The Darkest Goodbye

by Alex Gray

  ‘No,’ Sarah whispered. ‘I don’t want anything more to do with you people.’

  A soft laugh sounded as she prepared to hang up and switch off the mobile. ‘No? Oh, Sarah, you’re going to do exactly what we tell you, doll. Or do you want that nice Mrs Abbott to know what you’ve been up to recently? Fancy going back inside, is that what you want? Be here in five minutes, got it?’

  There was a lengthy silence as Sarah’s thoughts whirled. She needed time to think, needed to let someone know what was happening.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ she replied hoarsely. ‘I’m in the middle of something right now.’

  She cut off the voice of her tormentor. She needed to let Nancy know what was happening, she’d promised… but not on this phone, just in case…? Panic made her head pound as she looked at the phone in her hand. Could they trace her calls? It wasn’t a chance that she was prepared to take but she had to make this phone call.

  Heart beating fast, she sped along the corridor towards Nancy’s office. She could use the landline there, couldn’t she?

  But when she tried the door it was locked.

  Damn! Of course, since the break-in none of the staff was taking any chances. She stood for a moment, thinking hard then crept quietly along to the staffroom.

  Several coats were hanging on the coat stand behind the door, Grainne’s hooded mackintosh to the front. Didn’t she keep her mobile in that outside pocket?

  With trembling hands, Sarah unzipped the pocket and felt inside. Yes! She breathed out. Thank goodness it wasn’t one of these smart phones but an ancient thing that the nurse kept just for making calls.

  Sarah dialled the number and waited. Nancy would be in bed at this hour and although she hated herself for disturbing the good woman, she prayed that she would get up and answer the landline at Corrielinn.

  ‘Hello?’ a sleepy voice asked.

  ‘Nancy. It’s me. Sarah. They’re back and I have to go outside to see them.’ Sarah shivered as she spoke, her eyes on the window of the room. Was anybody out there, watching her through those thin curtains?

  ‘Sarah! You mustn’t! Don’t go near these people. I mean it!’ Nancy’s tone was adamant.

  ‘I have to,’ Sarah cried. ‘Or they’ll tell your sister what I’ve done and I’ll be sent back to Cornton Vale.’

  ‘No!’ Nancy almost shouted. ‘Don’t go out. Listen. Detective Superintendent Lorimer wouldn’t want you to put yourself in any danger. Now here’s what we’re going to do.’

  ‘Didn’t show.’ The man slouched downhill towards the main road where the car was waiting. ‘What now?’

  ‘Call her again. Be there when she does come out,’ an authoritative voice replied. ‘And then you take her for another little drive.’

  Lorimer groaned as he sat up, hand already outstretched to pick up his phone.

  The digital clock by his bedside read five minutes to one.

  ‘Lorimer.’

  ‘Detective Superintendent, it’s Nancy Livingstone here. We need your help.’

  The dawn was still some hours away as Lorimer drove across the city, its lights twinkling against a black velvet sky tinged with that familiar sodium glow. Night in the city. Time when the bad folk came out to wreak havoc on innocent citizens, time when he and his own kind had to be vigilant in tackling the different sorts of crime that tainted his beloved Glasgow. Blue and purple arcs of light shimmered on the waters as he crossed the Clyde and headed towards Stewart Street. A call was not enough. He had to see some of the night shift face to face, explain a little of the situation. Hopefully it was a quiet night for the officers there and he would have the necessary back-up when the time came.

  Lorimer sped across the bridge, wondering whether Sarah Wilding had the guts to carry out their plan.

  When the mobile vibrated once again Sarah let it ring a few times before picking up.

  ‘We’ve got an emergency here,’ she said, trying to inject as much strength into her voice as she could. ‘You’ll have to wait until the doctor’s been. I can’t come out till then.’ Her hands shook as she waited for a reply. Had she sounded scared? Probably. Her knees were beginning to tremble and she wanted to sit down and weep.

  ‘When will that be?’ The response was gruff and curt.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sarah replied. ‘We’ve been told he’s on his way. That’s all I know. Look, I must go.’ Then she pressed the off button and sank into a chair by the radiator, pressing her hands on to its surface to ease the sudden chill to her blood.

  The tall policeman would come straight into the car park and she would be waiting to let him in. What would the other nurses say? How would she explain the presence of a senior police officer in the middle of the night?

  ‘Sarah? Are you okay?’ Grainne stood in the doorway of the staffroom, a quizzical look on her face.

  Sarah shook her head. ‘There’s a problem, Grainne,’ she began. ‘Mr Imrie’s death is being investigated by the police. They think he’s been murdered,’ she began slowly, watching the other nurse’s eyes widen.

  ‘So that’s why all these forensic folk were here. We wondered. Are you telling me that you know something about this?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Sarah continued. ‘But the nursing home has been a target of some sort and there’s a policeman coming here right now.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Grainne came to sit beside her colleague, one hand resting on the back of Sarah’s chair. ‘Why has that made you look as if you’ve seen a ghost?’

  Sarah looked down at her hands and shook her head. ‘I can’t say,’ she murmured. ‘I’ve just been told to follow instructions,’ she added, knowing that what she was telling Grainne was true though so much was being left unsaid.

  The two men sat in the front of the black BMW, its engine running to keep them warm. From the open driver’s window came a thin line of smoke, the hand holding the cigarette resting on the glass. It had been more than an hour since Jerry had first called the nurse but their instructions were clear. Stay put and pick her up.

  He exhaled the last of the smoke and flicked the butt away, watching its molten tip describe an arc in the darkness until it hit the ground to join several others lying on the grassy verge.

  ‘Car comin’,’ his companion said suddenly and both men stared into the dark road as twin headlights appeared, cresting the hill and revealing a large silver car.

  ‘Must be that doctor,’ Dolan hissed, turning the knife in his hands, making its silver blade catch the moonlight.

  ‘Shut it,’ Jerry replied, pressing the button to close his window. Dolan had been annoying him all night, his constant foot-tapping and humming under his breath, signs that the man was wired to the bloody full moon. Maybe what they said was true. The man by his side was behaving more erratically than usual.

  Jerry Cunningham gripped the steering wheel, his bare knuckles whitening. If Dolan screwed up he’d be the first to give him a proper doing. But Dolan would scare the shit out of the Wilding lassie even more when she saw him in a state like this, Jerry thought with a sudden grin. And the blade that Rob Dolan carried would be sufficient to persuade the girl to do exactly as they told her.

  Sarah shivered as she pulled on her coat. Grainne had asked questions of the tall police officer who had given the impression that Sarah was somehow helping the police. Grainne hadn’t asked in so many words but she could see the other nurse wondering if Nurse Wilding was in fact an undercover police officer. Fat chance, Sarah thought. How did they do it? she asked herself as she slipped out of the staffroom. Impersonating criminal types, infiltrating dangerous groups of people? It was something she could never imagine herself doing and yet here she was, putting herself in a situation that required as much courage as she had ever mustered in her young life.

  Sarah wrapped her fingers around the object in her raincoat pocket that Lorimer had given her. Use it if you need to, he’d told her, and she’d nodded, glad to have something tangible to hold on to.

/>   She watched as the detective left the main door and closed it behind him. Now she really was on her own, Sarah thought. And taking a deep breath, she followed him out into the night.

  The Lexus was already driving away when Sarah stepped into the road that led down to where the men were waiting and she felt a spasm of fear course throughout her body.

  She was quite alone now.

  Glancing up, she saw the full moon, its unblinking face beaming out of the darkness. Step by step she walked along the path until she came to the corner and caught sight of the car tucked at an angle beside the hedge.

  Wait until they come to you, Lorimer had instructed her. Don’t get into their car, whatever you do.

  ‘Took you long enough.’ A familiar voice spoke out of the dark followed by the sound of a car door closing.

  ‘We had an emergency,’ Sarah said, shielding her eyes from the sudden glare of the car’s full beam.

  ‘Get in the car,’ Cunningham ordered.

  But Sarah stood motionless, fear and Lorimer’s strict words pinning her to the spot.

  ‘D’ye hear the man, hen?’ The figure of a smaller man loomed out of the darkness and lunged at her, the blade of the knife bright in his raised fist.

  Sarah plunged her hand into her pocket and took out the pepper spray. Then, as Dolan made to grab her she aimed it straight into his face.

  ‘Arghhh!’ His scream resounded through the night as Dolan dropped the blade and put both hands to his streaming eyes.

  ‘Ya bitch, ya wee bitch!’ he yelled, bending over in pain, his cries mingling with the unmistakable sound of police sirens.

  Immediately the car’s engine growled and the BMW took off into the night, leaving Dolan moaning on his knees, scrabbling for the knife.

  Then, as she heard the sound of the siren growing louder, Sarah began to run.

  Lorimer let the other car pass him on the back road. The driver of the BMW would assume that he was just the doctor, a ploy he had thought up to allow his car access to the nursing home and back out again without raising any suspicion.

  Now he was following the other car and peering through the gloom to get a closer look at its registration plate.

  ‘Sierra bravo ten. Mike, yankee, delta,’ he announced clearly, letting the other car slip a little further away.

  The officer back at base acknowledged his call and Lorimer cleared the line. They’d put a trace on the BMW now and, should the driver become suspicious of the silver Lexus in his wake, he’d turn off and let the patrol boys do their bit.

  The car looked to be heading back into the city, but as they reached the crossroads it took a right. Was he going to turn left again? Make for the Erskine Bridge?

  There was a roar as the car in front took off along a straight stretch of road then Lorimer could hear its tyres squeal as it took the first of several bends on the road towards Mugdock and into the countryside.

  Lorimer followed, keeping his lights low, just a country doctor going back home to Killearn or Strathblane, perhaps, if the driver of the BMW thought about it at all.

  The road narrowed and plunged between trees on either side, the big car taking the corners too fast, the driver having to correct the BMW as it went into a slight skid.

  Lorimer let it go, keeping his eyes on the red tail lights ahead, not wanting to be spotted as the trees fell behind, the countryside opening up ahead. But the Lexus sped on smoothly, the road slipping under it like a ribbon of grey silk in the moonlight. His eyes peered through the darkness, watching the red lights appearing and disappearing with each hidden dip in the road, the twin points of colour like tiny demonic creatures leading him to some terrible doom.

  It was tempting to gun his big car, to creep up right behind this character who had been involved in the death of David Imrie (and God knew who else). For a mad moment Lorimer wanted to tailgate the other car, drive it into a ditch, see the fear in the man’s face as he pulled him out of the car.

  A sudden rage possessed him, making his foot press down harder on the accelerator. He would do it.

  Then, high on a hill, waiting for them both, he saw the twinkling blue lights of the waiting patrol car, making Lorimer slow down once again, his anger cooling as he focused on his next move.

  The driver in front had spotted it too, for he slowed down and drew into the side. Would he try to turn on this narrow road?

  He had to stop him before the man could begin any manoeuvre. There was only one thing for it, Lorimer decided, leaning forward and peering at the hedgerows on either side.

  Yes! There was a gate about twenty yards between the BMW and his own car.

  He braked hard and pulled the wheel around then reversed a foot or two, placing the Lexus right across the path of any oncoming vehicle before switching the lights to full beam and activating his hazard warning lights.

  The figure emerging from the BMW looked across at him and Lorimer was sure his lips moved in an oath. He hesitated for a moment, then, taking a step backwards, ran full tilt and vaulted the hedge.

  Lorimer grabbed the wooden post and swung his long legs across the top of the five-barred gate. Then he began to step across the patch of glaur, feeling his thick-soled shoes sinking in the mud where many cattle had stood waiting for the farmer to bring their hay. By the time his feet had found dry ground, the driver of the abandoned car was halfway across the field and heading towards a gloomy patch of woodland higher up.

  Lorimer broke into a run, recalling the days of his youth when he had belted up the rugby field, ball in hand, in an effort to score a try. His feet pounded across the grass, leaping over tussocks, his longer legs giving him the advantage as he closed in on his quarry.

  Above them a full moon emerged from the clouds, its light enabling the tall policeman to see the running figure that began to slow down as the field sloped upwards.

  He could hear the other man gasping for breath as he approached. He wasn’t fit, Lorimer thought. Only fear and a rush of adrenalin had given him the necessary impetus to flee.

  It was then that the man he pursued made the mistake of turning to look over one shoulder, the motion throwing him off balance for a vital moment.

  Lorimer threw himself forward, the rugby tackle bringing the other man crashing down with a hollow thud as the breath was knocked out of his body.

  Then the sound of other feet stamping across the ground came closer and the detective breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled the man to his feet, grateful to see several uniformed officers approaching.

  ‘You’re no doctor!’ the man gasped as Lorimer pulled back his arms and clipped the handcuffs around his wrists.

  The man glowered at the detective, his scar livid in the moonlight.

  ‘Quite correct,’ Lorimer agreed, pushing him towards the nearest uniformed officer. ‘Take him away,’ he commanded. ‘I’ll see him once he’s had time to cool off in the cells.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Rob Dolan sat snivelling into a soggy paper tissue. The memory of the previous night stung as much as his sore eyes. Damn that bitch to hell! His fist scrunched the tissue into a vicious ball. He would make sure that she suffered if it was the last thing he did. There were ways and means; women inside that he could contact who would do his bidding, the promise of some gear when they came out dangling like bait.

  Dolan shut his eyes, the ache lessening now. One of the uniforms had given him a couple of paracetamol and watched him as he swallowed the pills with a plastic cup of water. He’d been left for what remained of the night in the cells here in Stewart Street police station, lying awake on the mattress, his mind seething with thoughts of revenge.

  Now he was in one of the interview rooms, a different uniformed officer standing guard at the door, legs apart like a soldier on duty. Dolan had tried to catch his eye but the polis wasn’t having any of it, staring straight ahead as if a guy like Dolan wasn’t worth the bother.

  Who would he see? Last time he’d been bust it had been that big guy M
urdoch who’d collared him. Dolan shivered. He’d heard that Murdoch had relocated to Stewart Street. He sniffled again, hoping that it wouldn’t be the tough-looking detective that walked through the door.

  ‘Aw, Jesus, whit the…?’ Dolan’s oath died on his lips, one hard stare from the tall figure entering the room silencing the prisoner.

  ‘Well, well, if it isn’t Robert Dolan,’ Lorimer said, taking off his jacket and slinging it on the back of the chair opposite.

  Dolan began jigging his leg up and down, the need for drugs to calm his nerves growing steadily.

  ‘Aw, Mr Lorimer, c’n ye no’ see whit a state ah’m in? That lassie had no right daein’ whit she did,’ Dolan girned.

  ‘And what lassie would that be?’ Lorimer asked quietly.

  ‘Och, Pete’s big sister.’

  ‘Pete?’

  ‘Pete Wilding. He’s deid. OD’d, didn’t he?’

  ‘What were you doing outside Abbey Nursing Home last night, Mr Dolan?’

  The man began shaking his other leg up and down, up and down, faster and faster. ‘Ah want ma brief, so ah do,’ he declared, his eyes flicking from Lorimer to the silent policeman by the door. ‘Ye’s cannae haud me here against ma will.’

  To Dolan’s chagrin, the detective superintendent laid his hands upon the table and burst out laughing.

  ‘Whit’s the joke? Eh? Eh?’ Dolan scowled and folded his arms across his chest.

  ‘Oh dear. If there were two of you, Rob, you’d make a grand comedy act,’ Lorimer declared, pretending to wipe tears from his eyes. For a moment he shook his head as though expressing disbelief at the follies of the criminal fraternity.

  Then he leaned forward, the expression on his face altered completely.

  ‘Would you like me to charge you, Rob? Abduction, coercion, accessory to murder… which one shall we begin with?’

  The blue stare fixed Dolan to his seat then the prisoner looked away. ‘Ah want ma brief,’ he muttered again, but this time there was no trace of bravado in his voice.