"I'm worried,' Solly said, turning away from the window, the brightness from the setting sun's last rays making him blink owlishly behind his horn-rimmed spectacles.
'It's that girl, Marianne, isn't it?' asked Rosie, shifting her position on the easy chair. Despite the cushions wedged at her back the discomfort from the Braxton Hicks had continued all afternoon.
Her mouth twisted in a small grimace; nobody told you about the minutiae of pregnancy, did they? Until you read up on the baby manuals, it was all a bit of a mystery, even for a qualified medic like herself.
Solly stood with his back to the window, his face now in shadow. Sometimes, Rosie thought, he was too concerned about the frailties of human suffering for his own good. She smiled at him, a sudden tenderness welling up inside her. He was so generous and kind to her, caring for her every need. And he'd be a splendid father – anyone could see that. She reached out a hand and Solly came over to where she sat, cuddling in at her side, his fingers lacing in her own.
'I keep wondering if it was something I did. Or said,' he murmured.
'What d'you mean?' Rosie asked.
'She said she was grateful to me… no… what were her exact words?' Solly broke off, frowning. A minute passed then his brow cleared and he sat up, his eyes bright. He turned to Rosie, and as he spoke she could hear the edge of excitement in his voice.
'She said she had a lot to thank me for. That was it!' he beamed, wagging his head. 'I thought she meant that I'd been a good teacher, or something like that. But there was… how can I put it? So much more. It was as though she was saying that I had helped her personally.' He stopped, a faint expression of embarrassment on his face. 'That sounds rather egotistical, doesn't it?'
'Go on,' Rosie urged. 'If you don't probe more deeply into this encounter you'll never arrive at the truth.'
Solly smiled at her fondly. His wife's words were an echo of what he himself had said on many occasions and hearing them coming back was an affirmation of just how close they had become as husband and wife.
'I remember Marianne as a faded, sad sort of young woman. So much so, that I hardly recognised her in the bookshop. She was…' he tailed off, trying again for the right word to describe the memory in his mind's eye. 'She was so alive,' he said at last. 'It was as though something wonderful had happened to change her from that nervy creature who sat through my seminars last session into a lovely, confident young woman.'
Vas it just an emotional change or was there something different about her appearance?' Rosie asked.
'Her hair,' Solly said simply. 'She has long red hair and it used to be scrunched up in a tight knot as if she didn't care about how she looked,' he said slowly. 'But that day it was loose and flowing, like some Pre-Raphaelite figure. Even her clothes had more colour,' he murmured, remembering.
'Sounds like she'd found a man,' Rosie laughed. 'Love does that to a woman, you know,' she said, snuggling closer to Solly's side.
'But was not that man,' Solly said. And she told me she had a lot to thank me for..
'Didn't you lecture on love, maybe?' Rosie asked.
'Yes, the usual one I trot out on St Valentine's day,' Solly replied. 'But she was such a mouse-like creature all the way through the session. I don't think it could have been that.'
'What, then?' Rosie asked.
'I don't know,' Solly said slowly, 'but I'm determined to find out.' He looked at his wife who was beginning to yawn.
'Come on,' he said gently. 'Bed time for you. That child of ours is taking its toll tonight, isn't he?'
Marianne rolled over onto her side, listening. Max was breathing deeply and she watched him sleeping as his chest rose and fell.
The faint veining on his eyelids began to flicker and Marianne could tell he was dreaming. Rapid eye movement, she thought, remembering Doctor Brightman's lectures. What was her lover dreaming about? Was it something from his past? Or simply a collage of the day's events? She smiled, thinking about their day away from the city. Max had told her his business could take a rest for a few days and that he needed a holiday, but Marianne suspected that he simply wanted to be with her.
Yesterday they had stood on deck as the ferry crossed from Wemyss Bay to the Isle of Bute, wind blowing her hair into a tangle until Max had told her she was a wild woman. He had drawn her closer to his side, murmuring that he liked wild women. Her heart had beaten faster at that and Marianne had felt such a sense of abandonment and freedom as she had never known before. This man would take her away from all the things that held her to the city, just like this ship sailing to the misty island. Wouldn't he?
She gazed at Max's sleeping form, noting the twitching eyelids.
Perhaps, she thought fondly, he was dreaming of her?
Lorimer heard the tiny sigh that escaped his wife's lips and, though he knew she was sleeping, the sound made his heart ache for her. It was hard to think she would be undergoing major surgery so soon and his mouth narrowed as he began to imagine all the things that Maggie had not told him. She'd made light of the operation, telling him it was one of the most common procedures nowadays. But though she'd pasted on a smile, he had heard the fear in her voice. And not just fear, a despair that finally their hopes of having a family of their own would be gone for good. 'I'm too old anyway,' she'd joked, not saying what both of them knew, that mothers were becoming older and older these days as more women postponed the start of bearing children.
He'd wanted her to talk to Rosie but that suggestion had been met with a definite shake of Maggie's head. Seeing a friend who was carrying a longed-for child of her own was simply too much for Maggie to bear. Besides, his wife had reminded him sadly, Rosie should not be concerning herself with thoughts of the surgery to remove a womb; not when her own was doing what it was meant to do.
Lorimer sighed. It would all be over and done with in a few weeks' time, their lives continuing as before. Meantime he had other things to think about in the darkness of this night. Who had killed Sahid Jaffrey? And was that killing linked in any way to the men who had been shot in Brogan's flat? Ballistics had come up with some suppositions. One candidate for the murder weapon was a Glock self-loading pistol, possibly the model 19. The ballistics expert had given some details of a pistol suppressor, the Jupiter Eye, that was compatible to all 9mm pistols and how it might have been used in the first but not the second shooting. That made sense of the theory that Galbraith and Sandiman had been shot in a moment of random panic whereas Kenneth Scott's death bore the hallmarks of a premeditated and carefully planned assassination.
Nothing had been heard by Scott's neighbours so a silencer had obviously been used, hadn't it?
Lorimer's thoughts chased themselves around his head like screaming children on a Ferris wheel, round and round in a rhythm that was beginning to make his head ache. It was no use.
Sleep would be long in coming so he might as well be up and about, looking at the documents he had left downstairs one more time just to see if anything new occurred to him.
Chancer, the ginger cat, gave a meow of recognition from his basket under the kitchen table as Lorimer switched on the light.
'Hi, you,' Lorimer said softly, stroking the cat's fur as he passed by into the kitchen area. He took a bottle of mineral water from the fridge then padded quietly back to the desk by the window, already remembering the contents of the folder. The BBC's editorial people were totally on the ball when it came to briefing any officers before the Crimewatch programme. He flicked over the papers that had been downloaded from his office email address; everything that he needed was here. Everything, that is, except answers to the questions that were keeping him awake. It was not Lorimer's first visit to the BBC studios but much had changed in the programme since the last time he had made a public appeal during a murder inquiry, including the presenter. She was a Scots lass, bonny and blonde, but with a no-nonsense attitude that Lorimer enjoyed any time he had the chance to watch the programme.
Tomorrow he and other members of the investigation team would be winging their way down south and expecting an overnight stay after the programme went out live. He flicked through the papers, wondering if this would be worth the time spent away from the investigation. Heaving a sigh, Lorimer reminded himself that the rest of the team wouldn't fall apart without him; they were all good officers, doing their best to come up with answers to the problems surrounding this case.
Lorimer rolled his shoulders, feeling the tension around his neck. The tick of the clock made him look up. It was only three thirty-six. He yawned, his eyes watering so that he had to rub away the tears. Maybe he should go back to bed after all, see if he could drop off for a few more hours. Suddenly the need to sleep overwhelmed him and he switched off the desk lamp then made his way up the darkened staircase.
Solomon Brightman woke with a renewed sense of purpose.
Today he would find it, he told himself. Marianne had attended every one of his seminars and there were notes on all of the students' participation somewhere on file. They might help to jog some memory, Solly thought.
His own recollection of these hours was somewhat hazy, given the numbers of students who passed through his office every week. And Marianne had not been one of the most forthcoming of his undergraduates, had she? It was human nature to remember the ones who tended to be outgoing, funny even. One lad from Liverpool, Barry something-or-other, had a waggish sense of humour and each seminar that he attended was guaranteed to be lively. The fact that he had been in Marianne's seminar group was a tad unfortunate since the girl was more able to let herself do that vanishing-into-the-woodwork act that so many shy people liked to do. It was Solly's job, though, as their tutor, to try to draw them all out. But coaxing Marianne to participate had been an uphill struggle and SoIly had to admit that in spite of his efforts she had let herself be overshadowed by more vocal types like Barry.
He was still in his pyjamas and dressing gown when Rosie passed his desk, handing him a mug of tea. Letting him concentrate while he worked on something was something his wife had learned to do and Solly was grateful for it, even though the tea that was silently given was often left to grow cold on the coaster beside his keyboard.
'Right,' he murmured to himself, scrolling down the file that he wanted to read. 'Let's see what we can see.'
Marianne's name had figured in every one of the seminars, her attendance perfect, unlike quite a few of her fellow students who seemed unable to get out of bed for that nine a.m. class. What had he written about her? Solly stroked his beard as he read the scant notes about the missing woman. Each seminar seemed to tell the same story; the psychologist repeatedly noting his suspicions that this particular student was a bit out of her depth and was struggling to keep up with the ebb and flow of conversation and arguments that enlivened the meetings. He sighed and shook his head. Was this all a complete waste of time?
Then the final seminar subject heading appeared on his screen: DREAMS.
Solly sat up, thumping one fist into his open palm.
How could he have forgotten?
It had been towards the end of the session, hadn't it? When examinations had been looming and students and staff alike had been under considerable pressure.
He read the notes he had written after the seminar.
At last!!! Marianne has come out of her shell. A topic that seems to interest her Was more animated than at any other time in the session.
Hope she has the sense to choose this in the exams.
And she had, he remembered. On examination day she had written a good essay on dreams. Did he still have it?
Solly sat still for a long moment. Anyone seeing the psychologist gazing at the wall in front of him might have been forgiven for thinking that he was absorbed in the picture above his desk. But it was not the little watercolour of New Zealand's snowy peaks that Solomon Brightman was seeing. Instead his eye was turned inwards to a different time and a different place.
Barry had been on good form that day, full of little quips dispelling the pre-examination tension that always seemed to build up then.
They had been discussing the veracity of dreams, Solly remembered now. The psychologist had quoted passages from the Book of Genesis telling of Joseph's ability to interpret dreams and how he had saved the chief butler but had been unable to save the chief baker, who had been hanged. The conversation had centred around visions and their interpretation and Solly had been keen to point out the charlatans who had written so-called 'dream' books based on nothing more than random mixtures of symbolism and myth. Things had become quite heated during the seminar, with some of his students questioning just how far dreams could influence one's behaviour.
They had talked around the subject of death and premonitions, each one of them offering more lurid and fanciful stories until Marianne had spoken up.
'What f you dream that someone is going to kill you? she had asked.
Her tone had been so serious, Solly recalled. And now he remembered with shame the words he had spoken to her.
All he had wanted was to restore some light-heartedness to the seminar, hadn't he? And so he had answered back, 'Oh, bump them off first first and then it can't happen,' his quick riposte meeting with a general outburst of laughter. And, of course, he should have added in the dream, not in cold blood.
Solly sat very still, recalling every moment of that seminar. The girl had participated well up to that point but after his comment she had said nothing. But he remembered her eyes shining as she listened to the others.
He felt a chill growing over his bones.
What had he done?
I've got a lot to thank you for, she had said.
Was that it? Had that throwaway comment sown a seed within the girl's mind? She had been a different woman that day in the bookstore, the day following Scott's death. Surely she hadn't…?
Solly gave a sigh that became a groan. A lot to thank you for, the woman's voice echoed in his brain. His fingers clasped the mug of tea and he drank it slowly, grateful for the warmth seeping into his cold hands.
If this was what had happened, and surely it was a very large if, then he had to make some form of reparation. Solly blinked as if to waken himself from a reverie. It was such an odd thing that he knew a little of Marianne's history through his wife. The missing woman's former husband was dead, killed by a professional gunman, Rosie had told him. But he hadn't known then that it might have involved one of his own students.
Might even have involved him.
Solly shook his head again in disbelief. His own wife had performed the post-mortem on the ex-husband…
These two CID officers, the nice girl Annie Irvine and that handsome young Egyptian, hadn't been terribly forthcoming about the woman they were seeking. She had been hiding away from someone or something, managing to have her details erased from the data banks in registry. He would have to find out more.
Had he been part of the team… but he wasn't wanted by Strathclyde Police right now, SoIly reminded himself. Still, he mused, stroking his beard thoughtfully, that didn't preclude him from carrying out some investigations of his own, did it?