Alex Gray - Five ways to kill a man

Two old women were dead, though. What if it had been Maggie’s mum? How would he have reacted? As ever, Lorimer tried to put himself in someone else’s shoes. Maybe Gary Wilson had every right to protest that his old mother had been stalked and possibly murdered. Maybe, though, he was clutching at anything that would give him an answer to why it had to be his mum who’d died. Maybe he couldn’t accept that accidents happened. Lorimer could see why DI Martin might not want to take this case any further. But Kate Clark’s sharp mind had brought the other old lady’s death into the equation now and Lorimer knew that he would be happy to encourage the DC, even at the risk of making himself even more unpopular.

ON YER BIKE. The words above the picture of two cyclists racing downhill caught Lorimer’s eye as he entered the hospital foyer. It was the same poster they had pinned up at the public entrance in Greenock HQ. But for some reason he stopped now and read it properly. The race in aid of a cancer charity was to take place in just a couple of weeks and he’d already been asked to sponsor one of their own officers. It was a typical Glaswegian phrase, he thought, grinning to himself; the sort of throwaway line a lassie would give an unwelcome suitor. But somehow its slightly aggressive tone worked in this context of encouraging folk to sign up for the cycle race or at least to sponsor a willing participant. Bikes had never been one of Lorimer’s hobbies, though many of his fellow officers belonged to the police cycling club.

The light-hearted feeling that the poster had engendered disappeared the moment Lorimer set foot inside his mother-in-law’s ward, Maggie’s look of sheer gratitude at seeing him making him hurry to her side.

‘How is she?’ he asked, lowering his voice. Mrs Finlay was asleep, her head turned to one side of the pillow, mouth open and snoring quietly. For a long moment he simply gazed at the woman lying there. She’d become a real pal over the years, although she had been a formidable presence to the young man courting her precious daughter. And Mrs Finlay had given Lorimer plenty of well-intended advice concerning his future. He’d dropped out of university, a move that had not endeared him to his future mum-in-law. But his rapid rise within the police force had mellowed her attitude towards him and they’d developed a special bond. She was proud of her son-in-law and fiercely protective of any criticism that came his way, as it sometimes did in a high-profile case. And she’d been such a rock for them both during the sad trail of failed pregnancies. She’d never be Granny Finlay now, he thought, biting his lip as he watched the rise and fall of her breath.

‘She was asleep when I arrived,’ Maggie whispered. ‘I wanted to wait till you were here to speak to the duty nurse. See how she’s been today. If only I could see her during the day…’ she added wistfully; but they both knew that with Maggie’s full timetable at school that wasn’t going to happen except at weekends.

Letting his wife leave her mother’s bedside, Lorimer shifted closer to the old lady sleeping so peacefully in her hospital bed. Suddenly his thoughts turned to the visitor she’d had the other day, Joseph Alexander Flynn. He’d have to do something for the lad. He’d wanted Lorimer to act as a referee for a job he was applying for. How had that visit gone? he wondered. Flynn was a wee character, right enough. The thought of the youngster made him smile again. Mrs Finlay had taken him under her wing, her own brand of plain talking suiting the street kid. And they’d shared a similar sense of humour, Lorimer thought.

But this was silly, he scolded himself. Why was he thinking of the old lady in the past tense as if she was already lost to them? With a pang, the senior detective realised that this was exactly how it felt. Even if she survived this stroke and its aftermath, Lorimer knew he’d miss the woman she had been. Her usual bustling manner and cheery voice were gone and in their place was this old lady, a shrunken version of the person he’d grown so fond of since he’d first met her. Old age, decay and death: hadn’t he seen them all in his line of work? And shouldn’t he be inured to what was, after all, inevitable?

The bell sounded to signal the end of visiting just as Maggie appeared.

‘She’s still asleep?’ her voice was raw with disappointment. For a moment Maggie seemed to hesitate, then she bent down to drop the gentlest of kisses on her mum’s cheek and drew the cover nearer to her chin, a comforting gesture that a mother might make for her child, Lorimer realised, biting his lip.

He clasped his wife’s hand as they left the ward, neither of them speaking for a moment as the crowds surged towards the bank of lifts.

‘Let’s walk,’ he suggested, heading for the stairs.

Neither of them spoke as they left the hospital and it was only as the Lexus swung out of the main gate that Maggie looked at him. There were unshed tears in her eyes. Lorimer squeezed his wife’s hand in a gesture of solidarity. He understood what she was feeling. Didn’t he have the same hollowness inside? That fear of losing the person who was their only remaining parent.

Later, when he was certain that Maggie was asleep, Lorimer slipped out of bed and crept downstairs to the space that doubled as dining room and study. Despite the information they’d had from the medical staff, he wanted to know a bit more and so for almost an hour the detective trawled the Internet, scrolling down the various sites on the subject of strokes and stroke victims. As he hunched over the small screen of Maggie’s laptop, Lorimer’s mouth tightened. It all made pretty grim reading. And if he was correct in his assessment of his mother-in-law’s condition, the future looked fairly bleak. If her heart were to survive this sudden onslaught, she’d be dependent on other people for the rest of her days. It would change everything for them.

A thought of Colin Ray’s haggard face came to him then. He’d been through it with Grace, hadn’t he? And it was something that so many of his older colleagues had had to endure. Though, if he was honest with himself, the care of a sick or elderly relative usually fell to the woman in a partnership. How would Maggie cope? Could she contemplate giving up her teaching job? Her career was more than just a job, though, he knew. Teaching English was something that defined Maggie Lorimer and to give it up before she’d even reached her fortieth birthday would be a huge blow. Was there some kind of sabbatical she might be able to take? Lorimer sat back suddenly, rubbing a hand across his eyes. What was he thinking of? Making even mental decisions like that for his wife was just not fair. Surely they could afford to hire a professional person of some sort to come in and look after the old lady if she was to be consigned to their care?

He imagined a stranger here in his own home tending to the stroke patient in a wheelchair. They’d need to make loads of changes. Install some sort of a stairlift for a start or add an extension to the downstairs loo. His eyes searched the familiar rooms of his home, seeking practical solutions to the potential problems that could lie ahead. The garden was large and rambling; no problem in adding another room on at the kitchen side and the plumbing was maybe easier there anyway. But how were they to cope with builders about the place at the same time as a sick old lady was living with them? And he couldn’t take time off, not now when he’d been appointed as a review officer to this case in Greenock.

As the practical difficulties threatened to overwhelm him, Lorimer found his fingers tapping the relevant keys to close down the screen. Nobody had told them that Mrs Finlay was being discharged. Maybe she’d be in the Southern General for a good while yet, giving them time to prepare for her coming home to them.