Alex Gray - Shadows of Sounds

‘Fifty if it’s any good,’ Greer said immediately.

Flynn hesitated. ‘Naw, I’m no sure. Ah think it’s worth a lot more’n that.’

Greer drained his coffee. ‘Waste of my time then, son,’ he said and made to stand up.

‘No,’ Flynn protested, his hand raised suddenly as if to prevent the journalist from leaving. ‘All right then, fifty,’ he said desperately, cursing Greer inwardly for having the whip hand.

Greer called out to the girl by the coffee machine, ‘Two more espressos, doll. Oh, and a jammy doughnut,’ he grinned at Flynn as he turned back. ‘For you,’ he added. ‘Just call it a wee sweetener.’ He paused. ‘So. Do you know anything about how George Millar was killed?’ Jimmy Greer whispered.

Flynn looked the man straight in the eye. ‘No I don’t. But I know some of the stuff he was involved in.’

‘OK, pal. Let’s have it.’

Flynn took a deep breath and began his story.

‘Keep out of his way if you know what’s good for you,’ Sadie advised the young policewoman.

WPC Irvine made a face. Lorimer’s moods had grown worse since his wife had left him to work in America. The rumour factory was working overtime and it was said that the DCI wasn’t sleeping too well. At least he hadn’t hit the sauce like some of her colleagues whose marriages had ended in acrimony. The station gossip was ambivalent about Maggie Lorimer, though. Wee Sadie insisted Maggie would be back home ‘to see to her man’ as she put it but other voices cast doubt on that scenario. As for Lorimer himself, well, you could hardly just go up and ask him, could you? Now this case had made more headline news, the kind of news that would make Lorimer blow a gasket. Sadie was right. It would be sensible of the young policewoman to keep her head below the parapet this morning.

As luck would have it, Lorimer had not seen the Gazette that morning. It was only when Superintendent Mitchison came storming into his room that he had any inkling of the matter.

‘… and not only is your victim a cocaine user, he’s been fingered here,’ Mitchison slapped the page with his hand, ‘as a receiver of stolen goods. Musical instruments, to be precise.’

Lorimer looked at the man across the desk. He’d noted how George Millar had suddenly become his victim as if the DCI had been personally responsible for the man’s demise. The Super was still glaring at him as Lorimer gathered his wits together.

‘He’s also a homosexual, or did that piece of information not come out in the Press?’

‘That’s not an offence. Drugs and reset are!’ Mitchison’s face grew paler with an anger that seemed to be hugely out of proportion to any imagined oversight on Lorimer’s part.

‘Perhaps if you let me read it?’ he suggested, holding out his hand.

‘Be quick about it, then, because I want you to nail that hack, Greer, before he has time to write another word!’ Mitchison threw the paper onto the files and documents that were already cluttering up Lorimer’s desk and stomped out of his office. Lorimer looked towards the door after the Superintendent had gone. It was ajar so he got up and closed it quietly but firmly and returned to his desk.

The paper’s headlines stared up at him. ‘Murder Victim’s Shady Dealings’ it read. Lorimer scanned the columns, his brain taking in the salient points of the article. George Millar, claimed the journalist, had been a cocaine user known to the drug dealers in Glasgow. Which ones? Lorimer asked himself, his mind running over a list of snouts that might be able to verify this. The article continued with the breathtaking accusation that the late Leader of The City of Glasgow Orchestra had been a source of ‘hot’ musical instruments that he had sold to other musicians.

Not only that, the article went on to hint that the violinist funded his cocaine habit from his nefarious profits.

Lorimer sat still. For some reason it was not the bollocking that Mitchison had given him that was uppermost in his mind but the face of Mrs Millar when she read this over her morning cornflakes. He felt suddenly sorry that she must endure this kind of shame. Then he stopped himself. Had she known about it, after all? Was that why she had been so unemotional about her husband’s death? Despite the obvious piety, was she involved in any way?

Lorimer looked back at the paper. Jimmy Greer, whoever he was, was in for a short, sharp shock when it came to withholding information from the police. Lorimer reached for his phone. The sooner he got this particular business over and done with, the sooner he could concentrate on finding George Millar’s killer. But before he dialled the number for the Gazette, he recalled Mitchison’s white face and his unnatural anger. What had that been all about?

Edith Millar pressed her back against the wall, its cold surface making her shiver. Were they never going to go away? It had been bad enough when the phone calls had started but now, crowding up onto the steps of the flat, trying to peer in at the front window, that was just too much to bear. She thought of the young policewoman who had come to break the news about George. She’d been solicitous but awkward in the way that some young folk were. The kids from the Mission treated her like that too, as if her advancing years made her somehow slow on the uptake.

She was only sixty-two, for heaven’s sake, and coped a dash sight better than most of those kids ever would. Yet the thought of the policewoman made Edith realise that right now she wasn’t coping well at all. She wanted somebody to be there, to make the reporters go away. Maybe she should call that man, Chief Inspector Lorimer. There was something about him that had given Edith several unquiet moments but he also had the sort of strength that she could use just now.

If only George was here. He’d have sent them packing. He’d never suffered fools gladly and had always dealt with tiresome people in his own peculiar way. Edith felt the first hot tears prick behind her eyes as she realised George would never be there again. It was only now that she let herself indulge in remembering the few good times they had had all these years ago. George Millar had been quite a catch in those days. Edith had hovered on the fringes of his bohemian set but hadn’t known enough to understand George’s true sexuality or his need to merely assume the conventions of life. It had been enough for Edith to have been wooed and won. She remembered thinking that marriage would have brought all sorts of rewards, like children. Only there never had been any children for Edith and George Millar. And she’d allowed herself to drift along, remaining in a sterile relationship that had come to be based on sheer habit, her youthful hopes long ago withered in the bud. The Mission had been her refuge since then. There she had found some shelter from the storm and it had provided all the family she’d wanted.

Edith’s chin rose as she thought of her late husband. George had made her life a misery when he’d been alive and now he was making things worse, so much worse.

Her mouth firmed into an angry line and the tears were gone as suddenly as they had arisen. She heard the letterbox being rattled again and another voice call out her name. She’d pulled the phone out from the wall but she supposed she’d have to connect it again to call the Police.

Taking a deep breath, Edith Millar marched into the sitting room and drew the heavy curtains across the window, leaving the reporters to gawp at the William Morris pattern instead of peering in to catch a glimpse of the widow of a man who’d been exposed as a criminal.

The telephone was on the floor, its cord splayed across the polished wooden surface. She picked it up and plugged it into the socket. As she dialled the number, Edith Millar looked at her hands. There was no sign of a tremor. She smiled a brief, wintry smile, pleased to be in control of herself once more.