Five ways to kill a man lab-7 Page 6

  ‘What are you saying, Lorimer?’

  ‘I’m asking you, Colin. About the case. It wasn’t just that you spent time with Grace. And God knows no one in their right minds would blame you for that. No. It’s the way the finger was pointed at local villains. But not at anyone in particular. Get what I mean?’

  ‘You think that smells funny?’

  ‘Aye, I do. Strikes me that not a lot was done to investigate the victims’ own background.’

  Colin Ray shook his head. ‘Och, well, I suppose it’ll all come out somehow and better you hear it from me than one of the others.’

  Lorimer stopped his cup halfway to his mouth and put it back on to the table.

  ‘Was hauled in to Pitt Street for a wee chat with our Chief Constable. David Isherwood. Did you know that he lives up in Kilmacolm? No? Well, anyway, he wanted to warn me off any sniffing around Jackson’s business affairs.’

  ‘And ordinarily you might have ignored that and just got on with the job?’

  ‘Aye, I’m as ornery a bastard as you are, Lorimer.’ Ray smiled properly for the first time that morning.

  ‘But Grace…’

  ‘… was a damn sight more important than bothering my ginger with what I was supposed not to do, see?’

  ‘And now?’

  Colin Ray gave another wintry smile. ‘If I were in charge of a review I’d make it my business to see everything that had been missed. No stone unturned. No ignoring any wee slimy creatures that could be lurking among Jackson’s affairs.’

  The sky had closed in, grey and louring, by the time he left Cardwell Bay and headed back up the coast road, the first few drops of rain spotting the windscreen. A typical change in the weather, Lorimer thought to himself, turning the heater up a notch. The keen gardeners round these parts might well be spreading sharp sand on to their perfect lawns, but surely it would be a good while before the appearance of spring flowers heralded some warmth in the ground. As if in tune with his thoughts, a blast of wind from across the river shook the big car and the rain began in earnest.

  He’d spent a productive hour with the retired DCI. And now Lorimer knew where he wanted to begin on the pile of paperwork that waited back at Greenock HQ.

  Thinking of the man who had shaken his hand as they’d parted, Lorimer wondered what sort of life the former police officer could enjoy now. Ray hadn’t mentioned any family but Lorimer thought he’d remembered Maggie saying something about a married daughter.

  I’ll be put out to grass one day, too, if I survive to pensionable age, Lorimer suddenly thought. And then what? a little voice asked. Something related to policing? There were no children to follow them on, so there would be no wee ones to tug his trouser legs in years to come and call him Grandpa. Lorimer shook his head as if to rid himself of such notions. That prospect was years away and, besides, he had plenty to occupy his thoughts right now without worrying about the distant future.

  But what about Maggie’s mum? How was she coping and, if she was able to come home from hospital, would she be fit to stay in her own little house again? That was something they’d need to discuss. But not until the subject arose, he told himself firmly. Meantime he’d concentrate on the case in hand. And, now that he’d spoken to Colin Ray, it offered the prospect of being a more interesting investigation than he’d at first assumed.

  CHAPTER 12

  Dr Solomon Brightman smiled and hummed a little tune to himself. Outside the windowless lecture theatre the rain might be sweeping down in sheets; here it was warm and dry and the babble of student voices told him that there were lots of young minds eagerly awaiting his thoughts on behavioural psychology. The spring term, so-called, lasted right up until Easter when the students would suddenly be seized with panic at the thought of final exams on the horizon; but now, with Valentine’s day imminent, there was a more genial atmosphere in his classes.

  ‘Love,’ he began and, at the sound of his voice, all heads turned towards the bearded man with eyes twinkling brightly behind his horn-rimmed spectacles, the chatter suddenly silenced.

  ‘Love is in the air,’ he continued, beaming at them and evoking a ripple of laughter. ‘Saint Valentine, the patron saint of love; romantic stories fuelling our desire for a vicarious experience of love; songs from the time of troubadours to present-day rap enjoining us to celebrate the coupling of men and women…’ Solly continued to beam at them, wiggling the fingers of his left hand to show off his new wedding ring. The clapping began at the back of the lecture theatre and soon there were whistles and whoops as the entire student audience applauded their favourite lecturer.

  ‘You see, even I am not immune from the shafts of Cupid’s arrows.’ Solly grinned at them as the noise died away.

  ‘Love, however, is sometimes seen as a force of darkness rather than light. It may destroy as well as uplift a human being. In all its vagaries, there is possibly no other emotion that has the power to change the way we behave.’

  Solly let his smile disappear. The lecture was sometimes regarded as harsh by those who had never heard it before; a come-down from the heights of erotic passion to the more sinister aspects of jealousy and revenge. What people in the past had done in the name of love was sometimes hard to fathom, but Dr Brightman owed it to his students to delineate such examples and use them to back up his premises about emotional behaviour.

  It was a quieter and more sober group that left the lecture theatre, most of them nodding in Solly’s direction, pleased with what they had heard, for it had given them plenty to think about in this basic course of behavioural psychology. Some of them would use the class as a stepping stone to a general arts degree, a few would return to junior honours and some might even apply for a postgraduate degree, inspired by people like Dr Brightman. His work was well known in academic circles within the UK now and the psychologist had begun to gain a reputation as a forensic psychologist who regularly helped police with investigations, particularly into cases of serial rapes and murders.

  Solly Brightman, the married man, counted himself as one of the most fortunate people in the world. Not only did he have a job that he loved (that word again!) but now he was dizzy with joy at having pledged himself for life to his darling Rosie. They had spent a magical time in New Zealand, doing things he’d never dreamt of attempting, like white-water rafting. Rosie’s outgoing nature impelled him to tackle such challenges and, to his delight, Solly found that they had evoked something inside him, a spirit of recklessness that had long lain dormant. From the behavioural point of view it had been interesting to see how far he could push himself simply to keep up with Rosie and then experience the same thrill that she was experiencing. It just proved what he had always believed: there are untapped depths in human nature. All it might take was a set of circumstances to release these hidden qualities. And now, back in Glasgow, Solly felt that his life had been changed by these honeymoon experiences. In some strange way he was no longer alone in the world, but linked to another human being whose aim in life was to care for him. He, too, had taken a vow to love, honour and cherish his beloved. And wasn’t Rosie all the more precious to him since she had survived that near-fatal car crash?

  Life, he mused as he closed the door of his office, had dealt him rather a fine hand. He pulled out the drawer at the front of his desk, taking out what he hoped was a tasteful Valentine’s card. If Rosie sent one it would probably be a jokey sort of card, maybe even a bit rude. But this one was all hearts and flowers with a few rather nice lines to his darling wife. All my love, Solly, he wrote, then added a single kiss and sealed the card inside its envelope. Had he destroyed the students’ attitude to romantic love by that lecture? He hoped not. Love, as Desiderata said, was after all as perennial as the grass.

  Closing the drawer again, Solly turned to his laptop and opened a file. He was currently writing on the subject of female psychotic behaviour, much of it based on case studies of women in high security mental institutions. The nub of his work was to demonstrate what was behind th
e sort of violence that had been a part of these patients’ behaviour. It had struck Solly quite forcefully that although these case studies revealed a lesser degree of violent behaviour than had been seen in their male counterparts, many of them had notched up a sizeable tally of deaths. The idea of women as killers was not something readily acknowledged by the public; perhaps it was time to redress the balance in people’s perceptions of violent crime.

  ‘If there is anything you can remember that wasn’t done at the time, then now is your chance to put that right,’ Lorimer told the assembled officers. ‘You aren’t doing this to please me or indeed the people who ordered me to undertake this review,’ he continued, his tone slightly sardonic. ‘And don’t think that by coming forward you are letting Colin Ray down. I’ve spoken to DCI Ray already this morning and he’s very much in favour of this review being done as thoroughly as possible.’

  There was the slightest murmur of what sounded like approval, and Lorimer allowed himself a mental pat on the back. He’d already looked at staffing levels on the initial case, and in this HQ in general, and found that it was the old story of too few bodies spread too thinly over too many ongoing cases. And Kate Clark’s maternity leave would bring that figure down to unacceptable, in his opinion. She had been the admin person in Colin’s team and Lorimer knew it would be wise to continue her in that role.

  The tannoy system burst into life from the front bar calling for someone and Lorimer stopped speaking, wondering for a moment if this was a good place to take a break. He’d made DI Martin his allocator so she was going to be kept fairly busy writing out the various actions and handing them to the other officers. It hadn’t been her remit under Colin Ray and Lorimer found himself wondering why. She was clearly an able officer but such tasks meant liaising closely with the SIO; had Colin been less than friendly with the woman? And was this a reason for her aggressive attitude?

  ‘Right, I’ll be here when you have anything relevant to report,’ Lorimer told them, standing up so that they knew it was time to leave.

  As they trooped out, Lorimer found himself wishing for his own room back in Glasgow, not this square box of an office that was doubling as an incident room. Okay, so the view beyond the blue Venetian blinds was guaranteed to take one’s mind off work, with its expanse of water and hills, but that was poor compensation for the inconvenience of having folk dropping in and out all the time.

  Lorimer was happy with how things had progressed so far: it had been a fruitful morning spent with the members of his new review team. They had not been the belligerent group that he had feared they might be and he wondered if Kate Clark’s influence had tempered their initial manner towards him. Perhaps his own attitude of Well I’m here and this is a job that we must get through together had struck a chord with them. Whatever, he was now in a far better mood to begin tackling the masses of paperwork lying on his desk. DI Martin would delegate some of the more routine stuff to members of the team, hopefully urging them to pick it over with a fresh eye even when boredom threatened. But he’d kept some things for himself; there were several witness statements that he wanted to examine.

  A knock at his door made him look up.

  ‘Come in,’ he called and saw a young uniformed officer who had been among the officers earlier.

  The surprise must have shown on his face for the constable immediately blurted out, ‘Constable Dodgson, sir. I was one of the first officers at the scene of the crime.’

  ‘Ah, right.’ Lorimer smiled encouragingly. ‘Take a seat, constable. What can I do for you?’

  The young man seemed ill at ease, sitting right on the edge of his chair and biting his lower lip. ‘Well,’ he began, ‘it might be a bit silly. In fact I didn’t know what to do at the time. I mean we’d been told about it at the course. But I suppose I didn’t want to seem pushy

  …’

  ‘Woah!’ exclaimed Lorimer. ‘Facts, please. Just tell me what you did, constable and we’ll take it from there, okay?’

  The young man nodded then took a deep breath. ‘I get thirsty a lot. I find the patrol cars awfully hot so I carry bottled water with me,’ he began. ‘So when we arrived at the fire I thought I’d do what they’d shown us on the course.’

  ‘Go on,’ Lorimer said.

  ‘Well, we’d been told that vapours from a fire might be lost into the atmosphere quite quickly so I threw the contents of my water bottle into the fire and I also had one of these.’ He fished in his tunic pocket and brought out a tiny glass bottle, a bijou bottle, used by police officers for taking samples of drink from neds on street corners.

  ‘I let the vapours fill the one I was carrying,’ he said.

  ‘And what happened to that bottle?’ Lorimer asked, thinking that he knew exactly how the officer was going to respond.

  ‘It’s still in my locker, sir,’ Dodgson replied, his voice high with anxiety.

  Lorimer sat still for a moment. Then he asked, ‘Why? Didn’t you think this might be evidence that could be crucial to the investigation?’

  Dodgson immediately coloured up and Lorimer saw for the first time how young he really was.

  ‘Thought they’d laugh at me, sir,’ he muttered at last, hanging his head so he didn’t have to look the SIO in the eye.

  Lorimer chewed his lip thoughtfully. Dodgson had shown enough initiative to ask his supervisor to let him be seconded to CID. But not enough to bring out this wee bottle from his locker. What would Lorimer have done in this youngster’s place? Would he have been too shy to have come forward with such evidence at the original inquiry? Fearing the derision of his more senior officers, perhaps? And which officers in particular? a little voice nudged his thoughts. Was it worth digging into that can of worms as well? Whatever else it might provide, this might well be some tangible evidence in an investigation that had been sadly lacking in such things.

  ‘Thank you, constable. If you would like to put it into an evidence bag it can be sent to forensics. Make sure it goes to the senior forensic officer. And don’t forget to put a date on it, will you?’ Lorimer neither smiled nor showed any sort of annoyance that this particular piece of evidence had been sidelined. Lorimer’s matter-of-fact manner took the young man by surprise as he stood and mumbled his thanks.

  ‘Don’t mention it, Dodgson. Perhaps I’ll be thanking you before the week is out,’ Lorimer told him, eliciting a grin of relief on the constable’s boyish face.

  Alone once more, Lorimer pondered that little scene. He must have gained this lad’s confidence and that was hugely heartening at this stage of the proceedings. But was it also indicative of some wariness on the part of youngsters like Dodgson in their relations with more senior officers? To be afraid to come forward with evidence like that from a scene of a crime showed either the lad’s own inadequacy or a reluctance on the part of some of the others in the team to listen to their younger colleagues. Fresh out of college they might be, but such officers were often more clued up in the latest techniques and were eager to tick all the relevant boxes. It was the same with young doctors, Lorimer thought. They soaked up all the information necessary during their medical studies, much of it cutting-edge stuff that older practitioners might have no time to read up on.

  Thinking of this, his mind turned for a moment to his mother-in-law. What had her second day in the Southern General brought for her?

  Mrs Finlay felt the chill from an open doorway as she was wheeled along, a single cellular blanket over her thin nightdress. She couldn’t see the orderly who was pushing her bed along and so it seemed as if she were being propelled like some sort of strange shuttle through the brightly lit hospital corridor. They stopped by a lift and she waited, knowing that there was a figure behind her, scanning the lights to see when the doors would sigh open, but he didn’t seem to want to communicate with her and she was too afraid of what would come out if she attempted to speak. She was just another job to the orderly, that was all; another live body to be shunted into its rightful place. The lift gave a twa
ng as it opened and she felt the bed being rolled into the square space. In a matter of minutes they were out again and moving forward towards another corridor.

  Just as she had expected, they stopped at the nurses’ station and the man came forward to hand over her bags to the staff nurse behind the desk.

  ‘Ward fifty-six, Jim,’ the nurse told the orderly. ‘Right, Mrs Finlay, we’ll have you tucked up again in no time,’ she added, turning a smile on to the patient. She was a small plump girl, thought Alice Finlay, the sort you’d pass in the supermarket and never give another glance. But here, in her own world, the nurse had something about her that made Alice ponder. Was it that quality of caring in her tone? Or the way she gently touched the back of Alice’s hand? It was not a gesture that was over-familiar, more a small caress to reassure the older woman.

  The noise hit Alice as soon as they passed through the swing doors: the sound of a television set blaring out above a babble of voices. Passing one patient after another, their aged faces turned towards her with a semblance of curiosity, Alice could see that she had been taken into what was surely a geriatric ward. One old lady whose back was bent from some spinal disorder, her mouth hanging open slackly, stared at Alice as though there was nothing much going on behind her eyes.

  Dear God, she breathed silently, listening to the racket within the ward. What have I come to?

  For a few minutes she had the privacy of curtains around her bed, screening her off from prying eyes as the same kind nurse took her temperature and blood pressure, then busied herself putting things into a bedside locker. But once these matters were attended to, the curtains were whisked back and Alice found herself looking out into a room full of women whose faces were turned to see this newcomer in their midst.

  She did the only thing that she could think of to separate herself from these old women: she closed her eyes, tightly, feigning a sleep that she suddenly and fervently desired.