The Darkest Goodbye (William Lorimer) (4 page)

G
lasgow.

Sarah heaved a huge sigh as the train passed through the darkness of a tunnel. What was she going to find there after all this time away? It was where everything had gone wrong and yet there were still good memories associated with the city, memories that lingered like the aftertaste of a sweet wine.

Pete was gone. Her parents didn’t want to know her any more, so why had she decided to come back? It had been home for all of her twenty-six years, she supposed, unless she counted the time spent at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Anyway, Sarah told herself, zipping up her jacket, it was a question that could wait until she decided whether she was going to stick around here or move on.

The suddenness of light flooding into the railway carriage almost made Sarah gasp. As the train slowed down at platform three in Queen Street station, the girl glanced at the people beside her, gathering up their laptop bags and raincoats, ready to face whatever was taking them into Scotland’s largest city. Sarah sat still, waiting until the train had come to a complete halt, not wishing to bump into any of her fellow passengers, deciding to hold off until the very last moment when she would pick up her raincoat and the bag at her feet and set off on the next stage of her journey.

There was a damp smoky smell in the air as Sarah alighted from the train, as if an autumn fog had swirled its way through the dark tunnel and settled down on the concrete platforms and the metal rails below. She shivered, clutching her ticket, remembering that disembodied voice on the train telling the passengers that a barrier was in operation. So many details forgotten, so many things to think about. Only a few stragglers from the Stirling train were moving through the barriers now as Sarah placed her ticket in the slot. She watched as it was swallowed up and the little black gates opened noiselessly, letting her through. It was, Sarah felt, as if she were being properly released back into the maelstrom that was Glasgow’s human population.

Her feet seemed to have a life of their own, taking her past the uniformed station staff, the Costa Coffee shop (was that white-haired barista who made such nice chai lattes still there?) then out past the Millennium Hotel and into the heart of the city.

For a moment Sarah stood on the pavement watching the traffic ebb and flow around George Square. Light bounced off the car windows, the rays of a September sun penetrating the clouds, a warmth that was pleasing after the chill of the station. If she could just stand here for a while, she thought, face turned up to the brightness…

Sarah only realised that she had shut her eyes when the beep from the traffic signal alerted her.

‘You crossing here or what, hen?’ a gravelly voice spoke at her side.

Sarah jumped then mumbled an apology to a cross-faced older woman with straggly grey hair as she let herself join the group of pedestrians heading along in the direction of Queen Street. She needed to keep her wits about her, not fall into the trap of standing out in a crowd, she thought, a sudden dread washing over her. She didn’t want anyone staring, divining who she was and where she had come from. Perhaps she ought to have taken their advice back in Cornton, let them persuade her to talk to that woman from SHINE.
A mentor,
they’d told her.
Someone to help you when you come out.
But Sarah had rejected any offer of help, preferring to keep her own counsel, burying her darkest thoughts as deeply as she could.

The pavement underfoot was damp from an earlier shower of rain, the grey surface cracked and worn from many passing feet. She looked with interest at two red open-topped buses by the kerb, a few folk waiting patiently for one of the doors to open. Tourists, no doubt, wanting to sample the Glasgow atmosphere.

I could show you a few places that would make your eyes open
, Sarah thought, glancing at them. But their eyes were probably turned towards the magnificent City Chambers, its neo-classical features dominating one entire side of the square. Sarah had been inside only once, a vague notion of brown marble and a sweeping staircase lingered in her memory.

She shifted her bag on to a different shoulder, the ache of its weight making her long for her journey’s end. Not all of the landmarks around here were familiar, she thought. Some of the restaurants had changed, hadn’t they? And there was a new building on that corner replacing one that had been demolished. What had it been? She simply couldn’t remember. Then, as she walked along past the Gallery of Modern Art, Sarah’s face creased in a grin: the Duke of Wellington’s statue still had a traffic cone on its head. Some things never changed.

The light that had warmed her disappeared as Sarah walked down between the high buildings on either side of Queen Street, reminding her that summer was past and the chills of winter were only weeks away. In a doorway ahead she could see a bundle of grey rags that became a man’s face, the eyes turned up in that self-conscious expression of pleading that street beggars always seemed to wear. He would tell her to
have a nice day
even if she passed him by without throwing a coin or two into the grubby upturned cap that lay beside the worn blanket. Sarah hesitated, unsure how she would react, thinking about how little she now had herself in the world yet hoping that fate might keep her from this state if she showed some kindness. She fumbled in her pocket, feeling the handful of loose change that she’d thrust there after the taxi had driven off, leaving her outside Stirling station.

It was the work of a moment to toss the coins into his cap then hurry on, not waiting to look in his face, not wanting to hear any words of gratitude. For who was she to receive thanks? The poor beggar sitting there was probably more deserving of kindness than she was.

Her head was down as she rushed along to the corner where the pedestrian precinct on Argyll Street opened up, so she did not see him until it was almost too late. A dark figure stepped sideways to avoid her and she gasped, horrified to see the uniform of Police Scotland, fearful that the look on her face would betray where she had been, what she had done. But the young officer hardly gave Sarah more than an amused glance as he strode on, leaving her with a sick, trembling feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Nobody appeared to notice the young woman walking hurriedly towards the street where she was to find the correct bus stop that would take her out of the city centre. Two women, each with toddlers in buggies, chatted to one another as they passed, snatches of their conversation drifting by.

‘D’you think I really should?’

‘Aw, go on! Tell him that…’

But whatever one of them was being urged to tell, and to whom, would remain a mystery for ever, the women’s words lost in a blur of traffic noise as a bus braked nearby, its screech drowning out speech and thought.

Sarah wondered for a few seconds what they had been discussing. The break-up of a relationship? (She’d had plenty of those!) Or was it something more mundane, like blowing too much money on a fancy new dress?

Her thoughts made Sarah shift the bag again, its contents heavy enough but in truth the burden that she shouldered represented the sum total of all her worldly goods. She would not think of all her clothes and other belongings discarded by that mean-faced landlord, a fact that the prison officer had passed on. Her rent had been due and she had no means to pay it once the prison gates had slammed behind her, so the nasty old man had binned the lot, or so he had told the officers who had contacted him to ask. Sarah thought of her fake-fur coat with a sudden pang. Bad old bugger had probably sold it on eBay! Or given it away to one of his slim-hipped daughters.

The sigh that escaped her became a yawn as she turned the corner and searched for the number of the bus that she needed. At least where she was going there would be a room and a bed, somewhere that she could relax and call her own for a week or so. And she would need to sign on, find a job, get enough money together to… to do what? A wave of anxiety came over her as Sarah began to think how she might spend her future. And, despite the steady stream of people walking up and down Jamaica Street and the queue ahead of her at the bus stop, the former prisoner felt more alone than she had ever felt before.

However, Sarah was not alone. All along the route from Queen Street station to the pavement here outside a cut-price store, the former inmate had no inkling that she was being followed, no hairs standing up on the back of her neck to alert her to the figure shadowing her every step. In her eagerness to take in all the sights, Sarah Wilding was quite oblivious to the person that kept to the shadows, pausing when she paused, head dropped to scan his mobile phone should she happen to look his way.

And when at last she stepped on board the bus that would take her to her final destination, there was nothing to make her turn and stare at the man who now sat two rows behind, his eyes fixed intently on the long blonde hair sweeping past her shoulders. Nor was there anything to alert her to the danger that lay ahead.

S
arah sat on the edge of the bed and looked out of the window at the street below. The bed and breakfast place was only temporary, she told herself, looking up at the rough patch on the corner of the ceiling where water must have dripped through. The woman shivered and drew her coat closer to her body. There was no heating that she could see and the windows rattled with every passing lorry, so no double-glazed units either. The yellowing candlewick bedspread was worn, several tufts of its swirling design missing. There was a desk and a metal chair, a lamp with a dingy white shade and a small rail set into an alcove with three wire hangers shoved to one side. She had been too tired, too depressed by the place to bother unpacking what few bits and pieces she had taken from the prison, and so the hangers lay empty still, waiting for garments to be placed on their thin metal shoulders.

Sarah had expected a surge of elation once she had closed the door to this room and taken possession of it, but all she could feel was the weight of her own guilt pressing down upon her. A headache was beginning to throb on either side of her head, the forerunner to a full-blown migraine, if she wasn’t much mistaken. She needed to eat, Sarah’s wiser, more practical voice told her; the voice she used to employ when trying to coax her patients to take some nourishment. There was nothing in this room to use for preparing meals: no microwave oven or electric grill, only a white plastic kettle, its flex coiled like a fakir’s snake to be charmed into something magical. The communal bathroom was down the corridor so she would need to leave her room whenever she wanted to fill it from the sink.

‘Don’t leave anything in there,’ Mrs Duncan, the bed-and-breakfast owner had told her as she had shown her the bathroom. And, when Sarah’s eyebrows had risen in a silent question, the woman had added, ‘It’ll just be nicked.’

Her words came back to Sarah now. Was this three-storey building on Glasgow’s south side a halfway house frequented by female offenders, then? A place recommended by the social worker who had liaised with the prison about her release? Were there thieves, prostitutes and others here, separated from Sarah Wilding by a few plasterboard walls? The cornicing around the ceiling stopped abruptly, a tell-tale sign that a bigger room had been split into two or more. Once upon a time this might have been a lovely place, home to a prosperous Victorian businessman and his family. Years of neglect had rendered its red sandstone walls shabby and dark, the paint was peeling from every faded window frame and the creaking stairs up to this third-floor room bore testimony to the many feet that had climbed this way.

Mrs Duncan had not asked any questions of her newest guest, simply told her the times for breakfast each morning (seven till nine) and shown her the facilities, such as they were, before relinquishing the key and heading off back downstairs to her own part of this rambling old house. Was that because she knew of Sarah’s history? Or was she simply uninterested in the young woman as a person, seeing her instead as a line of figures in a ledger, adding up as the weekly rent became due?

She gave another sigh and turned from the window, seeing nothing outside. A sudden yearning for sleep made her kick off her shoes and lie down on top of the yellow bedspread.

Outside, betrayed only by a thin line of cigarette smoke ascending in the cold morning air, the dark-clad figure stood, eyes fixed on the window up above where, until a moment before, the object of his scrutiny had stood.

W
hat on earth was she going to do about Murdoch? The proper course should be to report him to someone in Professional Standards, of course. Failing to do that could cost Kirsty dearly, even see her sacked from the police. But, she reasoned, reporting him might see her hung out to dry as well; who knew what friends the DS might have in high places.

As she climbed the stairs to the CID rooms, Kirsty admitted to herself that the best course of action was simply to keep her mouth shut. After all, Murdoch could deny any accusation she might make and it would do her fledgling career as a detective no good whatsoever to point an accusing finger at the man who was mentoring her.

As if the thought of Murdoch had suddenly conjured him up, there he was, striding along the corridor towards Kirsty, a grim expression on his face.

‘C’mon, Wilson, we’re going back out,’ he said sharply. ‘Sudden death. And it looks like one for the Fiscal,’ he added darkly.

A police car was outside the house when they arrived, an officer standing by the foot of a short flight of stone steps leading up to a dark green painted door. The house was one of the old-fashioned cottage-style four-in-a-block flats that were common in and around the city; the ground-floor homes were accessed by doors at the front of the building whilst the upstairs neighbours had to go around each side to enter their homes. Jane Maitland’s home was one of those on the ground floor, and Kirsty noticed the small metal handrails that had been fitted either side of the front door steps. An old person, then, she guessed.

‘District nurse found her this morning when she called in to give her the usual medication,’ Murdoch told her as they donned their white suits for the second time that day. ‘When the ambulance came to take her away, the neighbour from upstairs came down to see what was going on.’ Murdoch gave a grin. ‘Nosy neighbours. Don’t you just love them!’

Kirsty struggled to fit the bootees over her shoes as Murdoch continued. ‘Seems there had been an early morning caller. Another nurse who’d arrived at the crack of dawn. Not anybody on their rota.’ He raised his eyebrows meaningfully. ‘The body’ll have to be taken down to the mortuary for a PM.’

Kirsty followed the crime scene manager into the house where a pale-faced woman with short dark hair stood in the hallway, a green cardigan draped over her navy blue uniform.

‘Nurse Morgan,’ she said as they approached. She looked at their white garb and nodded. ‘I’ve only touched her wrist to feel for a pulse,’ she said, tilting her chin up in a defensive manner.

‘And the paramedics?’

‘I asked them to come back later,’ Nurse Morgan told them. ‘When Mrs Doyle from upstairs told me someone else had been in early this morning… well… what was I supposed to do? A sudden death, that wasn’t unexpected – she was a very sick woman – but with a complication like this…’ She tailed off as though the detectives would understand what she was trying to say.

‘Is Mrs Doyle still there?’

‘Oh, aye.’ The nurse gave a faint smile. ‘No show without Punch. She’s just dying to see one of you to tell her story.’ The hint of sarcasm in her tone was not lost on either of the officers.

‘We’ll need to see the deceased,’ Murdoch told her and she walked a few paces along the hallway, motioning with her hand towards a door that was shut fast.

‘Thought it should stay closed till you came,’ the nurse murmured.

‘Good thinking,’ Murdoch told her, nodding as he opened the door with his free hand, the other holding the huge black bag containing his extensive scene of crime kit.

The room was still in darkness, a pair of curtains closed against the bright autumn day. There was a smell that Kirsty couldn’t identify, a mixture of sweet pot-pourri and damp wool. Her eyes flicked over the shape underneath the bedcovers and came to rest on a radiator by the window where a Fair Isle jersey had been left to dry.

Murdoch nodded towards the window. ‘Open them, can’t see a damned thing in here,’ he ordered.

Kirsty’s gloved fingers felt along the side of the curtain until she found the pull cord. Suddenly the room changed as the brightness flooded in, dust motes dancing in a cone of sunlight.

Kirsty watched as DS Murdoch stepped around the body, checking for anything that seemed out of the ordinary, though how he would know what he was looking for was a mystery.

‘Could be a simple enough explanation,’ he grunted. ‘Old lady might have taken a bad turn then called someone else.’

‘But surely Nurse Morgan would know who that was,’ Kirsty whispered.

‘Aye, you’d think so. That’s why we’re here. Sudden deaths happen all the time.
Suspicious
sudden deaths not nearly so often.’ He knelt down, lifting the edge of a pleated pink valance to check underneath the bed.

Kirsty’s eyes were drawn to Jane Maitland’s face.
The face of the deceased
, she thought to herself. Odd how being in the room with Murdoch, dressed in these white suits, depersonalised the corpse in the bed.

‘She was bright enough yesterday.’ Nurse Morgan’s voice came from the hallway. ‘Must have taken bad in the night. Like I said, she was a very ill woman.’ She stepped into the room.

‘And it would have saved you a lot of trouble just sending for her GP to sign a death certificate,’ Murdoch said with a sigh.

Kirsty could see the woman bristle with annoyance at his words.

‘Well, I would have had to be satisfied that Miss Maitland had died of natural causes,’ she replied brusquely.

‘And you weren’t,’ Kirsty finished for her, trying to sound sympathetic towards the district nurse and annoyed at Murdoch’s insinuation that she’d caused more trouble for the police than this old lady was worth.

‘No, I wasn’t,’ the woman insisted. ‘My rounds are done at certain times of the day and there was definitely no other nurse meant to be here before me this morning. I checked,’ she added, folding her arm across her chest and staring defiantly at the detectives.

‘The home help’s due at eleven-thirty. But I called their office to tell them not to come in today.’ She sighed. ‘God knows what I’ll do if the Tesco delivery comes. It’s due around lunchtime.’

‘And have you called her GP?’ Murdoch asked.

‘Yes. He’s been held up at the surgery but should be here any time now.’

At that moment Kirsty heard the front doorbell ring.

‘That’ll be him now,’ Nurse Morgan declared, disappearing back along the corridor.

The doctor blinked at the sight of two white-suited figures in his patient’s bedroom but Murdoch ignored the man’s discomfiture, nodding towards the figure on the bed.

‘She died earlier this morning,’ Murdoch told the man who was hesitating in the doorway behind the district nurse. ‘Seems there was an unauthorised visitor dressed like a bona-fide nurse.’ He shrugged. ‘How they got in and out is a complete mystery. Probably a simple explanation,’ he growled.

‘You want me to examine the deceased and write out a death certificate?’ the man asked, a frown appearing on his brow.

‘Aye, doc, you do that, will you? And our pathologist will no doubt confirm exactly what you decide was the cause of death,’ Murdoch said wearily.

‘Wilson, you go upstairs and see this Mrs Doyle, will you? I’ll be with you directly.’

Kirsty was glad to leave the room and strip off her white suit in the hallway, though she kept on the gloves so as not to contaminate any fingerprints on the door handle as she left the lower cottage flat.

She slipped off the thin rubber gloves and stuffed them into her jacket pocket as she climbed the flight of stone stairs to Mrs Doyle’s house. A nosy neighbour, Kirsty told herself, probably some old dear who couldn’t sleep too well. So it came as a surprise when a young woman with short, cropped hair in tones of pink and a row of earrings studded along one ear appeared at the door. She was dressed all in black, a baggy T-shirt covering wide-legged trousers, a white muslin cloth slung over one shoulder.

‘You polis?’ she asked in the deep gravelly voice of an habitual smoker.

‘Detective Constable Wilson,’ Kirsty replied. ‘My colleague, Detective Sergeant Murdoch, will be joining us shortly.’

‘Ailsa Doyle,’ the woman said, motioning Kirsty inside with a jerk of her head. ‘The wean’s asleep so dinna wake him, awright? In here.’ She ushered Kirsty into the front room, which overlooked the street.

There were signs of a small baby’s presence everywhere. A carrycot on a stand took up one corner of the room, the bedclothes spilling out on one side. A plastic nappy-changing mat had been left on the floor beside the fireplace, a blue quilted bag lying open beside it, all the creams and disposable nappies ready for use. A faint whiff of sick permeated the air and Kirsty tried not to wrinkle her nose as she saw the telltale yellow stains on the muslin cloth draped over the young mother’s shoulder.

‘Bad night?’ Kirsty asked, a tone of sympathy in her voice.

‘You got weans?’ Mrs Doyle asked, looking sharply at Kirsty, eyeing the smart trouser suit with undisguised longing.

‘No,’ Kirsty replied.

‘Had me up all bloody night,’ Ailsa Doyle grunted, leaning forward and picking up a cigarette packet that was lying on top of a scratched wooden coffee table. ‘That’s how I saw the old lady’s visitor,’ she said, nodding towards the window. ‘Used to seeing them come at different times of the day. Regular as clockwork, so they are. Till this morning, early on, like.’ She paused to light up then closed her eyes, inhaling the smoke as though it were the best moment of her day. Perhaps it was, Kirsty thought, watching the woman while wondering just how his mother’s smoking might affect a small baby.

‘Can you tell us what the visitor looked like?’ Kirsty asked, taking a notebook from her shoulder bag.

Ailsa Doyle tilted her pink head to one side, thoughtfully. ‘It wis dark, like,’ she began. ‘Kinda misty mornin’. Saw him walking along the street. Navy jaicket, an’ that.’

‘He didn’t get out of a car?’

‘Naw. Like ah said, walked up tae the door and jist went in. Must’ve had a key, know whit ah mean?’ She shrugged. ‘Anyroads, the wean wis greetin fit tae burst so ah didnae see ony mair till he cam oot.’ She frowned suddenly, flicking ash into a green glass dish on the windowsill. ‘He didnae see me. Didnae look up. The light in here wisnae oan.’ Ailsa Doyle shrugged again. ‘Got tae watch the electric bills,’ she said, lips pursing in a gesture of defiance. ‘Besides, ah like tae see the sun come up ower thae trees.’ Her voice softened as she nodded towards the line of golden-leaved chestnut trees across the road that screened the derelict industrial estate beyond. ‘Went doon when ah saw th’ambulance. Telt that Nurse Morgan wummin what ah’d seen. Asked if that ither nurse hadnae been able to help old Miss Maitland earlier oan.’

Ailsa Doyle turned to face Kirsty, her sharp eyes crinkling thoughtfully. ‘He wisnae supposed tae be therr, wis he?’ she asked, a look of perfect understanding passing across her face. ‘An’ it’s always women that come aroon; they’re arenae any male community nurses at oor surgery.’

Kirsty stopped taking notes and tried to look as authoritative as she knew she should.

‘You’ll need to tell DS Murdoch all of this as well, Ailsa,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s important that we find the man who came to see Miss Maitland this morning,’ she added, trying to maintain a neutral tone of voice. How was it that Lorimer managed to talk to folk without giving them ideas? The man could discuss the grisliest facts and still sound as if he were talking about the weather! It was a trick that DC Wilson must strive to emulate, she reminded herself, something that instantly put a witness at their ease so that they told their stories clearly, not missing out any details. Would Murdoch employ a similar technique?

The heavy rap on the door told her she wouldn’t have long to wait as Ailsa Doyle gave a curse and headed back along the corridor to the front door.

She heard their voices as Ailsa Doyle and Murdoch came towards the front room then there came a piercing cry as the baby awoke, and light footsteps as the young mother went into the bedroom next door.

‘Right, Wilson, get all of her statement?’ Murdoch glanced at Kirsty’s notebook.

‘Yes, sir, but aren’t you going to question her yourself?’
With me there to corroborate,
she wanted to add.

Kirsty bit her lip and wishing she hadn’t spoken as Murdoch’s face clouded over with disapproval.

‘Let’s see what you’ve got,’ he replied, gesturing for Kirsty to hand over her notebook.

‘Hm, looks like that’ll be enough to go on meantime. Good. Let’s get out of here.’ He wrinkled his nose in distaste as the baby’s cries grew louder. ‘Probably a complete waste of police time,’ he grunted. ‘And there’s plenty for us to do back at Stewart Street.’

Kirsty watched him stride along the corridor, only hesitating for a moment to look into the bedroom, aware that the baby’s howls had suddenly ceased.

‘That’s us off, thanks for your help,’ she said, smiling at the sight of the young mother nursing her child, a look of utter contentment on Ailsa Doyle’s young face.