Alex Gray - Glasgow Kiss

Catching sight of herself in the darkened glass, she saw a school leaver all ready and eager to begin university. She would be going in to buy all the stuff she needed for her course, wouldn’t she? Great big lined-notepads for lectures like the ones Mary used for her night-school class. And clothes. New stuff that made a statement, saying that here was someone out for a good time. She wouldn’t think about school. About him. She was past all of that now and there were things to do today, places that a new university student would want to see. A sudden thought struck her. Maybe she could actually go up to Strathclyde? Check it out before the official university term began? The other Julie stared back at her — older, more knowing — and she suppressed the self-satisfied smile, forcing herself to feign the nonchalance that an older girl would certainly feel.

Julie-the-student-to-be let the carriage rock her back and forward in a hypnotic rhythm, quite unaware of the eyes that were trying to translate every phrase of her body language.

‘We won’t give up until Nancy is found,’ Lorimer insisted.

‘D’you think she’s dead?’

DCI William Lorimer swallowed back the angry response he wanted to make to the question. What an insensitive little bitch! He glowered at the journalist, seeing her red mouth turned upwards in what was meant to be a smile but was more like a sneer. How could any woman, reporter or not, form a question like that when the child’s mother was sitting in front of them, nervously twisting her hands and throwing glances his way as if begging him to make it all stop. Well, that was just what he bloody well would do. He’d had quite enough of the national press for one morning.

‘That’s all, ladies and gentlemen,’ Lorimer replied, the merest hint of stress on the word ladies. Barbara Cassidy was no lady, just a nasty little hack grubbing for dirt. His gimlet stare at the reporter made others turn and look her way. Cassidy, he was glad to see as he ushered Nancy’s mother away, had the grace at least to blush. Or perhaps those twin spots of colour were simply temper at being so publicly thwarted?

‘You did well,’ Lorimer told Kim Fraser as they left the room where a backdrop of larger-than-life-sized photographs of Nancy had gazed down at the reporters. ‘A public appeal like that can only help to push things forward.’

‘But the newspaper people. .?’ Kim trailed off, unwilling to voice any allusion to that last crass question. She wanted to ask him. Of course she did. Any young mother would be desperate for the reassurance that the Senior Investigating Officer could provide. Especially if he thought her daughter was alive. But that was something Lorimer simply couldn’t give her.

‘We’ve got teams out right now scouring the city, Kim,’ he said gently. ‘There are door-to-door inquiries as well as officers looking in more remote places where Nancy might have been left.’

‘D’you think she’s-?’

‘There’s no point in speculating one way or the other. Kiddies have gone missing and been found several days later, alive and well. You just have to keep on hoping.’

Lorimer heard himself speaking and hated the sound of such platitudes, but knew fine that was exactly what Kim Fraser wanted to hear. He couldn’t very well quote the other statistics about children whose wee corpses had been turned up after as little as forty-eight hours.

‘You will find her, won’t you, Mr Lorimer?’ Kim was looking at him as though he were the only person who could make a difference to her world, eyes full of trust for the man who was organising the search for her daughter.

‘We’re doing everything we can, I promise you,’ he replied, steering Kim in the direction of the Family Liaison room where she would be given a cup of tea before someone took her home. An older woman was waiting for them, her bleached-blonde hair swept back into a ponytail, huge gold hoops dangling from her ears. Kim’s mother, Lorimer realised, noticing the resemblance between the two women.

‘Aw right, hen?’ Mrs Fraser asked, taking a tentative step towards them, eyes flicking over Lorimer, unsure of this tall policeman and his serious expression. He saw Kim let herself be folded into her mother’s swift embrace, then she was standing looking back at him, lip trembling.

‘You’ll let us know when you have any news?’ The young woman looked at him, her eyes wide with an appeal that let Lorimer see how young and defenceless she really was. Under that brave exterior, Kim Fraser was just a wee Glasgow lassie herself, still needing her mammy.

‘Of course,’ he replied, forcing his face to create a reassuring smile. Then, with a nod to both women, he turned and briskly walked away as though to show them that he was eager to be back at work on the job of finding little Nancy Fraser.

It was a hellish job whenever something like this happened. Triple murders and pub riots were a dawdle compared to the anguish of seeing a mum squeeze her emotions dry over a missing child. So far they’d not found very much but what little there was had been offered up for public consumption. Nancy’s wee friend had been helpful enough in giving them the lead of a white car, and the laborious task of visiting each and every potential owner of the vehicle was still ongoing. They’d had her in a second time and even shown photographs of types of Mazdas whose red-haired female driver might have snatched the girl. And yes, Sally had agreed — her little face screwed up in a frown of concentration — she thought that the lady did have hair that colour as she pointed to a picture showing a woman with henna-dyed hair.

The task of hunting down known paedophiles had begun the day after Nancy’s disappearance, a discreet line of inquiry that was being kept strictly under wraps for now. Lorimer and his team had to walk that fine line between observing civil liberties and making visits to the men on their register. All known sex offenders in their area had been contacted; their DNA profiles were all held on the national database. It was a painstaking job made even harder by keeping it from the papers. Sadie, the wee dragon in the police canteen, had her answer for them all: ‘Castrate the bastards! That’s whit ah’d dae tae the lot o them! ’ she’d growled when the news of Nancy Fraser’s abduction had filtered down to her domain. But the reality was a lot more delicate than Sadie’s politically incorrect suggestion. Just one smart-mouthed officer could provoke a convicted paedophile to run to the Gazette in the wake of a vigilante attack, screaming that his human rights were being trampled underfoot.

The possibility that Nancy had been snatched by a recently bereaved parent was harder to investigate but that was what Lorimer was working on, now that the appeal had been broadcast on national television. Back in his own room, Lorimer drummed his fingers on the edge of his desk, thinking about the sort of person who might take a child away from its own home and leave her mother worried to distraction. What sort of personality. .? Just as the thought was beginning to form, Lorimer picked up the telephone and dialled a number that he knew off by heart. It rang out twice then he heard a familiar voice, which made him smile for the first time since he’d left home that morning.

‘Rosie? How are you? Still keeping your feet up and reading all these novels Maggie gave you?’ Lorimer leaned back in his chair, swaying slightly from side to side as he heard the woman’s chatty reply. Doctor Rosie Fergusson was currently on sick leave from her job as a consultant forensic pathologist at the University of Glasgow, a job that had brought her into close contact with Lorimer on many occasions. They had a good working relationship, the pathologist always ready to supply what information she could whenever a particularly difficult case of suspicious death arose. But it was not Rosie that he had wanted to call, despite the pleasure that listening to her voice always gave him. She was so lucky to be here and everyone was grateful that the feisty little blonde was going to be back at her work before the year was out.