by Alex Gray
Asa had grown up so fast in the last three days, no longer a girl untouched by the world but brushed by experiences that were making her into a woman. Now she knew what happiness was. She had thought about this for hours, ever since she had been bundled roughly into the truck and taken to the airport.
Happiness was something you did not know you possessed until it was stolen from you. The simple joy of walking freely under the African sun, the certainty of every day arriving with its pattern of fetching water, cooking the mealie meal for breakfast, shaking her sleeping mat, then sweeping out the dust from her home: these had all been little acts of happiness.
The noise from the lorry’s engine grew quieter as it sometimes did, but then the vibration stopped altogether and Asa heard the sound of the cab door being slammed up ahead. Had they arrived? Was this the promised destination? A flicker of hope entered her thoughts as the girl lay against the straps that confined her.
There had been barely enough space for her to squeeze between the hulking boxes piled up to the roof and the wooden ribs that fretted the metal side of the lorry. She had protested when the driver had pushed her to the floor, struggled to rise when he had buckled her arms to the rattling chains. At first she had yelled and screamed, kicking out at the hard boxes. But nobody would hear her over the engine’s roar, she realised at last, and her toes had become sore and bruised.
Then the door swung open to reveal a cavernous place full of light so dazzling that Asa screwed up her eyes. When she opened them again she could see hands reaching out for her, hear the chains as they fell from her arms, feel the pain in her legs as she tried to stand.
‘Grab a hold of her,’ someone said, and Asa felt her body being lifted out of the narrow space. Then she was being carried, the rough cloth of a man’s jacket against her cold cheek.
‘Get her into the back,’ a voice commanded.
Asa did not protest as she was bundled into a car and strapped into her seat belt, one man on either side of her.
She glanced at them by turn, wide-eyed, but neither man was looking at her face, just straight ahead as if she wasn’t there at all.
CHAPTER NINE
‘A sudden heart attack,’ Dr Calder said at last, rising to his feet. ‘Probably felt unwell and went early to bed. Looks like he died in his sleep, poor soul.’ He stepped back, still looking closely at the man he had been summoned here to examine.
Lorimer nodded, following the doctor’s gaze. Charles Gilmartin’s eyes had been shut when the detective superintendent had first seen his body. He still looked quite peaceful, lying on the bed as though he had simply sighed one last time, drifting for an instant to the place between life and death.
‘It’s the way to go,’ the doctor said brusquely. ‘What I’d want. What everyone wants, eh?’
‘I suppose so,’ Lorimer agreed, though dying suddenly in his fifties like Gilmartin seemed a bleak prospect. And it would be of little comfort to Vivien to be told that her husband’s death was, in the scheme of things, a good death.
‘Any history of heart problems, d’you know?’
‘She said there wasn’t any,’ Lorimer replied, his mouth tightening.
‘Need to report it to the Fiscal, then,’ Calder said, reaching into his case for an envelope containing an A4 form, something to be filled in as the necessary procedure began.
Lorimer nodded again. It had been as he’d suspected, a sudden death that might well require a post-mortem examination; somehow he would have to bring up that distinct possibility with the grieving woman across the passage.
Vivien was in the lounge of the small apartment, a uniformed female officer sitting beside her. A tray with mugs of tepid tea lay on a small oval table, abandoned by both women.
Vivien sat hunched over, arms clasped around her stomach as though she were in pain. And perhaps she was, thought Lorimer. Hadn’t his psychologist friend, Solly Brightman, told him about the real physical pain that the bereaved could experience? A heartache that was more than a figure of speech. The detective stood by the doorway, wondering what he could say to make things better. He’d attended countless scenes of crime that had been far worse than this, an ordinary situation of an older man dying quietly in his sleep.
Yet seeing her bent head, its flame hair tousled where Vivien had raked it with those thin fingers, something shifted inside him that was more than pity. If it had been Maggie… a little voice whispered. And at that moment he had an inkling of just how Vivien Gilmartin must be feeling.
‘Vivien?’
She glanced up at him and for an instant it was like looking at a stranger, this woman whose green eyes were dulled, smudges of mascara making her look far more than her forty-one years.
‘Is there anyone you can call? A girlfriend, perhaps?’
Lorimer heard himself asking the question, hating himself for wanting to be away from here, wishing that he were back in bed, Maggie’s warm body against his own.
She shook her head, staring at him blankly.
‘Surely… someone from last night…?’
There had been so many people, lots of women that he’d seen her talking to, smiling with… wasn’t one of them a special friend? he thought helplessly.
‘Mrs Gilmartin hasn’t any family here, sir,’ the female officer said, her face a mask of careful reproach.
‘Your sister…?’
‘She’s in Canada,’ the police officer answered for Vivien.
‘Is there anywhere else you want to go to?’ Lorimer tried again. ‘A friend’s place, maybe?’
Vivien shook her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she sniffed in a small voice. ‘When will they take him away?’ she asked, turning to the woman sitting beside her and catching hold of her hand.
‘The doctor’s called for an ambulance,’ the officer said soothingly. ‘They won’t be long now.’
‘There might have to be a post-mortem,’ Lorimer said quietly, hunkering down beside her.
She nodded dumbly, her green eyes staring past him, making Lorimer wonder if she was taking in anything he was saying. He had seen the effect that shock produced often enough to make him realise that Vivien was maybe not hearing a thing that was being said to her. Instead she might well be replaying over and over the moment when she had found her husband’s body, other people’s words a mere blur of noise outside her head.
The female officer rose then, letting go of Vivien’s hand, and left the room. He took her place, taking Vivien’s hand in his, letting her body sag against him.
Outside he could hear the officer talking to the doctor. Then there was a knock on the door to the apartment and Vivien’s body stiffened against his, her hand clasping his arm as if in sudden panic.
‘It’s all right, the paramedics will deal with things,’ Lorimer soothed her blandly. He started as she looked wildly towards the lounge door. ‘Do you want to go and see him before…?’
The woman beside him shook her head fiercely, the edges of her hair caught like gold in the lamplight. She was biting her lower lip, controlling any sobs, though Lorimer guessed that a storm of weeping was not far away. The sounds of men’s voices and heavy footsteps could be heard, then the door trembled as a draught of air entered the room. As the outer door closed at last, Lorimer felt rather than heard the long shuddering sigh from the woman by his side.
In the corridor the female officer was still talking to the doctor.
‘… not nice to come back to,’ she was saying. ‘I could strip it and shove the lot in the kitchen. There’s a washer dryer,’ she was telling him.
Lorimer listened, realising that this officer wanted to be kind in a practical way.
‘Not a problem,’ the doctor was saying. ‘Nothing I need there. Probably better for Mrs Gilmartin not to see the room like that again.’ There were noises from the bedroom and then the officer was whisking through the lounge and he could hear the slam of the machine’s door and its swish as the wash cycle began. Lorimer put his arm around Viven’s shoulders. H
e understood what the police officer was thinking: it would be less horrid for Mrs Gilmartin to return to the flat to see a bare mattress, blank and impersonal, rather than the place where her husband had died. He watched through the open doorway as the woman gathered up Charles Gilmartin’s clothes too, putting them carefully into the fitted wardrobe as neatly as she could.
‘I can’t sleep through there…’ Vivien broke off in a sob, gripping his hand as though she would never let him go, her eyes looking past him to the doorway and beyond.
Lorimer thought about the home he had left, the darkened corridor upstairs with its spare room where once he had given sanctuary to an injured, homeless boy. But Maggie had been far away then, overseas on that exchange project. How could he land Vivien on her in the middle of the night?
‘Isn’t there anyone…?’ he tried again.
‘Only you,’ Vivien said, smiling sadly. ‘There was only ever you,’ she whispered.
Lorimer hadn’t blamed her for not wanting to see her husband’s body taken away. Vivien appeared to be traumatised by the man’s sudden death and now, sitting stiffly in the passenger seat of the Lexus as he drove through the city streets, she was silent, staring ahead, gloved hands clasped tightly together around the handle of an overnight bag she’d insisted on packing herself.
He’d called Maggie earlier, apologising for rousing her from sleep, telling her as briefly as he could what had happened to tear him from her side. She had been quiet, too, listening as he’d explained the situation, but poor woman and that’s terrible, of course she must come had fallen from her lips as he had expected. Her natural sympathy and generosity was rushing out to this stranger coming to invade their home; no word of recrimination or anything about your old girlfriend mentioned at all. So why, Lorimer thought as the car sped along Pollokshaws Road on its way to the suburbs, did he feel so uneasy about the thought of Vivien Gilmartin spending time under his roof?
CHAPTER TEN
Maggie looked at the kitchen clock. It was twenty minutes to five, no longer so dark outside, a pale drift of coral on the eastern horizon heralding the new morning. She smiled as Chancer awoke in his basket, stretching from slumber. He looked up at her and gave a tentative miaow, as though questioning Maggie’s presence at this early hour. Soon he was wrapping himself around her legs and she bent down to tickle him behind his ears.
‘Suppose you think this is breakfast time, eh?’ The ginger cat reared up against the hem of her fleecy dressing gown in reply, evidently looking for more scratches on his furry head, and Maggie complied, hunkering down, letting the cat leap on to her waiting lap.
‘Don’t know what you’ll make of her, Chancer,’ Maggie murmured, caressing the cat, whose purrs had began to thrum though her body as she stroked his fur. ‘Don’t know what I’ll make of her either, poor thing.’ She sighed, leaning back against one of the kitchen chairs. It was almost an hour since he’d called and in that time she had made up the bed, putting fresh towels and a new box of tissues in the spare room, wondering just what else might be required for this unexpected house guest: Bill’s old girlfriend. A newly bereaved widow, she reminded herself. She was a woman her own age with not a soul here in Glasgow to call family or friend. But she’d called Bill, a little voice insisted. And that same little voice had asked why more than once since that telephone call.
‘It’s because he’s a policeman,’ Maggie said aloud, trying to convince herself that this was true. But why had she not turned to another woman, a friend from her past? Vivien Gilmartin had arranged this entire school reunion thing, hadn’t she? Surely the sort of person who did these things kept in touch with their pals over the years? Maggie frowned. There were only two or three women from her own school days that she would call good friends, and even then, their contact was more Facebook than face to face. It was something she regretted, though the demands of her teaching job seemed to take all of Maggie Lorimer’s time and energy these days.
She heaved a sigh, the sudden movement making Chancer leap off her knee with a small cry.
‘Better stick the kettle on,’ Maggie murmured, getting to her feet. Tea, the balm for every difficulty, she thought. Why was it that in times of crisis people always made endless pots of tea? She filled the kettle at the sink, glancing out at the sky. The streaks of pink were suddenly brighter, dazzling her eyes, and she blinked, wondering if the fiery sky presaged rains to come. This was April, after all, a month when all sorts of weather could be flung at the poor Scots in the space of a single day.
The cruellest month, Maggie reminded herself, biting her lip. Would Vivien Gilmartin think of April like that for the rest of her life? Would she ever again feel that surge of joy from seeing the spring flowers and the blossom shaken from the cherry trees? Or would they become cruel tokens for the anniversary of her husband’s death?
Maggie pulled her dressing gown tighter around her slim body, shivering at the thought. It was cold, she realised. Better switch on the central heating, warm the place up before they arrived. Vivien was in a state of shock, Bill had said, didn’t seem to have taken in the enormity of what had happened. Soon the faint hum from the radiators had begun and Maggie was filling a hot-water bottle from the kettle. Tea could wait till they returned, and perhaps Vivien would want to go straight to bed anyway. Maggie hoped she would, saying a silent prayer that she and Bill could snuggle up together, catch up on their broken sleep for a few more hours. Thank goodness it was Saturday and there were no pressing cases to take her husband into the city today.
She took the hot-water bottle upstairs, looking out of the landing window at the street below, watching for the big silver car rounding the corner, but there was little life at this early hour, just a single blackbird flying silently over the garden. The bright dawn was already fading into a dusky lemon, the only trail of pink a jet scoring its way across the heavens. It was, Maggie fancied, as though the day was holding its breath, waiting for something momentous to happen.
Giving herself a shake, she opened the door to the spare room and pulled back the coverlet, sliding the hot-water bottle under the duvet.
‘Poor woman,’ she whispered aloud as she gazed at the bed. ‘Poor, poor soul.’
When the car finally came to a halt, the man beside her unclipped her seat belt and took her arm, roughly pulling her out into the cold morning air. Asa looked around her, blinking.
Everything was grey.
Tall stone buildings flanked the drab grey streets, their rooftops as dark as the thunderclouds that soared over the veldt. There were rows and rows of doors at street level, many windows up above, staring out like blind eyes. The girl shivered, looking past them to the sky, where only a few stars pricked the icy blue heavens. A strange bleeping noise made her jump and she turned to see the car flashing twice, the driver pointing his keys towards it.
‘Get a move on,’ the man who held her arm grumbled, pushing Asa towards the pavement. ‘In here,’ he added as one of the other men opened a black-painted door set back into the stone building, and suddenly Asa was being marched into a narrow passage with white-glazed walls like a public toilet, and up several flights of stone stairs, their edges worn and broken.
Then another door opened and Asa could hear a woman’s voice from somewhere inside as she was bundled along a corridor and into a square room with a bed and a dresser.
‘Stay here and keep quiet. Okay?’ the man commanded, staring at her. ‘Understand? Comprende?’ He frowned, lips twisting as he continued to stare at her. ‘Shhh,’ he whispered, putting a finger to his lips.
Asa nodded to show that she had understood his gesture if not the strange words he spoke. Then the door was closed and the girl listened to the unmistakable sound of a key being turned in the lock. She sat on the edge of the bed, her large dark eyes wide with fear. What was going to happen to her now? She took a deep breath, then wrinkled her nostrils. There was a bad smell in this room, a smell that Asa could not identify, both sour and pungent. It made her think of dead
things.
She listened, straining to hear anything that might give a clue as to what was going on elsewhere in this house. Standing close to the locked door, the girl could make out the sound of human voices, but although it was impossible to know what they were saying, she felt a flicker of hope as a woman’s voice was raised in laughter, the men joining in. Where there was laughter there was some sort of joy, and perhaps that would include a lonely girl from Nigeria shivering in her borrowed coat.
As she heard footsteps approach, Asa stumbled backwards to the edge of the bed and clutched the coat around her body, eyes fixed on the door.
‘There you are.’ A stout dark-skinned woman wearing a red flowered dress opened the door, her hands clutching a tray of food. ‘Here, sit yourself down and eat.’ She placed the tray at the foot of the bed, eyes watching the girl as she backed away.
‘I won’t hurt you, little one,’ the woman said softly, stepping closer and brushing a hand over her hair. Asa looked into her brown eyes, recognising that age-old expression, the kindness of mothers. Then she was being hugged against the woman’s ample bosom, swaying back and forth as the woman shushed her.
Asa began to weep, all her unnamed sorrows flooding out, her mind too full of tangled emotions to know just what she ought to feel.
‘Would you like some breakfast?’ Maggie asked hopefully. The woman sat rigidly in the rocking chair that had been Maggie’s mother’s, several embroidered cushions at her back.
Vivien Gilmartin looked up, giving a brittle smile. ‘No thank you. I… I couldn’t eat anything…’ She broke off, putting her hands over her face for a moment. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered, looking down at her lap. ‘It’s just…’
