Only the Dead Can Tell

by Alex Gray

  ‘Maggie!’ Rosie’s mouth opened in delight. ‘That’s great! What does Bill think?’

  ‘Shh.’ Maggie laid a finger to her lips. ‘I haven’t told him yet. Want to wait till something comes of it. And it can take months, years maybe.’

  ‘Goodness,’ Rosie replied. ‘Maybe you’ll be famous some day, like J.K. Rowling.’

  Maggie gave a laugh. ‘I’ll settle for seeing it on the bookshelves,’ she said. ‘Now, promise you won’t say a word.’

  ‘Promise,’ Rosie agreed. ‘But why so secret?’

  Her friend was silent for a few moments and Rosie noticed the rise and fall of Maggie’s chest as she heaved a sigh. ‘Not sure, really. Maybe I want to have it as a fait accompli before I start to say anything about it. I’d hate if everyone was full of expectations and nothing came of it.’

  Rosie nodded, beginning to understand. Hadn’t Maggie Lorimer been through that before? So many pregnancies, so many expectations for this lovely woman beside her and none of them had resulted in a surviving child.

  In her eyes Maggie Lorimer was a successful person, a secondary schoolteacher of English who commanded the respect of pupils and staff alike, but perhaps that was not enough for the detective superintendent’s wife? Unable to have a family of their own, the Lorimers were fond godparents to Abby and were as excited as she and Solly about the forthcoming birth. Perhaps this writing project was a sort of substitute for what she had lost.

  Across the garden, William Lorimer had stopped, looking up into the branches of a huge beech tree and pointing silently at the hidden blackbird that was regaling them with his evening song.

  He looked down at the dark head of the professor and smiled. ‘Nothing quite beats this, does it?’ he murmured. ‘Quality of light, blackbird, the peace . . . ’

  Solly nodded. The tall detective was well known for his passion about birds.

  ‘No matter what might happen in the world, the sun will still rise and the birds still sing,’ Lorimer added thoughtfully.

  ‘Sounds like something is happening in your world, then,’ Solly offered.

  ‘Always something,’ Lorimer murmured. ‘Humankind being what it is.’

  The psychologist waited, hands clasped behind his back, content to listen to the liquid song of the bird, knowing that he was going to be told the sort of dark things that often came their way.

  ‘You know I was away in Aberdeen there for a bit?’

  Solly nodded but remained silent.

  ‘There’s a lot of nasty stuff about these days. Brutal. People trafficking has become a huge concern with gangmasters using illegal immigrants, keeping them under cover, making small fortunes out of their misery.’ He turned to his friend. ‘It disgusts me, Solly, but strange to say, that’s why this job is one I love, you know?’

  ‘Because you can make a difference,’ Solly continued. ‘I understand that now but as a youngster it used to puzzle me why so many fine human beings ended up in the police force seeing the rotten side of humanity.’

  ‘There’s good and bad everywhere, shades of grey in between most of the time too,’ Lorimer mused. ‘But I’m guessing we’ve got a grade one psychopath amongst this lot. Not a bit of empathy for these poor people, treats them like cattle.’ A note of bitterness crept into his voice.

  ‘You got them, though. In Aberdeen?’

  ‘We swept up most of the gang,’ Lorimer admitted. ‘A few Slovakians as well as Scots. Enough to keep the tabloids buzzing for the next few months. But we didn’t get them all.’

  Solly glanced at the tall man beside him as he heard him sigh.

  ‘They’re here, Solly. Some of the most dangerous individuals you can imagine. Right here in Glasgow.’

  ‘Are you going to arrest them?’

  ‘Ha! Once we find them, we will,’ he exclaimed. ‘Intelligence has given us indications that their work has begun here in the city but so far they’ve kept out of sight. And,’ he turned to look at Solly with a familiar expression in his eyes, ‘I think they are going to be very hard to find.’

  ‘You want me to help?’

  ‘I think profiling one particular individual might give us the break that we’re looking for, yes,’ Lorimer agreed. ‘D’you want to come over to Govan tomorrow? If Rosie can spare you?’ He glanced at Rosie and Maggie sitting together, the sudden sound of laughter easing the worry lines around his eyes.

  ‘Tomorrow, yes,’ Solly replied firmly. ‘But today is too nice to spoil. Don’t you agree?’

  *

  It was hard heaving herself out of the garden chair to take their leave, and harder still to keep quiet about the reason she’d wanted to talk to Lorimer. Peter Guilford was an enigma, all right. An apparently successful businessman, his history of violent behaviour did not seem to have repeated itself over the years since his one and only spell of imprisonment. And yet now he was languishing in jail, accused of murdering his second wife. Had he just been lucky? Had the pattern of brutality gone undetected for that length of time? Perhaps. Anyway, it wasn’t her job to judge the man. But, even as she shifted uncomfortably behind the wheel of their car, Rosie frowned.

  Something wasn’t right about this case and she would love the chance to find out more about the woman whose body currently lay in the City mortuary.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Detective Superintendent William Lorimer gave a rueful smile as he scrolled up the screen of his office computer. Peter Guilford’s name appeared at last and, with it, a list of those whose business interests had overlapped with the owner of Guilford Vehicle Hire. It was too much to hope that Guilford would be the link he had sought since coming back from the north-east but there was no denying that the trail to Scotland’s largest city took in both the innocent and others who crept across the wrong side of lawfulness.

  The report included the police raids on a chain of nail bars that had exposed the plight of dozens of young girls from Eastern Europe, whose lives were made sheer hell at the hands of their gangmasters. From their arrival in Scotland with an expectation of work and prosperity, they had been taken into squalid premises then forced to appear bright and professional at the salons by day. For the prettiest girls, nights were punctuated by other demands, prostitution running rife in the darker areas of Aberdeen. But things were changing all over the country, oil prices fluctuating wildly and thousands of jobs being lost. And, where the money went, so too did these entrepreneurs in human misery.

  Peter Guilford’s connection was tenuous to say the least but Lorimer knew better than to reveal even this to the pathologist, despite their friendship. The man might be involved in the trafficking business in some small way but it didn’t look as if it that had anything to do with the death of his wife at this stage. Better to keep each case separate and let McCauley deal with Rosie’s thoughts on the subject. Guilford dealt in commercial vehicles these days, though his background as a car salesman was something Lorimer had discovered. His second marriage certainly seemed to have been the catalyst for a change in his fortunes and Guilford’s was a well-known name in the truck rental business nowadays. What would happen to the business now that the boss was in prison for murder? Perhaps some digging could be done to see if anyone there could shed a light onto that.

  Odd how coincidences happened, he mused, thinking about Rosie’s anxiety over the murder case. If it was a murder, a little voice murmured in his head. Guilford had supplied vehicles to one of the firms in Aberdeen; that was all. Nothing remarkable about that but every single little thing was being investigated by the team at the MIT, nothing too small to be overlooked as unimportant. And now his wife was dead, a kitchen knife through her heart.

  Lorimer sat back for a moment, fingers clasped against his lips as he considered the options. Budget constraints were always a big factor in making any decision: could Police Scotland afford the services of Professor Brightman? Could he spare officers to dig more deeply into this case without treading on CID’s toes? He was also curious to know more about this man
and the wife whose life had suddenly come to an end. And sometimes a combination of coincidences and curiosity had given the detective superintendent remarkable results.

  DC Kirsty Wilson had been involved from the start, of course. And, as one of DI McCauley’s team, she would be writing up her own version of the case. Perhaps it was time to see the young woman who had chosen a career in the police after her own traumatic experience of finding a murdered woman in their student flat.

  He’d give her a call before she left for home tonight but first there was an appointment to keep with the professor from Glasgow University.

  Solly paid the cab driver and slipped the receipt into his wallet. Driving a car had never been high on his list of things to do, even as a teenager, and only lately had he wished for the skill he’d allowed to pass him by. Rosie drove them everywhere but now, in the later stages of her pregnancy, he’d like to have taken that task over from her. He gave a rueful smile, recalling his wife’s words. Not in a million years, Solly, she’d said firmly. I’m far safer behind the wheel. And she was probably correct about that, he admitted to himself, given the tendency he had to let his attention wander.

  Today he would be focused, however, the MIT team relying on his expertise to analyse the data they had on their quarry. Building a profile was not an easy matter, though the various TV shows made it look as if a brainy man or woman could sum up a criminal mind in a flash. It took time and effort to sift through all of the available intelligence about a person, usually someone nameless whose activities alone were the evidence he could use. Would that be the case here? Or had the arrests made up in Aberdeen provided more? He would soon find out.

  The big room was warm, sunbeams making swirls of dust motes visible against the glare. Sounds of traffic from the busy street drifted through the open windows, mingling with the officers’ voices as Solly stepped into the room.

  ‘Professor Brightman. Welcome.’ Lorimer stood up and stretched out a hand, beckoning Solly to an empty seat next to him at the head of the table. ‘You all know Professor Brightman,’ Lorimer announced to the room, ‘so let’s begin, shall we?’

  There were murmurs of welcome and some friendly smiles from the team of officers as Solly sat amongst them.

  ‘Now, then,’ Lorimer began. ‘We are looking for the profile of the gangmaster behind this entire set-up.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Intelligence has us believe that he may have origins in Eastern Europe, possibly Slovakia, and we’ve had several lines of enquiry open between police forces in different countries through Europol.’

  There was a small silence that prepared Solly for Lorimer’s next words. ‘Nothing. Not a thing. Nobody on their radar that would match the sort of person we’re looking for.’

  ‘And that would be . . . ?’ Solly asked gently.

  ‘A gang boss with form. A known criminal who’s used to surrounding himself with thugs. Someone who’d wanted to make himself scarce in a different country all of a sudden. On their wanted list. Or so we’d assumed.’ The detective superintendent gave a sigh.

  ‘Couldn’t be a British national?’ Solly queried.

  ‘We still don’t think so,’ Lorimer replied. ‘But at the moment anything’s possible. And that’s where you come in, my friend.’

  He glanced around the sea of expectant faces before pushing a thick folder full of papers towards the psychologist and giving him a rueful smile.

  ‘What we need right now is for you to tell us what sort of person is capable of the things you are going to find in this dossier.’

  *

  It did not make for pleasant reading, Solly reflected, grimacing, some hours later as the sun filtered through the blinds of his study. The girls were mainly of Eastern European origin, their hopes of finding a better future in the UK dashed the moment they had handed over their passports to the men who had taken charge of their destinies. The lucky ones were being repatriated but several brave souls were still in protective custody, awaiting a time when their testimony might put several people in prison. He leafed through the photographs again, lips narrowing in disgust at what these young women had been forced to do. Raped, tortured, forced into positions of the utmost degradation as if they were less than human . . . The images were explicit and someone behind a camera lens had enjoyed taking these photographs. It sickened Solly. And yet it was a necessary part of his job, to try to understand the depth of depravity that one person had sanctioned. Thuggery, brutality and degradation were all there like three wicked brothers from a Grimm’s fairy tale.

  ‘The evil that men do . . . ’ Solly whispered under his breath. And, of course, it had been ever thus, since Cain had taken out his spite against brother Abel.

  ‘Knowledge of good and evil,’ he murmured sadly, turning the last photograph face down onto the pile. It was always a matter of choice, wasn’t it? A choice to do a good or evil deed with all of the motivation that such choices have at their back. Most good citizens were motivated by a desire to stay at peace with their fellow men, or at any rate to avoid the punishment that came from being on the wrong side of the law. Sometimes choices were taken on the spur of a moment, a life snatched away as passion overtook reason. Had that been what had happened with Rosie’s victim? he mused, his mind temporarily distracted by the Guilford case. Perhaps. At any rate there were grey areas in every life and most folk would be appalled to know how easily they might cross the line between doing good and doing evil when passions were sufficiently aroused.

  But, of course, he was looking for a different sort of person here altogether, a person whose choices had long since been made. He was someone who saw human beings as a source of income. He? She? Solly shook his head and dismissed the notion of a gangmistress. There was just too much brutality here, for one thing, and he did not find it credible that those men already in custody were the sort to kowtow to a woman.

  No, they were looking for a man, someone hardened by his own life experience, no doubt, possibly brought up in a climate of violence and now inured to any sort of compassion. Or even a psychopath who had never been capable of empathising with other human beings and therefore had no qualms of conscience about inflicting the worst that he could upon them for his own ends.

  How many thousands of men did that describe? The aftermath of so many conflicts must have produced boys who’d had to fend for themselves, survivors who had climbed ruthlessly over their peers in the struggle to find some hope for a future. And what then? A career devoted to crime of one sort or another, amassing enough money to travel without disturbing any border authorities and fetching up on Scotland’s shores to exploit the tail end of the oil boom that had generated so much for the north-east. Was that the sort of story he had? It was possible, Solly mused. Whoever they were seeking was no amateur and he doubted whether he was a man still in the first flush of youth. No, this person had lived long enough to see the worst of humankind and not to be sickened by any of it. Quite the reverse, if his theory was to stand up.

  Had his choice of girls shown anything? A preference for one sort over another? But, no, there were girls from several parts of Europe: a few from Romania and Serbia, but most from Slovakia . . . He read on and then frowned. Each girl had been asked about her ethnic origins and most of them could tell a lot about their family background. Solly’s thoughts turned to those young Serbian women who had been caught up in chaos as children.

  The Yugoslav wars had lasted over ten years, the bloodiest and most brutal conflicts that had afflicted some of their young lives. Entire families had been wiped out, several of the girls being brought up in care or by distant relatives. He read their testimonies again and again, information filtering through the horn-rimmed spectacles into a brain ready to process the slightest fact. They had all been born during these conflicts. That was only to be expected, of course, though the youngest had only been months old when the final tanks had rolled off their streets.

  It was something that Rosie never spoke about, her part in volunteering to help i
dentify victims from these mass graves after the Srebrenica massacre that had horrified the Western World.

  He ran a hand through his dark curls and sighed. Surely there was something he had missed? Once again Solly reread the files, pencil in hand to make ticks against the suggestions that he had thought helpful.

  What if . . . ? He knew it was good to look for different shapes and sometimes the space between shapes, as his art teacher back in London had been fond of telling her class. It was an idea that Solly brought into his own world of studying human behaviour.

  Pencil in hand, he stopped as he put down the final page of testimony.

  There were no Muslim girls whose families had originated in Bosnia. Solly heaved a sigh. Did that even amount to a clue? Was the man they sought an ethnic Bosnian, for instance, who refused to employ girls from his own background? A few of the girls who had worked the nail bars had come from Muslim families but admitted to having left both family and faith behind them on entering the brave new world that was the UK.

  Solly pushed the glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes. He was trying too hard to find correlations. The man they were looking for could be a Scottish psychopath, plain and simple. And yet how had he managed to inveigle so many people from Eastern Europe into his various schemes? Besides, most of the women were Slovakian. No, his tired brain insisted. He was looking for someone who could speak several languages. A clever man, perhaps, not necessarily educated in the way that Professor Brightman had been, but on the streets of Sarajevo, in the melting pot that had once been Yugoslavia . . . Someone who had been here, in Britain, long enough to communicate fluently and to command the authority that graduating from the school of hard knocks with honours might well bring as its reward.

  And, his age? Would he have been a child in those early days of war-torn Yugoslavia? An impressionable ten-year-old in 1991? By the end of the conflicts had he even seen action? Solly pursed his lips, refusing to contemplate what sort of action a man like this might have considered necessary. Well, it was 2018 now, so maybe he was somewhere in his late thirties?