The Silent Games

by Alex Gray

  Time passed so strangely in the wee small hours that it may have been only minutes, but it felt like an age before he heard her breathing deeply and knew that she was asleep once more. Standing up slowly, afraid to make the least sound, Lorimer crept out of the room, leaving the door ajar, and tiptoed back along the corridor to his own bed.

  Maggie was asleep, he guessed, as he turned back the covers and slipped into his side of the bed, feeling the sheet cold beneath his bare feet. With a sigh, the policeman closed his eyes, willing sleep to come.

  But all he could see behind his eyelids was the dead face of Charles Gilmartin.

  In another part of the city, a man lay staring at the darkened ceiling above his bed. One hand wiped at the sweat trickling down his chest. The dream that had disturbed his sleep had come yet again, showing Cameron Gregson that somewhere deep in his subconscious he still had some degree of empathy. Psychopaths were incapable of that, or so he had been told by those who read all that true crime stuff, and he certainly didn’t consider himself in that light. The nightmare still had the power to make the postgraduate student stiffen in terror: the flames engulfing the people all around him, screams and yells of anguish, then the knowledge that he was trapped in the suffocating smoke and the press of heaving bodies trying to escape.

  Cameron Gregson blew out a sigh, then turned to see Gayle slumbering softly by his side. It was just a dream, nothing more.

  He would get out long before the bomb exploded, he had been told that often enough to believe it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Terry’s tattoo studio, the red words above the shop front proclaimed. Kirsty was waiting outside the studio for the other officer to arrive, as instructed. Being early was a fault she had acquired in her enthusiasm for this job, though to be fair, having her dad drop her off after last night at home had given her a head start too.

  The weather had turned colder again and an easterly wind slanted the rain across Chisholm Street, rattling the metal shutters that covered the front door. Ten o’clock, the man had told her on the phone, and there was no sign of DC Lennox, the officer supposed to be leading this particular action. It was still ten minutes to the hour, and Kirsty could feel the rain beginning to soak into her uniform trousers, driving her from the tattoo studio to the deeply recessed doorway of the restaurant next door. The young officer shook her head, wishing she had taken the umbrella offered by her mother. Betty Wilson had been right earlier on, as she’d looked up into the sky. ‘Too bright too early,’ she’d proclaimed. ‘Heavy rain coming in before long.’

  Kirsty kept her gaze on the street, looking at every vehicle as it slowed down in case it was DC Lennox or the tattoo artist arriving for work. Across the road was the Tron Theatre, a side door leading to a café where her boyfriend, James, had taken her after they’d seen a play together. Glancing around, Kirsty could see that little had changed over the decades in this particular area; many of the buildings had been there since Victorian times, and her eyes picked out the architectural details of crow-step gabling and tiny turrets, though the shops at street level mostly reflected twenty-first-century preferences, like this tattoo studio. She had walked along Trongate, passing the old Panopticon Theatre and a double-fronted shop that had made her pause, mouth watering. Mrs Mitchell’s Sweetie Shop was a modern take on the old-fashioned confectioners’ shops of her granny’s generation, something that was becoming more and more popular in these little pockets of the city. Maybe she’d buy a packet of soor plooms to give to Mum, a thank you for the great meal last night. Betty Wilson never bothered watching her figure and would enjoy these old-fashioned boiled sweets.

  ‘You waiting for me?’

  A grey-haired man stepped on to the pavement from his blue van, a younger girl hastening through the rain to open up the shop.

  ‘PC Wilson?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kirsty said, coming out of the doorway. ‘We spoke on the phone. Mr Wrigley?’

  ‘Stuart.’ He smiled, ushering Kirsty into the tattoo studio and out of the wind. ‘Cup of tea? Coffee?’

  ‘Aye, tea would be great, thanks,’ Kirsty said, following the man as he led the way into a second room. This was obviously the tattoo studio proper, she thought, her eyes roving around the place. One mirrored wall reflected the cabinets and worktops opposite, pairs of black swivel chairs reminding her of a hair salon, though the cluttered surfaces suggested something far more exotic. Her eyes fell on a bottle of dark green liquid containing what looked like a dead snake curled within, its opened fangs making Kirsty shudder. Beside it sat a pink glass paperweight, a sand-coloured scorpion trapped inside, and two other plastic shapes concealing a stag beetle and something strange that made her look more closely.

  ‘A pig foetus,’ Stuart said cheerfully, bearing two mugs of tea that he set down on the worktop beside them.

  Kirsty managed a weak grin. ‘Oh. Right,’ she said. She bit her lip. ‘I’m supposed to be accompanied by a more senior officer, but he hasn’t turned up, so perhaps I can talk to you on my own?’

  The grey-haired man’s grin faded a little. ‘You wanted to ask me about an unidentified person,’ he began. ‘Sad to say, it’s something that crops up a fair bit these days.’

  Kirsty nodded. He seemed a nice guy, this tattoo artist, and well spoken, too. She could imagine that a man like this would put a client at their ease without much difficulty. Stuart Wrigley’s establishment was the oldest of its kind in Glasgow, founded way back in the 1950s by his late father, Terry, hence the name above the door. And given the popularity of tattoo art, the man sitting opposite her had often been visited by police officers for help in the identification of men and women whose lives had been cut short in some way or other.

  Kirsty took out her notebook and showed him the drawing she had made.

  ‘I think it might be like that,’ she said, turning the page so that Stuart could see it.

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, looking at the curled spiral shape instead and nodding.

  ‘Black girl?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Yes.’ Kirsty drew in a sharp breath. ‘How did you know?’

  Stuart Wrigley turned his face to hers and she suddenly saw the furrowed brow and a look of intense sadness in his eyes.

  ‘I think I may have done the tattoo for her.’

  ‘When was this?’

  Wrigley raised his eyebrows thoughtfully. ‘Couple of days ago. Poor girl, what happened?’

  Kirsty stared at him. ‘But that’s impossible,’ she blurted out. ‘She’s been dead for . . .’

  Wrigley shook his head. ‘Definitely just two days ago. I remember her coming in with her uncles. Or at least that’s who they said they were. Showed me her passport.’

  Kirsty looked at him questioningly.

  ‘Even if they come in off the street like these ones did, I need to have ID of some sort to verify the client’s age.’

  ‘Okay.’ Kirsty nodded, intrigued. ‘Go on.’

  ‘They were quite specific about the design they wanted. A triple spiral on the lassie’s upper thigh. Well I tried to put them off. Suggested placing it on her shoulder instead, but they said she wanted it somewhere discreet.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Tricky place for girls like that. Thinner skin there, you see, and black skin is more delicate than ours.’ He shrugged. ‘Told them the usual about keeping it clean, giving it time to heal, how it might be more prone to infection. But that’s all we can do really. Unless they ever come back with a bad infection.’

  ‘And she hasn’t?’

  ‘No. As I said, it was only two days ago. That’s not the girl you’re trying to find out about, is it?’ Wrigley asked, his bright eyes shrewd with an intelligence that the young officer could not ignore.

  ‘So you gave this girl a triple spiral tattoo? Do you have any details of her name and address?’

  ‘Wait and I’ll see.’ He rummaged in one of the drawers opposite his workstation and drew out a sheaf of papers
clipped together.

  ‘Should be in this lot,’ he said, leafing through the bundle.

  Kirsty waited expectantly, her heart beating faster. Would she be returning triumphantly to Stewart Street with the information that Lorimer was seeking?

  ‘Here we are,’ Wrigley said, handing her an A5 sheet of paper with the heading: Terry’s Tattoo Studio. Our records are kept in the strictest confidence. Underneath there was space for the usual name, address, contact number and email, followed by tick boxes for various illnesses like HIV, epilepsy and diabetes. Every box was ticked under ‘No’, and only a name and address had been filled in. The date of birth was given as 1 April 1995.

  ‘I can tell you a bit about her if you like,’ Wrigley continued. ‘I thought the poor girl looked scared to death. Some of them get pretty nervous when they see the needle,’ he explained. He frowned again, as if trying to remember something. ‘She seemed a bit doolally,’ he said at last. ‘Thought she might have been not all there, know what I mean?’

  ‘Or drugged up to the eyeballs?’ Kirsty offered.

  Wrigley’s eyes widened. ‘The two guys with her said she was their niece over on a six-month visa from Nigeria. Passport seemed to check out okay. Photo was definitely recent. Said the girl wanted something really Scottish to remember her visit.’

  Kirsty looked hard at the man.

  ‘And you’re certain you never gave a similar tattoo to another black girl? Say within the last few months?’

  Wrigley shook his head, his keen eyes staring into her own; he was either telling the truth or he was an exceptionally cool individual.

  ‘And you didn’t suggest the triple spiral?’ Kirsty went on.

  Wrigley tapped his beard thoughtfully. ‘No. Like I said. Come to think of it, that was a bit strange. Two big black lads asking for a Pictish symbol for their lassie. One of them even had it on his iPad to show me exactly what they wanted.’

  ‘And did they pay by credit card?’ she asked, hoping that even more details might come to light.

  ‘Cash only,’ Wrigley said, pointing to a sign by the main door. ‘Always has been. Saves us a lot of bother. So these are all the ID we keep, I’m afraid.’

  Kirsty looked at the form. The address was in a street she had never heard of. But as she read the name above, Asa, no surname given, Kirsty began to wonder just where this might lead.

  ‘Doesn’t exist,’ DC Patrick Lennox told her. ‘Yoruba Street! They’re havin’ a laugh,’ he snorted. ‘That’s one of the main Nigerian languages, Yoruba,’ he explained.

  Kirsty felt her face reddening. Okay, she’d found the source of one girl’s tattoo. Surely that could lead somewhere?

  ‘Even if it’s true that Wrigley didn’t do the tattoo for our black girl, the name and address are both probably false,’ Lennox explained.

  ‘If they were up to no good then they probably wouldn’t use the same tattoo artist twice,’ Kirsty mused.

  ‘Still plenty for us to do, then, young Kirsty.’ Lennox grinned. ‘Let’s see the list of all the tattoo artists in the area.’

  DC Lennox had apologised profusely for his non-attendance at the tattoo studio; his mother-in-law had been rushed into hospital during the night and both he and his wife had overslept. ‘Be grateful if you don’t tell His Nibs,’ he had whispered, his face pale with lack of sleep and the strain of waiting for hours in a hospital corridor. ‘Don’t want to blot my copybook.’

  Kirsty had merely nodded, wondering if the information she had found was to be credited to Lennox or herself. There would be a meeting shortly where she would listen to Lennox reading from her report, though the email already distributed to other members of the team had come from her computer.

  She had a lot to learn in this job, she realised, and not all of it had to do with catching criminals.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Asa woke with a dry feeling in her mouth. It was still dark outside and she had no idea of the time, though there was the sound of a pigeon cooing on the roof, so perhaps dawn was not too far off. It was good to hear some sounds at last.

  Night after night the African girl had struggled to sleep, the traffic outside sometimes making strange high-pitched whines or pulsing notes that shrieked through the city. But it had been the long silences that had been hardest. Asa was accustomed to the texture of night noises, the small nocturnal creatures whose sounds lulled her to sleep, and she missed the gurgling croaks of frogs and the cicadas in the bush. This quietness made her stare into the shadows, an ache in her soul to be back where she belonged.

  The girl rolled over on her side, then yelped aloud as the pain from her wound seared along her inner thigh.

  He had not been a doctor after all. What had she expected from a man wearing jeans and a casual grey striped sweater? His voice had been kind, though, unlike the voices of the two Nigerian men who had persisted in speaking English. Asa had ventured a timid word or two in Yoruba only to be met with angry glares. They had understood her, she was certain of that, but they had refused to reply. The rest of the day had passed in a blur: memories of the car bringing her back from the tattoo studio to the tall grey building, of being huckled up each flight of cold stone stairs, then the relief of being able to sleep and sleep and sleep.

  Asa’s body tensed as she heard the creak of the door opening. Was it Shereen coming to bring an early breakfast?

  ‘Shh!’

  She sat up, the cry dying on her lips as she saw the bigger of the two Nigerians close the door behind him and approach her. There were tiny beads of sweat on his dark brow and he was breathing hard as he came to sit on the edge of her bed.

  Suddenly he grasped the covers and with both meaty hands pulled them off, tossing them on the floor, hungry eyes boring into her own. Then, pulling up her nightshirt, he began to squeeze her small breasts, shifting his body so that he could lie beside her.

  Asa closed her eyes, smelling the alcohol on his breath, feeling the hands coming down across her stomach, touching her in places that no man had ever touched before, her body rigid with fear.

  Then, in one swift motion, he had pulled her thighs apart, making her cry out, and she could feel the weight of his body crushing the breath from her chest. There was a push and a stab and her whole body seemed to split and burn, the man groaning and roaring above her, waves of pain surging as he pressed himself again and again into her soft flesh.

  Asa soon found that there was nothing to be gained from struggling beneath this terrible heaviness; her efforts to escape only seemed to redouble the big man’s enjoyment.

  At last, with a yelp that was more animal than human, he flopped across her body, a shuddering sensation deep inside her.

  When he rolled away from her, Asa began to cry, but he took her by the shoulders and shook her until she felt her neck would snap.

  ‘Shut it!’ he commanded. ‘You’ll get more than this from our friends, so better get used to it!’ he snarled.

  The meaning of the words was lost to the girl but the sound of his voice was enough to make her cringe to the edge of the bed, fingers curled over the damp edges of her nightshirt.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘Wrigley wasn’t to know what was going on, though maybe being asked to place a tattoo on that part of the body could have told him something,’ Lorimer said.

  ‘He did say that the girl wanted it somewhere discreet. He’d got the impression that the folks back home might not be too pleased to see their daughter with a tattoo from Glasgow,’ Kirsty answered.

  Detective Superintendent Lorimer sighed. There was so little to go on. The tattoo artist’s information had been helpful enough in its way, but everything seemed to point to something a lot more sinister than someone’s niece (if that was what she really was) hiding a tattoo from her parents back in Nigeria. There was no doubt in his mind that these girls had been tattooed for a different reason altogether, the Pictish spiral more of a brand mark than mere decorative art. And Rosie’s post-mortem had thrown u
p a suggestion of a different sort. Were these girls being trafficked as prostitutes? If so, perhaps they ought to be looking for this second girl, the one called Asa.

  Most of the citizens of Glasgow did not regard their city as a hotbed of human trafficking, despite it being the fifth most popular place in the UK for such criminal activity. It was their Dear Green Place, the former City of Culture, Glasgow’s Miles Better being a logo that had filled its folk with a pride in their couthy humour and welcoming manner to strangers. Now that the Commonwealth Games were coming ever closer, there was a sense of civic self-esteem amongst the populace, something that Detective Superintendent Lorimer had been told to consider. The girl’s body lay in the mortuary, silent and still, her identity remaining a mystery that was not to be shared with anyone outside the investigation. No press release would be put out and every officer on the team had been strictly warned to keep the case completely secret.

  Lorimer had now spoken to Stuart Wrigley at the tattoo studio, the quick visit to Chisholm Street necessary to keep the case under wraps. He’d liked the man on sight and trusted him to keep PC Wilson’s visit to himself. Wrigley had nodded, understanding. It wasn’t the first time he had helped with such a case, he’d reminded the detective superintendent.

  DC Lennox and PC Wilson had received the sharp end of his tongue afterwards. Letting the probationer go there on her own was just not on, and despite the fact that Kirsty had coped well and obtained some salient information, she ought to have waited for Lennox or reported back to Stewart Street. Lorimer had hidden a smile as Kirsty and Lennox left his office. She wasn’t used to seeing him stern like that, and her red face had made the senior officer realise just how raw she was to all of this.

  Stuart Wrigley folded the form in two, along with a copy of the triple spiral designs, placed them in an envelope and dampened the edge, sealing it shut. His two daughters were completely unaware of what had taken place during these visits from the police officers, and he intended to keep it that way. Stuart’s thoughts crept back to the young black girl whose skin had trembled under his touch. She hadn’t been a willing client, had she? And his instinct ought to have told him that at the time. Asa, the man had called her, the name written on that form. He recalled the lift of her head, the response to her name. That hadn’t been faked, he was sure. Fishing out the card from his wallet, Wrigley looked at the number beneath the detective superintendent’s name. It might not be much, but perhaps even this little snippet could be helpful. I think that was her real name, he had written on the back of the form.