by Gray, Alex
There was a pebbled area that might have been a slipway at one time, the different-coloured stones bright under the clear water, and this was where Lorimer stood, letting the tiny waves of the incoming tide lap over his feet.
‘Good morning.’
He turned and smiled as she approached. ‘Good morning. Thanks for coming. Hope I didn’t take you out of your way.’
Stevie made a face and looked at her watch. ‘I don’t have all day, so let’s get on with it, shall we?’ she said brusquely. Let him know who’s in charge here, she was thinking.
He gave her an apologetic smile then stretched a hand out as if to encompass the scene before them: quiet waters with the backdrop of the dark green trees and the sloping hills beyond, a thin line of mist draped languidly across them like a woman’s silk scarf.
‘Never tire of this view,’ he remarked. She saw his back heave with a sigh and for an instant Stevie Crozier understood what this place really meant to him. It was the peacefulness, so at odds with the noise and bustle of the big city where he spent his working hours, she realised suddenly, following his gaze and beginning to see how the hills, sky and sea worked a certain magic on this quiet morning.
Then he turned and she saw his lips tightening as he regarded the fluttering lines of police tape that indicated where Rory had come to rest, the moment gone, the memory of a dead boy tainting this idyllic scene.
‘You’ll have seen the photos that were shot when we found the body,’ Lorimer began, waving a hand at the spot where Rory’s body had been, empty today of any ravening gulls.
‘Yes?’
‘It was a spring tide, really high, the highest on record for quite a few years, in fact,’ he continued, wading out from the water and walking towards an area several feet above the water’s edge where clumps of sea pinks sprouted from the bright green turf. ‘This is the exact spot where his body was lying. I knelt beside him…’ He was bending down slowly, giving Stevie the impression that he was reliving the scene in his mind. ‘I put my hand on the grass, here’ – he was kneeling now, one knee on the turf – ‘and do you know what?’ He turned to give her a quizzical look.
Stevie shrugged, not knowing what on earth he was on about.
‘It was bone dry,’ Lorimer said. ‘There hadn’t been any rain for days and the sun had dried all the residual dew. I think the shock of finding him and chasing off these damn gulls —’ He broke off, rising to his feet. ‘That’s one of the things I needed to tell you,’ he said. ‘Or, maybe to ask you?’
‘Ask me?’
‘How had Rory’s body come to be above the tide mark on dry ground?’
‘Washed up by a particularly big wave?’ She shrugged, puzzled for a moment, her eyes turning towards the quiet lapping of the little waves as they caressed the stones.
‘Okay,’ she said at last. ‘No big tides at this inlet, then?’
Lorimer nodded. ‘No. So how did the body come to be lying above the water like that?’
‘You think someone dumped it on the shore? But that doesn’t make sense,’ Stevie protested.
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Lorimer agreed. ‘It doesn’t make much sense at all. But I think someone did move the boy’s body. Maybe for it to be found,’ he added thoughtfully.
‘And is that it? Did you drag me all the way to Fishnish Bay just to tell me that?’
‘I wanted you to see it for yourself,’ Lorimer explained, a look of mild surprise on his handsome face. ‘But that wasn’t all I wanted to tell you.’
Stevie waited, arms folded defensively across her chest. There was something in his manner, something hesitant that had her wondering if he was about to say that he’d been appointed to take over the case. Her case.
‘It was something that happened twenty years ago. When I was a young DC in Glasgow. Just starting out, really.’ He smiled as though embarrassed by the thought of his younger self. ‘We had a case where a young man was dragged out of the River Clyde. A red-headed boy, possibly around Rory’s age.’
Stevie frowned. Where was he heading with this?
‘There were marks on his arms and legs that showed where he’d been trussed up. Just like Rory,’ he added, giving her a meaningful stare. ‘He’d also been dead before he hit the water.’
‘So? You want me to look at whoever killed that lad, do you?’ Stevie asked, nodding. It would be okay, they’d access HOLMES, the database that was so up to the minute these days that cold cases were being reopened all the time, many of them to satisfactory conclusions.
‘That’s just it,’ Lorimer said, catching her glance and holding it with his own blue stare. ‘The perpetrator was never found. And, even worse, the boy was never identified.’
‘Dear God!’ The words were out of Stevie’s mouth before she could stop herself. ‘And you think there might be a link? A twenty-year-old case in Glasgow that coincides with this. My case,’ she added. As though to remind him. ‘Just because your victim had red hair?’
‘It was the way they’d both been secured,’ Lorimer insisted. ‘Same sort of twist to their limbs. I keep thinking about that other boy and how similar he was to the one I found here.’
Perhaps you keep thinking about how you never solved that case, Detective Superintendent Lorimer, Stevie thought inwardly, fists clenched by her sides. Or are you looking for a way to lever me out of this one?
‘Well, I have something to tell you, sir. I intend to find Rory Dalgleish’s killer and I am not having this case muddied by anything that happened back in Glasgow, twenty years ago.’
Lorimer seemed to hesitate for a moment as though deciding how to reply then he gave her a crooked smile and shrugged his shoulders.
‘So be it, Detective Inspector. I just wanted to see if you thought there might be some sort of connection…’ He broke off and gave an audible sigh, his eyes returning to the patch of grass where the young man’s body had lain.
She looked at him thoughtfully for a long moment, wondering just what he was seeing. Was it the recent body he had discovered? Or a missing person from long ago?
Stevie stood waiting for him to speak but he did not seem inclined to turn to face her again, leaving her feeling as though her presence was no longer wanted. Was that it, then? Had he been about to pull rank and try to take over her case here on Mull?
‘If there’s nothing more to tell me then I’ll be off, then, sir,’ she said, and turned back along the track, irritated but also confused that he had brought her all the way down here to consider… what? Okay, the tide problem was relevant, Stevie told herself grudgingly, but this cold case was a piece of complete nonsense. Probably just a way for him to stick his nose into her case, she thought angrily, slamming the car door and yanking on her seat belt.
Lorimer watched as the silver car gathered speed and disappeared along the tree-lined road towards Salen. He hadn’t expected her to be pleased, had he? And, to give Crozier her due, she was SIO in a murder case that was complicated by a senior detective having found the body. He’d wanted her cooperation, of course, hoped that she might ask him about that twenty-year-old case. Still, there was nothing to stop him from going back into the records himself, was there? Asking the right sort of questions might produce the right sort of answers. And there was one question that was like an itch in his mind: who were the people who had come to live on this island from Glasgow twenty years ago?
‘You have to tell him, Aunty,’ Fiona protested. ‘You cannae just see something and no’ let on, eh?’
Jean Erskine folded patient hands across her lap and looked at her great-niece. ‘I haven’t even told you what I saw and heard, Fiona,’ the old lady said. ‘And yes, of course I must speak to a police officer first. Jamie Kennedy will have to come up and see me, that’s all.’
‘No, Aunty, it doesn’t work like that,’ Fiona insisted. ‘You’re supposed to go to the wee caravan and tell Jamie Kennedy yourself,’ she said. ‘They need to get your statements, like,’ the girl explained.
‘Go
all the way along the street?’ Jean Erskine raised her sparse white eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘An old woman who can hardly get out of her chair?’
‘Och, Aunty!’ Fiona giggled. ‘You’re no’ as bad as a’ that! See if I help you down the stairs, take thon wee zimmer that’s in the close? Surely you can manage a walk along the street?’
‘Well now,’ Jean replied, eyes twinkling. ‘Perhaps it would be better if the constable were to come up here and visit me. Then he’d be able to see the view from my window.’ She smiled, waving a tiny hand, its paper-thin skin showing a tracery of blue veins.
‘There is that, right enough,’ the girl said doubtfully. ‘Will I see if he can come up, then?’
Jean Erskine smiled fondly at her. She was a bonny girl, pretty and curvaceous like one of the old-fashioned movie stars of Jean’s youth. Fiona Taig had never been particularly ambitious at school but she was a well-liked lass with a good heart and would ensure that the young Kennedy boy came up these two flights of tenement stairs to see the old lady who had known him all his life, not to mention his father and grandfather before him. She nodded her acquiescence. ‘You do that, pet. That’s a good girl.’
Fiona was no sooner out of the parlour door than the smile fell from the old woman’s face. She hadn’t wanted to see that little scene on Main Street, had she? But there was no denying that Fiona was right. And it might really matter to the police to share what she had seen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jamie Kennedy groaned inwardly as he caught sight of the girl coming along the road, a purposeful look on her face. It had been awkward bringing in Fiona Taig to make her statement but the look on Crozier’s face had brooked no opposition. The young police constable had been all too aware of the girl’s blushes as he’d posed the standard questions to her, uncomfortably aware of her darting glances at his face. It was no secret in the town that wee Fiona had fancied him since their schooldays and that her feelings towards him still lingered. Was she just seeking some sort of an excuse to engage him in conversation? Jamie wondered, watching her cross over to the town clock and the space where the caravan sat, its door open to the public coming and going along the main street.
Crozier had insisted that they positioned the vehicle in this way to encourage people to come in but it made the police constable feel as though he were sitting in a goldfish bowl, the continual greetings of the townsfolk interrupting the air of solemnity he was trying to conjure up about this case. And now here she was coming straight up to the caravan, his old school pal, Fiona Taig, one hand up to smooth the unruly curls that sprang back the moment she let them be.
‘Fiona.’
‘Jamie.’ The girl blushed. ‘PC Kennedy, I mean.’ She tilted her head to one side, considering. ‘Is it not awfie hard being two people at once?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Well. Everyone knows who you are, eh? Johnny Kennedy’s lad. But you’re someone else in that uniform, aren’t you?’ she continued, screwing up her eyes.
Jamie attempted a smile. He knew what she was trying to say and he felt it too, especially now that he was part of a team dealing with a murder inquiry.
‘I’ve come to ask a favour,’ Fiona went on. ‘It’s no’ for me. It’s Aunty Jean.’
‘Oh, is she all right?’ Jamie’s face fell in alarm. Old Jean Erskine was a well-loved member of the community, a woman whose words of wisdom had been passed from one generation of children to the next as she taught the Primary Ones. How long had it been since she’d retired? Jamie wondered. She must be a good age now, at least in her nineties. His own mother and father had spoken highly of their schoolteacher, a lady who had instilled the basics of reading and writing along with good manners into scores of Tobermory children. They’d seen her six days a week, her welcoming presence in Sunday School no different from her Monday to Friday manner, his mother used to tell him. And Jamie still remembered the old lady handing out the prizes at the end of the Sunday School session, her handshake firm and her smile warming each child as they came forward.
‘Aye, she’s fine,’ Fiona replied. ‘Well, she’s got something she wants to tell you. It’s about the murdered boy,’ she whispered conspiratorially, leaning towards him so closely that Jamie could see too much fleshy cleavage escaping from her nylon V-neck top. He retreated slightly on the pretext of picking up his hat. Fiona’s great-aunt Jean hadn’t been seen on the street for a long while now, the rheumatoid arthritis having imprisoned her in that top flat above the Clydesdale bank.
‘She saw something that night,’ Fiona went on, the drama in her voice matching her wide-eyed stare. ‘She needs you to go up and talk to her. Can you come up, Jamie?’ There was a wheedling note in the girl’s voice that set off alarm bells. Was Fiona at it? Was this just an excuse to lure him up the stairs behind the bank?
PC Kennedy stepped down from the caravan and glanced back towards the buildings where the street turned a corner. Jean Erskine’s parlour window was in a turret looking down onto the street at an angle where she might see a lot of comings and goings, he thought. Maybe this was a genuine request after all.
‘I cannae just leave this place the now, Fiona,’ he said at last. ‘But tell her I’ll come up when the other fellow’s back, all right?’
‘I suppose so.’ Fiona Taig traced an invisible line on the stones with her shoe. ‘D’you want me to wait here till you’re ready?’ she added hopefully.
‘Your aunty keeps her door open,’ Jamie said. ‘Everyone knows that. I’ll be up to see her when I can. Okay?’
‘Aye, I’ll tell her, then,’ the girl replied, turning away reluctantly and slouching off, not attempting to hide her disappointment.
Jamie shook his head. Oh Fiona, he thought, I wish you’d find another lad to set your heart on. He watched as she disappeared back along the street, stopping to talk to one of the locals. She wasn’t a bad-looking lassie, he told himself, watching the sunshine bounce off her curls as she turned back to point at the caravan. If only she didn’t make her feelings for him so obvious. But Fiona Taig had never been one for the sort of subtlety so many girls seemed to employ around lads. He heaved a sigh. Fiona was the sort who seemed to like everybody, even the loud boy who’d disappeared after the ceilidh. He’d seen her shed a tear for him during the half-hour when she had given them her statement. But she hadn’t fancied him, Fiona had said. Not my type, she’d added with a wee grin that Jamie had taken for a spot of mild flirtation.
It was a phrase that PC Kennedy suddenly remembered with a frown. They needed to find out which girl the red-haired lad had taken home after the dance but so far none of the local lasses had claimed that distinction. And maybe now he’d have some time to trawl through the boy’s laptop to see if there were any clues in his previous life that might help uncover reasons for his death.
Fiona wandered along the street, wishing that Jamie Kennedy hadn’t been so busy. Still, she was glad that the hotel where she worked as a chambermaid wasn’t doing much business; why should she care if folk didn’t want to stay in the crummy old place? There had only been three beds to change yesterday and Freda Forsyth had told her not to bother coming in till tonight. Okay, she’d miss the extra cash, but it was nicer hanging about the town for a while than having to find jobs to do at Kilbeg Country House Hotel. Besides, Fiona thought, casting a backward eye past the town clock, she could always look in again on Jamie Kennedy, now that he was ensconced in that caravan, before it was time to catch the last bus back to the hotel.
It was one of those rare July days when the wind had blown the sky clean of clouds, sunlight sparkling on the water. There were lots of boats in the bay, many still moored after the annual race from Crinan to Tobermory, and the girl dawdled by the quayside, admiring the bigger yachts at anchor. The faint clinking sounds from the rigging and the squawks from young seagulls were sounds that Fiona had grown so used to that she hardly heard them any more; they were summer sounds, part of the landscape as much as the main street cro
wded with tourists. She smiled as one family approached, a wide-eyed toddler hanging onto his pushchair, the mother and granny shepherding him along the pavement. They were strangers, no doubt here to explore the town in its guise as Balamory, its television counterpart. Some of the locals were heartily fed up with being asked the whereabouts of the characters’ houses, but Fiona enjoyed pointing out Josie Jump’s big yellow house on the hill and directing people to Breadalbane Street where the fictional PC Plum was supposed to live. It was nice being asked things like that, not swept aside as she had been with Jamie, she thought, pursing her lips in a scowl.
‘Hey, who’s stolen your scone, wee yin?’
‘Oh, hiya, Jock.’ Fiona stopped as the man in the battered panama hat patted her shoulder.
‘Not like you to lose your smiles, Fiona.’
‘Och, I’m just fed up with Jamie Kennedy, that’s all.’
‘How’s that? What’s he done to make your bonny face the colour of sour milk?’
Fiona shook her head. ‘It’s what he’s not done yet, that’s the problem.’ She drew aside as a couple with a large hairy dog passed them by.
‘He’s to go and see Aunty Jean,’ she explained.
‘Oh?’ Jock cocked his head to one side. ‘Why’s that then? Old lady not paid her TV licence? Dearie me, she’ll no’ like being kept in the cells, eh?’ He made a long face and rolled his eyes.