by Gray, Alex
‘Of course.’ Lorimer attempted a wry smile. ‘I’ll be as detailed as I can,’ he said with a nod, his eyes flicking over to PC Kennedy and back to McManus. Whatever he said now would be integral to the beginning of this case, an investigation that the DI from the mainland would soon be taking over. His own suspicions and memories of that other unsolved case from so long ago would have to remain unspoken, at least for now.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dr Rosie Fergusson clicked on the send button, her reply to the police officer winging its way to the DI’s BlackBerry. The team was already on their way to Mull and she hoped to join them within twenty-four hours. It would be Rosie’s job as senior consultant pathologist to carry out the post-mortem. But, before that could happen, the victim’s parents were also heading to the Western Isles. The discovery of a red-haired young man washed up on the beach two days after he had gone missing told its own sorry tale. Rosie shook her head. Something bad had happened up there to allow a senior officer to investigate. Not just an accident, she told herself, not a simple case of drowning, then; not if DI Crozier was involved.
Her husband had raised his dark, bushy eyebrows when Rosie had described the death. Solly was not one to make puerile statements, but one look could say such a lot. His background in behavioural psychology had involved Solly in several cases of multiple murder in the past, many of them with cases headed up by Lorimer.
How bizarre that it should have been Lorimer who had found the body! The Lorimers spent at least two weeks every summer up in their hideaway. It was a release for them both; Maggie from the stresses and strains of teaching and Lorimer from the urban jungle that was Glasgow. Rosie sighed and blinked at the screen. She ought to send Maggie an email. After all, the Lorimers were close friends, godparents to her daughter, Abby, and the four of them had hoped to meet up during Maggie’s summer break. But the pathologist hadn’t reckoned on it happening quite like this.
A holiday in Balamory, Rosie had suggested, seeing three-year-old Abby’s eyes light up at the idea. The children’s TV programme that was based on the colourful houses around Tobermory had taken the little girl’s fancy and plans had already been made for the Brightmans to head north. Solly had found a place in Tobermory for them to stay and she would have time to fulfil her duties on this new case before taking a short break, Rosie realised. And maybe taking Bill and Maggie away from the scene of a crime would do them both a favour. Abby’s incessant chatter about her favourite characters in Balamory could be the perfect antidote to the horrors of finding a body practically on their doorstep.
She would also be able to catch up with her old friend and one-time mentor, she thought, images of a tall, grey-haired lady who now resided in Mull coming to mind. That would be good.
The pathologist’s eyes sought out the pencil icon and she began to type in Maggie’s email address. They had broadband up there, didn’t they? She shook her head, wondering if this email would reach them, letting them know that she, too, was involved in the fate of the boy.
Pamela Dalgleish stood on the deck of the Isle of Mull, the big car ferry that ploughed through the seas between Oban and Tobermory, looking out at grey skies and choppy waters. Minke whales had been sighted here, Rory had told them, but somehow she doubted whether she and Douglas would see more than the occasional herring gull on their trip to the island. A long spit of land, dominated by a stark, white lighthouse, loomed out of the mist, the current heaving harder beneath the ship. Lismore. That was the place. Pamela had read about it somewhere, hadn’t she?
If she could only stay here for ever, mesmerised by the waves foaming past the bow… it was a fate she desired more than anything. Stop all the clocks, Auden had written, and now she knew how he had felt. If she could make time stand still, keep sailing out to the west, away from landfall, away from the necessity of speaking to people, away from whatever horror lay ahead, then Pamela Dalgleish would choose that here and now.
He found her at the top of the hill under one of the ancient oak trees. Maggie was turned away from him, sitting on a long, low branch that generations of children must have used to bounce up and down. Did she miss them? These phantom children? And had the death of this boy brought back thoughts of what might have been? So many pregnancies, so much hope invested in a family life, all come to naught.
Lorimer came to sit beside her, his weight making the old branch creak.
Maggie was staring out to sea through a gap in the trees, the shore beneath them and the ribbon of road blanked off by the curving hillside from this point. The hill mist was a fine, gentle rain but larger drops fell from the trees, plopping onto their waterproof hoods.
Lorimer took her hand, twining her fingers in his own. ‘You’re frozen,’ he remarked, but she did not answer, simply kept looking at the grey seas and the dark green outline of pine forest across the bay. He reached across and took both her hands in his, gently massaging them to bring some warmth back into the cold flesh. Maggie placed her head against his shoulder then he felt a huge sigh as she nestled into his body.
‘I feel so selfish,’ she said at last, her voice small under the dark hood.
‘Why? You’ve done nothing to feel selfish about.’
Another sigh, then, ‘I was angry,’ she said quietly. ‘Am angry. That it happened here. Spoiled this place for ever.’
He put an arm around her shoulder, drawing her closer. ‘That’s not selfish,’ he replied.
‘Isn’t it?’ Her tone was scathing so he said no more, for hadn’t he felt that spurt of betrayal too? That moment on the shore, the feeling that their special place had become tainted with something evil?
‘There’s no getting away from it, is there?’ she continued, a note of bitterness in her voice.
‘What d’you mean? The job?’
‘No,’ Maggie answered, ‘not that. I’m not blaming you for being a policeman.’ She looked at him seriously. ‘I meant, there’s no getting away from the world.’
It was Lorimer’s turn to sigh. ‘I suppose not,’ he agreed.
Then, as something caught the corner of his eye, he placed a finger over his lips, nudging Maggie to follow his glance.
A large brown hare had come out of the mist, lolloping across the wet grass and onto the narrow road. They sat still on the branch, watching as it came closer and stopped. For a moment the animal seemed to stare at them, nose twitching, long dark ears erect, then it turned and began to make its way downhill, stopping again, sitting up on its haunches, turning to look back at them.
‘Time to go?’ Lorimer asked, and Maggie nodded.
The branch swung upward as they climbed off, a faint swish and groan as though the oak was tired of bearing its burden.
‘He’s waiting for us,’ Maggie whispered as they stepped onto the tarmac and followed the hare back down towards Leiter Cottage. Sure enough, the hare appeared to be looking at them with its steady, glassy eyes, as if certain the two humans were following his lead, then it turned and began to lollop its way down the road. They walked on, hand in hand, their eyes fixed on the creature. When the white house came into view it stopped once more and turned to watch them, ears twitching. Then, as though satisfied that they were safely home, the hare leapt across the burn and vanished into the bracken.
Lorimer and Maggie walked towards the edge of the road but there was nothing to be seen, not even a green frond disturbed by the animal’s passing.
There was no need for words when they crossed to the gate, hand in hand, the sound of boots crunching on pebbles as they made their way back to the front door. It was a moment that would be hugged to themselves and taken out some other time to be remembered, a moment a poet might have mined for symbolism or meaning. For now all that mattered was that the bold hare had lifted their spirits and restored their delight in this special place.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Glasgow
Twenty Years Earlier
The baby would be born in September, around the time of the equinox when summe
r finally gave way to darker nights and autumn tints. They hadn’t decided on names but Maggie favoured Susan for a girl and David if it was a boy. She wrinkled her nose as she recalled Bill’s choices. She didn’t fancy Brian for her son’s name; it reminded her of the naughtiest child in her first-year class at school, a snot-nosed kid who always forgot to bring a handkerchief. Helen was okay for a girl, but it would always be a reminder of the mother-in-law she’d never had, Bill’s mother having died some years before they had met.
She smiled as the baby moved, instinctively placing her hand to feel some tiny limb stretching beneath her rounded belly. ‘Susan Lorimer,’ she murmured into the dark. It felt at that moment as if there was a little girl in there, listening.
There would be books to read to this little one, stories to tell, songs to sing at bedtime. Maggie sighed, the prospect of motherhood stretching ahead in a haze of pastel-coloured baby clothes and nursery wallpaper. Such plans they had! The new house was far more expensive than they’d intended to buy, but Bill had managed to secure a mortgage for them and now she lay by his side, letting her dreams take her into a future where children played in the big back garden, maybe in a tree house like the one next door.
Her husband stirred, murmuring something indistinct, a dream escaping into the darkness. It was no wonder, Maggie thought. He’d been tasked with trying to identify a dead man pulled from the Clyde. She wrinkled her nose, the idea of death at odds with the new life growing inside her. It wasn’t something Maggie wanted to think about and she looked across at her husband’s sleeping form with pity. His was not a job she could ever have done. Being a policeman took a certain sort of strength, the sort that William Lorimer seemed to have in abundance. He’d told her briefly about the case, not dwelling on the details; it was the sort of things that working couples did, share the elements of their respective days over an evening meal. Perhaps she ought to tell him that she didn’t like to think about dead people right now, Maggie told herself, one hand on her belly as the baby moved again. He’d understand. He always understood things… She yawned and closed her eyes, sleep taking her back to her own dreams.
It was still early when he woke but sunlight filtered through a gap in the thin summer curtains, harbinger of another beautiful day. Maggie, slumbering on her side of the bed, was on holiday now from her school, Lorimer reminded himself, so he would try not to waken her. He had saved his own leave for the arrival of their child, so this fine July day meant a return to the city and a final attempt to crack the case of that unidentified man.
There was so much about this case that troubled the detective constable. He probably had it coming to him, one of his colleagues had remarked gloomily, hinting that such deaths always involved the dark side of this city, its drug barons ruthless in dispatching any troublesome elements. The words had been spoken when DI Phillips was well out of earshot. The SIO had already told them more than once that justice should be even-handed. Lorimer had mentioned this to his wife who had quoted lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: This even-handed justice commends the ingredients of this poisoned chalice to our own lips. He’d nodded, remembering the quotation from his own schooldays. But he didn’t think that was quite what Phillips had meant. It was more the point that all human life was worth something and that the dregs of society deserved the same quality of police time as anyone else. It was not a sentiment that all of his fellow officers shared. And now the case was being wound down, fewer man-hours spent on trying to find out who the red-haired man had been and why his young life had ended in such a brutal manner.
Detective Constable Lorimer could have taken one of the pool cars, a Ford Escort or an Astra, but parking spaces behind the mortuary were limited and the walk through the city appealed to the young man. It was always hard to equate the brightness of a clear July day like this with the sorts of things that had happened overnight. The duty sergeant had left notes about the knifing: a drunken brawl that had left one man in hospital and fighting for his life; the other incarcerated, howling with remorse.
Yet there was no trace of that anguish in those city streets as DC Lorimer walked down Buchanan Street past the old model lodging house, the crumbling tenements giving way to a vista that stretched all the way to the river and his destination. Already much of the place was derelict, properties having been purchased to make way for a new shopping complex. Lorimer smiled to himself, remembering Maggie’s mother’s words on seeing the architectural images in the newspaper. As if the good folk of Glasgow needed more shops. We’ve already got that new St Enoch Centre! she’d exclaimed, tutting loudly and going on to extol the virtues of older emporiums up in Sauchiehall Street like Pettigrew & Stephens or Copland & Lye where she’d shopped as a girl. But things were changing in the heart of Glasgow and soon these old Victorian buildings in Buchanan Street would give way to something that his mother-in-law would no doubt consider as brash and modern as the glass-topped edifice of the shopping centre that had been built beside St Enoch’s Square.
He crossed Argyle Street, skirted the new mall and headed towards Paddy’s Market, smiling to himself: the old way of buying and selling clothes was still rubbing shoulders with the newcomers here in Glasgow. Paddy’s was a frequent haunt of ne’er-do-wells, more for the resetting of stolen goods than anything else, though word had it that drugs were also being channelled through some of the street vendors.
A small man in a flat cloth cap looked up from behind a table strewn with old clothes, one swift glance that did not meet Lorimer’s blue gaze. As the detective walked on, he could hear the sound of hawking followed by a spit onto the pavement; it was a mark of the man’s bad feelings towards the polis. Even now, in plain clothes, Lorimer was finding it hard to hide his identity from those in the Glasgow underworld; it was as if they could smell a copper the way an animal smelled its enemy.
Saltmarket was an old part of the city, the river not far away, the tenement buildings towering overhead, closing in on these narrower streets. It was hard to imagine the expanse of Glasgow Green so nearby. He turned a corner and there was the High Court of Justiciary, its Greek portico dominating the other buildings, pale sandstone columns like raised fingers of admonition to those in fear of their lives. In contrast, the city mortuary was a squat, grey place, its back doors facing the grand courts, ready to admit the dead.
He was to meet the procurator fiscal at the mortuary – someone new in his limited experience of CID. There had not been much contact with the Crown Office so far, such liaisons not considered vital during the start of an investigation. A quick glance at his wristwatch told him that he was still on time; Donald Anderson was not someone he would want to keep waiting, Lorimer had been advised.
The man whose body had been dragged up from the river was the sort of anonymous person that Americans referred to as a John Doe. Here, in the west of Scotland, the authorities had no such terms of reference for these unidentified souls whose corpses were kept in the refrigerated cabinets awaiting the time when a friend or relative might come to claim them.
The mortuary superintendent gave him a nod as he entered.
‘Just over there, son,’ he said with a grin above his closely clipped white moustache. ‘They’ve not begun yet so you’ll be able to see the entire process.’
The man smiled at Lorimer with a knowing look in his bright eyes. Here was a rookie detective constable, the expression seemed to say; we’ll be able to have some fun with this one.
Lorimer stepped up to the viewing platform and looked at the room through the huge window that would separate him from the pathologist’s activities. Several figures appeared from another door; the pathologists gowned and masked, wellington boots on their feet as though to protect themselves from some awful deluge of blood and guts, with several gowned students trailing in their wake. Lorimer shuddered in spite of his earlier resolve to be as objective as he could be. Then his eyes were drawn to a slim shape emerging from the wall as if by magic. A couple of mortuary attendants arrived, lifting the
body from its refrigerated cabinet onto the stainless steel table where the two pathologists waited, one pulling at her silicon gloves as though keen to begin. Beside them, on a cloth-covered table, lay an array of surgical instruments, the scalpel blades glittering in the shaft of sunlight that filtered from the windows above.
It was the same boy that he had seen lying on the grass by the River Clyde but somehow here in this mortuary room his body appeared diminished, smaller and waxen, like a model for a corpse, not the real thing at all. The idea comforted him a little as the pathologist took her instrument and began the first incision.
It had been an interesting experience, he told himself, nothing that would bother his dreams. The detective constable had been pleased by his own sense of objectivity, able to look at each and every stage of the post-mortem examination, not even flinching when the sound of the saw had whined through the intercom. DC Lorimer had even been able to ask a few questions during the process, mainly to the fiscal by his side who was far less threatening than he’d been told.
‘What would happen to his body, sir? In the event that he remains unidentified?’ he asked Donald Anderson as they stepped back into the corridor.
‘We keep him,’ the fiscal said bluntly. ‘He’s ours in law,’ he added, glancing back at the door they had just left.
‘But surely you can’t keep unidentified corpses here indefinitely?’ Lorimer protested.
The fiscal shrugged. ‘We’ll see,’ he remarked blandly. ‘I believe you’ve been tasked with finding out who he is? George Phillips seems to think you may have the necessary skills to complete that particular action.’ He raised doubtful eyebrows at the younger man.
‘I hope so, sir.’ Lorimer swallowed hard. ‘Someone’s bound to be missing him.’