The Swedish Girl (13 page)

‘
A
ndy, where’s Fiona?’ The girl with the short red hair walked into the kitchen, bleary-eyed with sleep. Kim Travers yawned and hugged herself more closely into her camel dressing gown, blinking sleepily at the young man sitting at the table, a pile of weekend papers spread in front of him.

‘Don’t know,’ Andy Harrison replied with a shrug. ‘She went for a run earlier on and hasn’t come back. Maybe went into town?’

‘Aye, maybe.’ Kim yawned again. ‘I’ll give her mobey a ring. We’re supposed to be going home later today. Cousin’s engagement party,’ she explained.

‘That the one who met the woman in New York and asked her to marry him three weeks later?’

‘Naw, a different cousin. This guy’s been with the same girl for ages.’ Kim moved forward towards the cupboard and peered at the selection of clean mugs before selecting one without any chips.

‘Maybe she’s forgotten?’ Andy suggested.

‘Fiona? Forget a party? I don’t think so,’ Kim scoffed. ‘More likely she met someone and went for a coffee. I mean, who’d want to run in this?’ She jerked her head in the direction of the kitchen window where rain was streaming down, battered by the ferocity of the winter wind.

Kim Travers shuffled slowly out of the kitchen only to return a few minutes later.

‘That’s weird,’ she said with a frown. ‘She’s not answering her phone. It’s just ringing out.’

Her flatmate looked up and saw the worried expression on the girl’s face. Kim and Fiona were as unlike in appearance as it was possible for sisters to be but there was a strong bond between the pair. Andy Harrison put down the paper he had been reading, all thoughts of the state of the Scottish Premier League gone from his mind.

‘D’you think she’s maybe had an accident? Slipped and hurt herself?’ His eyes followed Kim’s as they both turned towards the window, now hearing the sound of hail battering against the glass.

Kim sat down heavily beside him, staring into space. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘But I’ve got a horrible feeling that something isn’t right.’

‘Hello?’

‘It’s Lorimer. Can we meet up somewhere?’

‘Oh.’ Kirsty Wilson stood looking out as the rain continued to drive across the bay windows of her room. Her heart quickened. Had they found something? Was Colin going to be released? Why did he want to meet up? ‘Okay,’ she replied, trying to sound less flustered than she felt. ‘Where are you just now?’

‘Crow Road. Not far from your flat.’

Kirsty thought for a moment. She didn’t want him coming here and she suspected he had too much sense to revisit the scene of crime without a genuine pretext. ‘What about the pub on the corner? The Caledonian Bar,’ she suggested. ‘You know where that is?’

‘Yes. Right. See you there in ten minutes.’

Kirsty looked down at the mobile in her hand. Had she started something that was going to get the detective superintendent into trouble? His voice had sounded terse, not angry, just restrained as though he was holding something back. Hastily she threw on her duffel coat, grabbing the gloves and scarf that were hung on a peg behind the door.

Outside on the street the wind seemed to have redoubled its strength and Kirsty had to battle against it all the way along to the corner, gusts pulling back her hood and spilling her hair all ways in front of her face. It was cold too, a real north-easterly, holding the threat of snow or hail.

There were no café tables or chairs on the pavement now, just double doors on the corner swinging open as she approached, a couple of men in green and white football strips barging out, no doubt on their way to the match at Parkhead. Kirsty shivered seeing their bare, tattooed forearms. How could they not feel the cold on a day like this? Mad, she told herself, then grinned. Och, listen to her! She was beginning to sound just like her mother. Kirsty made her way into the heart of the pub past crowded tables and the huge bar that was festooned in loops of silver and pink tinsel. She peered into the deepening gloom, searching the corners to see if he was there. A sigh of relief escaped the girl as she caught sight of him, sitting alone by the fire, a glass of something tawny already in his hand.

‘Good spot. Surprised there wasn’t anyone else here,’ Kirsty said, nodding towards the roaring fire as she plonked herself down beside him.

Lorimer smiled at her. ‘Actually, they just left,’ he said. ‘Couple of Celtic supporters. Right, what can I get you to drink? I can’t stay too long, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, not anything cold,’ Kirsty told him, still shivering from the short walk along Merryfield Avenue. ‘They do coffees in here as well. So… a latte, maybe?’

She watched as he rose from his place and strode towards the bar. He was a striking figure of a man, Kirsty thought, and it always surprised her how tall he really was, something that was emphasised by the wee man standing patiently beside him now, waiting for his pint to be pulled by Ina, the purple-haired barmaid. They were talking, Lorimer and the wee Glasgow man, and though Kirsty couldn’t hear what was being said she expected it was something to do with either the weather or the afternoon’s fixture list.

It is so strange how complete strangers can strike up a conversation in this city
, Eva had once observed. It was as if she was right there, speaking to her, Kirsty thought, hearing the Swedish girl’s voice in her mind. Sudden tears came unbidden then and Kirsty had to search in her coat pocket for a hanky, glad that Lorimer was not sitting there to see her being such a fool.

‘One latte.’ Lorimer set it down in front of her and brought his chair a bit closer around the small table.

‘Thanks,’ Kirsty said. ‘What do I owe you?’

Lorimer shook his head and made a face. ‘Think I might owe you quite a lot,’ he began. ‘Anyway, we’ll see.’

‘What’s happened?’ Kirsty cupped the hot drink in her hands, waiting for him to begin.

‘I’ve just come from the scene of what appears to be another murder,’ he said quietly. ‘Young woman, maybe about the same age as your flatmate, long blond hair… attractive girl…’

‘So you think there’s a serial killer on the loose?’ Kirsty breathed excitedly.

‘Whoa, steady on, now. The first thing any officer learns is not to jump to conclusions, okay?’

‘But you think there might be similarities?’

‘Could be,’ Lorimer said. ‘On the other hand this poor city of ours has more than its fair share of homicides. Could be a strange coincidence. And anyway, this one was outdoors, unlike your friend’s.’

‘Oh.’ Kirsty was visibly deflated by this piece of information. ‘So you don’t think…?’

‘Kirsty, listen to me, will you?’ Lorimer looked at the girl intently. ‘I can’t raise any hopes, okay? But there is something…’ He paused as she stared back at him, a flicker of expectation lighting her eyes. ‘We’ve approached the Procurator Fiscal to see if there’s anything that merits reopening the case. But there isn’t a hell of a lot to go on so far. There’s your feeling about Colin and the aspect of Eva’s lecturer to consider. Now this new victim has got me wondering…’ He heaved a sigh. ‘Call it a policeman’s instinct, call it fear that we’ve got it wrong, I don’t really know. But now this has got a hold of me and I’m not prepared to let it go.’

‘What can I do to help?’ Kirsty asked.

Lorimer shrugged. ‘Just what you’ve been doing so far. Searching in those areas of Eva’s life that we might have overlooked. Reporting anything, and I mean
anything
, back to me. I can’t involve you too much, Kirsty but what I want to propose is that you and I talk to Professor Brightman about visiting Colin.’

Kirsty’s eyes widened. ‘What will you say to Dad?’

Lorimer gave a hollow laugh. ‘Oh, your dad knows. Says I’m mad to listen to you. Hasn’t he said anything to you yet?’

Kirsty shook her head, a worried look crossing her pale features.

‘Don’t fret. I told him you were doing a good job, okay?’

Kirsty raised her eyebrows in an expression of doubt.

‘No, it’s true. Listen, since your discovery about Dirk McGregor, and with this morning’s affair, we’re going to begin asking questions of various people.’

‘Not just this lecturer?’

Lorimer shook his head. ‘I’ve spoken with DI Grant and we have agreed that what we would like to do is have you visit Barlinnie and speak to Colin Young.’ He hesitated. ‘It might be better if you and Professor Brightman go together. Colin will have to request that he is added to his visitors’ list, of course. What do you think? Could you do that?’

Kirsty Wilson raised her mug of coffee as though to salute him. ‘I don’t think you’re mad at all, Mr Lorimer,’ she said. ‘Of course I’ll go and speak to him. I’ll write to him today.’

Then, turning away before the policeman could see the tears starting in her eyes, she pretended to bury her face in the coffee mug.

Oh, Colin, Kirsty thought, what will you have to tell me?

‘
I
’ve called everyone,’ Kim wailed. ‘Even the A&E departments of the local hospitals!’

Andy Harrison sat opposite his flatmate, holding her hands between his own. Her fingers were so cold. Poor circulation, the scientist in him thought, then he chided himself immediately. The girl was distraught, panicking even. It was hours now since Fiona had left the flat for her daily run. And although Kim could be a bit of a drama queen at times, Andy felt that she was genuinely upset as though she instinctively knew something was wrong.

‘What about the police?’ he said quietly.

Kim choked back a sob. ‘I couldn’t…’

‘D’you want me to ring them?’

The red-haired girl nodded, fishing a crumpled hanky from her cardigan pocket.

‘Okay. Sorry, Andy, I’m probably being silly, but…’

‘No, it’s all right,’ the young man replied. But, as he left the kitchen to make the telephone call, the science student had to admit to an irrational sense of foreboding in his heart.

The woman on the line was pleasant but firm, directing his call through to the local police station where an officer took Fiona’s name and other details, promising to call back if there was any news and assuring Andy that there was probably no need to worry. People went missing all the time and usually turned up again safe and sound within twenty-four hours.

‘Fiona Travers. Lives in a flat up near Jordanhill station with her sister and another fellow. Left the house early for her usual run. Description: long blond hair, blue eyes, approximate height five feet five, slim build, aged twenty. Think she’s the one?’

The detective sergeant looked up from his clipboard at the uniformed officer who had relayed Andrew Harrison’s call.

‘Could be. Timing’s right. So’s the location. Better ask the sister if she can come down to the mortuary.’

The uniformed cop nodded. This was one aspect of the job that they all hated. Giving bad news to relatives was such a crap thing to have to do. Still, there was a young bloke in that flat, too, so maybe he’d accompany her?

Kim clung on to Andy’s sleeve as they entered the front door of Glasgow City Mortuary. The rain had stopped but the Glasgow streets were still awash with water gurgling into the gutters. She felt Andy’s hand on her back as he guided her into the place, hardly heard the lady pathologist’s words as she was led towards the viewing room. It was, Kim thought, like a bad dream where all sense of time and place was blurred at the edges and you knew that you would wake up at any moment, shaking off all the horrid images.

She was to look at a television screen, not at a real body, after all. It was okay, she told herself over and over again. It wouldn’t be Fiona, but some other poor soul lying in this cold place. Fiona would be fine, she’d be okay… sitting having coffee with someone she’d forgotten to ring, or having sex with a boyfriend she’d kept secret…

Only it
was
Fiona there on the white bed; Fiona with her hair spilling around her sweet face as though she had simply fallen asleep.

And it was Kim’s own wail that she heard echoing through the corridors of Glasgow City Mortuary.

‘Tired?’

Rosie nodded, her head sunk into the soft cushions of the sofa. A broken night’s sleep followed by a day on call had left her feeling completely drained. A huge sigh escaped the pathologist as she sipped the mug of mulled wine that Solly had warmed for her.

‘It’s such a shitty thing to happen. Poor girl caught by some sick bastard. God! You should have seen the state her sister was in!’

Solly stroked his wife’s hair, listening as Rosie told him about the post-mortem, wincing a little when the details became a little too grisly for his delicate stomach. It wasn’t like her to react so emotionally, he thought to himself. She had become far more sensitive about the victims of capital crime since Abby’s birth and the psychologist suspected that there was a proper hormonal explanation for this. Though, to be fair, lack of sleep probably had a lot to do with her state of mind.

Solly remained silent as Rosie’s conversation tailed off and he heard her breathing become deeper. He’d let her sleep a while beside him before insisting they both set off for bed. But for now Solly was content to mull over the events of the day. Maggie Lorimer had left for home by the time the young girl had telephoned. Kirsty was to come in to his office tomorrow afternoon and he wondered just what she would tell him. There had been only that insistent note in her voice that Colin Young was innocent of the Swedish girl’s murder. And of course she was hoping that this latest tragedy would exonerate her friend. The psychologist sighed. In his opinion it was unlikely to be the same man. A jogger in the woods suggested a random attack by an opportunist, whereas Eva Magnusson had probably known her killer. Lorimer wouldn’t like it when the psychologist spelled it out in his next report but he would have to see that the patterns weren’t the same.

The rain had stopped now and the wind that had battered against the bay windows earlier was spent. Solly gazed up at the winter sky; it was like a black canvas against the pale window frames. Somewhere there would be stars sparking in the night, looking down on a humanity that included the good, the bad and those damaged by life’s vagaries. And somewhere there might be a tortured soul seeking consolation for the terrible deed that he had committed. Or maybe not. If Fiona Travers’s killer was a person with a psychopathic personality then there would be no question of remorse, rather the possibility of a renewed urge to kill again.

Colin could hear the boy weeping silently in the bunk above his own. There was little that separated them, little that allowed for privacy and he had kept quiet, hoping to give the lad a bit of space. Colin still hadn’t found out why his previous cellmate had been transferred out from A Block. He’d overheard one of the other inmates talking about it, the name
Brogan
being uttered then a shifty glance was thrown his way causing a silence that had excluded him from their conversation. The chance to breathe the air on his own had been short-lived, however, before the door had swung open again. Darren had given him such a look when he’d been admitted to the cell; a look that was meant to be all big-man bravado to conceal the fear in his eyes. At first sight he didn’t think Darren was any more than eighteen, a thin wee runt of a lad with a weaselly countenance and eyes that darted here and there, suggesting that he might be under the influence of some substance or other. So it had come as a surprise when he’d told him he was twenty-six.

‘Ye either get auld in here or it keeps ye lookin’ young,’ Darren had told Colin, a defiant chin in the air. He had form, he’d boasted, knew the place inside out.

‘Jist a matter o’ time till ah’m sentenced an’ back oan the workshoap. Makin’ furniture fur thae garden centres, like,’ he’d told Colin. But now, under cover of the inky darkness that permeated the cell, Colin could hear the real agony in the other prisoner’s soul.

‘You have to leave your mobile phones behind,’ Lorimer told them, looking in turn from Solly to Kirsty as they sat in the psychologist’s office at the university. ‘It’s like going into another country,’ he said, a half smile on his lips. ‘Just remember to take your passports or some other form of visual ID for the duty officer at the reception desk, okay?’

‘How long do we get with Colin?’ Kirsty asked.

‘Fifty minutes, max. Less if there are as many as three folk visiting. They don’t allow more than three at any one time,’ he explained.

‘Did you think to call his father?’ Solly asked the girl.

Kirsty shook her head, an anxious expression on her face. ‘Should I have…?’

‘Don’t worry. It’s a working day today so I would doubt if Colin’s father is able to make the trip over from West Lothian anyway.’

‘What do I say to him?’ Kirsty bit her lip, looking more troubled than ever.

‘The truth,’ Lorimer said simply. ‘But I wouldn’t go trying to raise any false hopes either, d’you understand me, Kirsty? Just because another girl’s been strangled doesn’t mean that Colin is innocent of his charge.’

Kirsty nodded, tearing her eyes away from the tall policeman’s stern blue gaze. He was right, of course. There was always the chance that she was making too much of what she believed about Colin. And what if he had changed? What if the person she was about to see was a different young man from the one she thought she had known so well in Merryfield Avenue?

Fridays had always been favourite days of his on the outside, the week ending with the promise of good things ahead. But here, as a prisoner on remand, there was little for Colin Young to look forward to, weekends marking extra visits from families and the collective atmosphere of despair that followed them. It was hard to remember he had been here less than a month yet already Colin had become used to the daily routine and its occasional high spots. The next library visit was not until Thursday and then only for a limited time. He’d already browsed the bookshelves, finding a preponderance of crime fiction novels. Was that homework for the lags? Or did they simply like to read a novelist’s made-up version of reality and laugh derisively?

He’d be able to go over to the gym later on, Colin thought, once he’d been allowed the hour’s exercise out in the yard. A scatter of thin hailstones flung against the barred window made him look up towards the grey wall of E block opposite his cell. He stood up on a chair and looked out over the exercise yard of ‘The Wendy’, a special unit where disruptive prisoners spent time in solitary, to the huge wall beyond, seeing the white-painted numbers of cells from 43 to 39. Sometimes voices shouted across the space and he could hear answering laughter.

Today marked the winter solstice, the turning point of the year. The daylight was so limited anyway and dark rain clouds would scowl down on these figures marching around, beating their arms to keep warm. Yet being out and shivering in the open was better than being cooped up all day.

Darren was away to court this morning, leaving Colin guiltily appreciative of having the cell to himself once again for a while. It gave him time to think, though that in itself was a two-edged sword. How he would present himself to a jury when the time came was something his dad had tried to talk to him about last weekend and Colin knew that this ought to be at the forefront of his mind. Only it wasn’t. The thoughts of what was happening outside kept returning to him over and over again. The restaurant where he’d worked would be extra busy now with festive bookings every night. Colin could imagine the place, lit up with rows of starry lights swung between the buildings along Ashton Lane, customers laughing as they made their way into the warmth of the place. He closed his eyes, conjuring up the sights and smells of the kitchen: the fragrant aroma of good coffee wafting in as the door to the dining area opened and closed, the delicate scent of honeyed almonds from the dish that was made up daily and – Colin’s favourite – the roasted meats turning slowly on that great spit over the charcoal-burning fire. He breathed in deeply, as though to savour the memories.

The noise of the cell door clanging open made him look up suddenly, the illusion vanishing in an instant.

‘Time for you to see your visitors,’ the prison officer told him, opening the door wider. ‘Mr Popular, aren’t you?’ the man added with a grin.

Colin looked towards him to see if he was making fun or being sarcastic but the officer’s eyes had slid away from his as though it had been instilled into them that making any human contact was a bad idea. Colin didn’t even know the man’s name, hadn’t bothered to ask even though it was the same person who came regularly to lock and unlock his cell. Somehow it seemed safer not to indulge in small talk. After the first time, when his attempt to find a little sympathy had been rebuffed, Colin had sworn to keep his emotions to himself. Still, he felt a surge of expectation to see the man Kirsty was bringing with her to Barlinnie.

The large windowless room where visitors came was cheerfully painted in bright apple green, furnished with sets of numbered tables and chairs. There were two people at the far end sitting in the blue visitors’ chairs and Colin’s face lit up with pleasure when he recognised Kirsty. It was funny how this girl was already like an old and trusted friend, yet he had only known her since September. His gaze shifted momentarily to the other figure, a dark, bearded man with a long multi-striped scarf that was wound around his neck. Was this the professor he had heard so much about? Colin’s step faltered as he approached the single green chair opposite them.

Professor Solomon Brightman had watched the young man from the moment the door at the back of the hall had opened and Kirsty had whispered,
That’s him!
His first thought was that the slightly built figure coming towards them looked nothing like the stereotypical image of a killer. But then, as he knew all too well, superficial appearances could deceive. He was only a little taller than Kirsty Wilson herself, pale faced and with mid-brown hair that looked as though it could do with a wash.

‘Colin!’ Solly watched as Kirsty gave her friend a hug then stepped back, looking into his face, unaware of the prison officer who was staring at them almost rudely. Lorimer had told him about how prisoners could get drugs from their womenfolk:
a quick kiss, transfer the wad, a swallow and it was done
. Colin had already taken his seat opposite, obviously used now to the regimen required for visits. Was he pleased to see her? Solly wondered, looking at the boy’s hands clasped tightly together, his eyes devouring the girl’s face.

‘This is Professor Brightman,’ Kirsty said, and Solly offered his hand across the table. The hand he clasped for a brief moment was damp with sweat and clammy-cold. Nervousness could manifest itself in many ways and for many reasons, Solly knew, guilt being only one of them.

‘Hello, Colin,’ Solly said firmly, holding the boy’s gaze with his eyes. ‘We haven’t met before,’ he added.