Alex Gray - The Swedish Girl

Colin saw the look of anxiety cloud his father’s face.

‘You’re that peely-wally from being in here,’ Alec added. ‘Maybe we could get a wee break to Mallorca. Or Tenerife?’

‘Aye, Dad.’ Colin smiled at him, determined not to spoil the older man’s hopes. ‘Surely won’t be too long till I’m out of here, eh?’

I had always imagined us on a sunny beach, somewhere like you see in these fancy travel brochures; lying under a thatched beach umbrella, miles of endless sand and blue ocean and skies as far as you can see. Just me and Eva…

Colin’s pen hovered above the notebook. Pipe dreams , he should add. Just a lad’s fantasy of being with a beautiful girl. Eva had been everywhere, of course. She’d told him about the holidays in the Seychelles, the luxury yacht. Maybe that was why he’d had such a vision of them together, cast away on their very own desert island.

And what would Eva have made of his plight now? He imagined her face — with the smooth skin that glowed in a certain light — distorted into anguish as she looked down from wherever she was. The image vanished in an instant. At this moment Colin didn’t believe in any sort of afterlife. It was here today and into a nothingness tomorrow. That was what he believed now despite the years of goodly priests feeding him their dogma along with the wine and the wafers.

If there was a God, why had he allowed this to happen? Colin thought, a sudden fury coursing through his veins. And now he was in thrall to one of the invisible men over in E Block, Billy Brogan, wheeler and dealer extraordinaire. If the passing on of that message should get back to the prison officers… Colin shuddered. Perhaps there was no easy way out of here at all, just an endless series of events that could conspire to keep him here for years.

He looked back at what he had written, then, face twisting into rage, he ripped out the page and crushed it into his fist.

The January day was fading into darkness as the hooded man stepped out from the bushes in the park. Jogging towards him, the blonde woman ran to one side of the path, never changing her stride.

The slap slap of her trainers on the hard tarmac was the only sound as he approached. His fingers curled over the club hidden inside the heavy overcoat, his eyes fixed on the pale golden hair bobbing up and down on her shoulders as she came nearer and nearer.

The woman’s scream as the heavy stick felled her made a blackbird fly upwards. Its warning cry echoed in the frosty air.

Then it was all over, just the single white cloud of breath issuing from his open mouth as he stood over her, panting, stick in hand. He turned his face up to the heavens, and, as he gazed at the first stars wheeling overhead, the world tilted suddenly into a thousand fragments, a dizzying glimpse of something like eternity.

He stopped, frozen, as other footsteps sounded around the bend on the path. Glancing to his right and left, the hooded figure slipped back into the shrubbery and forced his way back into the depths of the woodland beyond.

‘Kelvin walkway,’ Jo Grant told her detective sergeant as they headed away from Stewart Street. ‘Woman was found badly beaten.’

‘Strangled?’

Jo shook her head. ‘No, not this time.’ She grimaced. ‘Another jogger came by pretty soon after the assault. Called 999.’

‘She’s dead?’

Jo nodded miserably. ‘Died on the way to hospital. Massive brain haemorrhage.’

‘But you think it’s the same guy?’ DS Wilson continued.

The DI raised her eyebrows speculatively. ‘Could be. We’ve got a description of the man from Lesley Crawford and there are CCTV cameras near the locus so let’s see what they can give us.’

Wilson’s stomach rumbled noisily, reminding him of the half-eaten sandwich and mug of tea he’d left on his desk. He screwed up his face and gave a despondent sigh. ‘Any joy on the medical front?’ he asked as they crossed the city and headed west.

‘Maybe,’ Jo nodded. ‘There have been a few patients that didn’t turn up for their regular visits at both Leverndale and Dykebar. We’re still doing house checks on them all.’

‘Any of them got form?’

Jo shook her head. ‘That’s not relevant, Alistair. Remember we don’t have this guy’s DNA on our database so we can rule him out as ever having been an offender.’

DS Alistair Wilson sighed again. A dangerous nutter running around Glasgow on the loose had already elevated this into a grade A case, one that the Fiscal wanted Lorimer to oversee. And where was his boss while all this was going on? Wilson raised his eyes to the heavens. With a bit of luck the detective superintendent would be somewhere in the air between Stockholm and Glasgow.

A thin-faced man of about forty was sitting in a small room at Gartnavel hospital, a blanket draped around his shoulders and a cup of tea held unsteadily in his hands, when the two detectives arrived. The uniformed officer stood up as soon as they entered the room, laying down his own mug on a work surface.

‘I’m DI Grant and this is DS Wilson,’ Jo said shortly. ‘I gather you were the man who called this one in?’

‘Christopher Gifford,’ the man told them. ‘It was such a shock. That poor woman lying there… all that blood…’

‘Mr Gifford’s had a bad shock,’ the uniform offered. ‘Doctor said to let him stay here quietly till you got here, ma’am.’

Jo nodded then dragged a chair from a corner to sit beside Gifford.

‘Sorry to seem so insensitive, sir, but we do need to take a statement from you. Understand?’

Christopher Gifford nodded.

‘Right, tell us exactly what happened this evening.’

‘I was taking a run through the park. Decided to go down towards the river. See if there were any migrants.’

‘Migrants?’ Jo’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Birds,’ Gifford explained hastily. ‘Migrating birds. Like redwings. Or waxwings. Only see them at this time of year in the cold, you know,’ he offered, looking from one officer to the other.

Jo Grant tried not to heave a sigh. Lorimer would love this guy, she thought; a fellow birder to share stories with.

‘And you ran which way?’

‘Across Kelvin Way and down the side path, the one that takes you beside the river and beyond. She was just lying there near the bushes,’ he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘I thought she’d had an accident. Till I saw her head.’ He looked up. ‘Then I knew. She must have been mugged.’

Grant and Wilson exchanged a glance.

‘It’s the same fellow, isn’t it?’ Gifford asked eagerly. ‘The one who’s been targeting these other women?’

‘Did you touch her at all, Mr Gifford?’

There was the merest hesitation before the man nodded. ‘Just her wrist, mind. To find a pulse. That was when I called 999. But it was no use.’ Gifford’s face crumpled in despair. ‘They’ve told me she died even before she got here.’

‘I’m really sorry you’ve had this awful experience,’ Jo said, touching his sleeve. ‘But there’s just one more thing. Can you remember seeing anyone, anyone at all who might have been coming up from that path before you arrived?’

Gifford pursed his lips as he thought. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘A bit too cold and dark for most people to be out, I’d say. Plenty of cars coming up and down, of course. Had to wait a bit before I could cross the road, I remember that now. But, no, there was nobody else on that path, Inspector. No one at all.’

The psychiatrist put down the telephone with a sigh. Kevin had missed his clinic appointments for more than a month now and although she had written a report to his care worker, Gwen Lockhart couldn’t help feeling that she ought to have done more for her patient. And now, this. The police officer had explained that, yes, they knew all about patient confidentiality, but they wanted to be made aware of anyone who might have come off their medication, someone who could consequently be a danger to themselves and to others. Gwen looked thoughtful as she twirled a pencil between her slim fingers. The death of his partner had changed the man, something that was not to be overlooked.