Keep The Midnight Out (William Lorimer)

by Gray, Alex

  Fiona gave a smile, despite herself. Jock Maloney could always make her laugh.

  ‘No, nothing like that.’ She beckoned him closer. ‘Tell you what it’s about.’ She glanced around as though to ensure they were not being overheard. ‘It’s that laddie that died; Rory, the one at the hotel.’

  ‘What about him?’ Maloney’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Aunty Jean reckons she saw something that night. Or rather someone,’ she added dramatically. ‘With Rory Dalgleish. She wants to talk to Jamie about it.’ She made a face. ‘But he’s so busy taking statements from folks. Says he cannae just up and leave the caravan.’

  ‘Who did she see?’ The older man stiffened up, his expression suddenly serious.

  Fiona shrugged. ‘Don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. Said it was better to talk to a local policeman first.’ She was about to move on but Maloney seized her arm and gave it a shake.

  ‘The night the boy disappeared, you say?’

  ‘Aye.’ Fiona frowned, pulling her arm out of his grasp. ‘She’s never a good sleeper. Sits up sometimes to all hours in that window seat. Sees all the comings and goings,’ she said darkly.

  ‘Well, I’m sure young Jamie will go and see her whenever he has a moment,’ the man said shortly, stepping back into the middle of the street.

  ‘Aye, I guess so,’ Fiona said absently, letting the man stride away, rubbing her arm where he had grasped it so violently.

  Strange bloke, Jock Maloney: happy to stop and blether one minute then as brusque as everyone else who passed the time of day with ‘the Taig girl’. Fiona frowned: she knew some folk called her that in tones of disapproval ever since she had refused to follow her parents abroad, preferring to live here in Tobermory with her old aunty, and for a moment she wondered if Jamie Kennedy was one of them.

  Her face brightened, though, as she recognised Eilidh McIver, an old school chum who was coming towards her.

  ‘Aye, aye, chatting up the old men now, are we?’ Eilidh joked.

  ‘Jock Maloney? He’s old enough to be my father!’ Fiona protested.

  ‘Just kidding,’ the girl laughed, slapping Fiona’s shoulder affectionately. ‘Here,’ she nodded at the Island Bakery a few paces along the street, ‘fancy a coffee and a sticky bun?’ She nudged Fiona’s elbow. ‘Give you a chance to tell me all the latest gossip, eh?’

  ‘Aye, why not.’ Fiona tossed her head. There was something rather thrilling about being so close to the whole murder case, taking messages from her aunty to Jamie Kennedy in the official police caravan. And it wasn’t every day that she had the chance to be the first to relate a tasty bit of news to her pal.

  ‘Aye, Fiona.’ A few faces looked up as the girls entered the bakery. ‘All right, lass?’ someone asked.

  The girl’s smile widened.

  For once in her young life Fiona Taig was the centre of attention instead of the local girl in the corner of the dance hall that all the boys took for granted.

  She lifted the Perspex lid of the cake display, mouth watering in anticipation. Another few calories would make little difference to her waistline and besides, Fiona persuaded herself, she needed cheering up after that strange encounter with Jock in his panama hat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘I think Rory Dalgleish was gay,’ Lorimer said, moving the binoculars upwards as he followed the skylark’s progress.

  Solly pursed his lips but said nothing. The women had taken Abby up to Tobermory on a pilgrimage to Balamory, something that the two men had managed to avoid on this glorious July day. Maggie had been ecstatic about having Abby with them for a whole day and her little goddaughter hadn’t seemed to mind leaving Daddy and Uncle Bill behind at the cottage. The family had slept in the spare bedroom the previous night, Abby tucked into a Z-bed in the lounge, the adventure of sleeping away from home keeping the child awake far past her usual bedtime.

  Lorimer lowered the glasses and shot a glance at his friend.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I think that?’

  Solly smiled his slow, easy smile, one hand smoothing the bristly beard. It was a gesture that made Lorimer think of the psychologist as some Old Testament prophet, considering how he was going to phrase his words to the waiting throngs.

  ‘No, I wasn’t about to ask you that. However, as you seem to wish to tell me…?’

  ‘It was something the press chap asked his parents. About having a girlfriend. It wasn’t anything they said, just a look that passed between them as though there was some taboo there, something that was not to be spoken aloud.’

  ‘And you imagine that it’s about his sexuality?’

  Lorimer nodded. ‘Yes. It was as though they were afraid and ashamed at the same time.’

  ‘Not every parent of their generation is able to accept the diversity of sexual orientation,’ Solly remarked mildly. ‘I know my own parents would have been appalled if I had suggested that I was gay. Though I’m sure they must have wondered about it at times,’ he grinned.

  ‘You?’

  Solly chuckled. ‘I was rather too engrossed in my work to make time for romantic interludes. That all changed the day I met Rosie, of course.’

  Lorimer smiled back. He remembered the very night the three of them had been in that Glasgow flat, its owner lying dead on the floor. Solly had turned pale, his weak stomach unable to cope with such a sight. It had been something so diametrically opposed to Rosie Fergusson’s brisk professionalism that it was almost laughable now. It was a funny old world, Lorimer mused, remembering how the on-duty pathologist had taken Solly home in her car. Theirs had been the start of such an unlikely relationship, yet it had blossomed into love and marriage. Solly was no better now at scenes of crime than he had been back then, nor had he learned to drive a car, but he had different sorts of strengths to bring to the marriage, intangible things that undoubtedly gave Rosie a sense of security and belonging.

  ‘So do you think they’ll be looking for a young man rather than a girl who accompanied the Dalgleish boy after the dance?’ Solly asked.

  ‘That’s just it,’ Lorimer said. ‘It needs to be taken into consideration. But I don’t know whether Crozier and her team have any inkling about this. And I’m not at all sure I can feed the DI any more information without annoying her.’

  ‘Tell your friend, the big chap from Craignure. What is it you call him?’

  ‘Calum Mhor. Big Calum. I suppose I could,’ Lorimer sighed. ‘But I would rather one of Rory’s parents had actually said something to Crozier herself.’

  ‘Can you talk to them about it?’ the psychologist asked.

  Lorimer gave him a long look, his head tilted to one side enquiringly.

  ‘Oh, no, don’t even think it! I’m not even supposed to be here, never mind interfering with someone else’s case,’ Solly protested. ‘Besides, you’re the one the Dalgleishes seem to have taken to. I’m a total stranger to them.’

  ‘But you’re so good at getting people to open up to you,’ Lorimer wheedled. ‘And they’re the sort of people who would trust a professor of psychology.’

  ‘Even though it was his wife who cut up their poor boy?’ Solly shook his head slowly. ‘No, my friend, I think not. If none of the police have any knowledge about Rory’s sexual orientation then I think there have to be other avenues to follow.’

  ‘You mean closer to home?’

  Solly lay back against the soft grass, the mingled scents of meadowsweet and bog myrtle wafting beside them, the lark all but forgotten. ‘If it had happened in Glasgow you’d be talking to all his friends back there, wouldn’t you?’

  Jamie drew a deep breath as he reached the top stair. Crikey, he was out of condition, he thought. Too many of his mum’s cakes and not enough exercise. Any day now he’d be sporting a gut like Calum Mhor! He fingered the memory stick in his pocket, wondering what the big police sergeant, DI Crozier and the rest of the team would make of it when he showed them what it contained.

  He knocked at the door then pu
shed it open.

  ‘Mrs Erskine? Jean? It’s me, Jamie Kennedy. Can I come in?’

  ‘Come away through the house, Jamie,’ a distant voice called out.

  Wiping his booted feet on the doormat, Jamie entered the flat and closed the door behind him. It was a strange place, he always thought, full of weird objects, like the two big dark screens covered in mother-of-pearl birds and flowers that Charlie Erskine had brought home from his voyages in the South Seas. And pictures, loads of them covering up the flowered wallpaper; some faded sepia, of people from a previous century whose names Jean Erskine could give in an instant before commencing a little history about each and every one of them. That sort of knowledge would die with her, Jamie thought sadly. He’d urged Fiona often enough to get her great-aunt to commit these tales to paper or even a Dictaphone. But it never happened. Fiona wasn’t too bothered about the past, she only seemed interested in her own future; a future she kept hoping that he’d share, he thought with an inward groan.

  ‘Come away in, Jamie,’ Jean Erskine said, smiling at him from the high-backed chair that always sat in the recess of the big bay window. ‘Come and sit beside me.’ She indicated a smaller chair with a patterned cover of roses done in cross stitch, something that the old lady might have made herself in days before the rheumatism had seized her poor joints.

  ‘You think I’m a right old nosy parker, do you, Jamie?’ she twinkled at him as he sat down. ‘But sitting here and looking out at everything makes me feel I’m still a part of the town.’ Her words were not spoken with any wistfulness or bitterness for her condition, more in a simple matter-of-fact tone that the young officer admired.

  ‘And who would ever tire of that view?’

  He followed her gaze out of the window. The tide was in, right up to the edges of the old pier, and there were numerous boats at anchor in the shelter of Tobermory Bay. To one side the wooded hills rose above Ledaig, towering over the distillery and the garage plus the newer buildings that had emerged in Jamie Kennedy’s own lifetime: the tourist office and the pub where folk spilled out into the sunshine with their drinks and food, the old jetty having been enlarged to encompass a decent-sized car park. Calve Island lay like a beached whale between Tobermory and the Sound of Mull, providing protection for the yachts that sheltered within this most sought-after of anchorages. Looking down, Jamie could see people walking along Main Street, locals stopping now and then for a blether, tourists more intent on examining the numerous shop windows that displayed a variety of crafts and gifts. His eyes took in the length of the street towards the old pier and beyond, then he turned to glance left and saw that Jean would only be able to follow a person’s progress as far as the corner where the road took a sharp turn up the Back Brae.

  ‘I want to tell you something, Jamie. I’ve told nobody else at all, not even my Fiona.’ She cast a sly glance at the young policeman but he was still gazing out of the window as though only half listening to her words.

  ‘I saw that young man,’ she said softly, breaking into PC Kennedy’s reverie. ‘The boy who was found dead at Leiter.’

  ‘How did you know it was Rory Dalgleish?’

  ‘Fiona pointed him out to me a couple of times,’ she said. ‘What a head of red hair he had!’ She smiled and shook her head at the memory. ‘I could see it under that street light there.’ She pointed at a lamp that stood just below the window. ‘His hair looked as if it was on fire.’ She laughed. ‘I don’t usually sit up at midnight, but it was such a clear night and the moon was shining straight into my bedroom that I couldn’t sleep. I’m not the best sleeper in the world. Lack of exercise probably means I don’t need so much sleep. Anyway, I was up so I made myself some cocoa and took it to the window. There’s always something to see in the street after a Saturday night ceilidh.’ She smiled.

  ‘And was there anything in particular that you witnessed, Mrs Erskine?’ Jamie asked, fiddling with his police cap, hoping he was sounding suitably official.

  ‘Yes there was, PC Kennedy,’ she countered, the sudden smile fading almost at once. ‘I saw something that was a little disturbing.’

  Jamie Kennedy sat quite still, letting the old lady gather her thoughts as his eyes turned back to the street.

  ‘There were two of them there,’ she said slowly, nodding towards the street lamp as though seeing the images in her mind. ‘Rory and the other man. They were having quite an argument. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, of course, even though the window was open for fresh air. Oh, hasn’t it been a hot summer!’

  Jamie nodded, hoping she wasn’t going off at a tangent.

  ‘I could see the boy was upset. The other one was shouting at him, pointing a finger at his chest, waving his hands in the air. Then he stomped off along the street, leaving Rory standing there looking quite miserable.’

  ‘You could see Rory Dalgleish’s face?’ Jamie looked sceptical.

  ‘I saw his bowed head and the way he stuck his hands into his jacket pockets,’ she said briskly. ‘Then he walked along the street. I watched him till he disappeared past the town clock.’

  ‘And the other man…?’

  ‘Did I not say? I know fine who that was,’ Jean Erskine said firmly. ‘No mistaking him.’

  Jamie took a deep breath. ‘And who was it, Mrs Erskine?’

  ‘It was Jock Maloney. Even on a dark night there is no mistaking that silly old hat that he always wears.’

  Jean Erskine sat smiling into the twilight. It was her favourite time of day: everything was quiet now, the shops long since closed, the tourist buses away back to the mainland, leaving Tobermory to breathe its sigh of relief. Evening shadows deepened over Main Street, deserted now that locals and holidaymakers had ambled along towards the pubs and hotels.

  The sound of footsteps coming along the corridor outside her sitting room made the old woman turn awkwardly in her chair. It would be Fiona, no doubt, coming to tell her all the latest news. Jean Erskine’s front door was never locked, allowing the girl to come and go as she pleased.

  The old woman tried to hide her disappointment as she saw that it was not Fiona after all. However, it would not do to seem inhospitable to any of the kindly folk who made their way up these long flights of stairs to pay a visit.

  She smiled her welcome, though did not attempt to rise from her chair.

  ‘It’s yourself,’ Jean smiled. ‘Come away in and sit down.’

  She turned back to the window, her back aching slightly from twisting around to identify her visitor.

  ‘Another fine sunset,’ she remarked, gazing up at the rosy-hued sky. ‘It should be a grand day the morrow.’

  There was no answering voice replying with a pleasant remark, only the sensation that someone was standing right behind her: sharing the view, perhaps?

  Jean started as she felt the hands encircle her throat, raising her own in sudden panic.

  The scream she wanted to utter was silenced.

  Then the blood-red sunset turned to utter darkness as she choked against their grip, eyes bulging in her last astonished moment.

  He stepped away from the body slumped on that chair, looking down at his guilty hands. How quickly they had forced life and breath from her old body! He covered his eyes and turned away, not wanting to see what these hands had done, anxious now to quit this place.

  Then, unseen, the killer crept back down the stone stairs and disappeared into the darkening night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Glasgow

  Twenty Years Earlier

  ‘It’s a brown bag mo-rn-ing!’ someone sang to the tune of ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’, the man’s voice drowned in sudden laughter. Last night had been a busy one for the previous shift, the productions from several cases lying side by side in their brown paper bags. The level of humour was lost on the young officer who slid into his place in the CID room, however.

  The boy’s mutilated body stopped DC Lorimer in his tracks every time he came into the large room in Stewart Street. The ima
ge was pinned up on the gallery board that held various pictures of victims whose cases were still ongoing and he wondered how long it would be until someone else’s fingers pulled out the green pin tacks and removed the photograph for good.

  Immersion in water had taken its toll on that particular body, of course, several underwater creatures making their small marks on the flesh. But it was the wasted face that bothered Lorimer most, the boy’s eyes ravaged by marine creatures, no doubt, the way that he had seen crows peck out the eyes of dead lambs on snow-covered hillsides.

  Looking at those empty sockets reminded him of the play that Maggie had been teaching to her sixth year kids. She’d taken them to see a performance of King Lear at the Citizens Theatre and he’d agreed to tag along. It was not one of Shakespeare’s works that he knew at all and the violence had astonished him, particularly the scene where the old Earl of Gloucester had been attacked and his eyes plucked out: several pupils had visibly winced at the action on stage. The line from the play came back to him as he looked at the unnamed boy in the photograph: Out, vile jelly! Where is thy lustre now?

  He sat down at his desk, glad that his chair was turned away from the board, though he could almost feel the image boring into his brain. The pathologist’s team had done an amazing job in stitching the body back up but even their skill had not managed to repair the damage done to the boy’s poor face. And so there was nothing to give to the press, no photographic image that would jolt someone’s memory and give a name to the dead boy. Perhaps a clever artist might be able to simulate an image? he suddenly thought. Wasn’t there a department at Glasgow School of Art that specialised in portraiture? Why not try to have an artist alter the photograph on the wall to make it presentable to the public eye? DI Phillips had more or less given him the task of finding the victim’s identity, so why not go down that route?

  The thought was no sooner in his mind than he was gathering up his thin linen jacket and heading back out of the room. Nobody had pulled him out on another matter so far this morning and he just needed to let the desk sergeant know where he was going in case he was needed for anything else.