.

  ‘A triple spiral, hm,’ he replied, his dark eyes bright behind their horn-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘Not just that,’ Rosie went on, following him as he bent to put a xylophone and a half-naked doll into the toybox. ‘It’s where the tattoo was located. I mean, who would choose to have something small and insignificant on their inner thigh? Who’s going to see it there?’

  Solly tried to close the lid of the white wooden box, but there were so many toys that it simply wouldn’t budge any further. Abigail’s bedroom too was testament to the generosity of family and friends, rows of rabbits and teddy bears ranged along the skirting board, except for special ones that were tucked up beside the little girl in her cot.

  ‘Good question,’ he replied. ‘Has anyone actually thought to answer that yet?’

  ‘There was the idea that she might have been on the game,’ Rosie mused. ‘Lorimer’s team is investigating that angle.’

  ‘It does make some kind of sense,’ the psychologist agreed. ‘Nobody is going to see the tattoo until she parts her legs, which does suggest…’

  ‘Yeah,’ Rosie sighed. ‘But why would you choose a wee Pictish symbol? Why not something from her own ethnic heritage? And in dark blue? You can hardly see it against her skin colour.’

  Solly stood up, nodding his head sagely. ‘That is a good question to ask. Choose. Did she, though? Choose the symbol for herself?’

  ‘Maybe she just liked the design. Surely there are hundreds to select when you go into these places?’

  ‘Or perhaps it was chosen for her?’ Solly asked quietly, sitting on the arm of the settee.

  ‘A tattoo artist would be able to give advice if the customer didn’t have a clear idea of what they wanted.’

  ‘A triple spiral. A dark blue pattern inked on to the skin of a young black woman.’

  Rosie watched as Solly stroked his dark beard. There was that familiar faraway look in his eyes, a look that meant the psychologist’s mind was beginning to formulate ideas and patterns. She slipped behind him and began to empty the toys out of the toybox on to the carpet, sorting them according to their shapes so that they could be replaced in some sort of order. She put in Abby’s building blocks, the xylophone, cloth books and the various musical games, leaving enough space for the more awkward shapes like the plastic doll and several cuddly animals. Then, with a satisfied smile, she closed the lid and fastened the clasp.

  Solly was still seated on the arm of the sofa, staring into space, oblivious to anything else in the room. He might not have anything to do with this strange case, Rosie knew, but it never did any harm to plant the seeds of a puzzle into the fascinating brain of Professor Solly Brightman.

  ‘What does Maggie make of it, that’s what I’d like to know.’

  Betty Wilson placed the casserole dish on a heatproof mat on the dining room table, then lifted off the lid, her capable hands protected by thick oven gloves. A smell of herbs and cinnamon wafted up from the meaty dish, making Kirsty sigh with pleasure. Since joining the police, her visits home to West Kilbride had become rarer than ever. How on earth Dad managed that drive to Glasgow every day was beyond her, though coming back to Mum’s home cooking was a big incentive, she realised, as her plate was heaped up with food. And now that he was acting detective inspector on this poisoning affair, the hours spent in Glasgow would be longer than ever.

  ‘He hasn’t said,’ Alistair Wilson replied. ‘But I got the impression Lorimer was mighty relieved when I took over the case.’

  ‘It can’t be easy having a stranger in your home. Especially one who’s newly bereaved. I mean, what do you say to her?’ Betty continued.

  ‘Mrs Lorimer’s nice,’ Kirsty said, waving her fork in the air. ‘She’s just the sort of person you would want to be with when something bad happens. I’m sure Lorimer did the right thing in bringing the poor lady home.’

  Betty Wilson shrugged. ‘Can’t say I’d be thrilled if your father brought one of his old flames back to stay.’

  ‘Ooh, Dad, tell me, were you a right Lothario in your younger days, then?’ Kirsty joked.

  Alistair Wilson shook his head, affecting an air of innocence. ‘Who, me? I only ever had eyes for your mum and well she knows it!’

  Betty shook her head, but the dimpled smile showed that she was pleased enough with the compliment.

  ‘Anyway, let’s enjoy this dinner without all the shop talk, eh? There’s more to life than the polis. What did you do today, love?’ Alistair went on, turning to his wife.

  Betty Wilson looked fondly at her husband. She knew fine that the pair of them would have been chatting about their respective cases all the way home. Hearing about her own job as a professional cook was tame stuff compared to that, but she was glad to turn the conversation away from the gory details of their work, especially at the dinner table.

  ‘Is he always as late as this?’ Vivien asked.

  ‘Sometimes much later,’ Maggie admitted. ‘Depends on what sort of case he’s involved in. Could be up through the night if need be, though I didn’t have the impression he’d be that late tonight.’

  The red-haired woman toyed with the food on her plate, a tasty bolognese sauce that had been simmering on Maggie Lorimer’s hob for several hours.

  ‘Do you cook a meal from scratch every day or are you just doing this to be nice to me?’ Vivien said suddenly, looking at Maggie with a shrewd expression in her green eyes.

  Maggie glanced down at her plate, avoiding the woman’s penetrating stare. ‘I like to cook,’ she muttered. ‘And Bill likes to come home to something freshly made.’

  ‘My goodness,’ Vivien countered, one eyebrow arched in mock surprise. ‘Quite the little housewife, aren’t you? I don’t think poor Charles ever expected me to be any sort of domestic goddess,’ she continued.

  Maggie lifted her head at the woman’s tone. Where was the grief that had flowed from her only a matter of hours ago? It was as if Charles Gilmartin had been dead and buried for years, the way Vivien was speaking. She looked again at those cat-like eyes, wondering. Were the pupils enlarged? Had Vivien been taking a bit too much of the doctor’s medication? As a school teacher Maggie had encountere
d several episodes of substance abuse, mind-altering drugs that changed a person’s behaviour. Had to be, she told herself. Such a sudden shift in her manner needed a logical explanation.

  ‘Did you two meet at university?’ Vivien asked, changing the subject, much to Maggie’s relief.

  As she related the tale of their meeting and the years of courtship after Bill had joined the force, Maggie saw that Vivien had begun to eat the supper, small forkfuls of pasta expertly twirled against a silver spoon.

  ‘So how long is that? Twenty years?’

  Maggie nodded. ‘And you?’

  Vivien smiled sadly. ‘Oh, Charles swept me off my feet not long after I’d graduated. Saw me in a West End play and came backstage afterwards. Sweet, really,’ she sighed. ‘We were married six weeks later.’

  ‘Goodness,’ Maggie replied. ‘I mean, that was quite romantic,’ she hastened to add.

  ‘It would have been our twenty-first wedding anniversary this summer,’ Vivien mused.

  Once again Maggie was struck by the other woman’s matter-of-fact manner.

  ‘Were you planning anything special?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, no, darling!’ Vivien gave a short, brittle laugh. ‘Charles was far too wrapped up in that African theatre group!’

  Maggie glanced quickly at the woman’s face. For a fleeting instant there was a shadow of intense fury, then it was gone as quickly as it had appeared, the flawless alabaster skin showing just a faint colour like the blush of pink on an almost white rose.

  As the conversation continued, Vivien asked mundane questions about Maggie’s own career as an English teacher, as though deliberately steering the talk away from Charles Gilmartin.

  That small moment was one that Maggie Lorimer put to the back of her mind. But it was something that would be brought out again and examined, particularly in the days and weeks that were to follow.