by Alex Gray
‘Feeling bad?’ he asked, as if she were an old acquaintance and not a stranger who was also his prisoner. He heard the sigh first, then Janis raised her head and looked at him. There was a brightness in her eyes that spoke of unshed tears. Her little nod and a flicker of recognition were all Lorimer needed to know he’d begun to win her confidence.
The door clanged open and the uniform strode in, proffering a tumbler of water and a strip of foil containing two painkillers. Both men watched as she unwrapped them, her fingers shaking as she clutched the glass and tilted back her head, then swallowed.
‘Thanks,’ she said, her voice hoarse. But it was to Lorimer that she spoke, to Lorimer that she handed back the empty tumbler.
‘You’ll have been told that we have to keep you here till tomorrow?’ he asked quietly, a hint of apology in his voice. She nodded again, but her head had drooped once more and Lorimer sensed she was withdrawing into herself, just as Mitchison had described. ‘You can talk to me if you want to,’ he told her. There was no response at all this time and as the minutes ticked past he realised that there was little point in trying any longer.
As he turned to leave, the silence inside that cell was redolent of misery.
‘Hi, anybody home?’ Lorimer shut the door behind him. As if in answer, a questioning meow came from somewhere near his feet and he looked down to see a ginger cat regarding him with interest.
‘Maggie! There’s a cat in the—’
‘I know, I know. It’s okay. He’s just staying over for a bit.’ Maggie was there, smiling at him from the kitchen doorway, one eyebrow arched in amusement.
‘He? Who does he belong to?’ Lorimer was already hunkering down to the cat’s own level. A tentative outstretched hand was met with a furry rubbing against his fingers and the beginnings of a purr. As he began to stroke the soft pelt, the cat reared up slightly, butting its head on Lorimer’s knee.
‘Friendly enough, I’ll say that for him. Where did it come from?’
‘Ah.’ Maggie came into the room and perched sideways on a chair, swinging her bare tanned legs. ‘Now that’s a good question, Chief Inspector,’ she began pertly. ‘Don’t actually know yet. He just appeared in the garden and he’s been with me all afternoon.’
‘It must belong to somebody, surely? I mean, look at the coat, it’s in good condition.’
‘He was really hungry, though. You should’ve seen the way he wolfed down a whole tin of tuna. Must have been starving, eh, boy?’ Maggie slipped off the chair and knelt down beside them. At the sound of her voice the cat turned its attentions from Lorimer and began rubbing the side of its face on Maggie’s ankles.
‘Well, seems he knows which side his bread’s buttered on,’ Lorimer muttered.
The cat shifted suddenly and sat, looking at him with green, unwavering eyes. It’s waiting for me to make the next move, Lorimer thought, recognising a tactic he often employed himself. He was aware of Maggie keeping very still, holding her breath. The ginger cat continued to stare at him, its front paws neatly together. A sigh came from Lorimer’s chest, breaking the spell, and he reached out and picked up the animal, cuddling it closely. Burying his face into the warm fur, he felt the thrum of purrs reverberate into his chest.
‘Looks like we’ve got an overnight guest, then,’ he murmured and looked up to catch Maggie’s grin. You’re as big a softy as me, her look seemed to say.
‘I’ll phone the local vet tomorrow, see if anyone’s lost him. You never know, he might be microchipped.’
‘And if nobody claims him?’ Lorimer’s question hung in the air.
‘Well, I thought …’ Maggie’s eyes were on him, beseeching. ‘We can’t send him to a cat rescue place. Imagine being banged up in this weather.’
Lorimer had a vision of Janis Faulkner’s face. She was incarcerated now on this hot July evening and Lorimer had a sudden urge to release her back into the wilds of Mull to wherever she had been going. As if aware of the change in his mood, the cat slipped out of his arms and strolled towards the kitchen and the open back door.
CHAPTER 4
Staying still had its advantages. If she did try to change position then the numbness in her limbs would wear off and she might remember what it felt like to be alive. That moment by the lochside, when the fresh morning breeze had wakened something inside her, seemed to be from a different age now, not a mere couple of days ago. She’d travelled up to Oban with a renewed sense of purpose; Lachie had said to come up any time. Why not? she’d asked herself. It would have given her a little respite, time to lick her wounds. Her mouth curled into a sardonic smile. Some wounds never healed. A little sigh escaped her and one leg moved as if of its own volition.
The springs of the other bed creaked, only inches from her face, and Janis froze. What if the woman were to wake up and try to engage her in conversation again? She might be a plant, for all Janis knew. Okay, her imagination was working overtime but she had reason enough to be paranoid. Running away from it all hadn’t been the answer; it had only delayed the inevitable. Now silence seemed to be her only option. Silence here and now in this cell where the only sound was of another person’s breathing; silence before all of their questions. She’d learned a long time ago to switch off her emotions. Nicko had been an unwitting teacher, not beating her into submission so much as driving her out of the place where everything hurt. It was a trick she could manage whenever things became too much, slipping into that other place where no voices could reach her, no eyes force her to face what she had chosen not to face ever again. They’d all tried already; a female solicitor they’d dug up from somewhere – a whey-faced woman with untidy hair escaping from a failed attempt at a French pleat – the police who had pressed her with questions for hours and now these prison officers with concern in their eyes and bunches of keys inside their pockets.
Janis sighed, remembering. They had looked at her with suspicion as if she was some sort of threat. Not to them, but to herself. She had seen the exchanged glances, heard the concern in the nurse’s voice as she asked her, ‘Are you feeling suicidal? Do you feel you might hurt yourself?’ She wanted to say she was feeling just fine, thank you, never better, but as Janis lay there in the darkened cell, she knew that was a lie.
A rasping noise alerted her to the viewing hatch being lifted and she could imagine one eye pressed up against it, checking to see that she was all right. Holding her breath, Janis waited until the square flap was shut once more. They were watching her, waiting for her to make a mistake. But she wouldn’t do that, she couldn’t.
She’d endured the humiliation of being stripped and searched but the journey here had been the worst bit, Janis decided, remembering how she’d sat with knees bent in that dog box. At least they’d taken off the handcuffs once she was in the van, the bus, whatever it was. She couldn’t remember these details. And then there was that other girl travelling with her, talking all the time. Desperate for Janis to answer her back, the girl had rambled on about how the system worked. Janis had pretended to ignore her fellow prisoner, aware of the officer listening to the girl’s voice going on and on. But, as they’d been taken out from the prison transporter, she’d heard a whisper at her back, ‘Dinna laugh or they’ll think ye’re on drugs. Dinna cry or they’ll think ye’re a psycho.’
The young girl’s words stayed with her now, like a mantra: dinna laugh, dinna cry ...
‘Janis Faulkner? Not a lot from background reports, I’m afraid.’ The voice on the telephone sounded slightly apologetic. ‘No criminal record. Very little to go on if her lawyer is looking to plead temporary insanity. But we have been keeping her under observation.’
Detective Chief Inspector Lorimer shook his head. There was something about the woman that troubled him. A plain old fashioned admission of guilt tempered with a good enough reason for her actions was what he was really after, but this strange refusal to speak did smack of something deeper. Was it more than simple shock at seeing a person fall dead at her feet? It was as if sh
e’d reneged on any kind of human communication, the mental health nurse had told him. Maybe she was genuinely unbalanced, but she had driven away, she had taken money out of an ATM as if there had been some calculation in her thoughts and actions. Her psychological assessments were expected later this week. Now, having obtained the necessary permission from the Procurator Fiscal, he was going to drive out to the prison in Stirling to see her once again.
Cornton Vale women’s prison had suffered badly at the hands of the press. A spate of suicides several years back had given the tabloids the opportunity to rubbish the institution and yet there had been several innovative and far-sighted changes over the years. But the institution itself continued to be a target for any adverse comments, with some liberal thinkers even suggesting that a women’s prison was not a requirement of any civilised society. They hadn’t seen the inmates, thought Lorimer. Many of them were in thrall to drugs, had been since late childhood, following a pattern that had become too well established within family circles. Half a century before they’d have been taught to knit at their mammy’s knee, now it was a different sort of needle that took their attention and for some of them the prison was the only place where they could actually come off drugs. The staff included some pretty special people as he knew from his visits; it took a strong heart to cope with the variety of humankind that came and went.
Set in a housing estate on the outskirts of Stirling, one could be forgiven for thinking that this HMI establishment was in fact a continuation of the rows of white, pebble-dashed terraces. Lorimer parked the Lexus and walked back towards the main entrance, ready for the necessary measures that always accompanied such visits.
Janis Faulkner was waiting for him in a little room adjacent to the reception.
‘Janis, this is Detective Chief Inspector Lorimer. He’s the senior investigating officer in your husband’s case.’ The female prison officer made the introductions, her voice gentle, reminding Lorimer of that tone reserved for the bereaved, the grieving, but Janis Faulkner did not look as if it was grief that troubled her. That tense face was closed against something else, Lorimer thought. The female officer sat in a corner, her duty to ensure that the prisoner remained safe from this policeman and his questions. Admittedly, it was pretty unusual for the senior investigating officer in a case to actually visit the prison, but Lorimer felt they saw him as an interloper. That was not how he wanted Janis Faulkner to see him, though why he was so bothered about her opinion he wasn’t entirely certain.
‘Janis?’ he began, bending his head to see beneath the woman’s fringe of fine, blonde hair. It reminded him of a child’s hair and he wanted to touch it, to sweep it from her brow and take that heart-shaped face in his hands and tell her that everything was all right. But years of experience made him resist such impulses, knowing that they came from sheer pity.
She sat staring at the floor, her hands clasped together, unmoving. If there was an expression on that pale face it was impossible to read.
‘Do you remember me?’ Lorimer tried again. ‘I was in Mull, waiting for the ferry as you arrived. Just coming home from my holidays … then we met in Glasgow …’ He tailed off. For an instant her head was raised and a pair of grey eyes regarded him as if from far away. There was a flicker of recognition then the merest nod of her head before she relapsed into her study of the linoleum. Lorimer looked at the prison officer who gave an exaggerated shrug as if to tell him he was wasting his time.
‘Hasn’t your lawyer told you things will be much easier if you write a confession? Pleading guilty when the case comes up for trial can affect the sentence dramatically. Especially for a first offender,’ he wheedled. But the woman made no response at all and Lorimer suppressed a sigh. He’d wondered about her state of mind on the day her husband was killed. She could have been pre-menstrual. There were plenty of cases where women had flipped under a rage of extreme hormones to attack their husbands. And some of them had been given fairly light sentences. Should he mention that yet? Probably not. But he might talk to the psychiatric doctor over in the medical wing. See what she thought.
Lorimer studied the woman in front of him. Her unexpressed misery seemed to fill the room. Could there be any possibility that she was in fact not guilty of this crime?
‘Maybe you can tell us who you think killed Nicko?’ he muttered, his voice barely reaching the officer. Janis Faulkner did not move but Lorimer felt her stiffen and for a few seconds he waited.
‘Janis?’ His voice was gentle, the tone reserved for calming a wild creature that had started from the undergrowth and stood caught between fear and flight. Only there was no flight for this young thing, he thought, unless she had already escaped to some distant place deep within her self. ‘Janis? I’d really like to help you,’ Lorimer said softly, but he sensed that she had left the room already, only her physical presence remained, and that he was speaking to himself.
‘If you change your mind,’ he told her, slipping his card across the dark wooden table that divided them. ‘I can always listen.’
CHAPTER 5
‘We can’t keep the media at bay for ever,’ Ron Clark insisted. ‘There’s going to be a lot of speculation now they know that it’s his wife. Why not simply hold a press conference now and get it over with?’
The man sitting hunched beside him on the empty terracing did not speak. His eyes wandered over Kelvin’s grounds, visualising his team out there in the new season’s strips: white shirts with a diagonal black band. It was an irony now. They’d have to issue black armbands for the opening match. He gritted his teeth. Faulkner would have raised their profile for a bit, put the wind up some of the clubs in their league, he thought. Even if the mid-fielder was a bit long in the tooth, they had bought him knowing he had still some mileage left, and some charisma too, he nodded silently to himself, remembering the man’s roguish eyes and the engaging way he’d spoken with all of the backroom staff the day he’d signed for Kelvin. Letters and cards of sympathy had been received from his ex-club mates in Sunderland, all saying the same thing: how he’d been such a well-liked lad...
‘Pat?’ Clark’s voice penetrated the chairman’s thoughts, banishing that vision of his new team. ‘Look, I know Nicko’s murder’s been a helluva shock, but we need to say something. Even if it’s just to tell them how devastated we all are.’
Patrick Kennedy sighed resolutely. ‘Okay. But you talk to them, will you? Say we are being supportive of the family. Keep it vague. Don’t mention anything about the wife if you can help it. And …’ he paused for a moment, ‘see if you can turn the spotlight on to Jason White.’ Kennedy nodded to himself. That might be a good tactic. Concentrating on their other new signing so soon after Nicko’s death might deflect attention from the bloodiness of it all, and White, with his nightclubbing lifestyle, was a potential headline grabber for quite different reasons.
‘Ach, well, it’s that time of year. Everyone’s busy with new faces. Maybe this will all blow over once the season begins.’
‘It had better,’ Kennedy replied shortly. There was too much riding on this new team of his. What he really didn’t need was a backlash from the fans or a slip in the team’s morale. Support was required from every angle and it was Kennedy’s job to see that it was forthcoming. Ron could handle the press. He’d been hired after the sacking of their previous manager when they’d suffered the ignominy of relegation. Ron Clark had come to Kelvin with an excellent track record and the respect of many in the world of sport. Kennedy trusted this man to put his message across.
The chairman of Kelvin FC stood up heavily, still gazing at the rows of empty seating. Alone at one end of the pitch was Kelvin’s trusty groundsman, Albert Little. Kennedy watched him in the process of fixing new netting to one of the goalposts. Wee Bert, as everybody knew him, was ferociously dedicated to the club; not a pin would be out of place, not a striped line wavering when the turf was cut. Even today, under the hot July sun, the man was concentrating on his task with the kind of dedication
that had won him the trophy for best groundsman in the Scottish Premier League in three consecutive seasons, a feat of which he was rightly proud. The chairman’s eyes passed from one end of the park to the other, then, with his mouth closed in a determined line as if he had reached some unspoken decision, Patrick Kennedy made his way back down from the directors’ box to the darkened passages that led into the club.
The cement steps echoed under his shoes and he glanced down at his feet, noticing the gleam of polish on black leather. Attention to detail, he’d told his players season after season, then repeated it to the string of managers who had come and gone from the club. As he walked out of the sunlight into the shadows, Kennedy passed a hand over his hair. It was thinning now but that didn’t prevent him from having it groomed by the best stylist in Glasgow. Attention to detail, that’s what made all the difference. If Janis Faulkner had killed Nicko then maybe the media would focus less on the club and more on the footballer, his wife and his background.
The last thing Kennedy wanted was a lot of journalists sitting on his doorstep, digging for dirt.
Maggie gave a deep sigh. Usually her husband’s first week back at work after their summer holiday made her feel oddly bereft, what with his enormous backlog of emails and catching up in general, but today would be different. She peeked at the cat carrier on the passenger seat beside her, borrowed from a neighbour. The ginger cat was sitting sphinx-like, his paws tucked underneath his body. He’d slept outside somewhere but at the first sound of the back door opening he’d trotted into the kitchen, tail erect, greeting Maggie with a little meow of recognition. Now he stared ahead, quiet and alert. He must be used to cars, Maggie told herself; he must belong to somebody. She tightened her lips in resignation at the inevitable. They’d be bound to find the owner and give him back, wouldn’t they?