Alex Gray - Shadows of Sounds

‘But why kill Karen?’ Maggie had asked.

‘He thought she knew what he’d done,’ Lorimer told her. He’d paused, making Maggie sense that he was unwilling to speak ill of the dead.

‘Karen was the sort of woman who made insinuations. She liked people to think she knew more than they did,’ he had told his wife. ‘She had secrets of her own so perhaps she assumed that everybody kept things hidden. Anyway, Corrigan saw her talking to me and immediately thought that she was on to him. She was stupid enough to telephone him on the night that George was killed, let him know that she was aware of his affair with her son.’

‘How did she feel about Chris being gay?’

‘I doubt she was thrilled about it, she seemed to have had an antipathy for the Leader of the Orchestra that I guessed was homophobic. Perhaps she simply didn’t want Chris being involved with George Millar. Maybe Simon Corrigan seemed a safer bet?’

Maggie had shuddered, the thought of the man’s double murder and his subsequent attempt to kill those two young people suddenly very real indeed. ‘He thought Tina and Chris were an item?’

‘Worse than that. He saw them together the day Tina told Chris she was his sister. Somehow he jumped to the conclusion that she was pregnant with Chris’s child.’

‘So he tried to kill them both?’

Lorimer had nodded. ‘If he couldn’t have Chris for himself, then no one could. He gave the lad some ground almonds in his porridge, knowing full well the effect that would have then he went to the Quentin-Jones house.’

‘To murder Tina,’ Maggie finished for him. ‘Thank God you got there in time,’ she’d whispered.

Lorimer had nodded, his silence telling Maggie that there were things about the fire that he wanted to keep to himself. He’d tell her once he was ready to talk about it.

‘Yes,’ he’d replied. ‘She was a bit of a mess but she’ll be all right. More than I can say for Corrigan.’

‘Oh?’

‘He’s in a special burns unit. Most of his face has gone,’ Lorimer had turned away for a moment and Maggie wondered just what the clinician had reported. ‘But he was able to communicate with Jo Grant yesterday. Told her everything,’ he’d broken off suddenly, squeezing Maggie’s hand.

‘And the others? The families? What’s happening to them now?’

She recalled her husband’s smile as he’d related how Edith Millar was playing hostess to the Surgeon. ‘Funny old world, isn’t it?’ he’d remarked. How long it would take before the Surgeon could return to his burnt out home was anyone’s guess.

Maggie rolled onto her side with a sigh of contentment. Whatever had been going on these past few months was over, now. oh, there would be other cases, some of them just as disturbing, but DCI William Lorimer would handle them. Maggie stared at the man lying asleep on the bed beside her. He’d rushed all the way here with no luggage, full of apologies for all the lovely Christmas presents he’d left behind. It was fine, she’d assured him. They’d keep till she came home.

Maggie Lorimer’s face split into a radiant smile. It was Christmas day and she had everything she wanted in the world.