by Alex Gray
The first time he had placed a red flower between the praying hands the wind had sighed outside the chapel door like a benediction. Then he knew it was all right. He had a blessing. The priests had sounded their delight. Bells had rung in his honour and the clever boys had lifted him shoulder-high through the college gates. He’d been feather-light, a wisp on the air, able to float down into the coffin and embrace the cold figures lying there so stiff, so stately. Death was sweet. Couldn’t they understand that? Death released them all. He released them now, these women, from their hateful lives. Better to be dead and in a clean white coffin. Clean and cool with the flicker of candle-flame.
He groaned as the pain filled his thighs. Would they never leave him alone, these waking dead? Was he burdened with this task for all eternity?
Chapter Thirteen
Number twenty-eight Murray Street was one in a row of faded red sandstone tenements, once the glory of the tobacco merchants who had helped the city to prosper, but now split into a mismatch of bedsits and small flats. Kirsty MacLeod had rented one of the basement rooms.
Lorimer had spoken to the landlady briefly on the telephone. Now their feet thudded on the uncarpeted wooden stairs that led them in a spiral down to the lower level. Lorimer took in the landlady’s scuffed leather shoes and much-washed cardigan as she turned the stairs below him. Her clothes were covered in an old-fashioned overall, the kind his granny had worn to the steamie to wash the household linen, but he noticed the hem of her skirt was unravelling at the edge. Whatever rent her tenants were paying, it didn’t seem to make a fortune for the woman.
‘How long had Miss MacLeod been renting from you?’
‘Well, let me see,’ the woman turned her head towards Lorimer. ‘She’s been here about eighteen months.’ Lorimer caught a glimpse of tears start in her eyes. They had reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped outside a door marked 3B.
‘I can’t believe she’s dead,’ her words fell in a whisper and she looked away, suddenly embarrassed at her own emotion. She fiddled with the key in the lock. Lorimer cast his eyes over the green painted walls. The place reminded him of an institution rather than a warren of bedsits, although the faint smell of joss sticks lingering in the corridor spoke of a student life he remembered well. Lorimer stood on the threshold of the room. The dark green curtains were still drawn and his eyes took a few blinks to adjust to the dim light.
‘Have you been into this room since Miss MacLeod left for work on Thursday?’
The landlady looked fearfully at him, shaking her frizzed grey hair.
‘Oh, no, Chief Inspector. I didn’t like…Well. You know. it didn’t seem decent,’ she trailed off, her hands wringing the flowered cotton overall. She hovered in the doorway, uncertain.
‘You don’t need to stay if you have other things to get on with. I’ll bring the keys when I’m done. All right?’ His face creased into the reassuring smile that he brought out of his stock expressions for the old and vulnerable. The woman nodded and disappeared along the corridor. He waited a moment until he could hear the sound of doors banging and pots being clattered before turning into the room once more.
Kirsty MacLeod would have kept the curtains shut whenever she’d had a night shift, he told himself. Security-conscious. Even when the windows looked out onto a brick wall, he mused, leaning over a wide desk and drawing the heavy folds aside to let in the daylight. He stood with his back to the desk taking in the contents of her room.
The neatly made up bed was up against one wall, a scattering of soft toys over the pillow. Lorimer recognised a rabbit with floppy ears and a stupid grin embroidered onto its face. It was a Disney character but he couldn’t remember which one. There was the usual tired-looking furniture that every city bedsit seemed to afford: dark varnished wardrobe, chest of drawers, bedside cabinet. At least they matched, he thought. A stereo system had been rigged up in one corner on top of a steel cabin trunk. Lorimer looked at the walls, expecting to see the usual wallpapering of pop posters but there was only one of a Runrig concert dating from several years back and a travel poster depicting the standing stones of Callanish.
Lorimer flicked on an angle-poise lamp that stood on the desk and gazed at the picture. The stones seemed to heave out of the Lewis earth as if they’d grown there from ancient roots. So, Kirsty had reminders of home. That was hardly surprising. Lorimer’s gaze continued along the line of photo frames on the mantelpiece. There was one of a laughing girl with her arms around an older, white-haired woman. It took him a moment to realise that it was Kirsty. Images of her body sprawled across that concrete floor flicked through his brain. He’d only seen her once, dead at the Grange. This was a younger, carefree teenager and the old lady might be a relative, the aunt, he thought, taking in the background of hills and sea. The other photos included one of her graduation, a close up of a collie dog, its tongue lolling, and an old black and white photograph of a man and woman outside a cottage. Her parents, probably. No young men were included in the line-up. A surprise, really, given that she’d been such a pretty girl.
An empty coat hanger swung from a discoloured brass hook on the back of the door. Her personal clothing had been taken from the nursing home to forensics for examination. Lorimer turned suddenly at the noise of a bluebottle buzzing at the closed window. It heightened his awareness of the silence in the room. No hands would come to switch on the stereo. Nobody would sing a Gaelic song as they tidied or made up the single bed. There was a feeling of utter emptiness, as if the room itself knew that Kirsty was never coming back. Remembering the landlady, Lorimer supposed that another tenant would eventually move in. He sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets. Life went on. It had to. Someone would come to take the girl’s personal effects away later in the day. More forensics. More grief for the relatives, wherever they were. For now Lorimer had to gauge the sort of girl Kirsty had been and hopefully find some helpful documentation. A neat, tidy person; from the look of the room, she would have her paperwork somewhere to hand, collated and sorted.
The desk drawer was the obvious place and Lorimer was not disappointed. A red leather five-year diary sat on top of a sheaf of papers. He rustled through them. Payslips were clipped together, a plastic bag contained a pile of receipts and a guarantee for the stereo. Bank statements lay in order in a blue ring binder. Lorimer flicked through them. Nothing obviously wrong there. A floral paper file held letters with a Lewis postmark. It would all have to be taken away for close perusal. Suddenly it all seemed so intrusive to Lorimer. It didn’t stop with the killing. Even after death, the girl’s private life had to be dissected as thoroughly as her cold corpse.
His fingertips brushed against a small, metal object in a corner of the drawer and Lorimer pushed it into sight. It was a tiny key. Lorimer picked it up. Her key to the diary, surely? He fitted it into the lock and turned. The red book sprung open as if someone had breathed life into its pages. Flicking from the back, Lorimer noticed that the diary had spanned all of the last five years, its tightly written pages giving details of Kirsty’s life.
The final entry had been 31 December last year. Starting at the top of that page he read of five different sorts of Hogmanays.
1999 Ceilidh at the Halls. Didn’t get in till after two. What a night!!!!
2000 Working tonight. Watched the Rev. I. M. Jolly on TV. A good laugh. Wish Aunty Mhairi had the phone.
2001 George Square for the bells. Millions of mad folk but it was great fun. Bitter cold. Went to someone’s party in Hyndland afterwards.
2002 Great to be home. Chrissie and I stayed in with Mhairi as she had a bad cold. Loads of neighbours came in after the bells. Malcolm’s black bun went down a treat.
2003 Last New Year in Glasgow. Hope next year brings better luck.
Lorimer gritted his teeth. What bloody irony. All this year had brought her was a grisly death at the hands of some lunatic. He glanced over the five entries again, turning back to confirm his first impressions. Yes, she’d been back to Harr
is twice in those five years. Had she intended to go back for good? Last year in Glasgow. What had her plans been for the future? And with whom? Who was Malcolm?
He flicked back through the pages until the diary fell open of its own accord. Lorimer frowned. Cut neatly out of the centre of the little book were several pages, the remaining thatch of paper left to prevent the diary falling apart at its stitched seam. What had taken place to make Kirsty MacLeod obliterate several weeks out of a record of her life? And in which year had this event happened? A love affair gone wrong? Something so embarrassing that she couldn’t bear to reread it in the following years? Lorimer closed the diary, weighing it in his hand. He’d have to read the whole thing. Then ask even more questions. Slipping the diary into his pocket, Lorimer let his eyes rove around the room once more.
He’d had enough. The place gave him an impression of girlish innocence, of a Kirsty MacLeod who was doing her best to survive in this alien environment. As he looked again at the picture of the standing stones, Lorimer couldn’t help feeling that the nurse would have gone back to the islands eventually.
He turned on his heel. The boys would be back later to strip the place. For now, all Lorimer wanted was to leave the airless room to the fly trapped against the dusty windowpane.
Chapter Fourteen
Glasgow University sat high above the west end of the city on Gilmour Hill, its spiked spire a landmark for miles around. To the south it overlooked the Art Galleries and the river Clyde beyond. That particular morning Tom Coutts felt real pleasure in the view.
‘Makes you feel good, doesn’t it?’ he smiled at Solomon. They were sitting on a wooden bench by a strip of grass, warmed by unexpected sunshine.
Solly smiled back. Tom hadn’t looked as relaxed as this for a long time. He nodded at his companion.
‘Coming back into work soon, then?’
Tom sighed. ‘I hope so. They tell me I’ve done well, whatever that means. Thought I knew all the psychobabble but it’s different when you’re on the receiving end,’ he grinned wryly. ‘But I can’t fault them. OK, it’s taken a while and you must be fed up with all the extra marking. Sorry about that,’ he added. ‘Still, I feel better than I’ve felt in ages. And this helps,’ he spread a hand over the banks of primulas spreading down towards Kelvin Way.
‘I wanted to ask you something, Tom. About the clinic.’
‘They using you as their profiler, are they? Good. I’m glad,’ Tom Coutts nodded approvingly.
‘I know DCI Lorimer’s spoken to you about the victim. Must have been hard when she was Nan’s nurse.’
‘One of Nan’s nurses,’ Tom corrected him gently. ‘Yes. It was a shock. I’d only seen her a few days before the murder. Hadn’t even realised she worked there. But then I didn’t keep in touch with any of them after the funeral.’
‘I wondered if you would help me. Give me some information about the clinic. From an insider’s view point, as it were.’
‘Listen, I’d be glad to. You’ve no idea how grateful I’ve been for all your help, Solly. Anything I can tell you, anything at all that might help build up a decent picture for you.’ Tom laid a hand on Solly’s arm as he spoke. ‘Mind you, I can’t fault the clinic. The therapists were very professional. I thought the place seemed well run.’
‘How about the other patients?’
Tom grinned. ‘Aha! Run into a problem over patient confidentiality, have you?’
‘Something like that,’ Solly replied blandly. Mrs Baillie had not been pleased at having to give her patient files to the police. She would be even less inclined to cooperate with a civilian, he thought.
‘Want to give me a grilling before I go up to Lewis?’
‘Lewis?’
Tom inclined his head. ‘Didn’t you know? They’ve got a respite centre on the island. Most of the longer term patients have a chance to go up there for a break at the end of their treatment. I was offered the chance and I thought, well, why not. A few days with some clean air can only help. Then I’ll be ready for work again.’
Solomon shook his head. A respite centre. On Lewis? He wondered if Lorimer had any inkling of this. Kirsty MacLeod came from Lewis. This was an element that kept coming into the equation. A coincidence? Or was there something more sinister going on that they’d all missed?
‘Tell me a bit about the patients you met during your therapy sessions.’
‘What’s there to tell? These are folk who are part of a system, Solly. They’re more a danger to them selves than to anyone else. It’s the loose cannon you’re looking for. The one who’s never seen his GP. The one everyone sees as normal. You know that.’ Tom drew him a disapproving look.
Solly nodded and shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But just indulge me for a little. Tell me about the patients who were in your group.’
Tom took a deep breath. ‘Well. They weren’t the same for a start. I can remember one or two who came after I started, but to be honest I don’t have a lot of memory about who was there at the beginning of my treatment. Except the long termers, the residents.’
Solomon crossed one leg over the other, listening but not interrupting.
‘The Irish chap, Leigh, he’s been there all along. Eric came a couple of months back. Then there was an older man called Sam something. He’d been a shipyard worker. And the nun, of course. She’s been there for ages. How she can afford it, goodness knows. I thought they took a vow of poverty and that place doesn’t come cheap. Even with medical insurance.’
‘The nun. What was her name?’
‘Sister Angelica. Poor soul. She’d been displaced from her last convent when it was closed down. Had lived there all her professional life, I believe. She simply couldn’t come to terms with any change.’ Tom turned to Solly, his eyes suddenly hard. ‘Bereaved, really. Like me,’ he added. ‘People tell you to pull yourself together, you know. Think time will help, as if grieving should be contained in a respectable amount of time: so many months and no longer. It’s not like that, though. Not for some of us. Sister Angelica suffered from manic depression. She’d come into the Grange after an attempted suicide.’
‘When was this?’
Tom shrugged. ‘Don’t know. She was there when I started the sessions and she’s still there, as far as I know.’
‘Do you remember any of the patients who were given the chance to go to Lewis?’
‘No. You see, the makeup of the group changes so much from week to week. There were the ones, like me, who came in as outpatients and then there were the residents.’
‘But some of the residents would continue as outpatients for a while, surely?’
Tom frowned. ‘Yes, I suppose so, but you’d really need to check with the Baillie woman. She’ll have all that sort of thing in her files. Cathy, the girl on reception might be a better bet, mind you,’ he grinned conspiratorially at Solly.
‘Thanks, Tom. Would you do me another favour?’
‘Surely. Anything I can.’
‘Would you mind writing down everything you can remember about the residents in your therapy group? It might help me.’
‘Of course,’ Tom patted his arm. ‘In fact I’ll get on with that right away.’ He rose from the bench and flexed his shoulders. ‘Getting too old for sitting on park benches,’ he laughed. ‘Good hunting, Solly.’
Solomon stood on the platform of the bus, gripping the rail as it braked to a halt. The bus had taken him from University Avenue all the way over to the south side of the city. Now, according to his A to Z, there was only a short walk to the Grange. His mind was still buzzing with last night’s marking load. Final year exams were a headache for all the staff at this time of year and Solly found it one of the few times when he had to struggle to clear his mind and focus on other things. They were such a vulnerable lot, his students, under their guise of bravado. One girl in particular, bright, feisty and chasing a First for all her worth, seemed to have cracked under the strain. The psychologist had been saddened to read her scripts full of generalisations
and glossed over statistics. Hannah was so much better than her results would suggest. The girl was one of a group who had failed to come to his exam preparation classes earlier in their course, he remembered now. Solly always made it his duty to give every student a chance to find out about the psychology of exam preparation. It had so much more to do with strategies and mental attitude than sitting up burning the midnight oil. Still, there were some kids, like Hannah, who would never be convinced.
Dismissing students from his mind, Solomon recalled the file on Kirsty MacLeod. His present remit was to the dead rather than to the living.
The road to the clinic ran slightly uphill and the pavements were narrow on either side of the road where, as Lorimer had told him, there was extensive double parking. Even during the day, thought Solly. Perhaps a fair proportion of the residents were retired? An interesting thought. Would there be more eyes to see during the daytime? The psychologist had a list of local people who had been interviewed in the house-to-house enquiries following Kirsty MacLeod’s murder. These were so time-consuming for the police whose resources were often stretched to breaking point anyway.
Solomon stopped at the brow of the hill. The red sandstone tenements petered out here, giving way to a few solid Victorian villas at the end of the cul-de-sac. The Grange was just one of those that had undergone extensive renovation. Most had been divided into residential flats, a more marketable proposition these days, and certainly a saving on Community Charges. Opposite the Grange two houses had been given quite different makeovers, however. What at first appeared to be a large family home was in fact a dental surgery. Next door to that was a pub, the sort that could be found in any town the length and breadth of Britain. There was a poster outside advertising the weekly events along with its chips-with-everything bar menu. The psychologist crossed the road towards the surgery, noting the house name, Palmyra, still engraved in faded gold over the glass lintel. Standing back, he could see several cars nosing around the back of the building. The front gateway was only wide enough to admit pedestrians so there must be another entrance to the driveway, Solly thought, his feet taking him round the side of the old house.
