The Swedish Girl

by Alex Gray

  ‘Look at the darned files,’ she breathed aloud, turning her attention to the folders once more. As her eyes ran over the perfectly ordered pages, Kirsty sighed. She could just picture Eva sitting in her classes, earnestly taking down notes, concentrating on the lecturer’s every word.

  She had almost finished searching through that folder when she stopped and smiled. Gotcha! There it was, a wee bit of writing standing out from the black and white page. Kirsty could see it right at the foot of one of the printed sets of notes where Eva must have added something of her own. The lecturer’s name and email address were there for all his students to see but now there was more: a telephone number written in pale blue ink. And beside it, a hasty scribble that was different from Eva’s own writing. Kirsty took a deep breath as she noted a date and time.

  She blinked and read it again then sat back on her heels, mind in a spin. If Eva Magnusson had not been killed on the night of that party then she would have been meeting someone at eight o’clock the very next evening.

  Dirk McGregor had not intended to follow his father’s footsteps into the world of academia. No, his path was to have taken quite a different turn, though by the early years of the new millennium, Dirk had to admit that gaining a degree in business studies and the lectureship that followed was a huge relief. A sudden lunge across a wet football pitch by a defender on the opposing team had put him out of the beautiful game for good, cutting short a career that one or two pundits grudgingly agreed might have taken him to international stardom. Or perhaps not. Dirk had been a reasonably skilful footballer, usually making the first team in a club that hovered somewhere in the middle of Scottish First Division football. Sometimes, when he had been a little too long in the staff club of a Friday night, Dirk was wont to become somewhat maudlin, lamenting the freak accident that had destroyed his career, a career that would surely have blossomed given half a chance.

  Now he was ensconced in his shoebox of a study, glancing up at the clock: ten more minutes of peace and quiet until the next lot of students turned up for their seminar. His desk was covered in a pile of essays to return, a dirty coffee mug and an open laptop. To one side was a digital photoframe, its screen blank for the moment. Sometimes Dirk liked to watch the slide show, glimpses of his life like visual sound bites: Fran and the girls in the garden, his father and mother – before the Alzheimer’s took hold of the poor old girl – and several of himself in a black and white strip, action photos salvaged from his glory days.

  The sound of his mobile ringing made Dirk frown in annoyance: Fran knew fine she shouldn’t call him at work; what the hell did the stupid cow want now?

  Thrusting his fingers into the right-hand pocket of the cord jacket slung behind his chair, Dirk pulled out the phone and snapped it open.

  ‘Yes?’ His tone, even to him, sounded irritable. But the small silence that followed, then the unfamiliar voice asking that terrible question, made the lecturer suddenly ashamed.

  ‘Who is this?’ he demanded.

  Dirk listened to the continuing silence then the question was repeated.

  ‘Yes, this is Mr McGregor. What are you doing calling this number?’

  His hand shook as he waited for an answer, but again, the woman simply reiterated her first question. ‘Are you Dirk McGregor, the man who was seeing Eva Magnusson?’

  Dirk let the silence continue for a moment then, as the door to his study opened to admit his first student, he closed the phone and switched it off, dropping it back into the pocket as though it were a burning coal.

  Kirsty sat on the floor of her room, trembling. She’d had all night to think about this, after all. It wasn’t as though she’d called him on the spur of the moment. What the heck had she done? The man had sounded really, really alarmed. Frightened, even. Well, maybe he had good reason to be frightened if he had been seeing a girl who was one of his students, a girl who had ended up dead in her own flat.

  Kirsty blew out her breath in a huge sigh. She really ought to report this to somebody. DI Grant? She made a face. No. That one had Colin tried and convicted already, hadn’t she? Her dad? Kirsty thought about it for just a heartbeat then shook her head. Not Dad either. Lorimer? He hadn’t seemed to mind her turning up before, had he? Even suggested that she poke around a little. Well, she had, and now there was something to report, wasn’t there? Kirsty leaned forward and pulled her handbag off the edge of the bed. She’d put it somewhere, inside her uni diary, most probably. Aye, here it was; a card with another number that she ought to have listed in her phone.

  The girl sat back against the radiator, trying to decide. Was it too soon to bother him? Or would he welcome the call? It was Detective Superintendent Lorimer now, she remembered. He had been promoted a while ago but had been away in Pitt Street before coming back into her dad’s divisional HQ. He’s a very busy man, Alistair Wilson had warned her when he had called to talk last night.

  What were her options? To go over to Strathclyde and seek out this man, Dirk what’s-his-face? Or to ask for Lorimer’s advice?

  Eva had never said a word about meeting this man, McGregor. Well, maybe it was all completely innocent. But a Saturday night at eight o’clock? Hm, Kirsty huffed aloud. No way. She’d been up to something, hadn’t she? Arranging to meet one of her lecturers – a married man, perhaps? – the day after a party where she had been having it off with poor wee Colin.

  Kirsty Wilson blinked hard as though trying to clear the fog that was misting up her brain. There was a lot she had not known about Eva Magnusson. And for the first time, she began to wonder just what other secrets the Swedish girl had kept from her friends.

  ‘Hello, Lorimer speaking. Oh, Kirsty, it’s you. How are you?’

  The tall man leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him.

  ‘No, it’s fine. I’m on my own right at this moment but I will be going to a meeting in about quarter of an hour. What can I do for you?’

  Lorimer listened, not interrupting once as Kirsty recounted what she had found in Eva’s notes and how she had acted upon that, calling up the business studies lecturer.

  ‘He hung up on you?’ Lorimer nodded, wondering, as the girl continued.

  ‘What if…?’ Kirsty began but then broke off, not really knowing what she wanted to say.

  ‘What if this man had been having an affair with Eva? Is that what you’ve been thinking?’

  ‘Yes. Look, I know this sounds horrible, but Colin just wasn’t Eva’s type. She was a sophisticated girl, you know? She’d travelled, mixed with all sorts of important people – famous, some of them. It just didn’t make sense for her to have a relationship with an ordinary bloke like him.’

  Lorimer sighed before he spoke. ‘I have a colleague who would say that this simply endorses the suspicion that Colin Young killed your friend,’ he said at last. ‘If he wasn’t Eva’s type then perhaps he had been rebuffed by her before raping and strangling her.’

  There was a silence between them and Lorimer suddenly felt an immense pity for the girl. She was doing her best and he had given her a little encouragement, after all.

  ‘Was it rape?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Ah, now that is a good question,’ Lorimer said, wondering just how he could begin to answer this without compromising the case in any way.

  ‘There was no sign of rape, was there?’ Kirsty insisted.

  ‘No,’ Lorimer admitted. ‘But that doesn’t mean it was consensual either. Eva may have been forced into something she didn’t really want but had decided not to resist.’

  ‘Well, what about this man, this Dirk McGregor? Shouldn’t we be doing something about him?’

  Lorimer smiled to himself. The girl was so eager to clear Young’s name that she obviously felt that she had entered into some sort of liaison with the senior police officer. Perhaps she had. And it would do no harm if he made a discreet call to see the lecturer. Just to chat about Eva?

  ‘Kirsty,’ he said, making up his mind even as he
spoke, ‘leave it with me. It might be nothing at all, something completely innocent. Okay?’

  ‘Okay, Mr Lorimer,’ she mumbled, clearly disappointed that she was not being asked to join him in an investigation.

  ‘Oh, and Kirsty…’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘Keep looking in Eva’s room.’

  ‘What am I supposed to be looking for?’

  ‘Who knows? But you’ll know when you find it.’

  CHAPTER 19

  ‘

  S

  ir?’

  Jo Grant stood uncertainly in the doorway of Lorimer’s room, her lips parted as though she had wanted to say more.

  ‘Sit down, Jo.’ Lorimer gestured to the chair opposite his own.

  ‘Sir,’ she replied dully, folding her arms over her chest in a gesture that the detective superintendent recognised as protective.

  She’s assuming that I am about to reprimand her for something, he thought guiltily.

  ‘Jo,’ he began again, ‘I have something to tell you that you aren’t going to like.’

  ‘You’re taking me off the case?’

  The detective inspector dropped her arms and looked at him in astonishment.

  Lorimer shook his head. ‘No, no, nothing like that,’ he assured her. ‘Actually, I have a huge apology to make to you, Jo,’ he said slowly.

  The woman frowned and tilted her head, clearly puzzled.

  ‘It’s about Colin Young.’

  ‘What about him?’ Her face cleared and there was a trace of a smile as she asked, ‘Don’t tell me he’s confessed? Oh, boy, no flaming court case, after all—’

  ‘No, he hasn’t,’ Lorimer broke in. ‘It’s nothing like that at all. In fact,’ he said, ‘he might even be released if things develop the way I think they could.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Lorimer heaved a long sigh then bit by bit recounted the whole story of Kirsty Wilson coming to see him and the strength of her conviction about the man who was in Barlinnie.

  ‘I knew this would come as a blow,’ he went on. ‘You imagine you’ve got the right man then fresh evidence appears to make you wonder.’

  ‘But why didn’t anyone tell me right from the start?’ Jo blurted out, her face tight with suppressed anger.

  ‘When Kirsty Wilson came to me I couldn’t be sure she was doing more than wanting to express her feelings. And I didn’t want to offend you.’

  ‘And you’re telling me now that you think I messed up?’ The woman had turned white with fury and Lorimer held up a placating hand.

  ‘I’m not saying that at all. Maybe I should have told you as soon as the girl came to see me but, if I had, would you honestly have been prepared to reconsider your initial stance?’

  Jo did not reply, pursing her lips in a discontented moue instead.

  ‘So, what now?’ she said gruffly.

  ‘I want your cooperation on this,’ Lorimer told her gently. ‘The last thing I want is for us to fall out as colleagues. But’ – he raised an admonitory finger – ‘I don’t think you want to see an innocent man go down for something he didn’t do any more than I do.’

  ‘And the grounds for reopening this case…?’ The arms were folded again as she looked him in the eye.

  ‘It’s entirely up to the Fiscal, of course,’ Lorimer told her. ‘But let’s just say that, thanks to Kirsty Wilson, we are beginning to find out a bit more about Eva Magnusson and the people around her.’

  ‘But you still haven’t persuaded me that Colin Young couldn’t have killed her,’ she protested. ‘This lecturer guy, she might just have been going to see him about her studies.’

  ‘On a Saturday night?’ Lorimer’s twisted smile was sceptical.

  ‘I still think it was Young,’ Jo insisted.

  ‘But why?’ Lorimer leaned forward, staring right at his DI. ‘Can you honestly say what motivated an otherwise mild-mannered young man to commit such an act?’

  Jo still had her arms folded across her chest and was staring straight at him, her mouth closed tight.

  ‘Okay.’ Lorimer raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘I can see you’re not happy and you think I’m taking up precious time right now, but I really felt I had to tell you what we’ve been doing.’

  ‘And Alistair Wilson doesn’t know a thing about it?’

  Lorimer smiled thinly. ‘You had to be told first. I think he’ll have Kirsty’s guts for garters when I tell him. You know we have to wait for approval from the Fiscal and then if anything else comes up that provides a new lead in the Magnusson case we will keep him informed.’

  ‘And meantime you want me to do what, exactly?’

  Lorimer stared back at her, wondering if she would have the grace to add ‘sir’.

  ‘Your job,’ he said stiffly.

  Jo Grant clenched and unclenched her fists as she marched back to her own desk. It was beyond belief! Why the hell would a detective superintendent risk so much just on the off chance that the wrong man had been arrested for murder? What kind of evidence did he think he had? She had been with Young, watched him break down, hadn’t she? Besides, his DNA profile was right there for anyone to see, so why go off on a tangent with something as unreliable as a tenuous date in the victim’s social diary?

  Okay, so maybe she had got the wrong man, she fumed to herself. It had happened before and the norm was for police to close ranks, protect their own, wasn’t it? What a court and a jury of fifteen men and women did thereafter was up to them.

  She sat down at her desk with a thump, staring angrily at the computer screen. Then a small voice of doubt crept into Jo Grant’s thoughts. What if she had been wrong? What if Colin Young was innocent after all? It meant two things, didn’t it? First, a guiltless student was being held in Barlinnie prison, undergoing who knew what sort of deprivations, and second – a thought that sent chills shivering up her spine – Eva Magnusson’s killer was still out there.

  Lorimer held up a list of the names of those interviewed in the aftermath of Eva Magnusson’s murder. He was grateful for Jo’s cooperation, however grudgingly she had given it, and now he was looking once again at the entire procedure of the case. If Jo had got it all wrong there was a chance that the powers on high might well put in a review team to examine the case, officers from a different division crawling all over their own patch who might make Jo Grant feel small and inadequate. Whereas, he reasoned, this way he could repair some of the damage without her losing too much face.

  The names and addresses of neighbours were near the top of the list and Lorimer frowned as he read them. Kirsty had mentioned the neighbour across the landing, a deaf, grumpy old man, she’d told him. Why hadn’t his name been there? Surely, he thought, Mr McCubbin would have been questioned by the police.

  He dialled his DI’s extension and waited until she picked up.

  ‘Jo? Lorimer here. Just a wee question. Derek McCubbin, the next-door neighbour. No sign of a statement from him. Wondered why.’

  ‘He was away that night,’ Jo replied sharply. ‘At his daughter’s in Castlemilk. He’s selling up anyhow,’ she added.

  ‘Okay. Thanks.’

  An old deaf man would probably not have heard anything anyway, Lorimer reasoned, even if he had been in his flat that particular night. And who could blame a protective daughter for wanting her father to leave the place after what had happened?

  Still, perhaps he would pay the old man a visit some time, just to see what he could glean about the comings and goings at 24 Merryfield Avenue in the days before someone took the life of his lovely young neighbour.

  CHAPTER 20

  F

  or a December day that was creeping towards the winter solstice, the morning appeared with a freshness that made Professor Solomon Brightman smile. The first faint flush of rose spread across the horizon, the sky above palest lemon, a brightness that dazzled his eyes even as the sun struggled to pierce the early mists. Life, he thought to himself, was very good indeed: his life, at any rate, with so many b
lessings for which to give thanks. There was Rosie, of course, and baby Abigail; not quite such a baby now, her first birthday behind her and developing at such amazing speed that Solly was almost afraid to leave the house each morning lest he miss something vital. Abby had taken her first steps two months earlier and had begun to utter discernible words even before that. Both he and Rosie were looking forward to the Christmas holidays and seeing their little girl’s face on Christmas morning.

  Abigail Margaret Brightman was a determined little lady, not at all bashful at asserting herself if there was something she wanted. Like the shiny red bauble that he had placed just out of her reach. Solly smiled, remembering the previous night when Abby had systematically stripped the tree of the painted wooden baubles, gathering them all to her tiny chest like so much treasure. His heart ached to give her everything she wanted but his wiser self knew that his little daughter had to learn what was safe to touch and what might harm her, like a glass sphere that could shatter into deadly shards or an electric socket that was left without its safety plug.

  They were both still asleep; Abigail back in her cot and Rosie in the warmth of the big sleigh bed that he had slipped from only minutes before. The temptation to crawl back in beside her was strong: there had been yet another night of broken sleep, Abby leaving both her parents feeling shattered. But it was Saturday morning, there were no classes demanding his presence and Rosie was not on call, thankfully, this particular weekend. Morag, the wonderful nanny who had been an answer to all their prayers, would not be in until Monday morning so he had two whole days to spend indulging his little family.

  Standing back from the window in his study, Solly’s gaze was drawn to his laptop. There would be emails to deal with, but somehow he could not bring himself to spoil this moment of quietness, the stillness within the flat as yet unbroken by a child’s demanding cry. Yet, as if the very thought itself had broken a spell, the psychologist found himself seated at his desk, tapping in his password. There were eighteen emails in his inbox, several of which he recognised as coming from his colleagues and postgraduate students. He deleted the junk mail as he scrolled down, eyeing the list with increasing indifference. Then his hand paused, hovering over the cordless mouse as he read the familiar name. Lorimer.