Pitch Black lab-5 Page 3

  ‘I’ll phone the local vet tomorrow, see if anyone’s lost him. You never know, he might be microchipped.’

  ‘And if nobody claims him?’ Lorimer’s question hung in the air.

  ‘Well, I thought …’ Maggie’s eyes were on him, beseeching. ‘We can’t send him to a cat rescue place. Imagine being banged up in this weather.’

  Lorimer had a vision of Janis Faulkner’s face. She was incarcerated now on this hot July evening and Lorimer had a sudden urge to release her back into the wilds of Mull to wherever she had been going. As if aware of the change in his mood, the cat slipped out of his arms and strolled towards the kitchen and the open back door.

  CHAPTER 4

  Staying still had its advantages. If she did try to change position then the numbness in her limbs would wear off and she might remember what it felt like to be alive. That moment by the lochside, when the fresh morning breeze had wakened something inside her, seemed to be from a different age now, not a mere couple of days ago. She’d travelled up to Oban with a renewed sense of purpose; Lachie had said to come up any time. Why not? she’d asked herself. It would have given her a little respite, time to lick her wounds. Her mouth curled into a sardonic smile. Some wounds never healed. A little sigh escaped her and one leg moved as if of its own volition.

  The springs of the other bed creaked, only inches from her face, and Janis froze. What if the woman were to wake up and try to engage her in conversation again? She might be a plant, for all Janis knew. Okay, her imagination was working overtime but she had reason enough to be paranoid. Running away from it all hadn’t been the answer; it had only delayed the inevitable. Now silence seemed to be her only option. Silence here and now in this cell where the only sound was of another person’s breathing; silence before all of their questions. She’d learned a long time ago to switch off her emotions. Nicko had been an unwitting teacher, not beating her into submission so much as driving her out of the place where everything hurt. It was a trick she could manage whenever things became too much, slipping into that other place where no voices could reach her, no eyes force her to face what she had chosen not to face ever again. They’d all tried already; a female solicitor they’d dug up from somewhere — a whey-faced woman with untidy hair escaping from a failed attempt at a French pleat — the police who had pressed her with questions for hours and now these prison officers with concern in their eyes and bunches of keys inside their pockets.

  Janis sighed, remembering. They had looked at her with suspicion as if she was some sort of threat. Not to them, but to herself. She had seen the exchanged glances, heard the concern in the nurse’s voice as she asked her, ‘Are you feeling suicidal? Do you feel you might hurt yourself?’ She wanted to say she was feeling just fine, thank you, never better, but as Janis lay there in the darkened cell, she knew that was a lie.

  A rasping noise alerted her to the viewing hatch being lifted and she could imagine one eye pressed up against it, checking to see that she was all right. Holding her breath, Janis waited until the square flap was shut once more. They were watching her, waiting for her to make a mistake. But she wouldn’t do that, she couldn’t.

  She’d endured the humiliation of being stripped and searched but the journey here had been the worst bit, Janis decided, remembering how she’d sat with knees bent in that dog box. At least they’d taken off the handcuffs once she was in the van, the bus, whatever it was. She couldn’t remember these details. And then there was that other girl travelling with her, talking all the time. Desperate for Janis to answer her back, the girl had rambled on about how the system worked. Janis had pretended to ignore her fellow prisoner, aware of the officer listening to the girl’s voice going on and on. But, as they’d been taken out from the prison transporter, she’d heard a whisper at her back, ‘Dinna laugh or they’ll think ye’re on drugs. Dinna cry or they’ll think ye’re a psycho.’

  The young girl’s words stayed with her now, like a mantra: dinna laugh, dinna cry …

  ‘Janis Faulkner? Not a lot from background reports, I’m afraid.’ The voice on the telephone sounded slightly apologetic. ‘No criminal record. Very little to go on if her lawyer is looking to plead temporary insanity. But we have been keeping her under observation.’

  Detective Chief Inspector Lorimer shook his head. There was something about the woman that troubled him. A plain old fashioned admission of guilt tempered with a good enough reason for her actions was what he was really after, but this strange refusal to speak did smack of something deeper. Was it more than simple shock at seeing a person fall dead at her feet? It was as if she’d reneged on any kind of human communication, the mental health nurse had told him. Maybe she was genuinely unbalanced, but she had driven away, she had taken money out of an ATM as if there had been some calculation in her thoughts and actions. Her psychological assessments were expected later this week. Now, having obtained the necessary permission from the Procurator Fiscal, he was going to drive out to the prison in Stirling to see her once again.

  Cornton Vale women’s prison had suffered badly at the hands of the press. A spate of suicides several years back had given the tabloids the opportunity to rubbish the institution and yet there had been several innovative and far-sighted changes over the years. But the institution itself continued to be a target for any adverse comments, with some liberal thinkers even suggesting that a women’s prison was not a requirement of any civilised society. They hadn’t seen the inmates, thought Lorimer. Many of them were in thrall to drugs, had been since late childhood, following a pattern that had become too well established within family circles. Half a century before they’d have been taught to knit at their mammy’s knee, now it was a different sort of needle that took their attention and for some of them the prison was the only place where they could actually come off drugs. The staff included some pretty special people as he knew from his visits; it took a strong heart to cope with the variety of humankind that came and went.

  Set in a housing estate on the outskirts of Stirling, one could be forgiven for thinking that this HMI establishment was in fact a continuation of the rows of white, pebble-dashed terraces. Lorimer parked the Lexus and walked back towards the main entrance, ready for the necessary measures that always accompanied such visits.

  Janis Faulkner was waiting for him in a little room adjacent to the reception.

  ‘Janis, this is Detective Chief Inspector Lorimer. He’s the senior investigating officer in your husband’s case.’ The female prison officer made the introductions, her voice gentle, reminding Lorimer of that tone reserved for the bereaved, the grieving, but Janis Faulkner did not look as if it was grief that troubled her. That tense face was closed against something else, Lorimer thought. The female officer sat in a corner, her duty to ensure that the prisoner remained safe from this policeman and his questions. Admittedly, it was pretty unusual for the senior investigating officer in a case to actually visit the prison, but Lorimer felt they saw him as an interloper. That was not how he wanted Janis Faulkner to see him, though why he was so bothered about her opinion he wasn’t entirely certain.

  ‘Janis?’ he began, bending his head to see beneath the woman’s fringe of fine, blonde hair. It reminded him of a child’s hair and he wanted to touch it, to sweep it from her brow and take that heart-shaped face in his hands and tell her that everything was all right. But years of experience made him resist such impulses, knowing that they came from sheer pity.

  She sat staring at the floor, her hands clasped together, unmoving. If there was an expression on that pale face it was impossible to read.

  ‘Do you remember me?’ Lorimer tried again. ‘I was in Mull, waiting for the ferry as you arrived. Just coming home from my holidays … then we met in Glasgow …’ He tailed off. For an instant her head was raised and a pair of grey eyes regarded him as if from far away. There was a flicker of recognition then the merest nod of her head before she relapsed into her study of the linoleum. Lorimer looked at the prison officer who gave an
exaggerated shrug as if to tell him he was wasting his time.

  ‘Hasn’t your lawyer told you things will be much easier if you write a confession? Pleading guilty when the case comes up for trial can affect the sentence dramatically. Especially for a first offender,’ he wheedled. But the woman made no response at all and Lorimer suppressed a sigh. He’d wondered about her state of mind on the day her husband was killed. She could have been pre-menstrual. There were plenty of cases where women had flipped under a rage of extreme hormones to attack their husbands. And some of them had been given fairly light sentences. Should he mention that yet? Probably not. But he might talk to the psychiatric doctor over in the medical wing. See what she thought.

  Lorimer studied the woman in front of him. Her unexpressed misery seemed to fill the room. Could there be any possibility that she was in fact not guilty of this crime?

  ‘Maybe you can tell us who you think killed Nicko?’ he muttered, his voice barely reaching the officer. Janis Faulkner did not move but Lorimer felt her stiffen and for a few seconds he waited.

  ‘Janis?’ His voice was gentle, the tone reserved for calming a wild creature that had started from the undergrowth and stood caught between fear and flight. Only there was no flight for this young thing, he thought, unless she had already escaped to some distant place deep within her self. ‘Janis? I’d really like to help you,’ Lorimer said softly, but he sensed that she had left the room already, only her physical presence remained, and that he was speaking to himself.

  ‘If you change your mind,’ he told her, slipping his card across the dark wooden table that divided them. ‘I can always listen.’

  CHAPTER 5

  ‘We can’t keep the media at bay for ever,’ Ron Clark insisted. ‘There’s going to be a lot of speculation now they know that it’s his wife. Why not simply hold a press conference now and get it over with?’

  The man sitting hunched beside him on the empty terracing did not speak. His eyes wandered over Kelvin’s grounds, visualising his team out there in the new season’s strips: white shirts with a diagonal black band. It was an irony now. They’d have to issue black armbands for the opening match. He gritted his teeth. Faulkner would have raised their profile for a bit, put the wind up some of the clubs in their league, he thought. Even if the mid-fielder was a bit long in the tooth, they had bought him knowing he had still some mileage left, and some charisma too, he nodded silently to himself, remembering the man’s roguish eyes and the engaging way he’d spoken with all of the backroom staff the day he’d signed for Kelvin. Letters and cards of sympathy had been received from his ex-club mates in Sunderland, all saying the same thing: how he’d been such a well-liked lad…

  ‘Pat?’ Clark’s voice penetrated the chairman’s thoughts, banishing that vision of his new team. ‘Look, I know Nicko’s murder’s been a helluva shock, but we need to say something. Even if it’s just to tell them how devastated we all are.’

  Patrick Kennedy sighed resolutely. ‘Okay. But you talk to them, will you? Say we are being supportive of the family. Keep it vague. Don’t mention anything about the wife if you can help it. And …’ he paused for a moment, ‘see if you can turn the spotlight on to Jason White.’ Kennedy nodded to himself. That might be a good tactic. Concentrating on their other new signing so soon after Nicko’s death might deflect attention from the bloodiness of it all, and White, with his nightclubbing lifestyle, was a potential headline grabber for quite different reasons.

  ‘Ach, well, it’s that time of year. Everyone’s busy with new faces. Maybe this will all blow over once the season begins.’

  ‘It had better,’ Kennedy replied shortly. There was too much riding on this new team of his. What he really didn’t need was a backlash from the fans or a slip in the team’s morale. Support was required from every angle and it was Kennedy’s job to see that it was forthcoming. Ron could handle the press. He’d been hired after the sacking of their previous manager when they’d suffered the ignominy of relegation. Ron Clark had come to Kelvin with an excellent track record and the respect of many in the world of sport. Kennedy trusted this man to put his message across.

  The chairman of Kelvin FC stood up heavily, still gazing at the rows of empty seating. Alone at one end of the pitch was Kelvin’s trusty groundsman, Albert Little. Kennedy watched him in the process of fixing new netting to one of the goalposts. Wee Bert, as everybody knew him, was ferociously dedicated to the club; not a pin would be out of place, not a striped line wavering when the turf was cut. Even today, under the hot July sun, the man was concentrating on his task with the kind of dedication that had won him the trophy for best groundsman in the Scottish Premier League in three consecutive seasons, a feat of which he was rightly proud. The chairman’s eyes passed from one end of the park to the other, then, with his mouth closed in a determined line as if he had reached some unspoken decision, Patrick Kennedy made his way back down from the directors’ box to the darkened passages that led into the club.

  The cement steps echoed under his shoes and he glanced down at his feet, noticing the gleam of polish on black leather. Attention to detail, he’d told his players season after season, then repeated it to the string of managers who had come and gone from the club. As he walked out of the sunlight into the shadows, Kennedy passed a hand over his hair. It was thinning now but that didn’t prevent him from having it groomed by the best stylist in Glasgow. Attention to detail, that’s what made all the difference. If Janis Faulkner had killed Nicko then maybe the media would focus less on the club and more on the footballer, his wife and his background.

  The last thing Kennedy wanted was a lot of journalists sitting on his doorstep, digging for dirt.

  Maggie gave a deep sigh. Usually her husband’s first week back at work after their summer holiday made her feel oddly bereft, what with his enormous backlog of emails and catching up in general, but today would be different. She peeked at the cat carrier on the passenger seat beside her, borrowed from a neighbour. The ginger cat was sitting sphinx-like, his paws tucked underneath his body. He’d slept outside somewhere but at the first sound of the back door opening he’d trotted into the kitchen, tail erect, greeting Maggie with a little meow of recognition. Now he stared ahead, quiet and alert. He must be used to cars, Maggie told herself; he must belong to somebody. She tightened her lips in resignation at the inevitable. They’d be bound to find the owner and give him back, wouldn’t they?

  The vet’s surgery was situated in a small, pretty bungalow on a street full of similar residential homes. Maggie turned into the drive where a car park had long since replaced the original large front garden.

  ‘Right, out you come,’ she said and the cat gave a quizzical cry as it was lifted off the seat.

  Inside, the reception area smelt of disinfectant and a draught of cold air came from a passage beyond the front desk, making Maggie shiver.

  ‘Mrs Lorimer,’ she told the girl behind the counter.

  ‘Oh, yes, the stray cat. Just take a seat in the waiting room, Mrs Lorimer. The vet will see you shortly. Can you fill in this form while you’re waiting, please?’ The girl handed Maggie a black clipboard with a pen and paper attached.

  The waiting room was empty of other pets and their owners, thanks to the appointment system and, Maggie told herself, the holiday season. But there was a large aviary in one corner of the room housing a pair of brightly coloured budgies; their squawking soon had the cat on its feet, head craning forward, a low growl issuing from its throat.

  ‘Behave,’ Maggie told him. ‘You’ve to be good, now.’ Then she sighed at such a proprietorial remark. What did it matter if he growled or not? She’d not have any say in his behaviour for much longer.

  The radio was playing an old Abba number and Maggie found herself singing along as she drove home. The vet had promised to put up notices about the cat (who was not chipped and had not been a previous patient) and had given the animal a thorough examination. The sore back was the result of a dog bite, the vet had re
ckoned, showing Maggie a tiny hole puncturing the flesh. He’d given her antibiotics for the cat, who had purred and wrapped his front paws lovingly around the vet’s neck as he’d lifted him on to the scales.

  ‘Lovely puss,’ he’d laughed. ‘Glad you’ve found a good home,’ he’d added approvingly as Maggie had placed the animal carefully back into the plastic carrier.

  ‘D’you think we could keep him if the owners don’t turn up?’ she’d asked.

  ‘No reason why not,’ he’d replied. ‘But bring him back in for his injections if nobody claims him. He’s been somebody’s pet at one time. Been spayed, coat’s not in a bad condition. Maybe you’ll be lucky and find his owners. Or,’ he’d grinned at Maggie’s expression, ‘maybe you’ll be luckier and not find them at all.’

  *

  It was late when her husband finally reached home. No surprise, Maggie thought. A murder investigation took up so much time, and she should know. Lorimer had had his fair share of cases as Senior Investigating Officer over the years. Sometimes it irked Maggie that he had been overlooked for further promotion, though making the rank of Detective Chief Inspector in his thirties had been something to cheer about.

  ‘Hi, we’re through here,’ she called.

  Lorimer’s head appeared round the doorway and he grinned as he saw them together; a woman and ginger cat curled up companionably on the sofa.

  ‘Still here then, is he?’

  ‘Yeah. The vet says there’s no reason why we can’t keep him. If nobody claims him, that is,’ she added hastily.

  ‘Better give him a name, then. We can’t just keep calling him cat. How about Ginger?’

  Maggie made a face and shook her head.