Solomon Brightman smiled and sniffed the air. The damp earth bordering the swards of grass smelled rich and pungent. A few saffron-coloured crocuses were growing at the foot of a great chestnut tree, its bare branches waiting for warmer days. A scattering of snowdrops lay against a curve on the grass, a drift of white like the snow so recently melted from the park. It had been a bitter winter, snowfalls throughout the country bringing traffic and commerce to a standstill at times. But now the days were becoming lighter and the spring flowers in the Botanic Gardens would soon brighten the dull greens and browns. Solly watched as one of the gardeners drove an open truck along the pathway; boxes of primulas jigged up and down as the vehicle passed, a dazzle of pink, yellow and purple. By this afternoon the empty beds would be filled with these little plants, another sign that winter was losing its grip.
Solly thought of his conversation with Lorimer. He’d thought of apologising and saying (truthfully) that he was too busy with work to manage any extra commitments. But, listening to the man he knew so well, the psychologist had made his decision. Lorimer needed help and he could tell from the inflection in his voice that the detective was under considerable strain. Maggie’s mum was never mentioned but she was there all the same, an anxiety hovering in the background.
The frown furrowing his brow made the psychologist suddenly sombre. Three elderly ladies had come to grief on their own back doorsteps. Doorsteps that began at the top of a steep flight of stairs above a concrete patio. Pushed to their death. By whom? He would visit the scenes of the crimes with a uniformed officer from Greenock, he had told Lorimer. Then he’d just have to see what came of it after that. It wasn’t that he was being deliberately vague, Solly told himself, remembering the acerbic tone in his friend’s voice after a lengthy pause in their conversation. But he had to have ideas of the locations in his head before he could begin to see the picture of the crimes as a whole.
There were no lectures this afternoon so he would take a train from Central Station down to Greenock, a journey he had rarely made since his arrival in Glasgow so many years before. It was a terminal for ocean-going liners and car ferries, Rosie had told him; one of the older towns strung like beads along the Clyde coast.
Terminal. It was a word that meant the end of things, wasn’t it? But, perhaps in this case, it might also signify a beginning.
After the train had pulled out of Saint James’s station, the urban landscape began to give way to green fields and the hint of a countryside that was emerging from its long winter’s sleep. As Solly let his gaze sweep across the view from the window he saw flocks of wood pigeons, a few ducks in a stream and even caught a glimpse of a pair of hinds feeding quietly. Bishopton was the first rural village on the line, then Langbank where the view suddenly changed and the Clyde was there and Dumbarton Castle on the far side, its massive rock towering above. He could see the hills and mountains but what their names were he didn’t know. Was that Ben Lomond with snow still on its peak? Solly wasn’t certain about the geography of this area and resolved to look up a map on his return home.
Maps meant a great deal to the psychologist and it was one of the integral parts of his job as occasional criminal profiler. Mapping murder had been seen as a vital part of the search for serial killers by Professor David Canter from the University of Liverpool and now every behavioural psychologist worth their salt took a serious look at the pathways and routes surrounding crime scenes. The three deaths in Port Glasgow were fairly close together but that didn’t mean he would ignore the way they were grouped on a map of the area. On the contrary, Solly expected their location to give him some insight into the mindset of the killer.
If Dr Solomon Brightman was surprised to be met by a uniformed officer instead of DI Martin he didn’t show it.
‘PC Reid.’ The man nodded towards the psychologist and led the way to a waiting police car. ‘I’ve to take you to the houses, sir,’ the officer added, opening the back door for Solly as though he were a passenger in a taxi or, worse, a felon being taken into custody.
‘I’ll sit up front, if that’s all right, officer,’ Solly murmured, wishing for a moment that he had not agreed so readily to Lorimer’s request.
At last the car left the main thoroughfare and headed uphill away from the coast.
‘Take a wee look down there, sir. Grand view, eh?’ the officer said and Solly could hear the hint of pride in his voice.
It was indeed a grand view, the hilltop affording a vista of the widening river below and the hills beyond. He would return here one day with Rosie, once she had bought another car. In summer, perhaps, when that expanse of blue might be dotted with small boats seeking a wind to fill their sails.
Then it was gone, the road turning away from the view and curving into a street that led to a mass of houses clinging to the hillside. Upper Port Glasgow was a twentieth-century attempt to create a dormitory town in the windy spaces above the conglomerations of Gourock, Greenock and Port Glasgow, towns running together along the coastline. It seemed, to Solly, as if some giant hand had plucked the estates straight from one of the Glasgow housing schemes and thrust it down here. It was like a last urban outpost before the wilderness of field and moor staked its claim on the land.
‘Here we are, sir. DI Martin asked me to take you to each of the locations in order,’ Reid told him, drawing the car up in a small parking bay in a cul de sac surrounded by modest rows of terraced houses. Solly nodded, his mind already on the residents of this place. These women had lived here for decades, raising families, making lives for themselves. According to his notes, they had all lived in substantial houses, big enough for the average family. Old age and the strictures of living on pensions hadn’t deterred them from wanting to keep their homes. So there was something about the area that made them want to remain. Good neighbours, perhaps? A settled feeling with all the attendant memories that meant home to them, maybe? Or had this become a little village on its own over the years? Those, and other questions, were to the forefront of Solly’s mind as the police officer led him to the first house.
It was a plain pebble-dashed grey, fairly featureless to Solly’s eye, with the look of a property that had been abandoned.
‘She died on Boxing Day,’ Reid informed him.
Solly’s lips parted but no words came. How could he begin to tell this policeman that he had spent the happiest hours of his entire life on the selfsame day that an old lady had been murdered? Clenching then unclenching his fists, the psychologist followed the officer towards the high fence surrounding the terraced houses.
Solly stopped just outside the back gate. It was the end of a row of four identical homes, though he supposed that the small patches of garden and different curtains at the windows did disturb the dreary uniformity. He turned to look at the path around the house. Easy access from the main road to this end terrace and a blank gable wall from the house opposite made the psychologist nod his head as if to agree with some earlier supposition. If he was correct, then the killer had chosen the location as much as the victim herself.
Standing on the paving stones below the back door, Solly could all too easily imagine the body that had plummeted to the ground. The stairs were set at an angle to the rear entrance so that someone coming out of the house would have had to take a couple of paces forwards on to the large top step and turn around before making their descent. The metal handrail followed the line of the stairs, Solly noticed, and there was a white grab rail outside the door. A faltering pensioner might well be unsteady on their legs for a moment or two until their hand reached out, clutching. And the stairs were certainly wide enough for more than one person. Had she known her assailant, then? Whoever had pushed the old woman down that flight of stairs must have come right up to the top; and used considerable force to shake the poor old soul’s hand away from her rail. Solly shook his head, wondering. The viciousness of that act alarmed him. A woman might have done something like that, he’d told Rosie, but standing here, the wind blowing scraps of dead leaves around his feet, Solly was no longer certain of the theory he had so glibly suggested.
By the time they had reached Freda Gilmour’s home, Solly had formed a few ideas about the person who had carried out these acts. All three of the houses were situated at the end of a row of terraces. The houses ran in blocks of four, separated by small lanes running between them. But the homes of the victims had not simply been on one of these corners, but at the very end of the rows. There was no street lighting right outside the main doors or back doors, nor did any of the neighbouring houses look directly into the gardens. It had been, Solly realised, the subject of careful planning on the part of someone who either knew the area very well indeed (and possibly lived in the estate) or who had carried out a detailed reconnaissance whilst under the guise of someone who would not be noticed, like a regular delivery man.
The estate itself was built into the hillside and several of the terraces were designed as split-level homes, their back gardens running steeply downwards to the ribbons of pathways. All three victims had lived in such homes, the stairs from their back doors ending in a few concrete slabs masquerading as patios.
‘Do you mind if I walk around here a bit on my own? Less conspicuous, perhaps?’ He smiled at the officer who merely shrugged and stepped back into the warmth of his patrol car. If this bearded, rather exotic-looking psychologist thought he was inconspicuous then he was daft, the gesture seemed to say.
Solly wanted to walk around the areas away from the victims’ houses in order to see what differences there might be. He noticed that many of the terraces were on flatter ground, paths pitted by years of wear and tear, plastic bags like pale white bats clinging to the hedgerows. Some of these paths were as accessible to a cyclist as the others, but with the difference that there were no steep flights of stairs descending to the gardens below.
Solly stopped abruptly. What were the chances of there being other similar locations on this estate? There was a sudden churning in his stomach. He had to know. Had to stop it happening again.
‘Can you drive around all the streets, please, officer?’ Solly asked, opening the car door and stepping into the patrol vehicle once more.
PC Reid stifled a sigh. His orders were to accommodate this odd chap from Glasgow University, this beardy weirdy as his wife would have called him, so that’s what he would do, even if he thought privately that it was a bloody waste of police time.
DI Rhoda Martin had quite a different opinion of Doctor Solomon Brightman as she ushered him into the small room reserved for visitors. His quiet air of authority might have impressed the detective, but her thoughts on the psychologist had come from personal experience.
‘I don’t suppose you remember me,’ she began, sitting down opposite Solly. ‘I took your class in my first year at uni.’
Solly smiled and shook his head. ‘Sorry.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of apology. ‘There are so many students. And my memory’s awful,’ he added with a twinkle that made Rhoda Martin doubt the truth of this last statement. Still, perhaps it was better not to be remembered as an average student who should have performed so much better than she had. A lower second had been okay but hadn’t set the heather on fire, nor had it been something about which her parents could boast to all their friends at the golf club.
‘This case,’ she began, twisting her fingers together on her lap, ‘do you really think you might be able to shed some light on it?’
Solly nodded, looking intently at the officer. His eyes seemed to bore straight through the blonde detective and she found herself blushing. There was a silence between them that she found a little uncomfortable; those kind brown eyes and that smile that seemed to tell her that he knew her very thoughts. Rhoda shivered. If he did..?
‘The person who perpetrated these awful acts must be stopped, Inspector,’ Solly said at last.
Rhoda frowned. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘I mean just that. Someone has killed three elderly ladies for a reason unknown to us, but from what I have seen I am afraid…’ he tailed off, making a gesture with his hands in the air as if Rhoda should be able to finish his sentence for him, but her frown was rapidly becoming a scowl.
‘You see,’ he went on after another long pause, ‘the method of killing was rather simple once your killer had done his homework.’ It was Solly’s turn to frown now. ‘I say his advisedly, of course. It may well have been carried out by a woman. My current line of study is into acts of violence by what we call the fairer sex.’ The hands spread again as if he were apologising for such a statement.
Rhoda was beginning to remember such gestures and also how much they had irritated her throughout her undergraduate year of studying psychology. But this man was giving up his time to help them so she should at least show some polite interest.
‘So, any ideas?’
Solly nodded, his face becoming quite grave. ‘Sadly, yes. I think you have a very dangerous type of person in your area, Inspector Martin. Very dangerous indeed. In fact,’ the psychologist bit his lip as if to prevent the words coming out, ‘I would go so far as to say that, unless there was something material to be gained by killing these women, this person has killed simply because he could.’
Rhoda’s eyes widened. ‘You’re telling me there’s a psychopath on the loose?’
Solly neither nodded nor shook his head but continued to gaze into the detective’s eyes so that she looked away.
‘I can’t believe that,’ she said. ‘There must be something that links these three deaths,’ she continued, almost to herself. ‘Surely?’ she added, turning to face the psychologist again.
‘That’s for the police to investigate, of course.’ Solly nodded. ‘But I believe that whoever did this had selected these homes on the basis of their accessibility as well as for the frailty of their occupants.’
‘You mean he didn’t even know who the women were?’ Martin’s response failed to hide the scornful tone in her voice.
‘Oh, he would know them after a while. At least in terms of their day-to-day habits and when he might find them in alone at night.’
‘So,’ she spoke more carefully again, not wishing to appear discourteous, ‘he stalked them for a while before deciding to push them off the steps to their deaths?’
‘I imagine that will have been his procedure, yes,’ Solomon answered a trifle stiffly. ‘But I must warn you, Inspector, this might still be part of an ongoing pattern.’
Rhoda Martin frowned, head to one side, considering the psychologist’s line of thought.
‘You see, I have looked all around the area and there are still some houses that resemble those of the victims.’
‘What do you mean?’ Rhoda looked puzzled.
‘I mean,’ Solly said with the sort of sigh one might reserve for a small child who has failed to grasp something elementary, ‘that the conditions the killer would be looking for still exist on that estate. And if certain houses are inhabited by vulnerable elderly folk, then.. who knows?’
Rhoda Martin gave a wintry smile. Yes, her expression seemed to say, she’d be polite to this man, the lecturer whom she had once held in such high regard. But now she was the authority figure and he was simply a civilian whose theories, she was sure, would be laughed at in a court of law.
‘Well, thank you for all of that, Dr Brightman. It was very good of you to take the time to come down and help us,’ she said in the sweet tones she usually reserved for men that she fancied. ‘Can I offer you some coffee before your journey back to Glasgow?’
Solomon Brightman was not the type of man to harbour any animosity. In fact the detective’s attitude amused rather than insulted him. He’d done a favour for Lorimer and now that favour meant he could face his friend and give him his opinion on the case. That DI Martin was in charge of it was neither here nor there. Lorimer was down at Greenock and surely he could bring some influence to bear on the triple killing? Sitting on the train, watching flocks of white gulls bobbing past on the currents of the river, Solly smiled to himself. He was enough of a psychologist to understand what had happened back there. A specialist being paid a hefty fee would have attracted much more respect and probably had his views taken a lot more seriously. It was human nature, after all, to value what you had paid for. Still, he hoped the idea he had planted into that young woman’s head would result in the housing estate being included in any routine police patrol.
Failure to do that might well result in one more old lady falling to her death.