Alex Gray - Sleep like the dead

When the telephone rang, Solly blinked, shaken from his thoughts back to the present.

'Doctor Brightman,' he said. As the familiar voice of the departmental secretary spoke to him, the psychologist's eyebrows rose in a speculative expression.

'And they'd like to see me?' he asked.

Putting down the phone, Solly stroked his dark beard thoughtfully.

Officers from Strathclyde Police were in the departmental office and wondered if he could spare a minute to see them.

Curiosity and his own better judgement overcame a sudden childish notion to say that he was too busy. The name of the officer was unknown to him, not one of Lorimer's team, he decided, walking along towards the main office. But as he opened the door and saw DC Irvine standing beside a slim, dark young man, Solly had to revise his first thought. The other detective's elegant features marked him out as North African, the psychologist decided, and his body language told Solly that the man was both respectful and ill at ease. Had he heard about Solly's dismissal as a profiler? That could certainly cause a slight sense of embarrassment, he told himself as Annie Irvine made the introductions.

'Sorry to bother you, Doctor Brightman,' Irvine began. 'But we wanted, that is, wanted, to let you know what we were doing here,' she began.

Solly smiled at the woman. He liked this officer. She had been one of Lorimer's team on several of the cases he had been a part of and it was sensitive of her to go out of her way to keep him in the loop.

'Good of you,' Solly murmured. 'Perhaps we can talk in my office?' he suggested, leading them back along to the bright and airy room that overlooked a delicate row of silver birches swaying in the afternoon breeze.

'We're investigating the murder of Kenneth Scott and the double shooting in the West End,' Irvine told him, sitting down on the chair that he had pulled out for her. 'But you know that of course, sir,' she gave a rueful grin. 'Mrs Brightman did the postmortems,' she added, turning to address Fathy.

'We're looking for the sister of the drug dealer who's disappeared,' she went on. 'Seems she applied to the university a couple of years back and was given an unconditional acceptance.

Only thing is, we haven't been able to find her name in any of the registration lists so far. So we're trawling through all the departmental records instead.'

'That's a lot of work for you,' Solly nodded then, looking at them both in turn, he asked, 'What does my good friend think?'

Irvine made a face. 'Lorimer thinks she's dead,' she told the psychologist.

And you don't?' Solly said, looking from one officer to the other.

Irvine shook her head. 'But he isn't being pig-headed about that, either.'

'Which is why you have come to talk to the secretarial staff?' `Yes, sir,' Fathy answered for them both. 'I just have this feeling. …' the young Egyptian broke off.

And feelings are important,' Solly replied immediately, encouraging the officer. 'They can tell us things that are not on the surface but are of value nonetheless,' he continued, wagging his head sagely.

Omar Fathy sat opposite the psychologist seeing eyes that twinkled behind their horn-rimmed spectacles. So this was the legendary Solomon Brightman? Solomon the wise, Fathy thought, noting the man's keen intelligence. Here was a man he felt he could trust. On impulse he blurted out, 'We're looking for a woman who called herself Marianne Scott. Was Marianne Brogan before her marriage,' he said, pulling the well-thumbed photograph from his inside pocket. He stopped suddenly, aware of the change that had come over the psychologist's face.

For a long moment none of them spoke, Solly staring at them owlishly as though he had retreated inside himself. The ticking of an old-fashioned clock on the wall seemed unnaturally loud.

'Marianne?' Solly said at last, swallowing as though the word stuck in his throat. 'Marianne,' he paused for another moment, sighing as if it were an effort to continue, 'is one of my students.

Or at least she was,' he tailed off, eyes gazing into space at something neither of the police officers could see.

'I've seen her,' he told them at last, still looking into the distance.

'And she was happy. Happier than she ever was last session.'

Turning to Irvine and Fathy Solomon Brightman's face grew serious once more. 'I would hate to think that anything bad has happened to that young woman.'

C 'mon, doon here,' Geordie Mitchell beckoned his pals.

'This'll do fine,' he added, grinning as the other two boys picked their way carefully through the broken glass that littered what remained of the pathway. 'Here, Rab, gonnae you gie's a haun taste git up taste thon windae?'

'Ye cannae git up therr, Mitchell,' Rab replied. `Thur's way too much glass still in that one.'

'Well let's finish it off,' the third boy said gleefully, setting down his backpack with a clink that betrayed its contents. He was by far the smallest of the trio, a dark-haired boy, quick and otter sleek, but he had shouldered the pack manfully down the steep track that led from their village. 'Better inside where naebody can find us, eh?'

The three boys scrabbled in the tussocky grass, finding suitable sized rocks to aim at the already Ilroken pane of glass above them. `Geronimor Rab shouted('See thon wee bit up taste the left?

Got it a bull's eye so ah did!' `Ah'll finish it off fur youse n'all,' his pal boasted.

'Bet ye cannae, Chick. Ye're too wee!' Geordie scoffed.

The challenge flung out made the smaller boy's face tighten with concentration as he pulled back his arm then let the stone fly through the air.

With a tinkling sound the remaining shard fell inwards, leaving a blank hole big enough for them to scramble through.

'See!' Chick yelled in triumph, offering his open hand for a high five.

'Right, let's get in there,' Geordie told them. Who's gonnae gie me a leg up?'

Geordie Mitchell heaved himself upwards from Rab's clasped hands, scrabbling his feet to find some purchase. Then, seizing the edge of the windowsill, he thrust his body forwards into the gloom.

For a moment he could see nothing, blinded by the contrast from the sun's glare outside. Then his eyes began to register shapes beneath him. And a smell that made him wrinkle his nose in disgust.

'Three laddies, sarge,' the officer told the mobile phone in his hand. 'Down at Brockenridge's old place. Foot of Rowan Glen.

Aye, that's the place.'

The uniformed policeman turned to the boys sitting behind him in the squad car. 'You all right, lads?'

The three boys nodded in unison, silenced by the enormity of what Geordie had found in the old factory. Thoughts of being punished for dogging off school had long vanished. Fear of something more dreadful had made them scramble up the hill to the main road where, as chance would have it, they had managed to flag down a passing patrol car. Their earlier bravado had vanished; now they were three wee laddies whose natural instincts for what was right and what was wrong had reasserted themselves.

Breaking already broken windows and having a few bottles of Buckfast was nothing compared to what Geordie had found. That was wrong in anybody's book.

'Can you describe the man to us, Geordie?' the officer in the front passenger seat turned to ask.

Geordie Mitchell swallowed the bile that threatened to shame him before his mates. He'd never forget that sight as long as he lived. Yet trying to describe that body covered in blood with its dead, glaring eyes was beyond him. He shook his head, refusing to meet the eyes of his pals who were looking at him with unashamed curiosity.

'It's a deid mate he'd screamed, falling down on top of an astonished Rab.

There had been no time for discussion. Geordie had turned to run back the way they had come, the other boys following his lead, galvanised into action by the expression of horror on his chalk-white face.