Five ways to kill a man lab-7 Read online

  Mary MacKintyre’s death had taken place on the night of Boxing Day last year. Eighty-seven years old and not in the best of health, she’d fallen down her back steps and been killed instantly. There had been no reason whatsoever to suspect anything malicious about the death. But now, with another elderly woman falling to her death just two streets away, Kate was beginning to have doubts. The houses were almost identical, too. They’d been built in the seventies by a housing association that had won awards for good architectural design. Rows of nice split-level terraced houses overlooking woods on one side and the older council houses of Upper Port Glasgow on the other, they’d been popular with families wishing to rent. Now most of that housing stock had been bought up and only a few residents still paid their rent to the Housing Association.

  Both of these two elderly ladies had been living there from the time the first houses had been let, probably much fitter then to cope with the steep steps down to their neat patches of garden. And they had chosen to remain in a three-bedroom house after each of their families had left the nest. Kate’s mouth gave a twist. Her own granny was in a great wee sheltered place down in Greenock where a warden looked in every day to see that her charges were okay. Mind you, she remembered her mum and dad having to do a lot of sweet talking to get her in there. But now she loved it. Perhaps these old ladies had been the same: reluctant to leave their homes.

  DC Clark sat back, a sudden kick in her abdomen taking her breath away. A new wee life was in there, demanding her attention. But somehow she felt strongly drawn to the notion of death; those two old ladies who had perished just yards from their own back doors seemed suddenly more real to her than her unborn son. Lorimer had suggested a friendly drink. Maybe it was time to take him up on that. It couldn’t do any harm to tell him what she was thinking once they were off duty, could it?

  Sir Ian Jackson and Lady Pauline were two intriguing characters, Lorimer thought, tapping his foot absently against the side of the desk. He’d been a boy from the Port, she an upper class lassie from Kilmacolm — that much he knew through the station gossip. Wonder how they met? he asked himself softly. It was one of those mysteries that would probably never come to light. Not his business. But it was his business to make sense of how they had died and sometimes it paid dividends to find out how a victim had lived. Especially if their deaths had any whiff of violence or malice. Why would anyone torch that big house and leave its occupants to burn? Sir Ian had been the poor boy who’d done good, as the ungrammatical saying went. And it was apt, wasn’t it? The man had lacked his wife’s polish but had made up for it with his apparent skills in making money. Lots and lots of money. The beginnings of Jackson’s career were a bit hazy and that was where he’d gained his reputation as a wheeler-dealer. But the man had no police record. Good at ducking and diving, some might say. But was that cynicism and Schadenfreude speaking? It was an unattractive Scottish trait of envious longing that sought to bring a successful and wealthy person down to disgrace and serve them right anyway. And sometimes it muddied the waters when a true opinion was sought about folk way up the social scale. Like now.

  Maybe Sir Ian had been as pure as the driven snow. A good man who’d worked hard to achieve his millions. Multi-millions, a wee voice corrected Lorimer. But if that had been the case, who’d have wanted him dead? Years of experience had taught the Detective Superintendent that certain victims were never completely innocent when it came to a deliberate killing. There was always a something, as his old man had been fond of saying. And right now Lorimer was keen to find out what that something was. DI Martin might supply a little background knowledge, but then, if she really knew the family well, surely she would have made some sort of contribution before now? Okay, she’d been at that private school with the children, but ‘moving in the same social circles’ hadn’t exactly rung true. Rhoda Martin had merely been trying to impress him that she’d come from a similar wealthy background, Lorimer told himself, that was all. Had she been a real friend of Serena and Daniel she would have had to put such information into a written report.

  Like many men of vast wealth, Jackson had donated generously to charity, hence his knighthood. And that had certainly gained him respect. The few personal testimonials contained within the file were all warm in their praise of the man. But, Lorimer told himself with a bitter twist to his mouth, wasn’t that the norm after someone had been killed? Nobody wanted to bad-mouth a victim. It was just too much like stepping across an unseen boundary between right and wrong, tempting a primeval sense of fate. No, to find out the truth about Ian Jackson, he’d have to ask those who had known him well and who weren’t afraid to give a real portrait, warts and all. And who better than his own children?

  The knock and the smile as Kate Clark waddled into his room made Lorimer lose the thread of his thoughts.

  ‘Any chance of a wee dram after work?’ she asked, head to one side as if she were pretending to flirt and wanted him to share the joke. But it was a harmless sort of flirtation, friend to friend, quite unlike the DI who had made a fool of herself in this very room.

  ‘Aye, why not,’ he answered. Then bit his lip as he remembered Maggie’s mum in hospital. ‘Might have to be a quick one, though,’ he added. Kate Clark wouldn’t have come in to ask that question, couched as it was in a light-hearted tone of voice, unless… Unless she had something on her mind that needed to be shared with him. In private. ‘And I’m sure I can afford a double lemonade,’ he teased, nodding at her bump.

  ‘Och, see when this wee yin’s here, I’ll be ready for a double of anything so long as it’s alcoholic!’ Kate sighed, rolling her eyes theatrically. ‘See you down in the Harbour lounge bar at five-ish, then?’

  ‘Okay. Mind you both leave a seat for me, won’t you?’ Lorimer grinned, waved a hand in the direction of her abdomen and was rewarded by Kate sticking out her tongue at him. He might be the senior officer around here but they were old pals and it did his heart good to be reminded of that right now.

  The Harbour was not the usual police howff since there was a bar dedicated to officers from K Division just on their doorstep. But perhaps Kate had wanted a bit more privacy, Lorimer told himself, carrying their drinks back from the bar; she might not want to be seen to be fraternising with the enemy. That’s maybe how some of the others saw him, he thought grimly.

  It was happy hour here and he had to push his way through a press of bodies to get back to the table where DC Clark was sitting. She’d chosen a corner by the open fire, a secluded spot in the noisy bar where they might talk in peace and not be overheard.

  ‘So, when’s the baby due?’ Lorimer asked, putting down his half-pint.

  ‘End of March,’ Kate replied. ‘Six weeks and five days if he’s on time,’ she grumbled. ‘Hope it’s earlier, though. I cannae be bothered with this much longer.’

  The woman shifted, obviously uncomfortable even with a padded tapestry cushion between her and the wooden seat.

  ‘Are you going to take some maternity leave early before he arrives?’

  ‘No chance. I’m staying put right till the last minute. My blood pressure’s fine. I’ve no reason to go home and rest and, besides, I want as much time off afterwards as I can manage.’ Kate grinned. ‘Slainte,’ she added, raising the tumbler of lemonade to her lips.

  Lorimer nodded in reply as he lifted his glass. He’d allowed himself a half-pint of lager. He was driving and, besides, he had to watch his time if he were to reach the Southern General for visiting hour. But after the first swallow, he wished he’d made it a pint. He could do with a good drink right now — like the punters milling around the bar, their cares forgotten for this interlude between work and home.

  ‘Well, as nice as all this is, hadn’t you better tell me what’s on your mind? Other than the future of the Clark dynasty?’ Lorimer asked.

  ‘Ah, you sussed me out, then,’ Kate joked. ‘Aye, and you’re right. There is something I wanted to talk to you about. And I think it involves the case we had ye
sterday.’

  Lorimer listened as Kate took him through her thoughts about Mary MacIntyre, Jean Wilson and their two very similar deaths.

  ‘You always said you didn’t believe in coincidences and I’ve just got this horrible feeling…’ She broke off, grinning. ‘Woman’s intuition. And don’t give me any of that stuff about a preggie bird’s hormones, eh?’ she warned.

  Lorimer smiled. It was refreshing to have a junior officer like Kate who apparently didn’t give a toss about acknowledging his rank. Perhaps her pregnancy made the woman feel that there were more important things in her world than the hierarchy of the police. Whatever, it felt good to be sitting here listening to her theories.

  ‘Intuition should never be discounted. A friend of mine says that it can point to the subconscious working things out logically after you’ve obtained all the disparate facts,’ Lorimer told her. ‘And if you have seen similarities in two deaths then of course there’s justification for digging deeper. Though whether there’s enough evidence to suggest the deaths are suspicious is a matter for the Procurator Fiscal to decide. But DI Martin’s said she’ll look into it,’ he added.

  ‘Aye.’ Kate sighed as if she wasn’t quite sure that Rhoda Martin was going to do as she’d promised. ‘But…’ she tailed off, looking into the middle distance. Lorimer could tell she was struggling with something else. A lack of trust in her colleague?

  ‘See, if I was in charge of this,’ Kate began again, ‘I’d want to make inquiries about that cyclist. See if anyone had seen him around the area. How would we go about that?’

  Lorimer raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, if it were a category A we could use Crimewatch. But there’s not enough evidence to suggest we have a serial killer after old ladies on our patch, is there?’

  ‘So what do we do?’ Kate asked, her eyes suddenly turned to his own, a challenge flaring in them.

  Lorimer put down his glass again. ‘ We? As in the investigation team? Or did you have something else in mind?’

  Kate squirmed uncomfortably, a movement that Lorimer instinctively knew had nothing to do with her burgeoning shape. ‘I thought… well, that is, I wondered. Och, hell’s teeth, Lorimer can we no’ just sniff around and see what comes up?’

  ‘You have something in mind DC Clark?’ Lorimer asked, his face deadpan.

  For a moment the woman hesitated, the use of her rank and his expression giving her pause.

  ‘Aye,’ she replied at last. ‘I have. How about putting feelers out among the local snouts? I’ve got a couple of lads in mind. One’s a taxi driver. Ex-con but a reliable sort,’ she told him.

  There was a silence between them as Lorimer digested this; a silence that Kate Clark must have interpreted as his disapproval, for she sighed heavily.

  ‘Should’ve realised it was a bit much to ask,’ she muttered, beginning to gather up her coat and bag.

  ‘Wait on a bit,’ Lorimer said, raising a hand. ‘I don’t think you should give up that easily. DI Martin hasn’t warned you off this case, has she?’ And as Kate shook her head he added, ‘Well, then. Go with your gut feeling. See this informant and you never know. He might come up with something. But you know I can’t interfere in something like this.’

  ‘Okay.’ Kate gave him a half smile. ‘But it doesn’t feel like I’m doing very much.’

  ‘And you really believe these two old dears were murdered?’

  ‘Well, Jean Wilson’s son certainly believes his mum was killed. And I have a feeling he’s not going to let us sweep anything under the table.’

  ‘I have to go,’ Lorimer said, suddenly, looking at his watch. ‘Hospital visit. But keep me in the loop with this one, will you?’

  ‘Sure. And thanks for the lemonade,’ Kate replied, grinning at him as they stood up and he helped her on with her coat.

  As Lorimer drove along the M8, thoughts of Kate Clark kept coming back to him. She’d wanted to talk to him and he felt flattered by her confidence. But it disturbed him too that she couldn’t put the same trust in a senior officer like Rhoda Martin. He was an outsider, only there to tidy up a particular case, not one of their own colleagues. And yet Kate had wanted his advice. He had to be careful. Feeling gratified about the woman’s faith in him could obscure the more important matter of what had gone wrong within the team under Colin Ray’s command.

  Two old women were dead, though. What if it had been Maggie’s mum? How would he have reacted? As ever, Lorimer tried to put himself in someone else’s shoes. Maybe Gary Wilson had every right to protest that his old mother had been stalked and possibly murdered. Maybe, though, he was clutching at anything that would give him an answer to why it had to be his mum who’d died. Maybe he couldn’t accept that accidents happened. Lorimer could see why DI Martin might not want to take this case any further. But Kate Clark’s sharp mind had brought the other old lady’s death into the equation now and Lorimer knew that he would be happy to encourage the DC, even at the risk of making himself even more unpopular.

  CHAPTER 17

  ON YER BIKE. The words above the picture of two cyclists racing downhill caught Lorimer’s eye as he entered the hospital foyer. It was the same poster they had pinned up at the public entrance in Greenock HQ. But for some reason he stopped now and read it properly. The race in aid of a cancer charity was to take place in just a couple of weeks and he’d already been asked to sponsor one of their own officers. It was a typical Glaswegian phrase, he thought, grinning to himself; the sort of throwaway line a lassie would give an unwelcome suitor. But somehow its slightly aggressive tone worked in this context of encouraging folk to sign up for the cycle race or at least to sponsor a willing participant. Bikes had never been one of Lorimer’s hobbies, though many of his fellow officers belonged to the police cycling club.

  The light-hearted feeling that the poster had engendered disappeared the moment Lorimer set foot inside his mother-in-law’s ward, Maggie’s look of sheer gratitude at seeing him making him hurry to her side.

  ‘How is she?’ he asked, lowering his voice. Mrs Finlay was asleep, her head turned to one side of the pillow, mouth open and snoring quietly. For a long moment he simply gazed at the woman lying there. She’d become a real pal over the years, although she had been a formidable presence to the young man courting her precious daughter. And Mrs Finlay had given Lorimer plenty of well-intended advice concerning his future. He’d dropped out of university, a move that had not endeared him to his future mum-in-law. But his rapid rise within the police force had mellowed her attitude towards him and they’d developed a special bond. She was proud of her son-in-law and fiercely protective of any criticism that came his way, as it sometimes did in a high-profile case. And she’d been such a rock for them both during the sad trail of failed pregnancies. She’d never be Granny Finlay now, he thought, biting his lip as he watched the rise and fall of her breath.

  ‘She was asleep when I arrived,’ Maggie whispered. ‘I wanted to wait till you were here to speak to the duty nurse. See how she’s been today. If only I could see her during the day…’ she added wistfully; but they both knew that with Maggie’s full timetable at school that wasn’t going to happen except at weekends.

  Letting his wife leave her mother’s bedside, Lorimer shifted closer to the old lady sleeping so peacefully in her hospital bed. Suddenly his thoughts turned to the visitor she’d had the other day, Joseph Alexander Flynn. He’d have to do something for the lad. He’d wanted Lorimer to act as a referee for a job he was applying for. How had that visit gone? he wondered. Flynn was a wee character, right enough. The thought of the youngster made him smile again. Mrs Finlay had taken him under her wing, her own brand of plain talking suiting the street kid. And they’d shared a similar sense of humour, Lorimer thought.

  But this was silly, he scolded himself. Why was he thinking of the old lady in the past tense as if she was already lost to them? With a pang, the senior detective realised that this was exactly how it felt. Even if she survived this stroke and its aftermath, Lorime
r knew he’d miss the woman she had been. Her usual bustling manner and cheery voice were gone and in their place was this old lady, a shrunken version of the person he’d grown so fond of since he’d first met her. Old age, decay and death: hadn’t he seen them all in his line of work? And shouldn’t he be inured to what was, after all, inevitable?

  The bell sounded to signal the end of visiting just as Maggie appeared.

  ‘She’s still asleep?’ her voice was raw with disappointment. For a moment Maggie seemed to hesitate, then she bent down to drop the gentlest of kisses on her mum’s cheek and drew the cover nearer to her chin, a comforting gesture that a mother might make for her child, Lorimer realised, biting his lip.

  He clasped his wife’s hand as they left the ward, neither of them speaking for a moment as the crowds surged towards the bank of lifts.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ he suggested, heading for the stairs.

  Neither of them spoke as they left the hospital and it was only as the Lexus swung out of the main gate that Maggie looked at him. There were unshed tears in her eyes. Lorimer squeezed his wife’s hand in a gesture of solidarity. He understood what she was feeling. Didn’t he have the same hollowness inside? That fear of losing the person who was their only remaining parent.

  Later, when he was certain that Maggie was asleep, Lorimer slipped out of bed and crept downstairs to the space that doubled as dining room and study. Despite the information they’d had from the medical staff, he wanted to know a bit more and so for almost an hour the detective trawled the Internet, scrolling down the various sites on the subject of strokes and stroke victims. As he hunched over the small screen of Maggie’s laptop, Lorimer’s mouth tightened. It all made pretty grim reading. And if he was correct in his assessment of his mother-in-law’s condition, the future looked fairly bleak. If her heart were to survive this sudden onslaught, she’d be dependent on other people for the rest of her days. It would change everything for them.