Alex Gray - The Riverman

‘No, think it’s about time we found out why, don’t you?’

‘Hello?’ Lesley Adams picked up the telephone and listened, her hand going to her mouth as the voice at the other end identified himself as an officer of Strathclyde Police.

‘Malcolm! What’s happened to him? He hasn’t come home!’

‘Mummy! Where’s my book?’

‘Not now, sweetheart, not just now.’ Lesley shushed the child, clinging onto her chubby fingers as if they were a lifeline.

‘But Mummy-’

‘Mummy’s on the telephone, darling. No. No, I told you he’s not here,’ Lesley returned to the voice asking for the whereabouts of her husband. ‘He should have been home hours ago.’

Alec Barr gave a huge sigh of relief as he swept away from Glasgow airport. Hinshelwood was gone at last. He’d given a brave version of West’s disappearance, sticking to the depression theory. It was a reasonable card to play, after all. With three of his colleagues dead, how must Hinshelwood have felt? West had no parents or wife to go home to, he’d said. And, besides, these sorts of illnesses were hard to spot, weren’t they? If Peter Hinshelwood was convinced, he didn’t show it. But at least he’d tried to sell the idea to his London colleague, Barr told himself, revving into the outside lane as he left the slip road.

He was about to head for the city when his mobile rang. A quick flick of the hands-free button told him who was on the other line.

‘Malcolm,’ he began, ‘how did it go?’ Barr’s voice was hearty, encouraging.

‘Alec, I need to see you.’

‘Sure, sometime tomorrow?’

‘Now! It has to be now, Alec,’ Adams raised his voice. There was no mistaking the tone of desperation.

‘But I’m on my way to police headquarters, Malcolm,’ Barr protested.

‘I need to see you now!’

There was a pause as Barr thought hard.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll see you in our usual place. Fifteen minutes max. That do you?’

There was no reply, just an audible intake of breath before the phone went dead.

It was midnight. The curtains were still undrawn against the gathering darkness. Tomorrow would be the first of May. When she was little, her mum would laugh and say they should wash their faces in the dew and they’d be pretty for the rest of the year. It was a joke, really, that old wives’ tale, but Lesley had always wanted to creep out in the dawn light and wipe the moisture from the wet grass across her cheeks, just in case.

Where was Malcolm? she thought desperately, for the hundredth time. This had never happened before. He wasn’t one of the drinking and carousing types that she read about in the Sunday papers, those men who seemed to live such unpleasant lives of clubs and pubs where sexual adventuring was the norm. Malcolm would never — she bit her lip to stop the tears coming again. Where was he? She’d wanted to phone Mum earlier, just as a comfort, but her older wiser self stopped her hand lifting the phone. It would be selfish to worry her mum. There was nothing to worry about, was there? Yet, a little voice suggested unkindly, turning her bowels to water.

When the telephone rang, Lesley Adams jumped as if she’d been stung. Stumbling away from the window, she grasped the phone and pressed it to her ear.

‘Hello? Malcolm! Is that you?’

The voice on the other end of the line was unfamiliar and Lesley sat heavily on the edge of the bed, expecting the worst, expecting this to be the police telling her that Malcolm was dead.

But as she listened, Lesley Adams sat up straighter. The voice was telling her things that she could never have believed, things far, far worse than the sleazy goings-on outlined in any colour supplements. That Malcolm had been involved … She couldn’t imagine her gentle husband being mixed up …

‘What do you want me to do?’ Lesley whispered at last, gripping the phone so tight that her fingers hurt.

With a sigh, the voice at the other end told her.

Lorimer lay awake staring into the darkness. Beside him Maggie moaned softly, dreaming about something she’d forget by morning. Unlike his wife, Lorimer always remembered his dreams but as yet he’d not even managed to fall asleep.

Adams had never shown up. His wife had been hysterical, they’d said, and Lorimer had initiated a discreet search for the man. He thought of Adams, he’d been the quiet one of the four. A mere stick of a man, his fair hair thin against a cadaverous skull. But his face had softened with pity, Lorimer remembered, when he’d asked questions about Duncan Forbes and Jennifer Hammond. Pity and grief, he thought, striving to recall the details of that meeting in Carlton Place. Yes, that was it. He’d appeared quite stricken, in a silent sort of way.

They knew little about Adams as yet. It seemed he was a family man whose wife cared enough to break down and beg the police to find him for her, to bring him home. None of that day’s searching had turned up anything unsavoury about these Forbes Macgregor partners. They were as clean as the proverbial whistle, but the masses of shredded paperwork suggested that someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make this so. Tomorrow he’d have the fingerprints off both sets of bags; those at the offices and the ones West had left outside his flat. If they matched, as Lorimer supposed they would, then their hunt for the fugitive would intensify.

Alec Barr had been helpful in that respect. He’d seemed reluctant to part with the knowledge that West had been suffering from some kind of depression. It was an old-fashioned reaction, to speak about mental instability in such hushed tones, but that was exactly what Barr had done. The man had seemed weary, and Lorimer couldn’t blame him. Trying to hold on to the remnants of his world must be hard, yet Barr had maintained a dignity that the senior investigating officer admired. He’d looked grim, as if fearing the worst, and had answered all of Lorimer’s questions with a directness that he’d found refreshing after the clipped responses he usually had to listen to. When asked what he thought was going on, he’d sounded genuinely perplexed. It was a nightmare of someone else’s making, Lorimer thought. Barr would be losing sleep right now, just like the rest of them, trying to figure out what West had done, why he’d done it, and what would happen to his firm once all the facts were uncovered.

And more would be, Lorimer thought with a yawn, when tomorrow finally came.

She heard a baby’s cry, sharp and insistent, as she sat bolt upright in the bed. But as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, Liz Forbes was only aware of her own breathing. There was no baby in the house; Janey and the family had gone home. It must have been a dream, Liz decided, lying back against the pillows. The night air was cool in their bedroom and the linen curtains moved as a breeze blew in. Duncan had always liked an airy bedroom and she’d become accustomed to the night sounds over the years. There were always noises from the garden: trees soughing in the wind, their resident owl deep within the adjoining woods and, sometimes, the bark of a fox.

Along the corridor Philip would be sleeping. His room was far enough from his parents’ bedroom to ensure complete privacy for them both, yet just to know he was in the house was comfort enough. Lately he’d dropped hints about maybe having to move away, if the search for work took him further afield. Liz had forced an understanding smile while aching inside. Of course he must make a break for independence. Of course she must let him go his own way, but it was doubly hard to imagine him gone and being left alone in the family home.

If only, she thought again, if only she could be sure that Duncan had been faithful to her. Her heart told her it was so but the voice in her head, a voice that sounded like the author of those malicious letters, kept insisting that he had strayed. He’d been seeing another woman. Was it true? And if it was, then perhaps somewhere in this city she would be lying awake too, restless with the questions that seemed to have no answer. Who had killed Duncan? And, for God’s sake, why?