Rosie drew one fingernail across the envelope, a smile hovering around her mouth. It was typical of Solly to have sent her the card at work, she thought, taking it out and turning it over. Yes, red roses on a highly embossed surface, the sort of extravagantly romantic Valentine’s card she’d never received from any of her former boyfriends. Inside she read the equally flowery words. She should have laughed at their message as over-the-top sentimentality, but somehow she couldn’t. Hand on her cheek, Rosie smiled properly now, thinking about the man who had won her heart. They’d met in such inauspicious circumstances; the scene of a crime where a young woman had been brutally murdered. She might have despised this strange man whose weak stomach contrasted so much with her own hardened professionalism. But that hadn’t happened. Somehow she’d found herself driving him home that night and hoping against hope that he would ask to see her again.
Now they were husband and wife. An odd couple, some might say, but their very differences seemed to suit them both. Rosie had left her card for Solly on the bedside table, hoping he’d find it after she’d left for work. February fourteenth or not, the consultant pathologist had to be in early at the office before her first appointment of the day. Being an expert witness for the Crown meant that Rosie often had to give evidence in high profile cases and today was one such. A son had murdered his mother in a fit of drunken rage. Photographs of the stab wounds were part of the evidence that would be presented to the jury of fifteen men and women in the High Court but Dr Rosie Fergusson’s verbal testimony would also be crucial in affecting the outcome. She was used to them but Rosie still took her court appearances very seriously indeed, knowing that shades of meaning might be derived from any answers she gave.
With a sigh, she placed the Valentine’s card on top of the filing cabinet where she would be sure to see it the moment she returned from court.
No Valentine’s cards for me today. Not that I expected any. Once there had been a little flurry of them and that had been amusing for a time. This omission wasn’t something to worry me, though. My mind was occupied with far loftier things than teenage fantasies. School kids might be biting their nails, anxiously waiting for the bell to ring so they could rush home and see what the postman had left. In my day the mail had arrived before breakfast. Now it could be delivered at any old time at all; another thing that irked me about this changing world where outside forces determined parts of my existence.
That was why I could breathe easily in the knowledge that what I was going to put into motion would never rebound upon me. I would have it planned to the last detail just as I had planned every one of the other deaths. Nothing would be left to chance.
And, besides, who was going to suspect someone like me?
Jean Wilson loved crime. It was her favourite section in the local library and the assistant always gave her the nod whenever a new title came in. Not real-life crime, though she had dipped a tentative toe into those murky waters. No, for Jean the crime stories of folk like Ian Rankin and Val McDermid were her abiding passion. She was on her way to the library now. The writers’ group had focused on romance today, of course, since it was February fourteenth. She’d tried to pen a wee thing to read out, but had given up and crumpled it into her bin. Others had managed fine: lovely poems that made Jean sigh. Such talent among her friends down at the community centre! Every week she walked from her home to the writing group, nodding a greeting to the old folk who were downstairs at the elderly forum, a club where the seniors of the district could be entertained by visiting singers and other folk. The old folk, she called them, but most were in fact a deal younger than herself. At eighty-one, Jean was the oldest member of the writing group that met upstairs in the community education room but nobody knew that little fact since she chose to keep her age to herself.
It was a windy day today and the clouds were racing across a sky whose weak winter sun managed only a faint appearance from time to time behind a mass of leaden grey cumulus. Jean paused for a moment before she crossed the road. She needed more second-class stamps to send off the articles she had finished for those magazines. Looking left and right, she crossed over to the post office, noticing as she did so the now-familiar figure of the hooded cyclist.
Jean grinned to herself. She’d seen him every week and had woven him into a story in her imagination. Not that she’d actually written it yet but it was there, percolating away inside her head. He had managed to find his way into her diary, however. Jean always wrote a few sentences last thing at night, just to record the day’s events and, given that most were fairly humdrum, she added details of anything that seemed unusual just to spice things up. So the mysterious cyclist had been given some lines already.
The rain had begun to spit and there was a rumble of thunder as Jean came back out of the post office. She struggled with her black umbrella, the wind catching it and threatening to turn it inside out. As she made her way along to the corner of the street and the library, Jean saw him again. He was standing across the road and she could swear that he was watching her from under that dark hood of his. Shivering, the old woman hauled herself up the steps, glad of the automatic doors swinging outward to welcome her. Once inside the warmth of the library, Jean left all thoughts of the cyclist behind. Overactive imagination, she told herself, her eyes already feasting on the rows of novels under the heading CRIME.
Once out in the rain again, the old lady was buffeted along by the driving wind, holding on to her bag and umbrella so hard that she was unable to see the dark figure following her from a distance. Nor did she hear the swish of bicycle tyres on the wet road as the traffic splashed puddles of rainwater towards the pavements and the thunder grew louder. A flash of lightning made her hurry along the street; it wouldn’t do to be caught out with her brolly held aloft. You heard such awful things about men being struck by lightning on the golf course and places like that.
It was a relief to be home again. Jean shut the door and pulled the chain across, glad to shut out the miserable afternoon. She took off her wet coat, hanging it on the hook on the wall, deciding to change her shoes later. First she needed warmth and light. She’d switch on the lamps in the sitting room, plug in her electric fire then make a nice cup of tea before settling down with that new writer they’d recommended at the library. Jean groaned, the aches in her body a potent reminder of her eighty-one-year-old bones.
The old lady was filling her kettle when she heard the scuffling sound at her back door. Was it some animal? Jean stopped and listened. The scuffling sound continued and she set the kettle down beside the sink and headed towards the source of the noise.
The door was whipped out of her grasp as soon as she opened it and for an instant she thought it must be the wind.
Then she saw the figure standing there, an arm raised above its head.
Jean’s scream was lost in the sudden crash of thunder and, as the ground came up to meet her, she knew with a certainty that she was going to die.
Acting Detective Superintendent Lorimer frowned as he pored over the witness statements. At first glance the file was fine, nothing to worry anybody. But it was the lack of detailed information missing from these pages that gave him pause for thought. Dodgson’s own report had triggered off the initial visits to nearby properties (Lorimer noted the word properties: not neighbours or even neighbouring houses. Kilmacolm was famous for its huge mansions that, even during the years of financial uncertainty, had commanded millions on the open market.) It had been during the night that the fire had been started and the pattern of statements from those living within a mile or so of the Jacksons had been depressingly predictable. Nobody had seen anything that could have helped the police. Not until the fire service had made its noisy way along the drive had anyone even awoken to hear what was going on. Then, Lorimer read, the fire could be seen over the treetops, an open window giving the sounds of crackling mixed with the sirens screaming to a rescue that never happened. No dog walkers wandering past the drive, no night-time shift workers passing by, no sign of a car full of carousing louts fleeing the scene.
Yet that was exactly what had been suggested: the fire had been started by a bad crowd from down the hill in Port Glasgow. Okay, there had been a spate of burglaries a year or so previously and a local lad had been nabbed for them. So what? Fire-raising hadn’t been in that thief’s case history. It was simply the old story of guilt by association. Someone from the port had been sentenced for crimes against the good decent folk of Kilmacolm and so the finger was pointed at them (whoever they were, and why don’t the police investigate them?) He could almost hear the indignation in the voices of the outraged neighbours. And who could blame them? After all, the tragedy must have shocked local people. But these witness statements (if he could deign to call them that) were hardly more than a collection of opinions based on nothing more than anger and fear. The local crime prevention lads had been particularly busy in the week following the fire, Lorimer knew. And he would bet that the sale of electric gates and other security devices had rocketed in the wake of the Jacksons’ deaths.
And the Chief Constable had taken this line as well. Look at the low-life in Port Glasgow, he’d told Colin Ray. Lorimer’s jaw hardened. There were bad elements in every town, though statistically Kilmacolm could expect its own share to be very low indeed. Especially when the head of Strathclyde’s police force lived there himself. And yet, the Chief Constable, David Isherwood, had issued orders for Colin to come up to see him in Pitt Street rather than ask him to visit him at home. Why? Wouldn’t he want to keep it unofficial if there was anything dodgy about his request? Lorimer mused. And if there was, Isherwood wouldn’t want his own name contained within the pages of this file, would he?
There was something unsavoury about this, Lorimer thought, tapping his front teeth with a pencil. Why tell DCI Ray not to look among Jackson’s associates? Was there something Isherwood knew? And if so, was it worth him risking asking questions at that level?
He was acting Detective Superintendent, a role that would probably lead to a permanent promotion if he were to succeed in this review.
A thought suddenly came to Lorimer. Was that why he had been seconded to the job in the first place? There were surely a few other Detective Superintendents who could have been posted to Greenock’s HQ to tackle this one. And of course it had to be someone higher than a DCI, Colin Ray’s own rank. Lorimer bit his lower lip as this new idea took hold. Did they think that his temporary promotion would make him all the more eager to toe the line? Was he simply being used to keep the lid on things? A can of worms, Colin Ray had suggested. Aye, well, maybe it was. Giving a sigh, Lorimer knew that, despite his wife’s delight at the thought of his promotion, he’d be ready to risk that to get a result in this case. Maggie Lorimer might well live to be disappointed but he wasn’t going to let anyone, Chief Constable or otherwise, stand in the way of doing his job.
The tannoy sounded loudly in his ear, breaking the chain of thought. Someone was looking for DI Martin at the front desk. Lorimer frowned. This review didn’t take priority over any new crimes being committed for the officers in Greenock and he could easily lose some of his personnel if something major cropped up.
There was a knock at his door and the cheery face of DC Kate Clark appeared. She tugged ineffectually at the smock top covering her swelling body as she approached Lorimer’s desk.
‘Been a murder, gov,’ she said in her best Taggart voice, mimicking the phrase associated with the long-running TV police drama. Then, sitting down on a chair without being invited, Kate gave a groan. ‘This wee blighter’s been playing football in there all morning.’
Lorimer smiled at her. It was refreshing to have someone like Kate around: for others it might mean the nuisance of the woman being off on maternity leave fairly soon, but it gave Lorimer a sense of normality. Birth and new life was a wholesome contrast to the sort of work they did, often involving violent deaths.
‘Does that mean I’m to lose all of my best officers for today?’
Kate shrugged. ‘DI Martin’s away to the scene just now. An old lady’s been mugged at her own home; or so her neighbour seems to think.’
The woman’s tone gave no indication that she felt anything for the victim. But in this job an officer had to maintain a detachment from the tragedies that occurred each day. Start feeling sore at every crime that came along and you’d end up a basket case, Lorimer remembered one of his lecturers at Tulliallan saying. And it was true. But it hadn’t stopped him having feelings for the victims in his own cases. Feelings of outrage, sometimes; feelings of pity for a life cut short. And shouldn’t there be some heartache for an old person too? Especially one who had been brutally attacked.
Lorimer’s thoughts turned to Maggie’s mum. How would they feel if it had been her?
DI Martin saw that the blood had not been completely washed away by the thunderstorm, though some of it had been watered down by the driving rain.
‘Jean Wilson’s her name, Ma’am,’ the uniform offered. ‘Her son’s on his way over here from his work now.’
‘Okay. Get family liaison on to it, will you,’ Rhoda ordered. ‘And see if the doctor wants a pathologist over here as well.’
There was a small group of people gathered at the foot of the stairs, surrounding the body. Attempts had been made to conserve the scene of the crime and treads had been placed from the entrance of the house through the hallway and kitchen out into the back garden where the victim lay on the concrete slabs. Rhoda Martin seethed inwardly. The Detective Sergeant who was usually the scene of crime manager (and responsible for keeping everything as intact as possible for forensics) was at a funeral, leaving her in charge. It was demeaning, she told herself. She should be the SIO in the case, not the crime scene manager. It was all Lorimer’s fault, taking staff away from them, she decided pettishly. Still, she’d put her name on this one if nobody more senior turned up. And delegate all this stuff to the DS when he came back from the crematorium.
A neighbour had called the police. A woman putting out rubbish in her bin had caught sight of the old lady lying there on the patio. She was back inside her own home now, having tea poured into her by one of the uniforms. Rhoda would have a word with her as soon as she was free here. A large tarpaulin tent was being erected now around the body, the gusting wind threatening to blow the whole thing sideways. Further along the rows of back gardens she could see one or two figures standing, watching the process. Nosy beggars, she thought to herself, wanting to go across and shout at them to mind their own bloody business. They’d be door-stepped soon enough, their fascination with this crime scene tempered by the routine questioning from police officers. At the top of one set of back steps two white-haired women stood, huddling together, their faces turned towards the scene three houses along from them. The gardens were separated by low wooden fences, easily stepped over by neighbours seeking a short cut to visit. Or by someone hoping for a quick getaway, Rhoda thought.
‘Did she fall or was she pushed?’ A voice behind her made Rhoda turn to see DS Wainwright.
‘The pathologist’ll let us know in due course, if we’re to call one out, but it looks to me as if it could just be an accident.’
‘Any reason to think otherwise?’
‘Och, the woman who rang us up said her neighbour had been mugged. The sight of all that blood must’ve made her panic.’
‘Right. But you’re obviously not taking any chances, are you?’ Wainwright’s eyes found Rhoda’s own and she gave him a little smile. They all knew she’d taken too many chances when DCI Ray had been in charge and now it was time to exert a little more caution, especially with Lorimer in the background.
Gary Wilson sat slumped in the chair of his mother’s sitting room. Someone had switched on the electric fire and its artificial coals were glowing in the hearth but even that couldn’t stop the trembling. His hands were round a mug of hot sweet tea and he’d drunk most of it without realising. Now he held onto it as if it were the most precious thing in the whole room. A uniformed policeman had spoken to him on his arrival and later there was this older woman, talking quietly to him and giving him some of the facts of his mother’s sudden death. He’d cried when he’d seen her body; face down on the patio, her legs splayed at an awkward angle, rain soaking through her skirt and tights.
The questions were still coming at him and he only nodded or shook his head, not trusting his voice to speak. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever experienced before. Dad’s death had been a call in the night from the hospital and a quiet bedside farewell with whispering nurses hovering around him, painless and sanitised, not like this.
For a moment the female police officer excused herself and Gary’s eyes wandered over the room. Mum’s coffee table with its lace cover, a new pile of library books, her laptop over there on the desk with some papers to one side. Gary set down the mug on the carpet, his fingers brushing against a hard, leather-covered book. Bending over, he saw what it was. Mum’s diary. It was almost a standing joke that Mum could tell you what the weather had been like years back, since she’d kept her diary for as long as he could remember. Carefully, almost reverently, Gary Wilson lifted the little book and opened it.
There was no entry for February fourteenth. Saint Valentine’s Day, Gary thought with a pang. What a day to die! Now it would be forever associated with Mum’s passing. Drawing the diary towards him, Gary began reading the last entry. Then the one before that. Leaning forward, he skimmed over the pages, his eyes widening as he read his mother’s words.
The family liaison officer came into the sitting room, another mug of tea in her hand. Gary Wilson looked up at her and held the diary aloft.
‘I think someone better have a look at this,’ he told her.
‘She wasn’t a frail old lady,’ Gary Wilson insisted. ‘Ask anyone. She was old, aye, and had rheumatism, but she got around just fine. I don’t think this was an accident,’ he said, his mouth closing in a firm line.
DI Martin sat beside the man, his mother’s diary in her hand. She’d read the entries but she’d also seen other books lying on top of the coffee table. The old lady was into crime, it seemed. The made-up sort. And she was a member of a writers’ workshop. So did these diary entries bear any resemblance to facts or were they, too, a bit of fanciful fiction?
As if reading Rhoda’s thoughts, Gary Wilson turned sideways in his chair to face her. ‘Mum’s diaries were totally factual,’ he said. ‘We always knew what had happened on a day-to-day basis. You could depend on her diary.’ He smiled a little, his eyes looking into the distance as if remembering. ‘If you wanted to know what happened on any given day a couple of years back, Mum’s diaries would tell you. She even kept a note of what we had for Christmas dinner.’
‘So this cyclist…?’
‘Was real,’ Gary told her, his fist thumping the arm of the chair. ‘She made stuff up for the writers’ group, but it was mostly articles she wrote. And sold,’ he added, the tinge of pride unmistakable in his voice. ‘She wouldn’t invent this man, whoever he was.’
DI Martin nodded. It did look as if the old lady had been stalked. The mentions of the cyclist and the old lady’s additional observations were pretty clear. A hooded man, riding so slowly I thought he might fall off that fancy bike of his, Jean Wilson had written. Back again, today, she’d put in another entry. Is he following me??? In all, the cyclist had been mentioned five times, too many for it to have been a mere coincidence, a fact that the victim had also been shrewd enough to set down in her final entry.
‘We’ll certainly follow this up, Mr Wilson,’ DI Martin assured him. ‘But we also have to wait for other evidence like the pathologist’s report and the forensic reports.’
‘They take time to come through, you see,’ the family liaison officer added as gently as she could.
Gary Wilson looked from one woman to the other. Did they believe him when he’d insisted that this was no accident? Or was it just a bit convenient that Mum had been an old lady of eighty-one out on her back steps in a thunderstorm? He shook his head, a cynical expression hardening around his eyes. They weren’t going to bother, were they? All this talk of forensics was just to placate him. Wasn’t it?