The Darkest Goodbye (William Lorimer) (24 page)

Yes! There was a gate about twenty yards between the BMW and his own car.

He braked hard and pulled the wheel around then reversed a foot or two, placing the Lexus right across the path of any oncoming vehicle before switching the lights to full beam and activating his hazard warning lights.

The figure emerging from the BMW looked across at him and Lorimer was sure his lips moved in an oath. He hesitated for a moment, then, taking a step backwards, ran full tilt and vaulted the hedge.

Lorimer grabbed the wooden post and swung his long legs across the top of the five-barred gate. Then he began to step across the patch of glaur, feeling his thick-soled shoes sinking in the mud where many cattle had stood waiting for the farmer to bring their hay. By the time his feet had found dry ground, the driver of the abandoned car was halfway across the field and heading towards a gloomy patch of woodland higher up.

Lorimer broke into a run, recalling the days of his youth when he had belted up the rugby field, ball in hand, in an effort to score a try. His feet pounded across the grass, leaping over tussocks, his longer legs giving him the advantage as he closed in on his quarry.

Above them a full moon emerged from the clouds, its light enabling the tall policeman to see the running figure that began to slow down as the field sloped upwards.

He could hear the other man gasping for breath as he approached. He wasn’t fit, Lorimer thought. Only fear and a rush of adrenalin had given him the necessary impetus to flee.

It was then that the man he pursued made the mistake of turning to look over one shoulder, the motion throwing him off balance for a vital moment.

Lorimer threw himself forward, the rugby tackle bringing the other man crashing down with a hollow thud as the breath was knocked out of his body.

Then the sound of other feet stamping across the ground came closer and the detective breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled the man to his feet, grateful to see several uniformed officers approaching.

‘You’re no doctor!’ the man gasped as Lorimer pulled back his arms and clipped the handcuffs around his wrists.

The man glowered at the detective, his scar livid in the moonlight.

‘Quite correct,’ Lorimer agreed, pushing him towards the nearest uniformed officer. ‘Take him away,’ he commanded. ‘I’ll see him once he’s had time to cool off in the cells.’

R
ob Dolan sat snivelling into a soggy paper tissue. The memory of the previous night stung as much as his sore eyes. Damn that bitch to hell! His fist scrunched the tissue into a vicious ball. He would make sure that she suffered if it was the last thing he did. There were ways and means; women inside that he could contact who would do his bidding, the promise of some gear when they came out dangling like bait.

Dolan shut his eyes, the ache lessening now. One of the uniforms had given him a couple of paracetamol and watched him as he swallowed the pills with a plastic cup of water. He’d been left for what remained of the night in the cells here in Stewart Street police station, lying awake on the mattress, his mind seething with thoughts of revenge.

Now he was in one of the interview rooms, a different uniformed officer standing guard at the door, legs apart like a soldier on duty. Dolan had tried to catch his eye but the polis wasn’t having any of it, staring straight ahead as if a guy like Dolan wasn’t worth the bother.

Who would he see? Last time he’d been bust it had been that big guy Murdoch who’d collared him. Dolan shivered. He’d heard that Murdoch had relocated to Stewart Street. He sniffled again, hoping that it wouldn’t be the tough-looking detective that walked through the door.

‘Aw, Jesus, whit the…?’ Dolan’s oath died on his lips, one hard stare from the tall figure entering the room silencing the prisoner.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t Robert Dolan,’ Lorimer said, taking off his jacket and slinging it on the back of the chair opposite.

Dolan began jigging his leg up and down, the need for drugs to calm his nerves growing steadily.

‘Aw, Mr Lorimer, c’n ye no’ see whit a state ah’m in? That lassie had no right daein’ whit she did,’ Dolan girned.

‘And what lassie would that be?’ Lorimer asked quietly.

‘Och, Pete’s big sister.’

‘Pete?’

‘Pete Wilding. He’s deid. OD’d, didn’t he?’

‘What were you doing outside Abbey Nursing Home last night, Mr Dolan?’

The man began shaking his other leg up and down, up and down, faster and faster. ‘Ah want ma brief, so ah do,’ he declared, his eyes flicking from Lorimer to the silent policeman by the door. ‘Ye’s cannae haud me here against ma will.’

To Dolan’s chagrin, the detective superintendent laid his hands upon the table and burst out laughing.

‘Whit’s the joke? Eh? Eh?’ Dolan scowled and folded his arms across his chest.

‘Oh dear. If there were two of you, Rob, you’d make a grand comedy act,’ Lorimer declared, pretending to wipe tears from his eyes. For a moment he shook his head as though expressing disbelief at the follies of the criminal fraternity.

Then he leaned forward, the expression on his face altered completely.

‘Would you like me to charge you, Rob? Abduction, coercion, accessory to murder… which one shall we begin with?’

The blue stare fixed Dolan to his seat then the prisoner looked away. ‘Ah want ma brief,’ he muttered again, but this time there was no trace of bravado in his voice.

The lawyer who had been summoned to Stewart Street at Jerry Cunningham’s request was well known to Lorimer.

‘Pauline.’ He smiled and put out his hand. A wintry smile and a cursory handshake were his only reward. ‘Nice to see you again. How are things?’

Pauline Dick sighed and shook her head. ‘They’d be a damned sight better if I didn’t keep getting folk like Jerry Cunningham calling me up,’ she growled, a fifty-a-day habit making the woman’s voice low and gruff. ‘Finishing a case on at the High Court this afternoon so I could do without this.’

‘Well that’s where he’ll be heading eventually, I reckon,’ Lorimer replied. ‘Meantime he’s all yours this fine morning.’

When he opened the door and stood back to allow Pauline Dick to enter the room, Lorimer could see Jerry Cunningham sitting in the chair, back ramrod straight, arms folded in a gesture of defiance. What would it take, Lorimer wondered, to see those arms fall by the scar-faced man’s side?

‘Good morning, Mr Cunningham,’ he began. ‘You know Mrs Dick, of course?’

‘
Ms
Dick,’ Pauline butted in, drawing off her leather gloves and stuffing them in her briefcase.

Lorimer glanced at the lawyer’s left hand, now bare of any wedding rings. Ah, well, he thought. She’ll be in no mood for any nonsense after her acrimonious divorce.

He switched on the tape and sat back. ‘Detective Superintendent William Lorimer,’ he began, then gave the time and date.

‘Jerome Thomas Cunningham, you have been charged with the following. Abduction of a female person, holding said female at knifepoint, breaking property and being an accessory to the murder of David Imrie.’ Lorimer intoned the words as though he were a bookie reading out a list of runners for the three-forty at Cheltenham.

‘No comment,’ Cunningham replied, staring defiantly at Lorimer and completely ignoring the woman who sat at his side.

‘You were outside Abbey Nursing Home last night,’ Lorimer continued. ‘Like to tell me why?’

‘No comment,’ Cunningham said again, a trace of a sneer in his voice.

So, it was going to be like that, was it? The smarmy bastard wanted to play this old game, did he? Lorimer thought.

‘We’ll be taking a DNA sample from you shortly, Mr Cunningham,’ he announced. ‘I’m sure it will match the traces on the little pile of cigarette butts we retrieved from where your car was parked.’

There was a slight tremor down one side of the man’s face, the livid scar tightening. He’d hit home. Or had he?

Cunningham glanced at Pauline Dick then shrugged in a parody of nonchalance.

‘We also have a mobile telephone in our possession,’ Lorimer said slowly. ‘Records from which will match the conversations you had with the same female whom you threatened on three separate occasions.’

Cunningham’s shoulders lifted a little, a sure sign of tension. But that chin still jutted upwards and those dark eyes looked at the tall detective then away.

‘What have you got to say about that?’ Lorimer asked.

‘No comment,’ Cunningham repeated then gave an exaggerated yawn and began to examine his fingernails as though they were of greater interest than the man sitting opposite or the words being recorded on to tape.

But the gesture was not lost on Lorimer. The arms were no longer tightly folded and the signs of uncertainty were there for anyone who cared to read them.

‘We’ve taken on Professor Brightman to help us in our investigation,’ Lorimer said. ‘You know him, don’t you, Jerry?’

Cunningham stopped picking at his fingernails and stared at the detective, lips parted slightly.

‘What’s that got to do with me?’ he asked truculently.

‘We normally don’t invite the estimable professor to help us unless it is in cases of multiple murder. Cases which he is really rather good at helping to conclude.’ He smiled, catching Pauline Dick’s eye. The woman sighed deeply and looked at her watch. He could see that Cunningham’s refusal to cooperate was beginning to annoy her.

‘
Multiple
murder?’ Pauline Dick asked suddenly, her dark eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

‘Oh, yes,’ Lorimer continued, his tone laconic, sitting back with hands behind his head as though he were enjoying the performance. ‘We have reason to believe that Mr Cunningham here has been an accessory to several murders in the city. And,’ he unclasped his hands and leaned forward suddenly, making Jerry Cunningham flinch. ‘We have forensic evidence to back this up.’

‘I didn’t do anything to anyone,’ Cunningham bleated, turning to Pauline Dick, his hands now falling by his side. ‘It wasn’t me!’

‘If I could have a few minutes alone with my client?’ Pauline Dick sighed.

‘Interview being paused at nine fifty-three,’ Lorimer said, flicking the switch, an expression of calm satisfaction creasing his face.

It had been a long night. After the arrest out in the Stirlingshire countryside, Lorimer had returned to the nursing home to check that Sarah Wilding was safe.

The main door had been opened by a pleasant-faced nurse who ushered him into Nancy Livingstone’s office where the nursing home manager was waiting for him.

‘I sent her home,’ Nancy explained. ‘We covered the rest of her shift between us.’ Then, looking at Lorimer, she clasped her hands and brought them to touch her lips. ‘What will happen to her?’ she had asked quietly.

‘I don’t know,’ Lorimer admitted. ‘That’s for the Fiscal to decide. But I will be stressing how Sarah Wilding was forced into an action against her will, and against her better judgement. We can only hope that there will be no charge brought.’

‘If she hadn’t copied those details your relative would still be alive,’ Nancy Livingstone said quietly.

‘Aye, there is that. But I think they’d still have found a way to access the records. We’ve got a team trawling every nursing home in Glasgow that deals with patients like yours. Some hospital wards too. We think that there’s a whole outfit targeting vulnerable patients and their relatives. And there may be more nurses like Sarah who have been unwitting pawns in their sordid game.’

‘I see.’ Nancy Livingstone had shivered as though the idea disgusted her sensibilities. ‘Who could do such things…?’

‘Have you ever heard of an organisation calling itself Quiet Release?’ he’d asked. ‘Any of your patients’ relatives mention it to you?’

But the woman had shaken her head, her unblinking response showing that not only had she never heard of them but that she could not conceive of such wickedness impinging on her world.

He had driven back to the city through the dawn light, the pale yellow sunrise a bright contrast to the charcoal outline of Glasgow’s familiar skyline.

Lorimer rubbed his eyes, thinking of Rob Dolan and the doctor who had smeared some ointment on the drug addict’s eyelids before taking a mouth swab. What he would give for the chance to go home and lay his head on the pillow of his own bed! Preferably with Maggie by his side. He gave a sigh. Cases like this took him away from his wife for long spells. But she was used to it, he hoped, gnawing at his fingernail as he remembered Pauline Dick’s bare left hand.

Dolan had spilled the beans at any rate, put Jerry Cunningham right into it. They’d communicated by phone, Dolan had said at last, wee cheap mobiles that they’d been instructed to discard from time to time. But Dolan had taken it on himself to keep them, he’d admitted, taking them to his dealer in exchange for a fix.

Now it remained to be seen whether Cunningham would persist with his ‘no comment’ routine or try to dig himself out of a hole that looked deeper and deeper with every bit of his partner’s confession.

‘Interview resumed at ten twenty-eight,’ he intoned, not even bothering to catch Cunningham’s eye as the man sat down beside his lawyer.

‘Mr Cunningham wishes to make a statement,’ Pauline Dick declared, nudging the man by her side. ‘Tell Detective Superintendent Lorimer what you told me, Jerry,’ she sighed.

The scar-faced man scowled, first at the woman then at Lorimer.

‘I can’t tell you what I don’t know,’ he began. ‘It was all done by telephone.’

‘What was all done by telephone, Mr Cunningham? Please explain for the tape,’ Lorimer said.

‘Well, folk don’t want to see their relatives suffer a lingering, painful death,’ Cunningham continued, sounding as though he had memorised a familiar script. ‘So this guy starts up his business to help them. Right?’ Quiet Release, Lorimer thought. But would Cunningham name it and the people behind it?

‘I have no idea who he is, honest,’ he gulped, looking swiftly from Pauline Dick to the tall detective. ‘But I can tell you who gave us our instructions.’

Lorimer tried to keep his face poker straight as the prisoner continued.

‘I know this guy,’ Cunningham said. ‘From way back. Brogan his name is. Done time with him in the Bar-L.’

‘Billy Brogan?’

‘Same fella,’ Cunningham agreed. ‘He contacts me and asks if I want to make a bit of dough. Course I agreed. Who doesn’t need to make a living?’ he asked, shifting his chair forwards as his apparent confidence grew.

‘Go on,’ Lorimer murmured.

‘We were told where to go and find these poor souls,’ Cunningham said, looking up at Pauline Dick as though to check that the version of his tale was what they had agreed. ‘Report back to Brogan and then move on to another place.’

‘And how did Sarah Wilding fit into this?’

Cunningham shifted uncomfortably. ‘I knew Pete back before he took that overdose,’ he admitted. ‘Knew his sister had been done for theft and supplying.’ He bit his lip and looked at Pauline Dick again but she refused to meet his eyes.

‘I told Brogan about her and he got back to me with all the information about her, release date and everything. Don’t know how he got that.’ He shrugged.

Lorimer did not respond. Some woman in Cornton Vale had no doubt supplied that information, not something he might ever be able to prove, however.

‘I was to follow her and find out where she was staying. Brogan says that the boss wanted to see if she’d be talked into helping us. Doing the needle bit. For money, of course.’ Cunningham shrugged again, as if that sort of transaction was normal in his world, which of course it was. ‘But then I discovered she had a job in that nursing home and it seemed that the boss had a change of plan.’

Who is he?
Lorimer wanted to seize Jerry Cunningham by the throat and shake the answer out of him but the detective superintendent remained as impassive as before, knowing that such an action would be counterproductive.

‘Tell me what you were instructed to do,’ he said instead.

‘Aw, we just sort of…’ Cunningham visibly squirmed in his chair then, at a nudge from Pauline Dick’s elbow, he continued. ‘Well, all right, we lifted her after her shift. Gave her a wee frightener. Told her to copy the patient records on to a phone.’

‘This phone?’ Lorimer held up a clear plastic production bag, the mobile phone that Sarah Wilding had been given inside.