The Bird That Did Not Sing (DCI Lorimer)

by Alex Gray

  And there they were: two fully grown otters emerging from the water’s edge on to a tangle of bladderwrack. The sun silvering their pelts made the creatures harder to see against the shining seaweed, but then, in a moment, they were playing together, bodies curving as they rolled and frisked along the water’s edge, blissfully unaware of the elderly couple watching their antics. For perhaps ten minutes the two otters romped by the lochside, then, as if something had called them back, they slipped into the water, their sleek bodies disappearing beneath the surface.

  ‘Whew!’ Peter exhaled, his eyes still on the sun-dappled water. ‘Don’t think we’ll see anything better than that on our trip, do you?’

  ‘Not even the Games? Or the Gathering?’ Joanne teased. ‘What about the news you had last night from Glasgow?’

  Peter smiled at her, the otters momentarily forgotten. ‘I know. Fantastic, isn’t it? Who would think that we would be invited to be so close to the royal family at the opening ceremony?’

  ‘It’s because we’re Aussies and MacGregors,’ Joanne reminded him. ‘That’s what the man said, wasn’t it?’

  Peter nodded. That was it, he thought. Yet why single out an ordinary chap like himself for such an honour? He smiled as he remembered the man’s words. You’ve been chosen to accompany the royal party, he’d said. And he would make sure that Peter was properly dressed for the occasion, even bringing him the specially inscribed sgian dubh that he had promised.

  As Peter MacGregor’s gaze shifted back to the Cuillins and their jagged tops, he was reminded of the small black-handled dagger he had been told to leave behind in Melbourne, and for a moment he shivered, a stray cloud passing over the sun and darkening the landscape.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It had been a while since he had visited this place, DS Wilson thought, as they rounded the corner of the avenue and parked outside the Lorimers’ home. The house, like all the others on this curved street, was a post-war villa, built to last, the mature trees and shrubs providing a screen against prying eyes. Like so many others it had undergone changes in the decades since the first residents had moved into this leafy avenue. Several houses had been extended, dictated by the tastes of the owners and the demands of growing families. Conservatories had been added over the years and some of the original slate roofs had been replaced by different shades of terracotta tiles, giving the avenue a less uniform appearance.

  Wilson looked up to his right, his eyes scanning the space between two of the houses. It was still there, he saw, and smiled. Cradled in the generous arms of an oak was an old tree house, its timbers weathered to a dull grey, half hidden amongst the leaves. He recalled the summer afternoon when he and Betty had brought Kirsty on a rare visit to the Lorimers’ home, the banging of the hammer attracting their attention. ‘A tree house!’ Lorimer had exclaimed, and they had all wandered to the edge of the garden to peer at the activity nearby, two small boys yelling encouragement as their father sat astride one of the sturdy branches. Wilson remembered the expression on Lorimer’s face as he turned to Maggie, her belly swollen with what was to have been their first child. ‘We could have one of those!’ he’d cried, eyes shining in anticipation of all the good things that fatherhood would bring.

  But it was never to be, Wilson thought, a moment of sadness clouding his vision. The neighbours’ two boys were long gone, grown men now, he supposed. And Maggie had never brought a live child into the world. Hopes of parenthood had faded over the years, her hysterectomy the final sign that they would remain a childless couple in a street full of families. Still, the old tree house had endured the passing years, its structure still visible behind the fresh new green of the emerging oak leaves.

  DS Wilson cut the engine and sat for a moment ignoring the officer by his side and looking at the house that should have been home to the Lorimers’ children. They had adapted it just for themselves, he knew, one of the big bedrooms upstairs now their main lounge, the lower floor all open-plan and airy, combining study, dining room and kitchen, with a bathroom at the back that a previous owner had added on. Maggie’s mother had stayed with them briefly after suffering a stroke, Wilson recalled, Maggie ready to relinquish her career in order to care for her mother. But that had never happened.

  Now there was this other woman, someone from the detective superintendent’s past; an old friend, Lorimer had said, from his school days. Wilson sighed, reluctant to walk up that driveway and knock on the door. He’d never been good at having to face the bereaved, choosing whenever he could to delegate such tasks to a female officer, such was his dread of having to cope with the emotional aftermath of a murder. McEwan would make the tea and offer the paper hankies, he told himself. But he would ask the questions. He had been appointed SIO, was acting detective inspector now, a promotion that he had never expected to happen, and as he sat looking nervously towards the Lorimers’ doorway, he wondered if he really wanted the responsibilities that came with this rank.

  ‘Sir?’ Detective Constable McEwan was looking at him quizzically.

  ‘Okay, let’s get on with it,’ Wilson said, stepping out of the car and letting the younger woman follow him up the path.

  The ring of the doorbell seemed to echo through the house, the two officers listening for footsteps within. The door was opened suddenly, however, as though the woman had been waiting for their arrival.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Wilson. Detective Constable McEwan,’ he said, nodding towards the red-haired woman who stood on the threshold.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, opening the door wider and standing to the side. Just as though she were the lady of the house, Wilson told himself, an irrational flash of annoyance making him frown; though to be fair to the woman, she had been expecting them, he reminded himself.

  It was pretty much as Wilson remembered: the desk in the bay window to the front, the old rocking chair still with its plumped-up cushions to one side of the dining area, a breakfast bar the only structure to separate the kitchen from the rest of this long, bright room.

  ‘Would you like to sit here?’ Vivien Gilmartin asked, indicating the high-backed chairs around the square table. ‘Easier to have tea,’ she said, moving towards the kitchen, where Wilson spotted a tray already prepared with three of Maggie’s best china teacups and saucers. He motioned McEwan to sit next to him while he regarded the widow with interest. She was smaller than Maggie, fine-boned and with the sort of pale complexion that redheads often had. Her black dress emphasised that slim figure, its full skirt sweeping just below knee length, elegant and understated as befitted a woman recently bereaved. Yet when Vivien Gilmartin returned with the tea tray in her hands, Wilson saw that beneath the pallor and the mourning clothes she was an exceptionally attractive woman.

  ‘I am sorry to have to…’

  Wilson bit his lip. Why was he apologising for doing his job?

  Her tentative smile, these green eyes trembling with tears; they had to be ignored if he were to carry out this interview with any success.

  ‘There are several things we need to ask you, Mrs Gilmartin,’ Wilson continued more briskly.

  Vivien nodded, a little sigh escaping from her lips. ‘I understand. William told me what to expect.’ She smiled at them both in turn, then lifted a silver teapot, one that Wilson had never seen before.

  ‘Milk? Sugar?’

  ‘We require information about your husband, Mrs Gilmartin,’ Wilson began. ‘Can you tell us exactly why he had come to Glasgow?’

  ‘Work,’ Vivien replied shortly, sitting at the table. ‘Charles was setting up a project with an African theatre group. Part of the wider remit of the Commonwealth Games is to provide cultural experiences for all the visitors to Scotland,’ she explained, looking at McEwan, who sat sipping her tea. ‘We would have been bringing the show to several venues, notably the Edinburgh Festival.’

  ‘Would have been? You mean it’s being cancelled?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Vivien nodded, eyes narrowing slightly. ‘There is no way it can
proceed without Charles.’ Her glance fell and Wilson detected a tremor in her hand as she laid down her teacup.

  ‘He has nobody to take his place, then?’

  ‘No.’ Vivien shook her head. ‘It’s quite impossible now. Charles was the driving force behind it all. Without him it is simply a non-starter.’

  ‘Won’t there be difficulties in cancelling it all?’ McEwan asked hesitantly.

  Vivien shrugged. ‘The Africans weren’t due to arrive for rehearsals until June. And the cultural programme for the Edinburgh Festival isn’t out until then either.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ McEwan remarked. ‘You must be disappointed after all the work that had gone in to make it happen.’

  Vivien gave a short, dry laugh. ‘Disappointed? I think that’s the least of what I am feeling right now.’

  ‘Who else was involved in the Scottish end of things?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘Oh, lots of people were involved, of course, but nobody we actually knew. At least, nobody in person. Various government agencies were behind it, of course. Masses of telephone calls. Lots of paperwork,’ she said.

  ‘So there wouldn’t be anyone visiting you at the rented flat, somebody who had a key?’

  Vivien shook her head. ‘I can see what you’re asking me,’ she sighed. ‘But it is as much of a mystery to me who was in the flat that night.’

  Wilson watched as she sat back, clasping her hands together on her lap, no doubt digging her nails into the soft flesh to stop from weeping.

  ‘Can you take me through the day of his death, Mrs Gilmartin? Tell me exactly what happened.’

  Vivien looked up, eyeing the two detectives in turn. She swallowed hard before answering.

  ‘I was out a lot of the day. Arranging the school reunion.’ She paused as though collecting her thoughts. ‘Charles went to the local theatre, the Citizens, where he was to put on a week of performances.’

  ‘When did he go to the theatre?’

  ‘Oh, late morning, early afternoon, I think. He was in the flat before that, on the phone to London mostly, making arrangements about the scenery, I think.’ She shook her head. ‘It was such a busy day,’ she apologised. ‘My head was full of the reunion and I was at the school all afternoon setting things up.’

  ‘But you came back to get ready?’ McEwan asked.

  Wilson gave an imperceptible nod, approving the officer’s question. A woman would ask that sort of thing, understanding the need to prepare for a special occasion.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what time was that?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘About five o’clock, I suppose. I gave myself time to shower and change, then left again just after six. The taxi came to the back door of the building.’

  ‘And how did your husband seem when you came back to the flat?’ Wilson wanted to know.

  Vivien’s eyes widened. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Didn’t I tell anyone?’ She looked from one to the other as though this was something that had never occurred to her. ‘Charles wasn’t there.’

  Wilson tried to remain impassive, though in truth his mind was already creating a possible scenario.

  ‘Did your husband expect to be returning with anyone from the theatre while you were out?’

  Vivien frowned. ‘I’ve really no idea. He certainly didn’t tell me he had any plans like that.’

  ‘Had anyone visited either of you at the flat?’

  ‘No. Nobody.’ She looked from one officer to the other, green eyes widening as the thought took hold. ‘Do you think he brought his murderer back with him?’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s the only explanation that makes any sense,’ Wilson said as they drove away from the Lorimers’ home. ‘Gilmartin brings someone back when his wife is at her school thing. Goes to bed,’ he turned to McEwan with a meaningful glance, ‘then is given a lethal cocktail of some sort, already prepared by whoever it was who came back with him.’

  ‘A woman?’

  Wilson raised his eyebrows. ‘Who knows? Some of these arty types swing both ways. Could’ve been a man. Could have been more than one person. And that,’ he said firmly, ‘is what we have to find out.’

  Lorimer looked at the initial report. He’d been there, done nothing to stop that female officer from washing the bed linen. Had he been too preoccupied with Vivien sobbing on his shoulder to imagine that the flat could possibly be a crime scene? No, he reasoned. His instincts would have made him far more cautious had there been any grounds for suspicion. A heart attack, the doctor had said, and they’d taken his word for it. Never once had the thought of murder intruded into his thoughts that night. And now vital evidence was missing for good. Was there something else they might have found? Had Gilmartin been in bed with someone other than his wife? The thought came unbidden to the detective’s mind just as it would in any case like this where so many possibilities had to be examined. Any traces in the bedclothes might have been tested for DNA and matched against the theatre people Gilmartin had known up here. Rosie had insisted that there was nothing like that on Gilmartin’s body, however. So perhaps whoever had lured the man into bed had administered the drink before the promise of any sexual play. Lorimer shuddered. He was glad that Wilson was in charge of this case, but each step of the investigation still came back to him in the form of these reports. Vivien did not know that, and he wasn’t going to let her know, though she must have suspected that he was keeping all further intelligence from her.

  The detective superintendent thought back to the previous year when he had scribbled his signature at the foot of that letter of invitation to the reunion. It had been a capricious moment, the memory of his youthful dalliance encouraging him to see her once again, but it was now one that filled him with a deep regret.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The man in the corner of the coffee bar sat reading the Gazette, his face hidden from sight behind the opened paper, a deliberate ploy to remain unseen by the person he had come to watch.

  As disguises went, his was fairly standard: false beard, a fashionable flat cap over his thinning hair and heavy spectacles that contained nothing more than ordinary plastic lenses. He had known this was the place that the couple frequented before Gayle Finnegan began her day’s work at the Albion Street offices, for it was not the first time he had spied on the young man.

  His newest recruit troubled him; that arrogant lift of his shoulders when he was asked to carry out a necessary action. As if he had done it all before.

  None of them had, the man in the corner thought. This would be entirely without precedent. The bomb exploding at the opening of the Games at Parkhead Stadium would signal complete and utter contempt for the foreign regime that headed up his country. Every time the man thought of it happening he had a queer sensation in the pit of his stomach, the sort of excitement that anticipation for a promised treat had always brought him as a small boy.

  As he waited for Cameron Gregson to arrive at the coffee shop, the man recalled the explosion in the Stirlingshire countryside the previous August. That had been a success, and according to his sources close to the security services, there was nothing to link any of them with the event. And there would be nothing to link them with the final explosion at Parkhead in July either. One of his team had served in Iraq, the bitter disillusion that followed making him a prime target for recruiting. But this was a different sort of war and his soldiers would remain anonymous. There would simply be a notice in the press about why their act of terror had been carried out. And it would be something that Scottish people would never forget, something to be written in the history books for all time.

  He watched the young couple come into Berits & Brown together, their body language giving away more than they realised. Or perhaps, the man thought, they didn’t care that their closeness and the way the young man pressed his thigh against the girl’s was noticeable to anyone who cared to observe them. That was fine. Gregson (oh yes, he knew the fellow’s identity all right) was doing just what he had been commanded to do:
infiltrate the very heart of the enemy’s territory, keep a close watch on all that was happening in the run-up to the Games.

  Looking over the edge of the newspaper, he saw Gregson look his way and for a heartbeat he thought his cover had been blown. But no, the younger man had turned away again and was talking to the girl, telling her what sort of coffee he wanted. That was good, he told himself as they left the shop carrying small brown paper bags containing their breakfasts. She had less than five minutes before making it to work on time. Gregson must have kept her lingering in bed this morning, he thought, looking after them and seeing the smile on Gayle Finnegan’s face as she cuddled closer to her boyfriend’s side.

  His own expression was quite impassive as he imagined the moment when the bomb exploded, that smile being wiped off the young woman’s face for ever.

  ‘You’re sure you’ll be all right?’ Maggie asked, turning back to see Vivien standing at the kitchen sink, one hand already in the pocket of her silk dressing gown. She’ll be whipping out the fags as soon as I’m gone, Maggie thought.

  ‘I’ll be fine. No need to worry,’ Vivien replied with a brittle little smile. ‘I don’t mind being on my own.’

  ‘Oh.’ Maggie stopped and turned back for a moment, the heavy satchel weighing on her shoulder. ‘You won’t actually be on your own all day. Flynn’s coming over this morning.’

  ‘Flynn?’ For a moment Vivien’s brow creased in an anxious furrow.

  ‘Our gardener. More of a friend, really. He’ll come in and make his own coffee. Knows where everything is.’

  In truth, Maggie had considered letting the young man know the circumstances behind the red-haired woman’s presence, but Lorimer had cautioned against saying anything at all while the investigation proceeded.

  Maggie closed the door behind her and set off for work. It had been a long Easter break, the red-haired woman’s plight taking up all of her attention, and now that Charles Gilmartin’s death was being considered as a murder investigation, goodness knows how long Vivien would be staying with them.