The Bird That Did Not Sing

by Alex Gray

  ‘There you are, Asa, all done,’ a voice from the plaster room proclaimed.

  At once the man was on his feet, grabbing the grey coat from the chair beside him.

  Was this a solicitous gesture for his young wife? Or was he simply in a hurry to be off? Emily wondered, standing back a little and watching the African girl being escorted from the room by a nurse.

  Even had she not seen the expression of abject fear in the girl’s eyes as the man came towards her, the coat in his hands, Emily Bishop would have understood Asa’s body language, something that overcame all the barriers of speech. The way that she slunk away from him, keeping as much distance as she dared, head bowed in complete resignation, made the psychologist give a nod in Nurse Lee’s direction. Yes, she was saying silently. Make that telephone call. Report your misgivings. Someone will follow this up.

  ‘A little word before you go?’ Emily asked the man as he strode away from them. She had to quicken her pace as he hurried towards the exit.

  But there was no answer from either the African man or the terrified girl by his side, and as she watched them disappear into the Glasgow night, Dr Emily Bishop hoped that whatever details were written on their case notes would be followed up by the proper authorities.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Police Sergeant Patsy Clark had been up since five, washing and setting her hair, putting her make-up on far more carefully than the usual slap of foundation and quick brush of mascara. Today merited the sort of attention to detail that Patsy had shown her reflection in the dressing table mirror. There was little she could do about the uniform, but that didn’t matter: people who met you for the first time always looked at your face, and she wanted to be remembered by the man from MI6 as Clark, that bright woman from Glasgow.

  She knocked on the detective superintendent’s office door, glad that she was ready for this meeting, hoping that her eagerness would not show, like the lacy edge of a fancy slip peeping below her hemline. The image made the police officer frown for a moment, tugging at her skirt just in case.

  ‘Ah, Sergeant Clark.’ Lorimer rose from where he had been sitting next to his desk, a dark-suited man half turning to see who had entered the room. Then he too was on his feet, examining the new arrival with a smile that made his eyes crinkle at the corners.

  ‘Connor Drummond,’ the man said, extending his hand towards Patsy. It felt warm to her touch and strong, the sort of handshake she liked, but then he was back in his seat and Patsy was being ushered into the chair next to Lorimer.

  Was that his real name? Patsy thought, wishing she could utter the question, fearful that to do something so inane would brand her as a complete idiot.

  ‘We’ll bring you up to speed, Sergeant Clark,’ Lorimer was saying. ‘Connor, why don’t you give our colleague an outline of what you told me?’ he offered.

  ‘Sergeant Clark,’ Drummond began.

  ‘Patsy,’ she blurted out suddenly, then blushed.

  Drummond smiled at her and for a moment the woman was struck by the notion that he could read her mind, see the dreams she cherished of a life like his: secret, undercover, making the world a better place while the world slept on, unknowing.

  ‘Well, Patsy,’ he continued, and as he spoke about the cell that had been identified in Glasgow and the need for total discretion, she realised that Drummond’s accent was Scottish. Perthshire maybe? An educated voice, clear and with overtones of the city about it, but a softness too, though not with the lilt of the Highlander or the measured tones of the Outer Isles.

  ‘So you see,’ Drummond said at last, ‘we need to be aware of the potential for disaster on a massive scale. There is absolutely no doubt in our minds that the Games are their target,’ he went on, though how that opinion had been reached Patsy would never be told. ‘Our intelligence suggests that there are at least five of them working together. An explosives person, obviously, and at least one member of the Games personnel.’

  ‘Really?’ Patsy exclaimed. ‘But surely Disclosure would have picked up any aberration there?’

  Drummond’s smile faded. ‘You would hope so. But we are beginning to be of the opinion that one of the group has been recruited from the higher ranks of the Games committee.’

  ‘But don’t they all need to go through a vetting procedure?’

  Lorimer shook his head. ‘Not if they are someone already in the public domain,’ he said quietly.

  ‘That’s right,’ Drummond agreed. ‘And in our business we have to make sure that each and every person who comes close to members of the royal family is checked out very, very carefully.’

  ‘So will all the high heid yins go through this process?’ Patsy asked.

  Drummond smiled at her lapse into Glasgow slang. ‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘Everyone who is to be at the reception before the opening ceremony and the event itself will be carefully scrutinised. Background checks, the lot.’

  ‘That includes all the military personnel,’ Lorimer reminded her. ‘And our own officers.’

  Patsy nodded, understanding. Health and safety measures had rocketed in number ever since the attempted terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport, and though the public might moan a bit about the inconvenience of having to go through so many security procedures, they were all aware of the danger that such an attack presented.

  ‘Lord Coe hardly had a wink of sleep throughout the Olympics,’ Lorimer told her. ‘On the surface he appeared calm, but I’m sure he must have been glad when it was all over without any incident.’

  ‘And that’s what we want for Glasgow,’ Drummond went on smoothly. ‘The public deserves to have an excellent summer of events with nothing to disrupt them. God knows the Games committee’s worked hard enough to achieve a major success.’ He looked from Patsy to Lorimer. ‘And it is our job to make sure that nobody knows of any sort of threat that might take that away,’ he warned them. ‘We will find this group,’ he went on. ‘We already have one name and the identity of a second person to work on. So let’s start with that, shall we?’

  Lorimer blew out a sigh of relief. It had been a long morning, the empty coffee cups littered on his table testament to the hours of discussion with the man from MI6. Patsy Clark had been a tad intimidated by the idea of meeting the intelligence officer, but she, like Lorimer, had soon warmed to the young man with the sandy hair whose ready smile had put them both at ease.

  Everything they’d discussed was written down in the notebook in front of Lorimer, not one word recorded on the usual office computer for added security. ‘Never know who might hack into your system,’ Drummond had said lightly, though the expression in the man’s eyes belied his casual words.

  A heavily tattooed man of large build and reddish hair, Lorimer had scribbled. Maybe involved in one of the heavier sports. Weightlifter? he had added, the question mark embellished with squiggles as he had listened to the intelligence officer. May have something to do with the Gathering of the Clans event out at Stirling. Battle re-enactment societies a possible source.

  It was somewhere to start, anyway, plenty for police officers to follow even if they were not told any details of why they were investigating this particular individual.

  The name should have given them a better way into the terrorist cell. But names could be stumbling blocks for those shape-shifting men and women whose true identities were often covered up by several aliases. And Drummond had not offered his opinion (or that of his Ministry) as to whether it was real or not.

  Robert Bruce Petrie, Lorimer had written, each word underlined. He had hesitated to add a question mark this time. It would be easy enough to find someone of that name, tracing it through the databases at their disposal. And if he was anywhere to be found, they would seek him out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The email from Solly had not gone unnoticed. Lorimer’s frown had turned to a smile as he imagined the psychologist poring over the computer screen, anxious not to overstep the bounds of their friendship. I hope you don’t min
d, Solly had begun, showing a deference to Lorimer’s authority that had not always manifested itself in the early days of their association. The detective superintendent read on with interest. A colleague of Solly’s had some misgivings about a girl in the detention centre where she worked. Think you ought to speak to her, Solly had written. Here’s her number. And Lorimer jotted it down on a page torn from the notebook he had been using earlier that day. It was the sort of detail that might or might not lead to something concrete, he mused, tapping his lips with the pencil.

  Minutes later he was picking up his jacket from the back of the chair and heading out of the room. Yes, the psychologist at the detention centre had agreed, it would be better if he came down, though it was highly doubtful that the girl would talk to him. She was terrified of men.

  As he drove away from Stewart Street, Lorimer felt his spirits lifting. It was one of those days in May when the morning clouds had cleared, the outlines of landmark buildings silhouetted against skies of perfect blue. Tonight he would be returning home to Maggie and it would be just the two of them now that Vivien had flown back to London, no other person there to disturb the peace of their suburban home. As he drove through the city streets, Lorimer imagined sitting out in the garden, Chancer curling around his legs, a glass of something tawny in his hand. It wasn’t a bad life; he had a wife he loved, a house with no mortgage and the best job in the world. What more could he ask for?

  A lopsided grin formed on the policeman’s face. There were always going to be things he wanted, answers to all those difficult questions. Like this case now: who was the African girl who had been found out at Cathkin? And was there any significance in that Pictish shape tattooed on to her thigh? None of the missing persons enquiries had turned up a girl connected with the Commonwealth Games, but that did not mean that she had nothing to do with the events unfolding around this city. If Solly’s idea about trafficking was correct, the body now lying in the mortuary might well be that of a girl brought into the country specifically to service the needs of men willing to pay for sexual gratification; men who would come to Glasgow for a while and leave again, their lusts for sport and sex equally satisfied.

  ‘She won’t see you,’ Dr Jones warned him.

  Lorimer nodded, stifling a sigh of exasperation. He was sitting in the psychologist’s tiny office, no more than a glorified cupboard with one high barred window to let in the daylight. The window was shut fast, making the place stuffy, a desk fan moving slowly in a constant arc, the tiny breeze doing little to rob the room of its sultry atmosphere. Dr Jones was a thin woman of around fifty, he reckoned, short grey hair curled behind her ears, a pair of reading glasses perched on her nose, and a manner that brooked no nonsense from anyone in her domain whether he were a senior police officer or not.

  ‘What can you tell me, then?’

  Dr Jones thought for a moment before answering, reminding him suddenly of Solly Brightman, a man of many considered pauses in his speech.

  ‘She spoke about a big man, a white man,’ the woman began at last. ‘With lots of hair on his face, red hair, she told me. And many shapes tattooed on his arms.’ She swept her fingers across her sleeve as though to illustrate this point.

  ‘What sort of shapes?’ Lorimer asked.

  ‘I asked her that after you called,’ Dr Jones said. ‘Curled shapes, like hissing snakes, she told me. But not snakes. Does that make any sense?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Lorimer replied. ‘Can you show her these.’ He drew out a folded sheet of paper from his notebook and flattened it on the desk between them, turning it towards the woman so that she could see the designs that Wrigley had given them.

  Dr Jones studied them carefully, one finger tracing the intricate whorls and curls.

  ‘Pictish,’ she said at last, looking up.

  ‘You know about stuff like that?’

  She smiled. ‘It might surprise you, but many psychologists begin their careers with studies into anthropology. The fascination with the human condition,’ she added, her grey eyes lighting up with an enthusiasm that Lorimer found infectious.

  ‘Yes, I’ll show her these, shall I?’ The woman rose from her desk, taking the paper with her, and left him in the room, closing the door behind her.

  Lorimer sat on the edge of his seat, the walls of the overheated office suddenly seeming to close in on him, a sure sign of the claustrophobia that had haunted him for most of his life. Hoping that he was not breaking any sort of rule, he stepped to the door and opened it wide.

  The sounds of life were not from human voices but machines: a vacuum cleaner’s drone, the shrill ring of a telephone somewhere down the corridor and the whirring of the electric fan on the psychologist’s desk. What the hell must it be like to live in a place like this day after day? Adrift in a no-man’s-land between the place you thought was safe and the threat of being deported back to wherever it was you’d fled from, waiting for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn. He could well understand why the young girl would not see him: he represented the very authority that posed such a threat. And more: he was a man and it was at the hands of men that girls like this had suffered.

  At last Lorimer heard the woman’s footsteps return along the corridor and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  As she entered, the psychologist paused, one hand ready to close the door again, but one look at the tall man sitting back from her desk made her stop.

  ‘You’d rather I kept this open a little?’ she asked, settling her spectacles on to her nose again.

  Lorimer nodded, too ashamed of his weakness to confess it to this woman, guessing that those shrewd grey eyes could see his discomfort anyway.

  She settled herself behind the desk once more. ‘Yes,’ Dr Jones began briskly. ‘It was indeed tattoos like that. Blue and green, she says. However, the man she describes did not have that one.’ She turned the paper towards him, one finger on the triple spiral. ‘Though she has seen it before.’

  Lorimer suddenly wanted to tell this woman all about the black-skinned girl they had taken from the edge of that pond, tell her everything about the case. But it was impossible without breaching the same code of confidentiality that was imposed on the rest of the investigation team. She was looking at him, her clear eyes waiting for his response.

  ‘There is a tattoo like this that interests us,’ he began carefully. ‘And not on the arm of a man.’

  ‘Our detainee tells me that it was given to another girl, one she met before coming here. She won’t say any more.’ Dr Jones shook her head slightly. ‘I am sorry.’

  Lorimer thought about the bloated face back in the mortuary and the predations of the water creatures that had eaten away at her flesh. Who now would recognise the dead girl?

  ‘It’s important that we know where she met this other girl,’ Lorimer insisted. ‘Can you try to persuade her to tell you?’

  Dr Jones smiled suddenly, a sad smile, then another regretful shake of the head. ‘I can try, certainly, but I cannot guarantee that my question will be met with any degree of success.’

  ‘It really is important,’ Lorimer told her. ‘Other girls may be harmed, like the one here. Tell her we only want to stop that happening, will you?’

  ‘Look at this!’ Kirsty exclaimed aloud so that several heads in the room turned her way.

  ‘Sorry.’ She blushed. ‘Just found something…’ Her voice fell to a mumble. She caught the expression of amusement on one female officer’s face as she turned back to her own desk: the rookie cop at it again, overenthusiastic. And the blush deepened as she wondered what else they said about her. Wilson’s daughter, getting preferential treatment just because Lorimer’s a family friend. Was that strictly true, though? Kirsty had been given the same routine sort of jobs that any probationer would expect and Lorimer had never once shown her any special favours. His manner was completely professional whenever he was speaking to the team, concentrating their minds on the case in hand, explaining the reasons behind the need for each and every action. Th
e occasional wry remark that would make them smile, a nod when an officer had achieved something worthwhile, and above all, the sense that he trusted them to do a good job; these were all attributes that PC Wilson was finding out about Detective Superintendent Lorimer here at Stewart Street. She had known him for most of her life and it was Lorimer, not her own father, who had inspired her to join the police after all, wasn’t it?

  Kirsty looked back at the email from the Royal Infirmary that had been forwarded to the team. No doubt everyone involved in the case had seen it by now, her exclamation of discovery quite redundant. The notes from the hospital were quite specific: the patient’s birth date was given as 1 April and the address as Yoruba Street, a place Kirsty knew simply did not exist. The girl’s name had been given as Asa Okonjo. Mrs.

  Kirsty nodded. It all tallied with the same girl Stuart Wrigley had tattooed. Would he remember a wedding ring? she wondered.

  There had been sufficient concern to alert the authorities, the email continued. The patient did not seem to be comfortable with the man who had brought her to the hospital and the nurse in A&E had suspected that he was not in fact her husband. Further suspicions arose when the psychologist had been called to have a look. She had seen the man’s behaviour; was sure he was hiding something and in a very big hurry to leave. And there was more. Kirsty’s eyes widened as she read on. The nurse in the plaster room had been embarrassed when the girl had lifted her skirt and pointed towards her inner thigh, the psychologist had written. But the nurse had remembered the tattoo all right. The three curled shapes revealed as the girl had taken her hand away.

  ‘So we’re looking for a black girl with a broken arm now,’ Lorimer said.