The Bird That Did Not Sing (DCI Lorimer)

by Alex Gray

  ‘We need to bring her in,’ Lorimer told Alistair Wilson.

  He saw his colleague nodding gravely. Wilson had listened as he’d related the conversation with Maggie the previous evening. The germ of what had been only an idea was growing into more of a certainty now that Lorimer was telling it to the man who was SIO in the investigation into Charles Gilmartin’s murder.

  ‘And there may be a motive that we could never have guessed,’ Lorimer murmured, half to himself. ‘We need to find out a lot more about that Nigerian theatre company and just how Charles and Vivien had planned on bringing them over to the UK.’

  ‘Right,’ Wilson agreed, rising from his chair. ‘I’ll make that a priority. And put out an international call for help in finding Mrs Gilmartin.’

  ‘And, when we bring her in, I’d like to be the one to interview her.’ Lorimer said. Wilson would be there, all right, as SIO, but there were questions his superior officer needed to ask.

  The other man nodded. ‘See what I can do,’ he said.

  Once Wilson had left the room, Lorimer sat staring at the wall, though it was not the array of maps and charts he could see, but the image of a fox-haired woman with green eyes smiling up at him.

  ‘Plans have changed,’ Petrie told them.

  ‘You’re cancelling the whole thing?’ Worsley tutted his disapproval.

  ‘On the contrary. We go ahead as originally intended. And eliminate Number Six.’

  ‘May as well call him Gregson,’ Malcolm Black growled. ‘Everyone else knows his name now.’

  ‘You’re the reason for our change of plan!’ Petrie stormed at him. ‘You were supposed to take care of that detective, and now, not only have you failed to eliminate him, we’ve lost contact with all of his sources!’

  Black scowled back at the leader. ‘Not my fault,’ he grumbled. ‘Spooks must have done a sweep of his place, then checked Stewart Street.’

  ‘Well that’s you effectively on their radar now,’ Petrie argued. ‘We should just deselect you and be done with it!’

  ‘And who’s going to clean up after the attack, eh? You still need me for that, don’t forget,’ Black told him. His job at Folkfirst might have ceased to exist, but Black had installed systems in several other areas, notably the stadium itself. They would be in constant contact through the communication channels he had set up through a bogus company, as well as their dedicated cell phones.

  ‘Just keep yourself out of sight, okay? And what did you do with the vehicle?’

  Black gave a short laugh. ‘Burned out over in a dump near Lennoxtown,’ he replied. ‘Don’t worry about me. I can take good care of myself.’ He turned to smile at the others, a look of supreme confidence on his handsome face.

  ‘The need to deploy officers to do further background checks on every member of the Games personnel is of paramount importance,’ Lorimer told the woman sitting next to him. ‘I am sure that there is somebody inside the organisation itself. Someone who knows one of the terrorists.’

  Joyce Roger, the Deputy Chief Constable of Police Scotland, heaved a sigh. ‘It’ll blow a hole in the budget,’ she admitted.

  ‘But you can’t put a price on human lives,’ Lorimer finished for her.

  ‘No, our responsibility is to the public. And to the members of our royal family,’ she added with a twist to her mouth.

  ‘Right,’ she said at last. ‘How long will it take?’

  Lorimer raised his eyebrows. It was nearing the end of the first week of Maggie’s school holidays, and there were just over two weeks until the Games began. ‘Before July the twenty-third,’ he replied, mentally adding a fervent hope that this enormous undertaking would indeed be concluded before the date of the opening ceremony.

  It had not been as difficult as he had expected. Finding someone who had gone through passport control at several major airports and checked into a French hotel was easier now that so much was carried out online. Now, standing here at arrivals at Glasgow International Airport, Lorimer felt more nervous than he had on their first date.

  Vivien Fox had turned up twenty minutes late, just when young William Lorimer had given up all hope of the zany redhead keeping to their arrangement. He recalled almost nothing of that first teenage date, just a faint memory of her green eyes laughing at him, the way they always had.

  Now he was waiting for her again, but this time they would not be leaving hand in hand but accompanied by other officers, who were waiting outside in a white car emblazoned with the Police Scotland sign.

  Several passengers had moved through the area already, their luggage showing the London Heathrow tags. Vivien would have been escorted from the Bordeaux flight through security and on to the plane waiting to take her to Glasgow.

  And suddenly there she was, a uniformed flight officer by her side, walking smartly through the crowds and turning heads as if she were some VIP used to special attention.

  ‘Mrs Gilmartin.’ Lorimer reached out a hand and took the woman’s arm.

  ‘Oh, William.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘Do we really need to be so formal?’

  But the laughter died on her lips as she looked up at the expression on the tall policeman’s face.

  The interview room smelled of her perfume for days afterwards, but that evening, Lorimer could only concentrate on the way she was affecting his other senses.

  ‘We have your prints on the glass phials that were recovered from my garden,’ he told her, trying to keep his tone as neutral as possible. ‘And the shopkeeper who sold you the ginger wine has identified you from a photograph. So you may as well tell me exactly what happened.’

  Vivien Gilmartin stared at him, her gaze unfathomable. She had barely acknowledged the prescence of Alistair Wilson, sitting to one side.

  ‘What made you do it?’ Lorimer asked, looking straight into the green eyes that had bewitched him so long ago.

  For a long moment the woman seemed to consider the question. Then she gave a long sigh and sat back in the chair, her whole body seeming to register an air of defeat.

  ‘It was the right thing to do,’ she said simply.

  ‘I have to ask you for all of the details,’ Lorimer said, a note of apology in his voice. ‘For the tape,’ he added, nodding at the recording device that sat to one side of the table in the interview room.

  ‘Oh, the details!’ Vivien raised her eyes to heaven. ‘What is it they say? The devil is in the detail?’

  When Lorimer did not answer, she leaned forward towards him. ‘I tried so hard to get everything right, you know,’ she told him, as if this was an argument in her favour. ‘The ginger wine masked the taste of the other substances. He didn’t feel a thing.’ She shrugged as though she had done something worthy of his approbation. ‘And burying them in your garden, well, I loved the irony of that!’

  ‘Why did you kill your husband?’ Lorimer repeated patiently.

  ‘Lots of reasons,’ she sneered. ‘Because he was a bastard, put me through years of hell, refusing to cast me in any of his damned plays, though if I have the money to pay for a decent brief, they’ll tell a jury that I did it to stop him bringing all those poor girls across from Nigeria!’

  ‘Please will you explain this, Mrs Gilmartin?’ Wilson asked smoothly.

  ‘For the damned tape!’ she snapped, throwing a glance at the older detective. ‘Oh, all right. Charles was a very greedy man, that’s something you have to understand about him.’ She turned back to Lorimer, eyes widening as though she could still persuade him to believe her. ‘It wasn’t just fame and prestige that he coveted, oh no, he had to have money and more money, even when his poor old mother died and left him a fortune. Set up this theatrical scheme to bring a troupe of actors over from Africa. Nigeria, to be precise. But of course there were always going to be youngsters involved, assistants paid for this, gophers paid for that. Rubbish, of course!’ She shook her head, making her long gold earrings swing from side to side. ‘Charles and that horrible man with the tattoos had an arrangement that
he would supply young girls for the sex trade just in time for the Commonwealth Games.’ She gave him a look of disgust. ‘They’re not all coming over here to watch a whole lot of men running round a race track, you know.’

  ‘If you were aware of this, why didn’t you inform the police?’

  Viven Gilmartin looked down and began to pick at her fingernails.

  ‘Surely it would have been easier to leave your husband, ask for a divorce, tell the authorities what you knew?’ His voice was low and soft, a reasonable man asking a reasonable question.

  There was no answer, as the woman across the table continued to examine her perfectly manicured hands.

  ‘You wanted money too, didn’t you, Foxy?’ he whispered.

  Vivien’s head shot up at the old nickname.

  ‘You knew all about the plan to traffic young Nigerian girls into Glasgow, didn’t you? It was to have been another lucrative money-spinner. But that wasn’t enough for you, was it?’

  Her mouth remained tightly closed, though the look in her eyes told him his guess was correct.

  ‘You see, I think that when you found out the extent of the theatre costs, all you could see was that huge hole blown in your husband’s fortune,’ he continued, watching the green eyes glaring at him malevolently, like some cornered beast. ‘I think you wanted the fame and the fortune too,’ he continued. ‘Only fame had eluded you. Not because Charles Gilmartin had thwarted you in your career, but for the simple reason that you weren’t good enough.’

  ‘I…’

  ‘You see, we’ve spoken to the management of several theatre companies, and they all say the same thing. You never made the grade, did you?’

  Suddenly the woman’s eyes filled with tears and her expression hardened.

  ‘You could have divorced Gilmartin, but his fortune was tied up with the African scheme, wasn’t it? You wouldn’t see a penny of it. Unless you killed him before he could transfer the money. You see, we checked that too,’ he went on. ‘Had you waited any longer, your husband would have risked all his capital on this… venture, shall we call it? And you didn’t want that to happen, did you?’

  The woman opposite shook her head.

  ‘Speak for the tape, please,’ he ordered in a firm tone.

  ‘No, I bloody well didn’t!’ she yelled, the mask of respectability falling from her lovely face.

  Lorimer felt a pang of sorrow for the girl he had once known who had become this snarling, spitting wretch.

  ‘But I had you fooled for a while, didn’t I?’ she sneered. ‘Thought I was the poor grieving widow. Acted that part well enough, eh?’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘Not so sure about that little wife of yours, though.’

  He could see a light from the kitchen as he closed the door behind him. There had been more questions, some of them yielding answers about the man he knew as Kenneth Gordon McAlpin, answers that were being investigated in several parts of the city even as the detective superintendent made his weary way back home.

  ‘Maggie.’

  She turned from the kitchen sink, a silent question in her eyes.

  Lorimer heaved a sigh as he took her into his arms.

  ‘She’s admitted it. Everything. How she did it, why… the way she planned it all down to the last detail. The school reunion, luring me in so she would be above any suspicion.’

  He drew back to look into Maggie’s eyes.

  ‘You didn’t fall for her act, did you, my darling?’

  ‘I never thought she was a killer,’ Maggie said at last. ‘But there was something… the way she was so possessive of you… I thought it was just jealousy on my part,’ she confessed.

  ‘It was more than that,’ Lorimer whispered. ‘The thing they call a woman’s intuition.’ He laughed softly. ‘That magical sixth sense we men lack at times. Ever think of changing careers, Mrs Lorimer?’ he added admiringly. ‘The police could use someone like you.’

  Later, as he slept by her side, Maggie gazed at her husband. The lines were still there and the strain across his brow. Would it always be like this? The endless search for clues leading to an arrest and hopefully a conviction? Or would this troubled man find peace somewhere? They had talked well into the night, Lorimer going over what had been said in the interview room, berating himself for his lack of insight, Maggie consoling him as best she could. Now he slept, but there was always tomorrow and the next day and the next, demands made upon him that would carve the signs of care deeper and deeper into the face of the man she loved.

  ‘She beguiled you,’ Maggie said quietly. ‘Perhaps she wasn’t such a bad actress after all.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  It was not unusual in her job to have to meet the police, but today was different, Gayle Finnegan realised. She had arranged a rota for all the staff to be interviewed, discreetly, as instructed, and in just over fifteen minutes it would be her turn to face the plain-clothes officers who had infiltrated the building on Albion Street. Routine, her line manager had said, but there had been a hint of anxiety on the other woman’s face.

  ‘Ms Finnegan?’ A tall young woman with cropped black hair stood smiling at Gayle. Her summer frock was Cath Kidston, Gayle realised, looking at the floral dress and the open-toed sandals. If this was how the police dressed nowadays for work, then perhaps the interview wouldn’t be too bad after all, she told herself, sitting down in the chair that the woman had pulled out for her.

  ‘Just a few routine questions. Gayle, isn’t it? My name’s Kate.’

  The handshake was warm, like the policewoman’s smile, and Gayle Finnegan nodded, relaxing into the chair, ready to answer whatever questions were necessary to complete this security check.

  There had been the usual things: home, hobbies, people she mixed with, then her relationship with Cam.

  ‘Anything unusual happen to you lately, Gayle? Anything odd?’ The woman smiled. ‘Silly wee things, even they can be significant.’

  The girl thought immediately of the red mobile phone covered in numbered stickers. But that wouldn’t be of any interest to them, would it?

  ‘Gayle?’ Kate, the nice police officer, was looking at her intently. ‘What is it? Something that bothered you?’ Her voice was kind, understanding. And at that moment, Gayle felt that Kate was just the sort of person she could confide in.

  She began to tell the officer about the discovery in their bedroom, how she had worried herself sick that Cam had another woman. Or other women. But he’d said it was to do with university stuff. He was always late home these days; the dissertation seemed to cause him to stay in the university library for hours on end.

  And had anything else changed? Kate had asked, and Gayle found herself confiding about how worried she was whenever her boyfriend had those terrible dreams, and yet they had never been happier together, no more fighting about how he thought the Games were a load of rubbish. Yes. He’d changed his mind about that quite suddenly, she’d agreed.

  The two Aussies had been extra nice to him tonight, Cameron thought, as he sauntered through the streets of Glasgow’s Merchant City, heedless of the people around him, blind to the giant green G of Glasgow 2014 on every corner. Peter had insisted on picking up the bill for dinner, too. They’d wheedled it out of him, guessing that their tour guide was still a student, telling him how much they appreciated his services, even hinting that there would be a welcome any time he cared to venture Down Under.

  It was different now, he decided. They were real people, not an abstract concept. And he bit his lip as he considered how he was going to prevent Peter and Joanne MacGregor from being part of the catastrophe that was planned for the opening ceremony. He had to do it somehow, extricate himself from the plot to which he had so readily agreed all those months ago. As his feet took him towards Gayle’s flat, a place he regarded these days almost as home, Cameron Gregson never noticed the two men slipping out of a parked car and following him.

  Lorimer and two of Drummond’s men were waiting in the kitchenette, h
idden from sight, as Cameron Gregson turned his key in the door of Gayle Finnegan’s flat. The girl had been taken for further questioning, her face stricken with anguish as Kate and another colleague had helped her into a waiting car.

  Gregson’s professor had been helpful when Lorimer had telephoned him, concerned that his postgraduate student had failed to make contact for several weeks. The final draft of his dissertation ought to have been submitted by now. What was its subject? Lorimer had asked, and the professor had told him, unable to see the expression on the detective superintendent’s face when he had revealed that the young man had been writing about the persecution of Clan MacGregor and its effect on Scotland’s destiny.

  Drummond’s eyes had lit up when the detective superintendent had relayed that particular nugget of information.

  ‘It fits,’ he’d said. ‘Everything his girlfriend told us points to Gregson being part of a conspiracy. How he asked her for inside information about the Games, his seeming change of heart. She’s been well and truly conned by this man,’ Drummond had declared. ‘And if we can access that mobile phone, then we may just be able to find the other members of the cell.’

  There were officers positioned outside the flat too, waiting to apprehend Gregson in case he made a run for it. But there was no need.

  ‘Cameron Gregson?’

  ‘Who the…?’ The young man’s face paled and he began to back away, bumping into a chair then sinking into it as though his legs had given way.

  ‘We need to ask you some questions,’ Lorimer said, bending over Gregson, pinning him with his blue glare.

  ‘Let’s begin with a certain red mobile phone that we believe is in your possession…’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  ‘I swear I never seen him!’ Harry Temperland spread his skinny fingers in a pleading gesture.