by Alex Gray
‘Ah, lovely. Here we are.’ Solomon Brightman emerged from the kitchen bearing a tray of small bowls. Maggie looked up at him appraisingly. Anyone meeting the psychologist for the first time might be excused for taking him for a foreigner, so exotic was his appearance. That dark, luxuriant beard and those twinkling ebony-brown eyes fringed with impossibly long lashes seemed to belong to a person from some distant land. Or from another time, Maggie mused to herself; Scheherazade might have told a story concerning a sage who looked just like Solly.
‘You’re all right, Maggie?’ he asked, turning as if he had felt her gaze on him.
‘Never better, Solly,’ she assured him, raising her glass in his direction. For a long moment Solly simply smiled at her as if he could somehow see into her mind and read her thoughts. It was a disquieting habit of his and Maggie often wondered just what the psychologist made of her, an ordinary schoolteacher who had hitched her star to the legendary DCI William Lorimer.
The evening sky deepened into a luminescent blue, Venus sparking her flint against the burgeoning darkness as the talk drifted towards the missing girl. Maggie, her limbs heavy with sudden sleepiness and too much gin, sat up a little bit straighter, suddenly conscious of just how important Solly’s input might be to the case.
‘Let’s leave them to it,’ Rosie whispered, nudging her friend’s arm. ‘Got something to show you next door.’ And with a wink, the pathologist led Maggie out of the lounge and into the spare bedroom.
As soon as Rosie threw the light switch, Maggie saw it.
‘Wow! You’re certainly using your recuperation to good purpose! That’s. .’ Maggie, suddenly lost for words, took a step towards the old-fashioned wardrobe where an open door revealed a full-length wedding gown. The dress shimmered in the light, illuminating a thousand tiny seed pearls scattered over a fine web of creamy lace. ‘That’s. . that’s like something out of a fairytale,’ she said at last, a sigh in her voice.
‘You like it, then?’ Rosie grinned. ‘Solly’s forbidden from coming in here unless I let him.’ She laughed. ‘Good old tradition. Never let the groom see his bride until she has him at the altar.’
‘So you’ve set the date?’ Maggie hardly looked at her friend, so taken with gazing at the exquisite dress. Full skirted with a tiny waist and satin straps, she could already imagine this wedding gown on Rosie as she floated down the aisle.
‘Yep. December twenty-sixth. Stick it in your diary and tell that man of yours he’ll be on a different kind of duty that day.’
‘Oh? How’s that, then?’
‘Well. We thought you two might just be our witnesses.’
‘Oh.’ Maggie failed to hide her surprise. ‘You’re being married in the registry office.’
Rosie laughed. ‘Well, to start with at any rate. It is just along the road, after all. We will have all the family up for a traditional Jewish shindig, though. Can’t have their boy selling out on them completely,’ she added. ‘But there’ll be a few Scottish elements as well, never fear.’
Lorimer looked at the psychologist and frowned. ‘You’re sure about this?’
Solly nodded. ‘I found all of these case studies in our department. The Prof is quite happy for you to have them. They are copies, naturally.’
‘Good of you,’ Lorimer muttered, turning over the sheets of paper within a pale grey folder.
‘There’s one in particular that I thought you might find interesting.’ Solly bent over Lorimer’s shoulder, thumbing through the file. ‘Yes, here it is. If you read this you’ll see the patient was incorrectly diagnosed at first as having Munchausen’s by proxy.’ Solly made a face. ‘There were some high-profile offenders round about that time and every Tom, Dick and Harry wanted to put the Munchausen’s label on them. But this was a bit different, as you’ll see.’
The psychologist straightened up then wandered over to the stereo to change the CD. Soon the strains of Elgar’s Enigma Variations commanded one part of his attention as Lorimer read the case study.
It was chillingly familiar. A child exactly Nancy Fraser’s age had been snatched from near her home by a woman in a car and driven away. Lorimer glanced at the date; it had happened more than a decade before and in a small Lancashire town, the names of the victim, her family and the snatcher all quite unfamiliar to him. The child’s mother had been a single mum, her home a rented flat in a sink estate not unlike the one where Kim Fraser had been trying to raise her daughter. A massive police search had ensued. Lorimer nodded to himself: so far it all tallied. Then his eyebrows rose as he read on.
‘She gave the child back?’ He looked at the psychologist in surprise.
Solly nodded from his chair beside the bay window, his dark head outlined against the sodium glow from the city lights. ‘Took her right to her own front door. Waited until the mother appeared then apologised to her.’
‘And gave herself up to the police,’ Lorimer continued, reading on. ‘After which she was detained in a secure mental hospital where she was eventually diagnosed as suffering from a delusional disorder.’ He looked up. ‘Where is she now?’
Solly smiled sadly. ‘Still there as far as I know. She thought she was the child’s grandmother, in her less lucid moments.’ He shrugged. ‘When she was, shall we say, “seized with a spell of normality”,’ he fingered the inverted commas in the air, ‘she returned the child and asked for help. The names are changed, of course. But the story is perfectly accurate.’
Lorimer tapped his chin thoughtfully. ‘Would be nice to think there’s a person out there looking after Nancy Fraser.’ Then he shook his head. ‘But statistically we aren’t expecting to find her alive now.’
‘I know,’ Solly replied softly. ‘But if you read to the end you’ll find that the Lancashire police expressed quite the same sentiments. Coffee?’ he asked, motioning towards the door of the kitchen. ‘I suspect our other halves will be a little while. Rosie’s bought her wedding dress,’ he confided, a shy smile making his handsome features even more boyish than usual.
‘That was a lovely night.’ Maggie sighed as the car picked up speed. She closed her eyes and Lorimer glanced over at her, savouring the smile softening her face. It was good that Solly and Rosie had one another, good that they were cementing this unlikely pairing. For a moment Lorimer had an image of them both as an elderly couple, laughing together, Solly’s mop of hair grizzled with age, Rosie’s blonde locks a white halo. And he found himself mentally saying a word of thanks for whatever power had brought the pathologist back from the brink of death after that terrible accident, giving them both a future together.
Following the beam from his headlights, Lorimer stared straight ahead, willing that same power to let him find little Nancy Fraser.
CHAPTER 18
‘What exactly are you trying to tell me, Eric?’ The tall man stared down at his son, his hawk-like nose and bushy eyebrows making his handsome face harsh and bleak.
Anyone seeing both men together would immediately have seen the familial resemblance; each man had the height and spare frame of an athlete and the sort of facial bone structure that classical sculptors recreated from the finest Carrera marble. But the Reverend Paul Chalmers lacked a certain quality that featured in his son’s appearance. Eric had a natural grace that seemed to shine through, as if a light within could not help but illuminate his entire personality.
‘I told you, Julie forced herself onto me. The poor girl.’ Eric shook his head. ‘She’s simply infatuated, Dad. She didn’t know what she was doing. I mean, teenagers like that. .’ He broke off with a shrug, as if anyone would understand.
‘Little tarts, you mean?’ Paul Chalmers’ sneer made Eric look up suddenly to see his father’s curled lip and expression of distaste.
‘She isn’t like that,’ Eric replied quietly. ‘Julie’s a lively girl, full of fun. A bit too inclined to fancies, perhaps. But I won’t have you calling her a tart, Dad.’
‘You seem a bit too protective of her for your own good, Eric,’ the
minister replied. ‘Perhaps there’s more to this relationship of yours than you’ve told Ruth, for instance.’
Eric stood up quickly, facing his father, twin spots of colour in his cheeks.
Paul Chalmers smiled grimly. ‘Don’t like to hear the truth, is that it?’
‘Dad,’ Eric shook his head, ‘you just don’t understand, do you? I have done absolutely nothing wrong, as the Lord is my witness. And if you can’t accept my word for it, well. .’ He trailed off, a look of disappointment in his eyes. ‘At least the folks at school seem to have accepted what I’ve told them,’ he muttered, turning away and gathering up his jacket. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he added. ‘May God bless you, Dad.’
As his son closed the door behind him, the Rev Paul Chalmers curled his hands into fists, his jaw clenched tightly in suppressed fury. Eric had brought shame on their good name and that was something he would find hard to forgive.
Once out in the fresh air, Eric let his breaths become deeper and slower. Why did his father always make him feel like that? The need to justify himself, to prove to the older man that his son was right to follow this vocation, kept coming to the surface like a sore that wouldn’t heal. That his father had never forgiven him for refusing to take up the ministry was one thing, but to suggest that there was some guilt on his part with Julie, well, that simply defied any sort of belief. It had seemed the right thing to do, driving over to the Manse early this morning, letting his father know what was happening. It was not the sort of thing a telephone call could easily achieve. But what had he expected, sympathy? No. There had been nothing like that between them, ever. A simple acceptance that his only son was a truthful man who found himself in an invidious situation was surely not too much to ask. Well, it seemed that it was. And now Eric experienced the familiar sinking feeling that told him he would never be good enough for his father no matter how hard he tried.
As he opened the car door, Eric smiled to himself. Ruth was waiting. And baby Ashleigh. These were blessings that God had provided, a voice in his head reminded him, and he must be glad in his heart. Yet, as he drove along the road, knowing that his wife and child were becoming ever closer, Eric felt a certain sense of despair. The shadow of that wee girl’s abduction seemed to hang over the entire city like a pall.
‘Let them find little Nancy Fraser,’ he whispered, eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Then other words flickered into his mind. A bit too protective of her for your own good. Perhaps there’s more to this relationship. . The sound of his father’s voice hammered inside his head, drowning out any other thoughts of prayer, especially one for himself.
‘Wouldn’t you want to disappear if you were in her shoes?’
‘I don’t know,’ Maggie Lorimer replied. In truth she was worried. Maybe it was that other case, the little Fraser girl who had been abducted from right outside her front door, that gave her such a feeling of unease, but something cold was turning in the pit of her stomach. Guilt? Should she have told someone about seeing Julie and Eric? Last night Maggie had decided on a course of action but now she hesitated to put it into practice.
‘Are you doing anything after school?’ she asked Sandie as they hovered outside their respective classrooms.
‘Nope. What have you in mind?’
‘Thought we could go and see Ruth. I’ve got a present for the baby. How about it?’ Maggie asked, her face creasing into a smile.
‘Okay. But can we go via the shops first? I haven’t even got them a card yet.’
‘Right, you’re on. See you later,’ Maggie said. They parted company for that interlude of quiet before the first bell brought their registration classes thundering into the corridors.
The daily staff bulletin had Julie Donaldson’s disappearance from home as its headline. Her parents had telephoned Manson early on and now everybody on Muirpark’s teaching staff was aware of the girl’s absence. But was it simply an absence? Maggie Lorimer tried to reassure herself with Sandie’s words as she tucked the bulletin out of sight. Would she have done a runner to avoid the situation she’d created for herself? Or, and here that little doubt niggled away at her, had something bad happened to the girl? Oh, come on, fifteen was old enough to take care of herself, wasn’t it? Maggie’s mind see-sawed back and forward as she considered just what Julie Donaldson might have done. With a sigh, she turned to the cupboard behind her and took out the folder with lesson plans for periods one and two. Poetry with S3, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. Good old Wilfred Owen would take her away from such everyday problems. There was nothing like the gloom of trench warfare to focus one’s mind.
Mary Donaldson stood in the middle of her stepdaughter’s bedroom regarding the smooth coverlet over the single bed, the slippers tidied neatly under the dressing table and the wardrobe doors closed at last. She’d wanted to pick up the clothes from the floor where Julie had dropped them and hurl them out of the window in a moment of sheer blind fury that would leave her weak and shaking. Instead Mary had picked everything up, putting the discarded items into drawers, onto hangers or into the white metal bin that Julie was supposed to use for dirty laundry. Now all the clutter was tidied out of sight Mary actually felt worse, as if she had somehow been responsible for erasing Julie’s presence from the room.
Had it been her fault? she asked herself for the hundredth time. Had she been too hard on the girl, suggesting a fantasy when in fact there really was some substance to her dreadful accusation? Frank was adamant that his girl had been wronged by that Religious Education teacher, but Mary hadn’t been so certain.
‘I’ve called the police.’ Frank’s voice behind her made Mary spin round, her mouth an ‘O’ of surprise. She hadn’t heard him coming up the stairs. How long had he been standing there, watching her, feeling her despair? she wondered.
‘Have we phoned everybody?’ Mary asked, hearing the thickness in her words, emotion constricting her throat. She put out a hand to touch his arm, an automatic gesture that sought to reassure him as much as it signalled her own desire to be comforted.
Frank Donaldson nodded his head, his shoulders bowed in weariness. Neither of them had slept a wink, rising and dressing at first light after hours of straining their ears for that sound of a key in the lock. He’d driven round looking for Julie after that, then the phone calls had begun, each one producing the same negative result: Julie wasn’t there, nobody had seen her since that last day at school. The only whiff of his daughter had come from the Wetherbys; Samantha had had a text from Julie saying she was up in the town, then nothing. He and Mary had tried over and over to make contact with her mobile phone but it was clearly switched off, yet another sign that his daughter was rebuffing all their efforts to communicate with her.
‘I called Manson as well,’ Frank said, his hands dangling uselessly by his sides. ‘Told him Julie had never stayed out like this before.’
‘Yes, that’s true. I mean, we know Julie’s going through this bolshy teenage phase, but she’s always let us know where she is and who she’s with.’ Mary bit her lip to stop from crying, aware that she was beginning to babble, with hysteria not too far away.
‘Except,’ Frank Donaldson said with a sudden venom that made his fingers curl into fists, ‘when she’d been seeing that Chalmers fellow. D’you think he’s behind this?’
Mary looked at him, stunned into silence by the accusation.
‘For two pins I’d like to know where he lives so I could shake the truth out of him!’ Frank’s voice rose and ended in a cry of anguish. Mary watched in horror as his tears of rage turned to tears of impotent self-pity.
‘It’s all right, love,’ Mary soothed, her arms around his waist. ‘She’ll come home, I’m sure she will.’ Yet as she laid her head against her husband’s heaving shoulder, Mary Donaldson experienced a spasm of anxiety that gave the lie to her own words.
‘Missing fifteen-year-old girl.’ DS Niall Cameron waved a piece of paper at his colleague Detective Constable John Weir. ‘Father says she was dogg
ing school yesterday. Didn’t come home.’
Weir shrugged his shoulders. ‘Wonder who she’s shagging.’
Cameron frowned. ‘That’s maybe the crux of the problem. She recently claimed that her RE teacher had sexually assaulted her at Scripture Union camp.’
‘So what does this teacher bloke have to say about it?’
Cameron’s smile faded. ‘We should know soon enough. He’s due to have an interview with uniforms this afternoon as part of an initial inquiry. Seems we’re invited to join the party.’
Lorimer eased himself back into his chair, a smile hovering on his mouth. Last night had been one of the most enjoyable since Maggie had returned to work after the school holidays. Rosie was obviously recovering well from her operation and enjoying the enforced rest. It had done his heart good to hear the two women chattering about girly things instead of what was happening in the world of pathology. Solly and he had discussed the Fraser case at some length and that had not made such pleasant conversation. Both agreed that it would now take a bit of a miracle to find the little girl alive and well. Too many days had passed for any good news to emerge.
When the telephone rang, Lorimer was still thinking about the previous evening. As he listened, the smile was immediately wiped from his face.
‘Where?’ he asked. ‘Right. I’ll have the team over now.’ He put the phone down, reached for his jacket and was out of the door in two seconds flat.
‘They’ve found a body,’ he declared, entering the open-plan room where several members of his team were sitting at desks. ‘Team scouring the woods for Nancy Fraser,’ he added. ‘So let’s get ourselves over there now!’
Lorimer was aware of his heart thumping a rhythm of despair as the big car leapt into the road outside police headquarters. Dawsholm Woods was less than ten minutes’ drive away from Nancy’s home. As he headed west all he could think of was that young mother’s face as she’d turned towards him yesterday, doubt and fear etched so clearly on her features. What the hell was he going to tell her?
