Alex Gray - The Swedish Girl

The small white bungalow sat at an angle facing the sea, its bay windows glittering in the midday light. Derek McCubbin saw the FOR SALE sign leaning drunkenly behind a privet hedge, a victim no doubt of the recent winter storms, then his eyes strayed to a smart silver saloon car parked at the kerb.

‘C’mon, Dad, estate agent’s here already.’

‘It’s cold,’ Derek complained, struggling out of the black Volkswagen Golf. His daughter had persuaded him to buy the car and after several arguments about the cost he had relented, seeing the sense in having some transport of their own. The old man sighed. It wasn’t as if he was short of funds, she had wheedled, and besides, wouldn’t it be nice to take him on wee jaunts once the weather was better?

Derek had continued to grumble a little but only because he couldn’t bear to give in without some sort of protest.

The rain had been lashing against the windscreen as they left the city but now soft white clouds scudded across a pale blue sky, the sun glinting on the water below them.

‘Come on, Dad, let’s get inside,’ Corinne urged him, offering him her arm.

Derek shook her off. ‘Got my stick,’ he grunted. ‘Don’t need you to help me to walk along a road.’

Corinne shook her head, rolling her eyes to heaven. ‘Suit yourself. I’m dying to see what it looks like inside.’ And with that, she walked briskly down the path towards the front door, leaving her father to look around him.

Derek McCubbin blinked as the sunlight met his eyes. He had spent more years at sea than he cared to remember and now, looking out at the expanse of water beyond the shore, he realised that his latter years could be properly indulged with memories, memories that might take away the darkness and despair gnawing at his soul. Yet the wrench he had felt after Grace’s death had not gone away, his errant daughter a poor substitute for a beloved neighbour.

They would live here together, he thought, Corinne becoming bossier as he became older and weaker. Already he was beginning to see what sort of existence they would have — the balance of power shifting from an ageing father to a daughter who was becoming bolder day by day. Corinne was already entering the open doorway, talking to the young girl from the estate agency who had arrived before them.

Derek’s mouth trembled for a moment then he closed his eyes against the treacherous tears as Corinne’s voice summoned him.

‘CCTV footage shows a man fitting the description of Kevin Haggarty,’ Jo told the officers assembled in the muster room.

All eyes were on the screen at the back of the room, the projected images sent through from Cowcaddens.

‘Sir!’ Jo stopped suddenly, looking up, and all eyes turned to see the detective superintendent enter the room.

‘Carry on, DI Grant,’ Lorimer said. ‘I’m interested to hear all about this.’

Jo took them through the footage and there was complete silence from all of the officers as they watched the hooded figure of a man slip across the main road and into the darkened path beside the River Kelvin. There was no sound from the cameras but each officer imagined the sough of wind that blew the hood from the man’s dark head, a flurry of leaves scattering upwards as he pulled it back up. It was a split second moment, but sufficient to let them see the man’s face. And, as Jo played the image over again and again, there were nods and glances as each police officer saw the likeness between the man caught on camera and the artist’s image that Lesley Crawford had described.

‘I think we need to make this public,’ Jo said, looking past the assembled officers to where Lorimer was standing, arms folded.

‘Perhaps,’ Lorimer said. ‘I agree that this man presents a real danger to the public now but we need to be aware that Haggarty could slip out of our grasp if we alert him to what we know. It’s a case of balancing the two risks.’

‘What do you suggest, sir?’

Lorimer stepped forward and joined his DI at the front of the room. ‘I’m more than happy to throw every resource we have at this one. Issue as many officers as possible with this information and comb the streets till we find him. Put a twenty-four-hour surveillance on the Govan flat. He has to come back there some time,’ he suggested. ‘Tell Dr Lockhart and the care worker to let us know the moment he appears, though I got the impression from your message that Haggarty has chosen to ignore the people who would normally help him.’

‘Does Professor Brightman have any idea about Haggarty?’ someone asked.

Jo Grant nodded. ‘It was Professor Brightman who gave us the profile of a mentally disturbed man. He talked about a trigger, something like a shock that made him begin to attack young blonde women.’

‘And that shock could be his girlfriend’s death from a drug overdose,’ DS Wilson offered.

There were murmurs from the officers; then, as Lorimer stepped forward, all talking ceased, all eyes focused on the man standing before them.

‘Right, we go with this one. Find Haggarty. That’s everyone’s top priority. And if he’s not in custody in twenty-four hours I’m prepared to let DI Grant throw this to the media,’ he told them.

Cold wind was creeping through every layer of his clothing as Kevin glanced up and down the road, waiting for a break in the traffic.

The towers of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery were outlined against a deep blue sky, an orange haze of light pollution throwing the architectural shapes into relief. He crept in there sometimes, looking at the stuffed animals with their glassy dead eyes staring back at him. But it would be closed now, the big doors slammed shut, locking him out from the warmth.

As he crossed Kelvin Way he could see the police tape still flapping across the entrance to the park but there was no uniformed officer standing guard, blocking his entrance to the walkway. Nor was there any pedestrian making their way along the road, not a dog walker or jogger to be seen at all. As he walked down the familiar path, hearing the rush of water to his left, it was as if the entire place had become his alone.

What Kevin Haggarty could not see were hidden eyes watching him from a control room deep within the heart of the city; the eyes of a police officer who, at that moment, had just identified the hooded man.

‘He’s going down the same route,’ the officer spoke into his headset. ‘Definitely Haggarty.’

The man in the control room would continue to sit there but even he felt a thrill in his blood as he imagined police cars being mobilised from all parts of the city, knowing that in a matter of minutes the path along the Kelvin would be swarming with his fellow officers.

The hooded man heard the stamp, stamp, stamp of running boots.

Something was happening on the path above him.

He turned to see figures darkening the space between earth and sky then pressed himself against the railing. Only a few feet separated him from the brown river water rushing a few feet below the bank. He hesitated for a moment but it was too late. The black-garbed men were upon him, cutting off any thoughts of escape.

Kevin Haggarty’s mouth opened in a soundless cry as the first two policemen caught him by the arms.

Then, hearing those awful words flung at him, Kevin tilted his head back and uttered a roar of anguish that chilled the blood of everyone who heard it.

‘God, it was like some sort of wounded animal.’ Wilson shook his head as he sat in Lorimer’s room. ‘Desperate, really desperate.’

‘You sound almost sorry for him, Alistair,’ Lorimer remarked.

The DS sighed. ‘Well he’s no’ right in the head, is he? Cannae help but feel for the poor bastard. Some terrible things must be going on in that sick brain of his.’