Alex Gray - Pitch Black

‘We don’t have any trouble here,’ Mr Singh began. ‘No trouble. Ever,’ he said firmly.

Niall Cameron kept his expression neutral. The man’s protestations might well be an indicator of some incident in the past, or maybe he really did run a strict regime in his flats. It didn’t matter either way; the warrant in the DC’s pocket gave him immediate entry into Donnie Douglas’s rented rooms.

‘Would you be good enough to show us Mr Douglas’s flat, sir?’

The man glared at Cameron then turned wordlessly, leaving the DC and his colleague to follow him into the darkened hallway.

Cameron gave a nod to the young man who trailed just behind him. John Weir was fresh out of uniform and this was his first day in CID. His dark suit and pristine white shirt were as brand new as the slicked-back haircut. DC Weir smiled nervously and nodded back. It gave Cameron a peculiar feeling to be in charge of this outing.

As the landlord unlocked the door to the footballer’s rooms, Cameron remembered all that Lorimer had told him about reading a person’s surroundings. It wasn’t enough to look for evidence of a crime, you had to see what a place could tell you about the people who lived there. The main door was a solid enough affair with a bell push on the polished frame. Underneath was a metal plate where names of tenants could be inserted. A scrap of paper bearing the footballer’s name in childishly formed capitals had been pushed into the space, a temporary measure until something better came along.

Afterwards he would tell Lorimer that it was the smell that hit them first as they moved into the flat. Not the pungent rotting smell of a decaying corpse, an expectation that had been hovering unspoken at the back of their minds. No, it was a sweet and sickly smell that wafted across the living room. Cameron glanced towards the top of the sash windows; there was not even a chink of space allowing fresh air to ventilate the room, a fact he must remember to report to the DCI.

‘Looks like he left in a bit of a hurry,’ Weir murmured, pushing open the bedroom door. It was true. The room bore every trace of a panic-stricken exit, particularly that bottle of DKNY aftershave lying where it had spilled on to the bedroom carpet, its fumes leaching into every corner of the place.

Cameron rifled through each drawer and cupboard, turning over papers and bills.

‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No passport or credit cards.’

‘Were we expecting to find them?’ Weir asked and Cameron shook his head, sighing. The comment was justified, given that the sliding wardrobe door was open, exposing a gap in the rail with only empty coat hangers. It was obvious that Donnie Douglas had cleared out, and in something of a rush.

‘Got to be thorough,’ Cameron growled in rejoinder. ‘Let’s see what else we can find.’

Weir might have been impatient to get out of the flat but Niall Cameron wanted to linger, taking in what he could of the rented rooms, following his SIO’s advice to read a place for clues as to the personality of its inhabitant. It was a real boy’s flat, he decided eventually. The porn magazines were there, right enough, but they were at the bottom of a pile of comics, lurid things with strip cartoons, the sort of stuff they’d giggled over in primary school, Niall thought.

‘Look at this,’ Weir remarked, pointing into the kitchen cupboard. ‘D’you think he suffered from the munchies?’ Weir joked, pointing to packets and packets of breakfast cereals.

‘Na. Probably some kind of special high-carb footballer’s diet,’ Cameron replied.

‘I don’t think so. Take a butcher’s at that.’

Cameron followed his gaze. There, at the back of the kitchen table was a row of wee plastic spacemen all lined up in formation.

The two men exchanged a glance. It was just the sort of thing a young kid would have done. Cameron could just imagine Douglas playing with his Kellogg’s freebies before he set off for training each morning: a lonely boy struggling with the responsibilities of a grown man.

‘Where d’you think he is now?’ he heard Weir asking as he wandered out of the room, but it was a question that Niall Cameron could not answer.

He felt an unexpected rush of sympathy for this young man who had run away. Standing in that kitchen, he thought he could understand what had happened. Donnie Douglas’s safe world had been ripped apart. First his childhood had been thrown into chaos by a violent parent, now some other menace had infiltrated the footballer’s life.

But who was it that had made the boy feel so threatened? Or was it something he knew that had made him flee?

Lorimer sank back into the sun lounger with a groan of pleasure. This was definitely the best time of the day. The fierce heat had left the sun and there was a tiny breeze stirring the plants. He watched absently as a peacock butterfly alighted on the purple tip of a buddleia. The cluster of cone-shaped flowers swayed slightly in the evening air, the butterfly clinging on, sucking from one tiny floret before hovering and landing on another. Down beside him in a patch of shadow, Chancer was watching it too. Lorimer put out his hand to stroke the animal, a ploy to keep it from pouncing on the butterfly, and was rewarded with a thrumming purr. He closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of warm fur under his fingers and the draught of cool air kissing his face. For a moment he slipped into a doze, all thoughts of the day forgotten, his body utterly relaxed. Then he opened his eyes and realised the cat was no longer there by his side.

He was too late. The cat was already heading towards the shrubbery, one peacock butterfly in its mouth. Lorimer watched the animal slip under the trailing leaves and disappear into the shadows.

Gazing up into the pink-stained sky, Lorimer’s mouth tightened. He’d dropped his guard for just those few seconds. Was that some sort of an omen, perhaps? If he took his eyes off the case is this what might happen? He remembered what Niall Cameron had told him about Donnie Douglas. Butterflies, footballers: hedonistic creatures both, he mused, but so vulnerable to whatever might be stalking them.

Lying there in the gathering twilight, Lorimer felt a chill creeping over his flesh.

Rosie stood in the shower, towelling herself dry. She bent her neck one way then the other. It had been a long day. Sometimes the physical effort of post-mortem surgery left her feeling drained, like she was now. But maybe, too, it was this relentless heat. The mortuary was air-conditioned and the refrigerated room kept things reasonably cool. But it was the nights at home that were worst. Hot, windless nights that failed to breathe a whisper of fresh air through their open windows high above the city. For a moment she leaned against the glass of the shower cabinet, luxuriating in its chilly surface. Closing her eyes, Rosie thought about their honeymoon. She and Solly had opted for a winter wedding with a trip to New Zealand afterwards. It was supposed to be much like Scotland at that time of year, but hotter. Normally she’d have welcomed anticipating a break from the long winter months, but now, with this extraordinary weather, she found herself longing for cold, clear days and the sharp frosts of a February morning.

Rosie pushed her body away from the glass with a soft groan and wrapped the towel around her, then stepped out on to the cork mat. She could hear voices from the corridor as some of the technicians made their way to the staffroom. The place was never silent; day or night, there was always some activity as bodies were brought in from all parts of the city. The latest, a stabbing, had been brought in from a bar in the East End, the result of a drunken brawl. The police had the perpetrator in custody: the dead man’s cousin, someone had told her. He’d bawled his eyes out once he’d realised what he’d done, so the story went. It didn’t matter how contrite they were, Rosie and her fellow pathologists still had to perform the surgery just as meticulously.