Alex Gray - Five ways to kill a man

‘Mum!’ The sight of Alice Finlay sitting up in bed, hair brushed neatly back from her face, a proper smile reaching her mouth, made Maggie rush forwards and kiss her mother’s cheek.

‘Well, you look a hundred times better tonight. Can you tell me what you’ve been up to?’

Alice nodded and began to utter the words that were forming in her brain. Slowly she enunciated each one, pausing for breath and giving Maggie a grin at the astonished expression on her daughter’s face.

‘You can speak properly now!’

‘Had plenty… of… practisss… in my… life,’ Alice replied, giving a little nod.

Maggie heard the childlike treble in her mother’s voice. Suddenly Alice Finlay had become an old, frail woman and, despite this progress, Maggie wondered if she would ever see the strong, feisty woman she had once been.

Bit by bit the story of the day’s events unfolded and, by the time the bell signalled the end of visiting time, Maggie had learned that not only had her Mum begun to walk again, but that the regular speech therapy exercises had given her back that little voice.

‘Mrs Lorimer? Can you spare a minute, please?’ A figure in dark blue called to Maggie from the nurses’ station, coming swiftly round and indicating a side room.

‘Sister Kilbryde,’ she introduced herself. ‘Come in here, would you? I’d like a wee word about your mother.’

Maggie hardly saw the road as she drove home from the Southern General. It was good news, of course it was, but the problem of where her mother would go once discharged from hospital still remained. Maggie had fudged that particular issue with Sister Kilbryde and now her thoughts danced about between what she had been told and what was to come. Zimmers, walking sticks, a seat for the bath, a special easy chair: all the things her mother would need when she was finally ready to come home. But where home would actually be was the question uppermost in Maggie’s mind. Sister Kilbryde had been full of questions about her patient’s own little house. She’d shaken her head when Maggie had described the split-level design.

They could manage. Couldn’t they? A mental image of her downstairs dining room swam into Maggie’s mind. A bed settee would have to be purchased. They could put it against the far wall, away from any draughts, move some of the book cases upstairs. At least there was access to a loo and shower room. That bath seat would just have to wait. Maggie sent up a silent prayer of gratitude: thank goodness the previous owners of her home had built a little extension on at the rear of the building. It wasn’t perfect but it would have to do until such times as Alice Finlay could cope with the stairs.

Maggie had turned into the drive before she knew it. Bill’s ancient dark blue Lexus was parked to one side, facing the road as usual. A frisson of excitement (or was it fear?) coursed through Maggie’s body, making her shiver, and for a moment she sat in her car, the engine idling, thinking of how to break the news that her mother would be coming here to live with them.

Sportscene was showing the highlights of the weekend’s Scottish Premier Division game between St Mirren and Rangers. Lorimer knew the score already: five goals had thundered past the posts at Greenhill Road, leaving the Saints in a precarious position near the foot of the league table. But he wanted to watch the game for himself, try to take his mind off the day’s events and, besides, Maggie had specially recorded the programme for him. He was dimly aware of the sound of his wife’s key in the lock downstairs. Part of him wanted to heave his body out of this comfortable chair, go downstairs and offer to make a pot of tea but the lure of the game was just as strong and he sat on, torn guiltily between what he could and what he should be doing.

‘It’ll be all right,’ Lorimer told her, smoothing her dark curls that now tumbled over his chest. ‘She’ll be fine. Lots of folk get over strokes. Manage to live a normal life again.’ He could hear the muffled sob coming from Maggie’s throat, feel the rise and fall of her chest. With every cry all the pent-up fears and worries of the last few days were being let loose. ‘Anyway,’ he bent to kiss her forehead, ‘can you see someone like your mum giving in to this?’ The sobs turned into a gurgle of laughter and Maggie sat up, wiping her face then collapsing once more against the comfort of her husband’s body.

‘You’re all right, love. All right,’ he soothed, holding her closer to his body, as though she was a little child.

Maggie needed this, he realised. It was better to open the floodgates of emotion than to continue to bottle it all up. He’d not been much of a support lately. And she hadn’t complained about it, not once. Lorimer heaved a sigh. This feeling of being torn between duties, had it been like that for DCI Colin Ray? Cradling Maggie in his arms, Lorimer vowed to make it up to her. He’d telephone the social work people tomorrow, find out what steps he had to take to make their home safe for an old, infirm lady.

As her sobs subsided and he felt his wife’s body relax, Lorimer began thinking about three other old ladies who had lived on their own. How would he have felt if it had been Alice? And any misgivings he had about sharing their home with his mother-in-law suddenly vanished.

‘Three elderly ladies?’ Dr Solomon Brightman mused. ‘And they lived in the same estate? Interesting.’

‘I thought Lorimer might be in on the case but that woman DI didn’t as much as mention his name. Bit of a stuck up type, I thought. Good looking girl, though,’ Rosie told him.

‘And no defence wounds, you say,’ Solly continued, his dark eyes taking on that far away look that his wife knew so well.

The firelight that glinted off his horn-rimmed spectacles was burnishing a halo around his dark curls, making the psychologist resemble some Biblical prophet. He was young still, but there were times when Rosie thought her husband had been born a wise old man. She smiled at the whimsical notion before recalling Freda Gilmour’s post-mortem.

‘Yes. Poor old soul. Wish there had been a better report on the first two women but there’s nothing to give me a comparison. Just the technical details of time of death and suchlike.’

‘Interesting.’ Solly nodded into his beard again. ‘It’s just the sort of crime one might expect from a woman.’

‘Och, Solly! You’ve got female serial killers on the brain just now,’ Rosie protested, twisting round to admonish him. ‘Come on, admit it, this book’s taking over.’

Solly gave his wife an indulgent smile. ‘Well, let’s just say that it is the sort of methodology a woman might choose. As well as the type of victim.’

‘Oh?’ Rosie sat up a bit straighter, head to one side.

‘Mm,’ Solly said. ‘You don’t find female serial killers often. Statistically it’s almost always a male. Some of the more notorious ones are paired up with a man, of course,’ he added.

‘Ah, like Bonnie and Clyde?’

‘I was thinking more of Fred and Rosemary West, actually,’ Solly murmured. ‘But, yes, these two definitely come into that category.’

‘But you think something like this could have happened to these old ladies?’

Solly shrugged and spread his hands in a non-committal gesture. ‘Women tend to use a weapon like poison. You know the cases of nurses who have despatched their elderly patients with overdoses of insulin or potassium. They claim afterwards to have carried out mercy killings. Angels of death,’ he said, raising his eyebrows dramatically. ‘But here we have three killings that target vulnerable victims at their own homes and their killer uses minimum force. Could be a woman,’ he added lightly, as though to consider the possibility once more.