by Alex Gray
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?
‘Young white female, mid to late teens. Strangled.’ The pathologist lifted up a grimy hand. ‘Nothing under the fingernails that can be seen, so maybe we can conclude that it was over pretty quickly.’ He glanced up at Detective Chief Inspector Lorimer, who was staring at the body. The girl’s face was a mask of agony, eyes and mouth wide open in her final moment of terror. Her head was still thrown back, revealing a series of bruises upon her throat where fingers had cut off her last breath. Lorimer tried to stop himself imagining the scream that had been lost in that moment when all that could have been uttered was a weak gurgling sound as the airways were constricted. Every time he came to a crime scene and saw the body, it happened: his mind would flash back to the moment of death. It was something he had no control over and he’d gradually come to realise that he was trying to see the victim as a flesh-and-blood human being who had been violated, not simply as another murder case. Moments like these kept alive that spurting flame of anger that drove him on and helped him focus on the questions that could lead to a killer.
Her blonde hair was full of leaves and soil from the shallow grave where they had found her, and her pallid skin was streaked with dirt. As he hunkered down there beside the pathologist, Lorimer noticed a shiny red insect emerge from inside the girl’s white blouse. It crawled over the edge, stumbling on the ridge of her collar, then hesitated before opening a pair of brown gauzy wings and taking off into the air. His mouth twisted in a spasm of disgust. She was probably crawling with tiny beasties. Swallowing back the phlegm that had gathered in his mouth, Lorimer swept a careful eye over her clothing – she was fully dressed, even down to her high-heeled shoes. That wasn’t to say she hadn’t been sexually assaulted, though, he told himself grimly. As he leaned in close to the dead girl, Lorimer caught a whiff of decomposition.
‘Dan, how long?’
‘Oh, she was put here very recently. I’d say she’s been dead less than twenty-four hours. Know more later,’ the pathologist replied gruffly.
Lorimer nodded. He would be there to see for himself as Dr Daniel Murphy performed the post-mortem and someone else’s daughter was subjected to the pathologist’s scalpel. His throat tightened as he stifled a sigh of relief. Okay, so it wasn’t Nancy Fraser’s body but some other poor souls would be grieving just as badly before much longer. He looked back at the girl’s body, wondering about the person who had dug the hole out of the dry forest earth. Forensics would be making every effort to look at things like spade marks. Had she already been dead when he’d buried her there? Or was this some sicko who’d been all prepared with a shovel in the back of his van? Such things had happened before and Lorimer was only too familiar with the vagaries of that sort of warped human nature.
Leaving the scene of the crime, Lorimer headed back to the nearest footpath. This wood was full of paths that turned and twisted in a maze-like fashion and he quickly noticed that someone had put in coloured markers to show where each track was leading. Had this been carried out by park rangers? How many worked here and what exactly did they do? These were details he’d have to find out, he thought, even as he eyed the red-painted tree stumps, fearful of losing his sense of direction. Had the killer been so familiar with this place that he needed no such guidance? A local man? One of the dog walkers, perhaps? His head buzzed with questions about the identity of the man who had taken the girl into the woods.
He soon realised that the park had been built on a hillside with several undulations that fell away into the steep sides of the river Kelvin, its waters racing along, a fierce brown torrent that might carry the woodland’s detritus miles away. Some paths were made from tarmac, others were mere cinder paths while a third sort consisted of red chips. The path he had chosen led Lorimer deeper and deeper into the quiet of the woodland. Many of the great trees looked like something out of a child’s nightmare: their roots snaking green mossy tentacles into the ground, clutching at it cruelly. It would be hard to bury a body in among such a proliferation of tree roots, so had the killer known about this terrain, had it in mind when he chose that quiet spot where the wood ended and the meadowland began?
He came to a halt as the path was suddenly cut off by a barricade where several large trees had been felled, their sawn trunks piled in a heap about five feet high. It probably deterred all but the most eager kids who would enjoy the challenge of scrambling over it but, since there were so many alternative paths everywhere, Lorimer doubted that many people persisted with this route. He turned aside, letting another path take him to the edge of a clearing where more felled trees had been set into neat piles, their snarls of twisted logs arranged in heaps as though waiting for someone to come and light a series of bonfires. In the centre of the clearing a blasted tree stood stark and upright, clinging to the vestiges of existence, but only fungal growths seemed to inhabit this unwilling host. Death and decay lay scattered all around him.
Picking up a stout stick, Lorimer scratched at the leaf mould, noticing the rich burnt umber of the soil beneath, real forest bark that had decomposed beautifully, with fine red threadlike roots within many other root systems. Looking up, he could see that the trees formed a bright canopy of green from the majestic beech and oak. Elsewhere he had passed a stand of Scots pine and some shivering sycamores that would produce yellow leaves come autumn. Would they find her killer by then? The next twenty-four hours were going to be crucial. He stood up and looked back into the wood, listening for the sound of water that might give him a clue as to where he was and which path might take him back to the crime scene.
It was a shorter walk than he’d expected. The trees petered out beside a high wall, its broken stones green with algae, next to the electricity substation where the crime-scene tape fluttered in the breeze. On one side of the wall was a culvert running parallel with the line of trees and disappearing back into the wood, but on this side was a section of grassy field like the corner of a neglected suburban garden. The girl’s body had been buried just at this margin, obscured by long grasses, docks and ash saplings. The silence here was only broken by a raucous magpie performing its acrobatics on top of a slender birch tree, oblivious to the activity in this small corner of the park. Lorimer watched it for a brief moment, then his eyes took in the vista of Maryhill with three tall skyscrapers and a cluster of houses spread across the hillside opposite. The path that led out of the woods would take him to the other side of the park, past the recycling facility and a metal barrier. Right now a couple of uniformed officers were stationed there preventing any member of the public from entering.
Had they come into the park from that direction? And was the victim someone who had trusted her companion? Lorimer stood and gazed across the skyline, wishing for answers.
CHAPTER 19
‘I can’t believe it.’ Frank Donaldson slumped forwards, thrusting his head into calloused hands that were used to grappling with heavy machinery down in the Clydeside dockyard. ‘I can’t believe it’s really her.’ His voice choked and the family liaison officer proffered a box of tissues, silently letting the father expend his anguish for those few minutes before he
could face the outside world. Sometimes the bereaved poured forth a torrent of words, sometimes they clammed up entirely. The officer sat patiently, observing the big man who sat hunched over his grief like it was all he had to hold on to. He’d been white round the gills as they’d led him into the viewing room to make a formal identification. The man had seemed utterly bewildered as he’d gazed at his daughter’s body. His whispered ‘yes’ had been almost a question as he’d turned, gaping open-mouthed at the stranger at his elbow who was trained to deal with such situations. Nothing in Frank Donaldson’s life, though, had prepared him for a moment like this.
‘What am I going to tell Mary?’ he said at last, looking up at the officer with frightened, helpless eyes.
The family liaison officer drew a deep breath and began to talk him through all the things that lay ahead, hearing himself recite the usual spiel and wondering as he did if the man was taking in a single word.
DCI Lorimer glanced at the familiar figure standing beside him at the window. Iain Mackintosh, the Procurator Fiscal, had come straight down to the crime scene and now both men were watching as the post-mortem was performed on the victim’s body at the mortuary. As Dan had already pointed out, the girl had been strangled and now the pathologist was talking them through the external signs of injury before he began the process of examining her internal organs.
‘The injuries are concomitant with the assailant having straddled his victim to the ground,’ Dan remarked to the other pathologist who was taking notes. It was mandatory procedure this side of the Scottish border, and Lorimer wondered for a passing moment when Dr Rosie Fergusson would be back with her colleagues. Their workload was tough enough at the best of times and she was sorely missed.
‘The assailant must have been fairly strong if her ribs are so badly crushed,’ Mackintosh observed, cutting into Lorimer’s thoughts.
‘Yes, and there are visible signs of both carotid arteries having been pressed, showing that he’s grabbed her with both hands. If it’s any consolation, the victim will have lost consciousness within twenty seconds,’ Dan replied, glancing up at them from his place beside the stainless steel table. ‘I think we can say without too much trouble that the injuries causing death were deliberately inflicted.’
Lorimer nodded. Twenty seconds; the longest and most horrific time in Julie Donaldson’s young life before someone had finally snuffed it out. Of course it was a clear case of murder, but it never did to assume anything until the pathologist had given his qualified opinion, an opinion that could take Dan into a court of law.
‘No signs of any sexual activity, though she’s not a virgin. So, not a case of a rape gone wrong,’ Murphy remarked as he looked over at the two men.
‘A class “B”, then,’ the Fiscal said quietly to Lorimer. ‘It might have been worse.’
‘Aye, simple murder,’ he replied with a bitter twist to his mouth. There was rarely anything simple about a murder investigation but he knew what Mackintosh was trying to say: had the body been that of Nancy Fraser then the whole case would have taken on a different aspect. Child murder meant the possibility that it was the work of a dangerous paedophile and thus an obvious threat to the public, a class of crime that might have seen Superintendent Mitchison being appointed as SIO. The wee girl from Yoker was still in his own caseload as a missing person, meantime. They were being careful to ensure that the identity of the victim was being kept quiet for now, though ‘the body of a teenage girl’ would be allowed as a quote from the police press office. Lorimer was keen to distance the missing toddler from this new case although the locus could not be ignored. And hadn’t it been the little girl’s body he’d expected to see when the call had come in?
‘Want to know what she last ate?’ Dan asked as he turned towards the window separating the post-mortem room from the raised area where the two men stood. Taking their silence for an affirmative, Dan began to reel off the stomach contents.
Eric Chalmers tugged nervously at his tie. It was as bad as the time he’d sweated outside the interview room at Muirpark, waiting for his turn. Every prayer he’d sent up last night and this morning had met with a sense of nothingness. There was no feeling of peace, just a disquieting lack of anything at all. Mind you, he’d been wakened several times with the baby and had got up to change her after she’d been nursed, singing softly to her as he paced up and down. ‘Amazing Grace’ he’d sung, rocking her gently in his arms till she’d closed those tiny eyes and gone back to sleep. So he shouldn’t be too troubled this morning; it had happened before when he’d prayed at times of crisis and he knew that, even if he had no sense of a listening ear, God was there with him. It was all a matter of trust. He was being tested, perhaps, made to feel weak and small, just as weak and small as baby Ashleigh. What was it Scripture said? ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Eric felt something inside him change and his shoulders dropped, the tension in them suddenly released. Everything would be all right. He was bound to be found innocent of their accusations.
When the door opened at last, Eric Chalmers was smiling calmly, his face lifted to greet the men and women whose eyes were fixed upon him.
Detective Sergeant Niall Cameron sat listening as the education committee member quoted the paragraphs dealing with statutory suspension. It looked to him that Eric Chalmers was quite impassive while the education man’s throaty voice elucidated every part of the procedure. The head teacher, Manson, had already been told about Julie Donaldson’s murder, and of all the people in this room he alone betrayed signs of anxiety. Cameron glanced at him, seeing the fingers stray into his mouth as he chewed his nails, noting the way Manson’s eyes kept flicking towards Chalmers. Was he wondering if the man he knew so well could be capable of a crime like that? Since Manson was the only other person who knew about the discovery of Julie’s body, the officers could observe the disciplinary meeting objectively before taking Chalmers down to HQ for further questioning. The head teacher appeared to be gritting his teeth and anyone else in the room would suppose that it was his loyalty to his staff making his expression so grim.
‘Do you understand the nature of the allegations that have been brought against you, Mr Chalmers?’ The committee man’s voice grated in Cameron’s ears, rolling his words in a guttural sound that reminded him of a particular preacher who had bored him rigid back home in Lewis.
‘Yes, I do,’ Chalmers replied with a smile that seemed totally at odds with the gravity of the situation and Cameron couldn’t help but think how that smile was going to be wiped off the RE teacher’s face before long. But it wasn’t a self-satisfied smirk. Cameron wouldn’t be able to report it as that, he suddenly thought to himself as if he were preparing to testify in court. It was a genuine sort of smile, as if this man being accused of sexually assaulting a minor was actually feeling a modicum of sympathy for the men who had to deal with the situation. Chalmers was a self-confessed Christian, the son of the Manse (not that that was necessarily any character endorsement) and he had glowing testimonials lying on the table in front of them, all from various authorities, not least the head teacher of Muirpark Secondary.
The hearing came to a close at last and as they all rose, Cameron came forward and rested his hand on Eric Chalmers’ sleeve.
‘I’m afraid I have to ask you to accompany me, Mr Chalmers. There are more questions we need to ask you at police headquarters,’ he added, keeping his voice deliberately low as he saw one or two faces turn their way.
Eric Chalmers raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question and then nodded, looking at his wristwatch. ‘Fine, how long will I be? I should let my wife know.’
Cameron gave a shrug and scratched his forehead, giving the impression of the simple plod just carrying out orders. It was a trick he’d learned to carry off several times to good effect, but as Eric Chalmers looked at him sharply he wondered just what was going through the man’s mind. Certainly he didn’t appear to be a person with
a guilty conscience. But appearances could be deceptive, as Lorimer had often told him.
CHAPTER 20
Lorimer’s divisional headquarters – a functional, modern concrete block with no pretensions of architectural merit – had been built on the brow of one of Glasgow’s many hills. For a newcomer to the place it looked large and imposing, the five stories towering over the pavements, casting their shadow right across the street towards a more graceful line of grey sandstone Victorian townhouses, now used as offices. Situated just to the north-west of the city centre, the Division covered several square miles in a densely built-up area, Lorimer’s own room overlooking the buildings that marched down to the river Clyde. It was near enough from Pitt Street, one of Strathclyde Police’s three main central offices, and the city mortuary across town to make life relatively easy in terms of fitting in as much as he could to his day. That was the good part about its location. The downside of being so close to Pitt Street was the ever-present worry that one of the senior officers would descend at a moment’s notice. Superintendent Mitchison just loved it whenever the Chief Constable or his deputy arrived on the scene but for Lorimer it was usually one more thing elbowing out the really important matters in his caseload.
The DCI pasted a smile on his face as he finally shook hands with the Chief Constable. The remains of tea and scones lay on a table behind him, crumbs testifying to the little celebration that had taken place in Lorimer’s honour. Okay, it was nice to have the commendation and the Chief Constable had been very flattering. Maggie would just love hearing how he’d hinted that promotion to Superintendent was surely overdue. Lorimer had tried very hard not to grin or even to make eye contact with Mitchison but he could imagine the latter’s teeth grinding as the words of praise had been lavished on ‘a most deserving officer’.
