Alex Gray - The Riverman

‘Gotcha!’ he exclaimed, rising from his chair.

‘What-?’

‘Come on, I’ll explain as we go,’ Lorimer answered, taking his jacket off its peg behind the door.

It was not the first time the two men had sat side by side at a hospital bed, a uniformed officer by the door. The patient lying within the curtained cubicle groaned as he opened his eyes.

‘Well, well. What do we have here? Thought you’d gone over to annoy the boys and girls in Argyll and Bute, Eddie. How come you ended up here?’

The man on the bed squinted up at Lorimer. His head was swathed in white bandages with another wrapped round his jaw. He opened his mouth to speak then closed it again, his reddened eyes flicking across at Solomon. ‘Who’s he?’ the words came out hoarsely.

‘Never mind that, Eddie. What were you doing with all that gear? And, more to the point, tell me about this.’ Lorimer waved a long slim notebook in front of the man’s face.

‘Oh, Christ!’ The man turned his head to one side in a groan of defeat.

‘G21 WST. Familiar number, Eddie?’ Lorimer read the license number off the notebook and grinned down at the man in the bed. ‘Mean anything to you? Customer in a Porsche. Surely you wouldn’t forget him in a hurry?’

‘Don’ know a thing,’ Eddie replied.

‘No? Well, it might come as a shock to you, Eddie, but we do. You’d been supplying something to the owner of this car, whose name and details we have right here.’ Lorimer patted his jacket pocket. ‘So why not do yourself a favour and tell us exactly what you were supplying him with.’

The man in the bed licked his lips nervously.

‘Come on, Eddie, this isn’t just about supplying.’ Lorimer’s tone was quiet but held a hint of menace. ‘We’re conducting a murder inquiry here.’

The man’s eyes opened wider and he glanced again at the bearded psychologist who nodded gravely.

He gave a huge sigh. ‘All right. Might as well tell you. Punter wanted a quantity of Goop.’

Solly caught Lorimer’s eye and frowned.

‘Goop. GHB,’ Lorimer explained. ‘Gamma-hydroxybutrate to give it its Sunday name.’ He smiled down at the man beneath the bedclothes who seemed to have shrivelled up under the chief inspector’s blue gaze. ‘Isn’t that right, Eddie?’

‘Aye,’ came the resigned voice from the depths of the hospital sheets. ‘’S right.’

‘That explains a lot,’ Lorimer told Solly as they made their way out to the hospital car park. ‘West gets hold of GHB, drugs Forbes and tips him into the Clyde. Later on he doses Jennifer Hammond the same way, only gives her so much that he kills her,’ he continued grimly.

‘Why?’ Solly stopped beside Lorimer’s car. He had one hand on the door handle, his expression puzzled. ‘I can see how he came to do it. The couple who spotted them from the Crowne Plaza Hotel seem to confirm that.’

‘Plus he’s done a runner to the other side of the world,’ Lorimer reminded him.

‘Yes, yes.’ Solly sighed as though Graham West had let him down in some way. ‘It’s just-’

‘What?’

‘West’s profile. It doesn’t fit with that of a cold-blooded multiple killer,’ Solly told him as he eased himself into the passenger seat.

‘Well, profiles have been known to be wrong before, Solly,’ Lorimer told him shortly. ‘And it’s our number-one priority to get hold of West before he disappears.’

Catherine Devoy applied the scarlet lipstick to the brush and bent forward towards the washroom mirror. The face reflected back at her stretched its lips and held them in a rictus as the woman stroked an outline then filled in the shape, a blood-red bow starkly contrasting with her pale complexion. With a sigh that held just a trace of a sob she leaned back and let the brush fall with a tiny clatter, her hands gripping the edge of the countertop. She couldn’t do this, she really and truly couldn’t. For all Alec had cajoled and promised, Catherine felt a sense of sheer misery well up in her at the thought of facing the police. They were trained to notice things: she’d seen it on television, how they played good-cop-bad-cop with people in the interview room. What if they tricked her into saying things she didn’t want to say? How would she answer them if they asked her about Duncan?

The woman in the mirror stood up straighter and gave her dark hair a reassuring pat. She’d encountered dozens of difficult clients over the years, dealt with cases where grown men and women had shrieked abuse at her for simply telling them what the law required and how they must make reparation to their creditors. She’d taken a pride in being on the side of the angels all those years ago, so what had gone wrong? The face that looked back at her was older, hardened with lines that told of sleepless nights rather than laughter. What had she to laugh about now? Her familiar world was about to be broken into pieces unless …? Unless she told the story she had so carefully rehearsed. But could she carry it off? The dark woman staring at her lifted her chin a fraction as if in challenge. Yes, she could do it. She hadn’t come this far to let a few policemen spoil everything.

‘Miss Devoy’s in the interview room, sir,’ WPC Irvine told Lorimer.

He raised his head, ‘Still no sign of Mr Adams?’

‘No, sir. Shall I try his office?’

Remembering the London partner, Lorimer nodded briefly. Adams was probably still ensconced with his bosses. Still, it was bloody annoying. He’d had the instructions to be here at the same time as the Devoy woman.

‘Oh, and tell him I want him over here, will you?’ he added, rising from his seat with a sigh. He felt as if he’d been glued to that chair for the last hour listening to Mitchison warble on about Home Office procedures. If he’d just get on with it and stop trying to be so wrapped up in rules and regulations they might get somewhere. Graham West was winging Singapore and they were no nearer to finding a way to intercept him at his journey’s end. So far, not a lot had been found in either Forbes Macgregor’s offices or in the betting shop’s riverside headquarters: plenty of bags of shredded paper, though, which had raised not a few eyebrows. That old chap in Human Resources, Adrian Millhouse, had admitted that there was about a year’s worth of shreddings stacked in the machine room, and, no, the bulging plastic sacks hadn’t been there at the start of the week. DC Cameron had already taken statements from other members of staff who had confirmed this. As he strode along the corridor, Lorimer wondered what Miss Catherine Devoy would say when he asked her opinion about West’s sudden disappearance.

Thinking back to his first visit to the offices by the river, Lorimer recalled Jennifer Hammond. He stopped outside the door of the room for a moment, conjuring up the leggy redhead’s flirtatious smile, the way they’d linked arms to cross the road. That such scintillating life should be snuffed out! He took a deep breath to bring the spurt of anger under control then turned the handle and entered the room.

Inside, three pairs of eyes turned towards him but Lorimer ignored the psychologist and the duty officer, turning with a smile and outstretched hand to the slim woman sitting on the edge of her chair.

‘Miss Devoy, thank you so much for coming in today,’ he said and took a seat opposite her.

Catherine looked up at the tall policeman with surprise. There was no trace of anything other than pleasant courtesy in his manner. He might have been one of her associates coming in to discuss the wording of a legal document. She sat back against the hard wood of the chair and clasped her fingers lightly together. This was going to be fine, just fine.

‘You are one of Forbes Macgregor’s associates?’ Lorimer began.