Never Somewhere Else (2 page)

More on the horror of three murders in two weeks, he thought, starting to type some detail into his copy.

Linda Thomson knocked on her son’s door quietly. The terrible sobs had subsided and she hoped that he had slept. She too had wept in her husband’s arms, shocked and stricken when the police had come to bring the awful news. James had gone with them to the police station in the city centre. It had been hours before they brought him home, chalk white and frozen cold with shock. Couldn’t anyone see the poor lad was in a state? His reaction clearly showed that he was innocent of any hint of crime.

Anyhow, Linda thought,
anyone who knows James can tell that he’d never hurt a fly. She took the mug of tea into the darkened room and placed it on the bedside table. James was lying face down on his bed, the duvet only partly covering his legs. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Linda stroked her son’s dark hair. A long convulsive sob broke from him, but he uttered no words. He was too exhausted to speak, she thought, remembering his scream of pain earlier that day.

‘Why, Mum, why?’

Outside the sunset glowed on the horizon, making all the foreground shapes one black silhouette. A crow sat on the rooftops turning its head this way and that, as if waiting for a mate before flying off to roost for the night. Darkness would soon gather and in the darkness unmentionable fears would rise and percolate around the city, fears which might spill over into careless talk to give a clue to these deeds of death.

Lorimer had officers scouring several haunts in the city, primed to receive any word which could lead him to the killer. The Superintendent was breathing down his neck, talking about psychological profiling. After Lucy Haining’s death he had thought, ‘Not yet. Not yet.’ Now he was not so sure.

*

On a glass
shelf three trophies stand. The dried blood has congealed to make a brown stain like dull varnish on the glass. Three swathes of hair adorn the shelf, blonde, red and near-black, trophies of a grisly hunter.

Outside the room
where these scalps are kept, daylight has broken again. A greenish light is cast on the bare distempered walls from the uncurtained windows set high above the city. A bird flies past outside. Look and see. A concrete tower with blank eyes staring, anonymous. No one will ever find you here.

C
hief Inspector Lorimer
stood at the window of his office, hands clasped behind his back. Before him the morning had turned dull and drizzly, puddles forming in the car park below. Uniformed men scuttled across the yard to their vehicles. Doors slammed. Engines revved. Lorimer saw and heard all this without noticing it at all. His eyes and ears were in St Mungo’s Park, trying to pierce through the darkness of three sinister nights.

There was nothing, nothing at all to link these victims other than the grisly manner of their death. Donna Henderson had been a hairdresser, just an ordinary enough lassie, almost eighteen. Lucy had been an art student. English family. Lived in digs near the Art School. By all accounts she had had a promising future in jewellery design, having won some award or other in this, her final year. And it had been her very final year. Then young Sharon Millen, just a wee girl really, still at school. No police records to link them, no common backgrounds. Even their appearances differed, as if the killer picked and chose for sheer variety. Lorimer understood too well that this type of killer was the most difficult to find and the most dangerous. Some crazy person with an obsession, a fetish in their sick mind, looking for victims. The scalping hadn’t shown any sort of expertise, the MO claimed. But maybe he would improve his technique given time, thought Lorimer to himself. And we mustn’t give him time.

He clenched his
fists harder. So far there was nothing at all to show for the painstaking work by his squad. House-to-house interviews, as well as a thorough scouring of the park, had drawn a blank. The families of the victims had been questioned, their closest friends and colleagues brought in to make statements. The places they had been on the night of each murder had been turned inside out.

Donna Henderson had been murdered in West George Lane. Forensics had matched hair and blood samples. No one had seen or heard a thing and yet the murder must have taken place only minutes after she had left her companions. The killer could not possibly have known that the young hairdresser would take that particular route. The victim had been picked quite at random; yet Lorimer felt certain that a murder had been intended. Someone had lain in wait to pounce on a solitary girl in that lonely place.

The exact location of Lucy’s death had taken rather longer to discover. It emerged that she had been on her way to visit a fellow student – Janet Yarwood – but had never arrived. Lucy had often dropped in on this girlfriend whose flat was a short walk away. In her statement Janet had said that she had not expected Lucy, exactly, in the sense that no prior arrangement had been made. But there had been nothing unusual about this. However, enough evidence had been found on the waste ground between the back courts of two rows of tenements to establish that Janet’s flat had been Lucy’s destination that night. His men had sifted through all sorts of rubbish, used needles included, and had even taken apart the beginnings of a heap destined to become a bonfire on Guy Fawkes night.

Lorimer sighed.
There was nothing to link them in life, and everything to link them in death. As for poor little Sharon Millen, no trace had been found to show where her death had taken place. All they knew was that she had got on that number 7 bus and then her corpse had been found in St Mungo’s Park, hidden in the bushes. Just like the others. Why? Why had he troubled to take them to the park? The initial risk in dumping Donna’s body was bad enough, but the increased risk in taking two further bodies there was crazy. But I am dealing with a crazy person, Lorimer told himself. This person has apparently no motive for the killings, so why expect any logical motive for his disposal of the corpses? That young PC, Matt Boyd, had suggested a link with previous murders in the city which had been at the hands of drug-crazed youths, hallucinating and paranoid. It was Matt’s answer for every crime of violence. Given the statistics, he had a fair chance of being correct some of the time.

But this was different. There was something far more calculating and vindictive about this. No fingerprints had been left and the fibres being tested by the forensic biologists were as yet without any significance. Forensic biology could uncover all sorts of clues from traces left at the scene of a crime, but it had its limitations. Often the data was only one half of an equation, meaningless until the other half could be discovered.

A consultation of HOLMES had proved fruitless. The national computer bank could show patterns of crimes all over the country. But there was none. This spate of crimes in his city had no parallel anywhere else. In one way this was a relief: it narrowed the field. Yet a repeated pattern would have offered help in establishing travel routes and other background which might have helped identify a killer.

It all came back
to why. Why had he taken them to the park? Why brutalise them in such a way? Lorimer’s eyes roamed around the walls of his office, seeking inspiration. There were the usual outsize maps, a statement of policing principles, various commendations and two calendars, one ringed in red to show the dates of murders committed in his Division. But it was to none of these that Lorimer turned his attention, and instead he looked to the paintings he had accumulated over the years. Some were prints, of course. A policeman’s salary didn’t always allow for the purchase of originals, and certainly not the famous portrait of Père Tanguy which gazed down at him. The postman looked as if he was restless with sitting and longed to be off and doing something more active. That was what had attracted Lorimer to the Van Gogh print; that feeling of a man’s repressed energy. Lorimer understood that feeling only too well.

But today there was no inspiration to be had from works of art or anything else for that matter. The Fiscal had allowed them weeks to have the corpses studied by forensics, with all the painstaking details which that had entailed. And what had he to show for these weeks of investigation? For the first time in his career Chief Inspector William Lorimer was beginning to feel out of his depth. He’d cracked countless cases of mindless violence, but none had yielded up as little as this one. That none of his colleagues had experienced a case like this was little comfort.

The Press were on
his back, demanding results. And so was the Super. It was time to bring in the psychologist. Lorimer frowned. He’d heard of miraculous results from these fellows, but part of him still resisted putting faith in a procedure he didn’t know much about. Well, perhaps he ought to make it his business to find out now.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Sir, Superintendent Phillips says he’s ready to go now.’

WPC Annie Irvine waited anxiously for Lorimer to turn round and acknowledge her words. For a few moments he stood, still staring out of the window. They were all used to his moods, and put up with the long, almost rude, silences because he was such a good DCI and pretty fair-minded if his officers watched their step. At last the shoulders heaved in a resigned sigh.

‘All right, Annie, I’ll be there shortly.’

‘Yes, sir.’ She closed the door and rolled her eyes to heaven.

Superintendent Phillips, the Divisional Commander, didn’t like being kept waiting and she’d be the one to catch the brunt of his short temper if Lorimer didn’t hurry up. The Divcom was already in a foul mood. WPC Irvine crept past George Phillips’s door. Thank goodness she wasn’t the one who was going to that poor girl’s memorial service.

They sat in the car until most of the mourners had passed through the gates and slowly wound their way up to the church. Rain on the windscreen made the shapes of leafless trees blurred and out of focus, like an Impressionist painting.

All the families had
wanted cremations but the Fiscal had, of course, refused. The victims’ bodies were still in the mortuary and would be for some time to come. Meanwhile this latest memorial service had to suffice to help the bereaved come to terms with their loss.

Lorimer wondered if wanting cremations was simply the modern trend of funerals, or did they want to obliterate in ashes the remains of these mutilated bodies? An interesting thought. Perhaps he’d put it to the psychologist and see what he made of it.

Beside him the Divcom coughed and looked irritably out of the window. Lorimer tried not to smile. George Phillips had given up smoking again and was hell to live with.

‘All right, Constable,’ Lorimer leaned forward and touched the driver’s shoulder. The car joined the slow line of vehicles winding up to the little building at the top of the hill. Already people were queuing to enter, their black umbrellas held against the streaming rain. Lorimer stared at each one, hunting for a face to jog a memory, to spark off some clue which would set him on the long road to solving this case. Each darkened figure was a stranger. As they took their places near the back, Lorimer was distracted by a group of girls weeping desperately, holding on to each other. They must have been classmates, he thought. What a hellish murder. Lorimer felt a boiling rage inside.

As the minister asked the congregation to bow their heads in prayer, Lorimer’s piercing blue stare was directed at the wooden cross on the wall. Give me a clue, he demanded, show me where that bastard is. Oh God of any pity, don’t let him get away.

Later, sitting in
the car, they watched as one by one the mourners left the church. James Thomson was being supported by his father. The boy looked as though he could collapse at any moment. The schoolgirls were quieter now, subdued by the service and by the necessity of encountering Sharon’s parents. Bravely, the Millens had remained to receive the congregation, speechless, but shaking hands. The elderly minister stood by them supportively, speaking an occasional word of thanks. He hadn’t known who we were, Lorimer thought to himself, he’d treated everyone with the same kindly courtesy. What was it about some of these church folk that they could only see good in their fellow men? Lorimer mused on this for a moment, admitting to himself that the seamy side of life had given him quite a different outlook.

What kind of outlook did the killer have? Did he know of Sharon’s memorial service? Or did his involvement with her end when he left her body under those bushes, taking her blonde hair away with him? For what? Why? With Donna Henderson’s murder had come a frantic round of city salons, freelancers, theatrical stylists and wig dressers. The link between the victim’s profession and manner of death had seemed so obvious. Now it seemed only a cruel irony.

The last of the mourners stepped into her car and drove off. A school teacher, thought Lorimer, who was good at guessing professions from appearances.

‘Nothing doing, Bill.’

George Phillips’s tone was resigned. Lorimer declined to answer. Rain-soaked trees lined the road to the gateway and their car swished out into the main road leading back to town.

At the first set
of red lights George Phillips turned to Lorimer.

‘We’ll be sending that psychologist fellow up to see you later today. Can’t do any harm, and could do some good. Question is, do we let the Press in on it at this stage or not? Could make it look as though we’re up to something.’

On the other hand it might be seen as clutching at straws. Lorimer stared straight ahead. He was not opposed to this development, just resentful that it had come to this in a case where he had failed to find anything significant himself.

‘Fellow by the name of Solomon Brightman,’ continued the Divcom. ‘Funny names most of these psychologist types have. Ah well, perhaps he’ll cast a little light on the case.’

Lorimer refused to acknowledge Phillips’s feeble attempt at a joke. Within himself he hoped fervently that the psychologist would do just that. And it was no laughing matter.