Keep The Midnight Out (William Lorimer) (6 page)

‘Here.’

She turned to feel the touch of the policeman’s hand on hers, the folded cotton handkerchief slipped gently into her grasp.

Pamela nodded her thanks, too full for speech, the kindness of that small gesture more than she could bear. Still, it was comforting to have this tall man hovering near their side, a shadow guarding them against the outside world.

The daylight made her blink as they walked towards the waiting car. She was aware of other voices now, the tall man speaking to another chap who was looking their way.

‘I will see you later, Mrs Dalgleish.’ The woman detective put her hand on Pamela’s sleeve as she opened the back door of the silver Lexus and ushered her in. Douglas had already drifted to the front passenger seat and was slumped there, staring into space.

The short journey was made easier by being able to look out of the window at the view, much of the road running parallel with the sea. It did not fill her with any horror to think of Rory’s body washed by the tides. The horror lay in what had happened before he had died; it was a route into darkness where the woman wanted her to go and Pamela Dalgleish was not yet ready to take that particular journey.

Neither of the men spoke as the car sped smoothly over the ribbon of road leading them to Fishnish Bay; the man at the wheel might have been a taxi driver, the silence was so natural but, Pamela realised, this man, Lorimer, understood their need for an interlude of quietness. She had seen the other man, the one in the tweed jacket, nodding in acquiescence at something he’d said before they had left the hospital grounds: Lorimer was someone to whom people deferred, Pamela had noticed that. She heaved a sigh of relief, the tremble through her chest lessening as they drove on.

When the car turned off the main road onto a tiny single track, Pamela realised that they were almost at their destination and she turned to look towards the shore. Was this where her boy had finally come to rest? This pretty bay with a forest of trees to one side, the little white cottage nestled under the gently sloping hills? As the car turned into a pebbled driveway she saw a slim woman approaching, her dark curls blowing in the breeze. Taking a deep breath, Pamela Dalgleish prepared herself for the niceties of social encounter once again.

The world still turned on its axis, she thought, as Lorimer helped her out of the car and she stood on firm ground once more. Life would go on, though their particular world could never be the same.

‘I
need an incident room set up right away in Tobermory,’ DI Crozier told the chubby sergeant who was driving them through the village of Salen where a proliferation of flowers spilled from tubs and window boxes. ‘That’s where he was last sighted, right?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Calum Mhor agreed. ‘What exactly have you in mind?’ he added. Such things had never once featured in the man’s professional career and he was unsure what this feisty woman expected him to do.

‘We need a visible presence,’ she told him frostily. ‘Somewhere the public can come to us with information. I’ve requested a police mobile unit but we’ve been told it will take another three days till one is available. Hoped to have this done and dusted by then,’ she added sourly. ‘How difficult can it be to find a killer on a place this size?’

‘So,’ Calum Mhor began ponderously, ignoring her last remark, ‘you’ll be wanting something like a
caravan
?’ He said the word as though it were something foreign, the stress on the last syllable.

‘Possibly. Can you arrange that?’ She twisted in her seat to give him a cool appraising look.

‘I think so. My son’s pal works in the campsite. There are always caravans empty, even in high summer. They don’t do as well as they might up there,’ he told her, shaking his head. ‘Even when the bed and breakfasts have no vacancies and turn folk away they don’t think to toddle over the hill to the campsite.’

‘So you can get me a caravan?’ Crozier asked impatiently.

‘Aye, ma’am.’ He swung the police Land Rover around a corner and slowed down, the road out of the village narrowing to a single track.

Calum Mhor sighed inwardly. He was used to extolling the beauties of his island home to new visitors, slowing down just here to point out the grey seals lolling on the rocks, waiting for the gasps of delight as the crumbling ruins of Aros Castle came into sight, the bay below like a millpond, a swan or a lonesome heron completing the picture. But, as he drove up the steep slope that took them past forests and the breathtaking vistas of the Sound of Mull, he knew he would be wasting his time with this one. She was staring straight ahead, her mind on the murder case. And who could blame her? Since the discovery of the boy’s body Calum had been wakening a lot during the night, the picture of that ruined face haunting what was normally a dreamless sleep.

‘You’ve secured the crime scene, I take it?’ Her words snapped Calum out of his reverie.

‘Well, we don’t know if the edge of the bay is the actual scene of the crime, ma’am…’ he began.

‘It was where his body was found, wasn’t it?’

‘It was where he was washed ashore,’ Calum told her patiently. ‘Tides might have carried him for miles.’

He could hear her sigh from where she sat beside him. ‘Could be he went into the water much further up the coast,’ he mused. ‘Has been known for these tides to take someone a long way down the Sound. And it was a very high tide that particular morning – a spring tide.’

‘Oh?’

‘Sometimes spring tides can wash right up to the edges of people’s gardens, given the right conditions.’

‘And how does that affect this case?’

‘Well the lad’s body was washed up high on the shore, much higher than anybody would have expected. ’Twas laid out on the grassy banks way above the normal tideline. Lorimer said he found it because of the gulls.’

‘The what…?’

‘The seagulls, ma’am. They’d been attacking the poor boy lying out in the cold. Och, it doesnae bear thinking about,’ he added in disgust, slowing the Land Rover down and turning into a passing place as a couple of cars approached. Calum gave a wave as the driver of each car drew level.

‘You seem to know everyone here,’ Crozier remarked as they moved off again.

‘Oh, no, ma’am, these are visitors. It’s just a common courtesy to acknowledge one another,’ he explained. ‘Something that doesn’t happen on the mainland much,’ he added, allowing himself a smile.

Stevie Crozier did not reply. Life on this island was very different from anything in her experience, it seemed, and she was irked by the thought that this bumbling sergeant was teaching her things that most of the inhabitants took for granted. Sure, she was becoming used to life in Oban after years spent in the Borders towns, but the people on these islands seemed to behave as though they were a law unto themselves, something Stevie found hard to take.

She stared out of the window as the vehicle climbed higher: the Sound of Mull seemed so far below now, a few yachts under sail mere specks of white against the blue. Somewhere down there the boy’s body had been swept along, these strange tides taking it from… where? Had he been cast into the waters near Tobermory? Or had someone transported the corpse further south? Craning her eyes, the detective could see the steep hills that tumbled down and down into the rocky coastline. Who had taken that boy? Had it been the task of more than one man to heave the dead weight from a car into the depths? The DI had decided to begin answering these questions in the town where Rory had been last seen. Perhaps someone would share a nugget of information about who had been with him, then the team could begin to piece together the boy’s last movements in an attempt to discover what his terrible fate had been.

‘That’s Tobermory,’ Calum told her, though he used the Gaelic words,
Tobar Mhoire
, a sound that was suddenly alien to the blonde woman who gazed at the curve of little houses ranged against a sloping hillside. Then the sight was lost as they descended once more, the road straight and smooth taking them to the place where she would set up her incident room.

‘It’s peaceful here,’ Pamela Dalgleish said at last. The sun was still masked by a few stray clouds but there was a brightness in the sky, patches of earlier rain already dry on the ground.

‘That’s why we like it,’ Maggie said simply.

‘It’s where I would have liked to come for a holiday,’ the older woman admitted. Then she fell silent, sipping tea from the nicest porcelain mug that Maggie Lorimer could find in their kitchen cupboard. Maggie nodded. She could understand that this woman was unwilling to talk about holidays or times past that may have been reminders of her dead son, superficial things now that this dreadful event had stolen him from her.

They continued to gaze shorewards, the two figures of their husbands clearly defined against the background of Fishnish Bay; one standing tall and straight, the other seated on a rock, back bowed as he looked out to sea.

‘You don’t want to go down…?’

Pamela Dalgleish shook her head. ‘I thought I would but, no.’ Her voice faded as she swallowed hard. ‘It was bad enough having to see him back there,’ she admitted, stealing a glance at the dark-haired woman sitting beside her on the garden bench. ‘I couldn’t bear the thought of him…’

Maggie reached out and took the other woman’s cold hand in hers, feeling the fingers clasp her own. They sat there in silence once again, two women pondering the vagaries of life, watching while their menfolk dealt with this tragedy in a different way. She had known so many cases where her husband showed compassion to the victims of crime; often it was the impetus that drove him on to discovering what had happened and whose hand had committed that most terrible of deeds. But here he was simply a witness, not the person in charge, and Maggie Lorimer wondered just how that must feel right now as he tried to find words of consolation for that broken father down on the shore.

‘He was our youngest, you know. The baby of the family,’ Pamela Dalgleish said suddenly. ‘A bit of an unexpected addition, actually.’ She smiled vaguely. ‘Thought we had finished. A gentleman’s family,’ she went on. ‘Phillip and Jennifer. That was all we really wanted.’ She drew her hand away, searching for her handkerchief. ‘I was appalled when I found out I was pregnant again. Didn’t want a third. Felt far too old to begin all over again. Nappies and sleepless nights, you know?’

The woman turned her head as if she expected a child to come wandering out of the cottage then turned back again. ‘He was a funny little thing when he was born,’ she continued. ‘All that red hair. God knows what side of the family that came from.’ She sighed. ‘Douglas suggested we name him Ruaraidh because of his colouring but I thought it was too hard for a little boy to be given such a difficult name so we agreed on Rory instead.’ She shook her head. ‘Never realised just how appropriate that would turn out to be.’

‘Why?’ Maggie asked, puzzled.

‘Oh, dear.’ Pamela Dalgleish heaved another huge sigh. ‘They say it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead but Rory was a loud sort of boy.
Very
talkative. Could be quite annoying at times. His friends nicknamed him
Roary
. You know, with an A in the middle.’

She paused then bowed her head, crumpling the handkerchief in her hands. ‘Funny how much I would give to hear his voice again.’

Maggie said nothing, letting the woman wipe away the tears that were coursing down her pale cheeks. Her heart felt sore inside her chest as though she too had been weeping, an aching sympathy for this bereaved mother.

‘You have children?’ The inevitable question that Maggie had expected.

‘No. We couldn’t,’ she said shortly.

‘Well, you’re lucky. You’ll never know what this sort of loss feels like,’ the older woman replied, a note of bitterness in her tone.

Maggie sat very still, remembering the way she had stroked her rounded belly, feeling the life within. Then, afterwards, the agony of seeing the tiny form, lifeless in her arms. It would do this woman no good to share such pain, let her know that yes, she had suffered
that sort of loss
; and had her grief been so very different? A sigh shuddered from her before she could stop it.

‘I’m sorry…?’ Pamela Dalgleish had turned towards Maggie, a look of concern on her face.

‘It’s all right,’ Maggie tried to reassure her. ‘It was a long time ago.’

‘I
’d like a boy,’ she said, laying down her book beside the chair.

‘So long as it’s like the world,’ her mother replied, looking up from her knitting. Already there were several tiny little garments folded between sheets of tissue paper awaiting the day when Maggie would bring home her first child from hospital. And, well wrapped up in a plastic carrier bag, was the complete pram set that Mum had made, blankets all edged in satin, a crocheted cover meticulously crafted.

Maggie nodded and smiled at the old-fashioned phrase. Mum had also promised to buy a pram. It was ordered but would not be paid for or delivered until baby Lorimer made his or her appearance for fear of bringing ill luck on the expected infant, a superstition that had lingered in the west of Scotland over countless generations.

‘Still working in white?’ Maggie cocked her head to one side as her mother smoothed out the piece of knitting, its intricate pattern of diamond-shaped leaves almost invisible under the lamplight.

‘I can buy pink or blue when the time comes,’ Mrs Finlay told her daughter. ‘And if it’s anything like you were, you’ll need plenty of changes of clothes, let me tell you.’

‘Why? What was I like?’

‘Oh, a sickly baby. I was forever running out of gripe water.’

‘Everyone uses muslins now,’ Maggie murmured. ‘I’ve seen girls with them draped over their shoulders. Seems to keep mother and baby clean.’

‘And you would fill your nappy just when I was all ready to take you out in the pram. Wee frilly pants, lacy tights, underskirts. Och, sometimes I had to change the lot!’

Maggie laughed at her mother’s wrinkled nose. ‘See what I’m in for!’

‘Well, it’s not all rock-a-bye-baby,’ the older woman told her tartly. ‘I can remember pacing the floor for hours when you were cutting your teeth. Poor wee lamb,’ she added with a sigh, looking into the distance as though she could see baby Maggie all over again. ‘But you were a bonny wee thing, I’ll say that. Good-natured, too.’

‘Well, if I have a girl maybe she’ll take after me,’ Maggie said. ‘But I’d love to have a son as my first-born.’

The sound of a car turning into the drive made both women look up. The light was fading from the summer sky and Detective Constable Lorimer was only now arriving back home, hours after Maggie and her mother had finished dinner.

‘Late again,’ Mrs Finlay remarked.

‘It’s a murder case,’ Maggie said quietly. ‘They don’t know who the victim is. That’s what Bill’s trying to find out,’ she explained.

‘Well, he’ll be glad to get away from all of that and come home to a decent meal, I dare say.’

Maggie smiled. Her mother had brought one of her home-made steak and kidney pies, enough for two meals at least, and it would be the work of just a few minutes to warm it up again.

‘Hello, Alice, hi, gorgeous.’ Lorimer bent to kiss his wife before she could heave herself out of her armchair. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

‘Well. You need to keep better time once Maggie’s due date comes closer,’ Alice Finlay told him. ‘I might not always be here to keep your wife company.’

‘Ah.’ Lorimer’s eyes twinkled. ‘Planning that trip to Australia, then, are you?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ his mother-in-law scolded, but her smile had joined his already. ‘Come on, go and get yourself washed. I’ll see to your dinner.’ She rose from her chair and nodded at her daughter. ‘You stay where you are and keep your feet up,’ she ordered in a tone that brooked no refusal.

Lorimer winked at his wife behind the retreating back of her mother. He loved Alice Finlay dearly but there were times, like now, when she made him feel like a little boy again, not a grown man whose job entailed dealing with life and death.

The afternoon had been hot, the air-conditioning units in the mortuary scarcely able to diminish that feeling of oppression in the viewing room. There had been several students there too, wilting in their green scrubs, watching as the lady pathologist, Dr MacMillan, performed the post-mortem examination. He’d noticed that one of them was a girl, her blonde curls escaping from the cap on her head. She’d looked far too young even to be at university, Lorimer had thought, yet hers was the face that expressed most interest in all of the surgery, hers the hand that was raised first to answer any of the consultant pathologist’s questions. The young woman’s cheeks had turned pink when she’d praised her.
Well done, Miss Fergusson
, she’d said.

Lorimer had watched and listened, fascinated by the entire procedure, not at all squeamish as Donald Anderson, the fiscal, had hinted he might be. The marks on the young man’s neck were discussed at length by the pathologist, her explanations about neck injuries giving Lorimer as well as the students gathered around a great deal to think about. The pathologist had drawn back the victim’s eyelids, pointing out the petechial haemorrhages, signs, she told them, of an asphyxial death.

‘Seen typically in the eyes, face and neck,’ she had continued, her voice strong and enthusiastic, making the students look more closely; even Lorimer found himself peering right up against the glass of the viewing window, fascinated by the woman’s discourse.

Of course, the main things to look at were the marks around the fellow’s neck, clear signs that something had been applied to cut off his last breath. And he’d been dead before he’d hit the water, the pathologist explained, showing the internal signs after exposing the thoracic area.

A case of manual strangulation, she had concluded, well satisfied that her audience had seen such evidence that she might well have to bring to court should an arrest for the man’s murder ever be found.

Dr MacMillan had given them time to suggest what sort of materials had secured the wrists and ankles, the body twisted and misshapen in rigor mortis.

Only the young blonde girl had asked,
Why
would they do that
? Her question showing a keen appreciation of motive as well as interest in the surgical details.

The pathologist had shaken her head and smiled.
Something for our colleagues over there to find out
, she’d answered, making them all look up at the window where Lorimer and the fiscal stood observing the post-mortem. It was right that she had prevaricated, Lorimer thought. Putting ideas of bondage and sexual fetishes into students’ heads was not a good idea, even though that was one line of thought that had cropped up at a briefing meeting back at police HQ
.
Some of the police officers had looked distinctly uncomfortable as DI Phillips had spelled out the possibility that the victim might have been indulging in some sort of sex game as he sought to find an explanation for the state of the dead man’s body.
And it might also explain why these bonds had been cut before the victim had been cast into the river
, Lorimer had suggested. But shakes of the head and disgusted looks from his more senior colleagues had stopped him pursuing that idea.

‘Any luck with finding out who the victim is?’ Maggie asked.

They were in bed at last, Mrs Finlay had gone home after insisting on washing up the rest of the dinner dishes, and the summer twilight had deepened to a burnished blue. Lorimer had watched the sky as they lay side by side, Maggie turning this way and that, trying to find a position that would be comfortable enough to let her drift off to sleep.

‘No. Maybe we won’t ever find out,’ he said quietly. ‘Fiscal seems to think he might not be missed by anyone.’

‘That’s awful,’ Maggie sighed. ‘How terrible to be of so little importance that nobody would miss you.’

‘Go to sleep, darling.’ Lorimer stroked her bare arm gently. ‘Don’t think about my job, all right?’

Her smile in the fading light was all he ever wanted, Lorimer thought as she closed her eyes. Yet, even as his wife’s breathing became the measured tones of slumber, Lorimer lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering about the man whose body had undergone such extensive examination and whether they would ever be able to dignify him with a name.