Alex Gray - The Riverman

He shivered suddenly in spite of himself. Was that a premonition of some sort or just a cold gust of wind coming up from the slithering waters?

Inside the hotel, Lorimer approached the reception desk and held up his warrant card.

‘DCI Lorimer to see Mr Wotherspoon,’ he told the blonde receptionist. She smiled brightly at him and lifted the telephone at her side. Lorimer could hear her ask the duty manager to come to reception.

‘Just take a seat over there. He won’t be a second.’ She smiled again, indicating a row of squashy seats opposite the main door. Lorimer nodded and gave a sigh. A second in her language would more likely be ten minutes, he thought, sinking into the soft leather. But he was wrong. He’d hardly time to stretch out his long legs when a youngish man in a tweed suit approached.

‘Andrew Wotherspoon,’ the duty manager announced, hand outstretched. ‘Good to meet you, sir,’ he addressed Lorimer. ‘Perhaps you’d care to come through to the office,’ he added. Lorimer nodded, rose to his feet and followed Wotherspoon across the foyer and into a side room.

‘Terrible business, this,’ Wotherspoon began. ‘Have you any idea how it happened?’

‘It’s being investigated,’ Lorimer remarked blandly. ‘We hope to learn a bit more once we know Mr Forbes’ movements on the night he died.’

‘Of course. What can I tell you?’

‘Where he was, for a start.’

‘Actually,’ Wotherspoon nodded, ‘I can do better than that. I can show you, if you like. The Forbes Macgregor party was held in one of our meeting rooms on the mezzanine. Staffa, I think it was,’ he added, checking a paper on his desk. ‘Yes, it was. Staffa. These rooms are all named after Scottish islands,’ he explained. ‘Like Staffa, Barra, Jura and so on. The whole hotel has a nautical theme running throughout. Perhaps you’d noticed that?’ he asked eagerly, hoping for some reaction from the detective chief inspector.

But Lorimer had already risen to his feet.

‘This meeting room?’

Wotherspoon walked him back across the foyer and up a narrow staircase that led to a mustard-yellow corridor. Lorimer glanced absently at the decor, wondering if the decorator had eventually tired of sea blues.

‘Here we are,’ Wotherspoon announced. ‘All the rooms are identical actually, and of course they all look out onto the river.’

Lorimer strode across to the window. Below him the hotel’s conservatory jutted out, its wall of windows stretching up, parallel to the mezzanine.

Seeing him look down, Wotherspoon explained, ‘The conservatory’s for the business delegates or guests using our meeting rooms. They can wander down for a coffee whenever they like.’

‘Or a fag break?’

‘Well, not really,’ Wotherspoon frowned. ‘They have to go outside for that, but there’s a side entrance to the conservatory where most of the smokers tend to gather.’ As the duty manager brushed an invisible speck from his trousers, Lorimer grinned.

He’d bet Wotherspoon would have been happier with a total ban on smoking even outside the hotel.

‘Can you give me a list of everybody who was here last night?’

‘Of course. There were only about thirty in the Forbes Macgregor party-’

‘No,’ Lorimer interrupted him. ‘I mean everybody . All the guests in each of the meeting rooms, downstairs in that conservatory bit, anywhere you have a record of someone, in fact.’

‘Oh, but-’ Wotherspoon began.

‘Someone might have seen Mr Forbes from up here,’ Lorimer insisted. ‘Look. You can see the cycle path for quite a distance on either side. Almost as far as the Squinty Bridge. If he did walk that way …?’ Lorimer shrugged, leaving the question hanging in the air.

‘Oh, I see what you mean. Right, I’ll try to find lists of names for you, Chief Inspector.’

‘I particularly want you to ask for anyone whose room had a clear view looking down towards the Finnieston crane. Okay?’

Wotherspoon jotted down the DCI’s request on a thin hotel notepad then looked back solemnly at Lorimer.

‘And your CCTV tapes. We’ll need to see them too, of course.’

‘Ah, yes.’

‘What areas do they cover? I only spotted the ones at the car park and at reception.’

‘We have all the entrances covered,’ Wotherspoon told him, ‘including the delivery entrances. The tapes are changed on a daily basis.’

‘Exactly when are they changed over?’

‘At midnight. By the security staff. We have seven twenty-four hour tapes that are then recycled for the following week.’

‘So if I wanted to see what happened a week ago last night …?’

‘You couldn’t, I’m afraid.’

‘Okay.’ Lorimer turned away from the window. ‘I think that’s all I need to see up here for now, Mr Wotherspoon. Once we have the particulars of your delegates we can begin to ask some more questions. Nobody on the night staff mentioned anything untoward happening last night?’

Wotherspoon shook his head. ‘First we knew about it was your officers turning up here this morning. Bit of a shock. Not the first drowning there’s been near the hotel, mind you, but it’s hardly an everyday occurrence.’

‘Had one recently then?’ Lorimer asked as they left the room and walked to the far end of the yellow corridor.

‘No.’ Wotherspoon grimaced. ‘There was a young boy who fell in a few years ago. Not one of our guests,’ he hastened to add. ‘Chief Inspector,’ Wotherspoon hesitated, ‘may I ask what exactly this is all about? We didn’t expect an officer of your rank to be making inquiries about an accidental drowning.’ The duty manager’s face was turned up questioningly to Lorimer’s, but there was no trace of indulging his human curiosity. The man was justified in asking something that impinged on the business of his establishment.

‘I’m afraid I can’t comment on that just yet, sir,’ Lorimer replied. ‘And I’d be grateful if any speculation were to be kept away from the press’ He looked at Wotherspoon who nodded gravely. He’d trust the duty manager but it would be impossible to prevent the rest of the staff from whispering among themselves if the inquiry gained momentum.

‘We’ll walk down this way, just to let you see the other stairs,’ Wotherspoon said.

Lorimer passed the lift and pointed at it enquiringly.

‘For disabled guests,’ Wotherspoon said briefly, making his way round the end of the corridor and down a carpeted flight of steps. The stairway turned onto a half-landing and Lorimer stopped suddenly, struck by the view. From here he could see the entrance to that lonely spot with its empty black benches. Had anyone wandered down this way last night? Duncan Forbes, maybe? Well, the CCTV footage would surely tell some of that story.

The DCI hardly heard Andrew Wotherspoon as he rattled on about the famous mural that covered a whole wall of the hotel. It depicted the Clyde’s heyday with scenes from celebrated launches and three generations of royalty, as well as the men who had laboured to produce the world-famous Queens who’d taken their names. His eyes flicked over the mock art deco Mariner Restaurant to the bar with its tent-like canopy, a visual simile for sails, no doubt. But Lorimer’s inner eye was trying to see beyond all that, to a darker scene altogether where a man had crossed to the railings and then fallen to his death in the waters below.

‘Right, an afternoon at the movies.’ DS Alastair Wilson leaned back, hands behind his head and winked at his colleague. DC Cameron sat up straight in his chair, arms folded, an expression of annoyance across his face. It seemed an inordinate waste of time to spend on a drowned man who’d simply fallen into the Clyde, all because some hysterical woman had called the station. They’d listened to the recording of her voice a few times now, at Lorimer’s insistence.