Alex Gray - A Pound Of Flesh

‘And no connection with any sort of organised crime,’ Barbara pointed out. ‘Pure as the driven snow, or so it would seem,’ she added darkly, cynicism having coloured her outlook ever since that very first week at Tulliallan Police College.

‘Coincidences do happen, of course,’ Mumby said, then sighed and shook his head as he caught sight of DC Knox’s sceptical expression.

‘Two men driving white Mercedes S-class cars found shot dead under railway bridges?’ Her scorn was almost palpable.

‘Well, yes,’ Mumby admitted. ‘Perhaps we ought to see what this DI Preston has to say about the first case.’

Barbara Knox nodded her satisfaction. The body of Thomas Littlejohn might even now be laid out on the cold steel of the mortuary table. There was no apparent reason for his death, no connection with the sorts of people who meted out summary execution. But that was exactly how this murder had appeared.

Okay, the two killings might be several months apart, but DC Knox was willing to bet a chunk of her monthly salary that it was the same person who had picked off these apparently innocent men.

Detective Superintendent William Lorimer turned over the calendar so that the month of January was showing. It was a snowscape of Rannoch Moor, one single wind-bent tree standing starkly in the foreground, the Black Mount a brooding presence against the cold blue sky, misty wisps of cloud hovering balefully above. Despite its bleakness, the moor was a place that beckoned to the policeman, making him want to be there, his climbing boots sinking into the snowy approach to the hills, a pack on his back. Instead he was here in the red brick sprawl that was police headquarters, his only view the streets and buildings of Glasgow. This was Lorimer’s first day in the job here at Pitt Street and he still had to come to terms with the new regime. Being in charge of such an important department as the Serious Crimes Squad had afforded him the dubious luxury of an office overlooking the back courts of other buildings in the city. The SCS existed to filter out the more difficult cases throughout the Strathclyde divisions, murder being one of the main crimes investigated by the hand-picked team. And Detective Superintendent William Lorimer was well qualified in such inquiries. It was, he supposed, a good step up from being in a Divisional Headquarters, though he already missed the buzz of voices from the open-plan offices he’d worked in during his last post as Detective Chief Inspector.

He had arrived earlier than necessary, partly to see where he could park his battered old Lexus and also to steal a march on the officers who comprised this elite squad.

After the official interview Lorimer had been taken to meet his new colleagues and had been surprised by how few officers were actually in the building.

‘The squad is at the disposal of every division in Strathclyde,’ Joyce Rogers, the deputy chief constable, had explained to him when she had first mooted the idea of Lorimer taking over the running of this regime. ‘Officers can be seconded to any serious crime at all, but it will be entirely at your discretion which officer goes where and why and for how long. Man management is the name of this game,’ she’d told him with a grin.

That was all very well, but with more than half of his team away on cases elsewhere, how was he meant to become familiar with their skills and their personalities? Tomorrow, he told himself. He would book one of the larger rooms in this building and have them all meet after their working day was over. It might not go down particularly well with those who’d been sent away further than the confines of the city, but it had to be done. How could he do this job if all he had was a list of names to which he was unable to put faces? That wasn’t his way of doing things and they had better know that from the outset.

He had taken leave after his wife, Maggie’s, operation, so that leaving his old division and beginning his post at the Serious Crimes Squad had proved to be less of a wrench. It was pretty normal for officers to be posted from one division to another following a promotion but Lorimer had been the DCI in a Glasgow division just down the road from police headquarters for a goodly length of time and he knew he would miss his fellow officers there. Niall Cameron was moving on, too, becoming a DI out in Motherwell this month; it would not be his final posting by any means, Lorimer thought. The tall young man from Lewis would go far by his reckoning. But it wasn’t only the officers that he would miss. Wee Sadie Dunlop, the mouthy woman who served in the police canteen, was someone who had been special to him as well. Wee Sadie told it as it was, he recalled with a smile, addressing the most junior recruits right up to the Divisional Commander as ‘son’ or ‘hen’. Still, it wasn’t too far away for him to pop in and have a bite to eat now and then, was it? The canteen here was far noisier than the one at his old headquarters and Lorimer would have to become accustomed to the press of folk at lunchtimes, forensic scientists and a large civilian population sharing the facilities with the officers from Strathclyde Police. He’d have a look in the canteen for some decent Danish pastries, the sort that wee Sadie used to keep for him.

As if by thought transference, a knock came at the door and a smiling, grey-haired woman appeared, bearing a tray with coffee and a plate of chocolate biscuits.

‘Good morning, sir, here you are,’ she beamed. ‘Thought you’d like something to warm you up. Isn’t it a chilly one this morning?’ She cocked her head to one side, beady bird-like eyes twinkling at him as though something amused her.

Lorimer came forward as the woman laid the tray on a low table next to the window. Shaking her hand, he scrutinised the woman’s face. A nice homely sort of woman, he thought, with her green tweed skirt and a thick jumper that looked hand-knitted, but for the life of him Lorimer could not recall having met her before.

‘And you are …?’ he asked, hoping she would give him some sort of clue as to her position in the administrative hierarchy. Was she a secretary? Or part of the civilian staff?

‘Don’t think you remember me, do you?’ she laughed. ‘We met once, a long time ago when I was on a course at Tulliallan. I’m Rita Livingstone, your IO,’ she smiled.

Lorimer’s mouth fell open for a moment. How could he have made such a mistake? Wasn’t he always lecturing other people about the need to distinguish a person’s appearance from the realities of their character and abilities? Rita Livingstone, he remembered the name now, but could not recall any previous meeting. His intelligence officer! And here he had been thinking she was some wee Glasgow wifie bringing in his coffee. Rapped knuckles, Lorimer , he told himself, noticing the two cups and saucers laid out on the tray.

‘Shall I be mother?’ Rita asked as Lorimer noticed the corners of her mouth turn up in a smile of mischief.

‘Thanks,’ he said weakly. ‘Please, sit here,’ he added, taking a seat on one of the easy chairs that flanked the coffee table.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, picking up a cup of steaming black coffee. ‘I really didn’t remember you from that course.’

Rita shook her head, still smiling. ‘No worries, sir. And sorry I missed you when you came in with Joyce Rogers. I was in and out of the office that day. You’d hardly have had time to take in who you’d met and who was missing amongst your new colleagues. Plus the fact that some of them were skiving off doing last minute Christmas shopping,’ she added, her eyes crinkling up at the corners. For a moment Lorimer smiled as Rita suddenly reminded him of a favourite aunt of his who had been a mine of information about so many things, both fascinating and completely trivial.