by Alex Gray
Gibson’s main concern had been for the minimum disruption to the trains. They’d keep the North Hanover Street entrance cordoned off from the public and platform 7 was out of commission meantime, but the station would open for business as usual. Lorimer yawned. It wasn’t yet daylight and he had hours of work still ahead of him. These nine-to-five commuters didn’t know they were living.
Chapter Two
It had been a long day. Rosie stretched out with a yawn that made her jaw crack. It was good to be finished at last, she thought, sinking into the leather folds of her favourite chesterfield in the University staff club. The post-mortem had shown death by strangulation and it looked like the ligature was the dead woman’s own scarf. Forensic testing would verify that eventually, of course.
Lorimer had brought along his lanky Highlander to observe. Give the lad credit, thought Rosie, swirling the ice cubes at the bottom of her brandy glass, he’d not blanched at the sight of her opening up the cadaver. Some of them simply fainted away, usually the big macho ones that wouldn’t flinch in a bar room brawl when glasses were flying. But DC Cameron had watched with an interested detachment as if he’d been one of her senior med. students.
The staff club was quiet tonight, just three elderly gentlemen discussing academic something-or-others over by the fireside. Rosie found the sound of their low voices soothing. She didn’t want to make small talk or any other sort of talk until she had to. Despite her tiredness there was an underlying excitement. Solly would soon be here and then she could give him an account of the day’s events.
Lorimer had assured her that the psychologist would be invited on board for this investigation. Although he was the Senior Investigating Officer, the procurator Fiscal still had to be consulted. However, he hadn’t shown any worries over Solly’s involvement.
The queer sight of that carnation pressed between the woman’s hands still bothered Rosie. Straight forward murder was OK but weird stuff like that gave her the willies. She considered the wording of her draft report. She’d outlined the position of the praying hands resting on the woman’s vulva. It was a point she’d already endowed with significance in her own mind though the report afforded no room for symbolic speculation. That was the area of expertise that she expected from Solomon Brightman.
Solomon. She gave a tiny sigh. There was something otherworldly about him that she found both attractive and exasperating, his timekeeping, for instance. He was notoriously late for everything and tonight he’d already kept Rosie waiting for the best part of an hour. So why did she do it? Rosie asked herself. She was not a naturally patient person, just the opposite, but since getting to know Solly she’d found herself habitually waiting in the staff club where they’d meet up after work. He didn’t drive so Rosie often dropped him off home even though his flat was less than ten minutes’ walk through Kelvingrove Park.
Rosie Fergusson was hooked and it surprised her. Solly wasn’t her type at all. He had no great interest in socialising other than to sum up his fellow man, but he seemed happy enough in her company even though he’d been a bit shy to begin with. They’d met in the most inauspicious of circumstances, the locus of a grisly murder in Garnethill, and she’d taken an instant liking to him.
The ice had melted in her glass. Rosie slurped the watery dregs, considering whether to have another and leave the car parked overnight. She could always take a taxi home. If she didn’t get a better offer, a bad little voice murmured in her head. Rosie grinned at the delicious naughtiness of the thought then looked up to catch the barman’s eye.
‘Same again, please,’ she smiled at him, holding out the glass.
‘Rosie.’ Suddenly Solomon was standing there looking down at her, his eyes twinkling gently behind those horn-rimmed spectacles.
‘So sorry I’m late. Had to take another class for one of my colleagues. Fellow I told you about, remember? He’s having a bad time of it, poor man.’ Solly unwound an enormous knitted scarf from his neck as he spoke, his expression somewhere between apologetic and glad to see her, as Rosie noted with delight. ‘There,’ he plonked himself down beside her and flung an arm around her shoulders, giving a friendly squeeze.
‘Never mind that,’ Rosie told him. ‘You’re here now and I’ve been dying to tell you what happened today. Lorimer’s got a new murder case and he says you’re going to be asked onto the team.’
‘In that case I’d better have a drink, don’t you think?’ Solly grinned at her. ‘Before you tell me the nastier bits.’
Rosie waited impatiently as he sauntered over to the bar then returned with a pint glass of orange squash.
‘That all you’re having? I thought you’d be needing a double vodka at least,’ she joked.
‘Really? OK, let’s hear it.’
‘Well, it started off this morning. Early. And I mean early. Something like four o’ clock. Peter and I were called out to Queen Street Station. It was bloody freezing. Anyway. A woman’s body had been discovered in the lift between the upper and lower levels. Strangled. Probably with her own scarf.’
‘Any idea who she is?’
Rosie shook her head. ‘Looks like a prostitute and there are plenty of traces of semen. No handbag, nothing in her pockets; young, probably early twenties. She’d been dead long enough for rigor to set in.’
‘Sounds pretty normal,’ Solly put in. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound callous, but why do they want me?’
‘Ah, that’s the interesting part. Whoever strangled her didn’t just leave her lying there in a heap in the corner.’ Rosie paused for dramatic effect. ‘Wait till I tell you. They stuck a flower in her hands then put them together in a praying position. Like this,’ she added, placing her hands palm to palm, pointing down between her legs.
Solomon did not respond for a moment, gazing at Rosie’s hands.
‘What sort of flower?’
‘A red carnation. One of the long-stemmed sort. Why? Could that have any significance?’
‘Possibly. For the killer, at any rate.’
‘What about the praying hands? D’you think that might have some religious meaning?’
‘How can I tell? I haven’t even seen a report, let alone been asked officially to comment.’
‘OK, let’s look at this clinically. We’ll say that God created Eve with the anatomical advantage of having arms that stretch towards the genitals; that might simply be the way they fell but I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘Wait till you see the photographs. It really looks like he’s made a kind of ritual out of the flower and the hands. It’s been done so carefully. But what I wanted to ask you is, why place the praying hands downwards like that? Why not fix them up so that they looked as if they were really praying?’
‘You’re hoping I’ll make the leap between the genital area and a sexual motivation,’ Solomon gave her a half smile.
‘Sort of. I don’t know. She’d certainly been sexually active. There was semen in her mouth as well as in the vagina.’
‘Lorimer thinks it’s a stranger killing, then? Just because of the flower?’
‘I think so too, Solly. It wasn’t like the killer was sneering at her. It was different. As if…oh, I don’t know. As if he had some sort of remorse, maybe.’
‘A valedictory message, perhaps?’
Rosie squinted up at him. Her excitement had evaporated between waiting for Solly to arrive and his almost diffident response to her news.
‘I thought you’d be pleased to be working on another case with us,’ she huffed.
The psychologist gave a sigh. ‘I’ll be highly flattered to be asked, but my workload right now is pretty scary. With Tom’s classes…’
‘Solly, you don’t mean that!’
‘No, of course I don’t.’
‘Then you’ll come on board with us?’
‘If you’re sure I’ll be asked. What about Superintendent Mitchison?’
Rosie made a face. The new superintendent was not making himse
lf popular with anybody. Rosie and Solly had met him at George Phillips’ retirement dinner, never really expecting him to take over from the Divisional Commander. They’d all seen the Super’s job as Lorimer’s and it had been a shock when Mark Mitchison was appointed to the post.
‘Mitchison would probably ask you to sign several forms in triplicate,’ Rosie snorted, ‘but he’s not the SIO in this case. It’s down to Lorimer. Anyway, I don’t think Mitchison would oppose your involvement, especially if it gets the press off his back. Having a celebrated profiler will give him all the kudos he wants.’
‘Well, we’ll see,’ Solomon replied, nodding gravely into his orange squash. ‘We’ll see.’
‘Yes!’ Jimmy Greer punched the air and sat back down in front of his computer screen. It had paid off. A bit of chat here, a backhander there, ach, it was all in a good day’s work. Tonight there’d be punters tut-tutting over the murder of some scummy wee whore but they’d be reading his byline. Jimmy’s nicotine-stained teeth grinned out from his moustache as he typed in the copy. The police press Conference hadn’t given that much away but Jimmy had his own methods of filling in the blanks left by tight-lipped senior officers. So far he’d avoided any brushes with the Press Complaints Commission, though he’d sailed pretty close to the wind a few times.
DCI Lorimer was in charge of this case and Jimmy knew he’d be lucky to get anything off him. Still, there were always hard up coppers who’d tip him the nod whenever there was something salacious enough to tempt the senior reporter.
Greer hunched his long, cadaverous frame over the desk, his reddened fingers tapping out the details he’d gleaned about the murdered woman. She’d still to be identified but from the description the man Gibson had given him, he could tell what she had been, all right. Anyway, no self-respecting woman should have been out in the station at that time of night.
Chapter Three
The case of Deirdre McCann was headline news for three days. By the end of the first week the political situation in the Scottish Parliament had taken precedence over the dwindling paragraphs concerning the prostitute’s bizarre killing. Then there was nothing. Even Jimmy Greer couldn’t manufacture a news item from thin air. Oh, yes, the case was certainly still a live one, he was assured, but damn all was happening, or that was how it seemed. He’d managed a piece on her mates for the Sunday supplement. There were lots of photos of the women lounging against walls and smoking. But his text had been padded up by the prostitutes’ own stories. Not much was really known about the McCann woman. Twenty-three, originally from Airdrie, a known prostitute and heroin user, she’d been on the game since her mid-teens. There was no family in the background causing a ruckus, which was a pity. Both her parents were dead and her only sister didn’t want to talk to the Press. Sometimes the family angle could keep copy going for weeks with protests about police incompetence thrown in for good measure.
DCI Lorimer hadn’t forgotten Deirdre McCann though she’d been dead now for almost three months. Intensive police work had uncovered her identity and her manner of death but even with the help of Dr Solomon Brightman there had been no way forward in the case. Unless they were very lucky it would remain unsolved, adding yet another layer of discontent to Lorimer’s present mood.
As he sat as his desk, scanning the latest memo from Mitchison, Lorimer wished for the hundredth time that George Phillips’ taciturn face would appear round his door, demanding action, demanding results. But Lorimer only saw him whenever the former superintendent called round on some committee business for the Chief Constable. The new man in charge of the division was a different kettle of fish from old George. Fish was right, thought Lorimer. Mark Mitchison was a cold fish if ever there was one. He went by the book, didn’t even take a drink or socialise with the lads. Lorimer had nursed some promotion hopes of his own, as everybody knew, so it looked too much like sour grapes to be other than polite to the new boss, but Lorimer groaned inwardly every time they met. Mitchison was a paper man. He generated forests of administration and memos on a weekly and daily basis. Lorimer was fed up to the back teeth with him and had even considered asking for a transfer.
There was a vacancy for a training officer at Tulliallan, the police college, and he had gone as far as writing for an application form. But he knew fine it would end up in the bin next to Mitchison’s endless memos. Meantime it was put up and shut up. Maggie had been badly upset by his failure to secure the post of Superintendent. She’d seen it as a foregone conclusion, especially after the successful outcome of the St. Mungo’s case. They all had.
Accepting the commiseration of his fellow officers had not been easy. It had been even harder to persuade them to transfer their loyalty to this new man whom so few of them knew. Lorimer had met him on various courses and at George Phillips’ retiral dinner. He was a smooth, good-looking individual who curried favour with the Press boys. Anyway, it was done now, the man had been in the post for almost six months and if Maggie was disappointed by Lorimer’s failure that was just too bad.
A knock on the door banished all these thoughts from his mind and he looked up to see the dark head of DC Cameron appear.
‘A call from on high, sir,’ Cameron grinned. It was his oblique way of telling him that Mitchison required his presence. Why the blighter didn’t simply phone through to his extension baffled the DCI. It was yet another of the man’s annoying traits, using an officer to summon him to his office.
‘Sit down, Lorimer,’ the Superintendent waved his hand in a sweeping gesture. Mitchison was full of this sort of little thing: mannerisms that only irritated. You’d think you were being invited into a Papal audience, Lorimer had remarked to Alistair Wilson the first time Mitchison had summoned them into what had been George’s old room. Now, as he looked around him, Lorimer realised there was no trace of his old colleague whatsoever. The walls had been painted beige and there were mementoes from Mitchison’s career hanging everywhere. Lorimer glanced at them. There was plenty to show that the Superintendent had been busy in various parts of the globe. It was, reflected Lorimer, like a kid’s bedroom full of football pennants.
‘I really don’t know how to begin, Chief Inspector,’ Mitchison’s frigid smile was directed at Lorimer.
‘I understand that you have been contemplating a move to Tulliallan.’ The nasal voice was not asking a question. Lorimer clenched his teeth. Someone at the training school had been gossiping. He cursed inwardly. It was becoming like the bloody Secret Service the way this man kept tabs on them all. Lorimer shot him a look but said nothing.
‘Hm. Not too happy with detective work these days, perhaps. Too many cold cases?’
‘On the contrary, sir,’ Lorimer forced himself to be icily polite. ‘Just keeping my options open.’
‘In that case you’ll be pleased to increase your present knowledge of investigative procedures.’ Mitchison’s smile never faltered and Lorimer had a sudden longing to wipe it off the man’s face.
‘Part of the Chief Constable’s strategy for effective urban policing is to encourage you all to study methods used by police officers from overseas. This division is one hundred per cent behind him on this, naturally.’ The Superintendent rolled back and forth in his chair while Lorimer tried hard not to grit his teeth. Maggie was complaining that he even did it in his sleep these days. Mitchison’s nasal voice expounded the virtues of his latest ploy.
‘You may be interested to know that we have been chosen to play host to a most experienced officer from the State of Florida.’ Mitchison’s smile became almost beatific but if he expected Lorimer to grin inanely he was much mistaken. This DCI wasn’t giving the Chief Constable many brownie points for originality. It was only a few years back that there had been similar interest in comparative policing methods during the highly acclaimed Operation Spotlight campaign, when New York had supplied some specially trained officers to liaise with Strathclyde.
‘Officer Lipinski will be arriving at Glasgow Airport at 10.30 a.m. next Thursday. I want
you to be there to do the usual welcome-to-Glasgow on our behalf. Here’s the dossier. I think you’ll find it makes fascinating reading.’ Mitchison handed over a slim black file then raised his hand in another imperious gesture to show that the meeting was over. Lorimer stood up and dragged his chair over the thick new carpet pile.
‘Sir,’ he gave a swift nod before turning away. It was all he could do to stop himself clicking his heels and saluting the man. Once out in the corridor Lorimer strode towards his own room then halted abruptly. He needed some fresh air after that. In a few minutes Lorimer was down the stairs and out of the building. He took a turn away from the main part of the city, out of reach of any close circuit television cameras that would show his whereabouts, and headed for the nearest park.
Glasgow wasn’t short of wide green spaces. That was one of the things most visitors marvelled at. There were parks and gardens within walking distance of most parts of the city. And it wasn’t just the tourists who wandered among the flowerbeds and fountains. Summer brought out the mini-skirted office girls clutching their lunches in paper bags. The first blink of sun and there they would be, basking in the warmth as if it were Lanzarote instead of the west coast of Scotland. They were as predictable a phenomenon as learner drivers in the spring.