Never Somewhere Else (6 page)

They watched him weave his way through the crowd, stopping now and then to shake a hand and exchange a word with someone. Martin gazed after him, imagining how it must feel to be the centre of such attention. A movement by his side made him look down.

Diane’s wine was finished. She swirled the stem of her glass between her fingers thoughtfully. She’s wondering if I’ll fetch her another, thought Martin, who was only too aware of Diane’s signals. Half of him wanted to capitulate, but his own weariness had been shrugged off by discussing the case and now he wanted to be home, doing some more research, deciding on his next line of enquiry. He had to keep the story hot for the paper, and, as he had told Diane, there was very little new information to be had. He drained his own glass and gave her a grin.

‘Right, lass, I’m off!’

The exaggerated Glasgow accent was designed to make a pretence of being oblivious to Diane’s come-on approach. Martin hoped he’d be allowed to succumb to it another time. As he stood up, he rumpled her dark hair just for luck.

‘Oh, you … leave off!’ she laughed, a little ruefully, he thought. Martin bent his hand twice in a mock farewell wave then slouched out of the gallery into the street.

For weeks the
Gazette
had been following the story of the St Mungo’s Murders with Martin reaping the benefits. His stories had been good: just the right mixture of sensationalism and fact, not too grisly, but enough to hook his readers. These murders could really make his name as a reporter. It had taken an effort to concentrate on the outrage, the victims’ friends and family and, above all, the menace which had to be wiped off the streets, but wasn’t he using the printed word as another weapon in combating this evil hidden somewhere in the city?

As he drove to
his quiet bachelor flat, Martin turned on the radio for news. There was an item about a politician and his mistress. More kiss-and-tell. It was becoming old hat. The latest royal visit overseas had created a stir. Employment figures were up. Another factory had closed down.

Martin smiled sardonically. It was the sort of juxtaposition he’d often seen at the hands of the
Gazette
’s sub-editors: the one story seeming to give the lie to the other. Martin listened long enough to hear that a cold front was moving eastwards then switched off. The murderer had dropped out of sight since scaring Alison Girdley.

Now, Martin thought, let’s
make my readership speculate about the mental make-up of this serial killer. He had begun to feel enthusiastic about this angle. Talking to Diane had helped him think through a possible argument. Now there were textbooks to consult and other people’s hypotheses to mull over in the search for a different sort of story.

M
aggie Lorimer watched the windscreen
wipers swish back and forth against the pattering raindrops. The car moved slowly through late afternoon traffic, necessitating constant use of brake and clutch. Maggie wasn’t in any hurry, however. There would be the usual emptiness in the house, the unlit hallway, gloomy and unwelcoming. Once home she would turn up the central heating, switch on the lamps and tune into Classic FM. This last action was a necessity to Maggie, whose natural gregariousness demanded other voices around her. Even now a voice from the car radio was warning of the hazards of road works and delays from the city.

Tell me about it, thought Maggie, gazing at the rows of cars tortoising along their motorway lanes.

The voice changed and began to give the day’s news in clear, precise tones.

‘A body has been found …’

No, she thought, no, I can’t stand it any more. But the voice was describing Hertfordshire and the corpse appeared to be an old man, someone who had come to grief by accident. Maggie’s stomach felt weak. She had been so sure that the killer had found another victim.

Her finger flew to the
button and the voice ended in mid-sentence. What if he was never found? Lorimer had spoken briefly but grimly about the difficulties in tracking down serial killers such as this one. Would he ever give up the search?

Maggie caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror. Dark curls tumbled around her pale face, greying around the hairline. Her eyes showed signs of strain and fatigue, exaggerated by the mascara she had absently rubbed into dark smudges. Lines which had once told of laughter would soon be described as crows’ feet, she told herself, miserably.

Maggie sighed and pulled her gaze back to the traffic ahead. Once home she would prepare a meal for two but expect to dine alone. Despite the fact that Lorimer had always worked dreadful hours in their twelve years of marriage, Maggie had never come to terms with the disappointment of a husband who rarely appeared at dinner time. Instead of becoming accustomed to their long spells apart – for sometimes they did not see each other for days at a time – Maggie increasingly resented this lack of a pattern to their lives. Sometimes she wondered if perhaps her own day as a school teacher was so regulated by the electronic bell that she craved a similar order and structure in her home life.

The cars in front began to move faster and Maggie accelerated to match their speed. Up ahead the familiar junction appeared and she signalled left, relieved to be on the last stretch of her journey home.

*

The answering machine
was blinking its red button as usual. Maggie kicked off her high heels, throwing her velvet coat onto a nearby chair.

‘It’s me. Just to remind you that it’s
Crimewatch
tonight. I’ll be staying over.’

There was a pause as Maggie waited for the bleep, but Lorimer’s voice came again, almost as an afterthought.

‘Love you.’

And I love you too, you brute, thought Maggie, tears of frustration pricking behind her eyes. How on earth could she have forgotten
Crimewatch
? Easy, her more cynical self replied, I never talk to him face to face these days so why should I remember? At least I can record the programme, she told herself with a rueful laugh, then I can play my husband’s face over and over again in case I forget what he looks like.

Maggie massaged the back of her neck, circling her head to rid herself of the ache that was beginning to form already. The tape bleeped a few times then continued.

‘Hallo, dear, it’s Mum here. Just thought I’d remind you about
Crimewatch.
Isn’t it exciting? Mrs MacDonald was asking all sorts of questions, but you know me, I just told her that I couldn’t let her know anything about Bill’s cases.’

No, thought Maggie, because we never tell you anything, you old gossip.

‘Well, dear, must go. We’ll catch up some time soon. Bye, now.’

This last phrase was
spoken with a wistfulness that caught at Maggie’s conscience. Damn! Here she was craving the companionship of her husband when Mum would gladly have filled the gap of lonely hours. Two more bleeps sounded before Maggie switched off the tape. She’d phone her mother after dinner to reassure her that she hadn’t forgotten the TV programme. (A lie, but not one she was about to admit.) Fortified by some food she could endure hearing about what Mrs MacDonald had said at the pensioners’ club – couldn’t she?

‘A
nd now we come
to a most disquieting series of murders. These murders have had wide Press coverage in recent months and you may be familiar with some of the details.’

Nick Ross’s earnest, boyish face gazed towards the camera.

‘I refer, of course, to the murders of three young women whose bodies have all been discovered in St Mungo’s Park, Glasgow.’

Maggie Lorimer watched as the camera retreated from the presenter’s face and moved to include the figure of her husband. There he was, immaculate in his dark suit and crisp white shirt (a shirt she’d ironed only yesterday), his hands clasped before him in a firm, steady manner. His whole demeanour showed that stillness which Maggie knew so well. Ross had now introduced Chief Inspector William Lorimer of Strathclyde Police and Maggie felt a stirring of pride as well as an anxiety that this live broadcast should go well. She pressed the record button on the remote control. There would be a recording taking place at Police Headquarters, she knew, but Lorimer might want to see this more privately.

And so might I, thought
Maggie, so might I.

‘We are grateful for the full co-operation of the families of these victims,’ Ross was saying, ‘in making a reconstruction of the movements of Donna Henderson, Lucy Haining and Sharon Millen. If you were in the vicinity of St Mungo’s Park on the nights of Thursday October 21st, Monday, October 25th or the 3rd of November, which was a Wednesday, you may be able to help Chief Inspector Lorimer with his enquiries. Watch now and see if there is anything in these reconstructions which jogs your memory at all.’

Linda Thomson’s eyes were focused on the TV screen in front of her. She was dimly aware of James sitting slumped in a corner, watching the screen because he had to. They all had to, thought Linda. It was macabre, but it was a part of them now, and there would never be any getting away from it.

She watched as the actress taking the part of Donna Henderson left a group of friends and plunged into the darkness of the lane. Her high-heeled shoes clicked over the cobbles. The camera showed them in close-up and for a few seconds the room was filled with the menace of the darkness and that hollow, lonesome sound of footsteps.

Ross’s voice returned, reassuringly normal, talking about the forensic evidence at the actual scene of the killing.

Linda sat quite still, the cat on her knee asleep, oblivious to her turmoil. She stroked the smooth fur eagerly as if making contact with a living, breathing creature might restore normality, banish this nightmare. The cat purred in its sleep below her active fingers.

What had possessed the child to take a short cut down that sinister-looking lane? But then don’t we all believe that bad things happen to other people? Linda shivered.
They
were ‘other people’ too, she thought. And Sharon? That still remained a mystery. Would they ever know what had happened after she had caught that bus?

The cat jumped off her
knee, disturbed by a sudden grip on its fur.

Linda allowed herself a swift glance in James’s direction. She remembered how she had reacted to the news about Alison Girdley’s attack. Her first thought had been ‘Where was James that night?’ Relief to know that he had been at home with them was tempered by the dreadful guilt that she could even suspect her son of such a crime. He was so quiet, so withdrawn. Yet she knew in her heart of hearts that James was totally innocent. Didn’t she?

Now the screen showed the Glasgow area on a map of Scotland. What had once been Strathclyde Region was coloured in green with a red dot indicating the city. The scene moved to a helicopter shot of the River Clyde and the bridges which ran north to south. Then the camera panned out over the city and Nick Ross used the phrase ‘dear green place’ as the scenes showed the city’s familiar skyline then the stretches of parkland: Bellahouston, famous for its Papal visit, Queen’s Park, Kelvingrove near the university and, finally, St Mungo’s Park.

Solly was acutely aware of the killer. He would be crouched over his own television set, gloating. Solly felt that he was beginning to know this man now. He would have had a nasty shock when his attack on Alison Girdley failed. His ego would have been badly bruised and he would have retreated in fear and anger, like an animal snarling over lost prey.

As the helicopter
circled St Mungo’s Park, Solly gazed at the peripheral buildings; a church spire, old sandstone tenements and then the grey blocks of high-rise flats, bleak and impersonal like tombstones stretching to the sky. Solly had made red circles around these flats on his Glasgow street plan. Even though house-to-house enquiries had been made, he still came back to the flats. The killer was a loner. And what better place for a solitary, anonymous person than these flats which reared their pre-stressed concrete heads out of the surrounding greenery?

There were certain aspects of this man that defied profiling, but others were beginning to form a pattern to Solly. Would this programme make the killer react? The Chief Inspector certainly thought so. Solly and he had discussed the fact that the man would believe himself to be inviolable. They all had that streak of megalomania, that utter belief that their actions were those of a superior being. Often, as both Solly and Lorimer knew from their different experiences, that was the point from which their downfall began. Solly thought of the hunter in his lair. Yes. He’d pad up and down with restless uncertainty, but sooner or later he’d come out again to kill.

Lucy Haining’s last known movements were being shown now, and the presenter took pains to point out that this young art student had shown so much promise. A photograph came up on the screen of Lucy receiving her award. Her young face was flushed with pleasure.

Lorimer’s voice
was telling the millions of viewers about the attack. The word ‘mutilation’ was used, no doubt producing ripples of disgust in homes all over the country. Lorimer was tight-lipped about the gory details, however. This was not an exposé to titillate or fascinate the nation. That was understood.

Now Sharon Millen’s bus journey home was depicted. Nick Ross’s voice became urgent.

‘Did you see this girl on the night of Wednesday the third of November? Were you a passenger on that bus? If so, the police urge you to come forward. Any information you may give might be helpful in apprehending this dangerous killer.’

The television screen showed the laurel bushes in St Mungo’s Park where the scene-of-crime plastic flags still fluttered in the cold breeze. The Chief Inspector was explaining how the bodies had been dumped and found by unsuspecting passers-by. Hilary Fleming, holding Toby firmly on his lead, told of her discovery. She was composed now, speaking readily, buoyed up by the medication she had required since the day she and her dog had found that second corpse.

Police Constable Matt Boyd took a gulp of tea from the mug he had cupped in his hands. His eyes were fixed on the telly in the duty room. Lorimer was doing well so far, he conceded. There was no trace of anger in the man. He’d kept his emotions totally under control, giving nothing away that he didn’t intend to. Matt had seen him angry and they all knew that his temper had been the product of a deep frustration over this case.