Pitch Black lab-5

by Alex Gray

  ‘Strathclyde Police.’ DC Niall Cameron held up his warrant card for the man to read. A pair of treacle-brown eyes glanced at the card then came back to look him up and down. Mr Singh, a turbaned man in his late fifties with a luxuriant pair of well-oiled moustaches, stood in the doorway. Then with a show of reluctance he stepped aside, letting Cameron and his colleague enter the flat in Barrington Drive. They’d taken the underground to Kelvinbridge then walked along the tree-lined avenue, noting several tiny well-tended gardens. The small patch that hugged the entrance to Donnie Douglas’s flat had a resplendence of crimson-coloured roses, their stems bent under the masses of blooms. As they’d waited on the front steps for Mr Singh to answer the bell push, Cameron had drawn in their scent and for a fraction of a second he’d been reminded of home; a fleeting image of the garden with its waterfalls of climbing roses came to mind before the landlord’s voice had obliterated that fragile memory.

  ‘We don’t have any trouble here,’ Mr Singh began. ‘No trouble. Ever,’ he said firmly.

  Niall Cameron kept his expression neutral. The man’s protestations might well be an indicator of some incident in the past, or maybe he really did run a strict regime in his flats. It didn’t matter either way; the warrant in the DC’s pocket gave him immediate entry into Donnie Douglas’s rented rooms.

  ‘Would you be good enough to show us Mr Douglas’s flat, sir?’

  The man glared at Cameron then turned wordlessly, leaving the DC and his colleague to follow him into the darkened hallway.

  Cameron gave a nod to the young man who trailed just behind him. John Weir was fresh out of uniform and this was his first day in CID. His dark suit and pristine white shirt were as brand new as the slicked-back haircut. DC Weir smiled nervously and nodded back. It gave Cameron a peculiar feeling to be in charge of this outing.

  As the landlord unlocked the door to the footballer’s rooms, Cameron remembered all that Lorimer had told him about reading a person’s surroundings. It wasn’t enough to look for evidence of a crime, you had to see what a place could tell you about the people who lived there. The main door was a solid enough affair with a bell push on the polished frame. Underneath was a metal plate where names of tenants could be inserted. A scrap of paper bearing the footballer’s name in childishly formed capitals had been pushed into the space, a temporary measure until something better came along.

  Afterwards he would tell Lorimer that it was the smell that hit them first as they moved into the flat. Not the pungent rotting smell of a decaying corpse, an expectation that had been hovering unspoken at the back of their minds. No, it was a sweet and sickly smell that wafted across the living room. Cameron glanced towards the top of the sash windows; there was not even a chink of space allowing fresh air to ventilate the room, a fact he must remember to report to the DCI.

  ‘Looks like he left in a bit of a hurry,’ Weir murmured, pushing open the bedroom door. It was true. The room bore every trace of a panic-stricken exit, particularly that bottle of DKNY aftershave lying where it had spilled on to the bedroom carpet, its fumes leaching into every corner of the place.

  Cameron rifled through each drawer and cupboard, turning over papers and bills.

  ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No passport or credit cards.’

  ‘Were we expecting to find them?’ Weir asked and Cameron shook his head, sighing. The comment was justified, given that the sliding wardrobe door was open, exposing a gap in the rail with only empty coat hangers. It was obvious that Donnie Douglas had cleared out, and in something of a rush.

  ‘Got to be thorough,’ Cameron growled in rejoinder. ‘Let’s see what else we can find.’

  Weir might have been impatient to get out of the flat but Niall Cameron wanted to linger, taking in what he could of the rented rooms, following his SIO’s advice to read a place for clues as to the personality of its inhabitant. It was a real boy’s flat, he decided eventually. The porn magazines were there, right enough, but they were at the bottom of a pile of comics, lurid things with strip cartoons, the sort of stuff they’d giggled over in primary school, Niall thought.

  ‘Look at this,’ Weir remarked, pointing into the kitchen cupboard. ‘D’you think he suffered from the munchies?’ Weir joked, pointing to packets and packets of breakfast cereals.

  ‘Na. Probably some kind of special high-carb footballer’s diet,’ Cameron replied.

  ‘I don’t think so. Take a butcher’s at that.’

  Cameron followed his gaze. There, at the back of the kitchen table was a row of wee plastic spacemen all lined up in formation.

  The two men exchanged a glance. It was just the sort of thing a young kid would have done. Cameron could just imagine Douglas playing with his Kellogg’s freebies before he set off for training each morning: a lonely boy struggling with the responsibilities of a grown man.

  ‘Where d’you think he is now?’ he heard Weir asking as he wandered out of the room, but it was a question that Niall Cameron could not answer.

  He felt an unexpected rush of sympathy for this young man who had run away. Standing in that kitchen, he thought he could understand what had happened. Donnie Douglas’s safe world had been ripped apart. First his childhood had been thrown into chaos by a violent parent, now some other menace had infiltrated the footballer’s life.

  But who was it that had made the boy feel so threatened? Or was it something he knew that had made him flee?

  Lorimer sank back into the sun lounger with a groan of pleasure. This was definitely the best time of the day. The fierce heat had left the sun and there was a tiny breeze stirring the plants. He watched absently as a peacock butterfly alighted on the purple tip of a buddleia. The cluster of cone-shaped flowers swayed slightly in the evening air, the butterfly clinging on, sucking from one tiny floret before hovering and landing on another. Down beside him in a patch of shadow, Chancer was watching it too. Lorimer put out his hand to stroke the animal, a ploy to keep it from pouncing on the butterfly, and was rewarded with a thrumming purr. He closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of warm fur under his fingers and the draught of cool air kissing his face. For a moment he slipped into a doze, all thoughts of the day forgotten, his body utterly relaxed. Then he opened his eyes and realised the cat was no longer there by his side.

  He was too late. The cat was already heading towards the shrubbery, one peacock butterfly in its mouth. Lorimer watched the animal slip under the trailing leaves and disappear into the shadows.

  Gazing up into the pink-stained sky, Lorimer’s mouth tightened. He’d dropped his guard for just those few seconds. Was that some sort of an omen, perhaps? If he took his eyes off the case is this what might happen? He remembered what Niall Cameron had told him about Donnie Douglas. Butterflies, footballers: hedonistic creatures both, he mused, but so vulnerable to whatever might be stalking them.

  Lying there in the gathering twilight, Lorimer felt a chill creeping over his flesh.

  CHAPTER 19

  Rosie stood in the shower, towelling herself dry. She bent her neck one way then the other. It had been a long day. Sometimes the physical effort of post-mortem surgery left her feeling drained, like she was now. But maybe, too, it was this relentless heat. The mortuary was air-conditioned and the refrigerated room kept things reasonably cool. But it was the nights at home that were worst. Hot, windless nights that failed to breathe a whisper of fresh air through their open windows high above the city. For a moment she leaned against the glass of the shower cabinet, luxuriating in its chilly surface. Closing her eyes, Rosie thought about their honeymoon. She and Solly had opted for a winter wedding with a trip to New Zealand afterwards. It was supposed to be much like Scotland at that time of year, but hotter. Normally she’d have welcomed anticipating a break from the long winter months, but now, with this extraordinary weather, she found herself longing for cold, clear days and the sharp frosts of a February morning.

  Rosie pushed her body away from the glass with a soft groan and wrapped the towel around her, then st
epped out on to the cork mat. She could hear voices from the corridor as some of the technicians made their way to the staffroom. The place was never silent; day or night, there was always some activity as bodies were brought in from all parts of the city. The latest, a stabbing, had been brought in from a bar in the East End, the result of a drunken brawl. The police had the perpetrator in custody: the dead man’s cousin, someone had told her. He’d bawled his eyes out once he’d realised what he’d done, so the story went. It didn’t matter how contrite they were, Rosie and her fellow pathologists still had to perform the surgery just as meticulously.

  Rosie shook the drops of water from her hair. She was dressed now and ready to go home. The hot air would dry her blonde locks by the time she was back in the flat. Giving a sigh of pleasure at the prospect of being home, being with Solly, she gathered up her belongings and headed for the car park beyond the back door of the mortuary.

  The High Court stood right across the road from where she had left her car, its pillars of justice intended to command respect. Often during the daytime Rosie would glance up at the knots of people standing on the steps: some would be smoking, flicking their ash on to the pale stones that had been trodden by those who were guilty of heinous crimes and those who sought justice for their victims, as well as the plethora of advocates whose business it was to determine how far the system served its clients. She’d been in countless times, seen some murderers sent down for custodial sentences and a few others who had slipped out on some legal technicality, thanks to the unstinting efforts of their sharp defence lawyers. Mostly it worked, but there were times Rosie had to bite her lip when she felt justice had not been done and remind herself that it was her job to present evidence that showed possibilities, rarely definitive truths.

  As she pulled away from the mortuary, Rosie turned on the radio just in time to hear the end of the weather report and the latest warning about misuse of water. Shaking her head, she turned the air conditioning up full-blast and concentrated on negotiating her way out of the evening traffic.

  She didn’t see the green lorry until it loomed up so close that she took her hands off the wheel, throwing them up in an involuntary gesture of protection. A sound like an explosion hit her as the side of her car was ripped open. Rosie was flung backwards, her neck jarring against something hard.

  Then all noise, light and feeling disappeared into oblivion.

  Solomon heard the buzzer and smiled. She’d forgotten her key. Again. What a woman, he thought. But the voice from the intercom was not Rosie’s.

  ‘Strathclyde Police. May we come up, Doctor Brightman?’

  Solly murmured words of acquiescence and pressed the button to open the door. It would be something being delivered from CID, no doubt. He waited by the front door warily, watching through the spy hole. Once before he’d been conned by a bogus policeman, but the two uniformed officers, though unknown to him, seemed real enough and he opened the door to let them in.

  ‘Doctor Brightman?’

  Solly nodded, feeling his stomach muscles tensing, suddenly aware of the gravity of their demeanours.

  ‘I’m afraid we have some bad news for you.’

  ‘How bad is it?’ Maggie clutched Lorimer’s sleeve. His arms were holding her tightly as if he couldn’t bear to let her go.

  ‘We don’t know yet. She’s still in intensive care. Solly’s down there now.’

  ‘Will she …?’ Maggie left the words unspoken, the tears spilling over and coursing down her cheeks. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispered. ‘Not Rosie. They had so much to look forward to. Not fair,’ she added, burying her face into her husband’s shirt.

  Lorimer stroked her hair, his expression sombre. The news from the Royal Infirmary was not good. The BMW was a write-off and preliminary reports suggested that the air bag had done some damage to the diminutive pathologist’s upper body. That was as much as the officers on the scene had let him know. And the hospital staff had issued the usual ‘serious but stable’ bulletin. It would take the next twenty-four hours before they could properly assess the damage, and Rosie Fergusson’s chances of recovery.

  Lorimer heard a noise by his side and looked down. The ginger cat had jumped up on the settee beside them and was regarding them, head to one side as if he could sense their anxiety. Lorimer put out his free hand and caressed the animal’s soft fur. The responding purr brought a lump to his throat. He remembered telling Rosie about the stray, recalling her amused delight. She loved cats. She’d even wanted to come over and meet him. Would that ever happen now?

  CHAPTER 20

  There were times, thought Solly, when all the years of studying psychology counted for nothing. Nothing prepared you for this awful numbness.

  He had been sitting by her bedside for what seemed like hours. The sky had grown dark for a while but now the light was returning over the city’s outline of tower blocks and the misty-covered hills beyond. They’d whisked her off to theatre for emergency surgery — exactly what he couldn’t tell, he’d been too shocked to take in all the salient details. Pressure on her chest cavity had been the main issue, though her poor face was bruised in several places.

  Solly bent forward and ran a finger across her hair, glancing at the monitors beyond that recorded the performance of her vital organs. When it came down to it, was that all a person consisted of? A heartbeat that pumped fluids around the circulatory system; lungs that breathed gases in and out; a brain with synapses flicking here and there, signalling what a person thought, wanted, desired? Rosie wasn’t a believer in anything beyond this life. She’d made no bones about it. But Solly, gazing at her now, wanted to think that this woman he loved with a passion was wrong. Just for once. He couldn’t bear the thought that her spirit — that laughing, zany spirit — would suddenly be extinguished like a candle being snuffed. She had to come back to him, he thought. Then, closing his eyes, Solomon Brightman bowed his dark head and began a silent, imploring prayer to the God of his fathers.

  Across the city another head was bent, another mouth was silently intoning words. Words that were directed not at an unseen deity but to those anonymous readers of Kelvin FC’s website. The letters were tapped out slowly by unaccustomed fingers, their image filling that stark white space on the computer screen. It had been easy. There was no need to provide a genuine identity, no way of the message finding its way back to the user of this particular server. Bit by bit the fingers continued their tapping, stopping now and then to see if that was the right word, the salient phrase. At last the hands drew back, then, with the cursor hovering over ‘send’ one finger reached out and the words disappeared into the ether.

  The police presence at Dundee’s football ground was much greater than usual, augmenting Tayside’s usual numbers with some of Strathclyde’s own. Uniformed men and women strained their eyes gazing into a crowd that was hyped up by the recent events at Kelvin FC and the fact that Dundee and Kelvin were rivals for the top spot in this season’s league. Lorimer had driven up with Maggie. It was a good way to distract themselves from Rosie’s condition. He was keen to see the match, observe the players and it would be a day out together, he’d promised her. Now they were here, sitting amidst the sea of black-and-white scarves held aloft as the Keelies sang their alternative version of ‘Lord of the Dance’.

  The detective’s eyes scanned the ground. There were TV cameramen on the opposite stand, their cameras covered in grey tarpaulin, and others situated behind each of the goals next to the sports photographers. Once this fixture was underway, their cameras would be swivelling this way and that, according to the pace of the game.

  ‘Now let’s hear it for Blake Moodie, today’s mascot,’ a voice called from the loudspeaker and a scatter of handclapping broke out as a wee tow-haired lad trotted out, clutching the hand of one of the club officials.

  ‘Now make some noise for your home team, Dundeeee!’ Yells and stamping followed as the home team emerged, followed by a mixture of catcalls and whistles as Kelvin’s pl
ayers ran on to the pitch.

  Maggie gave her husband a quizzical glance but he just grinned back, his spirits lifted by the familiar sounds. This was par for the course, after all, at an away game. He looked down, noting a white metal gate set near the mouth of the tunnel, bearing the club’s familiar insignia of laurel leaves and the date of its inception, 1893. Further along, the advertising hoardings displayed the name of a local blacksmith specialising in wrought ironwork and Lorimer nodded to himself, making the connection. Now the players and match officials were on the pitch, the latter wearing bright turquoise strips to differentiate them from the players’ more sombre colours.

  ‘And you can hear the sound that reverberates down the tunnel and that familiar anthem of theirs sung with passion and expectation,’ the commentator insisted. ‘Now we’re just moments away from kick-off. Looking at today’s team it seems very much that Ron Clark has decided to play a three-three-four formation. Referee is looking at his watch and yes! The ball is way up into Kelvin’s half and Farraday is chasing after it…’

  Lorimer glanced at Maggie. Her cheeks were flushed with the sun and she seemed to be enjoying the atmosphere. It wasn’t often he had the chance to combine work and home, he thought ruefully. They’d go for a decent meal afterwards, maybe even drive over to St Andrews. He watched as the ball sailed off the boot of Farraday, the Dundee striker, and passed within inches of the goal. A huge ‘Ohhh!’ went up, then chants of ‘Easy, easy, easy!’ came from the Dundee fans. Lorimer nodded. Farraday’s shot hadn’t been too far off. Kelvin’s defence would have their work cut out if the striker was on form today.