The Swedish Girl

by Alex Gray

  ‘Going back to Glasgow, then, Gary?’ Grandma Iris was smiling at him, her eyes holding the question that was in everybody’s mind but that they were all too polite to actually ask. Do you really want to return to the flat where a murder took place?

  Gary smiled back, his face hurting from trying to pretend. ‘Yes, Grandma, of course. Have to get on with my studies, you know.’

  The old woman looked back at him, the crinkles around her eyes becoming almost a wink. ‘Hope you are doing more than just studying, my boy,’ she whispered, leaning in towards him so that only he could hear. ‘Time for some fun, now that you’re away from home, eh?’

  Gary gave a small laugh. ‘Well, we’ll see. Got a pile of stuff to do before the exams,’ he added, still smiling.

  ‘D’you want to play Monopoly after dinner, Gary?’ Esther asked.

  Gary nodded. ‘Sure, if everyone else does,’ he said, noting the smirk on his cousin’s face. Esther was thirteen going on thirty, he thought, trying not to show his disgust at the untidy mess of backcombed hair supposedly styled in a bouffant, or the false eyelashes with feathers on the ends and that bright kingfisher blue and opalescent pink that must have taken hours to paint on to her eyelids. His gaze drifted across the table to Aunt Linda with her tight-fitting black dress that showed too much cleavage and not enough good taste.

  The memory of a blonde girl draping a pink cardigan around her shoulders flitted across his brain and he took a quick pull on the champagne to hide the sudden tears that stung his eyes. He swallowed the bubbles too quickly and, as he spluttered into his napkin, he saw Esther grinning across at him, amused at his momentary discomfiture. For a moment he wanted to reach out and grab her untidy nest of hair and twist it around her neck. Little cow! He saw the girl’s smile fade and wiped his mouth once more on the white damask linen napkin, aware that he had let his guard slip.

  ‘Silly me,’ he murmured. ‘You’d think all these weeks living in Scotland would have made me a seasoned drinker!’

  Esther smiled again as everyone laughed but this time Gary noticed a new wariness in his cousin’s eyes and he cursed himself inwardly for the momentary lapse.

  ‘I’m off to bed, darling, thanks for clearing up. You are such a pet.’ Moira Calderwood blew her son a kiss over her shoulder as she disappeared up the stairs towards her room. It had been like this ever since he had returned home: Moira would rise late, yawning her head off, yet as soon as ten o’clock struck on the grandfather clock in the hall she was off to bed, never even waiting to catch the evening news. Gary had sneaked into her bedroom just before Christmas while Moira had been at the hairdresser’s. The prescription tranquillisers were still there right enough, in her en suite bathroom. It was coming up for two years now since Dad’s death, time enough to wean herself off the bloody things! Gary had told himself angrily, shoving the dark brown bottle back onto the glass shelf exactly as he had found it. If Dad hadn’t died, Moira would never have become the way she was now, so clingy and wanting his help at every turn.

  But, he reasoned, stacking the plates carefully into the Miele dishwasher, hadn’t she always been dependent on Dad? His mouth twisted as he envisaged the next three weeks spent fetching and carrying for the woman upstairs who was probably comatose already. A wistful memory came to him of Saturday mornings in the flat, Kirsty cooking up a great breakfast for them all, and in that moment Gary knew he wanted to cut short his visit home and return to Glasgow.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said aloud. ‘I’ll tell her tomorrow.’ Then, having made up his mind, he dropped a tablet into the dispenser, shut the door and pressed the start button, listening to the machine’s gentle whirr, the first real smile of the day appearing on his handsome face.

  Did I hate her? I don’t think so. Do I hate her now? He sighed, the pen poised above the lines, wondering if he should score them out. What was there to hate? A young girl who had beguiled him? Didn’t that happen all the time? Colin’s mouth disappeared in a thin line as he looked around his cell. This might be what he had to look forward to for the next couple of decades if he was found guilty; he’d be a middle-aged man when he came out. He closed his eyes, remembering her hair, the way it had swept across his face as her body rose and fell in a rhythm with his own. She would be forever young, he thought, trying to remember a line of poetry. Keats, wasn’t it? Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

  Was that to be their lasting testament?

  Colin rolled over in his bunk, wishing now that he could rid himself of that other vision in his brain, the picture he had tried so hard to forget, of her body lying so still, so very still on the patterned carpet.

  CHAPTER 32

  P

  rofessor Solomon Brightman stood outside the flat, watching for the girl’s shadow to appear beyond the glass.

  ‘Hello,’ Kirsty said brightly as she opened the door wide to let him in. ‘You’re early.’

  ‘Thought I would come up while Abby’s having her afternoon nap,’ he explained. ‘She doesn’t keep any particular timetable,’ he apologised, ‘but she does usually have a sleep some time after lunch.’

  ‘Know the feeling.’ Kirsty made a face as she rubbed her stomach. ‘Mum’s been force-feeding me all holidays as though I’ve been starving in a garret. I mean, c’mon,’ she laughed as she pulled down a baggy jumper to hide her bulging tummy, ‘do I look like an underfed waif?’

  Solly laughed with her but not before he saw a trace of sadness in the girl’s eyes. Had it been hard being the plain Jane here alongside a beauty like Eva Magnusson?

  ‘Cup of tea? I’ve got camomile or spearmint,’ Kirsty went on, leading Solly through the long hallway and into the kitchen. ‘And there’s some home-made cherry cake as well.’

  ‘Mint tea would be lovely, thanks, but I’ll pass on the cake,’ Solly told her.

  ‘Ah well, the boys’ll just have to polish it off.’

  ‘Boys?’

  ‘Oh, did you not know? Gary came back early. Said he had work to catch up on but I guess he was finding it hard going at home just him and his mum.’

  ‘And Roger’s been here since just after Christmas.’ Solly nodded to himself.

  ‘When are you off to Sweden?’ Kirsty asked, cutting a large slice of cherry cake and picking up the crumbs with her fingers. ‘Mr Lorimer told me you were going there to deliver a paper.’

  ‘The day after tomorrow,’ Solly told her. ‘No rest for the wicked.’ He chuckled.

  ‘I bet it’s lovely there,’ the girl said dreamily. ‘All snowy and crisp, a proper Christmassy sort of landscape, not like this,’ she added in disgust, glancing outside where the wind was driving the rain, rattling in gusts against the kitchen window.

  Solly smiled but did not reply. His trip to Stockholm might turn out to be far less pleasant than the idealised picture that was in Kirsty Wilson’s mind at this moment.

  ‘You said on the phone that there was something you wanted to talk to me about,’ Kirsty went on, fishing a teabag from a green packet and plonking it into a flowery mug.

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Solly replied, then paused as they went into the lounge where a warm fire crackled in the grate. He sat down, rubbing his hands before he spoke again. ‘I wanted to talk to you about Eva Magnusson. I know I’ve asked you this before, Kirsty, but what was she like? I mean, what was your impression of her?’

  ‘Oh.’ Kirsty put down the mug she was holding with a sigh. ‘What can I tell you?’

  ‘Just the truth,’ Solly said simply.

  ‘She was like no one I’d ever met before,’ Kirsty said.

  She had chosen to sit on the floor by his feet, her arms wrapped around her knees, hands almost lost under the long sleeves of a shapeless brown garment that might have been a knitted tunic.

  ‘She was the sort of person you would imagine going to the ambassador’s party, you know what I mean?’

  Solly frowned and shook his head.

  ‘That Ferrero Rocher advert, you know. The one where the flunke
y comes in with these gold-wrapped sweeties all piled up high like a croquembouche.’

  Solly smiled, still shaking his head.

  ‘Well, you get the idea. She was the sort of girl who could go anywhere, be with anyone and still carry it off. Posh places give me the willies but Eva, no, she was meant for the high life.’

  There was no bitterness in the girl’s tone, Solly thought as he listened to her. Kirsty Wilson might sound a little wistful for snowy Christmas scenes but there did not seem to be a trace of envy in her manner as she described the dead girl.

  ‘What was she like around her father?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, now you’re asking, Professor.’ Kirsty nodded over her mug of tea. ‘Mr Magnusson definitely brought out a different side to our Eva.’

  ‘Describe that for me, will you?’

  Kirsty looked into the middle distance as though trying to recapture a moment lost in time. ‘He was always very polite, you know? But it was as if she was standing to attention whenever he was around. Does that sound strange? I mean she was kind of stiff, like a doll, going through the motions just for him. Like she was playing the part of the perfect daughter and doing just what he wanted her to do.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, she even dressed differently the couple of times he was here. I mean, Eva had nice clothes, lots of nice clothes,’ she added in mock gloominess, ‘but she’d always put on something kind of demure, you know. Not quite twinset and pearls but the kind of dress that most students would consider pretty old-fashioned.’ She twisted the empty mug back and forth in her hands as she spoke. ‘Then when he’d gone she would put on something short and flimsy – she had loads of chiffony things, stuff like her Ghost blouse.’ She glanced up at the professor’s puzzled expression and sighed. It was clear that such niceties of fashion were lost on the psychologist. ‘Good designer labels, see?’ Kirsty explained.

  ‘And she’d be different in herself, more carefree, less the ladylike doll that her father expected her to be,’ she added sourly.

  ‘Didn’t you like Mr Magnusson?’ Solly asked in surprise.

  She shook her head. ‘Please don’t get me wrong, Professor Brightman, I feel terrible for the poor man, but you did ask me. I really didn’t like the way he seemed to… I don’t know…’

  ‘Dominate his daughter?’ Solly suggested.

  ‘Yeah, you could put it like that, though she wasn’t cowed or anything, it wasn’t as bad as that, just… Oh, I don’t think I’m doing a very good job of explaining what I mean. God! And you should have seen the state he was in when he came up here after the post-mortem! Poor guy!’ Kirsty shook her head again silently and Solly was moved by the sight of tears in her eyes.

  ‘When will Gary be in?’

  Kirsty smiled. ‘Who knows? Depends when he gets away from Detective Superintendent Lorimer. Poor Gary,’ she laughed. ‘Bet you anything that he’s wishing right now he’d stayed at home!’

  He couldn’t blame the boy for not wanting to visit A Division again and so Lorimer had agreed to meet him at the pub on the corner.

  He recognised Gary Calderwood from the description Kirsty had given him. He’ll be sitting outside on the smokers’ bench, a pint of lager in one hand and a cigarette in the other, she had said with a short laugh. And that was almost true. As the detective superintendent approached the dark-haired young man he could see him nervously picking at a ragged nail, the dregs of his drink on the table in front of him.

  ‘Gary?’

  The student looked up, an expression of alarm on his face that was swiftly replaced by a pasted-on smile.

  ‘I’m Detective Superintendent Lorimer. Can I get you another?’ He nodded towards the near empty glass.

  ‘Yes, thanks. Pint of Carlsberg,’ Gary replied, his eyes never leaving the detective’s face for a moment.

  Lorimer felt rather than saw those same eyes boring into the back of his head as he left the student sitting there and entered the pub. The bar was a curved old-fashioned affair and so Lorimer stepped around to a space where he could place the order and still see out of the window to where Calderwood was sitting.

  As he waited for the drinks to arrive, a quick glance showed him that the student was busy on his mobile phone. Texting or tweeting, perhaps? Or was he letting someone know that Detective Superintendent Lorimer had arrived? The idea took hold as he carried the drinks back outside, Calderwood hastily slipping the phone back into his coat pocket as the detective approached.

  ‘One Carlsberg, one cranberry juice and two packets of cheese and onion. Okay with you?’ Lorimer asked cheerfully, laying the drinks down and taking the crisps out from his own pocket.

  ‘Thanks,’ Calderwood said, lifting the glass. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Slainte,’ Lorimer replied with a grin. ‘Right, Mr Calderwood. You prefer to sit out here with your fags rather than enjoy the warmth of your flat upstairs?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Calderwood flicked ash into a sand bucket by his side. ‘The tenants aren’t supposed to smoke, you see.’

  ‘Bet you didn’t let on to Magnusson at the beginning,’ Lorimer said, his tone deliberately light, putting the younger man at his ease.

  ‘Course not,’ he replied equally lightly, blowing a line of smoke heavenwards. ‘No need to upset the apple cart.’

  ‘Okay,’ Lorimer began again, leaning forward so that only Gary Calderwood could hear him, ‘here’s what I want. All the information you can give me about Eva Magnusson from the time you met her until the night she was killed. Understood?’

  Gary Calderwood sat up a little straighter and nodded mutely.

  ‘Your flatmate has been arrested on suspicion of murder. That’s a damned serious charge, Gary. And we want to find out if there is any reason why it might not stick. Got me?’

  The student looked a little doubtful at the policeman’s sudden change from affable to bullish.

  ‘But I thought that Colin…’

  ‘You thought Colin what?’

  ‘He was charged so he must have done it.’ Gary shrugged but there was a new note of doubt that had crept into his voice.

  ‘Tell me,’ Lorimer said. ‘Start with Colin. What was he like around Eva? What kind of guy was he to share a flat with?’

  Gary Calderwood raised his eyebrows in thought before replying. ‘Colin was all right. A bit geeky, maybe, but he mucked in with the chores and all that sort of stuff. Had a proper crush on Eva, anyone could’ve seen that,’ he smirked.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘What about me?’ Calderwood’s chin jutted upwards, defiantly.

  ‘Well, rumour has it that you and Eva were more than mere flatmates, Gary.’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean,’ the boy replied.

  ‘Come on, Gary. They all knew about it,’ Lorimer bluffed. ‘Creeping upstairs afterwards, making sheep’s eyes at her over the breakfast table?’

  The young man reddened suddenly, more through a sudden surge of temper than embarrassment, Lorimer guessed.

  ‘So, what if we did? No harm in that, is there?’

  ‘None at all,’ Lorimer said evenly. ‘Nor was there any harm in her sexual relations with Roger or Colin or Uncle Tom Cobley.’

  ‘What…?’ Calderwood’s jaw dropped as he stared at the police officer.

  ‘She was playing with you, Gary,’ Lorimer smiled. ‘A beautiful girl like that could have her pick of bedmates. Couldn’t she?’

  Gary Calderwood ran a hand across his dark hair, rumpling its perfectly gelled style. He seemed genuinely stunned, Lorimer thought. Too egotistic to have contemplated that Eva Magnusson was simply using the boys for her own gratification, Gary had evidently considered that he was somehow special to the Swedish girl. So special that he had become jealous of anyone else?

  ‘You didn’t know about what she and Colin were up to the night of the party?’

  Calderwood was looking at the ground, now, shaking his head silently.

  ‘You know something, Gary?’ Lorimer leaned closer
to him. ‘I don’t believe you. I think you knew fine what was going on in that bedroom.’

  The eyes that flicked up to meet his held an expression that Lorimer recognised as fear tempered with uncertainty. He’d seen this countless times before, this doubt in a man’s eyes during an internal struggle to tell the truth or blurt out a lie. Which choice would this young man make? he wondered.

  ‘Okay.’ The word seemed to be drawn out of him like a long sigh. ‘I did know she was flirting with him, dancing, all that… Oh Christ!’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I thought…’

  ‘You thought she was trying to make you jealous?’

  He saw the dark head nodding up and down and heard a stifled groan as Calderwood bent forward, eyes closed against having to face a truth that he had previously denied.

  ‘When did you leave the party, Gary?’

  Calderwood took his hands away from his head and sat up again, mouth open.

  ‘You don’t think that I had anything to do with Eva’s death, surely?’

  ‘Perhaps I should be asking that question down at A Division,’ Lorimer answered quietly. ‘We have plenty of time to go down there if you like. And I would also have the facility to record your answer.’

  The colour drained from the young man’s face as he realised the seriousness of his position.

  ‘You want me to go back there?’

  ‘Perhaps it would be best,’ Lorimer agreed. ‘I think you might actually have a bit more to tell me about Eva Magnusson than you let on to my colleague DI Grant.’

  Billy Brogan tied the white laces together in a simple knot, an expression of regret on his face. These Reebok ERS trainers were pretty nice ones and he’d miss wearing them, but they were a small sacrifice to make for the bigger plan he had in mind. Sam had paved the way with the lad, giving him occasional treats, acting like a kindly uncle, so that Young was completely under his spell. The old man was useful in that way. Now, a wee pressie like the trainers would be a bargaining chip in the negotiation that he had to make with the prisoner in A Block. Brogan grinned to himself. The student thought he had nothing more to do than to sweat it out until his trial but Billy Brogan would make sure that he earned his keep in here, just like the rest of them. Brogan might be inside HMP Barlinnie but his drug distribution business was still ticking over nicely outside.