The Darkest Goodbye Read online

  ‘Taxi for Wilding?’

  The driver had rolled down his window and was regarding her with an appraising look in his eye. Did he think she was on the game like so many of her fellow inmates? Sarah clenched her teeth, realising that this was the first of many tests she was going to have to face. She reached out a hand to open the rear passenger door, trying not to return the driver’s stare. He might be used to picking up ex-cons here on this very spot for all she knew.

  ‘Railway station?’

  Sarah nodded. It would be all right. She was only going to be alone with this man for a short while then she would feel the freedom of being an anonymous person amongst hundreds of other commuters travelling from Stirling into the city of Glasgow.

  She did not look back as the car swung away from the prison, nor did she glance across the bridge where the Wallace Monument rose from the mist like an admonishing finger.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Stewart Street police station was hidden amongst a huddle of high-rise flats, office blocks and the nearby fire station, its chequered sign only visible as Kirsty Wilson turned the corner of the street. Memories of her first visit here when she had been giving a witness statement in a murder inquiry came flooding back. She shivered suddenly, remembering. Yet there were good memories too: her stint here in uniform in the run-up to the Glasgow Commonwealth Games had given her plenty of experience. But today the building seemed more daunting, somehow. This was where she would spend the next few months in CID and so she must begin to see the place through different eyes, ones that had become used to seeing the citizens of Glasgow in all shapes and forms.

  Her eyes sought out the old Volvo estate car lined up in the car park at the rear entrance to the police station. With a smile and a nod, Kirsty acknowledged the presence of her dad. He would be inside the building, waiting to see if she were arriving, perhaps even looking out for her at this very moment. The thought made her look up, but there was no face at an upper window watching for her arrival. She pushed open the door and entered the waiting area, glancing to her right just in case anyone was seated, watching for the moment when they were summoned inside to speak to one of the officers. But the curved row of brown faux-leather seats was empty, the floor slick and damp from the cleaner’s early morning work, a faint whiff of something that vaguely resembled pine lingering in the air.

  She was about to open the swing doors when a thick-set man in a short-sleeved uniform shirt came to the window of the front desk.

  ‘Can I help you?’ His voice was a growl, his bushy eyebrows drawn down as though ready to admonish Kirsty.

  ‘Ah… It’s me. Detective Constable Wilson,’ Kirsty said. ‘My first day here in CID,’ she added, trying not to look as uncertain as she felt.

  The eyebrows rose and the grim mouth turned up in a smile, transforming the man’s face in an instant.

  ‘Och, Alistair’s girl! Come away in, lass. Haven’t seen you in a while. Didn’t recognise you out of uniform.’ He grinned.

  Kirsty heard the faint sound of a buzzer and the automatic doors in front of her swung open.

  Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside, walking around to the door where the uniformed officer stood, regarding her with interest.

  ‘First day with CID, aye, you’ll be wanting to go upstairs to see Detective Sergeant Murdoch.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Len Murdoch,’ the officer replied. ‘He’s your mentor. Did Alistair not say?’

  It was Kirsty’s turn to raise her eyebrows. ‘No,’ she replied, inwardly asking herself why her father had omitted to give her this snippet of information. After all, he’d been ready enough with other sorts of advice: listen to everything that you’re told; keep a written record of every single action that you undertake; never contradict your superior officers… the list seemed to have gone on and on, stuff that had echoes of the weeks spent at Tulliallan, that turreted mansion across the other side of the Kincardine Bridge that was home to the Scottish Police Training College.

  Kirsty frowned for a moment: who was DS Murdoch? The name meant nothing to her. Perhaps that was why her dad had not mentioned her mentor. Was this Murdoch new to Stewart Street himself?

  ‘You know your way about here, don’t you? Along the corridor, up the stairs and you’ll find the muster room past the interview rooms.’ He nodded upwards. ‘It’s been a busy kind of night, by all accounts.’

  ‘Oh?’ Kirsty stopped and gave him an enquiring look but the officer simply grinned at her.

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ he replied, raising one bushy eyebrow. ‘Aye, Alistair, come down to see this young lady?’

  Kirsty turned to see her father hurrying towards them, his black jacket zipped up. In an instant she was enveloped in a hug. At his side was a young woman whom Kirsty remembered seeing on her last visit to Stewart Street, a detective constable, she thought, struggling to recall the officer’s name.

  ‘Sorry I can’t stick around, m’dear, going out on a job.’ Alistair shook his head and gave Kirsty’s arm a reassuring pat. ‘They’re all upstairs. Busy morning,’ he added, echoing the police sergeant. ‘Oh, and Lorimer’s off today. Family funeral.’ He bent to give her a peck on her cheek. ‘Best of luck.’ He grinned, then they were gone, out to where the old Volvo was parked, two detectives in a hurry to be somewhere else.

  As Kirsty opened the door to the muster room she could see several men and a few women gathered together and facing the far end of the room where an older man in a dark chalk-striped suit stood, talking to them. As Kirsty moved to join the crowd of officers, she observed his bullet-shaped head, its cropped grey hair giving him a distinctly military appearance. Was this DS Murdoch? A quick glance around brought a few smiles of recognition from the men and women who knew her as Alistair Wilson’s daughter, amongst them DC Jean Fairlie who gave her a grin and a thumbs up. But the man at the front was a complete stranger to Kirsty. At the sight of the new arrival, the man stopped what he was saying, waving her in with a flick of his hand, making several of the other officers turn and stare.

  The man cleared his throat noisily. ‘As I was saying,’ he began, the gruff tone not trying to hide its note of sarcasm, causing Kirsty to blush to the roots of her hair. ‘It’s imperative that we catch the buggers before they have a chance to get any further from the city. Traffic have given us up-to-the minute CCTV information that suggests they’re still within the Glasgow area.’ The man paused and stared out over the assembled officers as though assessing them. For a moment his gaze rested on Kirsty and a faint smile played about his mouth, a smile, the girl noticed, that did not reach that pair of hard grey eyes.

  Kirsty continued to listen, catching up on the news about a break-in at Paton’s, a city-centre jeweller’s shop, something that commanded the attention of the CID officers gathered in this room. As she listened, Kirsty pieced the story together. Armed robbers had burst into the premises during the hours of darkness, cutting through the steel shutters and smashing the windows even as the burglar alarm had been set off. Kirsty looked at the pictures on the screen behind the man in charge, images of running figures captured on CCTV cameras. Dark, masked men carrying the proceeds of their crime in what looked like sports bags, they fled out of sight, probably to a waiting car down a side lane.

  ‘DS Murdoch, sir, do we have any intelligence on other similar raids?’ a voice asked.

  Kirsty looked at the detective sergeant who was standing, arms crossed, chin tilted upwards as though assessing the officer posing the question. So this was DS Murdoch, her mentor for the foreseeable future.

  ‘Nothing like it in Glasgow recently. A few raids down in the Nottingham area but can’t say they were quite like this one. Buggers actually thought things out before they busted the shop.’

  There was a ripple of laughter in the room but Murdoch’s face displayed not a scrap of humour, his mouth a thin sour line as if the robbery was a personal affront and not just a part of his job. She felt a momentary qualm as she watched
the detective sergeant’s eyes wander over the room then lock on her own. There was nothing malicious about the weary sigh and the raised eyebrows but it made Kirsty feel certain that having a new DC to mentor was the last thing this man desired on a busy Monday morning.

  Several actions were handed out and the officers dispersed to their desks, leaving Kirsty stranded in the middle of the room with the bullet-headed DS staring at her.

  ‘Okay, Wilson, come with me,’ he said at last. ‘Might as well learn on the job. You can drive, I take it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Kirsty replied, lengthening her stride to keep up with Murdoch. She bit back the temptation to add that she had recently passed her advanced driving test with flying colours. Murdoch obviously hadn’t taken the time to read her appraisal from her previous division and the knowledge of this irked Kirsty. Why hadn’t her dad told her this was the man who would be her mentor? Was there something about Murdoch that he wanted her to find out for herself? The thoughts chased each other around her head as she followed him out into the car park at the back of the building.

  ‘Here.’ Murdoch turned abruptly and chucked a bunch of keys towards her. They flew through the air and Kirsty caught them with one hand, making Murdoch raise his eyebrows in the first gesture of approval that he had shown since her arrival. As she slid into the Honda Civic and adjusted the seat, Kirsty suppressed the desire to smile. This was where she felt most at home, driving around the streets of Glasgow.

  ‘Where to, sir?’ she asked, glancing at Murdoch who had opened a file and was reading from a paper he held in his hand.

  ‘Scene of crime, of course,’ he replied in a withering tone. ‘Where else d’you think we’d be heading?’

  There was the usual blue and white tape surrounding the front of the jeweller’s shop when Kirsty pulled up beside the scene of the robbery.

  ‘Keys,’ Murdoch said, the first words that he had uttered since leaving Stewart Street, and Kirsty handed them over.

  She watched as he opened the boot and rummaged in a large black bag, something that she recognised as a scene of crime manager’s kitbag.

  ‘Here.’ He tossed a bag containing a forensic kit at Kirsty. ‘One size fits all,’ he said, a fleeting smile on his face. He looked at Kirsty’s low-heeled court shoes with a frown. ‘Don’t tear the overshoes, for God’s sake, will you.’

  Kirsty struggled into the thin garb, feeling suddenly self- conscious. Every scene of crime demanded the same care and attention to detail nowadays. The least bit of contamination that an officer might bring to a locus could endanger the entire investigation. Every contact leaves a trace, the mantra that was Locard’s principle had been dinned into the raw recruits at police college. A sneeze in the wrong place might result in an officer’s own DNA messing up a particular area and so the wearing of full oversuits and masks was mandatory.

  She followed him carefully as Murdoch stopped to examine the torn edges of the shuttering. ‘Need to find out what did this,’ he muttered, a gloved hand lifting the broken metal strut.

  ‘Sorry?’ Kirsty asked.

  ‘We need to find out what sort of power tools they used to cut these shutters,’ Murdoch said in a laboured manner, as if he were talking to a simpleton. ‘Christ! Where do they get you lot from these days?’ he sneered, rising to his feet and heading past the uniformed officer who was standing in the entrance to the shop.

  Kirsty felt her face flame as he curled his lip at her. This was not a good beginning. Watch and learn, a little voice told her. You’ll not be with him for ever. And somehow the voice reminded her of her old friend, Detective Superintendent Lorimer, the man she had known for most of her life, something that immediately made her feel better.

  She followed Murdoch into the premises, past the uniformed police officer who was shuffling her feet to avoid the pile of broken glass that littered the dark blue carpet.

  Kirsty looked around to see if there were any scene of crime officers already in the jeweller’s shop but the place seemed deserted.

  ‘Is it just us, sir?’ she asked.

  Murdoch turned with a crooked grin. ‘Worried I might try it on with you, Wilson?’ he asked, his voice thick with derision.

  ‘No, I —’

  ‘The SOCOs are on their way,’ he sighed. ‘As crime scene manager I have to be here first to determine exactly how this investigation should proceed.’

  ‘The owners…?’

  ‘Are on their way to Stewart Street to have a nice cup of tea and talk to the officers there,’ he replied. ‘Need to get them back later to check the stock, see exactly what’s missing.’ Then he folded his arms and looked Kirsty up and down. ‘How about getting me a coffee and a bacon roll from across the road,’ he said, jerking his head in the direction of a greasy spoon that bore the dubious name Snax Attax on a white board above the double frontage.

  But I’ve just kitted up, Kirsty wanted to protest, then her better self uttered, ‘Yes, sir,’ in her meekest voice.

  As she stepped aside to remove the oversuit and shoes, Kirsty watched Murdoch out of the corner of her eye. The crime scene manager had strolled into a corner of the shop and was examining trays of watches that had been thrown on to the floor. As she folded the white clothing, she saw Murdoch drag the huge black bag that contained his crime scene gear and set it at his feet, partly blocking her view.

  The man was crouched down on his hunkers, gloved hands running slowly across the tray. Was he making some sort of a mental inventory? Kirsty wondered as she turned to leave.

  It was over so quickly that she hardly saw it happening. One moment Murdoch’s hand was hovering above the watches, the next he was slipping something into the bag at his feet.

  I didn’t see that, was Kirsty’s first thought as she hurried from the jeweller’s shop, pausing to thrust her forensic suit into the Honda. He couldn’t have done that, could he? Yet, as she crossed the road to the café, one hand fumbling for her purse, a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that her eyes had not deceived her. She had seen her mentor, Detective Sergeant Murdoch, putting one of the watches into his crime scene bag.

  The smell of rancid bacon and hot pies wafted out of the café as Kirsty opened the door, suddenly making her feel sick. Heart thumping, she waited in a small queue of early morning workers, glancing back across the road at the shop.

  There was no way of seeing Murdoch from here, just the officer standing outside and the Honda parked by the kerb. Had she really seen her senior officer stealing a watch? Was it something he had done to test her, perhaps? Would he expect his new DC to bring up the subject?

  Oh, sir, by the way, did you steal one of those expensive-looking watches? Was that what he thought she would ask?

  Kirsty blinked and tried to recall the moment when Murdoch had picked up the watch. Had she really seen that? Or, she began to wonder, had it been a trick of the light? And her overactive imagination?

  ‘Aye, hen, whit’re ye wantin?’ A woman in a white mob cap leaned forwards across the counter, shaking Kirsty out of her reverie.

  ‘Oh, er, a bacon roll and a coffee, please,’ she said.

  ‘Whit kinda coffee?’ The woman heaved a sigh, arms folded across her ample bosom.

  Kirsty’s mouth fell open. She hadn’t even asked Murdoch how he liked his coffee.

  ‘Um, white, please,’ she decided. ‘And can I have a sachet of sugar?’ Then, biting her lip she added, ‘Make that two coffees, would you? One black and one white,’ she said. She’d take whichever one Murdoch refused, she thought, desperate not to get into his bad books and even more terrified that he had known she was watching him.

  The scene of crime officers were sitting in the van, pulling on their oversuits, when Kirsty crossed the road for a second time. A sense of relief washed over her as she unlocked the Honda and set down the cardboard tray on the passenger seat. She would not be on her own with Murdoch for the rest of the morning, Kirsty thought, clambering back into her white protective clothing. And, she
told herself, what she had seen would be pushed to the back of her mind until such time as she could decide what she ought to do.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  As he glanced in the rear-view mirror, Detective Superintendent William Lorimer smiled. There was not another car in sight. He slowed down as the Lexus took the bend, eyes on the unfolding panorama of mountains etched against this clear September sky. Queen’s View, it was called, but any discerning traveller could heave a sigh of pleasure at the regal vista that spread itself before him. A momentary glimpse of Loch Lomond shining between the hills, then it was gone, the ribbon of road taking the detective superintendent downhill once more.

  The landscape was changing with the seasons, he noticed; it was as if the very earth was preparing itself for winter with its coat of bracken curling into brown fronds and grasses dried yellow after the summer’s heat. Swathes of willowherb lined the banks, their feathery seed heads soft and white after the vermillion that had stained the late summer hedgerows. Skeletons of Queen Anne’s lace towered above, grey and dry now, their umbels picked clean by foraging birds. Soon the light would wane as the equinox balanced night and day and he would find himself travelling to and from work in the darkness for many months to come.

  ‘I never tire of this place,’ Maggie sighed as they left Stockiemuir behind.

  ‘Need to come back for a climb one of these days,’ Lorimer agreed. ‘Some weekend,’ he suggested.

  His wife smiled and nodded, still gazing at the passing landscape. It was a rare occasion for them both to be away from their respective jobs in the city. Maggie’s school had allowed her a day’s leave of absence to attend the funeral of her old Uncle Robert, Lorimer wangling time off from his own caseload of work. It was just a pity that it had coincided with young Kirsty’s first day at Stewart Street, he thought. Still, she’d be there for long enough and he would see her tomorrow.