Alex Gray - Five ways to kill a man

But what about Maggie’s mum? How was she coping and, if she was able to come home from hospital, would she be fit to stay in her own little house again? That was something they’d need to discuss. But not until the subject arose, he told himself firmly. Meantime he’d concentrate on the case in hand. And, now that he’d spoken to Colin Ray, it offered the prospect of being a more interesting investigation than he’d at first assumed.

Dr Solomon Brightman smiled and hummed a little tune to himself. Outside the windowless lecture theatre the rain might be sweeping down in sheets; here it was warm and dry and the babble of student voices told him that there were lots of young minds eagerly awaiting his thoughts on behavioural psychology. The spring term, so-called, lasted right up until Easter when the students would suddenly be seized with panic at the thought of final exams on the horizon; but now, with Valentine’s day imminent, there was a more genial atmosphere in his classes.

‘Love,’ he began and, at the sound of his voice, all heads turned towards the bearded man with eyes twinkling brightly behind his horn-rimmed spectacles, the chatter suddenly silenced.

‘Love is in the air,’ he continued, beaming at them and evoking a ripple of laughter. ‘Saint Valentine, the patron saint of love; romantic stories fuelling our desire for a vicarious experience of love; songs from the time of troubadours to present-day rap enjoining us to celebrate the coupling of men and women…’ Solly continued to beam at them, wiggling the fingers of his left hand to show off his new wedding ring. The clapping began at the back of the lecture theatre and soon there were whistles and whoops as the entire student audience applauded their favourite lecturer.

‘You see, even I am not immune from the shafts of Cupid’s arrows.’ Solly grinned at them as the noise died away.

‘Love, however, is sometimes seen as a force of darkness rather than light. It may destroy as well as uplift a human being. In all its vagaries, there is possibly no other emotion that has the power to change the way we behave.’

Solly let his smile disappear. The lecture was sometimes regarded as harsh by those who had never heard it before; a come-down from the heights of erotic passion to the more sinister aspects of jealousy and revenge. What people in the past had done in the name of love was sometimes hard to fathom, but Dr Brightman owed it to his students to delineate such examples and use them to back up his premises about emotional behaviour.

It was a quieter and more sober group that left the lecture theatre, most of them nodding in Solly’s direction, pleased with what they had heard, for it had given them plenty to think about in this basic course of behavioural psychology. Some of them would use the class as a stepping stone to a general arts degree, a few would return to junior honours and some might even apply for a postgraduate degree, inspired by people like Dr Brightman. His work was well known in academic circles within the UK now and the psychologist had begun to gain a reputation as a forensic psychologist who regularly helped police with investigations, particularly into cases of serial rapes and murders.

Solly Brightman, the married man, counted himself as one of the most fortunate people in the world. Not only did he have a job that he loved (that word again!) but now he was dizzy with joy at having pledged himself for life to his darling Rosie. They had spent a magical time in New Zealand, doing things he’d never dreamt of attempting, like white-water rafting. Rosie’s outgoing nature impelled him to tackle such challenges and, to his delight, Solly found that they had evoked something inside him, a spirit of recklessness that had long lain dormant. From the behavioural point of view it had been interesting to see how far he could push himself simply to keep up with Rosie and then experience the same thrill that she was experiencing. It just proved what he had always believed: there are untapped depths in human nature. All it might take was a set of circumstances to release these hidden qualities. And now, back in Glasgow, Solly felt that his life had been changed by these honeymoon experiences. In some strange way he was no longer alone in the world, but linked to another human being whose aim in life was to care for him. He, too, had taken a vow to love, honour and cherish his beloved. And wasn’t Rosie all the more precious to him since she had survived that near-fatal car crash?

Life, he mused as he closed the door of his office, had dealt him rather a fine hand. He pulled out the drawer at the front of his desk, taking out what he hoped was a tasteful Valentine’s card. If Rosie sent one it would probably be a jokey sort of card, maybe even a bit rude. But this one was all hearts and flowers with a few rather nice lines to his darling wife. All my love, Solly, he wrote, then added a single kiss and sealed the card inside its envelope. Had he destroyed the students’ attitude to romantic love by that lecture? He hoped not. Love, as Desiderata said, was after all as perennial as the grass.

Closing the drawer again, Solly turned to his laptop and opened a file. He was currently writing on the subject of female psychotic behaviour, much of it based on case studies of women in high security mental institutions. The nub of his work was to demonstrate what was behind the sort of violence that had been a part of these patients’ behaviour. It had struck Solly quite forcefully that although these case studies revealed a lesser degree of violent behaviour than had been seen in their male counterparts, many of them had notched up a sizeable tally of deaths. The idea of women as killers was not something readily acknowledged by the public; perhaps it was time to redress the balance in people’s perceptions of violent crime.

‘If there is anything you can remember that wasn’t done at the time, then now is your chance to put that right,’ Lorimer told the assembled officers. ‘You aren’t doing this to please me or indeed the people who ordered me to undertake this review,’ he continued, his tone slightly sardonic. ‘And don’t think that by coming forward you are letting Colin Ray down. I’ve spoken to DCI Ray already this morning and he’s very much in favour of this review being done as thoroughly as possible.’

There was the slightest murmur of what sounded like approval, and Lorimer allowed himself a mental pat on the back. He’d already looked at staffing levels on the initial case, and in this HQ in general, and found that it was the old story of too few bodies spread too thinly over too many ongoing cases. And Kate Clark’s maternity leave would bring that figure down to unacceptable, in his opinion. She had been the admin person in Colin’s team and Lorimer knew it would be wise to continue her in that role.

The tannoy system burst into life from the front bar calling for someone and Lorimer stopped speaking, wondering for a moment if this was a good place to take a break. He’d made DI Martin his allocator so she was going to be kept fairly busy writing out the various actions and handing them to the other officers. It hadn’t been her remit under Colin Ray and Lorimer found himself wondering why. She was clearly an able officer but such tasks meant liaising closely with the SIO; had Colin been less than friendly with the woman? And was this a reason for her aggressive attitude?

‘Right, I’ll be here when you have anything relevant to report,’ Lorimer told them, standing up so that they knew it was time to leave.

As they trooped out, Lorimer found himself wishing for his own room back in Glasgow, not this square box of an office that was doubling as an incident room. Okay, so the view beyond the blue Venetian blinds was guaranteed to take one’s mind off work, with its expanse of water and hills, but that was poor compensation for the inconvenience of having folk dropping in and out all the time.