by Alex Gray
‘You came close to it, though.’ DS Alistair Wilson wagged his head at Lorimer. ‘Another day and we’d have been crawling with some snotty-nosed review team trying to tell us how to do our job.’
Lorimer laughed, whisky clutched in one hand, his third of the night. Wilson was right, it had been a close thing. But Russell had been easy in the end, confessing everything to them, even telling how he’d lured the girls, his victims, with promises of stardom.
The police officers had watched, fascinated, as the man had become by turns a film director then a make-up artist, changing his persona as the tale unfolded. It had been like watching a human chameleon. And his hunch had been correct. A fourth body had been unearthed from a culvert near the river, somehow undetected by their geophysics lads. Lesley Reid, a wee lassie who’d been missing from home, assumed to have taken the usual route down South after a row with her father. One of how many who slipped through society’s cracks? Only once had Lorimer seen a shadow cross the man’s face; the mention of Anna had troubled him and he’d looked away from Lorimer’s blue gaze. Someone more skilled in the ways of the human mind would have to delve deeper to find out just what had made him kill his first victim.
Lorimer looked around at the officers in the pub, laughing now that the case was over. Not minding too much that Russell had been declared unfit to plead, just glad that places like Carstairs Mental Hospital were there for the mad, bad and dangerous people who were deemed unsafe outside its heavily fortified grounds. DS Cameron, drinking his orange squash, was having a discussion with young John Weir. That one was worth the watching, Lorimer thought. Weir had been unable to meet his eyes lately and he was tempted to think that the Detective Constable might be the one who had been responsible for those leaks to the press. He couldn’t prove it, but the DC’s recent request for a transfer would be met and some other poor blighters would have the dubious pleasure of John Weir’s limited experience.
It was almost time to go home. Maggie would be waiting and she would be able to update him about Eric Chalmers. The RE teacher had left Scotland last week and would even now be settling into a mission in Malawi, his wife and baby daughter with him, beginning a new life together. He’d do all right, Lorimer thought, remembering the man’s easy smile and firm handshake when they’d seen him off at Glasgow Airport. There was strength in this man, something courageous that had nothing to do with his physical stature. How many folk would have had the guts to visit Frank Donaldson the way he had? No charges, he’d insisted. The man had suffered enough and he’d forgiven him for the random act of vandalism that had frightened his young wife.
Lorimer drank the last of the whisky and signalled to the barman. It was his shout, his tab, his party that he was leaving.
Walking into the chill night air Lorimer hailed a taxi, a glow of pleasure warming him. Soon it would be the two of them together at home, just himself and Maggie. And looking out at the city lights glittering against the wet Glasgow streets, he couldn’t imagine a better way to celebrate.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-311c54-8d72-814f-dbb9-2432-ea02-41affa
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 10.01.2014
Created using: calibre 1.18.0, Fiction Book Designer, Fiction Book Investigator, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Alex Gray
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