A Pound Of Flesh Read online

  ‘And no connection with any sort of organised crime,’ Barbara pointed out. ‘Pure as the driven snow, or so it would seem,’ she added darkly, cynicism having coloured her outlook ever since that very first week at Tulliallan Police College.

  ‘Coincidences do happen, of course,’ Mumby said, then sighed and shook his head as he caught sight of DC Knox’s sceptical expression.

  ‘Two men driving white Mercedes S-class cars found shot dead under railway bridges?’ Her scorn was almost palpable.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Mumby admitted. ‘Perhaps we ought to see what this DI Preston has to say about the first case.’

  Barbara Knox nodded her satisfaction. The body of Thomas Littlejohn might even now be laid out on the cold steel of the mortuary table. There was no apparent reason for his death, no connection with the sorts of people who meted out summary execution. But that was exactly how this murder had appeared.

  Okay, the two killings might be several months apart, but DC Knox was willing to bet a chunk of her monthly salary that it was the same person who had picked off these apparently innocent men.

  CHAPTER 5

  Detective Superintendent William Lorimer turned over the calendar so that the month of January was showing. It was a snowscape of Rannoch Moor, one single wind-bent tree standing starkly in the foreground, the Black Mount a brooding presence against the cold blue sky, misty wisps of cloud hovering balefully above. Despite its bleakness, the moor was a place that beckoned to the policeman, making him want to be there, his climbing boots sinking into the snowy approach to the hills, a pack on his back. Instead he was here in the red brick sprawl that was police headquarters, his only view the streets and buildings of Glasgow. This was Lorimer’s first day in the job here at Pitt Street and he still had to come to terms with the new regime. Being in charge of such an important department as the Serious Crimes Squad had afforded him the dubious luxury of an office overlooking the back courts of other buildings in the city. The SCS existed to filter out the more difficult cases throughout the Strathclyde divisions, murder being one of the main crimes investigated by the hand-picked team. And Detective Superintendent William Lorimer was well qualified in such inquiries. It was, he supposed, a good step up from being in a Divisional Headquarters, though he already missed the buzz of voices from the open-plan offices he’d worked in during his last post as Detective Chief Inspector.

  He had arrived earlier than necessary, partly to see where he could park his battered old Lexus and also to steal a march on the officers who comprised this elite squad.

  After the official interview Lorimer had been taken to meet his new colleagues and had been surprised by how few officers were actually in the building.

  ‘The squad is at the disposal of every division in Strathclyde,’ Joyce Rogers, the deputy chief constable, had explained to him when she had first mooted the idea of Lorimer taking over the running of this regime. ‘Officers can be seconded to any serious crime at all, but it will be entirely at your discretion which officer goes where and why and for how long. Man management is the name of this game,’ she’d told him with a grin.

  That was all very well, but with more than half of his team away on cases elsewhere, how was he meant to become familiar with their skills and their personalities? Tomorrow, he told himself. He would book one of the larger rooms in this building and have them all meet after their working day was over. It might not go down particularly well with those who’d been sent away further than the confines of the city, but it had to be done. How could he do this job if all he had was a list of names to which he was unable to put faces? That wasn’t his way of doing things and they had better know that from the outset.

  He had taken leave after his wife, Maggie’s, operation, so that leaving his old division and beginning his post at the Serious Crimes Squad had proved to be less of a wrench. It was pretty normal for officers to be posted from one division to another following a promotion but Lorimer had been the DCI in a Glasgow division just down the road from police headquarters for a goodly length of time and he knew he would miss his fellow officers there. Niall Cameron was moving on, too, becoming a DI out in Motherwell this month; it would not be his final posting by any means, Lorimer thought. The tall young man from Lewis would go far by his reckoning. But it wasn’t only the officers that he would miss. Wee Sadie Dunlop, the mouthy woman who served in the police canteen, was someone who had been special to him as well. Wee Sadie told it as it was, he recalled with a smile, addressing the most junior recruits right up to the Divisional Commander as ‘son’ or ‘hen’. Still, it wasn’t too far away for him to pop in and have a bite to eat now and then, was it? The canteen here was far noisier than the one at his old headquarters and Lorimer would have to become accustomed to the press of folk at lunchtimes, forensic scientists and a large civilian population sharing the facilities with the officers from Strathclyde Police. He’d have a look in the canteen for some decent Danish pastries, the sort that wee Sadie used to keep for him.

  As if by thought transference, a knock came at the door and a smiling, grey-haired woman appeared, bearing a tray with coffee and a plate of chocolate biscuits.

  ‘Good morning, sir, here you are,’ she beamed. ‘Thought you’d like something to warm you up. Isn’t it a chilly one this morning?’ She cocked her head to one side, beady bird-like eyes twinkling at him as though something amused her.

  Lorimer came forward as the woman laid the tray on a low table next to the window. Shaking her hand, he scrutinised the woman’s face. A nice homely sort of woman, he thought, with her green tweed skirt and a thick jumper that looked hand-knitted, but for the life of him Lorimer could not recall having met her before.

  ‘And you are …?’ he asked, hoping she would give him some sort of clue as to her position in the administrative hierarchy. Was she a secretary? Or part of the civilian staff?

  ‘Don’t think you remember me, do you?’ she laughed. ‘We met once, a long time ago when I was on a course at Tulliallan. I’m Rita Livingstone, your IO,’ she smiled.

  Lorimer’s mouth fell open for a moment. How could he have made such a mistake? Wasn’t he always lecturing other people about the need to distinguish a person’s appearance from the realities of their character and abilities? Rita Livingstone, he remembered the name now, but could not recall any previous meeting. His intelligence officer! And here he had been thinking she was some wee Glasgow wifie bringing in his coffee. Rapped knuckles, Lorimer, he told himself, noticing the two cups and saucers laid out on the tray.

  ‘Shall I be mother?’ Rita asked as Lorimer noticed the corners of her mouth turn up in a smile of mischief.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said weakly. ‘Please, sit here,’ he added, taking a seat on one of the easy chairs that flanked the coffee table.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, picking up a cup of steaming black coffee. ‘I really didn’t remember you from that course.’

  Rita shook her head, still smiling. ‘No worries, sir. And sorry I missed you when you came in with Joyce Rogers. I was in and out of the office that day. You’d hardly have had time to take in who you’d met and who was missing amongst your new colleagues. Plus the fact that some of them were skiving off doing last minute Christmas shopping,’ she added, her eyes crinkling up at the corners. For a moment Lorimer smiled as Rita suddenly reminded him of a favourite aunt of his who had been a mine of information about so many things, both fascinating and completely trivial.

  ‘Did you have a nice time, yourself? I love Christmas, don’t you?’ she rattled on, eyeing him all the time as though she were here to take the measure of this tall man who had been appointed head of their department.

  ‘Yes, thanks. Probably quieter than for most folk,’ he told her.

  ‘We have no children,’ he added. Better to get that out in the open from the start, he thought, Maggie’s recent hysterectomy having sounded the knell on any fleeting hopes they might once have had.

  ‘They’re a mixed blessing,’ Rita told him
with a canny look in her eye. ‘Better none than ones who go astray,’ she added in a certain tone that gave Lorimer the impression that his IO’s home life might not be picture perfect, despite her comments about loving the festive season.

  ‘I was thinking of having the entire team in tomorrow evening,’ he said, deciding that this was a woman he could confide in.

  ‘Good idea,’ Rita answered. ‘Tom and Duncan are away on that case down at Gairloch but most of the others should be able to make it for, what time did you have in mind? Seven-thirty, maybe?’

  Later, once she had left, Lorimer drew out the personnel file from his desk drawer. Tom Armstrong was one of three detective inspectors on the team. Lorimer had met him, at any rate, he remembered, casting his mind back to a thick-set man with receding hair. Armstrong had greeted him in a friendly enough manner, he thought, recalling the day they had met. The others were DI Duncan Sutherland and DI Monica Proctor. His memory of Proctor was of a sharp-suited blonde who had seemed pretty young to be already at that rank. Sutherland he had yet to meet. Four detective sergeants and the same number of detective constables, plus the IO and several civilian staff that they shared with other departments brought the total of his working colleagues to more than a dozen.

  He flipped over the pages, reading their résumés and wondering about the different skills each had brought to the job. It was interesting to note how few of them had been fast tracked after university. Most had chosen the police as a career in their twenties, having had different jobs elsewhere. Martin Gray, one of his detective sergeants, had been a PE teacher in Ross-shire before educational spending cuts had forced him to choose between leaving the area and finding an alternative career.

  Lorimer sighed. There was something disquieting in having all of these officers off on cases while he was here inside this building, waiting for something to happen. Be careful what you wish for was a cliché with some modicum of truth, he reminded himself. Hadn’t he wished for promotion before now? Stepping into his old boss’s shoes had once been the height of Lorimer’s ambition, and he’d seen his chance when George had retired. But it had been Mark Mitchison, a man with whom Lorimer had never rubbed along, who had been granted that particular appointment. Now he was here, with several high-profile cases to his name, not just having attained the rank of detective superintendent but with this prestigious department under his control. And yet he was restless already.

  Slipping the file back into his desk drawer, Lorimer spotted a hard backed black notebook. It was a brand new diary with the crest of Strathclyde Police embossed on its cover. A slip of paper fluttered towards the floor. Swiping it with the toe of his shoe, Lorimer retrieved the bit of paper and saw immediately that it had his name on it. Someone had probably put them into all the desk drawers of senior officers before the year’s end. The book had clearly not been opened so there was probably nothing yet written into his day. Lorimer flicked the thin pages just in case. No. Today’s date was still pristine. He leaned back, wondering how to spend the rest of his first day when there had been no commands from on high nor even any need for him to remain in the office.

  After tomorrow he would be getting to know his new colleagues, though over his term of leave he had already familiarised himself with the current cases in which Serious Crimes were involved. But perhaps this might just be the opportunity he had been looking for, he thought. Could he take a wee trip over to the Lexus dealership, see what they had on offer? Maybe he could surprise his wife with the news that he had at last decided to trade in the ancient dark blue car that had taken him on so many investigations.

  Today Maggie was finally returning to work, her GP having advised that she take several weeks off to recover from her surgery. Lorimer wondered how she was coping after so much time away from school. Perfectly well, most likely, he told himself. Maggie Lorimer was well thought of in the secondary school where she taught English and well liked by her colleagues. There had been a flurry of Christmas cards from staff and pupils alike, many of the latter expressing how much they missed their favourite teacher.

  Lorimer’s smile widened as he remembered Christmas Day. They had spent the afternoon with Rosie, Solly and baby Abigail in their large, airy flat overlooking Kelvingrove Park. It had been a day quite unlike any other Christmas that he and Maggie could remember, Abigail being passed from one to the other, her little face lighting up in a grin as he dandled her over his knees. It was something of a privilege to have this little girl in their lives, especially as they knew now they would never have a child of their own. He and Maggie had spent a fortune buying baby clothes and gifts, but that was okay; godparents were allowed to indulge their little ones, weren’t they? Rosie was still on maternity leave but had warned him that she intended to return to her post as consultant forensic pathologist by the summer. Jacqui White was doing a reasonable job of covering for her but Rosie fretted that too much of that young woman’s time was being taken up in front of the television cameras. And not for the right reasons.

  When the telephone rang, Lorimer blinked away the vision of Professor Solomon Brightman’s flat with its massive Christmas tree and returned to the room he must call his own as head of Serious Crimes.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Lorimer speaking,’ he said, realising suddenly that he was not completely accustomed to stating his new rank.

  The voice on the other end of the line belonged to DCI Mumby from K Division out in Paisley. Lorimer listened carefully as the man outlined a recent murder case and the parallel with one from Dumbarton that still remained unsolved.

  ‘Certainly sounds like the same MO,’ Lorimer agreed. ‘What does DI Preston make of it?’ He listened, doodling on a pad in front of him as Mumby explained that Preston had requested that both cases be assigned to him as SIO. Yet, as his senior, Mumby felt that he should be taking control of a case that fell within his own jurisdiction.

  ‘Quite a while apart, though, aren’t they?’ Lorimer told him, playing devil’s advocate to see how Mumby would react as much as anything. ‘Late summer and now the middle of winter.’

  He could hear the exasperation in Mumby’s voice as the DCI strove to explain just how many parallels there were in the two murders: both men came from south of the border on business, had driven the same make of car (a white Mercedes SL); and had parked below railway bridges several miles from the city centre where they had booked into hotels. And, of course, there was the MO, a shot at close range to the heart. So far there had been no forensic evidence to give a clue as to the perpetrator of either killing, suggesting that they had been carried out by someone who was forensically aware.

  ‘So, what are you looking for?’ Lorimer asked. ‘A mediator between yourself and DI Preston, or someone to take the entire investigation off your hands?’

  Everyone in the force knew that Serious Crimes existed to conduct investigations into a range of criminal activity throughout Strathclyde region. Their caseload at present included a drug cartel and an investigation into money laundering activities as well as an internal inquiry into possible sabotage at the Ministry of Defence at Gairloch.

  The first day into the job and murder was already knocking on his door, he thought wryly, acknowledging that his own time in the force had brought him investigations into several high-profile serial killings.

  ‘There’s no apparent reason for these men’s deaths,’ Mumby began slowly and Lorimer could hear a wheeze in the DCI’s voice, suggesting he was suffering from a bad cold. ‘One of my officers suggested that a night-time watch be made on railway bridges across the city, but of course that’s out of the question given the current budgetary constraints,’ he continued, pausing to cough away from the telephone.

  ‘And there’s no connection at all between Wardlaw and Littlejohn?’ Lorimer wanted to know.

  ‘None that we can find, sir,’ Mumby replied. ‘My officers have been over all of that ground with a fine toothcomb, believe me,’ he said firmly.

  Lorimer thought for a m
inute. ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘Send the files over and we’ll have a look at them.’

  He put down the telephone. There had been no promises made to the officer and no decisions taken. Whether this particular pair of shootings found its way under the auspices of the Serious Crimes Squad remained to be seen.

  DCI Mumby reached into his desk for a honey and lemon pastille. It was as much as he could reasonably expect from Lorimer. Could twice amount to more than a coincidence? he asked himself, echoing the words of DC Knox who had wanted officers posted at a series of railway bridges just in case. A third time would look like sheer carelessness on the part of the police, the young woman had insisted. She had enthused about local squads making detours from their routes to look out for any parked cars under the bridges’ shadowed arches. Far too time-consuming and expensive, Mumby had snorted, and he knew he was right.

  What neither the detective constable nor the DCI could have known, however, was that the killer’s next location would be well away from the echoing embrace of those curving stones below a railway line.

  CHAPTER 6

  The garage was situated near St George’s Cross, a five-minute drive from Pitt Street. Lorimer parked his old Lexus by the edge of the MOT bay, feeling the driver’s seat give a little, and hearing a creak, as he got out. A new car would take a while to become as familiar as this old friend, he thought, shaking his head at his foolish sentimentality. The midnight blue car had received its fair share of scrapes and scratches over the years and had recently developed a taste for oil on an alarming scale. It was time, long past time, Lorimer told himself, to trade it in for a newer model with a lower mileage.