Alex Gray - Pitch Black

Lorimer heard the doorbell ringing. ‘Just ignore them and hope they’ll go away,’ he called to Cameron. ‘What have you found?’ he asked, entering a lounge that was depressingly similar to Cartwright’s bedroom, all shades of browns and beiges.

‘Wasn’t a very tidy chap, was he?’ Cameron observed, holding a sock between two fingers. ‘Found this down the side of the settee.’

‘Anything else of interest?’ Lorimer asked, though from a quick look around this room there was nothing that stood out.

‘I’d say it was quite the opposite; he wasn’t interested in his home. Maybe he didn’t spend much time here. Especially if he was a referee at weekends and worked full-time during the week,’ Cameron said. ‘Kitchen’s not very clean either.’

Lorimer nodded, pleased to note how the DC’s observations chimed with his own. Norman Cartwright seemed to have been a person who’d had no great desire to surround himself with the finer things in life. In fact, Lorimer doubted if this visit had yielded anything much at all except to enhance his pity for the victim.

‘Think we’re more likely to find out about him from the football people,’ Cameron went on.

‘Aye, his fellow referees, maybe,’ Lorimer said. ‘Nobody at Kelvin Park’s going to give an unbiased view of the ref, now are they?’

They were waiting for the two policemen on Norman Cartwright’s doorstep: a gaggle of journalists all talking at once. Had he any idea who had killed the referee? Had they been looking for the murder weapon? What about the game at Kelvin Park? The questions followed them all the way out into the street, Lorimer ignoring their shrill voices demanding answers. As he drove away, a silent Niall Cameron beside him, Lorimer suddenly felt a strange sort of kinship with Janis Faulkner. Had she ever been hounded by the press? Was that the reason behind her putting down the portcullis and retreating back into the safety of her inner sanctum? Something told him that he had to breach that particular fortress if he were ever to understand the truth behind Nicko Faulkner’s murder. But, for now, this new case must take precedence in his thoughts and any sympathy he felt should be for this last victim and his family.

‘You’re a fool!’

Pat Kennedy clenched his fists by his sides, to stop himself from lashing out at the man before him. Jason White tilted his chin upwards, a defiant and insolent expression on his handsome face. The footballer was silent but his demeanour said it all: that sneering, supercilious look that had Kennedy’s fingertips itching.

‘We’ve docked money from wages you’ve yet to earn! What the hell did you think you were playing at?’ Kennedy raged. The man lounging by his desk raised one shoulder in an indolent shrug. ‘Maybe it doesn’t matter to you, but it matters to the club!’ Kennedy continued to fume. ‘Just don’t you dare get into anything like that before a match again. What you do in your own time is not just your own affair. We expect you to be available for every match. Understood?’

The man looked away from Kennedy and sniffed. ‘Can I go now?’ he asked, no attempt to disguise the boredom in his tone.

‘Yes,’ Kennedy replied, then as Jason White strolled into the corridor he followed him out, a feeling of suppressed rage bubbling to the surface. ‘And don’t think you’ve got off lightly! Remember, White, nobody’s indispensable in this game, and that includes you!’ Kennedy’s voice roared out after the footballer who walked away, pretending not to hear. He slammed the door of his office leaving a quiver of unease behind him.

‘Big man’s upset, isn’t he?’ Bert, the groundsman, remarked to Marie McPhail. The woman shook her head and laid a finger to her lips.

‘Shh! Pat can hear every word you say, Bert. You know these partition walls are paper-thin. Anyway, who can blame him? After all that’s happened …’ She trailed off, the death of Norman Cartwright remaining unspoken between them. Marie shook her head as if unable to believe Kelvin FC had been associated with the death of two men. Many of the staff wore the same tight expression of shock whenever the subject arose: nothing prepared you for something as horrible as this. ‘Anyway,’ she continued briskly, ‘Jason was totally out of order. Pat should have had his guts for garters.’

‘Don’t know why they had to buy him in the first place,’ Bert grumbled. ‘Or that wanker, Faulkner.’

‘Bert! You mustn’t say that. It’s bad to speak ill of the dead!’ Marie hissed.

‘Och, who’s gonnae hear me? S’not as if he was really a team player anyway. Not like our friend downstairs in the boot room.’

Marie McPhail raised a smile. It suddenly illuminated her thin, hard face. ‘Has anyone ever actually seen Kelvin’s resident ghost, then?’

‘Well, one o’ the young lads said he saw a shadow last winter. He’d jist aboot finished cleaning the boots when it loomed up at him. So he said.’ Bert tilted his head enigmatically then lifted up his mug of tea and drained it. ‘Thanks for the cuppa, lass. Back to work now, see you later.’

‘Aye, not if I see you first,’ Marie muttered under her breath. Wee Bert was a right doom and gloom merchant, never saying a positive word about anyone. Marie often suspected he was happiest when Kelvin got thrashed on a Saturday afternoon, it justified his morose predictions that the club would never again climb out of the First Division into the Premier League where they had once belonged. Still, he was right about one thing: Kelvin’s glory days were truly epitomised by legends like Ronnie Rankin, the fleet-footed player who had won a place in Keelie hearts over four consecutive seasons before being blown up at Ypres. Rankin’s picture hung in the boardroom, a sepia-coloured image that was pointed out to guests on match days. And legend had it that his spirit still hung around in the boot room downstairs.

She shrugged and turned back to the pile of correspondence on her desk. Wee Bert could moan all he liked, she was a Kelvin Keelie through and through and there was nothing that could sway her loyalty to this club, or to the man who sat feet away from her, divided from her by that partition wall.

For a long moment the woman looked at the blank space, imagining the chairman’s massive body bent over his desk, his head drooping with fatigue and worry. What must be going through his mind? One player had been brutally murdered, another had landed in jail and now this poor referee shot on his own doorstep. Surely Jason White could have been a bit more sensitive towards Pat? Marie ran a hand over her spiky red hair and glanced at her reflection in the glass window that separated her from the club’s main corridor. A thin-faced woman in a low-cut cream blouse looked back defiantly, gold hoops twinkling at her earlobes. She might be pushing fifty but she didn’t look it. Plus she’d kept her figure, unlike Barbara bloody Kennedy, she thought, a curve of triumph softening her mouth. She’d give it ten minutes then take him in a good pot of coffee and some Tunnock’s Teacakes, Pat’s favourites. The thought cheered Marie up as she began to sift through the day’s mail, putting aside the letters that were marked for the chairman’s attention, with extra care.

Ron Clark put down the telephone, hand trembling. That hack Greer’s predictions were right: the police were going to pay them a visit. But in the wake of Cartwright’s shooting, that was hardly a surprise. Some inspector called Lorimer, or was it Chief Inspector? Ron felt the sweat break out on his forehead. He’d better get that right, hadn’t he? It would never do to be on the wrong side of Strathclyde Police during something as serious as a murder investigation. This man, Lorimer, wanted to speak to all the players who’d been at Saturday’s game. Ron shivered inside his tracksuit, despite the heat. Surely they couldn’t imagine any of their boys had had a hand in that shooting? It was absurd. The police must think it was some mad bastard of a Keelie who had gone for the referee, surely? Or would they suppose it was nothing to do with the game at all? But, even as the Kelvin manager tried to reassure himself, a feeling of inevitable doom swept over him.