Alex Gray - The Riverman

‘How d’you think?’ came the retort. ‘Not sleeping, not eating, cries all the time. I’m at my wits’ end what to do for her. If it wasn’t for the baby I’d be worried that she’d do herself some mischief.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Well, it’s true. Wait till you see her.’

‘How are you , Janey?’ her brother asked, more softly this time.

‘Okay. Colin’s bringing over more stuff tonight. We’re staying here with Mum for as long as she needs us.’

‘Good. At least you’ve got him around, and the wee one.’

‘Look, I have to go now. Betsy’s awake and I don’t want Mum to have to go up and fetch her all the time — she’s worn out enough as it is.’

‘Okay, see you the day after tomorrow.’ Philip Forbes hung up and turned back into the heat of the airport.

It seemed totally unreal. Here he was killing time in this sweltering part of Africa, his recent safari adventures already receding into the background, and his father was dead. Drowned in the Clyde. What on earth had happened in Glasgow to cause such a terrible tragedy? Dad was the best swimmer he knew. Had he fallen and hit his head on something? Janey had been very cagey about it all and now that the initial shock had worn off, Philip found himself questioning her reticence. Was there something he wasn’t being told? As the younger sibling he was accustomed to being fobbed off, and normally he didn’t mind, but this was different. Now he needed to know every detail for himself to try to recreate the awful thing that had happened to his father. The young man wiped the sweat that beaded his forehead. The air conditioning inside the terminal building was erratic and his shirt was already showing patches of dampness.

Maybe Catherine would know more, he thought suddenly. After all, she was his godmother. Cheered by the prospect of talking to his father’s business partner, Philip Forbes sat up straighter and walked back to the telephone kiosk. He glanced at his watch. There was plenty of time before his flight and Catherine Devoy was likely to be in the office just now.

*

Ten minutes later the young man slumped back into the line of bench seats, his backpack by his side. She’d been there, all right. But what little his godmother had told him made Philip Forbes feel even more helpless and remote. Catherine had spoken gently to him, but that had only made it worse. As far as they could tell, the signs all pointed to Dad having gone on a bender and falling into the river after a late-night party. The boy’s fists clenched. How could he? After all his promises and years of abstinence; how could his father have thrown it all away? Tears pricked the back of his eyes and he had to swallow hard. It wouldn’t do to come over all emotional in a public place. He should be furious with his father: spoiling life for them all, making his mum a quivering wreck, cutting short his own time in Africa. He should feel angry, he should be picturing the final staggerings of a drunk man tipping himself over into a dark and sinister river.

Yet, try as he might, all Philip could see in his mind’s eye was a man laughing as he ran up a grassy hill hand-in-hand with his little boy, pulling a home-made kite behind them.

The background report on the late Duncan Forbes, CA, made interesting reading for DCI Lorimer. It was now a full week since that early morning by the riverside and the man’s body was quietly stored away in the mortuary, awaiting a decision from the Crown Office. They were at that in-between stage trying to correlate the post-mortem and toxicology results with what else they knew.

Duncan Forbes had been fifty-seven years old when his life was cut short. A large, fit man, he’d had no real health problems unless you could count the difficulties of alcoholism that had dogged him twenty years before. A recovered alcoholic was how his GP had described Forbes, emphasizing that the man’s adherence to the straight and narrow had been absolute. His AA meetings had continued right up to the week of his death and he was a model for others to follow. Lorimer chewed the end of a pencil. So Forbes had shown strength of character, after what had been a lapse in his thirties. What had caused his alcoholism in the first place?

Lorimer considered the papers in his hand. The Forbes family business had been merged with a bigger accountancy firm in the eighties when Forbes senior had still been at the helm. Following the new partnership, the old man had retired and left his son to shape the firm that would one day become one of the Big Six, as these world-renowned companies were known. That was the time when Duncan Forbes had gone on those drinking binges that were to mark him for the rest of his life. Lorimer made some calculations. Forbes’ kids would have been very young, the boy a mere toddler. What kind of trial had it been for Elizabeth Forbes coping with an alcoholic husband? Yet she’d stood by him then and, if he’d read the woman correctly, she’d genuinely loved her husband.

There was more in the report that Lorimer skimmed over: Duncan Forbes’ membership of the local golf club, his involvement in Rotary International and some dealings with charities. He had been a good solid citizen, the report was telling him, a man who had overcome his weakness and gone on to make something worthwhile of his life. Who would want to kill a man like that? The thought came unbidden into Lorimer’s head. There was no evidence of murder yet, although the GHB in his bloodstream suggested something sinister had happened that night at the Crowne Plaza. And that weird phone call? Someone had seen the man fall into the river, someone who knew it was Duncan Forbes.

Lorimer tried to imagine the dark night, the lights from the conference rooms shining across the river, the trees mere shadows at the water’s edge. Forbes had staggered out of the side door and across to the railings and then disappeared, hidden by the evergreen shrubbery. Whoever had seen this must have been close enough to the man to know his identity. So why had they not alerted the security staff at the hotel? Why wait until the early hours of the next day to make that hysterical call? It didn’t make sense. Unless the mystery caller had not wanted the man to be found until it was too late to save him. And the abrupt ending of that call? Another hand had been at work there, Lorimer believed. Someone had cut off the woman’s emotional outburst just as she had been on the point of telling the police something significant. Lorimer shuddered suddenly, despite the warmth of his room. It was all in his imagination, wasn’t it? Yet an image persisted of a man’s hand closing on the woman’s wrist, forcing it away from the telephone, pressing the button that would cut her off from the police.

No. What he should be looking at were the reasons for the man to have taken his own life. Something had been on his mind, his wife knew. Something to do with the firm? Yet, as far as he could tell from the papers before him, Forbes Macgregor was not only a highly successful firm but one that attracted all the right sorts of clientele. In short, it was a respectable firm of accountants. Lorimer’s eyes ran down a list of major companies that were audited by Forbes Macgregor’s Glasgow office. An oil company and all its subsidiaries, a major supermarket and a well-known publishing company were among the household names. It looked safe and sound, but perhaps the facts and figures required a more expert analysis.

Turning a page, Lorimer recognized a familiar name. So Forbes Macgregor handled the accounts of Jacobs Betting Shops, did they? That was interesting. He shrugged. Someone had to do it and one of the bigger accountancy firms was bound to have landed an important client like that. And it wasn’t the only bookmaker’s business they handled; The Pony Express, a chain of newer, flashier betting shops, was also a client. It was probably one of those bizarre coincidences he came across every week of his working life, and most DCI’s would dismiss it as such, but the more Lorimer stared at the lines of figures, the more uneasy he felt. He’d been looking for a clue to the death of Duncan Forbes. Could this be it? The murder of the bookmaker had caused shockwaves across the city and there was still an ongoing investigation into the case. They had a good idea who might be behind the contract killing but with Shug McAlister still refusing to give them names, there wasn’t much that could be done. He’d pass this onto Forensic Accounting if the Crown Office deemed it necessary. And maybe the Fraud Squad would have something to offer. It was always a good idea to put feelers out with cases like this. It would only take one more shadow of doubt over Forbes Macgregor for Lorimer to recommend to the Procurator Fiscal that this suspicious death should be treated as a murder inquiry.