by Alex Gray
He was nodding with satisfaction as he selected the text that he wanted, his benign smile changing instantly to an expression of mild annoyance as the shrill noise of the telephone interrupted his train of thought.
Placing his book carefully on the huge table that dominated the room, Solly headed towards his desk, anxious to silence the insistent ringing.
‘Hello?’ he queried politely. ‘Professor Brightman speaking.’
‘It’s me, Lorimer. I’ve got something that might interest you. Any chance we could meet up?’
Solly blinked, taken by surprise. It had been some time since his friend had asked for his help in a professional capacity. Indeed Strathclyde Police had warned Solly that his services might not be required for future cases. But, he reasoned, that had been before his involvement with the case last autumn, hadn’t it? Now the parameters had changed. He was a professor and Lorimer a detective superintendent, the promotions bringing each man some further respect from the police as a whole.
‘Solly? Are you still there?’ Lorimer’s voice sounded impatient and Solly smiled once more. Theirs was an unlikely pairing; the policeman had little time for the lengthy pauses that his friend tended towards, preferring to come straight to the point whenever they discussed a case.
‘Yes, still here. What can I do for you?’
‘I’ve got authorisation to have you on a case,’ came the reply. ‘So it’s official, this time.’ Lorimer hesitated, knowing as he spoke that Solly would be aware of every nuance of his speech, every tiny space between his words. ‘It’s the murder of four known Glasgow prostitutes. That’s how the press will see it. I’d rather think of it as the brutal murder of four vulnerable young women.
‘It’s looking a bit complex,’ Lorimer went on in a lighter voice, ‘so you’re bound to like it.’
Solly nodded, responding to the seriousness of his friend’s tone. He could imagine the tense expression upon the policeman’s face as he spoke.
‘Well, as it happens I’m finished with classes for today so … ’
‘Good. See you here in half an hour?’
Solly put down the phone, shaking his head slightly. So much for his plans for spending time reading this afternoon, he thought with a sigh. Yet as he packed some papers into his satchel there was a gleam in his dark eyes. A new case with Lorimer: the first since his appointment to the Serious Crimes Squad. Solly locked the door behind him and hurried down the stairs, his mind already on what lay ahead. A bit complex, Lorimer had said. Well, that remained to be seen.
Helen James opened her eyes and blinked. It was all over then, she thought. A collage of images filled her mind: the siren sound of the ambulance, the overhead lights in the corridor as she was wheeled into the operating theatre and the man in the blue mask and matching cap who had assured her that everything was going to be fine…
It was strange how relaxed she felt now after a night of unbroken sleep. Her lips moved towards the semblance of a smile as she caught sight of the drip, felt the drain in her right arm. Well, maybe not that strange after all if they were pumping some nice drugs into her. She sighed but it was not a troubled sigh, more an exhalation of all the worries and troubles that had dogged her for the past months. There was nothing she could do about any of it and the knowledge that someone else must be taking over from her was surprisingly good.
Closing her eyes once more, Helen slipped into a dreamless sleep, happily unaware of the latest in the series of murders that had taken place on her patch.
Outside the hospital room the uniformed police officer glanced at her watch, checking it for the umpteenth time against the clock on the wall above the nurses’ station. It was funny to be here, PC Patricia Fairbairn thought to herself. The word was that Serious Crimes was supposed to be taking over and she might have been seconded to Pitt Street as part of the team, yet here she was, waiting for her DCI to waken so she could bring her up to speed with this horrible prostitute killing. Sighing heavily, Patricia stepped across to the glass door, peering in at the figure lying on the bed. No, she didn’t seem to be awake yet. She bit her lip. Over and over Patricia had rehearsed the words she would say when her boss was finally awake. If only she would open her eyes so she could get it over with.
Hearing her stomach suddenly rumble, the police constable decided that a visit to the canteen downstairs was in order. With one final glance at the woman who appeared to be sleeping peacefully, Patricia slipped off down the corridor, her thoughts already on a cup of black coffee and whatever calorie laden stuff the hospital canteen might provide.
‘You’re awake, ma’am,’ Patricia said, putting her fingers to her mouth, nervously wiping away any traces of her latest snack.
‘So it would appear, Fairbairn,’ Helen James said dryly, eyeing the rookie cop who had been landed in her division so recently. ‘Nice of you to visit, but perhaps you’d care to tell me why you’re here.’
‘It’s not good news, ma’am,’ Patricia said, all her carefully rehearsed speech flying out of the window as she looked down on her boss’s pale face. ‘There’s been another prostitute killing. Just last night. I … I was one of the officers on duty who found the body,’ she continued, tightening her lips to keep them from betraying her inner trembling.
Helen’s fingers gripped the bedclothes and a sharp crease appeared between her eyes. ‘Who?’
‘Tracey-Anne Geddes, ma’am. She was found when we were patrolling the drag.’
‘Oh, God.’ Helen turned away so that her young colleague could not see the sudden tears. She blinked rapidly before facing the girl once more.
‘Who’s the SIO in charge?’
‘That’s just it, ma’am,’ Patricia told her. ‘It’s gone up to Serious Crimes. Detective Superintendent Lorimer has taken it on now.’
‘Lorimer … ’ Helen sighed heavily, sinking back into the comforting softness of her bank of pillows. ‘Well, that’s some relief.’
‘Who is he, ma’am?’ Patricia Fairbairn asked, coming forward to scrutinise her boss’s face. She’d expected a sudden fury from the SIO, outrage at the very least that the case that had commanded so many man hours was being shipped off to Serious Crimes.
Helen James turned to the young policewoman and gave a smile that lit up her face, softening all its harsh lines and angles. ‘William Lorimer is one of the best senior officers around,’ she said. ‘And you’ll find that out, young lady, if you’re ever lucky enough to be part of his team.’
‘Professor Brightman,’ the officer behind the desk smiled at the bearded man standing waiting for his security pass. ‘Good to see you, sir.’
Solly nodded and smiled. The officer had recognised him from the previous visits he had made to this building, often to discuss the finer points of a case with the hierarchy that comprised the top brass here in Pitt Street. But now he was here at the behest of the man who was heading up the Serious Crimes Squad.
‘Solly!’
He turned to see a tall man who was crossing the foyer and, before he knew it, his hands were enfolded in a firm grasp.
‘Lorimer. Hello,’ Solly said, smiling as he nodded at his friend.
‘Come on up,’ Lorimer told him. ‘See my new domain,’ he chuckled. The two men chatted as they ascended the stairs to the upper floor where the Serious Crimes Squad had its share of a long corridor.
DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT LORIMER was emblazoned in gold lettering on the wooden door, Solly noticed. He nodded to himself, recognising that this man’s promotion was well deserved given his track record. And, he thought to himself, who better to head up a unit devoted to serious crimes than the man whose determination and skills had solved so many of them?
‘Not bad,’ the psychologist smiled, looking around the room. It was fairly large and airy, given that the blinds were pulled all the way up and the winter sun was making a valiant attempt to penetrate this side of the building. Two easy chairs flanked a low coffee table and the detective superintendent’s desk dominated one end of t
he room, its blond wood already piled with papers and files.
‘Hard at it already?’ he asked, pointing at the mass of paperwork.
‘Aye, plenty for me to do and, as usual, never enough time in which to do it, but at least I’ve got my own manpower and the ability to call on various divisions within the force.’ Lorimer grinned.
‘You haven’t put up any pictures yet,’ Solly remarked, his eyes scanning the walls that were bare of any decoration save a large calendar depicting a Scottish scene.
‘Michael MacGregor?’ he asked, recognising the photographer who had taken the snowy landscape.
‘Yes,’ Lorimer replied. ‘Once again my dear wife has given me something for Christmas that she knows I’ll enjoy. He paused for a moment, looking at the photograph of Rannoch Moor. MacGregor was his favourite Scottish photographer, his ability to capture the magical qualities of a landscape something that the policeman greatly admired. ‘Och, I’ll get around to putting up my prints sometime,’ he told Solly, cocking his head at the stack of pictures propped up in a corner, still in their brown paper wrappings. ‘Have to make do with this and the charts for now.’
He strolled over to a large map of Glasgow taped to the wall to one side of his desk and indicated four red rings. ‘These are all scenes of crime,’ he told the psychologist. ‘I want you to have a copy of this,’ he added. ‘So you can do all your stuff with locations and whatever.’
‘Perhaps we could begin with a discussion about the victims first,’ Solly remarked mildly.
‘Aye.’ Lorimer ran a hand through his dark hair, letting it flop over his forehead. ‘Four victims,’ he nodded, taking a file from the desk and coming to sit beside his friend. With a sigh that told Solly more than mere words would allow, he began to outline the young women’s murders.
‘Such a waste,’ Lorimer murmured. ‘Wee lassies on the game because they had to stick that stuff into their veins.’ His voice was low but Solly could hear the outrage in his tone, an outrage that any right-minded citizen would surely share.
‘Were they all very young, then?’ Solly asked, the phrase wee lassies commanding his attention.
‘It began more than eighteen months ago,’ Lorimer said, choosing not to answer that particular question directly. ‘First victim was a twenty-year-old woman name of Carol Kilpatrick.’ He held out a photograph and Solly looked at the picture of a thin girl with badly dyed blonde hair, dark roots showing either side of her parting. She was smiling at the camera, pink lips curled as though saying cheese for the person behind the lens, but that smile had not reached her light blue eyes where an expression of sadness made Solly wonder what sort of suffering this girl had endured in her young life.
‘She was found in a lane just along the road.’ Lorimer jerked his finger at the door. ‘Less than five minutes’ walk from this place.’ He let the implication of his words sink in. Pitt Street might represent the bastion of law and order but there were plenty of dodgy areas close by; the juxtaposition of light and darkness, good and evil, in this city was something that was not lost on the detective superintendent. Nor was the savagery of some of the city’s killers.
‘Raped and then stabbed several times. But she was still alive when she was discovered at the scene,’ he added, taking more photographs from the file and handing them over to Solly. ‘Died in hospital later that night.’
Solly took the copies of the various photos, blinking at the images of a young female: some were close-up shots taken by the pathologist, a ruler placed strategically to show the extent of the stab wounds and vaginal bruising, while others depicted various angles of the cobbled lane where the attack had taken place. There were no aerial shots, he noticed, probably too difficult to obtain in a narrow alley like that.
It was a horrific way to die; alone, vulnerable and no doubt gagging for her next fix. He made himself examine the photographs once more, concentrating on what she must have felt as much as who had wanted to make her suffer like this.
‘Any leads at all in this case?’ Solly asked, looking up.
Lorimer shook his head.
‘No. But not for lack of hard graft on the part of DCI James and her team, I can promise you that. Still, there isn’t much in the way of forensic evidence. The killer had evidently worn gloves and taken the precaution of using a condom.’
‘There was nothing useful at all, then?’
‘There were traces of sweat found on the victim’s body that might be usable should we ever find a suspect,’ Lorimer conceded.
The psychologist nodded his dark head, his bushy beard giving him the look of an Old Testament sage. He knew what the detective was thinking. Making a match was what this particular science was all about. Even if they had found loads of useable DNA it amounted to nothing until that vital equation was made. Now his own branch of scientific thought would have to come into play as he sought out something that might have been missed, or strove to see a picture that might have been obscured by other matters.
‘You can have a copy of the crime file notes,’ Lorimer told him. ‘See things like the history of the victim and where she usually stood waiting for punters.’
‘And where she lived,’ Solly added.
Lorimer gave a grimace. ‘Afraid that was a women’s hostel. They come and go in places like that and according to the files there was nobody who could tell the investigation team very much about the victim.’
‘What about her family?’
Lorimer shook his head again. ‘That’s another tragic thing. Her family apparently disowned her when she became a heroin addict. The formal identification was even made by another woman from the drag. So there is very little in the way of information about the victim’s background. Parents didn’t even attend the funeral,’ he added, pointing to a paragraph in the notes.
‘But surely…?’ Solly bit his lip. What had he been about to say? Surely anyone would want to see their loved one put to rest? Well, perhaps all this family had wanted was to block out the horror, especially in the wake of what publicity there had been.
‘DCI James was quite sure there was no reason for thinking that the second and third victims were killed by the same perpetrator,’ Lorimer continued, passing over the case files about Miriam Lyons and Jenny Haslet.
‘You might find this one a bit close to home,’ he went on, nodding at the file marked LYONS. ‘Girl was a well-brought up lassie from Newton Mearns. Family were devout Jews,’ he said, with the hint of a smile. Lorimer knew fine that Solomon Brightman no longer visited the synagogue as part of his Jewish faith, but the religion was something he could respect and understand, especially as his own parents were still practising Jews.
‘Miriam,’ Solly said softly, ‘the older sister who put Moses into a basket in the water. How sad that she should have been left to die like that.’
‘Hope you’re not going to start seeing obscure symbolism in this,’ Lorimer said darkly. ‘Miriam was on the game for the same reason as Carol and the others. Got hooked on junk and had to fund her habit,’ he said, his mouth twisting in distaste.
‘You disapprove of the street girls?’ Solly asked, his bushy eyebrows raised in surprise.
‘I’d like to see every last one of them off the streets, same as Helen James wanted,’ Lorimer muttered. ‘Somewhere they could be safe from any predatory males. It’s a damn sight better than it used to be,’ he added, ‘but while there is still one wee lassie out there selling her body for a fix then we’re not doing our job properly.’
‘We?’
Lorimer sighed. ‘Och I don’t just mean the police. It’s society as a whole. Nobody wants to think about things like that going on under their noses. At least till something like this happens,’ he said, tapping the photo of Miriam Lyons after she had been taken out of the Clyde by the riverman.
‘What would you like me to do?’ Solly asked, suddenly aware of the passion in his friend’s voice.
‘I know exactly what I’d like you to do,’ Lorimer answered.
‘See if Helen James was wrong. There’s way too much similarity in the MO’s of Geddes and Kilpatrick. The other two girls worked the drag as well. It’s just the way they died and the place where their bodies were found that set them apart.’
‘What about DNA traces?’
Lorimer shook his head again. ‘None on Lyons due to the length of time she had been in the river and, according to her notes, Helen James thinks that whoever strangled Jenny Haslet must also have been forensically aware.’
Solly put his fist to his lips, pondering. Lorimer was already involved in this in a big way, he thought. Was it to do with it being his first major case in this new job? Or was the policeman’s natural instinct for justice asserting itself? Lorimer was a man capable of feeling great pity for murder victims, Solly knew, and would treat these poor, vulnerable women with as much compassion as any other girl who had been brutalised.
CHAPTER 11
The Malmaison Hotel was a short walk from the red brick building that comprised police headquarters, a fact that amused rather than intimidated her. It was in direct contrast to the large façade of the Blythswood where she had spent these other few nights, being tucked away on the sloping hillside, though in truth both hotels had been landmarks in the city for quite different reasons in the past. While the Blythswood owed its history to the Royal Automobile Club, this smaller place had once been a Greek Orthodox Church. Any religious connotation seemed long gone, however, as she stepped into the foyer, noting the chequered carpet in purple and beige.
‘Any chance of a coffee?’ she asked the couple behind the desk.
‘Certainly.’ The girl looked up from the papers she had been discussing with her colleague and came around to where the tall, dark-haired woman was standing. ‘Just through here to the brasserie. Down the spiral staircase,’ she added, showing her the way.
Light flooded down from a glass roof to the enclosed courtyard below the wrought iron stairs. She glanced to one side at a pink checked chair, its back rising up into one curved point ending in a black tassel like a jester’s cap. It was a quirky bit of styling that made her smile as she walked delicately down to the coffee parlour below. Here there was further evidence of the chequered theme with three small tables topped with chessboards, empty of their playing pieces for now. She was just sliding into a comfortable seat when a blonde waitress approached, pad and pen in hand, a smile on her face that looked totally genuine rather than pasted on for the benefit of the clientele.