Keep The Midnight Out (William Lorimer)

by Gray, Alex

  ‘Did Jock Maloney seem upset when you told him about what your great-aunt had seen?’

  Fiona’s eyes slid away from his for a moment as she considered.

  ‘I don’t think I’d call it upset,’ she began, a frown creasing her brow. ‘But he suddenly seemed a bit less friendly, if that makes sense. I thought he was just being moody.’

  ‘Is that normal for him?’

  ‘No, not really. He’s usually a good laugh,’ she said. There was a pause as she blew her nose again then gazed into Lorimer’s eyes. ‘I can’t imagine Jock doing anything bad, honest I can’t. He’s a nice man, even when he’s fu’ of the drink. Some guys aren’t.’

  Lorimer nodded, wondering just who had soured this young woman’s attitude. Had she seen belligerent drunks at the hotel where she worked? Or, more likely, had she witnessed the unpleasant side of drunkenness after some of the late-night dances in the town?

  ‘Okay, Fiona. It looks as if the McIvers are looking after you well here. DI Crozier will let you know when you might go back to your aunt’s house.’

  Fiona shook her head. ‘Don’t think I’ll ever be able to face being there without her,’ she whispered, reaching out and clutching the policeman’s hand.

  Jock drove along the narrow road, his eyes glaring furiously at the twists and bends. The forestry turn-off ought to be somewhere just along here, and then, hidden in the depths of the trees, the old woodman’s hut where he and Richard could hide out. He cast a quick glance at the young man hunched on the passenger seat beside him. It wasn’t his fault he’d turned out the way he was, Jock supposed, eyeing the dark hair falling into his face and the soft skin on his son’s curving jaw that rarely needed a razor. He’d been proud of his boys once, he reminded himself. His Keith and his Richard, named after one of his ex-wife’s favourite rock musicians.

  He’d had such hopes for his boys, dreams that they’d make their own names out in the world, away from the restrictions of small island life. Keith had done all right but Richard… oh what had happened to make Richard turn out like this? How had it happened? Was it something that had gone wrong before he’d even been born? Or had the boy turned away from normal heterosexual behaviour for some other reason? And could he be to blame for that, somehow?

  The questions chased each other round and around Jock’s brain as he slowed down to take the next bend on the road, his heart thumping as he gave a quick glance in the rear-view mirror just in case they were being followed. If only the old woman hadn’t seen him on the street that night…

  Now they were running from the forces of the law, two fugitives who were mixed up in a boy’s untimely death.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Glasgow

  Twenty Years Earlier

  The pains began as she rolled over onto her back, something that the midwives at the antenatal clinic had told Maggie to expect. Sharp pains, between her legs, as though a muscle had suddenly gone into spasm. It would pass, she told herself, like the intermittent heartburn that seemed to come on a daily basis now.

  Maggie wiped her brow, surprised to find beads of sweat coming off on the back of her hand. It was a hot afternoon and she had decided to lie down for a nap, the previous night’s sleep having eluded her. A quick swallow of water from the glass at her bedside did nothing to help a faint sense of nausea. Was she coming down with something, was that it? Nothing at all to do with the pregnancy? She lay back with a groan. Everything was to do with the pregnancy; her bladder and stomach were all being squashed any old way by the baby, weren’t they? No wonder she was feeling sick.

  Well, at least the wee one had finally stopped kicking her like a football and gone to sleep. Typical, Maggie thought with a smile, the baby deciding to drop off in the daytime after a night of rumbustious activity. It had to be a wee boy, she thought, affectionately running a hand across her belly; they were such restless creatures, always on the go. She thought of the boys in her first year class, untidy wee tykes, most of them, although they had begun the academic year smartly dressed in their uniforms, ties neatly knotted, shirts clean. But by the end of the session, most of them had copied the older lads, got into scrapes, gathered up enough courage to whisper cheekily behind their hands when the teacher wasn’t looking – she always knew, even when her back was turned as she wrote something on the blackboard. But then the last day of term had come and these same little scamps had surprised her by shyly presenting gifts and cards to wish her well. Maybe a boy wouldn’t be so bad after all?

  The next pain made her cry out, then a hot, wet feeling on her pants made her sit up and pull aside the sheet.

  Maggie stared in horror at the blood trickling down her pale thighs.

  Was this what they called a show?

  It couldn’t be happening so soon. Her due date was still weeks away. Unless there had been some mistake with the doctor’s calculations? That could have happened, couldn’t it?

  Heaving herself up into a sitting position, Maggie stretched out one hand for the telephone that lay on her bedside table. With trembling fingers she dialled the number of the surgery, wondering already if her next call ought to be to her husband.

  ‘I’ll let him know, Mrs Lorimer,’ the voice said, leaving Maggie with the panicked feeling that she was on her own with whatever was happening. Another spasm hit her lower abdomen and she cried out, real tears stinging her eyes.

  ‘Mum,’ she moaned, remembering that her mother was away in Edinburgh today, a visit to an elderly cousin whose number Maggie didn’t have. And Mum had never expressed an interest in having a mobile phone of her own. I’ll be there if you need me, she’d said, only a day or so ago. But now she was somewhere that Maggie couldn’t reach her and tears of self-pity began to roll down her cheeks.

  She struggled to the edge of the bed, dashing them away with the back of her hand, angry with herself for the sudden weakness. People had babies all the time, she told herself. She’d just got the dates wrong, that was all, she reassured herself. It would be a late July baby, not a September one after all.

  But when she looked back down at the red stain spreading below her thighs, Maggie felt a sudden fear grasping at her heart.

  He didn’t deserve that glorious rainbow arching across the fields. A stand of birches obscured the sky for a moment as the train swung around a bend on the track, then it was there once more, faint hues from crimson to orange blending past the rain-streaked window of the railway carriage. None of the people in the seats opposite him seemed to have noticed, heads down in newspapers or magazines, a few already tucking into their sandwich lunches. He hadn’t eaten anything for two days, stomach heaving at the very thought of food.

  The man staring out of the window licked dry lips, wondering how to explain his lack of hunger to the folks back home. A gastric bug, he’d pretend. Hadn’t he always been good at pretending, conning the women in his family into letting him play hookey from school when all he’d really wanted was to watch the children’s programmes on television?

  His head was deliberately turned away from his fellow passengers, a strange reluctance to let anyone look at his face lest they see what he had seen in the mirror: the face of a killer.

  The train rocked steadily along, pine trees fringing sky that was a shade of heavenly blue behind grey and threatening clouds. The weather might change several times over before they arrived at the ferry terminal. Would the sea be calm or choppy for his crossing? The hills clear or blotted out by mist? Did it matter? Once he had played a game with himself, trying to see if there would still be that frisson of joy as the bus turned the corner at the top of the Guline Dubh, the distant town glimpsed for a moment.

  But now, despite the hasty flight from the city, he was not even sure that he ought to be going back to Tobermory again, a place that would surely be darkened by his very presence, contaminating the town with a shadow of evil.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Glasgow

  Twenty Years Earlier

  ‘Get your
self home, Lorimer,’ DI Phillips ordered. ‘Sounds like you’ll be wetting your baby’s head pretty soon, eh?’

  The DI slapped him on the shoulder and Lorimer returned a weak grin. They all knew in a vague sort of way that his wife was expecting their first child but the day-to-day business at A Division took precedence over even the most important family events. Or at least until now, Lorimer told himself, taking the stairs two at a time. George Phillips had been decent in telling him to push off, hadn’t he? He was a father himself, of course. Had he been at the birth of either of his two girls? It was something he would ask him later, he thought, hurrying out to the car park, once everything was over and they were celebrating with him.

  The nurse at the hospital had been fairly brusque on the telephone, letting him know that his wife was in the labour suite and wanting him to come as soon as possible. Every light seemed to change to green as though Fate were urging him on as he sped across town, foot on the accelerator of his old Toyota, desperate to be at her side.

  Maggie stared up at the ceiling, its bright lights making her blink. She had been given this hospital gown, a thin cotton affair that hardly covered her, but none of that seemed to matter now. All she was concerned about was what was happening in her body, the pains increasing so that she cried out, unable to help herself. The doctor had hurt her, his fingers probing in the secret cavities that seemed not to belong to her any more. He’d nodded towards the nurse, both of them making eye contact above their green masks, their heads shrouded in surgical caps.

  It wasn’t what she had expected. Birth was supposed to be a joyous affair, wasn’t it? Painful, yes, the midwives hadn’t minced their words about that aspect. But the mess left on her bed at home, the two paramedics shuffling her onto that stretcher, covering her with a blanket and strapping her body down, that wasn’t what Maggie Lorimer had anticipated at all.

  And where was Bill? Would he get here on time? She felt another contraction, a wave of pain shuddering through her body.

  ‘Here, breathe in through this,’ a voice told her, and Maggie saw a pair of deep brown eyes above the nurse’s mask as she handed Maggie a black rubber device.

  ‘Gas and air,’ the nurse told her. ‘It’ll ease the pain,’ she added, placing the bulbous thing over Maggie’s nose and mouth. ‘Deep breath, that’s good.’

  Then the thing was taken off and Maggie gasped, simultaneously glad to be rid of the horrid thing yet relieved at the respite from pain that it had produced.

  ‘A wee bit early, aren’t we?’ The nurse patted her hand. ‘Never mind, soon be over.’ The woman’s eyes crinkled in a tremulous smile above her mask then Maggie watched her glance over at the doctor who had taken his stethoscope from around his neck and was listening for the baby’s heartbeat. Maggie felt the cold steel go from one part of her belly to another, her eyes seeing only the top of the doctor’s head as he bent to his task.

  Then, as he rose, there was a moment of utter silence when he looked across at the nurse and gave a tiny shake of his head.

  ‘What? What’s wrong?’ Maggie struggled to sit up, frantic now that something bad was happening to her baby.

  ‘Shh, don’t get upset now.’ The nurse was at her side, holding her hand. ‘Lie back, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘Just going to give you something that’ll help things along, Mrs Lorimer,’ the doctor was saying and there, in his gloved hands, Maggie saw the syringe and a faint arc of moisture catching the light as he approached the bed.

  ‘William Lorimer. My wife’s having our baby. Margaret Lorimer,’ he gasped out as he reached the reception desk.

  ‘Up to the third floor. Lift’s just along there.’ The woman pointed out before looking back down at her paperwork.

  Lorimer waited as the lift slowly made its descent from an upper floor, watching each lighted numeral as it changed. Then, with a ping, the doors were open and several people pushed past him on their way out.

  He was alone in the lift as it rose smoothly and silently upwards, his heart still thudding after the mad dash across the crowded hospital car park. Then the doors opened, light flooding into the corridor as he gazed frantically at the signs on the wall that indicated directions to different wards. The labour ward: that was surely where she would be? he thought, his long strides taking him down another corridor.

  ‘Can I help you?’ A curly-headed nurse behind a U-shaped desk looked up as he approached the end of the corridor.

  ‘Margaret Lorimer? I’m her husband. I got a call…’ Lorimer was suddenly lost for words.

  ‘Just take a seat there, Mr Lorimer, will you. I’ll find out how she’s doing,’ the nurse said, her eyes not meeting his own. And her tone was gentle, the sort of voice that PC Winters, the female police officer, might put on when she was talking to a grieving parent.

  Lorimer stood, watching as she disappeared through a doorway, a feeling of utter helplessness washing over him. Something was wrong, he knew that, had known it from the time the desk sergeant had found him to say Maggie was on her way to hospital. It was too early, far too early. Could a little baby survive being born eight weeks prematurely? He didn’t know.

  It was true what they said, he thought, this pacing up and down might be a cliché but who could possibly sit still when the life and death of his family were happening somewhere beyond that closed door?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ somebody was saying. ‘So sorry.’ Whose voice was it? Was it someone she knew?

  Maggie drifted on the hazy waves of a drug-induced sleep, the voices coming and going. Bill was there, she knew that now, could feel his hand stroking her face. A great sigh trembled through her as she remembered where she was.

  Then her mouth opened in a silent cry.

  The baby was gone. Born before his time.

  ‘Oh Maggie, my love, my love,’ she heard her husband whisper just as the waves of sleep engulfed her once more, pulling her under the blankets of darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Glasgow

  Twenty Years Earlier

  ‘Take as much time off as you need,’ George Phillips’s voice was gruff with emotion.

  Words not said, thought Lorimer, words felt inside but never uttered: wasn’t that just typical of a policeman? We duck out of confronting our own horrors, he told himself, so beleaguered are we with the awful things that other people do to one another.

  ‘Thanks, boss,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  ‘No need to hurry.’ There was a pause. ‘That nice wife of yours needs you there more than we do right now.’

  He put the telephone down at last, heartened by the concern in the DI’s tone. Phillips wasn’t one for flowery speeches at the best of times; he told it as it was, giving his officers the facts to work with and expecting them to deal with the fallout from criminal cases and the messes that human beings made of their lives. So he hadn’t been surprised by the terseness of the phone call. Phillips had said everything he’d needed to hear.

  ‘Who was that?’ Maggie asked, walking slowly from the kitchen, her hands clasped round a glass of water.

  ‘DI Phillips,’ Lorimer replied, looking up at her pale face, a pang of sympathy washing over him at the sight of the unwashed hair tumbling around her shoulders. ‘He’s told me to take some time off.’

  Maggie nodded, eyes downcast as she shuffled past him on her way to bed once more. Lorimer caught her arm and shepherded her gently up the stairs, feeling her wince as something inside caused her discomfort. What had she been through? His mind refused to go there; he would not try to imagine the labour suite and the cries of anguish she must have uttered.

  ‘Here,’ he said, helping her into bed. ‘Want some company?’ He smiled crookedly, the edge of the duvet in one hand, an invitation to lie down beside her, warm her body with his own.

  But Maggie said nothing, just shook her head, looking away from his face as though afraid to see the tenderness in his eyes.

  She had been sent home after one night in
hospital, a lonely night when he had stared at their bedroom ceiling, unable to sleep for the knot of pain in his chest; why? The question that could never be properly answered thudding in his brain.

  ‘I should have been here,’ Mrs Finlay wept, hugging her son-in-law, patting his back as if she knew how much it affected him too.

  ‘I don’t think that would have made any difference, Alice. They say the baby had stopped breathing before…’ He broke off, swallowing hard.

  ‘I know, I know.’ She tried to smile through her tears. ‘It’s just so sad, all those months she’s been carrying it… him.’ She shook her head, unable to continue.

  ‘We’ll have other babies,’ he assured her. ‘Just wait and see. Whole tribes of little Lorimers will be running around making your life hell before you know it.’

  She laughed. ‘Give her a chance, she’s only just home.’

  They smiled at one another then, Lorimer catching her hand lightly in his own.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ Alice gave a sigh then sniffled into her handkerchief, the tears coming once again. ‘S-silly old woman that I am,’ she gulped.

  ‘Hey, don’t say that,’ Lorimer protested gently, catching her arm before she moved away towards the kitchen. ‘We’re all grieving for our little boy. What’s so silly about that?’

  ‘I know,’ Alice nodded. ‘But it doesn’t seem as though he was ever really here, does it?’