by Alex Gray
‘I thought we were talking about Edward,’ she said, regarding him thoughtfully.
‘You were obviously close to Mr Pattison,’ Lorimer continued smoothly. ‘Were you perhaps close enough to know if he had been seeing someone in Glasgow on the night he died?’
Zena Fraser laid her mug carefully on a slate coaster before replying. ‘I think I would already have told the police if I’d known anything about Edward’s death,’ she said.
‘That’s not quite what I meant,’ he said. ‘May I be blunt?’
A raise of her finely plucked eyebrows was all the answer he required.
‘Was Edward Pattison having an affair with somebody in Glasgow or the Glasgow area?’
‘That’s blunt all right,’ she said. ‘Asking if poor old Ed was up to no good.’
‘Having an extra-marital relationship isn’t a crime,’ Lorimer said gently.
‘No, maybe not,’ she replied, then added with a touch of bitterness, ‘but the press would have treated him like some sort of a social pariah if they had found out something like that. A man in his position … ’ She shrugged, leaving the rest of the sentence unsaid.
‘Ed and I … ’ Her voice faltered for a moment and Lorimer saw the uncertainty in Zena Fraser’s face. And, in that moment, he became aware of several things. Why this lovely woman had never married, why she had chosen to follow her childhood friend into politics and why Catherine Pattison had insisted that the MSP was a person capable of killing her husband.
Lorimer stared at her for a long moment until she finally looked away. ‘You and Edward Pattison,’ Lorimer said slowly. ‘You were more than childhood friends, weren’t you?’
Zena Fraser shot him a look then glanced beyond him to the door of her office. ‘I’m very much aware that this is a murder inquiry,’ she said. ‘But I need to know that anything I tell you will not go beyond these four walls,’ she added, glancing at the glass partition beyond them.
‘If you have had nothing to do with Edward Pattison’s death then you have my assurances that anything you say to me here will be kept completely confidential.’
She gave a huge sigh then licked her lips as though wondering how to begin.
‘Ed and I were lovers. Off and on,’ she said. ‘He’d been my first proper boyfriend and even after he and Cath were married we continued to have the odd weekend away together. Nobody knew about us, not our friends or our family. Though I often thought that Cath had her suspicions.’ She looked up as if to see some sign of confirmation in the policeman’s face but Lorimer’s expression remained one of mild interest.
‘What did she tell you? That I had wanted Ed to marry me? That I was the scorned woman?’
Lorimer did not immediately reply, but his thoughts turned to the old adage that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Was she a woman scorned? Not only for the wife of the man she had loved but possibly for a string of mistresses?
‘Where were you on the night that Edward Pattison was killed, Miss Fraser?’ he asked at last.
Third time lucky, Lorimer told himself as he approached the corridor that held the offices of most of the Labour party members of the Scottish parliament. Both Raeburn and Zena Fraser had been able to supply alibis for the night that Pattison had been killed, though these would of course have to be corroborated.
‘You’re Lorimer, I suppose?’ A Glasgow accent made the detective superintendent whirl around to find a stockily built man with untidy dark hair who was wearing a brown tweed overcoat and a striped scarf.
‘Coming to see me? Frank Hardy,’ the man said, shooting out his arm and giving Lorimer a swift once up and down handshake. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here. Don’t think I’m paranoid or anything, but walls have ears, know what I mean?’
His grin was infectious and Lorimer found himself smiling as the man tilted his head towards the row of glass and wooden structures that served as offices.
Before Lorimer had time to answer, Hardy was off along the corridor and heading for the stairs that would take them back out of the parliament.
This time Lorimer noticed things that had not caught his attention on the way in. There were several pictures upon the walls and one in particular made him stop and stare, Hardy lingering at his side as he gazed. It was an enlarged photograph of a woman and her goat inside what could have been a ‘but and ben’, the ancient style of rural cottage that served as shelter for both man and beast. The woman, however, was looking askance at the goggle-eyed creature as though wondering what had possessed her to let it in. Lorimer gave a tiny smile, remembering the story of the discontented old woman who had asked a wise man how to make her house bigger. The wise man’s advice had been to take in her animals one by one, causing her to doubt the man’s alleged wisdom. He had, of course, eventually told her to let them all out, at once transforming the house into a larger space.
The smooth feel of wood beneath his fingers as he trailed them on the banister was pleasing to the man who had forsaken art history for a career in the police. As were the polished granite floors and slate steps. It was, Lorimer thought, a great attempt to marry so many of Scotland’s natural resources into this building.
‘Bit of a nip, eh?’ the man said, turning his collar against the wind that was blowing straight off Arthur’s Seat. He looked up at the darkening clouds approaching from the east. ‘Maybe a good idea to find somewhere we can get ourselves some central heating before the next heavy shower, eh? Any particular howf you fancy?’
Bemused by the man’s eagerness to depart the Scottish parliament, Lorimer shook his head. ‘Don’t usually drink on duty,’ he murmured.
‘Ach, one wee dram’ll no’ do you any harm,’ Hardy replied, grinning. Then, looking down at Lorimer’s thick-soled shoes he added, ‘Come on, the pavements shouldn’t be too bad up the Canongate and there’s a nice pub with a good fire that I know.’
Lorimer fell into step beside the man who, he noticed, was wearing stout boots, as though he had decided beforehand that Lorimer would acquiesce to his suggestion of marching through the snow-covered streets of Edinburgh’s old town.
‘You represent one of the West Renfrewshire constituencies,’ Lorimer said.
‘Aye, it takes in Erskine, Bishopton and Langbank,’ Hardy replied. ‘Nice and handy seeing as I live in Erskine myself. Been there since I was a wee boy back in the seventies when the Scottish Special Housing Association built the place. Was a councillor for Bargarran before I became elected,’ he added, puffing slightly as the hill began to rise before them.
‘Were you at home the night that Edward Pattison died, then?’
‘Uh-huh,’ Hardy nodded, fishing in his coat pocket and drawing out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Do you smoke? No?’ he asked, offering the packet to Lorimer who shook his head. ‘Cannae think that Ed was just along the road from our part of Erskine when … ’ He stopped for a moment to light his cigarette then blew out a plume of smoke that lingered in the frosty air. ‘Terrible thing to have happened, eh? And him that well thought of, too.’
Lorimer glanced at him, trying to detect any trace of sarcasm and wondering if the words were at all sincere or merely an empty platitude. Frank Hardy’s quarrel with Pattison had been well documented in the press after Pattison had defected from the Labour party. The things that Hardy had uttered then had been far less gracious, Lorimer remembered.
‘Over there,’ Hardy said at last when they had marched well up the hill and past the crown-steepled church of Saint Giles. The politician was nodding to a pub on the corner diagonally opposite the crossroads where they now stood waiting for the traffic lights to change.
Deacon Brodie’s Tavern was, thought Lorimer, an interesting choice of pub for the MSP to bring the policeman. He knew most of the story: Brodie had been an Edinburgh worthy back in the eighteenth century, a town councillor and supposedly wealthy cabinet-maker by day but a housebreaker by night. His double life had ended when he’d been caught and he had been condemned to death on the gallows.
The warmth hit them right away as they stepped inside the pub. Almost every table was surrounded by men and women drinking and enjoying a late lunch and the vinegary smell of chips began to waft temptingly around Lorimer’s nostrils.
‘Bet you havenae had anything to eat,’ Hardy asked abruptly. ‘Listen, I’m not like these Edinburgh folk. You’ll have had your tea?’ he said in a high voice that was intended to be a mimicry of an Edinburgh matron that made Lorimer grin despite himself.
‘I could murder a burger and chips,’ he confessed.
‘Well, come on upstairs. There’s a nice warm fire up there too,’ Hardy assured the policeman. Then, ‘Hey, Chloe, hen, can we have a couple of menus for the restaurant?’ he called to a young girl in black who was polishing glasses behind the bar.
‘Sure, Mr Hardy. Here you are,’ she said, picking up a couple of hefty leather-bound menus from a pile at the end of the counter. ‘Be with you shortly,’ she said, smiling.
‘You’re a regular here, then,’ Lorimer said as they headed upstairs past prints of Lord Byron and Robert Burns, poets both, perhaps favourites of the legendary Brodie.
‘Aye, your powers of deduction are just brilliant, Detective Superintendent,’ Hardy laughed as they settled at a table by the window. ‘Wee Chloe works here during the week so she knows all the punters that come in. See that new place across the road?’ he said, pointing at a modern building that stood out against the older, more gracious architecture on either side. ‘Well there used to be one of the ugliest buildings in the city right on that spot, before they knocked it down and built this new hotel. That was where we all worked before they created that money-sponge down at Holyrood. Brodie’s was a dead handy place for members of the Scottish parliament. And I kind of like it. So,’ he shrugged and grinned, ‘I see no reason not to keep on patronising their illustrious establishment.’
Perhaps the man’s patronage was indeed pure altruism, for the upstairs restaurant was completely empty except for themselves; or was he in the habit of coming here for peace and quiet, Lorimer wondered.
‘Deacon Brodie was supposed to have been the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, wasn’t he?’ the policeman asked.
‘Is that right?’ Hardy shrugged. ‘Not a great reader myself,’ he added.
‘My wife is an English teacher,’ Lorimer told him. ‘And a big Stevenson fan. The book was about a man who had two sides to his personality, one moral and the other evil. Wasn’t Brodie a little bit like that?’
‘Och, Brodie was a pure chancer,’ Hardy replied. ‘Oh, Chloe, right hen,’ he said as the waitress approached. ‘A couple of pints of Stella and two drams of Macallan. That okay with you, Lorimer?’
‘Just the whisky, thanks,’ Lorimer replied.
‘Are you ready to order your food, gentlemen?’ the girl asked politely, taking her little notebook and pen out of a black wraparound apron.
‘Burger and chips twice?’ Hardy asked, looking at the detective who nodded hungrily.
After the girl had gone through the usual rigmarole of sauces and sides, the two men were left alone, the only sound coming from the fire that was crackling and hissing as the rain began to pour down against the windows.
‘You were telling me about Deacon William Brodie,’ Lorimer reminded Hardy.
‘Aye, so I was. Seems he was a terrible gambling man. That’s how he got into the housebreaking game. Lost all his family’s money. They say that Brodie got off by bribing the hangman. Was supposed to have been seen alive and well in Paris.’
‘Must have been a bit of a character to have had a place like this named after him,’ Lorimer mused. ‘Wasn’t Edward Pattison rather a colourful character too?’ he asked mildly.
‘Pattison? Colourful?’ Frank Hardy looked doubtful for a moment. ‘Don’t know that I’d call him that. Bit of a chancer like Brodie, though,’ he said, leaning forward then lowering his voice. ‘You want to know what that man was really like, Lorimer? Well, you’ve come to the right man to tell you—Thanks, lass.’ Hardy sat back as the waitress placed their drinks on the table then waited until she had left the room and her feet could be heard clattering on the wooden staircase.
‘Edward Pattison was a shit of the first order,’ Hardy growled. ‘See if he’d been an Edinburgh wifie, you’d have said he was all fur coat and nae knickers. Pretended to be all lah-de-dah with that big hoose of his and the fancy sports car. The wife’s money, of course,’ he added, pausing to take a swig of his lager. ‘Pattison came from an ordinary background but that was never going to be good enough for him. He was the sort of man who had to be someone, know what I mean? A right wee social climber. Why he even joined the Labour party I cannot imagine. Didn’t have a socialist bone in his body!’ he finished in a tone of disgust.
‘Why do you think he joined the Scottish Nationalists?’ Lorimer asked.
‘So he could get ahead. That was Edward all over. He wanted to be part of whatever was successful at the time,’ Hardy snorted.
‘Politics aside,’ Lorimer said, ‘what can you tell me about Edward Pattison’s private life?’
‘His women, you mean?’ Hardy gave a lopsided grin but his eyes had narrowed and there was a sly look on his face as he regarded the policeman. ‘Oh, I can tell you plenty.’
‘I’ve already spoken to James Raeburn and Zena Fraser,’ Lorimer told him.
‘Och, James knew nothing about what Edward got up to in Glasgow. But I guess Zena may have had an inkling,’ Hardy said, lifting his glass for another mouthful of beer.
‘And what was that?’
Hardy grinned, his green eyes twinkling under his bushy eyebrows.
‘Poor wee Catherine was never enough for that big man,’ Hardy said. ‘She’d given him her family’s fortune and three nice wee weans. And in return her man went off with anything in a skirt that took his fancy.’ He looked sharply at Lorimer. ‘Paid for it too, from all accounts,’ he added quietly. ‘At least he did back in our home town.’
‘How do you know this?’ Lorimer asked.
‘Edward Pattison wasn’t always the clean-living boy he was made out to be,’ Hardy began. ‘Truth was he couldnae hold his drink, that’s why he gave it up. Terrified he’d make a fool of himself in public.’ He leaned forward again, his voice lowered. ‘See, one time when we were a lot younger, me and Edward were out on the batter and he told me some things that would make your hair curl. Things about what he did to girls, street girls, you know?’
‘When was this?’
‘Och, years ago, before either of us was married,’ Hardy admitted. ‘But I know fine he was still at it,’ he continued. ‘Saw him driving round Blythswood Square a couple of times, on the lookout, y’know?’
‘And you never told anybody about this?’
Hardy shrugged. ‘None of my business what the man got up to, was it? And I’m not the type to go bleating to the papers about another bloke’s weaknesses.’
Lorimer frowned. ‘But it was well known that you couldn’t stand the man,’ he began.
Hardy straightened up, his face reddening. ‘Now listen, Lorimer, I might have had a grudge against the wee shit, but I would never have stooped so low as that. Some of us MSPs do have principles, you know, despite what the journalists would like the public to believe. Plus,’ he mumbled, ‘what do you think that might have done to Cathy and the kids?’
The return journey to Glasgow began much more quickly, snow ploughs having cleared the earlier blizzards and a heavy rain washing the residual slush to the sides of the M8. As the afternoon closed in and darkness began to fall, Detective Superintendent William Lorimer had a lot to think about, mainly from what Frank Hardy had revealed about his erstwhile colleague. The chief constable of Strathclyde had hinted that Pattison had been a bit of a ladies’ man, but surely he had not known that he had been a regular along the drag? Perhaps, Lorimer thought to himself, it was time to see if anyone else had knowledge of Pattison’s nefarious activities.
Maggie hummed along to the Vaughan Williams variation of ‘Greensleeves’ on Classic FM as she flicked through their ancient address book. A hundred guests was not an unreasonable number, she told herself, ticking off yet another name on her list. She smiled as she thought of her husband’s reaction when she pulled the surprise on him. Turning forty was a landmark for anyone and, though she would happily settle for a week or so in Venice when it was her birthday, a party with all his old friends and former colleagues was just what her husband would most enjoy. To turn up at a restaurant when he was expecting to dine alone with her and find his best buddies was the treat that Maggie had in mind. Okay, so his work could still wreck all of her plans, but why should that stop her, she thought, a determined expression hardening her jaw.
The rattle upon the window panes made Maggie Lorimer turn to see the hail slanting sideways and she rose from her crosslegged position on the couch to pull the heavy winter curtains, shutting out the black night. Bill would be late again, meetings at HQ taking precedence over a peaceful night at home. Glasgow and Edinburgh weren’t that far apart but the weather had played havoc with his plans and everything in his diary seemed to have been pushed back so that Maggie didn’t know when to expect the sound of his key in the lock. Still, it gave her an opportunity to organise this party while he was out, didn’t it? She consoled herself with the thought that the Malmaison was near enough to Pitt Street that he could come straight from work, and they had been very nice about fixing her up with a lovely room to stay the night in as well. Bill’s birthday was on a weekday this year, she knew. The seventh of February seemed quite far off still and hopefully these major murder cases would be over by then or at least taking up less of his time.
William Lorimer had been born under the auspicious sign of Aquarius, and although Maggie derided all that star stuff in women’s magazines she had to admit that her husband did fit the profile of an intellectual whose honesty, loyalty and deep desire to right society’s wrongs were his greatest strengths. Maggie had never seen her husband in action very much, but on those rare occasions she had seen a darker side to him, qualities that seemed to be intractable and unpredictable. He had, too, a propensity to appear unemotional and detached, though Maggie knew that was a skill he had learned over the years of interviewing men and women who had been suspects for a variety of crimes.