Alex Gray - The Riverman

Liz smiled. It was all right. He was only asleep. She felt a sigh come from her chest as she looked at his familiar face, the eyelids closed, his mouth a straight line, the way it always was as he slept.

But there was something wrong. Duncan never slept on his back like that.

Liz frowned and glanced at the girl who was still holding her arm.

‘Mrs Forbes? Can you confirm that this is your husband?’

A tight feeling constricted Liz’s throat, making it impossible to speak. She nodded instead and then looked at the television again as someone stepped in and began to cover Duncan’s face.

Immediately Liz struggled out of the policewoman’s grasp and staggered towards the image of her husband, trying to call his name.

As she grabbed the edges of the television set, the figure beneath the sheets seemed to disappear, leaving an empty white space filling the screen.

Liz recoiled suddenly, whimpering.

Taking a step backwards into the arms of the girl behind her, Liz’s eyes were fixed to the screen. It was there again, the body of her husband. Of Duncan.

Then a single scream of ‘No …!’ was torn from her throat.

Dr Rosie Fergusson twisted the ring under the two layers of gloves, feeling the diamond below the soft material. She should have taken it off but as usual she had forgotten. Since Christmas, her engagement ring had become a part of her and she only removed it for surgery. When she remembered. For a brief moment Rosie allowed herself to think of Solomon and how she would feel if it were his corpse lying on her slab, then immediately banished such thoughts. The poor woman who had been in earlier to identify her husband was inconsolable. Rosie had caught a glimpse of her as they left by the rear of the mortuary. It was not a good idea to encounter relatives before you cut open their loved ones, she thought. The police liaison officers had done their usual excellent job with Elizabeth Forbes. Now it was up to Rosie to do her bit.

*

As she threw the outer gloves into the pedal bin, Rosie gave a sigh. ‘So far there’s nothing to show that Duncan Forbes has died from any other cause than drowning,’ she remarked to Dan, her fellow pathologist who had been the note-taker while she had performed the postmortem. Victims of drowning were given post-mortems as a matter of routine; those that might carry the suspicion of being other than accidental required two pathologists in attendance. The double-doctor system that Scottish law demanded had the added advantage of pathologists being able to bounce ideas off one another.

‘He was certainly alive when he entered the water,’ Dan replied. It was true. His lungs had breathed in water from the Clyde.

Rosie frowned. ‘There are no injuries to his hands which would suggest he’s not struggled against any rocks. Haemorrhaging in the inner ear is in keeping with no immediate cardiac arrest. No, this chap’s drowned all right.’

The toxicology tests were still to be done and so they’d know more in a few days, if she chased the results. Maybe the poor sod had simply had one over the eight and stumbled at the river’s edge. They’d seen drownings like this before where little struggle had been the result of intoxication.

Rosie washed her arms under the tap. Pity. She’d like to have something more to tell Lorimer, but he’d just have to wait.

*

The Crowne Plaza Hotel sat on the banks of the river Clyde, its glass walls a shimmering reflection of sky and water. On one side of the hotel lay the humped back of the Armadillo, one of the city’s most popular concert venues, with the newly built Clyde Arc (the ‘Squinty Bridge’, as it was fondly known by Glaswegians) angled across the river to Pacific Quay. On the other side was Bell’s Bridge, the footpath that had spanned the Clyde since the Glasgow Garden Festival of the eighties. Behind the gleaming block of mirrored glass stood the ‘Big Red Shed’ or Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, to give it its full title. Everyone who was anyone had stayed at the Crowne Plaza, from pop stars to members of the royal family. Functions were booked up months and sometimes even years in advance, the huge ballroom a perennial favourite for gatherings such as Burns’ suppers and New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Lorimer bumped the car gently over the speed humps, slowing almost to a standstill to allow a white van to pass him by. The barrier to the hotel car park lifted and he drove in, making a mental note to find two pounds in change for the way out. The DCI sat for a moment and glanced at the names in his notebook. All five of the Forbes Macgregor partners had been there the night of Duncan Forbes’ death, along with many of the staff. He was here to talk to the duty manager but first he wanted to wander along the path that ran beside the river.

Lorimer leaned against the white painted railings that overlooked the Clyde. They were just above waist height, not difficult for someone to vault over if they’d a mind to do it. Looking down, he could see the yellow tops of safety ladders spaced along the river wall; on the water’s black oily surface were numerous bits of detritus including a Drambuie bottle and an upturned blue plastic basin. There was no sense of depth to the murkiness below him. It would certainly be a shock to fall in water like that, he thought. And it was still icy cold. Lorimer turned towards the Millennium Bridge that spanned the Clyde. From here he could see the hotel and the walk-way more clearly. There was a considerable amount of tree cover and shrubbery screening the walkway from the hotel itself, probably designed to give a modicum of privacy to the guests. But had it also served to hide the manner of Duncan Forbes’ death?

He walked further along, noting the buds on the lime trees. Not so much cover here, then. And these white globes on the streetlights would have illuminated the entire path. Or almost, he told himself, walking round a curve that opened up into a quiet area hidden from view. Here the shrubbery was thicker, a mixture of rhododendrons and berberis, and the bare lime trees had given way to a stand of scrubby pines. There were several benches constructed from black metal mesh, their surfaces spray-painted with white graffiti. Above him towered the immense height of the famous Finnieston crane, the last relic of Glasgow’s shipbuilding past, the words CLYDE BUILT etched clearly on its side. The path narrowed at this point and the wall dropped directly into the river with hardly any ledge to the other side of the railing. Lorimer tapped his fingernail against his teeth. Could Forbes have fallen in at this spot? George Parsonage had warned him of the river’s notoriously unpredictable currents. The tides had certainly taken the body upriver.

The DCI turned on his heel and walked away from the spot just as a cyclist free-wheeled off Bell’s Bridge towards the city centre. It made him look up and across to the farther bank, to where the Scottish Criminal Record Office stood on Pacific Quay: a square of dull green glass whose windows looked directly towards the walkway. Beside it, the BBC’s new premises rubbed shoulders with the Scottish Media Group. CCTV cameras were dotted round the whole area, but they were like those at the Crowne Plaza: fixed heads looking inwards to protect their own. Still, it would do no harm to ask if anyone had seen an incident late at night. Security guards, perhaps? Lorimer gave a sigh. It was all so bloody nebulous, this inquiry into a fatal accident that might turn out to be no more than that. If that caller hadn’t given them all the idea that Forbes had been deliberately killed, he’d be doing something a bit more useful than sniffing around the Clyde on a cold April morning.

The black words printed along the walkway railings made Lorimer grin suddenly. He’d been thinking it was just for pedestrians but the words ‘cycle path’ immediately made him think of all the old psychopath jokes.