Alex Gray - A small weeping

Fulton shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Sometime. It’s an open ticket we’ve goat. Maybe in a week or so. How?’

‘We need to know your whereabouts, Mr Fulton. It’s routine, that’s all,’ Lorimer answered for him. ‘Anyway, thank you for your time. If Sister Angelica is ready, we’d like to speak to her now.’

‘That it?’ Fulton asked, rising to his feet. ‘Right. OK, well. I’ll see if she’s there,’ he raised his hand in a short salute of farewell and headed for the door. As he left, he turned and glowered at the two men sitting by the window. Solly, seeing his expression merely smiled and nodded in return.

The woman came into the room immediately. She was, they saw, dressed for the outdoors, her wax coat already buttoned up.

‘Not a day for sitting inside. You can talk to me all you want but don’t expect me to sit in here.’

She paused for a moment, regarding Solomon and Lorimer who had risen to their feet. ‘Got any warm jackets? That’s a north easterly wind, you know.’ Looking them up and down, she went back into the hallway calling, ‘Sula! Here, lass!’ There was the sound of claws scrabbling along the polished wooden floor then a dog whining excitedly. ‘Come on, then,’ Sister Angelica flung over her shoulder, ‘What are you waiting for?’

Lorimer handed over the car keys to Solly. ‘Jackets?’

‘If she says so,’ Solly raised his eyebrows.

The road from the house flowed over a rise and down towards the sea. Sister Angelica strode ahead, the collie barking at her heels. Overhead a gull squawked. Catching her up, Lorimer signalled the woman to slow down. Behind him, Solly walked, just within earshot.

‘Right-oh. What d’you want to ask a mad old nun, then?’ she grinned, turning to meet Lorimer’s eye.

Lorimer smiled back. ‘Not so old and not so mad, I think.’

Sister Angelica flung back her head and gave a hoot of laughter. ‘Well, maybe not so mad any more. Whatever they hoped to achieve seems to have worked. I’ll grant them that. Still, you can’t turn the clock back and I’m not going to see the right side of fifty again. There’s no known cure for the ageing process.’

‘We need to ask you about Kirsty MacLeod.’

The nun slowed her stride but kept on walking. ‘She’s dead. Someone killed her and it happened in the Grange while I was there.’ She looked at Lorimer, a thoughtful expression on her face. ‘That’s all there is to know. She was a thoroughly nice young woman and nobody had any right to take her life away.’

Lorimer nodded. ‘That’s how I feel. That’s why we’re here. To try to find out as much as we can about the people who were there in the Grange that night.’

‘Chief Inspector. I really don’t see how I can help you. Some intruder obviously broke in and killed the girl. The back door of the basement was open, after all.’

‘How do you know that? You left early the next morning.’

‘Mrs Baillie told us. She said someone had broken in and attacked Kirsty. She said we’d be questioned by the police eventually. Sam thought it was a bit daft to go, just like that.’

‘So why did you leave?’

Sister Angelica gazed at the ground as if the wind blown grasses could supply her answer then she looked up at Lorimer.

‘Cowardice, I suppose. We just wanted to be away from the place. Even though I knew it was our duty to talk to the police we let Mrs Baillie persuade us. I’m ashamed to say we didn’t take much persuading.’

‘Can you remember the events of that night?’

‘Oh, yes. I remember them all right. I was sitting up in bed when Mrs Duncan began screaming at the top of her voice. We all began to drift into the corridor to see what had happened.’

‘What did you think had happened?’

‘I thought someone had topped themselves. Peter said there had been an accident and we should all go back to bed but I stayed.’

‘Why?’

The woman shrugged. ‘Force of habit, if you’ll excuse the pun. I’m used to being around crises.’

Lorimer let this go. It was probably true. ‘So, what happened then?’

‘Mrs Baillie tried to calm her down and Peter let me come into the staff room to make some tea. They didn’t seem to mind me being there,’ she added, as if this had only just occurred to her. ‘Mrs Duncan was shaking and sobbing by this time and I heard Mrs Baillie tell Peter she was going to telephone the police. That was when she told me to go back to my room.’

‘And did you?’

‘Yes,’ she hesitated as if there was something more she wanted to say but couldn’t form the words.

‘Did you see anything strange that night, Sister?’ Lorimer looked intently at the nun.

‘Not strange, not really. Just,’ she gave her head a shake as if to clear her brain. ‘Just unusual.’

‘What was that?’

‘When I got back to my room one of the other patients was kneeling by my bed. praying.’

Lorimer stopped and caught her arm. ‘I would say that was very unusual.’

Sister Angelica gave a sigh. ‘More’s the pity, I say. But, you’re wrong as it happens. They all knew I was a nun and some of them would come into my room to talk about spiritual matters. I encouraged them. I even held a time of prayer each week. Well, they needed guidance if they were in a clinic for neural disorders, didn’t they?’ she said briskly.

‘Who was in your room, Sister?’

The woman sighed again, her large white face turned up to Lorimer’s. ‘It was Leigh,’ she said. ‘And he was crying.’

‘Well, what do you think? Does Leigh Quinn fit your profile?’ Lorimer asked, taking his eyes off the road for a moment and turning to Solly with a scarcely contained excitement.

Solly said nothing. This was the moment he’d been dreading. He’d been waiting for just such a question from the DCI and had absolutely no answer. No answer and certainly no criminal profile. His mouth shifted into a little bitter twist. Not so long ago Lorimer had thrown scorn upon the veracity of such techniques as profiling and here he was now, all eager to have a response as if Solly were some conjurer pulling a rabbit out of his hat. The truth was that he didn’t have a clue. This case had puzzled him from the time he had visited the Grange. Nothing seemed to add up about the two killings. The different locations were odd for a start. The murder of a prostitute and a respectable nurse were at variance, too. Nor was there any matching DNA material. Yet the things that should have been significant remained: that flower and those praying hands. It had to be one and the same killer.

Not a soul outside the murder investigation knew about these details; even the Press had depicted a corpse with praying hands like an effigy, palms towards heaven, not like their victims at all. So he’d ruled out any possibility of a copycat killing. Now Lorimer wanted answers and he had none to give.

‘You don’t think it’s Quinn? Is that it?’ Lorimer’s voice held just a hint of querulousness as Solly remained silent.

Solly heaved a sigh. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m not sure at all. It would be better to re-interview the man, of course, but from his notes he seems a pretty withdrawn sort. Not the type to have easily consorted with a prostitute.’

‘I would have thought those kind of loners were exactly the sort who’d need a woman like that!’

‘But he’s practically non-verbal. He’d have needed some conversational skills to persuade the woman to go into the station with him,’ Solly protested.

It was Lorimer’s turn to fall silent. His sudden euphoria at the nun’s revelation had evaporated. Solly’s words made sense. And yet? Perhaps Leigh Quinn had been a different person back in January? Maybe his illness manifested itself in different ways? They’d have to re-examine the case notes thoroughly, that was for sure.