Shadows of Sounds

by Alex Gray

  ‘How did she feel about Chris being gay?’

  ‘I doubt she was thrilled about it, she seemed to have had an antipathy for the Leader of the Orchestra that I guessed was homophobic. Perhaps she simply didn’t want Chris being involved with George Millar. Maybe Simon Corrigan seemed a safer bet?’

  Maggie had shuddered, the thought of the man’s double murder and his subsequent attempt to kill those two young people suddenly very real indeed. ‘He thought Tina and Chris were an item?’

  ‘Worse than that. He saw them together the day Tina told Chris she was his sister. Somehow he jumped to the conclusion that she was pregnant with Chris’s child.’

  ‘So he tried to kill them both?’

  Lorimer had nodded. ‘If he couldn’t have Chris for himself, then no one could. He gave the lad some ground almonds in his porridge, knowing full well the effect that would have then he went to the Quentin-Jones house.’

  ‘To murder Tina,’ Maggie finished for him. ‘Thank God you got there in time,’ she’d whispered.

  Lorimer had nodded, his silence telling Maggie that there were things about the fire that he wanted to keep to himself. He’d tell her once he was ready to talk about it.

  ‘Yes,’ he’d replied. ‘She was a bit of a mess but she’ll be all right. More than I can say for Corrigan.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’s in a special burns unit. Most of his face has gone,’ Lorimer had turned away for a moment and Maggie wondered just what the clinician had reported. ‘But he was able to communicate with Jo Grant yesterday. Told her everything,’ he’d broken off suddenly, squeezing Maggie’s hand.

  ‘And the others? The families? What’s happening to them now?’

  She recalled her husband’s smile as he’d related how Edith Millar was playing hostess to the Surgeon. ‘Funny old world, isn’t it?’ he’d remarked. How long it would take before the Surgeon could return to his burnt out home was anyone’s guess.

  Maggie rolled onto her side with a sigh of contentment. Whatever had been going on these past few months was over, now. oh, there would be other cases, some of them just as disturbing, but DCI William Lorimer would handle them. Maggie stared at the man lying asleep on the bed beside her. He’d rushed all the way here with no luggage, full of apologies for all the lovely Christmas presents he’d left behind. It was fine, she’d assured him. They’d keep till she came home.

  Maggie Lorimer’s face split into a radiant smile. It was Christmas day and she had everything she wanted in the world.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the following people for their help in researching this novel: Anne Smith, Concerts Manager, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Superintendent Ronnie Beattie, former Deputy Divisional Commander ‘U’ Division, Strathclyde Police; the late Margaret Paton, Procurator Fiscal Depute of the Crown Office and Fiscal Service; Dr Marjorie Black, Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Glasgow; Stringers of Edinburgh; the staff of Glasgow Royal Concert Hall especially Cliff Brown, Donald Ball, Keith Marshall and Jane Donald; Pat Leonard of the Hamish Allan Centre, Glasgow and last, but by no means least, Graham Taylor and all my friends past and present members of the City of Glasgow Chorus.

  About the Author

  ALEX GRAY was born and educated in Glasgow. She has worked as a folk singer, a visiting officer for the Department of Social Security and an English teacher. She has been awarded the Scottish Association of Writers’ Constable and Pitlochry trophies for her crime writing. Married with a son and daughter, she now writes full time.

  By Alex Gray

  A Small Weeping

  Shadows of Sounds

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  13 Charlotte Mews

  London W1T 4EJ

  www.allisonandbusby.com

  Copyright © 2005 by ALEX GRAY

  Hardcover published in Great Britain in 2005.

  Paperback edition published in 2006.

  This ebook edition first published in 2011.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  ‘Shadows and Silences’ from Collected Poems

  By Norman MacCaig, published by Chatto and Windus.

  Used by kind permission of Berlinn Ltd.

  All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from

  the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–7490–0918–2