Alex Gray - Pitch Black

It had been a long weekend and now, in the early light of Monday morning, there was more work to be done. Cartwright’s house had been locked up after a preliminary examination to see what next of kin the man had. A divorcee with no children, his elderly mother in a nursing home, Cartwright had lived alone. He’d not even had a cat to keep him company, thought Lorimer, catching sight of Chancer’s golden coat as the animal padded from the kitchen, an imploring expression on his face. Feed me, it said.

As he scraped the contents of a foil bag into the animal’s saucer, he recalled the moment when they had entered Norman Cartwright’s home. The dust motes had swirled thickly through a dark, narrow hallway that led to the sitting room and adjacent kitchen. Dirty pots and crockery were stacked up, half-submerged in a basin of scum-covered water. One fly had buzzed languidly against the window pane, others lay dead on the chipped wooden sill. The picture of neglect alone had rendered the dead man deserving of pity. Lorimer recalled the days he’d spent on his own after Maggie had gone to America to work; had he been as bad as that? He didn’t think so. There was a sense of defeat about Cartwright’s house, he thought.

It might be a good idea to go back with another officer in tow, just to see what else they could find out about the referee. The scene-of-crime officers had all the forensic material they seemed to require, but as the man had been shot outside his home, there had been little need to do a full-scale search of the premises. Normally Lorimer would leave a task like this to one of his more junior officers, but his visit today had a twofold purpose: he wanted to give Niall Cameron the benefit of his own experience — the lad had promise and could go far — and he felt an urge to satisfy his own curiosity. What might he find at number eight, Willow Grove? Some answers about the personality of the man who had been so mercilessly killed, he hoped. And, if he was really lucky, a reason to show why he had been gunned down in the first place.

It was only a short drive to the crime scene from the centre of the city. Great Western Road swept all the way out of Glasgow, through Anniesland Cross and Knightswood towards the Clyde and eventually Loch Lomond. In springtime the dual carriageway was intersected by a dazzling swathe of daffodils and row upon row of cherry trees, their pink and white blossoms scattered across the ground. Once, when they had been students, he’d taken Maggie down to Luss, a pretty little village right on the loch, after an all night party. It had been dark when they’d left the city and he could still see the daffodils in his mind’s eye, pale and ghostly, sweeping along for mile after mile. Now he and Cameron were driving by the stately grey-stone terraces that marched all the way up towards One Devonshire Gardens, the city’s most prestigious hotel. Lorimer gave it a cursory glance as they drove past. He’d taken Maggie there once, on their tenth wedding anniversary, and the memory of that special occasion lingered still. At night the trees outside sparkled with white lights but in daytime it might simply be mistaken for one more grand residence along this elegant row of Victorian buildings.

Norman Cartwright had lived in a pleasant, leafy suburb of the city, the sort of place where nothing much ever happens outside of school jumble sales and community coffee mornings. On this particular Monday the quiet of Willow Grove was disturbed by a small crowd of reporters and photographers anxious to catch up with the latest developments. As Lorimer pulled up to the kerb, he could see the next-door neighbours holding court at their front door. The DCI remembered them as Mr and Mrs Murphy who lived at number six, through the wall from the late Norman Cartwright. They had not been at home at the time of the incident, but that did not seem to be deterring them from putting in their tuppence worth. His mouth twisted in a grimace of distaste. Some people simply revelled in the chance to associate themselves with notoriety, especially when they could maintain a safe distance from its darker aspects.

‘Okay,’ he sighed, turning to his detective constable, Niall Cameron. ‘Let’s go in and hope we don’t have them all knocking at the door.’

The two men walked briskly up the gravel path, ignoring the heads that suddenly turned their way.

Lorimer stood back to allow the DC space to unlock the front door, then they entered the stuffy hallway and closed the door behind them.

‘What’re we looking for, sir?’ Niall Cameron asked, his eyes roaming around the dusty corridor.

‘Nothing and everything,’ Lorimer answered him. ‘Just a feel for the place. See how he lived, what he was like. A person’s home can tell you all sorts of things about them.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Well, what’s your pad like? No, let me guess. Neat and tidy, everything in its place, right?’

The tall Lewisman flushed under his white collar, letting Lorimer know he’d hit the mark. ‘Well, I do keep my bike in the hallway, near the front door, but only because there’s nowhere else to put it …’ he trailed off.

‘An organised mind.’ Lorimer chuckled. ‘Dr Brightman would tell you that straight off,’ he added, referring to Solly Brightman, the University of Glasgow psychologist. ‘Seriously, you can learn quite a lot from how a person lived,’ Lorimer told him, moving out of the hall.

Norman Cartwright’s bedroom reminded Lorimer of an old student flat, filled as it was with heavy furniture that had gone out of fashion decades ago. The matching mahogany wardrobe and dressing table had definitely seen better days; scratches and nicks around their bases told of years of abuse by some careless vacuum cleaner. Had he done his own housework? Or had there been a daily woman? No. It didn’t look as if a woman’s touch had been used here for a very long time. The carpet below his feet was stained and there were bits of dark fluff that could have come from the referee’s socks. The beige cotton duvet had been pulled hastily into shape, one end hanging lower than the other as if Norman Cartwright had left for his match in a hurry. There was nobody to see his sorry attempts at making his bed, or so he’d have thought.

‘No woman in his life,’ Lorimer told the empty room. ‘Nobody to care whether your bed’s tidy or the place even smells nice.’ Had his home been like that during Maggie’s absence? he wondered, guiltily. Life without Maggie had certainly made him negligent about keeping house. But he’d been rescued by Jean, his gem of a cleaning lady. This place looked as if Cartwright had given up bothering about what his place looked like. Saturday’s Gazette lay on one side of the bed. Lorimer picked it up. The referee had been reading the sports section then dropped it on the floor, meaning to pick it up later, he thought. An empty mug sat on his bedside cabinet, one more ring to add to the others staining the varnished wood, beside it a digital clock and a thin brass lamp, its shade an indeterminate brown. He switched it on but the colour was no better, an orangey wash illuminating that side of the bed. A paperback book lay behind the lamp and Lorimer turned it over to see what author the man had enjoyed. It was an American thriller by a writer he’d never heard of, its cover a lurid representation of a man being chased down some dark alley. He flicked the pages and saw that it was a library discard. So, there was no woman in his life but Norman Cartwright had had a penchant for fiction. Maybe he’d preferred the people of his imagination to those in reality. But, then, he was a sportsman who kept himself busy at weekends, not some recluse. So why did Lorimer have the feeling that this man had been a bit of a loner? Lorimer glanced around. No pictures on the walls, not here at any rate. Maybe the other rooms would yield more clues to the personality of a man who had been gunned down a few feet from his own front door.