Never Somewhere Else (12 page)

Ravit Sangha’s garage was situated on the corner of a busy dual carriageway and the main road leading to a sprawling housing estate on the South Side of Glasgow. The blue hoarding proclaiming USED CARS in white painted capitals overlooked a shabby yard with grimy whitewashed walls. There were cars lined up somewhat haphazardly, only a few displaying a price sticker on the front windscreen. Dark stains on the forecourt told of old oil spillages and there were empty plastic drums heaped into a far corner. The office was a jerry-built affair resembling the huts in school playgrounds: the sort that linger on far beyond their shelf life as ‘temporary accommodation’. Ravit Sangha may well have expected to progress to something bigger and better over the years, but the whole place had an air of defeat as if the receivers were not far off.

And now trouble had come in the shape of one old used ambulance. Why had he bothered to telephone? DS Wilson had asked himself. Sangha had been highly agitated at that first interview, protesting his good citizenship far too much for the Detective Sergeant’s liking. Lorimer was right. There had to be something more. Like where had the vehicle really come from and whether it had really ‘gone missing’ from Sangha’s yard. Answers to these questions would direct this inquiry forward for a change. Trawling through Donna Henderson’s case was becoming a wearisome exercise.

Less than an hour
later the two CID men were on their way back to Divisional Headquarters. DC Cameron risked a glance at his sergeant as they weaved through the afternoon traffic. Grim satisfaction was registered on that usually expressionless face. Cameron smiled and found himself wishing that he could be a fly on the wall when their visit was reported to Chief Inspector Lorimer.

Lorimer’s raised eyebrows were just the reward DS Wilson expected as he narrated the events on Glasgow’s South Side.

‘You were spot on about the VAT,’ Wilson confirmed. ‘When I began to hint about the serious consequences of defrauding Her Majesty’s Inspectors the poor buggar became almost pale.’

A hint of a smile flickered over Wilson’s mouth.

‘So what was the real reason for contacting us when he had a can of worms like that to hide?’

Lorimer clasped his hands tightly together. He could sense an undercurrent of excitement in Wilson’s manner and knew the DS had something to tell.

‘A phone call. Some bright citizen had seen the ambulance in the yard and decided to put the frighteners on our friend Sangha.’

Lorimer inclined his head thoughtfully. Wilson picked up the cue.

‘Reading between the
lines it’s probably no more than some idiot mouthing off the usual racial nonsense,’ he went on. ‘Still, it’s been enough to bring Sangha running to us before we came to him.’

‘What about the brother?’ Lorimer rapped out. ‘Ah, yes. Well, he sat there looking at us as if we’d crawled out from under a stone. Didn’t say a word at first but he backed up brother Ravit’s story once the thought of years of missing VAT loosened his tongue.’

‘I can imagine. And then it all came out?’

Wilson nodded. ‘It all came out. They’d paid cash for the ambulance from some rock band or other calling themselves The Flesh Eaters. No vehicle registration document, let alone MOT or insurance.’

‘Still, with a name like that they shouldn’t be hard to find,’ remarked Lorimer.

‘Also we have a description of two of them,’ Wilson added.

‘Fine. So we know where the ambulance came from. Any idea what happened once the Sanghas took possession of it?’

Lorimer’s light tone belied the expression on his face. He was staring at Alistair Wilson. He knew his sergeant’s ways so well.

Wilson paused to watch the effect of his words on Lorimer’s face.

‘Ravit Sangha sold
that ambulance to Lucy Haining.’

‘B
ut we don’t need
him any more. We can drop the whole investigation of Donna Henderson’s murder, look at Lucy Haining’s case and concentrate on the leads from
Crimewatch
. What do we need Brightman for?’

George Phillips sighed irritably. ‘I’m reluctant to sever the relationship between the university and ourselves, Bill.’ The Divcom gave a dry cough. ‘I really do think we should allow Dr Brightman continued access to the case.’

Lorimer glared at his superior, not caring to conceal his annoyance.

‘Let him sniff around meantime. I’m sure he’ll have his uses,’ Phillips concluded, shuffling some papers on his desk to indicate that this conversation was terminated.

Lorimer fumed to himself all the way along the corridor. George Phillips had been deliberately vague and his own remonstrations had cut no ice whatsoever. He suspected that there were wheels within wheels that he knew nothing of concerning the Divcom’s desire to use a psychological profiler. Maybe he would read something about it in the Chief Constable’s next annual report, he thought angrily, as he slammed shut the door of his own room, shaking Père Tanguy’s picture.

Lorimer looked up at
Van Gogh’s postman. The sitter clearly wanted to be up and off about his business instead of staring at the artist for hours on end. Lorimer took a deep breath. Perhaps that was a bit like Solomon and himself, the one looking at shapes within a framework of his own creation, the other out and about in the world, trying to make sense of the disparate facts that he could find. He ran a hand through his hair.

Solomon Brightman would keep his afternoon appointment after all, despite Lorimer’s attempts to cancel it indefinitely.

‘No, I do not accept that I was wrong. I simply told you that the murderer had killed a targeted victim known to himself, and used the others as camouflage.’

Solomon Brightman spoke in his usual unhurried manner, refusing to show any anger to match that of Chief Inspector Lorimer.

‘We’ve spent far too many man-hours going over the Donna Henderson murder again, and now ordinary detection methods have given us quite a different lead.’

Solomon raised his hands and shrugged in that fatalistic gesture that annoyed Lorimer so much.

‘The
Crimewatch
programme can hardly be considered ordinary,’ he said reasonably.

Lorimer gritted his teeth. He was stuck with Dr Brightman now and so any further argument would only be counter-productive. Solomon may have been having similar thoughts for he suddenly changed tack.

‘I’d like to look at the place where Lucy Haining was actually killed,’ he said.

‘All right. I’ll
arrange for a uniformed officer to pick you up.’

Solomon shook his head. ‘I’d rather just wander around unobtrusively, you know.’

Lorimer resisted a smile, thinking a less unobtrusive-looking character would be hard to find. He then swivelled round from his desk and pointed at the maps pinned to the wall behind him. They were enlargements of specific areas in the city.

‘Here. This is Sauchiehall Street and these are the streets leading up to the Glasgow School of Art. Over the hill just there’ – his finger stopped at a point on the map – ‘you’ll find the waste ground.’

Carefully Solomon made a sketch of the area, writing the names of the intersecting streets and copying the cross which signified the place where the young art student had met her death. Up until now Solomon had concentrated his attention on St Mungo’s Park and its immediate environs. The city locations had suggested no more than places of dark opportunity. Doubtless young Sharon Millen had been killed in just such an area.

Deep down Lorimer knew that they had both been guilty of one simple assumption; that the first killing had been the one to be carefully planned and that the others were simply random slaughters intended to obfuscate the whole picture. Now they were faced with the possibility that the killer had been cold-blooded enough to begin covering his tracks with Donna Henderson’s murder.

‘A practice run?’ Solomon had suggested earlier.

He had not been surprised to read the disgust on Lorimer’s face. Whoever this killer was, his profile was adding up to show a man of Machiavellian cleverness and ruthless disregard for human life.

Martin Enderby put the
phone down thoughtfully. So. Not Forensic Pathology after all. Dr Brightman was not only a trained psychologist, but he was researching a book about criminal profiling. Here was a tasty bone for a hungry news-hound indeed. And the book would be a good enough reason to set up an interview. Then … Martin grinned to himself. Then he’d see what else he could find out about the St Mungo’s Murders. He picked up the phone once more.

‘I’m sorry, Dr Brightman has just left.’

‘Oh, just my luck!’ Martin groaned, affecting the tone of an anxious student trying to locate his tutor.

‘Is it urgent?’ The secretary’s voice became concerned.

‘Well, sort of. Do you know whereabouts he might have gone?’

‘He was heading for the Art School, I believe. He should be there within half an hour.’

‘Thanks. I’ll maybe catch up with him there.’

Martin replaced the phone and grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. The Art School! Was there some new lead concerning Lucy Haining that he should make it his business to find out about? Martin’s long legs took the stairs two at a time. Whatever Dr Brightman might stand and stare at this time, he wanted to see it too.

S
auchiehall Street certainly
expressed the dichotomy of Scotland’s largest city, thought Solomon, as he turned into the main thoroughfare and headed west. Buses rumbled along Hope Street between ranks of pedestrians impatient for the lights to change. More than once, Solomon had held his breath as some old dear rushed out, defying the traffic. They seemed to lead a charmed life in this city, for he’d never seen an accident yet. Once in the pedestrian precinct, Solly slowed down, taking a professional interest in the mass of humanity coming and going. Snatches of conversation floated past him, accents betraying both the cultured and the couthy.

‘C’m ere, youse!’

A young mother wheeling a buggy yelled at her two older offspring who were weaving in and out of the human traffic. Giggling, they dashed over to their mother’s side and Solomon watched, amused, as they made faces behind her back. Pensioners sat on benches, some merely staring at the world going by, but others intent on feeding the feral pigeons. Behind him the
Big Issue
sellers were plying their wares outside Marks & Spencer’s and the shopping mall. In doorways buskers expressed their social outrage in plaintive song to the world at large, but to nobody in particular.

Solomon glanced up at
Mackintosh’s elegant Willow Tea Rooms, an early twentieth-century gem, though the School of Art was the real jewel in the celebrated architect’s crown. Here and there, tucked into quieter side streets, were the galleries where contemporary artists now made their names. Solomon had wandered around some of them occasionally, his eye favouring the brighter abstracts which commanded attention. But today he would not be distracted from attending to a much more sombre view.

Leaving the main street, the psychologist began the steep climb which would take him up to the Art School and beyond, to Garnethill. A young traffic warden was taking note of a white Toyota whose owner had left it overlong at the meter. She kept her head down as Solomon passed, grinning to himself. He had never learned to drive and affected to despise governments which allowed too much road traffic and contributed to hazards like pollution and road rage. Death from a traffic accident provoked a certain resigned sadness, of course, but the deaths of Lucy Haining and the other young women were an outrage that society must refuse to accept.

Solomon crossed over to where the School of Art towered above him. It seemed stark and bleak today, casting its shadows towards the area where one of its students had ended her bright prospects. As Solomon glanced at his makeshift map, he did not notice a tall figure standing above him on the steps to the main entrance.

At first his eye was caught, not by the main building at all, but by a vehicle parked on the opposite kerb. The blue Art School minibus bore an uncanny resemblance in size and shape to an ambulance.

Solomon crossed the
street to take in the vista of this celebrated School, itself a work of art. High over the entrance swung a bow of black metal serving as a token arch. Its keystone was a plain black box, rudely interrupting the flowing line like some purely functional appendage. Yet on closer inspection it became a sinister rectangular mass glaring at the world with one all-seeing indigo eye. Below the black-banded windows, unkind spikes and knotted buttresses of thin metal led the eye downwards to the railings with their abstract motifs.

The curving stairs made a pleasing invitation to proceed up towards the entrance, but the grubby white doors set with purple and blue eyes did not beckon. Rather it seemed a challenge to enter this holy of holies. Solomon smiled to himself, catching sight of a blonde student who now lounged against the railings. Clad all in blue denim, she was flicking cigarette ash onto the hallowed steps, seemingly oblivious to the mystique around her. Perhaps familiarity with the School as a workplace bred contempt? Solomon looked around him. To one side the newly cleaned Victorian tenements of Dalhousie Street fell away steeply. On the other side a conglomeration of concrete and glass pressed close, its ugliness in sneering contrast to the refinement of the School of Art.

He would return to wander the interior and tread the floors where Lucy Haining had daily trod. But not yet. Pausing to look both left and right. Solomon eventually decided to retrace his steps and continue up Dalhousie Street towards that cross on his map.

As the sun shone down
on the streets it was hard to see this place as one where evil had stalked. There was such an air of normality, the public going about their business. Three schoolboys in green uniform passed him by, laughing and chattering; an Asian woman swathed in cloths of gold and brown glided along, her plastic shopping bags rustling by her side.

Solomon slowed down as he came to the square of waste ground. This was where murder had taken place. Nobody had seen anything suspicious on that cold winter night and, looking at the adjacent buildings, Solomon could see the advantages of choosing this as a place to conceal an act of murder. The tenement building on one side was covered in scaffolding for what seemed a long-term project. Each and every window was boarded up. Blind eyes overlooked the patch of ground. Today, men in white overalls were clambering over the tubular scaffolding. The psychologist could hear them whistling as though the air around them had never been contaminated by evil.