by Alex Gray
‘A practice run?’ Solomon had suggested earlier.
He had not been surprised to read the disgust on Lorimer’s face. Whoever this killer was, his profile was adding up to show a man of Machiavellian cleverness and ruthless disregard for human life.
Martin Enderby put the phone down thoughtfully. So. Not Forensic Pathology after all. Dr Brightman was not only a trained psychologist, but he was researching a book about criminal profiling. Here was a tasty bone for a hungry news-hound indeed. And the book would be a good enough reason to set up an interview. Then … Martin grinned to himself. Then he’d see what else he could find out about the St Mungo’s Murders. He picked up the phone once more.
‘I’m sorry, Dr Brightman has just left.’
‘Oh, just my luck!’ Martin groaned, affecting the tone of an anxious student trying to locate his tutor.
‘Is it urgent?’ The secretary’s voice became concerned.
‘Well, sort of. Do you know whereabouts he might have gone?’
‘He was heading for the Art School, I believe. He should be there within half an hour.’
‘Thanks. I’ll maybe catch up with him there.’
Martin replaced the phone and grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. The Art School! Was there some new lead concerning Lucy Haining that he should make it his business to find out about? Martin’s long legs took the stairs two at a time. Whatever Dr Brightman might stand and stare at this time, he wanted to see it too.
CHAPTER 17
Sauchiehall Street certainly expressed the dichotomy of Scotland’s largest city, thought Solomon, as he turned into the main thoroughfare and headed west. Buses rumbled along Hope Street between ranks of pedestrians impatient for the lights to change. More than once, Solomon had held his breath as some old dear rushed out, defying the traffic. They seemed to lead a charmed life in this city, for he’d never seen an accident yet. Once in the pedestrian precinct, Solly slowed down, taking a professional interest in the mass of humanity coming and going. Snatches of conversation floated past him, accents betraying both the cultured and the couthy.
‘C’m ere, youse!’
A young mother wheeling a buggy yelled at her two older offspring who were weaving in and out of the human traffic. Giggling, they dashed over to their mother’s side and Solomon watched, amused, as they made faces behind her back. Pensioners sat on benches, some merely staring at the world going by, but others intent on feeding the feral pigeons. Behind him the Big Issue sellers were plying their wares outside Marks & Spencer’s and the shopping mall. In doorways buskers expressed their social outrage in plaintive song to the world at large, but to nobody in particular.
Solomon glanced up at Mackintosh’s elegant Willow Tea Rooms, an early twentieth-century gem, though the School of Art was the real jewel in the celebrated architect’s crown. Here and there, tucked into quieter side streets, were the galleries where contemporary artists now made their names. Solomon had wandered around some of them occasionally, his eye favouring the brighter abstracts which commanded attention. But today he would not be distracted from attending to a much more sombre view.
Leaving the main street, the psychologist began the steep climb which would take him up to the Art School and beyond, to Garnethill. A young traffic warden was taking note of a white Toyota whose owner had left it overlong at the meter. She kept her head down as Solomon passed, grinning to himself. He had never learned to drive and affected to despise governments which allowed too much road traffic and contributed to hazards like pollution and road rage. Death from a traffic accident provoked a certain resigned sadness, of course, but the deaths of Lucy Haining and the other young women were an outrage that society must refuse to accept.
Solomon crossed over to where the School of Art towered above him. It seemed stark and bleak today, casting its shadows towards the area where one of its students had ended her bright prospects. As Solomon glanced at his makeshift map, he did not notice a tall figure standing above him on the steps to the main entrance.
At first his eye was caught, not by the main building at all, but by a vehicle parked on the opposite kerb. The blue Art School minibus bore an uncanny resemblance in size and shape to an ambulance.
Solomon crossed the street to take in the vista of this celebrated School, itself a work of art. High over the entrance swung a bow of black metal serving as a token arch. Its keystone was a plain black box, rudely interrupting the flowing line like some purely functional appendage. Yet on closer inspection it became a sinister rectangular mass glaring at the world with one all-seeing indigo eye. Below the black-banded windows, unkind spikes and knotted buttresses of thin metal led the eye downwards to the railings with their abstract motifs.
The curving stairs made a pleasing invitation to proceed up towards the entrance, but the grubby white doors set with purple and blue eyes did not beckon. Rather it seemed a challenge to enter this holy of holies. Solomon smiled to himself, catching sight of a blonde student who now lounged against the railings. Clad all in blue denim, she was flicking cigarette ash onto the hallowed steps, seemingly oblivious to the mystique around her. Perhaps familiarity with the School as a workplace bred contempt? Solomon looked around him. To one side the newly cleaned Victorian tenements of Dalhousie Street fell away steeply. On the other side a conglomeration of concrete and glass pressed close, its ugliness in sneering contrast to the refinement of the School of Art.
He would return to wander the interior and tread the floors where Lucy Haining had daily trod. But not yet. Pausing to look both left and right. Solomon eventually decided to retrace his steps and continue up Dalhousie Street towards that cross on his map.
As the sun shone down on the streets it was hard to see this place as one where evil had stalked. There was such an air of normality, the public going about their business. Three schoolboys in green uniform passed him by, laughing and chattering; an Asian woman swathed in cloths of gold and brown glided along, her plastic shopping bags rustling by her side.
Solomon slowed down as he came to the square of waste ground. This was where murder had taken place. Nobody had seen anything suspicious on that cold winter night and, looking at the adjacent buildings, Solomon could see the advantages of choosing this as a place to conceal an act of murder. The tenement building on one side was covered in scaffolding for what seemed a long-term project. Each and every window was boarded up. Blind eyes overlooked the patch of ground. Today, men in white overalls were clambering over the tubular scaffolding. The psychologist could hear them whistling as though the air around them had never been contaminated by evil.
He walked around reading what he saw like some familiar language. The proximity to the School of Art had added a dimension of creativity to this long-neglected area. On top of the lamp-posts squatted fat black metal pigeons looking as though they were quite capable of muting down the length of each tall, thin pole. In some ways, Solomon thought, this was typical of much of Glasgow’s urban regeneration where smart new developments in red brick with landscaped corners cocked a snook at their older, worn out neighbours. On the far side of the waste ground, tenements huddled together, some with neo-classical features still clinging to the stonework; a few still hopelessly grimy with more than a century’s dirt.
Continuing to walk round the perimeter of the site, he came at last to where the killer must have taken Lucy. A narrow lane bounded the area on one side, flanked by a high brick wall. Uneven cobbles, which were more like bricks stuck haphazardly into the ground, caused him to stumble. Above the wall, branches of barbed wire swung menacingly on metal brackets. The psychologist shuddered. Even in broad daylight it felt unsafe to walk here. Suddenly he stopped and stared. Built directly into the wall was a strange house on two storeys, resembling the back portion of a warehouse. And then, just as he stood there, a young woman emerged from the front door, closed and locked it behind her, and marched purposefully down the lane. Solomon looked at the house again. There were two doors, one at street l
evel and the other like the entrance to a store, set on the first floor. Each was painted a bright, defiant red. There were windows on this side. He presumed the police had questioned the residents to no avail and, with a resigned sigh, turned to the waste ground itself. The ashes of bonfire night were now only a black patch in the winter grass. A few scrawny ash trees would create a screen from the road in high summer, but as yet they were leafless.
Lucy had used this lane as a short cut to her friend’s flat. The killer knew that, Solomon told himself. He walked back up the lane then turned and strolled alongside an imaginary Lucy, engaging her in … what? Conversation? Argument? He stopped before reaching the red-doored house and tried to imagine the situation. Had her killer taken Lucy by the shoulder in an embrace that was meant to look protective but that was actually steering her towards her death? What had made the girl stop on her journey? The scalping had taken place in a corner of the ground where the shadows from the wall and trees were darkest. Yet the place would never have been discovered had Janet Yarwood not intimated that Lucy might have been on her way to see her: she often came that way. Painstaking police work, thought Solomon, ungrudging in his admiration for Lorimer’s team. The lane would have done just as well. In fact, it would have been a duplicate of Donna Henderson’s murder, and that, surely had been his intention? Had something gone wrong, then? Had Lucy struggled, run towards the waste ground in an attempt to break through the line of trees but been caught by the killer’s deadly chain?
Solomon was aware of the silence. From where he stood, the city’s roar of traffic was muffled by the thick wall and there was not a soul in sight. The killer must have stood here, his victim at his feet, ready to transport this latest corpse by ambulance to St Mungo’s Park. The lane had a no parking sign at its entrance, Solomon had noted. Mon–Fri 8.15–5.15 p.m. Any vehicle outwith these hours would be legally parked and hardly noticed. Had he stopped in the ambulance and beckoned Lucy, the way he had with Alison Girdley? But Lucy knew this ambulance; she had been the one charged with its purchase in the first place. So. She knew her killer, maybe even liked him, and would wait patiently while he drew alongside her and called out her name. Or was he parked there already? One way or the other Solomon felt that there had been an implicit trust on the part of the girl. The killer had beguiled her somehow or else she was unaware of her danger. Why? To answer that, he must find out much, much more about Lucy Haining and every person she had known in her student life. It was not only a murderer he was looking to profile.
The lane took Solomon back out to the street that ran downhill to the city centre. Here Garnethill overlooked the city from all points. To the west, the white spires of Trinity speared the sky. Beyond lay the university and Solomon’s own small patch of belonging. Down to the north the buildings faded into misty greys, the street lights beginning to cast a weak glow. South lay the river. As Solomon walked back along Scott Street, the Art School appeared like a safe canyon against the wilderness outside. Huddled into the steep incline was the side door to the Centre for Contemporary Arts. Even as he glanced that way a couple emerged from the building. The CCA was open late every evening, he knew; sometimes it hosted a club night but mostly it was simply a hang-out for students, art students in particular. Solomon wondered if the centre had been investigated in the course of Lorimer’s lengthy inquiries. He made a mental note to ask – tactfully.
Straight ahead the river Clyde lay hidden, caught between the amalgam of buildings sprawled on either bank. Traffic criss-crossed the intersecting streets like a never-ending game in an amusement arcade. Push in a coin, see the buses ride the grid. Buses, taxis, post office vans, cars, ambulances … Their dim roar was like an animal breathing in its sleep, unseen and languorous in daylight but lurking by every watering hole come sundown.
The ambulance would have slipped into the main stream of night-time traffic then crossed through the gates of St Mungo’s Park. On impulse Solomon hurried down the last few yards to Sauchiehall Street and hailed an approaching black taxi.
It was that half-light of evening that motorists so dislike when the taxi drew up at the park gates, the evergreen bushes looking burnt orange in the glare of headlights. The park was no longer manned, though infrared detectors and closed circuit television cameras remained discreetly in place. But the gate was firmly shut. Solomon looked back at the retreating taxi that had swung an effortless u-turn and was now heading towards the city. The journey had taken sixteen minutes. What had been going through the killer’s mind during that journey? He had already made the dry run with poor little Donna Henderson, so he knew what to do here. But how could he be sure that a police presence would not disturb his activities? Even more so with Sharon Millen, he thought. Unless … Could the killer have had information about police movements? Or had he simply strolled around to check whether it was safe to repeat his original performance? Any cold-blooded murderer would seek to cover his tracks, but someone in the police force would have insider knowledge that could work to his advantage.
The photofit of the killer showed a trim, clean-cut individual. They had even made a joke about him looking like a copper. Yet so many men of this age group had that cropped hairstyle; defiant punk or a convenient attempt to disguise a receding hairline.
Solomon leaned against the park railings, forcing himself to consider this possibility. A sudden vision of Lorimer’s steely blue glare flashed across his mind. The Chief Inspector would not take kindly to this idea at all. Oh, no, indeed.
CHAPTER 18
It was almost too easy once he’d stopped to think about it. Martin had missed the black-bearded psychologist, who had not been at the School of Art after all, it seemed. The journalist had hung around watching the students come and go for a good half hour. He’d watched the entrance like a hawk, waiting to see whether Brightman would emerge, but the only figure he had recognised was Chris, the art student who’d bought that print at Davey’s exhibition. Martin had smiled as he passed him by on the street but the guy had just looked right through him as if he wasn’t there and walked on. Only minutes later a janitor from the School’s design workshop had strolled up and asked a few bland questions. The man’s meaningful look had almost encouraged Martin to whip out his Press card but, preferring anonymity, Martin had feigned the air of a tourist overawed by the sight of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s great work. The janitor’s look had remained sceptical, though, so Martin had taken himself off, cursing the time wasted. Later, however, the way to weasel information out of the psychologist had come to him in a flash of brilliance.
Martin chuckled to himself as he slotted the cassette tape into his machine. Diane’s sexy voice made the hairs on his neck tingle and there was a growing warmth in his groin. A small involuntary sigh of pleasure escaped him as the thought of her flickered across his mind.
The preliminary courtesies of the interview were coming to a close and Diane’s firmness of tone signalled the beginning of more interesting dialogue.
‘Tell me, Dr Brightman, what sort of response does psychological profiling receive from the police?’
‘In general, you mean?’
‘Well, I know it’s used a lot in the United States, but is it well thought of here in Britain?’
There was a pause in the conversation and Martin could imagine Diane, legs crossed, smiling in encouragement at Dr Brightman, researcher into what made murderers tick.
‘Yes and no,’ came the reply. Martin expected Diane to pounce on that prevarication but she kept a measured silence. ‘There have been cases in England where the techniques of criminal profiling have been used to great effect. The results are often surprising to the investigating officers when regular methods have drawn a blank.’
‘Do you feel that regular methods, as you call them, are outdated, then?’
‘Oh, no.’ His rejoinder was swift this time. ‘I have great respect for the methods used by the police. In many ways we follow similar lines of thought. We do not only ask why something like a
murder took place but we try to stand in the murderer’s shoes. Like Father Brown.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘G.K. Chesterton.’ Martin and Solomon replied together, and Martin grinned. He must remember to tease Diane about that one. But Solomon was enlarging for her benefit. ‘The Father Brown stories. He was, in his way, the classic profiler. He put himself in the murderer’s shoes, so to speak: tried to think as he would. Clever, really. A priest, you know. The confessional and all that.’ The psychologist’s voice drifted away as if his thoughts had taken wing elsewhere.
‘So the police are beginning to use psychological profiling here in Scotland?’
Diane was clever, thought Martin. Brightman had not actually mentioned Scotland yet.
‘Ah, yes. It is not only confined to their counterparts south of the border. Oh my, no.’
‘And the Scottish police value your services?’
There was another silence. Hello, thought Martin, anybody there?
‘I did not say that the Scottish police used my methods,’ the psychologist began slowly.
‘But they do?’
‘Yes.’
The admission seemed reluctantly drawn from him.
‘Will you use any of the cases in Scotland in your book, Dr Brightman?’
Clever girl, thought Martin, take him round the houses.
‘Ah, that depends.’
‘On what?’
‘Well. I think a certain case might generate much interest to readers. But then again I could not use it until there is a satisfactory outcome.’
‘You mean until a particular murderer is caught?’
‘That might not always be the same as a satisfactory outcome.’
‘But surely that’s what you are aiming for?’
‘Usually, yes.’
‘Tell me, Dr Brightman, this particular case – has it anything to do with the St Mungo’s Murders?’