The Bird That Did Not Sing (DCI Lorimer)

by Alex Gray

  In the corner of the room was a narrow cupboard, its door ajar. And there, suspended from its rail, was a pretty blue dress, its ruffled neckline reminding him suddenly of the sort of frocks Maggie would buy for Abigail Brightman, his little goddaughter.

  This had been Asa’s room, Lorimer told himself. A young girl, scared to death by what she had seen, fearful that her own life was in danger. And somewhere in this city she was hiding from the men who had brought her here.

  She had tried to explain it to the girl, really she had, but her words had been met only by a blank, uncomprehending stare.

  ‘I am the bird who cannot sing,’ Shereen sighed, flopping back on to the bed at last.

  ‘Bird.’ Asa smiled, making her hand flap like the wings of one of the sparrows she saw from the window.

  ‘I wish we were as free as the birds, girl,’ Shereen said. ‘Then we could fly away and never come back.’ She bent towards the girl lying on the bed next to her own. ‘They told me they’d kill me if I let on. And they’ll kill you too, little one,’ she said sadly, looking at Asa. The girl had started to smile, but her lips closed as she caught the older woman’s tone.

  ‘Stool pigeons, that’s what they’d call us. Grasses.’ Shereen shook her head. ‘You don’t know what on earth I’m talking about, do you, darling?’ she said softly, stretching out a podgy hand to pat the girl’s good arm. ‘It’s a bad old world they’ve brought you into, Asa, and I don’t know how I’m going to get you out of it.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Mrs Porter folded the clothes that were still warm from the tumble dryer. The skimpy silk panties and matching bras that Vivi kept buying were ranged along the clothes horse to dry: no way would the cleaner risk that lady’s wrath by shrinking her expensive undies! She heaved the laundry basket on to her hip and left the utility room. The towels were to be stacked in the airing cupboard, then she could begin to put away the rest of Vivi’s things. Ironing next, she told herself with a sigh. There would be no more of Mr Gilly’s shirts to smooth under her caring steam iron, she thought sadly. Vivi had packed the whole lot up and sent them to a charity shop already.

  Funny that that nice tall man from Scotland should turn out to be a copper, Mrs Porter mused as she opened the door to the linen cupboard. And what an odd question to ask her! Did Mr Gilmartin wear pyjamas in bed? She shook her head, baffled by the ways of policemen. No doubt there was something significant to be had from her answer. ‘No,’ she’d told him tartly, ‘Mr Gilly never wore night things; always in the buff he was. Gave me a shock more’n once, I c’n tell you!’ The old lady smiled, remembering the silence on the other end of the telephone, then that discreet cough. Well, that Mr Lorimer had seemed happy enough at what she’d told him. And she’d been able to let on about Vivi’s sudden trip to the South of France an’ all.

  ‘Lovely time of year,’ she’d told her cleaning lady. ‘The lavender will be a mass of purple all over the fields in Provence.’

  Then she’d upped and went, hadn’t she? Place was always safe with Old Porter to see to things, that was for certain. And she’d given her a nice fat envelope.

  No, she didn’t ’ave any address for Mrs Gilly over there. And she hadn’t said ’ow long she’d be gone, neither.

  The detective superintendent sat looking out of the window of his room. Southern France in June. The hills would be a hazy blue stretching all the way to the Mediterranean, a sight he and Maggie had enjoyed from the plateau of Les Baux-de-Provence with its ancient instruments of war. And they’d enjoyed a memorable al fresco dinner in that exclusive restaurant that had cost as much as their entire holiday. Would Vivien Gilmartin make herself known in that sort of place? Or would she be holed up somewhere in a tiny French village where life rolled by ever so slowly, the locals minding their own business even when a ravishing red-haired actress appeared amongst them? Had she gone to France at all? Lorimer wondered. It was a bit rich, he thought, taking off like that while her husband’s murder was still being investigated. Hadn’t she been told to stay put? Well, the passport control office would soon be able to let them know if she had left the country. But after that? Was Vivien Gilmartin already out of his reach?

  His ringing telephone broke into his reverie.

  ‘Lorimer.’

  The furrows on his brow cleared as he heard the psychiatrist’s voice.

  ‘Dr Jones, what can I do for you?’

  Lorimer listened as the woman explained the reason for her call. Leila, the Nigerian girl at the detention centre, had been having strange dreams, dreams that involved the tattooed man, and she had begged the psychiatrist to use her magic to make them go away.

  ‘Sadly there is no magic to do that,’ Dr Jones told him. ‘But I listened to her and suggested that she let you come here. Can you do that? She seems to want to unburden herself of whatever has been haunting her. You don’t have a lot of time, I’m afraid. She’s due to leave here within the next week or so.’

  ‘I can come over later this afternoon,’ Lorimer told the psychiatrist. ‘And I might even be able to help her feel better. We’ve arrested two men for human trafficking,’ he added.

  ‘Good,’ she replied. But there was a congratulatory note in that single syllable that made him feel absurdly pleased. Dr Jones had struck him as a person who did not waste her words in lavish praise.

  ‘See you later then,’ he told her, and rang off.

  A knock on his door made him look up.

  ‘Alistair,’ he said, nodding at the entrance of his colleague. ‘What news?’

  DS Wilson sat down opposite the detective superintendent without waiting to be asked; old friends, they only stood on formalities if one of the top brass was present. He ran a hand across his thinning hair, the dark widow’s peak that had once been so prominent now threaded with grey.

  ‘The phials contained the poison all right,’ he began. ‘No doubt about that. Same as the substance found in the tox report. But no sign anywhere of a bottle that may have held the ginger wine.’ He gave a half-hearted grin. ‘Don’t suppose you checked your recycling bin?’

  Lorimer gave a hollow laugh. ‘It was put out while Mrs Gilmartin was there,’ he replied. ‘And if she did have a bottle of ginger wine in her possession, I never saw it.’ He shrugged. ‘She could have put it in our bin easy enough, I guess.’

  ‘You don’t have one of those cleaning guys who come around and wash your bins, do you?’ Wilson asked. ‘Betty always has to put money in a wee plastic bag at the door for our man.’

  ‘No.’ Lorimer sat up a little straighter. ‘Maybe we ought to have someone take our blue bin away for testing? See if any residue from a bottle of ginger wine happened to leak out?’

  ‘Aye, I’ll arrange for that to be done,’ Wilson said. ‘But even if we do find that, it wouldn’t be conclusive evidence.’

  ‘No?’

  Wilson shook his head. ‘A prosecuting counsel might suggest you’d put the bottle there yourself,’ he said, looking his friend in the eye. ‘The former lover helping his old flame to destroy the evidence.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘Why did she make such a stramash about having to stay with you and Maggie?’

  ‘She said there was nobody else.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Wilson retorted. ‘My guess is that she had it planned all along. The class reunion, the chance to reel you in again… I’m betting that Mrs Vivien Gilmartin had things nicely worked out.’

  ‘But she couldn’t have murdered her husband…’

  ‘Because she had the perfect alibi? Detective Superintendent William Lorimer?’ Wilson nodded. ‘That’s the one thing we’ve still to work out. It’s all there except for the timescale.’ He frowned. ‘But Flynn seeing her bent over that patch in the garden where he found the poison phials… well, there is so much circumstantial evidence here that we mustn’t rule her out. Plus,’ he nodded grimly, ‘the fact that the lady stands to inherit more than three million pounds of his estate. And,’ he wa
gged a finger in the air, ‘we’ve found that Gilmartin had planned to sink a huge amount of that capital into the African project. Bringing those people over and putting on a tour like that was going to cost him a fortune.’

  ‘And Vivien was less than keen that it should go ahead,’ Lorimer sighed, remembering the woman’s insistence that the entire project be cancelled.

  He looked past the man who was senior investigating officer in the hunt to find Charles Gilmartin’s killer. They had to locate his widow. And she had to tell them the truth.

  ‘We need to find the Nigerian girl,’ Lorimer told the assembled officers. ‘We believe she is still in the city and is probably terrified out of her wits. She may be accompanied by a Jamaican woman by the name of Shereen Swanson.’ He held up a blown-up picture. ‘This is Swanson. She has been on the Met’s radar but hasn’t blotted her copybook up here till now. Was involved with a Jamaican gang master in South Shields. We need to find out where they are.’

  ‘Sir, what will happen to Asa when she’s brought in?’

  Several heads turned to look at the rookie cop who was regarding the detective superintendent earnestly. Young Kirsty Wilson was asking the question that any soft-hearted person might want to ask. One officer gave a cynical smile as he turned back, shaking his head as if to say that Wilson’s girl would need to toughen up if she wanted to be as good a cop as her father.

  ‘That’s not up to us, Kirsty.’ Lorimer gave her a kindly smile. ‘If Asa is found she will be the responsibility of the immigration authorities. Poor girl might well want to go back home,’ he added, raising his eyebrows. ‘We have enough from Okonjo’s statement to know about this particular flat, but it seems there may well be others dotted around the city, a far bigger network of trafficking than we can imagine. And we want to nail it,’ he said firmly.

  It was all very well telling them this, Lorimer thought as he headed out of Stewart Street, but finding people like McAlpin was far from simple. They had been lucky, that was all. McAlpin had been under close surveillance and they had found one of his nests over in the East End; how on earth were they supposed to find every last brothel in Glasgow where underage girls were being held against their will?

  Would Shereen Swanson be able to tell them more if they located her? That had been his unspoken hope as he’d pinned the Jamaican woman’s picture on the whiteboard at the meeting. No other tattoo artists had come back with reports of the triple spiral being given to any young woman in their studios. So perhaps Okonjo’s story that he had brought over only three Nigerian girls had been true. Lorimer’s expression was set as he started the big car and drove out of Stewart Street car park, wondering just what awaited him at the detention centre.

  While Cameron Gregson was doing a reasonable impression of tour guide to the Australian visitors in the city of Stirling, two men were approaching an upper cottage flat in Croftfoot.

  ‘We’re not meant to arrive together,’ the white-haired man reminded his companion.

  ‘Couldn’t help it this time,’ Number Five replied with an easy shrug. ‘Had to get petrol and there was a queue like an execution.’

  ‘He won’t like it,’ the explosives expert pointed out, nodding towards the house.

  ‘Too many things he doesn’t like, if you ask me.’

  ‘You still take his money, though, don’t you?’

  The other man laughed. ‘Why not? He’s rolling in it. Who d’you think owns all these houses we’ve been meeting in? He’s one of the biggest buy-to-let merchants in this godforsaken city.’ He pushed open the small metal gate, then turned to Worsley. ‘Our little capitalist wants to start his own private army once this is over. Did you know that?’ He gave the older man a keen look.

  ‘No,’ Worsley replied. ‘An’ how come you know so much about him, eh?’

  The other man stopped for a moment and tapped the side of his nose.

  ‘Part of my profession, isn’t it? Finding things out about people.’

  Rob Worsley gave the ghost of a smile as he took in his colleague’s words. They had all been selected for their varied attributes and he had long suspected that Number Five had some inside knowledge that involved the security services or the police. Maybe even both.

  The six men knew little of one another outside the group, or so it had appeared. Worsley had been recruited by McAlpin early on, their association having been forged by a mutual understanding over time spent in the forces. But he had only been able to guess at the background of the other men in the group. His plans to skip the country as soon as the stadium was blown to kingdom come had changed with the disappearance of McAlpin. The big tattooed man had given him assurances that he would be safe in Nigeria. He knew people, he’d told Worsley. He’d arrange everything.

  Well, McAlpin was out of the picture now, though why he had not answered his personal call Worsley did not know, and the older man chewed his lip anxiously as they ascended the inner staircase to the room where two men already sat waiting for them.

  ‘Sit down, gentlemen,’ the leader commanded, staring hard at Worsley and Number Five as they entered the room.

  It was, Worsley realised, typical of so many of the rooms where they had met before. The decor was bland and the furniture old-fashioned, as though it had come from a saleroom. Why it had never dawned on him before, he did not know, but he could see now that this was exactly the sort of place that would be rented out. The more modern flats in the city had confused him; they had all looked so much the same and now he knew why: they’d probably been kitted out from the same IKEA job lots.

  ‘There are some serious developments to discuss, gentlemen,’ the leader began, fixing them in turn with his gimlet stare, bringing Worsley’s attention back to the meeting.

  He paused for effect before leaning forward and proclaiming, ‘We have lost one of our number.’

  There ought to have been a gasp of alarm, the explosives expert thought. That was what the wee man wanted, after all. But there was a stubborn silence as they waited for the leader to continue.

  ‘The police tried to apprehend our friend,’ he began. ‘But happily they have failed. However, two of his colleagues have been arrested and they are being questioned by…?’

  The man who had walked in by Worsley’s side took up the thread. ‘Spooks have got them,’ he said shortly. ‘According to my sources, the Nigerians were taken from Stewart Street during the night. That’s as much as they could tell me.’ He shrugged. ‘But they haven’t been taken to any Scottish prison.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Worsley blurted out suddenly.

  ‘Got the ear of the folk who arrange transportation, haven’t I?’ He grinned.

  ‘We do not need to ask such questions.’ The leader glared at Worsley, who spread his hands in mute apology. ‘What we need to determine now is how much Number Two may have told his Nigerian friends.’

  ‘He wouldn’t…’ Number Three, the thin man who sat nervously beside the leader, raked his hair with one hand.

  ‘One never can tell,’ the leader said darkly. ‘And it may be a problem for us now that our deselected member has disappeared so effectively.’

  ‘Number Two can take care of himself,’ Worsley declared, already tired of the histrionic note that was creeping into the meeting. This was a serious matter, not the stuff of a schoolboy’s fantasy, though it did occur to him to wonder what sort of things the leader dreamed about at night. ‘We’ve got a job to do and we need to decide how we’re going to carry it out if the original plan has to be scrapped,’ he declared firmly. ‘I have to know,’ he added, as if they needed any reminding that the explosives expert was key to the entire plot.

  ‘Yes,’ the leader agreed, nodding. ‘And this is what I have to propose to you. Number Six has taken over the duties concerning the two Australians. He will be told to accompany them to the opening ceremony and stay with them until he is given the signal.’

  There was a faint smile on the man’s face, a shark’s smile; white teeth sh
owing between thin lips.

  ‘But there will be no signal.’

  ‘You’re going to let him be blown up?’ Number Three looked incredulous and Worsley saw him glance at the man who had come in with him to gauge his reaction. But Number Five remained impassive, making Worsley wonder if he had known already what was coming. He seemed to know quite a lot else.

  ‘He’s expendable,’ the leader said, nodding. ‘Besides, he’s getting far too cosy with that girl for my liking. And,’ he looked at each of them in turn, ‘I think he may have begun to develop what he would call a conscience.’

  Gayle turned the key in the door, her heart beating faster. She had raced up the stairs, eager to break the news to him. Letting the bunch of keys drop on to the side table by the telephone, she took her handbag into the bedroom and flopped down on the bed. Her smile broadened as she unzipped the front pocket and drew out the two tickets. It was like winning the lottery, she told herself, holding the tickets out and staring at them. To be selected as guests at the opening ceremony was an honour that the young woman had never dreamed of. Okay, so she had applied for the tickets; they all had. And just today she had been given two! ‘One for your young man,’ the senior committee member had murmured. ‘He’s been quite supportive of you, hasn’t he?’

  Gazing at the tickets, Gayle had to agree that Cameron Gregson had indeed been supportive of late. Something had changed in his manner, too. He was softer, less abrasive, more solicitous towards her. And for Gayle, that meant only one thing: Cam was in love with her!