Alex Gray - Glasgow Kiss

Irvine was right beside him now. ‘Get on the radio, will you?’ Lorimer asked. ‘Put out a description of Russell. He can’t be that far away.’ Then he stopped, biting his lip as he made a mental map of the area. ‘Tell them he’s possibly heading in the direction of Dumbarton Road or back up to Jordanhill.’

Immediately Irvine turned away, the radio already at her lips.

Lorimer was back in the main living room now, looking out of the window fronting Crow Road. They had only the merest details about Adam Russell so far — a single photograph from Jessica’s camera that might be anyone. It would be nothing short of a miracle if he was spotted in the next few minutes.

Straightening up, the DCI looked more closely at the room. It was something he had learned to do early on in his career as a detective. Reading the homes of people could give all sorts of clues as to their character as well as what they liked, and how they lived; things that might lead to building up a fuller picture.

Everything in this room was old and worn out: the furniture was in a state of collapse, the curtains at the window looked as if they hadn’t been washed for years and as he put out a hand to shake the grey material, a cloud of dust rose into the air. Above him a pleated plastic lampshade hung at an angle, its edges nicotine-brown. There were burn marks on the carpet and worn patches near the edges of the chairs and settee. Lorimer moved towards an ancient sideboard, a cheap-looking piece of furniture that had a pair of ornate tarnished handles on either door.

Pulling them open, he saw a mishmash of boxes sitting on top of a pile of table linen crammed up against an old sewing box, loose threads spilling from its bulging sides with a pile of papers pushed into the remaining space. Some of the boxes looked as though they had been there for decades, the cardboard curled at the corners and several layers of sellotape binding them together. Fingering them, he could feel how thin and papery the tape had become over the years and he guessed that these might have belonged to Russell’s parents. He’d start with them first. A label attached to the top of one box lid gave the address of a Glasgow department store long gone, the watery blue writing underneath addressed to Charles Russell Esq. Opening the box, Lorimer saw a heap of black and white photographs, reminding him with a pang of a similar cache stowed away in the attic of his own home, family stuff to be sorted out on the promise of a rainy day that had yet to come. His mum had always insisted on writing people’s names on the back with pencil, he remembered, turning the first photograph over in his hand.

It was a portrait of a young woman looking towards the camera, sitting rigidly upright as if fearful that the felt hat decorated with a plethora of fruit and flowers might slip from her head. A studio portrait, he thought, seeing the sepia-coloured stamp on the back and the pencilled words, Wedding day, 1946. Russell’s grandmother, perhaps? Lorimer sifted through the rest, searching for an image of Adam Russell, something more up to date, though with the advent of digital photography anything he found here would still be a few years out. And he hadn’t noticed a computer in any of the rooms.

Lorimer flicked through the heap of photographs, discarding them into the box lid, until he came to one that took his interest. It was a colour photograph of a small child wedged between a man and woman sitting on a beach towel. He turned it over to see the words, Ardrossan, 1984. He turned to look at the people on that beach, frowning. If it hadn’t been the Russells themselves, other names would have been pencilled in, wouldn’t they? And it fitted. Adam Russell had been born in 1979 so the little boy in the picture would have been about to begin school. He was smiling into the camera, hands clasped in front of him as if someone had instructed the boy to strike a pose. His parents (Lorimer assumed) had their arms around one another, little Adam squeezed between them, and were staring at whoever it was that had been taking the picture. The man had the look of someone who had been ill: the skin on his face hung from a slack jaw and the eyes were red-rimmed. The woman, however, was quite the opposite. A florid-faced female with ample bosoms rolling out from her print dress, Adam’s mother exuded the sort of jollity that Lorimer associated with naughty seaside postcards.

He put the photograph to one side, sifting through what was left of the pile.

‘No joy, sir. They don’t think there’s sufficient description to identify him anyway,’ Irvine said, coming into the room.

‘Okay. Look, I want to see if we can find anything while we’re here,’ Lorimer began, looking up at his detective constable. Seeing the worried expression on her face he added, ‘We’ll have a search warrant by the end of play today. Russell must have seen us coming. He fair got off his mark. So until we catch up with him, I’m not about to waste a chance like this. See if you can find a computer or a laptop anywhere. Okay?’

Irvine’s anxious expression was not lost on the DCI. She didn’t like anything that wasn’t strictly by the book. Lorimer grinned to himself, remembering the first time he’d seen one of his own senior officers take liberties with the rules.

There! Lorimer picked up a photograph of an older Adam Russell and held it carefully between his fingertips. He was looking at a young man in his early twenties, Lorimer reckoned, turning to see what was written on the back, but for once the paper was blank, no date to verify the man’s age. Russell was standing on a pavement, his back against a black metal railing, part of a red sandstone building visible behind him. To his left Lorimer could see the edge of what looked like an academic gown and part of a man’s dark suit. And though the photographer’s own shadow was cast over the picture, he could read an expression of irritation on the man’s face as if he’d been a reluctant subject; in fact, one hand was slightly raised as if he had thought about obscuring his features from the camera. He was wearing a dark grey lounge suit and a white shirt, though the tie had been loosened and the top shirt button undone. Lorimer’s eyes fell again on the building and the railings, something gnawing at the edge of his mind. Then he had it. The Barony! It was the building near to Glasgow Cathedral where students from the city universities held their graduation ceremony, he remembered. Was that the reason for Russell’s apparent displeasure? He’d not graduated with his peers yet he’d gone along to see their success. And he’d kept that photograph. Why? Was it a reminder of what Russell himself had failed to achieve? Lorimer sat back on his heels, wondering. A graduation photo would have been something to have put on top of this sideboard by proud parents, but there were no framed portraits at all, just this box of snaps all mixed up together.

There were a few more photos of Russell, showing a younger man in various poses, but none as striking as the one beside the Barony, nor as recent. But it was good enough to show to the girl in Maggie’s Fourth Year, just to confirm his suspicions that she had been stalked by this man. Lorimer rifled through the pile of photographs, almost discarding one of a class group taken in a school hall when something about it made him pause. That shield on the wall above the boys and girls standing facing the camera: he knew what it was. Holding the photograph a little way from him, Lorimer took a deep breath. It was the main hall of a place he’d been in very recently — Muirpark Secondary School. And if there was a group photo, perhaps there would also be a single one of the boy in his uniform? Sure enough there was a colour snap in a brown card frame of a young boy of around twelve, his blue eyes staring intently at the photographer.