Alex Gray - Never Somewhere Else

The question was left unfinished as Solomon nodded sagely.

‘May I change the subject for a moment?’

He bent down to open his briefcase and extracted a sheaf of computer print-outs. Lorimer stood impatiently by his side as Solomon spread the sheets over his desk. The lines of print dazzled his eyes for a moment as Solomon ran his finger down a list of names and numbers. Suddenly he stopped in the middle of a page.

‘There!’

Lorimer had scanned the list, briefly recognising the names of residents in the St Mungo’s Heights house-to-house enquiries, but now he looked at the name on the list in astonishment. There, opposite an address on the seventh floor of block three, was the name: Martin Enderby.

For someone who had been anxious to speak to Lorimer so recently, Martin Enderby now seemed to be playing hard-to-get. No, he wasn’t at his desk, the young man at the Gazette told the Chief Inspector. Sorry, there wasn’t any note in today’s diary to indicate where the reporter had gone. Did the Chief Inspector have his home phone number? Oh. Tried it already. Well, what about the Press Bar? The pleasant young male voice should have been reassuring but Lorimer’s disquiet was intensifying. Okay, so a news reporter wasn’t expected to be chained to his computer screen. Nevertheless, Lorimer had the feeling that Martin Enderby might be deliberately slipping out of his grasp.

A fruitless series of calls left WPC Annie Irvine scuttling down the corridor, her boss’s wrath plainly heard from his open door.

‘I want him in here now ! And when he gets here I want to speak to him!’

Some time later, warrant tucked safely in his jacket pocket, Alistair Wilson led Solly down the back stairway that led to the yard, Lorimer’s voice still ringing in their ears. As they hurried down, Alistair punched the swing doors aggressively. Solly glanced at the detective but his expression gave nothing away.

In the back of the Vauxhall Solly had the feeling that he was the criminal, seated as he was behind two police officers, Wilson and young Cameron, the new Detective Constable. This uncomfortable feeling was compounded by one of impending disaster. Instinctively he felt that Lorimer was haring off into yet another tangled thicket. And yet … how beguiling that Enderby should actually live in St Mungo’s Heights. Did his flat face the park? Solly wondered.

Red lights stopped them at Charing Cross and the constable revved the engine. Wilson raised his eyes to heaven, turned and winked at Solly, a conspiratorial comment on the impatience of the young man behind the wheel. Solly tried to grin back but only managed a rueful smile. Then they were off again, the tyres squealing as the car shot forward.

Solly looked around him at the familiar landmarks as they passed by. He recognised an Asian restaurant he had visited, housed in what had once been a cinema. There was the Kelvin Hall, the Art Galleries, the Western Infirmary and now the car was swinging round towards the gates of St Mungo’s Park. Solly raised his eyebrows briefly. The driver was clearly going to take a short cut through the park itself, despite the 20 mph limit. At once the tall blocks of St Mungo’s Heights came into view and two pairs of eyes sought to calculate the seventh storey.

When the car screeched to a halt Solly was thrown forward on to his seat belt.

‘Really, Constable!’ Wilson remarked dryly, causing the youngster to colour up.

The security door only gave numbers and positions of the flats, not names, so Wilson pressed both 7L and 7R but there was no response from either. Systematically he tried the buttons for each level until he met with a response.

‘Police.’

The one word provoked the deep croak of the buzzer releasing the door lock, then the three men pushed their way into the darkened hallway. It smelled of dampness but was free of the graffiti that so often decorated the walls of high-rise lobbies. The grey metal lift door shuddered open and they ascended noiselessly to the seventh floor.

Martin Enderby’s front door was nondescript wood veneer with no glazing. A single Yale lock and a spyhole were the journalist’s only security measures, apparently.

Wilson shook his head as the younger officer turned his shoulder suggestively towards the door.

‘A wee bit of finesse, lad, if you please. It goes with the search warrant.’

The ‘lad’ stepped aside and Wilson drew something from an inside pocket and began to fiddle with the lock. Neither Solly nor the constable saw how it happened but there was a faint click and the door swung gently open.

At first Solly was sharply reminded of his return from hospital to the sight of his own ransacked home. Papers, books and clothes were strewn haphazardly around every room. The bedclothes lay in a heap and there were dirty dishes on any available surface as well as the floor. Cupboard doors hung open, revealing the journalist’s wardrobe, and CD cases seemed to be breeding in every corner.

The lounge was slightly better. At least here most of the books were on shelves or stacked in piles. Solly moved to the window, sure what he would see.

Below him the road wound like a grey worm through the park. Miniature people and dogs were dotted over the grass, along pathways and disappearing behind clumps of laurel bushes and copses of huge dark firs. A flock of seagulls wheeled below his vision, screaming raucously then arcing out of sight. How often had he imagined a killer looking down from just such a vantage point? Again and again he had tried to enter that elusive mind, to sense the triumph of power, of ascendancy over the mere mortals scuttling below. Solly had reconstructed these crimes often within his own mind, seeing a shadowy figure drag the bloodstained corpses into the bushes; understanding the need to look down on the park where the bodies lay hidden. Solly sighed. It would have been so right, so satisfactory.

He turned back to face the room, swept his gaze over the shambles in the adjoining kitchen and shook his head sadly. What a pity.

‘Right, then. Let’s get started,’ Wilson began.

‘I fear there’s little point.’

Solly’s words stopped Wilson in his tracks.

‘What?’

‘You won’t find anything here to point to a killer,’ Solly went on resignedly.

Wilson gave him a kindly smile, and Solly recognised the man’s sincere efforts to avoid being patronising.

‘I think we’ll just have a look round anyway, Dr Brightman,’ the Detective Sergeant said firmly.

Solly shrugged and raised his eyebrows in acquiescence. Soon opening and shutting noises indicated that the two policemen were searching bedroom and bathroom respectively. The psychologist’s eyes ran over the bookcase, automatically scanning the titles on the spines, divining the owner’s predilections in literature and possibly a lot more besides.

Wilson was calling out advice on where to search but Solly didn’t hear his words as his eyes swept over the books. He recognised several titles, his heart fluttering uncomfortably as he imagined what conclusion the investigating officers might draw. Psychology textbooks, criminology, pathology, they were all there. Solly’s hand drew out one slim green volume and he gazed in dismay as he recognised a textbook on strangulation written by one of Rosie’s colleagues at Glasgow University. The book fell open, an old envelope marking a page that was highlighted in yellow. He swallowed hard as he read the medical details describing how a victim had been strangled with a bicycle chain.

Martin sat in the interview room opposite the two detectives. The buzz he’d felt earlier that day batting questions from Chief Inspector Lorimer had disappeared. Talking on the telephone was quite a different matter from talking across this chipped Formica table. Briefly he wondered how many criminals had sat sweating it out as they sought to evade justice. His reporter’s nose twitched with the scent of possible stories as he strove to assume a calmness he didn’t feel and he was painfully aware of his dry throat. Why didn’t they bring him some coffee? Didn’t they always do that on TV? Well, they couldn’t keep him in here, he was sure of that. Wasn’t he?