by Alex Gray
‘Well,’ Maggie said, scanning the invitation, ‘the Crowne Plaza! Very posh. I’ll …’
‘… need something to wear?’ Lorimer mimicked her.
‘Oh, you!’ She lobbed a scatter cushion which he caught expertly. ‘You won’t be working?’ she asked, an edge to her voice.
‘Not if I can help it. All work and no play makes Bill a dull boy.
‘Good. Good.’
Maggie Lorimer nodded to herself, a wide smile on her face as she turned back to the pile of marking. Lorimer picked up the invitation and tucked it behind the clock on the mantelpiece.
‘Solomon Brightman will be there.’
‘Oh, the great Dr Brightman?’ Maggie looked up again. ‘Will I like him, do you think?’
Lorimer shrugged. ‘I’ll be interested to see what you make of him.’
‘Hm.’ She grinned impishly at her husband. ‘I wonder what he makes of Chief Inspector Lorimer?’
Lorimer raised his eyebrows in mock horror but privately his wife’s words struck home. Just what did the psychologist make of him? Had he been less than co-operative, perhaps? Did Solomon Brightman see him as a mere pen-pusher, a manager delegating authority to officers like Wilson who did so much of the legwork? That was what a DCI’s job was all about. The management of murders.
With a touch of impatience Lorimer brushed aside this piece of introspection and turned his attention to the document he had left by his chair. The ongoing detection into a paedophile ring had taken some priority over the St Mungo’s Murders for the Divcom. European feelings were running high over certain of their nastier cases and there were possible links to incidents on his own Division that made interesting reading. He had a meeting with other senior officers from all around the region. Information had been trickling in for a good while now. From what Lorimer could see, there was a fair bet that children were being abused in the backs of cars, rather than in specific locations like homes or the usual seedy rented rooms. It made the case all the more difficult to pin down and meant a pulling together of many of the Divisions.
Lorimer poured himself a whisky, his mind already on the patterns of crime he might find in these documents.
Solomon Brightman poured boiling water into a generous measure of Ribena, his eyes gleaming in anticipation as the steam rose above the earthenware mug. It was one of those damp misty nights when winter refuses to concede to any notion of spring and Solomon felt that the cold had seeped into his bones. Still, it had been a useful evening and he still had the portfolio to examine. As he sipped the hot blackcurrant, he pondered on his next move.
Lorimer’s face came vividly to mind, the deep furrows between those glacier blue eyes, the down-turned mouth showing signs of stress. What had prompted him to become a detective? Solomon wondered. The life was one of constant pressure, he knew. Budgets were notoriously tight but the flow of crime took no account of police resources. The man was driven, though. It wasn’t just a matter of fulfilling his own ambition or even of pleasing his superiors. Lorimer wasn’t that type. He really cared, mused Solomon. The murders of those young girls were like a personal affront. Maybe because he had no family of his own? I care, too, Solomon thought to himself, but I know how to stand back from it. Lorimer becomes involved in these people’s lives. The psychologist took another sip of Ribena, imagining the Chief Inspector on stress management courses. He probably ignored every word the lecturer spoke, engrossed in whatever case he was involved in at the time. Solomon smiled at his suppositions. Lorimer would be an interesting man to profile but he really must concentrate on the matter in hand. Lucy Haining’s personality might well begin to emerge from the contents of her portfolio.
Solomon had been surprised to find that the dead girl’s work was still at the Art School.
‘But I thought that her parents …’
‘Well, they didn’t want any of Lucy’s things,’ the Principal’s secretary had explained, a note of apology in her voice.
‘Didn’t they come up to Glasgow, then?’
‘No.’ She had paused for a moment before continuing. ‘It was her friend who packed everything up for her. So sad. All these boxes and materials. Such a waste.’
‘Which friend?’ Solly had enquired.
‘Oh, Janet Yarwood. She was Lucy’s tutor, of course. She wants to put on some sort of retrospective exhibition. Maybe when the final-year students exhibit in the summer term.’
Solomon recalled the conversation, his mind already turning over Lucy Haining’s possessions. Possessions that her parents didn’t want. Then the secretary had mentioned the portfolio. It was still in the office. Yes, of course he could borrow it. If he just left a contact number?
Solomon drained the last of the sweet blackcurrant and put the mug aside. The large portfolio was resting against the wall as if waiting for him to uncover its secrets. Solomon unzipped the cover and drew out a large stack of drawings, their tissue coverings rustling. Designs for Lucy’s final-year jewellery project were revealed on the first sheets. There was an obvious African influence here, thought Solomon. Some sketches contained pencil notes written in Lucy’s spidery hand giving details of materials she would have used in the final creation of these unusual pieces.
Solomon turned the pages slowly, careful to smooth the tissue back onto the pastel drawings. Here was real talent, he thought, as page after page revealed elaborate designs. Some were on a theme of silver and gold, with rare touches of colour, enamels and lapis. Others used painted wood and inks, their shapes rounded and bulging like parts of human anatomy. Suddenly the designs were replaced by a series of life drawings. Portions of bodies were sketched in some detail. Solomon could see the influence in Lucy’s jewellery now. There seemed to be a preoccupation with buttocks, breasts and shoulders. A few life drawings followed, mainly of young boys. These were good enough to sell to a gallery, thought Solomon. The young artist had had a talent that was not confined to her chosen medium.
He gazed thoughtfully at the boys; sitting, recumbent, slouching against a wall. There were details of heads, some on darker paper, white highlights giving the young eyes a sad and luminous quality. There was even a sketch of an old man, bent with age but still grinning up from the page. Solomon put it down to lift the next sketch from the diminishing pile when something about the old man’s face made him take it up again. A shiver suddenly shot down his spine as he recognised the grinning face. For the image captured in Lucy’s drawing was one he had seen in police custody.
It was Valentine Carruthers.
CHAPTER 21
Lorimer stared at the face that lay on his desk. The image of a burnt corpse kept interfering with Lucy’s drawing. But now he knew so much more about this old man whose name alone had aroused his curiosity.
His team had not been idle following Valentine’s disappearance and their discoveries had multiplied considerably after his death. Other Glasgow derelicts had provided information about old Carruthers’s recent way of life. Pieced together with his police record, newspaper cuttings and a particularly detailed report from a rehabilitation clinic in Leeds, the present file made sad, but interesting reading. Solomon’s discovery had prompted further investigation at Glasgow School of Art, adding several more facts to the sum of knowledge about the old man. Much of his past life had been recounted during therapy sessions in the rehabilitation clinic. Lorimer sent out a mental thank-you to the psychotherapist who had kept her files in such meticulous order.
Valentine Carruthers’s life story had ended in agony and flames but it had started in a world of relative luxury, Lorimer read. The Carruthers family boasted several generations of sons who had made their fortunes at sea. One had even risen to the rank of Commander. Valentine had broken with that tradition, however. His father, apparently a rather taciturn man, had married a young Frenchwoman. According to the psychotherapist, Valentine’s mother had never wearied of telling him how his parents had met. Valerie Bouverat, dark, pretty and petite, had captured the attention of the young
Lieutenant Carruthers one night at a party in the Officers’ Mess.
Lorimer read on, imagining the conversations between the therapist and Carruthers. Confidential discussions, of course, up until now.
His parents’ marriage had not been a great success but nor had it been an unqualified failure. Mrs Carruthers had apparently found her husband’s long stretches at sea hard to bear. With his spells ashore becoming increasingly tedious, the Frenchwoman had lavished her pent-up affection on her little son, who had grown up to be a rather pampered child, shy of the father whom he rarely saw and tongue-tied in the presence of adults.
Mrs Carruthers had fought a long battle to keep her little boy at home when her husband would have packed him off to school at an early age, Carruthers had claimed, and it was not until his mother became ill that the twelve-year-old Valentine was sent away. What followed was a familiar story, according to the therapist. Public school buggery is a well-known fact of life, and there are those adults in society who constantly claim that the sordid practices of their boyhood did them absolutely no harm. Valentine Carruthers was not one to voice such an opinion. Lorimer read the therapist’s handwritten notes, then continued piecing the whole picture together. Young Carruthers had left school and drifted into the civil service, eschewing the family tradition of taking to the high seas. Then his mother’s death had given him the excuse to cut all ties with home and make his own way in the city of London.
Lorimer pictured the old man years before, pouring out his life story to this therapist. How much of it was true, he wondered, and how much the self-pity of a man trying to make sense of his wasted life?
Nothing much seemed to be known about his twenties but Lorimer guessed that his later preference for young male company must have begun at least by then.
His first conviction had come on his thirty-first birthday. He lost his job, spent two years in prison and came back to society to find that his life had changed forever. There had been nothing like the modern provision for rehabilitation of child abusers then and Valentine re-offended regularly, coming to the attention of the police several times in the twenty-five years that followed. He was well into his fifties by the time any attempt was made to turn him away from paedophilia. His crimes were detailed in the Press, his neighbours hounded him from their communities and eventually the man travelled further and further north. Until he reached Glasgow.
Valentine’s descent into dereliction was not so very surprising, Lorimer thought. Rejected by a fearful society, unable to control his desire for the company of small boys, he had slept rough and taken what pleasures he could whenever he had dared. Nonetheless the Chief Inspector’s natural revulsion was tinged with pity.
They had met in a park, according to the statement by Lucy’s tutor. Meeting Lucy must have opened up new horizons for the old man, thought Lorimer. He imagined how she had sketched the tramp impassively, as she might have sketched a robin’s nest or an old mossy log. He would have made an interesting subject, that was all. Then Lucy had offered to pay him to sit in her children’s drawing class. The old man would have accepted this without hesitation.
It must have been hard to sit still surrounded by these earnest young faces, Lorimer thought, his mouth tight with distaste. They had become accustomed to their wizened subject, however, and saw no harm in accepting his polo mints and sherbet lemons. Questions recently asked of the youngsters in Lucy’s drawing class had so far suggested that none of them had been interfered with by the old man. In fact they had felt sorry for him rather than afraid.
Then the murders had begun. Lucy was strangled and Valentine pulled from the bushes in St Mungo’s Park. His disappearance and horrific death had raised all sorts of questions but one thing was certain. The killer must have known them both. And if he had been known to both Lucy and the old man, then who else in the world of the Art School had encountered him?
CHAPTER 22
Martin slid a handful of coins into the Big Issue seller’s mittened hand then strode through the archway to Royal Exchange Square. Canopies over the smart shops and restaurants fluttered in the wind as he made his way round to the front entrance of GOMA. At one time the building had housed the Stirling Library, a reference library which had become a refuge for vagabond students and city derelicts alike. Right outside, the equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington was the butt of playful citizens who regularly crowned His Grace with an orange and white traffic cone. Now the area was pedestrianised and the neo-classical building was Glasgow’s home for the Gallery of Modern Art, its acronym part of the city’s vernacular. The exhibits had attracted much attention, and had polarised opinion at first, but now it was accepted as just one more facet of the city’s complex personality.
Jayne Morganti was waiting for Martin in the top-floor restaurant. She had chosen a table by the window and sat gazing over the city rooftops, one arm flung out across the back of her chair. Martin paused for a moment and grinned at the picture she made. She was striking a similar pose to Adrian Wisniewski’s mural figures whose elongated limbs created graceful arcs above the diners. Deliberate or subliminal? he wondered to himself, taking the stairs two at a time to the upper floor.
‘Darling!’ Jayne mouthed two large kisses in the direction of Martin’s cheeks as he bent his large frame over her. ‘Thank God it’s not busy! I can’t stand it when there’s a crowd of school children squishing these revolting little sachets of sauce over their chips!’
‘Ha! So much for taking art into the classroom, then.’
‘Oh, they’re welcome to come in and look around, darling, I just wish this place could be a bit more civilised at times.’
Martin glanced around at the brightly coloured walls and ceiling and thought there was something rather abandoned about the sprawl of figures whose youthful faces were turned aside as if hearing something in another distant landscape.
‘Maybe they should put up a sign: GROWN UPS ONLY.’
‘If only.’
As Jayne raised her eyes to heaven, a tall mini-skirted waitress appeared and took their orders for drinks. Martin settled his long legs under the table.
‘Well now,’ began Jayne briskly, ‘to what do I owe this lovely lunch invitation? I take it you want to pick my brains about something, mm?’ As she tilted her head to one side, her long silver earrings caught a sudden shaft of sunlight.
‘They’re nice.’ Martin’s finger circled his ear meaningfully.
‘Oh, them.’ A red fingernail caressed the silver. ‘My assegais.’
‘Your what?’
‘Assegais. You know. Tribal spears. That’s what they’re based on anyhow. Actually,’ she broke off to look Martin straight in the eye, ‘I wore them especially for you.’
‘Oh! Not trying to make a conquest of me, by any chance?’
‘Behave yourself. I’m not into toyboys any more, and anyway, you’re far too tall to suit me. No. I wore them because they were one of Lucy’s designs.’
Martin’s jaw dropped.
‘Lucy Haining? But how did you know …?’
‘… that you wanted to talk to me about her? Oh, a little bird told me. You know what newspaper grapevines are.’
Her dark eyes sparkled mischievously and Martin found himself impressed as always by the older woman’s vibrant sexuality. Maybe it was her Italian blood that gave Jayne Morganti such raw energy.
‘I’m right, then?’ she chuckled throatily but before Martin could reply the waitress returned with their drinks and took their lunch order.
‘Cheers! To your sleuthing.’ Jayne laughed merrily as their glasses clinked.
‘To my sleuthing. But how did you know, you horrible woman?’
‘Your little friend, Diane. She’s quite smitten, poor child.’
‘Oh.’
For a moment Martin wondered just how much the two women had discussed.
‘It’s all right. All your secrets are safe with me, darling.’
Jayne’s husky contralto voice was deliberately
teasing. She took a sip of wine then flicked the earring once again.
‘About Lucy,’ Martin began, ‘just what do you know about her?’
‘Well, you know I presented the award last year and so, yes, I met Lucy at the Art School. What can I tell you? She was interesting. One of those very pale creatures with dyed red hair and lots of dark eye-make-up. Very Gothic without being spiky. I tell you what did come across. She was terribly ambitious. Knew exactly what she wanted to do and wouldn’t let anyone stop her.’
‘Someone did,’ Martin remarked quietly.
‘Yes.’ The light went out in Jayne’s eyes and suddenly Martin was aware of the wrinkled hands clasping her glass and the crepe-like skin on her throat not completely hidden by the devoré scarf. ‘Tell me, Martin, why do you want to know so much about Lucy? I mean, apart from more copy for these wretched murders.’
Martin hesitated.
‘I guess I fancy myself as Clark Kent.’ He spoke lightly, trying to recapture his bantering tone, then added in a drawl, ‘Which makes you my Lois Lane, of course.’
‘Oh, no. That won’t do at all. Diane would be most put out to hear you say that!’
‘Well, let’s just say I need to know as much about Lucy as you can tell me.’
Jayne looked away from him, staring over the city skyline as she spoke.
‘I remember thinking what extraordinary talent she had. Jewellery design is painstaking. The ideas can be large – immense, like landscapes – but the execution demands such attention to detail. Her whole approach was like that. She could see an overall picture then work laboriously on the details. I admired her. She’d a hard time of it, like a lot of art students. Materials are so damned expensive. I’m sure some of these kids would sell their bodies for their art. Lucy made extra money taking these children’s life-drawing classes. She was on a full grant. No parental contribution. In all senses. There was no backing from home at all. I gather mummy and daddy disapproved.’
