Alex Gray - The Swedish Girl

Lorimer hunkered down, eyes level with the shabby brass letterbox, but all he could see was the interior glass door, no shadow moving beyond.

‘He’s not here,’ Wilson said, making to move back down the stairs, but he stopped as Lorimer stood up and knocked sharply on the storm doors.

Still there was no answer.

‘Right.’ Lorimer turned to the two uniformed officers. ‘You know what to do.’

The booming sound reverberated in the chill air of the close as they battered Derek McCubbin’s solid door. A splintering noise made them stop, the red battering ram swaying between them.

‘Okay, do the other one.’

Shards of glass tinkled to the ground as they burst a hole beside the lock.

Lorimer reached inside with his gloved hand.

It was there. He caught hold of the key between his thumb and forefinger then turned, wondering who had locked this door, fearful of what might lie within.

Not a word was spoken as they entered the house, only the crunch of glass below several pairs of boots alerting anyone inside to their intrusion.

Lorimer flicked a switch inside the doorway, illuminating the long hall. He could see the walls were half timbered, the doors along the corridor a dark varnish, yellowing wallpaper testifying to years of neglect. An old man’s house, he thought. Ancient mahogany bookcases and side tables cluttered with trinkets lined the walls, brass-framed prints of sailing ships above them, making the place seem narrower than it really was. All the doors along the passage were shut, except for the one farthest away, a lozenge of light drawing them towards the end of the hall.

The big kitchen was a mirror image of the one next door, even down to the roof beams suspended from the kitchen ceiling.

The body swayed slightly, the draught catching it as Lorimer pushed the door wide. Sightless eyes stared down at them, the old man’s neck twisted to one side as though he had struggled at the end, his mouth agape.

Had he wanted to change his mind? Or was it the body’s natural instinct to resist the onset of death? Lorimer could imagine that throttling cough as the rope bit into the old man’s throat, feet scrabbling for a surface that was no longer there.

A bentwood chair lay tumbled where Derek McCubbin had kicked it aside, the wooden stick halfway across the kitchen floor.

‘Leave it,’ Lorimer said shortly as one of the police officers went to pick it up. ‘Don’t touch a thing until Forensics arrive.’

Nobody spoke again for a few moments, the officers looking at the body swinging gently on its rope.

‘We should look for a note.’ Jo Grant touched Lorimer’s sleeve. ‘If you think he’ll have left one.’

Lorimer nodded. ‘I hope to God he has.’

It was all he needed to say for the four officers to begin their search, leaving the detective superintendent gazing at the body hanging there. His eyes wandered over the kitchen, noting the cup and saucer placed upside down on the draining board, a teapot laid to one side. He imagined the old man sitting drinking that last cup of tea, hand shaking as he thought ahead to that final act. What had gone through his mind? Remorse? Guilt? Who could tell?

‘We’ve found it, sir.’ Alistair Wilson stood by his side turning a sheet of pale blue notepaper in one gloved hand. ‘Pretty much says it all,’ he added.

Lorimer glanced down at the crabbed handwriting that filled almost both sides of the note. He would read it eventually, see if it confirmed what Corinne Kennedy had already told him and hope to understand finally what had happened on that fateful December night.

Lorimer read the photocopied letter once again. The original was sealed within a sheet of plastic, the final production in a case that had taken so many weeks out of Colin Young’s life.

I couldn’t let them keep the boy inside. It wasn’t right. He had nothing to do with it.

I’d seen her looking at me whenever I passed them, laughing at me, sniggering behind her hand, thinking I didn’t know she was making a fool of me. Thought she was better than them all, oh, I could see that. I used to hear them on the stairs, calling out. Noisy wee beggars. This was never meant to be a place for students. Grace would have hated all that uproar, Grace, my dear friend. I miss her so much.

That Swedish girl, she was screaming at the man outside the door. Terrible things. I’d just got home, still had my coat and gloves on so I came out to give her a telling-off. The man had gone and she was leaning over the banister, saying something in Swedish that I couldn’t understand. Be quiet, I told her. Stop all this racket. But she just turned on me with that false wee smile of hers. Told me to get lost. That was when I tried to grab her but she dodged into the flat and I followed her down the hall, taking my stick with me.

‘He didn’t mean to hit her,’ Corinne Kennedy had told him, sobbing. ‘He said it just sort of happened. One minute the girl had been shouting at him to get out of her house, Grace’s old house, then she was on the floor.’

I can’t remember much, just that anger swelling up inside as I took hold of her throat. Then she was so still. She just lay on the carpet, not breathing any more. I knew I’d killed her. I was frightened then, didn’t know what to do. Just wanted to get away.

‘And did he tell you what happened then?’ Lorimer had asked Derek’s daughter.

‘He was halfway along the hall when he heard someone at the door,’ Corinne had sniffed. ‘Slipped into the bathroom, didn’t he? Waited till she’d gone into her room. Then got out of the place as quick as he could and came to me.’

I couldn’t stay there. Took a taxi to Corinne’s and told her there had been an accident. Later, when she heard about the girl’s death, she looked at me funny. But she didn’t let on to the police, not even when they came to her house to see me.

Tell the boy I’m sorry.

It was as comprehensive a confession as the detective superintendent could have wished for. He had even written the date then signed it, Derek McCubbin.

Lorimer passed the copy to the girl, watching her face as she read.

‘I knew there was something I’d forgotten. Thought I’d heard the door open and close but I decided it must have been the wind,’ Kirsty muttered.

They were sitting in his office at Stewart Street. It was less than twenty-four hours since Derek McCubbin’s suicide but already it seemed much longer, so much had happened.

‘Why did he do it?’ Kirsty asked at last, handing the letter back to Lorimer. ‘And how could he do it anyway, he was such a weak old man, wasn’t he?’

‘Spite, probably. A moment of madness,’ Lorimer said. ‘His daughter told us that he had been really cut up about losing his old neighbour, especially when the flat was sold on and occupied with students.’

‘But we were never bad to him,’ Kirsty protested. ‘We didn’t do the things he said.’

‘Never mocked him, even when you thought he couldn’t hear you?’

‘No, not once,’ she said firmly. ‘In fact Eva always said she felt sorry for him. “Daddy No Mates”, she called him because he was always on his own.’

‘And you were always together in a group.’

Kirsty nodded. ‘Who would have thought an old man like that could have been capable of killing anyone,’ she mused.

‘He was an ex-merchant seaman,’ Lorimer told her. ‘Hardy type, even though he had a gammy leg, he was evidently strong enough to overpower Eva. And fury can give a person strength.’

‘But why didn’t he confess at the outset? Why wait all this time leaving poor Colin in prison?’

‘Fear,’ Lorimer told her. ‘Too old to face going to prison himself. And afterwards he probably tried to blot it out of his mind.’