‘ Hello? Mr Lorimer? It’s Serena Jackson here. You asked me to call you.’
Lorimer’s voicemail recorded the woman’s husky tones then there was a pause before a click sounded, cutting the connection to the line in the detective’s empty room.
Lorimer was on his way home. Greenock could bloody well wait for his services for the rest of today. Being with Maggie was far more important than tyre treads or exploring some tenuous links between two different murder cases. The Lexus sped along the outside lane, the river to the left sparkling in the midday sunlight. But for once the detective was oblivious to the landscape around him, focusing only on the road ahead and what was waiting for him at home. There was only so much he could achieve from a distance. The south side force had put everything they could into motion and he’d been relieved to hear the report of what was happening. He glanced at his mobile phone slotted into its cradle. At the first ring he’d be able to click it into life and listen. Okay, so he could have done just that from K Division but right now he needed to be with Maggie.
DS Wainwright was officially in charge of things down in Greenock today. At least until Martin deigned to turn up for duty. He’d not shown much sympathy when Lorimer had decided to cut and run. Wish I could make my mother-in-law disappear, he’d said. But the joke had fallen flat and he didn’t want to think about what the officer had made of his responding scowl. He thought instead of the blonde woman, her moods vaccilating between over-friendliness and cool disdain. She was an odd one, right enough. With her privileged background and expensive education, she was not the average sort of entrant to the police force. But, he reasoned, such a person was surely all the more welcome into the Force. They needed a police service that reflected a good social mix. His thoughts drifted to the Chief Constable. He’d become a resident of Kilmacolm, too. And was highly regarded amongst his very wealthy neighbours. Isherwood had been quite defensive about his home village, hadn’t he? Warning off DCI Ray in the way he had and giving Lorimer that flea in his ear as well.
As the road took him towards Glasgow, Lorimer realised that he had absolutely no qualms about walking out on the situation in Greenock. They could demote him for all he cared. Everything else about this peculiar Monday was put to the back of his mind as he concentrated on what was happening in his own house in that quiet little residential street.
‘Solly? Have you time to talk right now?’
The psychologist heard the catch in Maggie Lorimer’s voice and listened as his friend poured out her story. She could not see the grave expression on his face or the way he nodded as she related the events of the morning.
‘Solly, I think someone’s taken her,’ Maggie was sobbing now and he felt an overwhelming pity for the woman. ‘I think she’s been abducted.’
Even as he tried to calm her down with soothing platitudes, Solly’s thoughts were racing.
Was this related to Lorimer’s involvement in one of those cases down in Inverclyde? As he took in all that Maggie was telling him about Mrs Finlay’s disappearance and what the police had already carried out in the hours since she had left the house, Solly began to wonder. Was this directed at William Lorimer, the senior investigating officer? Could it be a diversionary tactic to keep him from penetrating deeper into the murders? Or was it something more personal?
There was something wrong here, he told himself, something very wrong. And with a deep sense of foreboding, Dr Brightman realised that if Maggie’s mother had indeed been abducted then it was very much in keeping with the sort of person whose profile was emerging in his own mind.
As he put down the phone, the psychologist stroked his beard thoughtfully. Should he doubt his instincts? Or was he so currently obsessed by his research into female serial killers that his feelings were being warped? Poison was a woman’s weapon of choice, so said the old adage, but that was simply a way of expressing a deeper truth. Women were less inclined to be hands-on killers, preferring their victims to die off-scene, as it were. Like burning people to death in a fire. Or pushing old women down a flight of stone stairs.
Try as he might, Solly Brightman was more than ever convinced that there was a woman behind those killings in Kilmacolm and Port Glasgow. And that this same person might have inveigled their way into the Lorimers’ home. After all, Mrs Finlay might be far less suspicious of a woman coming to the door. Hadn’t she been expecting a health professional, most probably a female? It would be too easy, Solly thought to himself. Too easy by far.
Lifting the telephone again, he dialled Lorimer’s mobile number.
He was almost at Eastwood roundabout when the phone rang.
‘Lorimer.’ Surely it would be news of Alice?
But it was Solly’s English tones that came over the airwaves, not an officer from Glasgow, not Maggie with the words he was longing to hear.
‘I heard about your mother-in-law,’ Solly told him. ‘It’s a terrible thing to have happened.’
‘Christ knows what’s going on,’ Lorimer told him. ‘It’s been a hell of a morning as well. My DC gave birth this morning, earlier than she expected, poor girl. And DI Martin’s not turned up for her shift. Nobody seems to know where the hell she is,’ he added, venting his pent-up anger at the psychologist. ‘Goes out to a posh party at the Jackson woman’s house and then doesn’t show her face come Monday morning.’
There was the customary pause in the conversation that Lorimer was well used to and he had almost forgotten that Solly was on the line when the question was asked.
‘Is your DI Martin a cyclist by any chance?’
‘Yes, she is. Training for that charity race next weekend. The whole bloody world seems to be on their bikes right now. Hugh Tannock’s a member of a cycle club and so are the Jacksons; Serena and Daniel. Too many of them. It’s muddying the waters, if you want to know the truth.’
Solly felt a sudden chill that was nothing to do with Lorimer’s obvious anxiety. All his fears seem to have become crystallised into one dreadful pattern.
Even as he asked Lorimer to keep him informed about Alice Finlay, he was recalling his wife’s descriptions of the two young women, the police officer and the girl whose parents had perished so horribly in that fire.
And he knew now which one he would identify as a killer.
Strathclyde traffic police had their work cut out for them this Monday. CCTV footage from the area nearest the Lorimers’ residence showed the times of hundreds of vehicles passing each way along the main road and it was a task that took the utmost concentration to log them all, identify their registration numbers and look up the vehicles’ owners on the computer. Names were now emerging from all of that data, and one in particular made an officer lift the telephone to call his superior.
‘Bit odd, don’t you think?’ he asked. ‘Should we make anything of it?’
There was a short silence before the reply came. ‘Lorimer will want to know. And, yes, check it out. Have a look to see if there was a passenger visible on the footage, will you?’
The senior officer frowned, puzzled by the message. The black Golf GTI was registered in the name of Rhoda Martin, an officer from K Division who was on Lorimer’s team. But the Detective Superintendent had let it slip that DI Martin hadn’t turned up for duty this morning. Something very odd was going on. And Lorimer ought to be told right away.
Chancer sprang to the floor and trotted over to Lorimer giving a small miaow of welcome. For once the orange cat was ignored as Maggie hurled herself into her husband’s arms and began to sob.
‘It’s all right,’ he soothed, stroking her long dark hair. ‘It’s all right. We’ll find her. I know we will.’
Behind them the family liaison officer lifted a two-way radio to her lips, affirming the message she had just scribbled down in her notebook.
‘Superintendent, that was traffic. They’ve spotted something,’ the woman began.
‘Mum? Have they found my mum?’ Maggie broke away from her husband, hope filling her pale face. Flynn emerged from the kitchen, his expression equally anxious.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Lorimer. There’s no definite sighting of her yet,’ the woman replied. ‘But there was a vehicle seen in the vicinity that belongs to one of your officers, sir,’ the policewoman continued. ‘At approximately nine-thirty-five a black Golf GTI entered the main road from the junction along from here and headed towards town. It’s registered to…’ she squinted at her own handwriting, ‘a Miss Rhoda Jane Martin. One of yours,’ she added.
‘Was she alone?’
‘Traffic’s still trying to confirm that, sir. The footage might not be adequate to tell us if there was a passenger beside her.’
Lorimer nodded, his mind in a whirl. The car would have to make a right-hand turn against the flow of traffic at that particular junction and the camera might not see anyone but the driver. But Rhoda Martin? What the hell had she been doing at his house?
Suddenly all the thoughts about the case down in Inverclyde became sickeningly clear. Colin Ray’s case had been stymied from the outset and he’d always had a feeling that DI Martin had been instrumental in that. Add that to the fact that Rhoda Martin was a cyclist. Who lived near Kilmacolm. And hadn’t she’d been going to and from the police station on those practice runs? Easy enough to take little trips up to Port Glasgow, follow vulnerable old ladies. But this was madness! Why on earth would a police officer turn killer?
But even as he tried to dismiss the thought, Lorimer felt a cold hand on his heart. Rhoda Martin was a tall, strong young woman but was she capable of such acts of violence? And she had known the Jackson family for years. Was there something in her background that might give a clue to a motive for murder? Or was she one of those women Solly had been describing to them: a person who could change from being a seemingly upright citizen to one who had no qualms about killing in cold blood? Lorimer bit his knuckled fist. Surely the psychologist couldn’t have profiled someone like that?
Yet, hadn’t he been considering the woman’s strange mood swings only this morning?
‘Get on to Greenock,’ he told the woman. ‘Tell them to head for Martin’s home. Now!’
Maggie looked from the grim-faced policewoman to her husband, her mouth parted in a moment of incomprehension. Something was happening, something only the police could control. Maggie wanted to weep anew; it was her mother who was missing but she felt like an outsider, trapped within a dark and fearful place.
Lorimer’s BlackBerry gave the tone that told him a message was waiting. He flicked the button to hear it and Serena Jackson’s voice came through. For a moment he wondered what to do, torn between a desire to rush off down to wherever Rhoda Martin lived or to stay here with Maggie and wait. And yet… the Jackson woman might be able to tell him where Martin had gone after that party. Pressing the reply button, Lorimer waited until he heard the same recorded message for a second time that day. He cursed under his breath. Still, it wasn’t Serena Jackson’s fault that she was out more than once in a day. She’d have no earthly idea that they were desperately trying to track down her old school friend, after all.
‘Don’t go,’ Maggie pleaded, sensing her husband’s sudden restlessness. ‘Please stay with me.’
Across the room, Lorimer caught Flynn’s eye; the young man’s eyebrows were raised in a question. If he did have to go, then the lad would stay on here, his expression seemed to be saying. Lorimer nodded at him briefly before gathering Maggie into his arms once more.