by Gray, Alex
‘Any girlfriends?’
Lorimer saw the dark look that passed between the Dalgleishes. It was a small enough thing but in that momentary exchange the senior detective suddenly understood.
‘No,’ Douglas said, a shade too firmly.
McGarrity smiled. ‘Lots of pals, though, I suppose.’
A momentary look of relief swept across Pamela Dalgleish’s face.
‘Oh, yes, lots,’ she agreed swiftly. ‘The house will be so quiet now without them all there,’ she added, biting her lip.
Lorimer sat back, watching and listening, forming his own opinions and wondering if the reporter had also picked up on the parents’ body language. Probably. McGarrity was no fool.
If he was not mistaken, here was a secret that the Dalgleishes wanted to die with their boy. Had it been a secret kept from others, though? Had Rory, the loud lad, shared the fact of his sexuality with his schoolfriends? Or had the shame that emanated from his own parents made him more reticent about the fact that he was gay? It didn’t explain the boy’s death but perhaps it would make things more complicated.
And, for the first time since he had discovered the body, Lorimer allowed himself to speculate about the marks around the wrists and ankles.
‘What do you reckon?’
‘I would have said wire.’ Rosie peered more closely at the ankles where some form of binding had cut into the boy’s flesh. ‘But it hasn’t left the sort of impression you would expect. Maybe some sort of binding twine.’ She paused, examining the surface wounds with a magnifying glass. ‘There’s a definite pattern. Won’t be any traces after being so long in the water, but I want some photos sent to our friends down in Glasgow. Chap I know there is a whizz with this sort of thing.’
Grace MacMillan angled the camera carefully, zooming in on the spot that Rosie was indicating with a scalpel blade, the ruler next to the boy’s ankle to give an idea of scale. Despite the tragic circumstances of Rory Dalgleish’s death, the older woman found that she was enjoying this. Having her former protégée undertake the post-mortem was hugely gratifying; it was something that she and Martin would talk about over an evening whisky for years to come.
Stevie Crozier stood as far away from the two doctors as she could manage, DS Langley by her side. It was not out of any sense of nausea at watching a PM, rather a desire to give the medics as much space as possible. There was no viewing platform here, as in a city morgue, and so the police officers had donned scrubs and slunk against a wall, angling themselves to see what was happening as Rosie moved around the stainless steel table. The harsh lights beamed down to illuminate the pathologist’s work, a necessity in this windowless room. She felt a strange sensation, as though they were all cut off from the real world, adrift in some timeless place where death ruled supreme. She watched as Rosie opened the boy’s body, revealing the internal organs.
Was that all a person amounted to in the end? A load of dark red pieces being weighed on the scales, facts and figures about them written down in a notebook? Where was the loud boy she had heard so much about? Where was his laughter, the exuberance of a young life?
Stevie sensed Langley shifting uncomfortably by her side and she glanced at him, hoping that the detective sergeant wasn’t going to disgrace her and throw up. He’d have told her that Rory’s spirit was elsewhere. In heaven, whatever that meant, she thought sourly. Langley was a churchgoer of the traditional sort but he had surprised her when she had remarked on the waste of a young life being cut short.
We can’t know why it’s their time, Langley had said, looking obliquely at his boss, we can only trust that their spirit is safe in the arms of God.
Somehow, watching the small blonde woman at work, Stevie found it hard to imagine a spirit of any sort. It was all flesh and bones, nothing more. Wasn’t it?
Rosie turned and looked at the two police officers. ‘You’ve been very patient,’ she smiled. ‘And I know you want as much information as possible, so here’s what we have.’ She turned back to indicate the neck area. ‘Broken hyoid bone suggests that some person has inflicted this injury. It cannot have happened during his passage at sea and the cause of death was most certainly not drowning. The lungs and air passages confirm that,’ she continued. ‘He was dead before he hit the water.’
‘So they tried to dispose of the body by chucking it into the ocean?’ Crozier said, not masking the bitterness in her tone.
‘That is a likely scenario,’ Rosie agreed, ‘but not my part of the ship. All I can tell you is how he died as far as the injuries on his body will show. Whether it’s a they or a he or even a she that put him into the water is not my call, Detective Inspector.’
‘Can you tell if he was tied up before or after he died?’
Rosie shook her head. ‘That’s a bit harder. But he was still warm when he was trussed up. Rigor setting in established the shape of his limbs like that,’ she said, nodding at the bent knees where the bonds had pulled his lower limbs back.
‘But he might have been restrained while he was still alive?’
Rosie nodded. ‘Might have been, but I would never categorically state that he was, not here nor in a court of law. We deal in possibilities.’ She smiled, exchanging a knowing look at her former tutor who smiled back as though the phrase was something that had been learned and passed on from Dr Grace MacMillan years before.
‘We’ll have to send all the photographic material to Pitt Street but I can do the toxicology here. See what his bloods and the stomach contents reveal.’
‘D’you mind if I go out for a bit?’ DS Langley said suddenly. ‘Bit stuffy in here.’
‘No, that’s fine, we’re almost done so no need to come back in if you don’t want to,’ Rosie said.
Langley slipped out of the room, closing the door almost reverently as he left, as though to disturb the dead was some sort of sacrilege.
‘Sorry about that,’ Crozier apologised. ‘Didn’t know he was the squeamish sort.’
‘Can’t be too many post-mortems for a police officer to see in this part of the world,’ Rosie said sympathetically. She glanced back at the cadaver, the flaps of skin that lay open, exposing the workings of the human body. It was a sight she was used to seeing in her job, but for a moment she saw Rory’s body through the eyes of the policeman and shuddered. It was fascinating to her, as a pathologist, but pretty grim, perhaps, if you weren’t used to it.
Jim McGarrity was waiting for her as Rosie emerged into the sunshine.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘Lorimer didn’t mention that they’d sent you this far north.’
‘Big story.’ McGarrity shrugged. ‘Bad thing to happen on a place as nice as this,’ he said, spreading his arms wide to encompass the hills, sky and sea around them.
Rosie followed his gesture. It was a lovely place, too lovely for such a death to have been committed here and she could see why the chief crime reporter at the Gazette had wanted to come to see it all for himself.
‘I’ve spoken to his parents,’ McGarrity continued. ‘And now I wonder, Dr Fergusson, if you could give me any indication of the cause of the poor boy’s death?’
‘Och, you know I can’t do that yet,’ Rosie protested. ‘It’ll have to be done through the proper channels.’
‘Did he drown?’ McGarrity persisted. ‘Was it an accident?’
Rosie shook her head. ‘You’ll know soon enough,’ she said. ‘The police press office will let you know by the end of today, I would think.’
McGarrity grinned. ‘Thanks, Doc,’ he said.
‘What for? I haven’t told you a thing!’ Rosie protested, but McGarrity was already walking away, one finger tapping against his nose as though he had read what he wanted to know in her unspoken words.
Martin Goodfellow’s hand pushed the tiller to starboard, feeling the tension on the sheet as the yacht cut through the waves. He bent low as the boom came around, feeling the boat swing beneath him like a living creature. Then, as he steered his course across the
Sound of Mull, the photographer lifted his face to the afternoon sun, feeling the sharpness of the wind against his stubbled cheeks. It was a perfect day for sighting the minkes, a perfect day to leave the little village behind with all its talk of death and despair.
His eyes caught sight of the fish box tucked neatly to one side, wrapped in several strands of plastic twine. There was a fishing line in there, the one with nine hooks that was called a ‘murderer’. Maybe he would head later to the buoy for a spot of fishing. The ling were supposed to be plentiful at this time of year and Grace might like to invite her young friends back for dinner.
He smiled to himself, feeling the field glasses bump against his chest as the yacht swept up and over a wave. It was good to keep an eye on these people from the mainland. So many of them meant well; but occasionally something like the death of the red-haired boy would happen to wreak havoc in their peaceful lives. The man’s smile faded as he faced the sun, his eyes half closed as he remembered his wife’s words and the bleak expression on her face. He would do anything, Martin thought fiercely, anything at all to protect his Grace from the world she had left behind all these years ago.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Glasgow
Twenty Years Earlier
A red-haired young man, she read, possibly in his late teens, the short article went on.
Mona Daly put down the newspaper with a sigh. Had that been the lad she’d seen the other night, after work? The young chap she had seen here before…? She shuddered, remembering the two men standing in the shadows of the building where she worked. It had been the shock of seeing grown men do something so horrid that made her remember them so well. She’d looked at them for a moment, expecting one of them to be a daftie, a poor soul who didn’t know any better. That would have made it kind of sad, but understandable. These sorts hadn’t a clue what was right or socially acceptable, did they? And Mona had heard it said they were extra affectionate, these Mongol laddies who hadn’t the brains to understand what they were doing with their own bodies.
But the one with red hair, she’d seen his face and he wasn’t like that at all. He was actually an okay-looking sort of guy, shorter than the other one who had bent down towards him, their faces so close that Mona had stopped suddenly, horrified that she was about to see two men kissing one another. Then the younger one had slid his hand onto the other man’s trousers, fondling his groin, and Mona had turned and fled from the window, gasping, not wanting to see any more.
Then, to see them again in the middle of the town… disgusting types!
Could it have been him? Had he come to grief in the river afterwards? Mona twisted her lips in a moment of indecision. Was it something in her – God forgive her! – that wanted the laddie dead? A punishment for having offended her sense of decency? She re-read the notice in the Gazette and shook her head. There were thousands of red-haired lads in the city; Scotland was full of them. And no doubt there were queers everywhere too, only she hadn’t been used to seeing the nasty sort of things they got up to: not in broad daylight.
No, it couldn’t be the same person. There had been something mendacious in the red-haired young man’s face, something that made Mona think he could look after himself. And if it was him? Well, it was none of her business, was it? Nobody had come forward to identify the body, the police spokesman in the article said. But someone knew that lad she’d seen. The older man; the one who hadn’t even flinched when his private parts had been touched. He would have come to the city morgue, wouldn’t he?
But what if that had been the lad’s killer? a small voice whispered in Mona Daly’s ear. She folded the newspaper and stuffed it into the wire mesh bin under her desk.
She wouldn’t think of it again. It didn’t concern her. There were too many other important things to take up her time, she told herself, pulling herself in to the desk and preparing to tackle another day with this new computer system that had been given to all the secretarial staff.
‘Not a thing.’ Lorimer shook his head as he sank back into the ancient armchair that had been a cheap saleroom purchase when they’d bought the house. ‘Not one single person in the whole city has responded to it,’ he said tiredly.
‘That’s a shame,’ Maggie said. ‘To think that nobody loves you enough to keep in touch.’
‘Oh, there could be any number of reasons why he wasn’t identified,’ Lorimer mused. ‘Probably wasn’t even from Glasgow. Most of the missing persons who are never found again have left their old haunts and live a life amongst strangers.’
‘Yes, you hear about old folk who are found behind their doors months after they’ve died.’ Maggie sighed. ‘It’s such a sad part of your job, darling,’ she sympathised.
‘Och, it’s the frustration of knowing that someone out there really does know who the boy is,’ he said wearily. ‘At least whoever trussed him up and threw him in the water does, but they won’t be letting on anytime soon,’ he grumbled.
‘It couldn’t have been an accident?’
Lorimer shook his head. ‘No. Phillips reckons it’s probably gang-related. But I’m not so sure.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, most of the Glasgow gangs are local, aren’t they? And even a bad lot has a mother or a sister who would be worried about them when they disappeared.’
‘What if they’re warned not to go to the police?’
‘Aye, well, that’s one of the things that Phillips said.’ Lorimer grinned suddenly at his wife. ‘You should be a polis, pet.’
‘Hard to see me in a uniform of any sort right now.’ Maggie smiled back, stroking the folds of her maternity dress.
She looked down. ‘Just a few more weeks and you’ll be out of there, wee one,’ she crooned. ‘And I can begin to get my figure back and not be such a huge big elephant.’
‘You’re gorgeous just as you are, d’you know that?’ Lorimer bent forward and patted his wife’s knee. ‘Pregnancy becomes you,’ he mused, smiling into her eyes. ‘And I don’t care if you’re never a skinny wee thing again.’
Maggie laughed. ‘Well you’ll be nothing but skin and bone if I don’t get your dinner.’
‘Here, sit where you are,’ Lorimer protested, rising to his feet. ‘I’ll fix the dinner. What are we having?’ He strode towards the kitchen part of the large, airy open-plan room that stretched the width of the house and beyond into an extension that the previous owners had built.
‘Mum made a casserole,’ Maggie called back. ‘A bit hot for this weather but it’ll be nice. There’s rice ready to be heated up in the microwave.’
‘Ah, the age of modern conveniences!’ Lorimer laughed, opening the microwave with a ping and slipping the covered dish inside.
Maggie Lorimer closed her eyes and sighed contentedly. They would never be rich people on a schoolteacher’s and policeman’s salaries, especially if she were to go part time after the baby was born; but right now she wouldn’t have swapped their lives for that of the wealthiest folk on the planet. Nobody could have as much as they had, she thought, feeling the ripples of movement across her swollen belly. They were the luckiest couple in the world.
They had been good together, he thought, blinking the tears that threatened to blind his vision as he chucked the last of his belongings into the rucksack and pulled the draw cord tight.
We make a good pair, don’t we? the boy had said, and he remembered smiling at that, imagining a future together where they made one another happy.
That would never happen now. The red-haired boy was dead, lying on some cold mortuary shelf, an unnamed victim.
He yanked the straps of the rucksack, gritting his teeth against the images that would not go away.
It was time to leave, time to go far away from this city of nightmares and vile memories. He would find a place where he was known and liked, he told himself. A place where he would make sure that nothing like that would ever happen again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Stevie Crozier snapped her mobile shut and stuf
fed it into her pocket. Damn the man! Could he not just get on with his holiday and leave her to carry on with the job? But, no, it appeared that Detective Superintendent know-it-all Lorimer had something important to discuss and was she free any time this morning? Stevie slammed out of the hotel room in annoyance, wishing she’d had the nerve to tell him to get lost.
Yet he hadn’t sounded as though he were pulling rank, she admitted, heading to the car park; his tone had been rather contrite, as though whatever he had to say might actually be a bit sensitive. And, if she were totally honest with herself, DI Stephanie Crozier was curious to know what it was that the detective superintendent wanted to share with her.
He was already at the water’s edge when Stevie drove up in the Mercedes, Langley having been dispatched to interview the staff at Kilbeg Country House Hotel. As she closed the car door, Stevie looked at the tall figure standing in his wellington boots, arms folded and gazing out to sea as though deep in thought. She clicked the lock, a spasm of annoyance crossing her face as she realised there was absolutely no need to secure her vehicle in this part of the world. ‘Old habits,’ she muttered under her breath and began the short walk along the narrow path where countless feet over the years had trod from the roadside to the wreck of an old boat shed.
It was a windless morning, the still waters reflecting the swathe of pines from Leiter forest in a mirror image, the sun a hazy suggestion behind a grey veil of mist. Looking up, the policewoman noticed clouds of tiny flies descending from the oak trees that sheltered this part of the bay. She cursed inwardly, remembering, too late, the anti-midge repellent sitting on the bathroom shelf back at the hotel. By the day’s end her fair skin would be peppered with tiny red marks, causing itching for days. Why on earth did someone who enjoyed his sort of salary come here year after year when he might have been swanning off to any part of the globe? Stevie raked slim fingers through her hair, hoping that the midges weren’t already feasting on her scalp. A lone buzzard swooped past and disappeared into the trees, hunting something more substantial than flies. Of course, the Lorimers were bird lovers; she remembered McManus telling her. And Mull was a haven for all sorts of wildlife.
