by Alex Gray
It should have been a private moment, a signal for Lorimer to leave, but something made him stop. He had seen that image before, hadn’t he?
‘Excuse me, sir, may I have a look at that picture?’
Tannock turned his ruddy face streaked with tears. ‘It’s all I’ve got left of her. Last photo she ever gave me.’ He gulped, handing it over.
Lorimer took it carefully. It was a copy of the one that he had seen in Daniel Jackson’s flat.
His heart quickened.
‘Where was this taken?’ he looked across at Tannock.
‘On the landing. Outside their bedroom.’
‘And how long before the fire was the photograph taken?’
Tannock must have caught the new note of excitement in Lorimer’s voice for his eyes glittered with hope.
‘Just a few days, as I recall. Why?’
Lorimer smiled suddenly. ‘May I take this? I promise it will be returned to you. But I can tell you something, Mr Tannock. Looking at this photograph, I think we may have jumped to the wrong conclusion. I don’t think that fire was started by Sir Ian after all.’
It was perhaps a little cruel to leave the man worried and wondering after Lorimer’s earlier supposition had reduced him to tears, but it was a police matter and one that had to remain as confidential as possible. What he had seen in that photograph gave Lorimer renewed energy to tackle this case.
For, behind the seated woman smiling into the camera’s lens, was a bedroom door with a key in the lock.
But it was on the outside of the room.
So some other hand must have turned that key, deliberately locking the couple in and leaving them to their fate.
CHAPTER 28
‘Yes!’ Lorimer gazed at the telephone on his desk as if it had conjured up some magic. Somehow the detailed information in this initial forensic report had not filtered through to Ray’s investigative team. He ground his teeth, reminding himself exactly why he was here doing this review. The forensic scientist at Gartcosh had confirmed exactly what Lorimer had wanted to know. The brass door fittings had been intact after the fire had done its worst and now he knew what he had only previously suspected: the key was still in the lock, its mechanism clearly showing that it had been used to secure the bedroom door. And that photograph on the landing told him it had been turned from the outside.
This put a whole new complexion on things: now Lorimer wanted to examine the case from each and every perspective. What reason could anyone possibly have had for killing these two people? And who had easy access not only to sprinkle accelerant around the house but to ensure that the key had been put into the keyhole on the landing side? It was not, he reasoned, something that anyone would have noticed. He doubted whether either of the Jacksons would have been in the habit of locking their own bedroom door when there were only two of them at home. And he doubted very much whether Pauline Jackson had risked having her lover there. Tannock had insisted that their liaison had been discreet. But not discreet enough for the Betty MacPhersons of this world, he told himself.
No, someone had set that fire deliberately to kill Ian and Pauline Jackson.
He considered Serena and Daniel. They stood to inherit vast wealth in the form of the company shares, and money was all too often a motivator in murder. But they had struck Lorimer as already having plenty of the world’s goods. And there had been nothing acrimonious between the children and parents. No, he thought, that didn’t fit. He couldn’t see Daniel killing anybody. The young man had enormous prospects within the firm. And, as for Serena, well, hadn’t she been completely traumatised by the loss of her parents?
The offshore business had intrigued him and it was an area that he had still to investigate thoroughly. Some feelers had already been out in the UK but perhaps it was time to cast the net further afield.
‘DI Martin, could I have a word, please?’ Lorimer poked his head around the door where the DI and several other members of the team were sitting.
Rhoda Martin stood up, brushed invisible fluff off her dark skirt and sashayed out of the room after Lorimer.
‘Take a seat, will you? This won’t take long and I know you’re up to your ears with the Port Glasgow case.’
Martin sat opposite the senior detective, crossed her legs and waited, hands folded neatly on her lap.
‘It’s the Jackson murder. We’ve had a real breakthrough,’ Lorimer told her. ‘Look.’ He handed her the forensic report with his own appended notes clipped on one corner. Martin read the paper, her eyes widening.
‘Bloody hell!’ she said at last. ‘You surely don’t think that it’s one of the family?’
‘That’s what I wanted to ask you. Daniel and Serena Jackson are your friends. Right?’
‘We . . .’ Martin began, ‘we all went to school together. Serena and I have stayed in touch.’ Matter of fact I’m seeing her tomorrow, she almost told him. She stopped herself, frowning. ‘Daniel is a great guy. Total sporting star, clever, always had the girls following him about. If he’d gone through the US school system they’d have called him a jock. But the nicest type you could want to meet,’ she insisted.
Lorimer nodded. ‘I liked him too,’ he said. ‘And I can’t think of any reason why he would want to commit such a terrible act.’
‘Nor would Serena,’ Martin retorted quickly. ‘Okay, she was a bit daft at school. Played around with all the troublemakers, didn’t work very hard at her subjects. But that was just Serena. She was high spirited in those days,’ Martin added thoughtfully.
‘What happened to make her change?’ Lorimer asked. This description of the young woman he had met certainly did not tally with DI Martin’s account of her friend.
‘She’s a lot quieter nowadays, I’ll grant you that, Sir,’ Martin admitted. ‘But don’t we all grow up eventually? She wanted to make her career as a model, but the lifestyle was all a bit too much for her, I guess. Nice to have the family business to fall back on, though. And she never wanted for a thing. The Jacksons were the most generous of parents. Her twenty-first birthday party was the talk of the village for months afterwards.’
‘Okay, so there’s no apparent motive from either of the children,’ Lorimer agreed. ‘And to be truthful it didn’t seem likely. Did it? No,’ he continued. ‘If it wasn’t an insider, then perhaps it was someone known to the family who had easy access to the house.’
‘You mean like staff? Cleaners and whatever? Or are we back to Davie McGroary?’
Lorimer ran a hand through his dark hair and sighed. ‘I didn’t think McGroary had it in him. But someone had access to that house. Someone who knew where the Jacksons’ bedroom was, and who put that key on the other side of the door several days before the fire.’
‘McGroary wouldn’t be likely to have admission to the house, though, would he?’
Lorimer shook his head. ‘No. So who else is there? Cleaners? Housekeeping staff?’
‘They didn’t have anyone resident. We did ask that at the time, Sir,’ Martin pointed out. ‘They used a firm of cleaners on a regular basis. We’ve got all the details on file already.’
Lorimer nodded. It had been one area that Colin Ray’s original team had covered.
‘Maybe we should be looking at some of these offshore businesses of Jackson’s? Perhaps he wasn’t as solvent as Hugh Tannock makes out.’
‘It’s a possibility,’ Martin replied slowly, savouring the thought. ‘What with the credit crunch, there might well be stuff hidden away that we know nothing about. And you said that Daniel spoke about these odd foreign types who visited.’
‘Yes,’ Lorimer said. ‘I think we want to dig into that a bit more. So,’ he clapped his hands together then gave them a rub as if to suggest immediate action, ‘let’s get on to this shall we?’
‘You mean right now, Sir?’ Martin asked, glancing at her wrist-watch. ‘I was hoping to be off duty in a couple of hours. Big weekend coming up.’ She grinned, pulling a face.
‘Oh?’ Lorimer asked wi
th a smile.
‘Serena Jackson’s house warming party, actually,’ Martin admitted, uncrossing her legs and sitting further forward as though she were anxious to leave. ‘She’s decided to throw it at last. It’s probably a good thing. Have friends around, and all that. Cheer her up a bit. Don’t worry, I’ll be there as an old chum, not a police officer. ’
There was a moment’s silence between them while Lorimer wondered if he should comment on the inappropriateness of his DI’s social life clashing with the case. But perhaps he should keep his own counsel meantime. Plus it might sound pretty small-minded to object to this pretty girl’s partying.
‘Wish my weekend was going to be such fun,’ Lorimer admitted, then wished he hadn’t spoken the words aloud.
‘Ah, the invalid comes home again? Well, good luck with that, Sir,’ Martin replied, standing up. ‘And maybe if we make the right sort of noises we’ll have some response from overseas by Monday morning.’
‘Well, let’s see what we can achieve with what’s left of our Friday afternoon, shall we?’ Then, standing up, Lorimer walked over to the door and opened it for the DI.
‘Thanks,’ she told him, giving him a friendly smile as she left.
Sitting back down behind his desk, Lorimer gave a sigh of relief. The case seemed to be going somewhere at last. And his relationship with DI Martin appeared to be thawing out. She was a bit of an enigma, he told himself. All stiff and resentful one minute then trying to ingratiate herself the next. But, when it came down to work, she was all right, really. Perhaps he ought to have told her to be careful what she said to Serena Jackson and her friends. Then he shook his head. It would be fine. She was an experienced officer. Telling her something like that would only have made her bristle with annoyance. And rightly so.
‘Ohh!’
‘Are you okay?’ Rhoda put out a hand to steady the detective constable as she bent over in pain.
‘Oh,’ Kate gasped again, her hands grabbing the edge of the wash basin. ‘Wee blighter’s probably lying on a nerve. Happens quite a lot at this stage. So everyone tells us,’ she added, grimacing as she tried to straighten up again.
‘Rather you than me,’ Rhoda said, watching her colleague’s face in the mirror, thankful to see that some colour was returning to Kate’s cheeks. ‘I thought you were going to pass out just now.’ She gave a little shudder. ‘Can’t see me ever wanting to go through all of that.’
Kate grinned. ‘Bet you do one day, though. Once you’ve found your Mr Right.’
Rhoda Martin gave a little wiggle in front of the bank of mirrors in the ladies’ loo. A smirk appeared on her face, making Kate raise her eyebrows.
‘Oh, aye, something we should know about then? Hot date this weekend?’
‘Wait and see,’ Rhoda replied, her eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘Tell you what, though,’ she looked down at her black skirt and jacket, ‘I’ll be glad to get out of this and into the new outfit I bought last week. Sonia Rykiel,’ she added, tossing her hair back in the superior way that never failed to annoy Kate Clark.
‘I’ll just be glad to fit into something normal,’ Kate muttered, watching Rhoda’s slim figure as she swept out of the loo. ‘Never mind anything posh.’
The sky was only beginning to darken with imminent rain clouds when Lorimer reached the car park, noting the DI getting into her black Golf, her cycle secured to the rear of the vehicle. Kate Clark gave him a wave from the passenger seat of her husband’s car as Lorimer headed towards the Lexus. Kate had made a joke earlier on about having to push the seat as far back as it would go to accommodate her swelling girth.
Other officers had already arrived for the next shift, ready for whatever a Greenock Friday night had in store, but now Rhoda, Kate and Lorimer were going their separate ways, leaving the concerns of murder and mayhem behind them.
Rhoda Martin waited until the big dark blue car had left before reversing out of her parking space. Her eyes shone with a girlish light that none of her colleagues usually saw; now she could really begin to enjoy the weekend ahead of her, exchange these drab working clothes for the designer outfit that was hanging outside her wardrobe door, new high heels still in their separate cotton drawstring bags. Tomorrow morning would be spent cycling to Mar Hall for a professional manicure and facial at the Spa then back again to prepare for her night out. A night out with folk of her own sort, she thought, waiting for the lights to change, like Serena and Daniel. For, she told herself with a frisson of excitement, Serena’s brother was bound to be at the party, wasn’t he?
Not everybody was in a hurry to leave work for the weekend. Back in the city, Callum Uprichard was smiling to himself as he jotted down some notes. They would be typed up later on, but for now he wanted to put his thoughts into some semblance of order. ‘Interesting,’ he whispered under his breath. ‘Not what I’d have expected at all.’ The tyre pattern had been invisible to the naked eye but under the powerful forensic microscope it was amazing what could be seen. A thin line with a distinctive herringbone pattern and that one tiny V-shaped nick had told the scientist rather a lot. First of all, the tyre came from a racing cycle, but not just any ordinary sort of racing cycle. Oh, no, if what he had seen was correct, this was the Rolls Royce of racing-cycle tyres, a Clement.
Clements were totally unlike conventional tyres. Made from silk, they were super-light and only used for special events, never for long distance cycling. He imagined the cyclist whizzing along, the tyres singing under him. The possibility of puncturing one of these babies was pretty high, Callum knew, and so they’d be more likely to be found in velodromes than out in the highways and byways of Inverclyde. Still, his report would give K Division plenty to speculate about. A cyclist who could afford something like this hanging around the garden of an elderly lady in Port Glasgow was curious enough in itself. But there was more. The scientist grinned as he noted details of the tiny soil particles that had been found around the treadmark. The cycle had come to rest on a patch of ground that had been treated with blood and bone fertiliser, a type specially made up in a garden centre down the coast. The tyre may possibly have picked up some of that material, Callum wrote. It could well be found embedded in the tyre itself (see nick, he scribbled in the margin) or under the cantilever of the brakes. And only a dedicated cyclist, or one who was forensically aware, would clean all of that up. Still it was only one half of an equation and the police needed to find the cycle and its owner in order to make sense of this evidence.
Callum whistled through his teeth as he began to type on his keyboard. Outside, the rush hour traffic was building up to a noisy crescendo but he was happy to take his time to finish this report and send it to the SIO in Greenock. He felt sorry for those poor sods struggling away from the city, desperate to leave their work behind. This was much better fun than sitting in an endless queue of cars. He had the best job in the world, he told himself, as he considered this link in a chain between searching for and finding a serious criminal; the very best.
CHAPTER 29
The sky looked bruised this morning, flesh-coloured clouds overlaid with patches of smoky grey shapes, shifting and changing as they drifted eastwards. Somewhere the sun was struggling to brighten the horizon. Trees that, minutes before, had been stark against an alabaster sky now glowed bronze, their empty branches the colour of autumn foliage against an artist’s wash of eggshell blue and violet.
Maggie turned from the window, listening to the sound of her husband’s breathing. She hovered between the thought of Chancer downstairs in the kitchen waiting for his bowl to be filled and the notion of climbing quietly back into the warmth and comfort of her Saturday morning bed. Saturday mornings might not be so free and easy after today, she told herself, slipping back under the duvet and snuggling against Lorimer’s bare back. He moved, still half-asleep, one arm drifting down across her thigh. He’d been restless all night, eventually waking her up at some ungodly hour with a cup of tea and an expression of apology on his face. It was the strain of
these two cases; the fire in Kilmacolm and the one in Port Glasgow where a calculating and vicious killer had selected vulnerable old ladies. Maggie shuddered, remembering her husband’s face as he’d told her the details. And thinking, That could have been Mum.
Just another half an hour and she’d get up. Everything was ready downstairs, after all; Mum’s bed made up, all her new toiletries neatly arranged in the loo, their own brought up here for the duration. Maggie shivered. Duration. Where had that word come from? Was she already thinking of the time when Mum would be able to return to her own cosy wee place? She scolded herself for the thought. It would be fine. Mum was to have these health professionals in every day, after all. She’d not lack for company and they had even managed to sort out a DVD player for her to watch downstairs if she wanted to. Ever since Dad had died, Maggie had seen an independent streak in her old Mum that she really admired. Alice had never complained about being on her own. She’d just got on with the business of living, making a pattern to her week of Church, the seniors’ club, shopping and pottering about her bit of garden. Yes, Alice Finlay had managed all right, Maggie told herself. And now she deserved to be cosseted and looked after. Maggie cuddled closer into her husband’s back, relishing the warm fug under the duvet while telling herself that it really was time she was making a move.