The Swedish Girl

by Alex Gray

  Lorimer hunkered down, eyes level with the shabby brass letterbox, but all he could see was the interior glass door, no shadow moving beyond.

  ‘He’s not here,’ Wilson said, making to move back down the stairs, but he stopped as Lorimer stood up and knocked sharply on the storm doors.

  Still there was no answer.

  ‘Right.’ Lorimer turned to the two uniformed officers. ‘You know what to do.’

  The booming sound reverberated in the chill air of the close as they battered Derek McCubbin’s solid door. A splintering noise made them stop, the red battering ram swaying between them.

  ‘Okay, do the other one.’

  Shards of glass tinkled to the ground as they burst a hole beside the lock.

  Lorimer reached inside with his gloved hand.

  It was there. He caught hold of the key between his thumb and forefinger then turned, wondering who had locked this door, fearful of what might lie within.

  Not a word was spoken as they entered the house, only the crunch of glass below several pairs of boots alerting anyone inside to their intrusion.

  Lorimer flicked a switch inside the doorway, illuminating the long hall. He could see the walls were half timbered, the doors along the corridor a dark varnish, yellowing wallpaper testifying to years of neglect. An old man’s house, he thought. Ancient mahogany bookcases and side tables cluttered with trinkets lined the walls, brass-framed prints of sailing ships above them, making the place seem narrower than it really was. All the doors along the passage were shut, except for the one farthest away, a lozenge of light drawing them towards the end of the hall.

  The big kitchen was a mirror image of the one next door, even down to the roof beams suspended from the kitchen ceiling.

  The body swayed slightly, the draught catching it as Lorimer pushed the door wide. Sightless eyes stared down at them, the old man’s neck twisted to one side as though he had struggled at the end, his mouth agape.

  Had he wanted to change his mind? Or was it the body’s natural instinct to resist the onset of death? Lorimer could imagine that throttling cough as the rope bit into the old man’s throat, feet scrabbling for a surface that was no longer there.

  A bentwood chair lay tumbled where Derek McCubbin had kicked it aside, the wooden stick halfway across the kitchen floor.

  ‘Leave it,’ Lorimer said shortly as one of the police officers went to pick it up. ‘Don’t touch a thing until Forensics arrive.’

  Nobody spoke again for a few moments, the officers looking at the body swinging gently on its rope.

  ‘We should look for a note.’ Jo Grant touched Lorimer’s sleeve. ‘If you think he’ll have left one.’

  Lorimer nodded. ‘I hope to God he has.’

  It was all he needed to say for the four officers to begin their search, leaving the detective superintendent gazing at the body hanging there. His eyes wandered over the kitchen, noting the cup and saucer placed upside down on the draining board, a teapot laid to one side. He imagined the old man sitting drinking that last cup of tea, hand shaking as he thought ahead to that final act. What had gone through his mind? Remorse? Guilt? Who could tell?

  ‘We’ve found it, sir.’ Alistair Wilson stood by his side turning a sheet of pale blue notepaper in one gloved hand. ‘Pretty much says it all,’ he added.

  Lorimer glanced down at the crabbed handwriting that filled almost both sides of the note. He would read it eventually, see if it confirmed what Corinne Kennedy had already told him and hope to understand finally what had happened on that fateful December night.

  Lorimer read the photocopied letter once again. The original was sealed within a sheet of plastic, the final production in a case that had taken so many weeks out of Colin Young’s life.

  I couldn’t let them keep the boy inside. It wasn’t right. He had nothing to do with it.

  I’d seen her looking at me whenever I passed them, laughing at me, sniggering behind her hand, thinking I didn’t know she was making a fool of me. Thought she was better than them all, oh, I could see that. I used to hear them on the stairs, calling out. Noisy wee beggars. This was never meant to be a place for students. Grace would have hated all that uproar, Grace, my dear friend. I miss her so much.

  That Swedish girl, she was screaming at the man outside the door. Terrible things. I’d just got home, still had my coat and gloves on so I came out to give her a telling-off. The man had gone and she was leaning over the banister, saying something in Swedish that I couldn’t understand. Be quiet, I told her. Stop all this racket. But she just turned on me with that false wee smile of hers. Told me to get lost. That was when I tried to grab her but she dodged into the flat and I followed her down the hall, taking my stick with me.

  ‘He didn’t mean to hit her,’ Corinne Kennedy had told him, sobbing. ‘He said it just sort of happened. One minute the girl had been shouting at him to get out of her house, Grace’s old house, then she was on the floor.’

  I can’t remember much, just that anger swelling up inside as I took hold of her throat. Then she was so still. She just lay on the carpet, not breathing any more. I knew I’d killed her. I was frightened then, didn’t know what to do. Just wanted to get away.

  ‘And did he tell you what happened then?’ Lorimer had asked Derek’s daughter.

  ‘He was halfway along the hall when he heard someone at the door,’ Corinne had sniffed. ‘Slipped into the bathroom, didn’t he? Waited till she’d gone into her room. Then got out of the place as quick as he could and came to me.’

  I couldn’t stay there. Took a taxi to Corinne’s and told her there had been an accident. Later, when she heard about the girl’s death, she looked at me funny. But she didn’t let on to the police, not even when they came to her house to see me.

  Tell the boy I’m sorry.

  It was as comprehensive a confession as the detective superintendent could have wished for. He had even written the date then signed it, Derek McCubbin.

  Lorimer passed the copy to the girl, watching her face as she read.

  ‘I knew there was something I’d forgotten. Thought I’d heard the door open and close but I decided it must have been the wind,’ Kirsty muttered.

  They were sitting in his office at Stewart Street. It was less than twenty-four hours since Derek McCubbin’s suicide but already it seemed much longer, so much had happened.

  ‘Why did he do it?’ Kirsty asked at last, handing the letter back to Lorimer. ‘And how could he do it anyway, he was such a weak old man, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Spite, probably. A moment of madness,’ Lorimer said. ‘His daughter told us that he had been really cut up about losing his old neighbour, especially when the flat was sold on and occupied with students.’

  ‘But we were never bad to him,’ Kirsty protested. ‘We didn’t do the things he said.’

  ‘Never mocked him, even when you thought he couldn’t hear you?’

  ‘No, not once,’ she said firmly. ‘In fact Eva always said she felt sorry for him. “Daddy No Mates”, she called him because he was always on his own.’

  ‘And you were always together in a group.’

  Kirsty nodded. ‘Who would have thought an old man like that could have been capable of killing anyone,’ she mused.

  ‘He was an ex-merchant seaman,’ Lorimer told her. ‘Hardy type, even though he had a gammy leg, he was evidently strong enough to overpower Eva. And fury can give a person strength.’

  ‘But why didn’t he confess at the outset? Why wait all this time leaving poor Colin in prison?’

  ‘Fear,’ Lorimer told her. ‘Too old to face going to prison himself. And afterwards he probably tried to blot it out of his mind.’

  ‘So what made him…?’ Kirsty stopped, reluctant to put the image of the hanging man into words.

  Lorimer shook his head. That was another story, one that he had pieced together in his own mind. An aged father and a grasping daughter, the one fearful of discovery, the other seizing her chance to hold his terribl
e crime over him for the rest of his days. Corinne Kennedy had wanted a life away from the drudgery she had endured for so many years and had seen her father as her only way out. The car, the bungalow by the seaside, the old man under her thumb as she reminded him daily that she knew what he had done. He’d never be able to prove it but the mendacious look in the woman’s eyes had told him more than any confession.

  The old man had faced a different sort of imprisonment, Lorimer guessed. A life with his daughter would have taken away the last vestiges of his freedom. And in the end, a life not worth living.

  ‘Perhaps he just couldn’t live with himself any longer,’ Lorimer told Kirsty. It was a sort of truth, after all.

  ‘Professor Brightman was right after all,’ she said. ‘He didn’t think Colin had killed Eva or that it was some random stranger. He always said that she knew who her killer was. And she did, didn’t she?’

  Lorimer sighed again. ‘Maybe none of you really knew Derek McCubbin,’ he said slowly. ‘Maybe that was the problem. He was an old cantankerous man who kept folk at a distance, imagining the worst of them. Not your fault,’ he added as Kirsty opened her mouth to protest.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, glancing at his watch, ‘isn’t it time you were getting back to the flat? Thought you’d be baking a cake for your pal when he comes home.’

  CHAPTER 44

  I

  t was still dark when he awoke and for a minute or two Colin could not recall where he was. Then the bed creaked under him and he remembered. Home.

  Outside his room he could hear the sounds of someone clattering pans in the kitchen. Of course. Dad had said he was taking the day off work. Can’t have my boy waking up all alone, he’d murmured as they’d said goodnight.

  He and Thomas had sat in the living room, drinking beers and talking till the wee small hours. Not about Eva, nor about the weeks spent incarcerated in HMP Barlinnie. No, it had just been catching up with daft stuff like how Celtic was doing in the league and what was going on in the neighbourhood. There would be a few sorry-looking faces avoiding their stares, Thomas had told him grimly. The newspapers would be full of it today: already there had been online reports about Derek McCubbin’s suicide and Colin Young’s release from Barlinnie.

  He was surprised the phone wasn’t ringing already, but then hadn’t Dad said something about unplugging it to give him a wee bit of peace?

  Colin turned onto his side, relishing the feel of the duvet against his skin, breathing in the fresh newly washed smell of it. He sighed, remembering. Eva had always insisted on them using that lavender fabric softener in the laundry. Would there be any of it left in the cupboard under the kitchen sink? Funny how things like that popped into his head, wee reminders of how life was before…

  Thomas had told him he was nuts wanting to go back to Merryfield Avenue but Kirsty and the others were there and he had to resume his lectures sometime soon if he were to stay on course. He’d texted her last night, told her he was fine. Colin’s mouth twisted in a rueful smile. That ubiquitous catch-all word: ‘fine’.

  It would take a while, the prison governor had told him. It always did. He’d shaken Colin’s hand, wished him luck for his future. Tears had smarted in Colin’s eyes then, as he realised that he did have a future after all.

  He’d said nothing to the governor about what he’d done for Billy Brogan or about Sam, the passman. That was all behind him now and he could forget them for ever if he wanted to.

  The first rays of a cold January sun filtered through the curtains, hitting the notebook that lay on his bedside table. He had sent so many letters to Professor Brightman, opening his heart and mind about Eva Magnusson. The Swedish Girl would never be finished now but perhaps his weeks inside one of Scotland’s most notorious jails could provide material for a different story altogether…?

  ‘You’re going to do what?’ Alistair Wilson’s jaw dropped in astonishment as Kirsty faced him, arms folded across her chest.

  ‘But you’re doing so well, pet,’ Betty pleaded. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to finish your degree first then think about it later?’

  ‘You have no idea what sort of life it is for a lassie in the police,’ Alistair fumed. ‘They need to work harder, do more to prove themselves as good as, if not better than, their male colleagues.’

  ‘I know, Dad,’ Kirsty said with a sigh. ‘It’s not as if I haven’t been exposed to the job in recent weeks.’

  ‘We thought you wanted to get away, go abroad to work in the hotel trade,’ Betty protested.

  ‘Well, I’ve changed my mind,’ Kirsty said firmly. ‘I’ve already downloaded my application and sent it away.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe they won’t take me.’

  ‘Oh, I bet they will. Determined wee madam like you!’

  Alistair Wilson stared at her for a moment then his face changed as he nodded, remembering what Lorimer had said about his daughter: She has a knack of getting under the skin of people she meets. And wasn’t that just like the detective superintendent himself?

  He grinned suddenly. ‘Ach, well, two polis in the family, why not?’

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks are due to the many people who helped bring this novel to fruition. As always I begin with those who gave of their time to help with research. Thank you Chief Inspector Martin Cloherty and DCI David Halliday of A Division in Strathclyde Police for letting me ask all sorts of questions and take video clips on my visit to HQ. The governor of Barlinnie Prison, Derek McGill, and several of his staff and some of the inmates were also very generous with their time, allowing me to see places and find out things about that institution that I would not otherwise have known. Thank you, all. To DI Bob Frew and DC Mhairi Milne, again many thanks for letting me ask random questions as I composed the novel. Dr Marjorie Turner is always there to keep me on the right track with Rosie, just in case my scalpel slips! Thanks, Marjorie, my turn for lunch.

  Huge thanks to everyone at Little Brown, especially my lovely editor, Jade Chandler, who approved the first draft and whose editing thoughts thankfully chimed in with my own; to Maddy, and Moira for keeping my head straight and not letting me double-book myself, and dear David Shelley who is always there for me.

  Bless you, Jenny, for being so supportive and always knowing the right word to cheer me up when things aren’t going right. You are an agent in a million.

  Finally, thanks to Donnie who reads the first draft, points out typos and tries to give me gentle advice (too many murders!!). Life would just not be the same without you to keep me going.