The Swedish Girl

by Alex Gray

‘Oh!’ Corinne’s eyes travelled upwards as she regarded the tall man standing at her door. A good-looking man, she thought immediately, mentally regretting her lack of make-up and her dishevelled clothes. Then, as he produced the familiar warrant card, her eyes narrowed in distaste.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Lorimer,’ he told her.

  ‘He’s no’ here,’ Corinne said, folding her arms over her thin bosom. ‘Havenae seen him fur years.’

  The tall man frowned, puzzled. ‘Your father? Mr McCubbin?’

  ‘Oh.’ Corinne took a step backwards into the hall. ‘I thought…’ She hesitated. ‘You want to see ma faither?’ Her brow creased in a moment of surprise.

  ‘If he’s at home,’ the detective superintendent replied politely.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ Corinne said reluctantly, opening the door wide to admit the handsome stranger. ‘What did ye say yer name was, again?’

  ‘Lorimer,’ he told her, stepping into the dark narrow passage. ‘Did you think I had come to see someone else?’

  Corinne shook her head. ‘My man,’ she said simply. ‘He was always a wrong ’un.’ She shrugged. ‘In and oot the jail… havenae set eyes oan him since the divorce…’ She tailed off, seeing the dark-haired man looking enquiringly at the door ahead.

  ‘Faither’s in the living room,’ she continued, lowering her voice. ‘Is it aboot thon wee lassie next door tae him?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Is he very upset about it?’

  Corinne shook her head, looking away towards the living room. ‘Hasnae said a word aboot it. So, aye, he probably is. Daft auld bugger. Come away through.’ She led Lorimer into an over-furnished room where the decor was predominantly ochre and beige, the worn carpet pocked by ancient cigarette burns.

  An old man was sitting facing the television, bent over the newspaper on his lap. White wispy hair appeared above the high-backed chair and, as Lorimer came around to greet him, he saw behind the heavy spectacles hooded eyes, glazed with fatigue (or medication?), and stubbled cheeks sunken into a cadaverous face that had a yellowing bruise along the jaw. Had he fallen, perhaps? Old folk were sometimes unsteady on their feet. As if to confirm his thought, Lorimer noticed a wooden stick lying beside his chair, just close enough for the old man to grab with his gnarled hands.

  ‘Mr McCubbin? I’m Detective Superintendent Lorimer,’ he said, putting out a friendly hand for the man to take.

  But at first the old man kept his fists clenched over the paper, frowning up at the stranger standing above him.

  ‘Who’d you say you are?’

  ‘Detective Superintendent Lorimer,’ he said, louder this time so he could be heard.

  Then a grudging hand was raised and Lorimer felt his own taken in a surprisingly strong grasp.

  ‘I’m here to ask you about your next-door neighbour, Eva Magnusson,’ he began. ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’

  ‘Course he doesn’t!’ Corinne broke in. ‘And I’m sure the superintendent would like a nice wee cup of tea. You too, Dad?’

  ‘Thanks, that would be lovely.’ Lorimer smiled up at her then looked back at the old man in time to see him dart a vicious glare at the woman whose expression hardened before she turned away to the kitchen. It was a brief moment but enough to allow the detective to see that there was no love lost between father and daughter.

  ‘Mr McCubbin, I hope you don’t mind my coming here to see you?’

  ‘Hm,’ the old man replied, folding the newspaper and slipping it down the side of the armchair. ‘What d’you want to know?’ He looked across at Lorimer, his eyes unblinking, but watchful as though he was waiting for a difficult question.

  ‘Oh, general things, really. I believe you were here when the incident took place,’ Lorimer said.

  ‘Aye,’ he said shortly.

  ‘And you’ve got one of those young hooligans for it, I hear,’ the daughter called out.

  Derek McCubbin’s eyes slid away from Lorimer’s gaze, resting instead on the door between the living room and the kitchen where sounds of teacups clattering could be heard.

  ‘Were they a nuisance, then, these students next door?’

  ‘Noisy, bad-mannered lot!’ Derek McCubbin muttered.

  ‘Not the sort of place for students. That’s what you always said, isn’t it, Dad?’ Corinne interrupted.

  ‘It’s a residential area, for families, decent folk…’ The old man tailed off, wiping a bit of spittle from his lips.

  ‘Had you complained to anyone about their behaviour?’

  There was no reply, a mere shake of the old man’s head.

  ‘Waste of time! Who’s going to listen to an old man like him? You thought it was going to be the big fair-haired chap didn’t you, Dad? Not a load of students playing their loud music and annoying everyone!’

  ‘Who else might have had cause to complain?’ Lorimer countered, looking up at the daughter but inwardly wishing that McCubbin wouldn’t let her answer for him.

  ‘The neighbours. There’s a residents’ association. Keeps everyone informed about what’s happening in the close. Repairs needing done and that sort of thing…’

  ‘And information about the owner of a newly sold flat?’ Lorimer leaned forward towards McCubbin, willing him to speak.

  The old man nodded.

  ‘Who owned the flat before that?’

  ‘Och, he had a grand wee neighbour for years, didn’t you, Dad?’ Corinne came between them, setting down the tray on a rickety coffee table. ‘Milk and sugar?’

  ‘Just milk, thanks. Where did that neighbour go?’

  ‘Grace Smith. A right nice wee neighbour she was. Och, she died and the flat was left tae her daughter in St Andrews,’ Corinne said, ignoring her father and speaking for him to Lorimer. ‘Gave him a bad shock, poor wee Grace going so sudden like that. Anyway, we’re going to sell up and find a nice wee place away from the city. Aren’t we, Dad?’ She smiled, barely turning to acknowledge the old man, but Lorimer saw a malicious gleam in her eyes that belied the curve on her lips.

  ‘Grace,’ Derek McCubbin whispered. ‘They sold her home to that man and his daughter…’ He trembled visibly as he took the mug from Corinne, cupping his hands around it as though to warm his aged fingers.

  ‘Did the other neighbours complain about the noise?’ Lorimer persisted but Derek made no reply so he looked at the woman instead for an answer.

  ‘Must’ve done, eh? I mean, if Faither could hear a racket with his bad hearing, it had to be pretty bad, right?’

  Lorimer nodded politely. Yet there was absolutely nothing in Jo Grant’s reports to show that the tenants in the top flat of number twenty-four had been anything other than exemplary neighbours. Perhaps nobody liked to speak ill of the dead? It was a common enough reaction. But still… there was something here that didn’t seem to add up, and, as he sipped his tea, Lorimer wondered just what that was.

  ‘And you were at your daughter’s all of that evening and night?’

  ‘He said he was!’ Corinne snapped. ‘Can you lot no’ leave a puir auld man alone? Why’re ye no’ oot getting that fellow that attacked these women? Eh?’

  Lorimer put down his mug, surprised at the woman’s sudden protective ferocity. Perhaps he had been wrong about the relationship between them. Maybe the daughter was closer to the old man than he had assumed.

  ‘Perhaps I had better be going,’ he said, aware of the hostility on the woman’s face. ‘Thanks for the tea.’

  He made to stand up and take his leave just as Derek McCubbin pulled out a crumpled handkerchief and blew his nose noisily.

  The old man muttered something into his hands as the policeman left the room and Lorimer turned for a moment, unsure if he had heard the word ‘Sorry’.

  ‘He’s an auld man that jist needs a bit o’ peace and quiet,’ Corinne explained as she opened the door. Yet, as he left, Lorimer couldn’t help feeling there was more reason than that for the woman to avoid his eyes as she ushered him out of her home.

&
nbsp; He had no reason to suppose that someone was watching from the upstairs flat, but as the detective walked across the road to where his car was parked, he felt rather than saw eyes boring down on him. A quick glance upward and the merest twitch of a curtain confirmed his suspicions. But who was it looking down: father or daughter?

  As he drove away from the rows of pale concrete flats, Lorimer could not help but feel a pang of sympathy for the woman hemmed in by the conglomeration of houses that comprised Castlemilk housing scheme. And, as he turned into the more affluent area of Kingspark where bay windows still displayed twinkling Christmas trees, he reflected on whether Derek McCubbin would ever be happy sharing a home with his sharp-tongued daughter and if, even now, the old man regretted leaving his spacious flat in Anniesland.

  CHAPTER 31

  ‘

  Y

  es, Detective Inspector, I agree,’ Solly said, picking up the cup of herbal tea and taking a sip. ‘There is a reasonable chance that the killer has a predilection for victims with long fair hair.’ He paused and took another sip. ‘How is the poor woman anyway?’

  DI Grant smiled. ‘The doctors think she’s going to pull through after all,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a couple of officers at her bedside for when she wakes up. It’ll be the best start to a new year for her poor family that I can imagine.’

  The psychologist breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Good,’ he said, laying down his cup on Jo’s desk. ‘Then it might be possible to catch this man…?’

  ‘So long as he’s at large he presents a real danger to women,’ Jo declared. ‘In my book, men who target lone females are either sad, mad or bad and my feeling from the start is that this one is pretty mad.’

  Solly tilted his head to one side thoughtfully. ‘A personality type that selects his victim on the basis of appearance is probably relating them to someone from his own past that he wishes to harm. Yes, this man most likely displays a certain sort of behavioural disorder,’ he said, nodding his agreement.

  ‘Aye, like I said, mad!’ Jo declared, watching with glee in her eyes as the psychologist winced. ‘Anyway, Lorimer tells me you’ve been interfering in my other case,’ she said, catching the psychologist’s eye and pinning it with a glare.

  ‘Guilty as charged,’ he murmured. ‘But perhaps Colin Young is not,’ he added quietly.

  ‘You know I could report him – and you – for taking steps like this?’

  Solly managed a half-hearted smile. ‘But you won’t, will you?’

  ‘No.’ The woman’s tight-lipped reply ended in a sigh. ‘I have too much respect for him to do something like that.’

  Solly nodded, watching the expressions flitting across Jo Grant’s face. She was hurting, wasn’t she? When he spoke again it was in a gentle, understanding tone.

  ‘And you feel that he ought to have had the same respect for you? And that he should have done nothing that would have upset this done-and-dusted case of yours?’

  ‘He’s been totally out of order,’ Jo replied. ‘But if I was wrong about Colin Young…’ She bit her lip, leaving the words unsaid. How would any decent-minded police officer feel about having an innocent man thrown into prison?

  ‘You did what you had to do,’ Solly told her. ‘You believed there was sufficient evidence to charge him. He’d had sex with the girl, he had followed her home, he broke down weeping when you interviewed him…’

  ‘But was it enough? Evidence has to be corroborated, doesn’t it?’

  ‘And how many folk at that party saw Colin hurrying out after the girl?’

  ‘Plenty,’ she replied, ‘and once we had his DNA matched it was a doddle.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, DI Grant, I am not of the opinion that Eva Magnusson’s case is in any way linked to those others.’

  ‘Oh?’ The woman’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. ‘I thought that you and Lorimer…’

  ‘We don’t always agree on every aspect of a case,’ Solly smiled. ‘And, getting back to Eva Magnusson, I don’t want you to think of that victim in a bad light,’ he said. He had already recounted his visit from Roger Dunbar and what he had found out about Eva Magnusson’s sex life.

  ‘You don’t want folk thinking that she was a wee slapper?’ Jo smiled back. ‘No, I can see what you’ve been saying, Professor. And I do get the point that she might have been trying to thwart her father’s domination by taking lovers he wouldn’t have condoned. Human nature to go after the bad ones,’ she murmured, making Solly raise his eyebrows a fraction and wonder if the detective inspector was referring to something in her own past. On this, the thirty-first of December, it was not unknown for sensitive souls to look back at the year gone by, but Solomon Brightman preferred to look forward with hope and anticipation at what was just around the corner.

  Glasgow was the poor relation when it came to the great Hogmanay party, Lorimer thought, tucking Maggie’s arm into his own as they walked back along the avenue. Over in the capital there would be the biggest party of the year with all its music and revellers thronging the streets. Round the next corner lay their own home and soon they would be sitting like thousands of other families across the land, in front of a television, waiting to catch a little of the fun, watching as the display of fireworks burst over Edinburgh castle.

  Drinks with the neighbours had been a low-key affair and it had been made clear that everyone was expected to leave before the actual bells rang out heralding the New Year to come.

  ‘They don’t do all that first-footing now, do they?’ Maggie remarked, cuddling in to his side, a warm woolly scarf covering her dark curls.

  ‘I can remember when I was wee my mum and dad used to have all the neighbours in for sausage rolls and sandwiches,’ he said. ‘The house would be full and nobody went to bed till after five in the morning.’

  ‘It was steak pies in our house,’ she laughed.

  ‘Aye, your mum always gave us a rare spread,’ he replied. There was silence then as they approached their front door, each reflecting on the families now gone and the sense of loss that this engendered.

  As Lorimer turned the key they could hear a loud miaow from Chancer, waiting to greet them.

  ‘Hi, puss,’ Lorimer said, bending down to scoop the cat onto his shoulder where he balanced, digging sharp claws into the detective’s good overcoat.

  ‘Well at least we have our wee pussycat to welcome us in,’ Maggie said.

  ‘But better not let him be our first-foot, eh?’ Lorimer chuckled.

  Maggie punched him gently on the arm. ‘Load of superstitious tosh!’ she exclaimed. ‘As if a red-haired first foot would bring bad luck!’ She lifted her hand to stroke the cat who began to purr loudly. ‘You wouldn’t bring us any harm, would you, Chancer?’ she crooned.

  ‘Come on, woman,’ Lorimer said, placing the cat in her arms and shrugging himself out of the coat. ‘What about that cold bottle waiting in the fridge?’

  Later, as they held their champagne flutes in readiness to welcome in the New Year, Lorimer reflected on the old superstition. He had been in great demand as a popular first-foot during his teens, already tall (and dark and handsome, his mother used to add).

  ‘You shivered,’ Maggie told him, laying a hand on his arm. ‘Goose walk over your grave?’

  ‘Just remembering all those years being pushed out the back door and having to walk around to the front while the bells rang and everyone wished each other a Happy New Year. It felt strange, being the one outside, listening to the boats sounding their hooters down the Clyde.’

  Maggie nestled in to his side. ‘Do they still do that, d’you think?’

  ‘Right, here we go,’ Lorimer said suddenly, hauling her to her feet as the voices from the television counted down to midnight.

  The booming tones of Big Ben sounded twelve sonorous notes then a cheer rang out and Scottish dance music began to play.

  ‘Happy New Year, darling,’ Lorimer said, clinking his glass against Maggie’s.

  ‘Good health and happin
ess,’ she rejoined, taking a sip of the champagne and smiling back at him. ‘Will it be a good one, do you think?’

  Lorimer stood at the bedroom window watching as a pale Chinese lantern floated silently across the expanse of inky black skies. He had slept for a bit then awoken, aware of the ginger cat between him and Maggie’s sleeping form. He had disturbed neither of them as he slipped out of bed, Chancer merely stretching out a paw before returning it to a soft furry place beneath his body.

  He was thinking about the old superstition. A black-haired man coming to your door as a first-foot after midnight was the sign for good luck whereas a red-haired man was an ill omen. Somewhere out there in his city there was a sick individual whose messed-up brain was telling him to target fair-haired women. What sort of symbolism was there? If any? Solly had spoken to him about different theories concerning symbolic choices and why killers might identify their prey with a person from their past. Did this killer have an issue with some fair-haired person who had abused him? He recalled the case from years back, when he had first encountered the psychologist. That killer had had mental issues, hadn’t he? Was Solly remembering him, too? And, perhaps, trying to create a profile that was not unlike that of the man now languishing in Carstairs, the Scottish mental hospital?

  ‘New year, new start.’ Mrs Calderwood raised her glass and smiled happily at her son who was sitting at the other end of the long dining room table. The room was bathed in a dazzle of winter sunlight making rainbow kisses on the crystal glasses that were now being clinked as the family members acknowledged the toast.

  Everyone was here: Grandma Iris, Uncle Terry and his wife, Linda, plus their two sullen-faced teenage girls who had already fallen out over which of them was to sit next to him at dinner. Miriam, the younger one, was knocking back her Veuve Clicquot like it was so much lemonade and Gary tried not to raise a disapproving eyebrow at her. Eva would never have behaved like that…

  The thought came to him suddenly, making a lump in his throat; a memory of candlelight and the perfume she always wore.