Alex Gray - Sleep like the dead

'Go on,' Rosie urged. 'If you don't probe more deeply into this encounter you'll never arrive at the truth.'

Solly smiled at her fondly. His wife's words were an echo of what he himself had said on many occasions and hearing them coming back was an affirmation of just how close they had become as husband and wife.

'I remember Marianne as a faded, sad sort of young woman. So much so, that I hardly recognised her in the bookshop. She was…' he tailed off, trying again for the right word to describe the memory in his mind's eye. 'She was so alive,' he said at last. 'It was as though something wonderful had happened to change her from that nervy creature who sat through my seminars last session into a lovely, confident young woman.'

Vas it just an emotional change or was there something different about her appearance?' Rosie asked.

'Her hair,' Solly said simply. 'She has long red hair and it used to be scrunched up in a tight knot as if she didn't care about how she looked,' he said slowly. 'But that day it was loose and flowing, like some Pre-Raphaelite figure. Even her clothes had more colour,' he murmured, remembering.

'Sounds like she'd found a man,' Rosie laughed. 'Love does that to a woman, you know,' she said, snuggling closer to Solly's side.

'But was not that man,' Solly said. And she told me she had a lot to thank me for..

'Didn't you lecture on love, maybe?' Rosie asked.

'Yes, the usual one I trot out on St Valentine's day,' Solly replied. 'But she was such a mouse-like creature all the way through the session. I don't think it could have been that.'

'What, then?' Rosie asked.

'I don't know,' Solly said slowly, 'but I'm determined to find out.' He looked at his wife who was beginning to yawn.

'Come on,' he said gently. 'Bed time for you. That child of ours is taking its toll tonight, isn't he?'

Marianne rolled over onto her side, listening. Max was breathing deeply and she watched him sleeping as his chest rose and fell.

The faint veining on his eyelids began to flicker and Marianne could tell he was dreaming. Rapid eye movement, she thought, remembering Doctor Brightman's lectures. What was her lover dreaming about? Was it something from his past? Or simply a collage of the day's events? She smiled, thinking about their day away from the city. Max had told her his business could take a rest for a few days and that he needed a holiday, but Marianne suspected that he simply wanted to be with her.

Yesterday they had stood on deck as the ferry crossed from Wemyss Bay to the Isle of Bute, wind blowing her hair into a tangle until Max had told her she was a wild woman. He had drawn her closer to his side, murmuring that he liked wild women. Her heart had beaten faster at that and Marianne had felt such a sense of abandonment and freedom as she had never known before. This man would take her away from all the things that held her to the city, just like this ship sailing to the misty island. Wouldn't he?

She gazed at Max's sleeping form, noting the twitching eyelids.

Perhaps, she thought fondly, he was dreaming of her?

Lorimer heard the tiny sigh that escaped his wife's lips and, though he knew she was sleeping, the sound made his heart ache for her. It was hard to think she would be undergoing major surgery so soon and his mouth narrowed as he began to imagine all the things that Maggie had not told him. She'd made light of the operation, telling him it was one of the most common procedures nowadays. But though she'd pasted on a smile, he had heard the fear in her voice. And not just fear, a despair that finally their hopes of having a family of their own would be gone for good. 'I'm too old anyway,' she'd joked, not saying what both of them knew, that mothers were becoming older and older these days as more women postponed the start of bearing children.

He'd wanted her to talk to Rosie but that suggestion had been met with a definite shake of Maggie's head. Seeing a friend who was carrying a longed-for child of her own was simply too much for Maggie to bear. Besides, his wife had reminded him sadly, Rosie should not be concerning herself with thoughts of the surgery to remove a womb; not when her own was doing what it was meant to do.

Lorimer sighed. It would all be over and done with in a few weeks' time, their lives continuing as before. Meantime he had other things to think about in the darkness of this night. Who had killed Sahid Jaffrey? And was that killing linked in any way to the men who had been shot in Brogan's flat? Ballistics had come up with some suppositions. One candidate for the murder weapon was a Glock self-loading pistol, possibly the model 19. The ballistics expert had given some details of a pistol suppressor, the Jupiter Eye, that was compatible to all 9mm pistols and how it might have been used in the first but not the second shooting. That made sense of the theory that Galbraith and Sandiman had been shot in a moment of random panic whereas Kenneth Scott's death bore the hallmarks of a premeditated and carefully planned assassination.

Nothing had been heard by Scott's neighbours so a silencer had obviously been used, hadn't it?

Lorimer's thoughts chased themselves around his head like screaming children on a Ferris wheel, round and round in a rhythm that was beginning to make his head ache. It was no use.

Sleep would be long in coming so he might as well be up and about, looking at the documents he had left downstairs one more time just to see if anything new occurred to him.

Chancer, the ginger cat, gave a meow of recognition from his basket under the kitchen table as Lorimer switched on the light.

'Hi, you,' Lorimer said softly, stroking the cat's fur as he passed by into the kitchen area. He took a bottle of mineral water from the fridge then padded quietly back to the desk by the window, already remembering the contents of the folder. The BBC's editorial people were totally on the ball when it came to briefing any officers before the Crimewatch programme. He flicked over the papers that had been downloaded from his office email address; everything that he needed was here. Everything, that is, except answers to the questions that were keeping him awake. It was not Lorimer's first visit to the BBC studios but much had changed in the programme since the last time he had made a public appeal during a murder inquiry, including the presenter. She was a Scots lass, bonny and blonde, but with a no-nonsense attitude that Lorimer enjoyed any time he had the chance to watch the programme.

Tomorrow he and other members of the investigation team would be winging their way down south and expecting an overnight stay after the programme went out live. He flicked through the papers, wondering if this would be worth the time spent away from the investigation. Heaving a sigh, Lorimer reminded himself that the rest of the team wouldn't fall apart without him; they were all good officers, doing their best to come up with answers to the problems surrounding this case.

Lorimer rolled his shoulders, feeling the tension around his neck. The tick of the clock made him look up. It was only three thirty-six. He yawned, his eyes watering so that he had to rub away the tears. Maybe he should go back to bed after all, see if he could drop off for a few more hours. Suddenly the need to sleep overwhelmed him and he switched off the desk lamp then made his way up the darkened staircase.

Solomon Brightman woke with a renewed sense of purpose.

Today he would find it, he told himself. Marianne had attended every one of his seminars and there were notes on all of the students' participation somewhere on file. They might help to jog some memory, Solly thought.

His own recollection of these hours was somewhat hazy, given the numbers of students who passed through his office every week. And Marianne had not been one of the most forthcoming of his undergraduates, had she? It was human nature to remember the ones who tended to be outgoing, funny even. One lad from Liverpool, Barry something-or-other, had a waggish sense of humour and each seminar that he attended was guaranteed to be lively. The fact that he had been in Marianne's seminar group was a tad unfortunate since the girl was more able to let herself do that vanishing-into-the-woodwork act that so many shy people liked to do. It was Solly's job, though, as their tutor, to try to draw them all out. But coaxing Marianne to participate had been an uphill struggle and SoIly had to admit that in spite of his efforts she had let herself be overshadowed by more vocal types like Barry.