Keep The Midnight Out (William Lorimer)

by Gray, Alex

  The waters were lapping against the coloured stones where tiny red fronds of sea anemones waved back and forth as the current took them. A whole miniature world continued down below the surface, oblivious to whatever was happening to the human race. Watching the pebbles roll beneath the tide’s swell, seeing a pale crab scuttle sideways under a dark rock was somehow comforting to Lorimer, hunkering at the sea’s edge. Life would go on in the world despite the vagaries of mankind.

  The crunch of stones under the big sergeant’s boots made Lorimer stand up again.

  ‘We’ll be expecting a team from the mainland,’ Calum Mhor said, waving the mobile phone in his fist. ‘Probably on the afternoon boat,’ he added.

  ‘Anyone I might know?’

  Calum McManus gave him a shrewd look. ‘Detective Inspector Stevie Crozier?’

  Lorimer shook his head. It was not a name he had heard of before and McManus did not seem to want to enlighten him further. Whoever this guy was, he would be SIO as soon as he set foot on the island. And, despite Lorimer being the one to have found the body, Crozier would probably not want the senior officer from Glasgow interfering in his case.

  ‘Here’s Jamie with your camera,’ McManus said, nodding towards the approaching figure.

  Lorimer bit his lip. There was something in the way McManus was standing, arms folded, as though he were barring the way back to the corpse on the grass. You can go now, his body language seemed to say. We can take over from here.

  ‘Will you come up for a cup of tea once the ambulance has been?’ Lorimer suggested.

  McManus nodded. ‘Aye, and we’ll need a written statement from you. And permission to hold on to your camera.’

  ‘It’s digital,’ Lorimer told him as they watched the constable picking his way across the marshy ground, the camera slung over his shoulder. ‘There’s a printer at the cottage. We can run off copies for you.’

  ‘Right,’ McManus said shortly. ‘We’ll see you in a bit, then.’

  The view of the Morvern shore was almost blotted out now by low rainclouds sweeping across the Sound of Mull, and the two figures heading back across the shore were bent against the sudden wind. It was the sort of rain that could soak a person in moments, soft and sweet-scented as it fell off the hillside, but persistent as a nagging wife.

  Jamie Kennedy heaved a sigh, wishing he were anywhere else but on the island right now. Bad enough to have to be involved in a sudden death, but to have to talk to the senior policeman from Glasgow who was staying at Fishnish made him feel the weight of his years of inexperience on the Force. Coming back to Mull had been great after his training in Inverness. No more violent clashes with neds in the wee small hours, his mum had remarked with a note of triumph in her voice. Better to be at home and see to things here, she’d added. And it had been better, hadn’t it? Boring sometimes, but good fun, too, and on the island the uniform was given plenty of respect, not like the sneers and filthy looks that had sometimes come Jamie’s way in the city. Here they were officers, not just your lot, as the mainland neds were wont to say.

  ‘D’you think he’ll have spoken to anyone in Glasgow?’ he asked the man toiling at his side.

  ‘Not if he wants to act like a professional,’ the police sergeant retorted. ‘He’s on holiday. And I hope he’s not getting any ideas about sticking his nose in,’ he grumbled, as though he was already suspicious that the detective superintendent might wish to pull rank and leave the island officers adrift.

  ‘What d’you know about him?’ Jamie asked as they walked along the single track road that led to the whitewashed cottage.

  ‘He comes here a fair bit,’ McManus admitted. ‘Birdwatcher. Helps out the RSPB boys now and again. Mary Grant speaks highly of the pair of them,’ he added grudgingly. ‘Told DI Crozier as much when we called it in.’

  ‘No, I know all that,’ Kennedy said. ‘I mean, d’you know anything about what he’s done? Cases, I mean…’

  ‘Och, he’s aye on the telly, that one. Crimewatch and stuff. He’s been SIO in lots of big murder cases. DI Crozier’ll make sure he keeps his paws off this one though,’ McManus said, smiling grimly, holding his collar tighter in a vain effort to stop the trickles of water soaking his shirt.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Kennedy stopped in astonishment. ‘The DI coming here? But…’ He stopped and stared at the older man. ‘The wee lad… you don’t think he was murdered?’

  McManus gave the young cop a sharp look. ‘Did ye no’ see his hands and feet?’

  Kennedy shook his head, ashamed. He’d not wanted to look long and hard at the dead body once he’d seen what the gulls had done to its face and genitals. And he was relieved that the paramedics were down there right now taking over, putting the lad on a stretcher, taking his corpse to the cottage hospital in Craignure.

  ‘He’s been tied up,’ McManus said quietly. ‘Someone did that to the boy, Jamie. It was no accident.’

  They stepped along the road in silence, their boots making wet imprints and vanishing again on the narrow tarmac, each man wondering what the officer from Glasgow would say when they reached the little house that overlooked Fishnish Bay.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Glasgow

  Twenty Years Earlier

  ‘No missing persons fitting his description, sir,’ Detective Constable Lorimer said, looking up from the masses of lever arch files that were stacked on his desk. It had taken him days to trawl through the missing persons data, reading each and every description of men who had been reported missing over the last couple of weeks. The waterlogged body had been taken to Glasgow City Mortuary where the pathologist had confirmed what George Phillips had suspected: death had occurred prior to the man being put into the Clyde’s flowing waters. Asphyxiation was a possible cause of death, there being no signs of knife wounds or bullet holes, the more common method of dispatch used by some of Glasgow’s gangland fraternity.

  ‘How d’you think he died, sir?’

  Phillips shook his head. ‘He’d been trussed up, possibly gagged as well,’ he shrugged. ‘Why, we don’t know. Did something to upset someone, obviously. Maybe it was a warning that went wrong? Maybe they didn’t mean to kill him, just give him a fright.’ He sighed heavily. ‘We’ll probably never know unless we find out who he was.’

  ‘Maybe if we ran it past the press office…?’

  ‘Aye, well, I’ll leave that with you to sort out. Let me see your written description of him first, okay?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Lorimer nodded, already imagining how he could phrase a short paragraph for the newspapers.

  He glanced up at the DI as Phillips turned to leave. There was a gloomy cast to the older man’s countenance as though he had already given up hope of finding any clues that might help solve the case.

  ‘Hm.’ DI Phillips gave another sigh. ‘Don’t like it, young Lorimer, don’t like it at all.’ He paused as though he were about to say more, then, shaking his head, turned and left the CID room, leaving William Lorimer to stare after him.

  Turning over a fresh page in his spiral-bound notebook, the detective constable began to write. Missing person found, he began, then scored it out. Body of man found in River Clyde. He stopped and frowned, twirling the pencil between his fingers. Maggie would know what to write, he thought. His wife was great at putting stuff into words; she spent her working life teaching kids how to do just that at the secondary school where she worked.

  A smile crossed his face as he thought of his wife. Her once slim body was filling out now as she entered the third trimester of her pregnancy. Just another few weeks and she would be on maternity leave. Pity that didn’t extend to husbands, he thought, imagining the time when the baby arrived and they could begin life as a complete family. It would never happen, though, he told himself. And certainly not for serving police officers: they were perennially short on manpower in Strathclyde Region, as everywhere else in the country. Just as well Maggie’s mum would be round to help when the baby was born.

 
Funny how life worked out, he mused, looking at the lined notebook, the effort of juggling words and phrases temporarily forgotten. Had it not been for that identity parade, then William Lorimer might still be at the university and studying for his doctorate. While he was working during the holidays, a chance likeness between a bank robber and the student who was innocently counting notes in the bank’s own vault had brought Lorimer to be part of a line-up in one of the city’s police stations. Discouraging frowns from his manager and the alarming thought that he might be mistaken for a real criminal had given him quite a shake at the time. But then talking with the officers over a cup of tea – after he had been eliminated from that particular part of their inquiry – had intrigued the young man. Folk who committed criminal acts might be people who looked just like him. How did you tell the difference? He wanted to know and it was a question that was to begin the journey away from his studies in History of Art and take him into the role of a serving police officer.

  At least his time at university had served some purpose, he thought, the smile lingering around his mouth as he brought an image of his wife to mind. Maggie and he had met at the University of Glasgow, after all. Maybe their kids would grow up to be students there one day.

  He flicked the pencil back and forward in his fingers, remembering the lad that had lain on the grass beside the river. He’d looked in his late teens. What was his story? Had he ever had the chance to go to university? Or was he one of the unfortunates in the city who had slipped in with the wrong crowd? Whoever he was, his life had been cut short and he deserved the same amount of time and attention as any other murder victim to bring his killers to justice.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘That’ll be the boys in blue.’ Lorimer attempted a grin as he heard the door being knocked; three determined raps of meaty knuckles against the pebbled glass.

  Maggie nodded and walked briskly from the cosy sitting room through to the kitchen.

  A brief glance showed the outline of two dark figures standing at the door, one of them the thick-set police sergeant from Craignure, Calum Mhor.

  ‘Good day, Mrs Lorimer, sir…’ Calum was brushing his boots on the coir mat inside the porch, a few paces away from where Lorimer’s wife was standing, busying herself with cups and plates.

  ‘Terrible business, just,’ he added with a shake of his head, then followed Lorimer and the younger officer into the main room of the cottage.

  Lorimer had put a match to the kindling on the hearth and already the birch logs had caught, giving warmth and light to the room, but he still knelt down, leaning across the red stone fireplace to loosen the wood a little with the poker – a proprietorial gesture, perhaps. This is our place for now, that small action might have said, but come in and be welcome.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’ Maggie’s dark head came around the door.

  ‘Oh, tea for us both, thank you,’ Calum replied, giving no opportunity for the younger officer who simply nodded his agreement.

  ‘Well, now, what can I say?’ Calum Mhor heaved a sigh as he watched Maggie approach with the tray.

  ‘You can say anything in front of my wife. If you want to stay, that is…?’ he asked Maggie, looking up at her from his place down by the fireside.

  ‘No, I’d rather not,’ Maggie said stiffly. ‘There’s milk and sugar and a selection of biscuits. Mary Grant’s own shortbread,’ she added with the ghost of a smile.

  Lorimer watched as she left the room, closing the door behind her. The swishing sound of her waterproof jacket being removed from its peg and the soft thuds as she put on the necessary rubber boots made him realise that she had decided to set off up the hill, just as she had planned to do before the discovery that had shattered their day.

  ‘Mrs Lorimer won’t be going near the shore…?’

  ‘No, Calum, she won’t,’ Lorimer replied, standing up and reaching for the milk jug and sugar bowl.

  ‘Ah, just so, just so.’ The big police sergeant nodded, his eyes flicking towards the large window that looked out to the bay, alerted by the sound of her feet crunching on the pebbled path as Maggie passed them by, the hood of her jacket pulled forward against the incessant drizzle.

  ‘It’s a bad business, Mr Lorimer, sir,’ Calum began again, his hand stretched out to take one of the pieces of sugary shortbread.

  ‘You’re sure it’s the boy from Kilbeg? Dalgleish?’

  Calum gave a sigh. ‘Who else could it be, man? The lad goes missing more than forty-eight hours ago and you find the body washed ashore here. Stands to reason it’s him. Same hair colouring an’ all,’ he said with a grunt. ‘We have the description though I never set eyes on the boy myself,’ he added, a note of sadness in his gruff voice.

  ‘What’s been happening on the island to find him up till now?’ Lorimer asked, deliberately looking at the younger officer from Tobermory. ‘It would come under your jurisdiction, I suppose?’

  PC Jamie Kennedy looked up, startled at being asked such a direct question.

  ‘Well, we checked with MacBraynes to see if he’d bought a ticket to Oban. The staff at the hotel thought he might have just pushed off.’

  ‘But you didn’t think so?’

  ‘No, sir. All his belongings were left behind in the wee attic room he had.’

  ‘Everything? Nothing missing there that you noticed?’

  The young man’s cheeks bloomed with sudden colour. ‘Well, just what you’d expect a kid to take with him. So, no mobile phone, no wallet or credit cards, that sort of stuff…’

  ‘And no trace of him using a card since he was last seen?’

  ‘Still waiting for an answer to that, sir,’ Kennedy replied, lowering his eyes guiltily.

  Lorimer bit off a reply. It was obvious that nothing much had been done to trace any activity on the lad’s credit cards or mobile phone, something that his own officers would have been smart enough to do. He’d done it often enough as a uniformed officer and as a young detective constable; though the technical support that they had nowadays was a whole world away from the days when they’d depended on British Telecom and the credit card companies for help.

  Besides, it was none of his business to criticise how these island officers went about their business. Life here went on at a slower pace altogether and crime, never mind murder, was not something most folk thought about.

  ‘What do you know about him?’ Lorimer asked. ‘The missing lad.’

  PC Kennedy sat up a little straighter before replying. He was on safer ground here, Lorimer thought.

  ‘He is… or he was a student. Up here to work at Kilbeg Country House Hotel for his holidays, seemingly.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Lorimer was surprised. Surely they knew more about the missing student than that?

  ‘Well,’ Jamie Kennedy began, glancing at the big police sergeant nervously. ‘Some of the staff at the hotel didn’t seem to like him very much,’ he said. ‘Not good to speak ill of the dead…’

  ‘He hasn’t been officially identified yet, constable, so I think your conscience is clear,’ Lorimer said kindly.

  Jamie Kennedy nodded, taking a quick slurp from his tea before continuing.

  ‘He seems to have been a loud type of bloke; bit of a Hooray Henry, if you know what I mean. Came from a well-off background and wasn’t shy about letting them all know it, too,’ he went on, nodding his head all the time as if he were embarrassed for the lad. ‘His first name was Rory but the girls in the hotel made fun of him. Talked about him as Roary, as in to roar, see?’

  ‘So he wasn’t a popular lad?’

  ‘The owners seemed to like him, sir. Said he was an asset to the place. He had the sort of manner that guests like, Mr Forsyth told me. Suppose he meant that he was well spoken, and all that.’

  ‘What sort of work did he do in the hotel?’

  ‘Oh, waiting on tables. He knew his silver service all right. Must have worked somewhere else, I suppose, to learn that. And lately he’d been given the job of wine waiter. That was so
mething else that riled the younger members of the staff. He was always showing off his knowledge of the wines of the world, seemingly.’

  PC Kennedy sat back, his face flushed from the heat of the fire. ‘That’s all I’ve found out about him so far,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Well, it’s a start, isn’t it?’ Lorimer said. ‘Your SIO will be glad to have something to go on.’

  Jamie Kennedy drew in a deep breath and nodded silently.

  Just then Lorimer caught the glimpse of a smile playing around Calum Mhor’s mouth. Maybe this DI Crozier was a stickler for detail and that was why the younger officer seemed so tense.

  ‘I looked this out for you.’ Lorimer handed over a small red booklet to the detective sergeant. ‘Tide tables,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t sure about today’s tide,’ he added, a question in his voice.

  Calum Mhor flicked through the booklet till he came to the page where the date and times for July tides were given.

  ‘Aye, a spring tide right enough.’ He nodded, handing the booklet back. ‘Just what I thought.’

  Lorimer took the booklet and slipped it into his pocket. The tide had been particularly high this morning. Unnaturally high, he knew, given the conjunction of the sun and moon. And yet… the boy’s body had been on a bank of soft grass about a foot higher than the damp line showing where the tide had turned. Almost as if it had been placed there by other hands…

  His thoughts were interrupted by the big policeman.

  ‘Perhaps we could take that statement from you now, sir?’ Calum Mhor asked, setting down his mug by the fireplace and reaching into his jacket for a black-bound notebook.