by Alex Gray
‘Find anything out from those two?’ he asked.
Martin shrugged. ‘Not really. Someone new to Forensics, I think. Anyhow, I shouldn’t expect there would be much left to test after a fire like that.’ He indicated the expanse of bald and blackened earth. ‘Seems to have done a thorough job.’
Davey didn’t answer, his eyes on the van now moving off in the direction of Strathblane. Martin followed his gaze. Whatever the prize-wining photographer was seeing, he couldn’t make it out. Ideas for a winter landscape, perhaps?
‘Right, let’s get back and put this lot together,’ he said at last, looking at his watch. Other folk might have time to stand and stare but he had a deadline to meet.
CHAPTER 15
Donna Henderson’s life lay in fragments within a plain buff folder. Despite the ubiquitous computer, hard copy was still the first point of reference for officers, and the lever arch files were stacked high in Lorimer’s Division. He sat with the folder open in front of him, examining statements several months old. Parents, friends, colleagues and neighbours had all contributed to the picture of who Donna had been. An ordinary lassie, Lorimer had decided at the time; one whose ambitions lay no further than the next good night out with her pals and maybe a holiday abroad, if she could save up her tips.
The young hairdresser had left school at sixteen to train in a local salon. She had apparently been happy enough to sweep up the floors, make tea and learn to shampoo clients’ hair. Then the take-over had come. A larger group of salons had bought out the shop and Donna had been given the chance to travel into one of their Glasgow branches. She had been thrilled at the prospect, a friend had said. Despite the cost of travelling into the city every day, Donna had loved her work there and was keen to learn. The senior stylist had been tactful about her progress. Enthusiasm had not been lacking, but she was not a fast learner. Nevertheless her cheery manner had been an asset to the city salon and she was both punctual and conscientious. Ironically it was that very conscientiousness that had been her downfall, Lorimer thought. A more rebellious spirit might have stayed out later with her pals and risked parental wrath; at least she would have travelled in company rather than seeking that solitary taxi home.
A taxi she had never reached.
Lorimer flicked through other statements. No boyfriends of any note. A few dates at the pictures in the company of lads she had known at school. Except one. Darren Hughes had met Donna at The Garage, a well-known city night spot, and had seen her twice thereafter. She wasn’t really his type, he’d said. Too chatty. He’d thought they’d shared the same taste in music, but apparently Donna had favoured a band that Darren considered passé and he’d lost interest quite quickly. Donna hadn’t appeared too bothered by the brief fling. A bit of necking in the back row of the cinema was about as far as the relationship had progressed. He might interview Darren again, but there was no obvious motive for murder.
Why the hair? Again and again Lorimer had tried to make sense of this aspect of the girls’ murders. ‘Can you guess what colour I’m going to have next?’ that voice had asked. There would be a few attempts at a voice match, Darren Hughes amongst them, but Lorimer had the strong impression that the voice on the telephone belonged to someone who had not yet sat across the table from him in the interview room.
Solly Brightman considered the murder to be deliberate and well planned. That was as may be. The psychologist was coming up with more answers now that he had been to Strathblane to see the locus of Valentine Carruthers’s murder. There was more to it than they could possibly guess, he had told Lorimer, driving the Chief Inspector into a barely concealed rage of frustration. He knew that already. Donna might have seen something incriminating, Solly had suggested. She could have been a threat to this man without even knowing it.
Now other questions must be asked of the people within this dossier. People who would show a greater reluctance to face the nightmare all over again and whose memories might be less reliable. The shock and aftermath of murder sometimes wiped out whole areas of memory for those close to the victim and they would cling to older memories of a younger, safer Donna. Lorimer had toyed with the idea of a client being involved. The trouble was that the city salon enjoyed a lot of passing trade and so not all their clients would be listed in the appointment book. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. But someone would have to make the effort to sift through that appointment book and to question the other employees at the salon yet again. Lorimer rolled his eyes to heaven. The Super had brought Solly Brightman into the investigation, but he would not necessarily provide the extra manpower to enable Solly’s theories to be tested. It’s always the same, Lorimer had fumed to his wife. The lack of manpower was the bugbear of every Division in the country. In a case like this, the bottom line was a longer day for the more senior detectives. Unpaid overtime, just part of the job. No wonder Maggie was cheesed off most of the time.
He closed Donna’s file and picked up the one marked ‘Carruthers V’. The full post-mortem report would take three weeks to prepare. Rosie had given him a start, though, by answering at least one question: who? His mind flashed back to the old derelict he had interviewed. He recalled the hacking cough, his cunning eyes and the wheedling tone of voice. Yet, despite his past he had felt sorry for the man, down and out as he was with no protection from the elements. And, he thought grimly, no protection from whoever had ended his unfortunate life.
But what was the connection between a young hairdresser and an old tramp? Had Donna been involved with charity work which might have brought her into contact with Valentine Carruthers? He doubted it, but it might be worth contacting Glasgow City Mission and checking out that line of enquiry. They might throw some light, too, on Valentine’s nocturnal movements.
Someone, somewhere, badly wanted rid of a young girl and an old man. The other two victims were camouflage, so the psychologist would have him believe. There is something wrong here, thought Lorimer, but until he could put his finger on it he would not dismiss Dr Brightman’s line of thought. Solly certainly would not wear the suggestion a young DC had made that Valentine had simply strayed into the abandoned ambulance and been the victim of hideous circumstances.
The old ambulance, he had noted, had run through the park. For the hundredth time Lorimer cursed himself for failing to follow up the old man’s comment. Perhaps he had been trying to hint at something he knew? Solomon believed now that Valentine Carruthers had known a great deal. The disposal of the old man by fire had taken some forethought and planning. So a thorough investigation into the tramp’s background was essential. Who were his cronies? What might they know of the old man’s involvement in the park?
‘Get yourself down to Kingston Bridge,’ Lorimer had instructed his youngest DC. ‘See if he took our advice and found a hostel. Ask around. Get to know his haunts.’
Lorimer hoped that gossip from amongst the street people would be forthcoming. It would certainly be welcome.
‘He thinks it’s finished,’ Solly had remarked at their last meeting. ‘He will believe that he has burned every shred of evidence to link him to the murders, including his association with Valentine.’
‘But is it finished?’ Lorimer had asked and Solly had shaken his head slowly.
‘Not at all. The paranoia he has displayed will only escalate, and his behaviour become equally unstable as a result.’
‘He could kill again?’
Solly stared the Chief Inspector straight in the eye.
‘Perhaps he already has.’
The ambulance had been sighted all over the United Kingdom, apparently. The process of elimination was tedious, given that every call to the Crimewatch programme had to be treated as potentially helpful. Now, however, there were several possible leads. One in particular interested DS Alistair Wilson, and it was this one that he needed to discuss with Lorimer.
‘Chap over on the South Side. An Asian bloke who deals in second-hand cars and scrap metal. A bit on the shady side, if you
’ll forgive the pun, but no form as such.’
Lorimer was scanning the report rapidly.
‘Says the vehicle went missing last October.’
‘Yes, sir. Can’t think why he didn’t bother to report it.’
DS Wilson’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. They both had a fair idea why the garage owner had not felt it necessary to involve the police in his business. Dodgy vehicles which should have ended up in the scrapyard were all too often sold on for a better profit to unscrupulous characters willing to risk driving about minus a tax disc and MOT certificate.
‘What made him report it now?’
‘Says he saw Crimewatch and felt it was his duty as a respectable citizen. He was all too anxious to know if someone had spotted it in his premises, is my guess.’
‘He’s probably hurt the VAT man over the years, but he’s not going to be had up for murder. Sangha. Ravit Sangha,’ read Lorimer. ‘He and his brother run the business, you say, and the brother does the scrap metal side of things.’
‘Sangha says that he has no record of who brought the vehicle to him,’ continued Wilson, ‘but he remembers it had been previously used by some type of rock band. He’d paid cash, of course.’
Lorimer read through Sangha’s statement once more while Wilson waited expectantly. It was up to his DCI to take the next initiative. In bringing the statement to his boss, he was already hinting that more could be done without actually asking for extra manpower.
‘What do you think?’
‘I could always go and see him again, lean a bit harder,’ Wilson smiled.
Sometimes his pleasant gentlemanly manner in dealing with the public was a blind for the hard steel beneath.
‘Do that. A second visit might shake him up sufficiently to jolt his memory. I want to know who owned that vehicle and where it went after it left Sangha’s yard. There’s a surprising amount of forensic evidence sitting in the file doing nothing. If we know the previous owner we can eliminate at least some of it.’
Ravit Sangha’s garage was situated on the corner of a busy dual carriageway and the main road leading to a sprawling housing estate on the South Side of Glasgow. The blue hoarding proclaiming USED CARS in white painted capitals overlooked a shabby yard with grimy whitewashed walls. There were cars lined up somewhat haphazardly, only a few displaying a price sticker on the front windscreen. Dark stains on the forecourt told of old oil spillages and there were empty plastic drums heaped into a far corner. The office was a jerry-built affair resembling the huts in school playgrounds: the sort that linger on far beyond their shelf life as ‘temporary accommodation’. Ravit Sangha may well have expected to progress to something bigger and better over the years, but the whole place had an air of defeat as if the receivers were not far off.
And now trouble had come in the shape of one old used ambulance. Why had he bothered to telephone? DS Wilson had asked himself. Sangha had been highly agitated at that first interview, protesting his good citizenship far too much for the Detective Sergeant’s liking. Lorimer was right. There had to be something more. Like where had the vehicle really come from and whether it had really ‘gone missing’ from Sangha’s yard. Answers to these questions would direct this inquiry forward for a change. Trawling through Donna Henderson’s case was becoming a wearisome exercise.
Less than an hour later the two CID men were on their way back to Divisional Headquarters. DC Cameron risked a glance at his sergeant as they weaved through the afternoon traffic. Grim satisfaction was registered on that usually expressionless face. Cameron smiled and found himself wishing that he could be a fly on the wall when their visit was reported to Chief Inspector Lorimer.
Lorimer’s raised eyebrows were just the reward DS Wilson expected as he narrated the events on Glasgow’s South Side.
‘You were spot on about the VAT,’ Wilson confirmed. ‘When I began to hint about the serious consequences of defrauding Her Majesty’s Inspectors the poor buggar became almost pale.’
A hint of a smile flickered over Wilson’s mouth.
‘So what was the real reason for contacting us when he had a can of worms like that to hide?’
Lorimer clasped his hands tightly together. He could sense an undercurrent of excitement in Wilson’s manner and knew the DS had something to tell.
‘A phone call. Some bright citizen had seen the ambulance in the yard and decided to put the frighteners on our friend Sangha.’
Lorimer inclined his head thoughtfully. Wilson picked up the cue.
‘Reading between the lines it’s probably no more than some idiot mouthing off the usual racial nonsense,’ he went on. ‘Still, it’s been enough to bring Sangha running to us before we came to him.’
‘What about the brother?’ Lorimer rapped out. ‘Ah, yes. Well, he sat there looking at us as if we’d crawled out from under a stone. Didn’t say a word at first but he backed up brother Ravit’s story once the thought of years of missing VAT loosened his tongue.’
‘I can imagine. And then it all came out?’
Wilson nodded. ‘It all came out. They’d paid cash for the ambulance from some rock band or other calling themselves The Flesh Eaters. No vehicle registration document, let alone MOT or insurance.’
‘Still, with a name like that they shouldn’t be hard to find,’ remarked Lorimer.
‘Also we have a description of two of them,’ Wilson added.
‘Fine. So we know where the ambulance came from. Any idea what happened once the Sanghas took possession of it?’
Lorimer’s light tone belied the expression on his face. He was staring at Alistair Wilson. He knew his sergeant’s ways so well.
Wilson paused to watch the effect of his words on Lorimer’s face.
‘Ravit Sangha sold that ambulance to Lucy Haining.’
CHAPTER 16
‘But we don’t need him any more. We can drop the whole investigation of Donna Henderson’s murder, look at Lucy Haining’s case and concentrate on the leads from Crimewatch. What do we need Brightman for?’
George Phillips sighed irritably. ‘I’m reluctant to sever the relationship between the university and ourselves, Bill.’ The Divcom gave a dry cough. ‘I really do think we should allow Dr Brightman continued access to the case.’
Lorimer glared at his superior, not caring to conceal his annoyance.
‘Let him sniff around meantime. I’m sure he’ll have his uses,’ Phillips concluded, shuffling some papers on his desk to indicate that this conversation was terminated.
Lorimer fumed to himself all the way along the corridor. George Phillips had been deliberately vague and his own remonstrations had cut no ice whatsoever. He suspected that there were wheels within wheels that he knew nothing of concerning the Divcom’s desire to use a psychological profiler. Maybe he would read something about it in the Chief Constable’s next annual report, he thought angrily, as he slammed shut the door of his own room, shaking Père Tanguy’s picture.
Lorimer looked up at Van Gogh’s postman. The sitter clearly wanted to be up and off about his business instead of staring at the artist for hours on end. Lorimer took a deep breath. Perhaps that was a bit like Solomon and himself, the one looking at shapes within a framework of his own creation, the other out and about in the world, trying to make sense of the disparate facts that he could find. He ran a hand through his hair.
Solomon Brightman would keep his afternoon appointment after all, despite Lorimer’s attempts to cancel it indefinitely.
‘No, I do not accept that I was wrong. I simply told you that the murderer had killed a targeted victim known to himself, and used the others as camouflage.’
Solomon Brightman spoke in his usual unhurried manner, refusing to show any anger to match that of Chief Inspector Lorimer.
‘We’ve spent far too many man-hours going over the Donna Henderson murder again, and now ordinary detection methods have given us quite a different lead.’
Solomon raised his hands and shrugged in that fatalistic gesture tha
t annoyed Lorimer so much.
‘The Crimewatch programme can hardly be considered ordinary,’ he said reasonably.
Lorimer gritted his teeth. He was stuck with Dr Brightman now and so any further argument would only be counter-productive. Solomon may have been having similar thoughts for he suddenly changed tack.
‘I’d like to look at the place where Lucy Haining was actually killed,’ he said.
‘All right. I’ll arrange for a uniformed officer to pick you up.’
Solomon shook his head. ‘I’d rather just wander around unobtrusively, you know.’
Lorimer resisted a smile, thinking a less unobtrusive-looking character would be hard to find. He then swivelled round from his desk and pointed at the maps pinned to the wall behind him. They were enlargements of specific areas in the city.
‘Here. This is Sauchiehall Street and these are the streets leading up to the Glasgow School of Art. Over the hill just there’ – his finger stopped at a point on the map – ‘you’ll find the waste ground.’
Carefully Solomon made a sketch of the area, writing the names of the intersecting streets and copying the cross which signified the place where the young art student had met her death. Up until now Solomon had concentrated his attention on St Mungo’s Park and its immediate environs. The city locations had suggested no more than places of dark opportunity. Doubtless young Sharon Millen had been killed in just such an area.
Deep down Lorimer knew that they had both been guilty of one simple assumption; that the first killing had been the one to be carefully planned and that the others were simply random slaughters intended to obfuscate the whole picture. Now they were faced with the possibility that the killer had been cold-blooded enough to begin covering his tracks with Donna Henderson’s murder.