Alex Gray - Never Somewhere Else

Kevin’s eyes grew crafty.

‘C’n Ah have the siren oan?’

Lorimer wanted to laugh out loud and he felt the atmosphere relax as several of the faces around him broke into wide grins.

‘Oh, let’s ask Chief Inspector Lorimer, shall we?’

Gail Stewart’s expression was impish.

‘I think that could be arranged, Kevin,’ Lorimer said, trying to keep his tone suitably grave, but the boy had sensed the change in the room and his eyes shone with mischief that was suddenly wholesome and healthy.

An hour later Kevin left the station having been shown around the CCTV room as a reward. The boy was skipping between his foster mum and the social worker and Lorimer could almost feel his eagerness to get away to tell his pals all about it. As they reached the main door Mrs McFadden nudged him.

‘Oh, aye,’ said Kevin. ‘Thanks very much for the ride in the car. It wis great.’

They disappeared out of the building leaving Lorimer shaking his head. How quickly kids seemed to bounce back. Even his medical examination by the police doctor hadn’t been too much of an ordeal, according to WPC Stewart. Still, the process of delving into his traumatic experiences was not all over yet.

Upstairs George Phillips would soon know about this latest development. Kevin Sweeney’s grubby little finger had jutted out defiantly at the photofit. Aye, he was sure. It was the same bad man.

Lorimer whistled through his teeth as he took the stairs two at a time. In his hand he held the envelope containing the photofit put together by Alison Girdley.

‘It’s too big a coincidence to ignore.’

Lorimer’s voice betrayed his excitement. Maybe this was the break they’d been looking for. Phillips swung back in his chair contemplating the photofit and Kevin Sweeney’s statement which he held between his finger and thumb.

‘The kid’s been systematically abused. In an ambulance, he says. Valentine Carruthers had a record of involvement with paedophiles.’ As Lorimer raised his eyebrows questioningly, Phillips added, ‘Supplying rent boys in his nefarious past, you say?’

Lorimer stood up suddenly and began to pace the room.

‘He dies in a burnt-out ambulance. Now this. Young Kevin has ID’d our photofit. So. What’s the link?’

Phillips said nothing. Lorimer slapped his fist down on a pile of papers on his desk.

‘Look,’ the DCI continued, ‘We’ve got these reports from the down-and-outs who knew Valentine Carruthers.’

‘The response was pretty limited,’ ventured Phillips.

‘Only to be expected. Protecting their own backs. Even those who admitted knowing him didn’t give much away.’

‘So what do we do now?’

‘I want all of these street contacts brought in for further questioning. Someone must know something.’

‘You think now that a child’s involved, tongues will loosen?’

The Superintendent leaned forward, elbows on the desk. Lorimer nodded, his mouth a single, grim line. He knew that Phillips could see his drift.

‘What I want to do is circulate this photo among the men. Get them down to Glasgow City Mission and the regular haunts the old man visited.’

George Phillips gave a brief nod and, as Lorimer shot out of his office, added, ‘And I suppose you want it done by yesterday.’ But he was already speaking to a closed door.

Back in his own room, Lorimer stared at the aerial photograph on his wall. The trees and shrubs of St Mungo’s Park looked so tranquil from that angle. Even the surrounding high-rise flats didn’t seem such an eyesore. The red circles disturbed the picture, however. Lorimer saw beyond them to other scenes; the carnage in Janet Yarwood’s home and the smell of burnt grass out at Strathblane where Valentine Carruthers had been so cruelly torched. A paedophile? Did the gross brutality of the killer fit in with this sort of crime? Lorimer thought of Solomon and picked up the phone.

To Solomon, Lorimer’s news wasn’t entirely unexpected. His own profile of the killer was not so much altered as more clearly in focus. That the man was a loner, he had never had any doubts. Loneliness often led to some striving for love and affection.

The less well-adapted members of society didn’t cope with normal relationships. Paedophiles were usually, though not always, people seeking a mixture of power and affection. Some of them delighted in bizarre acts of violence. No, Solomon wasn’t surprised at all.

A white man in his early thirties, reasonably articulate, almost certainly employed in a profession, maybe self-employed. A man who would appear decent and normal to his work colleagues, no doubt. Someone who even convinced himself in one half of his sick mind that he was an upright citizen. The phonetic analysis of the accent pointed to a local person. Someone on his home territory. And the mutilation? Even here the deliberate signature gave something away, like a footprint on the path as the hunter knelt to leave his false spoor. Solomon believed that there had been some trauma in his past to do with a woman. His taking of the scalps was not such an unusual way for killers to behave if they were subconsciously destroying someone. Perhaps a mother who had damaged them in some way? In fact, there was a possibility that the man they sought had a physical as well as an emotional scar. Solomon could read and understand the pattern of behaviour without in any way condoning it.

Now, as he typed in a few more details to the profile, he had a sudden thought. The missing back-up disk included this file. He sat back, colour draining from his face. If his intruder was indeed the killer, was he now in a position to double-bluff them? Or would the fact that so much of his personality was revealed tip him over the edge? Solomon switched on the printer, his fingers shaking. He realised for the first time why he had not been killed that night. The hunter wanted him alive. He needed Solomon to be there, to have someone skilled in appreciating this game of … what was it? Hide and seek?

But what if he tired of the game and was never caught? Solomon had a fleeting vision of Rosie Fergusson, her bright hair tied back from her laughing face.

It might indeed have been his corpse on her slab.

Lorimer had asked Solomon to come with them. Normally two of his experienced officers would have made the visit but Lorimer wanted to see Solomon’s reaction to the Yarwood family.

A lot hinged on this visit. So far they had drawn a blank about the missing pictures in the dead woman’s flat. He’d been a fool to think it would be so easy. Questioning her colleagues at the Postgraduate Centre had only revealed what a recluse the woman had been. Not exactly friendless but nobody had ever been in her flat. Lorimer was sure that that had not applied to Lucy Haining. But Lucy was dead. The neighbours had seen Janet coming and going but that was all. There had been no socialising there, either, and certainly no visits to the flat.

The School of Art’s director had been marvellous, putting up with the disruption of officers questioning so many students. It had to be done, he realised, but the man’s calm acceptance of the situation had impressed Lorimer. Nobody had recognised the person behind the photofit, though.

These thoughts flitted through Lorimer’s mind as his blue eyes stared over the hedgerows skimming past them. Annie Irvine was driving to the house that Mrs Yarwood shared with her daughter. Her only daughter, now.

The car had swept into the countryside leaving the Glasgow suburbs behind and now they were slowing down through the conservation village of Eaglesham.

Lorimer craned his neck to see if they were still there. Yes. The playing fields where he’d played the occasional game of football stretched to his left. It had been a terrible pitch, all lumps and tussocks, even for a rugby player like himself.