Long before a squad car arrived to investigate Mario Bernardini's call, the hit man had driven for several miles, seeking somewhere safe on the margins of the city. The bright lights of the cinema made him glance up briefly, letting him catch a glimpse of a neon Marilyn, her white skirts fluttering in a permanent arc above the parking bays. Maybe a nosey around there would help to establish an alibi, should he require one? A discarded ticket was easy enough to find. It was no more than a passing thought. Nobody was going to associate him with the carnage he'd left behind in Brogan's flat. The Travel Inn loomed closer and he turned the car into its dimly lit forecourt. It was one more anonymous place to rest his head. A place where nobody would see anything other than one more stranger passing through.
Detective Chief Inspector Lorimer stood by the bay window, looking down into the busy Glasgow street. Normality reigned here with cars, taxis and trucks moving slowly between sets of traffic lights, their collective aim to arrive at a destination before the nine a.m. cut off. However, the vehicles parked below and the lines of blue and white tape were making things more difficult for the steady stream and the policeman could imagine the swearing and dirty looks that were being directed towards this particular tenement.
The entire flat was being picked over by scene of crime officers, a horrible task given the state of the place. Had the killer ransacked Brogan's home before shooting these two men? Flashes of light behind him made him turn away from the view The photographers were taking pictures of the scene of crime, particularly the two corpses lying in the middle of the hall, before the on duty pathologist arrived. A shotgun lying near the bodies had also attracted their attention; it was not the murder weapon, though, Lorimer knew. Those neat holes through the heads of each man had been made by something like an automatic pistol. Sadly such types of gun were all too easily available nowadays, the market from eastern Europe having flooded the country with a variety of ex-military hardware. Once ballistics had identified the bullet they could begin to build up a picture of the assailant, but meanwhile the policeman had to content himself with finding out what he could from the drug dealer's flat. At least this time they had found the cartridge cases, something that would help to pinpoint what kind of weapon had been used.
For the moment Lorimer was keeping out of the way, not just to avoid any contamination of the scene but also to have a closer look at Brogan's home. A man could disguise himself, wear clothes to try and hide his real personality, but one of the things that gave him away was his own personal space. So often Lorimer drew knowledge about a person from the way that he lived.
It was a big flat for one person. Three bedrooms lay off the long narrow hallway, two with single beds that were now turned on their sides. There had been no bedclothes in either of the smaller rooms and one of them was full of empty cardboard cartons, their lids turned neatly in as if someone had stacked them like nesting boxes before the rampage had begun and they had been tossed around. But it was such small details that Lorimer had learned to see; did it indicate that Brogan was a methodical sort of fellow?
It was going to be a tough job to read these surroundings, given the mess in most of the rooms. Only the bathroom seemed to have avoided the onslaught of an enraged punter. Was that it? Had Brogan's flat been targeted by one of his customers? The man was a known drug dealer, one that had slipped and slithered out of the reach of Strathclyde CID for far too long. But his name and those of his associates was certainly on their files.
Lorimer's eyes roamed over the bright room that overlooked the west end of Argyle Street. Narrow twin shelves above the massive plasma television looked as though they had been built to hold compact discs; the charcoal-coloured carpet beneath them was now littered with dozens of broken plastic boxes. In his mind's eye Lorimer saw angry feet stamping on them, destroying things that might have given Brogan some pleasure. With one gloved hand, he picked up the cases. Brogan's taste was mainly for hard rock music but Lorimer did raise an approving eyebrow at a boxed set of Rolling Stones Greatest Hits and a David Bowie reissue.
The films were a mixture of horror and soft porn but there was one copy of Lost in Austen, still in its original wrapping. A gift for a girlfriend, maybe? If so, its choice showed a more thoughtful side to the owner of this flat. And who was the intended recipient?
Lorimer wondered.
As he looked around he saw a bronze-coloured sculpture that was supposed to represent grasses blowing in the wind. It had been partly wrenched off the cream painted wall and was swinging loose, a pathetic piece of junk now rather than an attempt at modern art.
Had Brogan fancied himself as a Mr Big? His taste in decor was reasonably muted; a dark carpet with matching grey tweed curtains (that had been professionally lined) against clean cream walls. The red leather settee was the only brash colour in the room. It looked as if it had been expensive, Lorimer thought, eyeing the slashes made by someone's spiteful knife, and for a moment he wondered if drug dealers bothered to insure their possessions.
Voices outside indicated the arrival of a newcomer, but before he left the room, Lorimer walked carefully around the debris, seeking something more personal. So far he had little clue as to how Brogan had lived, other than his penchant for rock music and tacky films. And a woman somewhere, he thought, remembering that brand new DVD.
He found it in one corner under a pile of scattered magazines, shards of glass sticking out from the splayed pages of FHM and GQ. A framed picture of a woman, smiling back at the camera. She was in her late twenties, perhaps, with a distinctive sort of pallor, her alabaster skin tone reminding him of some of the PreRaphaelite paintings. That long red hair cascading down upon one bare shoulder might have come from any era. But the background to the picture was entirely modern and Lorimer recognised the building at once: it was the library of Glasgow University, a place he had frequented during his time as a student. Dusting away the remaining fragments of glass, he let his finger linger on the glossy photograph. 'Who are you?' he whispered softly.
'Probably between nine and midnight,' a familiar voice intoned, making Lorimer straighten up, pocket the photograph and step into the hallway once more. The white-suited figure crouching beside the bodies paid him no attention, looking instead at her colleague who was busily taking notes.
'Never one to give us an exact time of death,' he said, shaking his head in mock despair as he noticed DC Fathy who was evidently absorbed in the pathologist's examination.
'Sir,' Fathy said, straightening up and looking guiltily at his senior investigating officer.
'It's all right, Fathy. Watching this one will teach you plenty,' he chuckled.
'That you, Lorimer?' Rosie turned her head a fraction, trying not to overbalance.
'Aye, and shouldn't you be the note taker these days?' he answered, smiling at the woman below him whose figure was now quite altered by her pregnancy. `Och, just this last one… well two… then I'll leave the nasty stuff to the rest of them,' Rosie replied.
'Dedication to duty,' Lorimer explained to Fathy in a loud whisper behind his hand that Doctor Rosie Fergusson was meant to hear.
Any idea when the PMs will be done?'
'Well, seeing this is the first murder since your pal Kenneth Scott, we might just be able to fit them in today. That all right for you?' Rosie asked waspishly.
DC Fathy looked from one to the other, mystified by the bantering between his SIO and the consultant pathologist.
'No worries, son, Rosie and me, we're old pals,' Lorimer explained. 'She just likes to give me a hard time of it.'
'Aye, and that's because you want everything done yesterday,'
Rosie shot back. 'Right, give me a hand up, that's us all done for now.'
Lorimer reached down and helped the pathologist to her feet, allowing the detective constable to see a fresh faced woman with curly blonde hair escaping from her white hood. Despite the voluminous overalls, Rosie's pregnancy was evident for all to see and Fathy noticed her eyes crinkle in a friendly smile as she regarded his boss. For a petite and pretty young woman like this to be involved in something as harsh as the examination and dissection of dead bodies was a novelty to the detective constable, whose experience of such folk had so far been limited to much older and much less attractive practitioners.
It was well after noon when the team reassembled at divisional headquarters. The rain that had earlier washed the streets had eventually disappeared in a haze of rainbow colours and now a glaring sun was shining through the dusty windows.
'The car's registered in the name of Fraser Sandiman,' Irvine told the officers assembled in the muster room. `Ah, dear old Fraz, wondered what kind of a sticky end he'd come to,' murmured DS Wilson. 'Known drug dealer,' he added for DC Fathy's benefit, giving the young man a wink.
There was a murmur amongst the other officers, some of whom were only now being brought up to speed on the latest murder case. Stuff like this happened not infrequently within the Strathclyde area. Drug dealers falling out, men gunned down for reasons that only became partly known, if ever, in a court of law.
'Galbraith was identified from his credit cards and Brogan's not been seen in his flat for a wee while, according to the neighbour who called us,' Irvine continued, her voice rising above the noise.
'His place was really trashed when we saw it this morning,' DC Fathy put in. 'Someone doesn't like Mr Brogan very much.'
Naw, son, he's no very well liked by a lot of folk,' Wilson explained as a ripple of laughter rang out, leaving the young officer red faced.
'Okay,' Lorimer raised a hand and immediately all talk ceased as they turned to look at the senior investigating officer. 'The post-mortems have still to take place but our initial impression is of a professional who knew what he was doing all right. There was a shotgun inside the flat, registered to Sandiman, and I believe we will find that victim's prints on it.'
The word victim served to remind the officers that, yes, these were Glasgow dealers who may have made hundreds of lives miserable through the supply of drugs, but they were still citizens whose murders deserved to be investigated. Some mother's son, DS Wilson was fond of saying, whenever a fellow officer became cynical about such deaths.
'The injuries to their chests and heads suggest a marksman, maybe a trained sniper. So one immediate line of investigation has to be into any known associates of the deceased who are or were regular army. Alistair, you knew Sandiman from the past, can you take on this action?' Lorimer nodded to DS Wilson. 'We've still to get the ballistics report as well as other forensics from the scene of crime, but until then it's a case of asking questions of neighbours like Bernardini, local shopkeepers and,' he fixed Irvine and Fathy with a stern eye, 'relatives of the deceased.'
Annie Irvine swallowed. This was becoming a habit. She was accustomed to being picked for this sort of action: dealing with the victims' families fell to a female officer all too often. You've got that sympathetic touch, she'd been told. But this was a little different from giving bad news to the relatives of an accident victim.
Sandiman and Galbraith's families might well be a tough lot, not easy to handle.
'What about Brogan?' someone asked.
Lorimer's face creased in a grim smile. 'Finding Billy Brogan is our top priority. It's looking likely that he's the man who can answer all of our questions. Billy's ex-army remember,' he added, raising one eyebrow suggestively. 'There's plenty of reasons for thinking he could have been the one behind these deaths.
Something tells me he's in for more trouble than a fight with his insurance company.'
Marianne spread out the books on her bed. She had enough to keep her busy until the beginning of the new term. One by one she lifted the volumes, reading the back covers where the various psychologists had been given their accreditations by the marketing departments of different publishers. Some were written in a more academic style than others. The last book she looked at was the one she wanted to read most. A slim black volume with the author's name picked out in silver: Doctor Solomon Brightman.
The woman smiled. The psychologist would never know just how much he had turned her life around, would he?
When the phone rang she paused before rising to answer it, almost as if she had an instinct of bad news. Marianne's stomach lurched. Something had happened to Billy!
But when she lifted the handset and said hello, the voice on the other end was not that of her brother at all.
'Yes?' she asked, leaning back on the bed.
'Still no sign of my pal Billy,' the voice said ruefully. 'And here I am all on my lonesome, no one to hang out with. Thought we could at least have a pint in that place he likes so much, what's it called? The Scotia?'
Marianne suppressed a laugh. If that wasn't an invitation to meet up, then she didn't know what was. 'Well…' she began, then paused, listening. The woman frowned, sitting up suddenly.
He was waiting for her to make a mistake, she thought, her intuition sharpened by the intensity of the silence between them.
'I don't know where he is,' she said at last then added, 'sorry,' before ringing off.
She stared at the telephone in her hand. What was wrong with her? The guy seemed okay. Knew Billy's regular bar, as well. Was every approach from a stranger going to make her turn and run like a frightened rabbit?
Amit had been a stranger once, she thought. But then Billy had arranged that for her too and now she felt perfectly safe with the man from Lahore.
Billy. Where was he? And why was this innocent call from one of his old army mates making her so nervous?
Marianne looked at the telephone thoughtfully, deciding to store that number so she could call him back whenever she wanted. If she wanted, the voice of caution reminded her. She gave a sigh and rolled onto her back. She was tired of this constant running, moving from place to place. Surely now she could find somewhere to settle down for good?
Her dreams were changing after all and there was no longer any darkness taking her down into the place from which she could never escape.