The Darkest Goodbye (William Lorimer) (23 page)

‘Well, maybe she could only afford to pay for her sister to be humanely put to sleep,’ Jean argued.

‘And topped herself with remorse?’ Kirsty looked askance.

‘No.’ Jean narrowed her eyes. ‘Topped herself because she knew she was going to end up the same way and there was nobody to help
her
when the time came.’

‘Either way we’re looking for someone who’s running an illegal organisation,’ Kirsty fumed. ‘It might be a moral choice to end your own life but it’s something completely different if someone makes that choice for you. And against your will!’

The two women looked at one another for a long moment then Jean Fairlie gave a shrug and turned back to her computer.

‘Okay, wee yin, you win,’ she said at last. ‘Better get ready for his nibs handing out the next actions. And I can guarantee that mine will be trailing around that bloody great hospital with a photo in my hand.’

‘S
he’s on night shift,’ the man said, huddling against the hedge outside Abbey Nursing Home, phone pressed to his cheek. He peered at his watch. It was half past midnight and the moon was showing a ghostly face behind shreds of racing clouds. ‘Left the big house an hour ago and arrived here just before twelve.’

‘Call her on the mobile,’ came the reply. ‘Tell her that she needs to come out and talk to you. Or you’ll be speaking to that boss of hers, the Abbott woman.’

‘Sure.’ The man grinned as he looked towards the building, its porch light bright against the darkness all around. Somewhere in there Sarah Wilding was attending to her patients. ‘And then?’

There was a pause.

‘Then she’ll find out just how serious we are, won’t she?’

When she felt the vibration of the mobile, Sarah gave a little jump of surprise. She had already checked on all of her charges, who were sleeping soundly, and was in the process of preparing a list of things that the nurses on day shift would need to do; the fact that the mobile phone was in her uniform pocket was something she’d entirely forgotten.

‘Hello.’ Her voice wavered.

‘You know who this is,’ a man’s voice snarled in her ear. ‘I’m right outside this place, just along from the gates, got it? Be there in five.’

‘No,’ Sarah whispered. ‘I don’t want anything more to do with you people.’

A soft laugh sounded as she prepared to hang up and switch off the mobile. ‘No? Oh, Sarah, you’re going to do exactly what we tell you, doll. Or do you want that nice Mrs Abbott to know what you’ve been up to recently? Fancy going back inside, is that what you want? Be here in five minutes, got it?’

There was a lengthy silence as Sarah’s thoughts whirled. She needed time to think, needed to let someone know what was happening.

‘That’s impossible,’ she replied hoarsely. ‘I’m in the middle of something right now.’

She cut off the voice of her tormentor. She needed to let Nancy know what was happening, she’d promised… but not on this phone, just in case…? Panic made her head pound as she looked at the phone in her hand. Could they trace her calls? It wasn’t a chance that she was prepared to take but she had to make this phone call.

Heart beating fast, she sped along the corridor towards Nancy’s office. She could use the landline there, couldn’t she?

But when she tried the door it was locked.

Damn! Of course, since the break-in none of the staff was taking any chances. She stood for a moment, thinking hard then crept quietly along to the staffroom.

Several coats were hanging on the coat stand behind the door, Grainne’s hooded mackintosh to the front. Didn’t she keep her mobile in that outside pocket?

With trembling hands, Sarah unzipped the pocket and felt inside. Yes! She breathed out. Thank goodness it wasn’t one of these smart phones but an ancient thing that the nurse kept just for making calls.

Sarah dialled the number and waited. Nancy would be in bed at this hour and although she hated herself for disturbing the good woman, she prayed that she would get up and answer the landline at Corrielinn.

‘Hello?’ a sleepy voice asked.

‘Nancy. It’s me. Sarah. They’re back and I have to go outside to see them.’ Sarah shivered as she spoke, her eyes on the window of the room. Was anybody out there, watching her through those thin curtains?

‘Sarah! You mustn’t! Don’t go near these people. I mean it!’ Nancy’s tone was adamant.

‘I have to,’ Sarah cried. ‘Or they’ll tell your sister what I’ve done and I’ll be sent back to Cornton Vale.’

‘No!’ Nancy almost shouted. ‘Don’t go out. Listen. Detective Superintendent Lorimer wouldn’t want you to put yourself in any danger. Now here’s what we’re going to do.’

‘Didn’t show.’ The man slouched downhill towards the main road where the car was waiting. ‘What now?’

‘Call her again. Be there when she does come out,’ an authoritative voice replied. ‘And then you take her for another little drive.’

Lorimer groaned as he sat up, hand already outstretched to pick up his phone.

The digital clock by his bedside read five minutes to one.

‘Lorimer.’

‘Detective Superintendent, it’s Nancy Livingstone here. We need your help.’

The dawn was still some hours away as Lorimer drove across the city, its lights twinkling against a black velvet sky tinged with that familiar sodium glow. Night in the city. Time when the bad folk came out to wreak havoc on innocent citizens, time when he and his own kind had to be vigilant in tackling the different sorts of crime that tainted his beloved Glasgow. Blue and purple arcs of light shimmered on the waters as he crossed the Clyde and headed towards Stewart Street. A call was not enough. He had to see some of the night shift face to face, explain a little of the situation. Hopefully it was a quiet night for the officers there and he would have the necessary back-up when the time came.

Lorimer sped across the bridge, wondering whether Sarah Wilding had the guts to carry out their plan.

When the mobile vibrated once again Sarah let it ring a few times before picking up.

‘We’ve got an emergency here,’ she said, trying to inject as much strength into her voice as she could. ‘You’ll have to wait until the doctor’s been. I can’t come out till then.’ Her hands shook as she waited for a reply. Had she sounded scared? Probably. Her knees were beginning to tremble and she wanted to sit down and weep.

‘When will that be?’ The response was gruff and curt.

‘I don’t know,’ Sarah replied. ‘We’ve been told he’s on his way. That’s all I know. Look, I must go.’ Then she pressed the off button and sank into a chair by the radiator, pressing her hands on to its surface to ease the sudden chill to her blood.

The tall policeman would come straight into the car park and she would be waiting to let him in. What would the other nurses say? How would she explain the presence of a senior police officer in the middle of the night?

‘Sarah? Are you okay?’ Grainne stood in the doorway of the staffroom, a quizzical look on her face.

Sarah shook her head. ‘There’s a problem, Grainne,’ she began. ‘Mr Imrie’s death is being investigated by the police. They think he’s been murdered,’ she began slowly, watching the other nurse’s eyes widen.

‘So that’s why all these forensic folk were here. We wondered. Are you telling me that you know something about this?’

‘It’s a long story,’ Sarah continued. ‘But the nursing home has been a target of some sort and there’s a policeman coming here right now.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Grainne came to sit beside her colleague, one hand resting on the back of Sarah’s chair. ‘Why has that made you look as if you’ve seen a ghost?’

Sarah looked down at her hands and shook her head. ‘I can’t say,’ she murmured. ‘I’ve just been told to follow instructions,’ she added, knowing that what she was telling Grainne was true though so much was being left unsaid.

The two men sat in the front of the black BMW, its engine running to keep them warm. From the open driver’s window came a thin line of smoke, the hand holding the cigarette resting on the glass. It had been more than an hour since Jerry had first called the nurse but their instructions were clear. Stay put and pick her up.

He exhaled the last of the smoke and flicked the butt away, watching its molten tip describe an arc in the darkness until it hit the ground to join several others lying on the grassy verge.

‘Car comin’,’ his companion said suddenly and both men stared into the dark road as twin headlights appeared, cresting the hill and revealing a large silver car.

‘Must be that doctor,’ Dolan hissed, turning the knife in his hands, making its silver blade catch the moonlight.

‘Shut it,’ Jerry replied, pressing the button to close his window. Dolan had been annoying him all night, his constant foot-tapping and humming under his breath, signs that the man was wired to the bloody full moon. Maybe what they said was true. The man by his side was behaving more erratically than usual.

Jerry Cunningham gripped the steering wheel, his bare knuckles whitening. If Dolan screwed up he’d be the first to give him a proper doing. But Dolan would scare the shit out of the Wilding lassie even more when she saw him in a state like this, Jerry thought with a sudden grin. And the blade that Rob Dolan carried would be sufficient to persuade the girl to do exactly as they told her.

Sarah shivered as she pulled on her coat. Grainne had asked questions of the tall police officer who had given the impression that Sarah was somehow helping the police. Grainne hadn’t asked in so many words but she could see the other nurse wondering if Nurse Wilding was in fact an undercover police officer. Fat chance, Sarah thought. How did they do it? she asked herself as she slipped out of the staffroom. Impersonating criminal types, infiltrating dangerous groups of people? It was something she could never imagine herself doing and yet here she was, putting herself in a situation that required as much courage as she had ever mustered in her young life.

Sarah wrapped her fingers around the object in her raincoat pocket that Lorimer had given her.
Use it if you need to,
he’d told her, and she’d nodded, glad to have something tangible to hold on to.

She watched as the detective left the main door and closed it behind him. Now she really was on her own, Sarah thought. And taking a deep breath, she followed him out into the night.

The Lexus was already driving away when Sarah stepped into the road that led down to where the men were waiting and she felt a spasm of fear course throughout her body.

She was quite alone now.

Glancing up, she saw the full moon, its unblinking face beaming out of the darkness. Step by step she walked along the path until she came to the corner and caught sight of the car tucked at an angle beside the hedge.

Wait until they come to you
, Lorimer had instructed her.
Don’t get into their car, whatever you do.

‘Took you long enough.’ A familiar voice spoke out of the dark followed by the sound of a car door closing.

‘We had an emergency,’ Sarah said, shielding her eyes from the sudden glare of the car’s full beam.

‘Get in the car,’ Cunningham ordered.

But Sarah stood motionless, fear and Lorimer’s strict words pinning her to the spot.

‘D’ye hear the man, hen?’ The figure of a smaller man loomed out of the darkness and lunged at her, the blade of the knife bright in his raised fist.

Sarah plunged her hand into her pocket and took out the pepper spray. Then, as Dolan made to grab her she aimed it straight into his face.

‘Arghhh!’ His scream resounded through the night as Dolan dropped the blade and put both hands to his streaming eyes.

‘Ya bitch, ya wee bitch!’ he yelled, bending over in pain, his cries mingling with the unmistakable sound of police sirens.

Immediately the car’s engine growled and the BMW took off into the night, leaving Dolan moaning on his knees, scrabbling for the knife.

Then, as she heard the sound of the siren growing louder, Sarah began to run.

Lorimer let the other car pass him on the back road. The driver of the BMW would assume that he was just the doctor, a ploy he had thought up to allow his car access to the nursing home and back out again without raising any suspicion.

Now he was following the other car and peering through the gloom to get a closer look at its registration plate.

‘Sierra bravo ten. Mike, yankee, delta,’ he announced clearly, letting the other car slip a little further away.

The officer back at base acknowledged his call and Lorimer cleared the line. They’d put a trace on the BMW now and, should the driver become suspicious of the silver Lexus in his wake, he’d turn off and let the patrol boys do their bit.

The car looked to be heading back into the city, but as they reached the crossroads it took a right. Was he going to turn left again? Make for the Erskine Bridge?

There was a roar as the car in front took off along a straight stretch of road then Lorimer could hear its tyres squeal as it took the first of several bends on the road towards Mugdock and into the countryside.

Lorimer followed, keeping his lights low, just a country doctor going back home to Killearn or Strathblane, perhaps, if the driver of the BMW thought about it at all.

The road narrowed and plunged between trees on either side, the big car taking the corners too fast, the driver having to correct the BMW as it went into a slight skid.

Lorimer let it go, keeping his eyes on the red tail lights ahead, not wanting to be spotted as the trees fell behind, the countryside opening up ahead. But the Lexus sped on smoothly, the road slipping under it like a ribbon of grey silk in the moonlight. His eyes peered through the darkness, watching the red lights appearing and disappearing with each hidden dip in the road, the twin points of colour like tiny demonic creatures leading him to some terrible doom.

It was tempting to gun his big car, to creep up right behind this character who had been involved in the death of David Imrie (and God knew who else). For a mad moment Lorimer wanted to tailgate the other car, drive it into a ditch, see the fear in the man’s face as he pulled him out of the car.

A sudden rage possessed him, making his foot press down harder on the accelerator. He would do it.

Then, high on a hill, waiting for them both, he saw the twinkling blue lights of the waiting patrol car, making Lorimer slow down once again, his anger cooling as he focused on his next move.

The driver in front had spotted it too, for he slowed down and drew into the side. Would he try to turn on this narrow road?

He had to stop him before the man could begin any manoeuvre. There was only one thing for it, Lorimer decided, leaning forward and peering at the hedgerows on either side.