Alex Gray - A Pound Of Flesh

Zena Fraser was seated in her pod, a quiet sanctuary that each member of the Scottish parliament had been given, conceived as a place of contemplation by Enrico Miralles, the clever architect of this marvellous building. It was, in truth, only a raised seating area set at right angles to the narrow little room and next to a window barred with rounded poles of what might have been beechwood. Yet, as the word came to his mind, Lorimer dismissed it. Barred was the wrong term to apply to these spars that reminded him of waving lines of bamboo: there was certainly some movement suggested by that simple design.

She looked up at Lorimer as he strode into the room, knocking on the glass door that was, he assumed, permanently ajar. Despite the room being a mirror image of the one he had just left, Zena Fraser’s was far neater and it was evident that she had made an effort to personalise her limited space. This room had a woman’s touch here and there: a vase of winter leaves and scarlet berries was arranged on the small desk, almost hidden by an enormous anglepoise lamp that dominated the surface and the coat stand held a cream-coloured wrap with a large furry collar. There was a plant on the steps within the pod, albeit a sad-looking orchid with one fragile bloom still clinging to its narrow stem. The whiteboard to his right held a garish calendar with African tribal figures dancing in the heat of this January month. He blinked as he entered the inner office, surprised at the bleakness of the decor: one wall was like a wooden jigsaw, panels opened to reveal the shelves of files within; the other simply looked as though the builders had upped tools and left, the white wall surrounded by greyish concrete that had the look of slightly ageing chipboard.

Lorimer’s first impression of Zena Fraser as she stepped off the pod and came to greet him was of a pretty, middle-aged woman who might easily have graced the fashion pages of a classy magazine in her earlier days. Her blonde hair curled softly just above shoulder level and, as she removed a pair of rimless spectacles, Lorimer noticed that her blue eyes had been skilfully enhanced by muted shades of blue and grey make-up. As she stood up and smoothed down her short skirt Lorimer was afforded the sight of a pair of very shapely legs and slim feet clad in expensive-looking high-heeled shoes, the sort that Maggie sighed over but had never actually bought.

‘Miss Fraser, Detective Superintendent Lorimer, Strathclyde Police. I spoke earlier to your assistant,’ Lorimer began, smiling politely as Zena Fraser looked him up and down.

‘Hello, Detective Superintendent Lorimer.’ The woman’s smile lit up her face and Lorimer could see at once the keen intelligence in those baby blue eyes. ‘Rather a mouthful,’ she said teasingly. ‘Is it all right if I just call you Lorimer?’

‘Everybody does, ma’am,’ Lorimer replied.

‘Oh, Zena, please,’ she laughed. ‘Let’s not be too formal, shall we? And I can’t stand being called Miss. Makes me sound so spinsterish.’ She smiled again, her cheeks dimpling as though she was perfectly aware that the man before her had no such thought and was in fact regarding her right now with a modicum of male appreciation.

‘We’ll have to make do with my wee office, I’m afraid,’ Zena said, pulling out the two chairs tucked into the circular table that seemed standard issue for these politicians. ‘It’s not very big,’ she apologised, ‘but we’ll be left in peace with nobody to interrupt us.’ She closed the glass door firmly, shutting out sound but not sight: every person who passed along this corridor would be able to note exactly who was in the room. There was certainly no space for any clandestine activity within these offices.

‘Now, have you had a cup of tea or coffee since you arrived? No? Well, what’s your poison?’ she twinkled, moving towards a small refrigerator that had an electric kettle jug and a cafetière placed on top.

‘A coffee would be fine,’ Lorimer replied. ‘Just black, no sugar, thanks,’ he added as Zena Fraser lifted a pair of china mugs from somewhere behind her desk.

‘Ed liked his coffee like that,’ the woman murmured. She was crouched down beside the refrigerator so that Lorimer was unable to see the expression on her face but he could hear a note of wistfulness in her voice that made him curious.

‘You were good friends?’ Lorimer asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ came the reply. ‘Our friendship goes back … sorry went back … to our childhood days.’ She stood up to fill the kettle with a bottle of water that she had taken from the fridge. ‘Our parents were next-door neighbours. Ed and I were both only children and we used to play in one another’s gardens. I was a year older than Ed so perhaps that’s where I got my bossy attitude from.’

‘Mr Pattison was known for his own strength of character,’ Lorimer countered.

Zena Fraser frowned. ‘Later, perhaps, but as a wee boy Ed was a camp follower, trust me. I was a real little tomboy in those days, always up to some mischief or other. Poor Ed,’ she sighed. ‘I was the one who made the shots for him to fire. Oh!’ Zena’s hand flew to her mouth as she realised the gracelessness of her choice of words. ‘Why did I say that?’ Her blue eyes teared up suddenly. ‘Sorry, it’s so hard to think about what happened,’ she sniffed, reaching for a tissue from a flowered box on her desk.

‘Cath … ’ she broke off to blow her nose loudly then turned away as the kettle began to boil.

For a few moments there was only the soothing noise of cups being filled and stirred, then the MSP handed Lorimer his coffee and sat down behind her desk, cupping her own mug between her hands as though to warm them. It was interesting how things in the room had suddenly changed: Lorimer was seated at a psychological disadvantage, as if he were the interviewee and Zena Fraser the person in charge. Now, with that physical distance between them, Lorimer wondered if the intimacy of their conversation would be resumed.

‘You were about to say something,’ Lorimer began. ‘About Mrs Pattison?’

‘Was I?’ The blue eyes turned to him appeared guileless but Lorimer knew fine she was prevaricating.

‘I thought we were talking about Edward,’ she said, regarding him thoughtfully.

‘You were obviously close to Mr Pattison,’ Lorimer continued smoothly. ‘Were you perhaps close enough to know if he had been seeing someone in Glasgow on the night he died?’

Zena Fraser laid her mug carefully on a slate coaster before replying. ‘I think I would already have told the police if I’d known anything about Edward’s death,’ she said.

‘That’s not quite what I meant,’ he said. ‘May I be blunt?’

A raise of her finely plucked eyebrows was all the answer he required.

‘Was Edward Pattison having an affair with somebody in Glasgow or the Glasgow area?’

‘That’s blunt all right,’ she said. ‘Asking if poor old Ed was up to no good.’

‘Having an extra-marital relationship isn’t a crime,’ Lorimer said gently.

‘No, maybe not,’ she replied, then added with a touch of bitterness, ‘but the press would have treated him like some sort of a social pariah if they had found out something like that. A man in his position … ’ She shrugged, leaving the rest of the sentence unsaid.

‘Ed and I … ’ Her voice faltered for a moment and Lorimer saw the uncertainty in Zena Fraser’s face. And, in that moment, he became aware of several things. Why this lovely woman had never married, why she had chosen to follow her childhood friend into politics and why Catherine Pattison had insisted that the MSP was a person capable of killing her husband.

Lorimer stared at her for a long moment until she finally looked away. ‘You and Edward Pattison,’ Lorimer said slowly. ‘You were more than childhood friends, weren’t you?’