Alex Gray - The Riverman

The four of them trooped back into the human resource manager’s room and Wilson watched as Adrian Millhouse went straight to the desk drawer. After only a moment’s rummaging, he produced a handful of papers and grinned.

‘Here we are. Michael’s personal stuff. Personal rather than personnel, if you get me.’ He winked again.

‘Are you sure you should be doing this?’ Emma Rogers sounded doubtful.

Wilson bit his lip. It wasn’t really his place to break bad news to Barr’s staff but this was becoming farcical. ‘Michael Turner has died,’ he told them quietly, watching as Adrian’s grin melted off his face and Emma gave a gasp of disbelief. ‘The American police are treating his death as murder. Mr Barr will no doubt make an announcement to you later today and I expect you’ll be reading about it in the papers before too long.’ He grimaced, sensing Cameron nodding in agreement beside him. ‘Meantime, I’d appreciate it if you could be discreet.’

Adrian Millhouse leaned against the desk. ‘That’s why the poor woman was so upset. No wonder she needed to go home.’

Wilson turned to Emma. ‘Thanks for your help, Miss Rogers. I wonder if you might bring us a cup of coffee? I think we’ll have a wee chat with Mr Millhouse.’ His voice was deliberately kind. Making coffee for them would give the girl something to do and an opportunity for Millhouse to tell them more about the relationship between Jennifer Hammond and the late Michael Turner.

An ache was beginning to nag at the top of Lorimer’s skull as he reread the papers in front of him. Michael Turner had left his flat in the Merchant City in the hands of estate agents. It would fetch a pretty price, thought Lorimer, looking at the particulars on the schedule. But to whom would the dead man’s estate belong now? That was the question uppermost in his mind. DVLC records had thrown up some information as had Turner’s medical records, but so far there was no sign of a next of kin. He had been an only child as had his father, so there were no uncles or cousins on this side of the pond. It was a can of worms, and a suspicious can at that. Could there possibly be any older relatives still living? Lorimer threw the papers down. It was time for his staff to find these things out, he thought as the telephone began to ring.

‘Chief Inspector? Adrian Millhouse here. Your detective sergeant asked me to call if I remembered any details about poor Michael that might help the investigation.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, it’s maybe nothing, but we shared the same dentist. I just thought … medical records and all that …’ the man’s voice trailed off uncertainly.

‘No, you were quite right to call, Mr Millhouse. Give me the dentist’s name and number, would you?’

‘It’s Ian Lynch,’ Millhouse replied, then reeled off the dentist’s phone number. ‘Michael asked me to recommend a good dentist when his old one retired. He’s been going to Ian now for about four years, I think,’ Millhouse gabbled on.

‘Yes, thank you.’ Lorimer paused then asked, ‘Mr Millhouse? Is there any possibility of you coming in to HQ to listen to the same tape Miss Hammond heard?’

‘Ah.’ The tone of the old man told him he’s hit a sore spot. ‘’Fraid not. Hearing’s not reliable, you know, even with this digital gadget. Things tend to get a bit distorted.’

‘Thanks anyway, sir. Much obliged.’ Lorimer rang off. That was one witness whose testimony wouldn’t stand up in court. Still, the dental records would certainly be useful to the NYPD in corroborating the dead man’s identity, although there was little doubt about that, surely? What Lorimer needed now was to talk to Jennifer Hammond. Maybe the ex-girlfriend would be able to shed some light on the puzzle of why these personnel files were missing.

The light was fading by the time Lorimer drove back through the city streets. April was a month of strange contrasts. One day it could be cold enough to snow, the next there were these lovely spring sunsets with the promise of longer days to come. What was it Maggie was fond of quoting?

‘April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of a dead land.’

Eliot’s famous words, of course, that referred to the dead of a century before. April in upstate New York had not been so cold that the grave of Michael Turner had frozen over. In fact it had been amazing that it had been found so quickly after the young man’s death. It was a freak coincidence that those hunting dogs had turned it up so soon after the body had been buried. Could’ve lain there for years, the officer in charge had told him. They usually do, the man had added gloomily. But by some quirk of fate this body was not meant to rest in foreign soil for long.

Lorimer turned out of the motorway traffic and headed towards the slip road that would take him into the leafier suburbs and the patch of peace and quiet that he called home. The clouds were darkening now, layers of nimbus showing bright against fading grey as the sun sank somewhere out of sight. The final part of his journey took him directly west towards the Kilpatrick Hills. A pall of mist obscured the outline of the hills but he could still make out their blue-green slopes with darker patches from burnt winter heather. For a few minutes Lorimer forgot the job, the meeting with Mitchison, everything, in his contemplation of the view before him. He was heading west where the hills became wilder and grander, hiding deep waters and mountain cataracts. Glasgow citizens were so lucky, he often told himself. A few miles and the streets were left behind, the open countryside there for the taking. He cruised along on the outside lane, open fields on either side. A faint tinge of green had begun to show on the hedgerows now. Soon there would be a quickening of the blood as the sap rose and birds began their seasonal couplings.

The image made Lorimer’s thoughts turn to Jennifer Hammond. A close friend of Michael Turner’s: she had a soft spot for him, Adrian Millhouse had said. Wilson had not been slow picking up on that titbit. She’d certainly reacted badly to the news of his murder, according to her colleague. Well, tomorrow he’d make it his business to speak to her, to find out just how close she had been to the dead man. And, he told himself, whose name she had held back on hearing that tape; the voice of a hysterical woman who had witnessed what might have been a murder.

The morning dawned grey and still, a fine drizzle covering the hills as Lorimer drove back along the motorway towards the city. It was early enough to miss the traffic jams that would hold up lines of commuters trying to make their offices for a nine o’clock start. Since Maggie had come home Lorimer had found himself spending more sensible hours at work. That was one of the few things he’d agreed on with Mitchison following his wife’s return, he thought wryly, though police work never really kept to a nine-to-five schedule, despite European directives about working-time practices. There was always the pressure to push on with the latest job and always a shortage of manpower to achieve it. Public perception of the police was not as good as it used to be, especially since the Soham case down south. The Home Secretary hadn’t made any of their lives easier in the wake of that scandal. Now every ‘i’ had to be dotted and every ‘t’ crossed, something in which his superintendent seemed to revel. He could see the point of it, but sometimes he felt as if all the administration got in the way of the real job of catching criminals and bringing them to justice. Would the cold case unit be any better? That was something he’d have to find out.

Lorimer slowed down and took the exit that led south of the river and to the complex of flats beside Kingston Bridge. Jennifer Hammond’s flat was one of a modern development that had been resurrected from the site of the famous Glasgow Garden Festival. The DCI drove directly under Kingston Bridge, glad for once to be free of the usual early morning log-jam on the three lanes that straddled the Clyde, and slowed down as he made his way around the perimeter of the complex. There were bright swathes of daffodils blossoming on the landscaped verges of Riverview Gardens and the patches of evergreen shrubbery were well trimmed. Given its proximity to the city centre, this place was an oasis of calm.