Alex Gray - A small weeping

Finally the Superintendent broke the silence between them. ‘She’s a very sick woman,’ he began to say, slowly.

‘Yes, she is,’ Lorimer replied. There was no point in denying it after what they’d both witnessed on the tape.

‘I wonder if the courts would consider her a reliable witness?’ Mitchison seemed to be asking the question of himself. Then he shook his head. ‘Oh, I don’t know. We’d need all sorts of expert medical witness statements to back up the validity of this statement. If you can even call it that.’

Lorimer clenched his fists out of sight, under the desk. Would Mitchison try to stop the tape being used as evidence after all her efforts? He mentally rewound the video, seeing the woman’s anguished face. It took all his powers of restraint to keep the passion from his voice.

‘Sir, although she has no power of speech, she’s no dummy. Mrs Baillie can vouch for her mental health.’

Mitchison’s face twitched as if a spasm of annoyance had passed over it. For a moment he didn’t speak but simply continued to stare at the blank screen. Lorimer wondered what was going on in the man’s mind. At last Mitchison swung around in his chair, his usual expression of superiority back in place. ‘Oh, very well, let’s get on with it. But I have to warn you, Chief Inspector, I’m really expecting some results now. There have been too many man hours frittered away on this case already.’

Lorimer took a deep breath. ‘I’ll be showing this to Dr Brightman, sir.’

Mitchison looked askance at his DCI. ‘Our criminal profiler? Why not. He hasn’t come up with anything yet, has he?’ he asked, as if Solomon was yet another tiresome burden he had to bear.

‘No, sir,’ Lorimer lied, his fingers crossed under the table. Let Solly’s theory about two killers simmer for a bit, he decided.

Having Mitchison’s blessing about Phyllis Logan meant more right now, especially with the idea that had taken root in his brain. If Solly was correct and a killer was closer to home than they thought, then Phyllis Logan might be in more danger than they imagined.

Solly re-crossed his legs thoughtfully. They had watched the video footage twice together now and he’d not offered any comment. He could feel Lorimer’s eyes burning into him, waiting for some word of encouragement.

‘Well, what do you make of her?’ Lorimer asked, obviously bursting for a response from the psychologist.

Solly shook his head slowly, tugging absently on the curls of his beard. Then he sighed. ‘What a terrible imprisonment for her. To be so confined. Just like poor Nan Coutts. Yet she must have developed an inner self.’ He spoke softly, almost to himself as he stared at the screen. ‘She’s been terrorised all right, though, don’t you think?’ he added, turning to make eye contact with Lorimer.

‘Oh, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. Only by whom? That’s where our problem lies. Leigh Quinn was my first thought, but now I’m not so sure. It’s certainly a man, so we can eliminate the female staff and patients from the scenario along with the cleaners and other women. Including Mrs Baillie,’ he added.

Solly tried to hide a grin. The director of the Grange had ruffled DCI Lorimer’s feathers considerably during the investigation. And there was still that question mark hanging over the finances of the clinic.

‘Phyllis Logan’s been there long enough to know the staff and long term patients by name, surely,’ his voice trailed off and Lorimer was left watching him as Solly’s face took on the dreamy attitude with which he was becoming so familiar. There was something brewing in that brain of his.

‘I took a long walk around the whole area,’ Solly began. ‘It struck me that somebody walked straight into the Grange and straight out again the night that Kirsty was murdered. I think we’re pretty much agreed that this killer knows his way about. He knew Brenda’s movements too. There’s a coolness about his character. He has something to do with the clinic, that’s clear enough to me. He can disappear into the background like so much wallpaper. Nobody sees him as out of place.’

‘Nobody seems to have seen him at all except Phyllis Logan!’ Lorimer protested.

‘I wonder,’ Solly mused. ‘Brenda Duncan and Kirsty MacLeod were doing their usual rounds, checking up on the patients. They had to go into everybody’s room, isn’t that so?’

Lorimer nodded, puzzled. They’d been over this again and again. What was Solly getting at now?

‘Well, it’s a pity we can’t ask either of them, but I wonder…’

Lorimer bit his lip impatiently.

‘The patients on suicide watch have a designated nurse with them during the night, don’t they?’

‘Yes,’ Lorimer frowned. What was he trying to say?

‘Well, suppose one of them left their post for a bit? Both they and their patient would be vulnerable, wouldn’t they?’

‘Vulnerable to what?’

‘Suspicion, of course!’ Solly exclaimed, surprised that Lorimer hadn’t followed his line of thought. ‘And I don’t see any of the nurses owning up to being away from a patient’s bedside when that would provide a perfect alibi, do you?’

‘But, hold on, let’s look at this another way. Say you’re right and there’s one killer of prostitutes who likes to hang around Queen Street station then another who bumps off two nurses, what about motive? Are we looking for two nutters, d’you think?’

Solly shook his head. ‘Whoever murdered Kirsty and Brenda knew exactly what they were doing and why. The real problem is how they came to find out about the signature.’ Solly looked hard at the policeman. ‘Rape can escalate into murder. The women in Queen Street may well have been raped. Sexual activity was present in both cases.’

‘But they were prostitutes! Of course there were signs of sexual activity!’

‘But neither Kirsty nor Brenda were assaulted like that. He simply walked up and strangled them. The element of shock was that they knew their attacker and trusted him.’

‘Would they have trusted a patient?’

‘That depends. If they knew him well enough, yes. Still considering Leigh Quinn?’

Lorimer’s face twisted in a grimace. It fitted almost too neatly: a depressive who had some sort of flower fetish. But why would he have killed Kirsty? He’d liked her. And Brenda Duncan? What possible reason could he have had for stalking her home like that? Lorimer shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he sighed. ‘He had no grudge against either woman as far as we know.’

‘Interesting you should use the word grudge. Something may have happened to poison a mind already holding a grudge. Something that triggered off this chain of events.’

Lorimer reached forward to eject the tape. The MS patient had given them both plenty to think about.

Solly would try to develop his profiles while his own team would continue the painstaking work of crosschecking the background of every man connected to the Grange. And now that included every member of the team itself.

Father Ambrose let his spectacles fall on top of the evening paper. Four women had been strangled now and still he sat here worrying about them. Praying too, he admitted, but he would have done that anyway. The picture in the evening paper showed a young woman smiling into a camera. The headline had shouted out her crime, and his. Poor child, he thought, to have stooped so low. The journalist had painted a life of drugs and deprivation. Father Ambrose could imagine what that might have been like. One of his parishes had been in the inner city, long ago, before they’d torn down the sagging tenements and given people decent homes. He’d been party to some terrible confessions in those days, he remembered.