Keep The Midnight Out (William Lorimer) (17 page)

‘Don’t touch her,’ she said, more softly this time as she felt the policeman’s body begin to tremble beneath her restraining hands.

‘This may well be a crime scene, Jamie,’ she reminded him quietly.

For a moment they stood together, looking down at the old woman.

Her lifeless eyes were wide open in an expression of horror that made Crozier shudder.

She had seen violent death before, but had never thought to find it here.

It did not take long for a small crowd to congregate around the corner of the pavement, the crime scene tape preventing further access into the lane that ran behind the bank. Masses of sweet-scented scarlet roses tumbled against the granite wall, the blue-and-white tape tied to their metal wires, a grim reminder to anyone who stood there of how shocking it was that a pretty place like this could conceal some dreadful crime.

‘Has there been a robbery?’ was a question on several lips. The front door of the bank was shut fast, opening hours long past, giving no apparent clues to the curious passers-by.

Detective Sergeant Calum McManus stood, legs apart, barring the way into the narrow lane that led to the rear of the bank buildings, his face impassive. It was times like this that he needed to be strong, he told himself. It was just the same as being in the lifeboat crew in a winter storm: there was no room for a consideration of self, just a grim determination to carry out one’s duty.

The small team had been gathered together hastily after the discovery of the body, Crozier barking out orders, determined to find the man who had suddenly disappeared from his home. Kennedy had been dispatched to Kilbeg where Fiona Taig was working. DS Langley had been there today but he was sticking to Crozier’s side like a limpet, Calum Mhor observed, as if to remind the uniformed officers that CID was in charge.

He looked up as a slight blonde figure approached, ready to ward her off.

‘Sorry, madam —’ he began, then stopped as she held up her hand.

‘Dr Fergusson, pathologist,’ she told him with a nod and Calum stood aside to allow the woman to duck beneath the plastic tape.

He glanced at her as she disappeared around the corner, his eyebrows raised in mild astonishment. So that was the famous pathologist from Glasgow, was it? Such a young-looking wee slip of a thing. Calum turned back with a sigh. That was a sign of becoming old, he reminded himself, and it was just a few years now until he reached retirement. He’d never thought too much about being away from the police – it had been a job he’d loved all of his working life – but right at that moment it was something that the big policeman desired with all of his heart.

The call had been as unexpected as any she had ever received. To come to a scene of crime like this,
here
, in lovely Tobermory, was far worse than if it had happened back in Glasgow. Island life was peaceful, she had been assured by the Lorimers; it was a welcome contrast to the city’s high crime rate. Nothing bad ever happened there, she’d once heard Lorimer proclaim. Well it had now, she thought, as her feet ascended the last turn of the stone stairs and she caught sight of a uniformed officer standing at the door.

The old woman was still in the chair where she had died, Rosie saw with a spurt of satisfaction. Crozier knew what was needed here at the scene; although they lacked the immediacy of a scene of crime team with photographer and other forensic officers, the DI was determined to carry out the correct procedures. Rosie laid down the digital camera she had brought with her. It already contained photos of Miss Hoolie’s house from
Balamory
and several of Abby, posing with a smile on her little face. Soon these happy family pictures would be joined by the sombre images of a dead woman, her body videoed from various angles in an attempt to tell the unknown story of just what had happened in the old lady’s home.

Lorimer was waiting for the DI as she emerged from the building.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she said stiffly, looking up at him.

Lorimer nodded. It must have taken a lot for the woman to swallow her pride and call him. She had made it pretty clear that she didn’t want him interfering in her case but now, with the discovery of a second body, things had changed completely for DI Stevie Crozier.

‘Has Dr Fergusson finished her examination?’ he asked.

‘She’s still up there,’ Crozier sighed. ‘You’ll want to have a look, I suppose?’

She pulled a pair of surgical gloves from her pocket and handed them to him wordlessly. This was as much as could be expected, he mused; no white-suited figures up here, just the minimum of precautions against contamination.

‘I’ve called for a forensic team to come over as soon as they can,’ she said, a defensive note creeping into her tone as if guessing his thoughts.

‘Good,’ he replied, gesturing her to lead him up the winding staircase that led to the top flat above the bank. The detective inspector’s hostility was almost palpable and for a moment Lorimer felt sorry for her. It couldn’t be easy having him here, a senior officer who had experienced so many violent deaths in his career. Yet she had had the courage to ask for his help, knowing perhaps that his presence here was fortuitous.

‘We’ve put out a call to the mainland to find Maloney,’ she told him. ‘His sudden disappearance makes him a prime suspect.’ She turned to face Lorimer at the top of the stairs. ‘His son’s gone as well. God knows why.’ She hesitated, frowning. ‘We know now that they took the smaller ferry from Fishnish to Lochaline,’ she continued. ‘So they might be anywhere in the wilds of Morvern.’

‘Or heading back down towards Oban?’

Crozier made a face. ‘There are several ways they might have gone,’ she agreed. ‘Oban, Fort William, even further west into the peninsula. But nobody’s seen hint nor hair of them yet. We’ll find the pair of them, never fear.’ Her words were belied by the way that the DI turned her head away from Lorimer’s gaze. The Ardnamurchan peninsula was one of Scotland’s last wild places, single-track roads winding around lochans and forests into miles of untamed wilderness.

The door to the flat was only slightly ajar and Crozier pushed it open with her gloved hand.

‘Room at the end of the corridor,’ she said, standing aside to let him pass.

Lorimer walked slowly along the hallway, noting the old-fashioned furnishings. He paused beside an ancient mahogany dresser that had numerous framed photographs displayed on its polished surface; a veritable rogues’ gallery of family portraits, some faded through time. He picked up one that showed a couple standing side by side, the young woman dressed in a fitted suit holding a posy of flowers, her hat placed at a jaunty angle; the man in a dark suit, the carnation in his buttonhole a dead giveaway. A wartime wedding, Lorimer realised, when coupons did not stretch to long white dresses, a happy couple tying the knot with no certainty of what their future might hold.

The pictures told a story of their own about Jean Erskine, plus what little Lorimer had been told. She’d endured the strictures and fears of wartime, the loss of her husband and all the changes that time had brought. And now her long life had ended abruptly.

It was wrong, he told himself as he entered the room where the body lay slumped on her favourite chair opposite the bay window. She ought to have breathed her last in the quiet of her own bed, a long deep sigh taking the former schoolmistress from this life, with all its troubles and pleasures, into eternity.

‘Ah, you’re here.’ Rosie stood up. ‘I’ve just finished taking these.’ She pointed to the small silver camera in her hands. ‘Not what we’d use back in Glasgow but better than nothing, I suppose,’ she whispered, aware that the DI was standing out in the corridor talking to one of the uniformed officers. ‘She called you, then.’

‘Did you ask her to?’

Rosie grinned suddenly. ‘Well, I might have mentioned that you and I had worked a lot of cases together. Maybe hinted that another pair of eyes could be useful.’

‘So, no pressure from the chief constable?’

The pathologist shook her head. ‘I think Crozier wanted you here, even though it might hurt her to admit it. She asked me for your mobile number and I saw her key it into her own phone,’ she told him, eyebrows raised. ‘Guess she really means to have you onboard.’

‘Well, we’re here for another ten days at least,’ Lorimer whispered. ‘I can help in whatever capacity she chooses, official or otherwise.’

‘Seems a shame to break into your precious holiday,’ Rosie observed.

‘I didn’t know I was going to find a body down on the shore,’ Lorimer said. ‘I think the holiday came to a bit of a halt from that moment on.’

‘Anyway, allow me to introduce you to the deceased,’ Rosie gave a grim little smile, ‘the late Jean Erskine.’

Lorimer walked around the high-backed chair and squatted next to the old lady.

There was something about a dead body that robbed it of any sort of sadness: the act of putting an end to its life was over, the pain long gone and all that was left was the husk of the person who had once breathed life into the mere flesh and bones that remained. The corpse was there now to tell whatever tale it could: the wide-open eyes glazed in death had seen their killer in those last frantic moments; the marks around her scrawny neck had been made by the hands of a much stronger person, he guessed. Death would have been sudden and swift: a shock, a gasp for breath that ended in blackness. Where was she now, an old woman twice his age whose eyes had seen so much over her life? Was there a hereafter where she floated oblivious to pain or to the troubles of this world? Was she reunited with that young man in the photograph, clasping his hand once again in some other world where the spirit continued its existence, leaving the shell of its body behind? He hoped so, though such questions were never without their doubts.

‘She wouldn’t have put up much of a struggle,’ a voice told him, and he looked up from where he knelt in front of the old woman’s body to see Crozier staring at him, a questioning expression in her eyes.

‘Maybe not,’ he agreed. ‘Wonder if she knew who her killer was?’

‘We’ve spoken to her great-niece, Fiona Taig,’ Crozier said. ‘She’s in a right state as you may imagine. The old lady was her only relative here. Her folks emigrated to Australia some time back but the girl stayed on, PC Kennedy tells me. God knows why. There’s precious little work for youngsters on the island these days.’

Lorimer did not reply. If he had been born and raised in a special place like Tobermory, would he have wanted to travel to the other end of the globe?

‘Any chance I can talk to her?’ he asked.

Crozier nodded, her lips in a tight line. ‘She’s staying with a friend, Eilidh McIver. The hotel folk have told her to take as much time off as she needs.’ She drew a piece of paper from her pocket. ‘Here, that’s the address.’

Manor Gardens was a small crescent of bungalows recently built on the outskirts of the town, its squares of gardens planted out with clumps of annuals and a few windblown young shrubs. Number nine was at the far end a little set back from the rest. A narrow lane ran down one side of the house, tapering away towards a building site where several other homes were under construction, their dark grey breeze blocks contrasting with the dazzling white of the occupied houses.

The door was opened seconds after Lorimer rang the bell, as though someone had stood watching for his arrival. A tall, spare man stood there, his open-necked shirt and thick socks making him appear as though he had been caught in the process of undressing.

‘Hugh McIver. Come away in.’ Eilidh’s father stood aside for Lorimer to enter the house.

The short hallway opened into a lounge-cum-dining room where three women sat huddled together on a settee. One of them immediately rose to her feet and came towards him, casting an anxious glance at the two young women behind her.

‘Oh, you’re the superintendent,’ she said in a breathy lilting voice that Lorimer recognised as native to the island of Lewis. ‘Fiona, shall we leave you two in peace, lass?’

Lorimer looked at the young girl sitting on the settee, her hands clutching an oversized handkerchief. Her face was blotchy from weeping as she looked up at him.

‘Fiona, I am so sorry for what’s happened.’

She nodded as though such a statement was only to be expected, then he saw a quivering sigh shudder through her body.

‘Think it was my f-fault,’ she gulped. ‘If I hadnae told —’ She broke off, biting her lip to stop a fresh bout of crying.

‘You mentioned something to Jock Maloney?’

The girl nodded. ‘Told him Aunty Jean...’ There was another pause while she blew her nose.

‘I mentioned that Aunty Jean had seen someone quarrelling with the lad who died.’

She looked up at him in mute appeal.

‘Did you have any reason to suspect that it had been Maloney himself?’

Fiona shook her head, great eyes turned to his own.

‘Well then, stop blaming yourself. Okay?’ His tone was as gentle as he could manage.

‘It wasn’t just Jock I told,’ Fiona said at last, a small defensive note in her lilting accent. ‘I told loads of folk down the town. And Lachie, of course. Had a blether with him outside the garage before I caught the bus back to the hotel.’

‘Lachie?’

Fiona nodded. ‘The gardener at Kilbeg. I often get a lift from him if he’s going back home after a shift. He stays with his sister here in Tobermory.’

Lorimer stifled a sigh. The number of people who had shared Jean Erskine’s supposed secret had probably multiplied considerably in a small place like this; a murder was such a rare event that any gossip about the boy, Rory, would have been a big deal and he could imagine the girl sharing her news about her aunt’s sighting with a sort of relish. It was only human nature, after all.

‘Did Jock Maloney seem upset when you told him about what your great-aunt had seen?’

Fiona’s eyes slid away from his for a moment as she considered.

‘I don’t think I’d call it upset,’ she began, a frown creasing her brow. ‘But he suddenly seemed a bit less friendly, if that makes sense. I thought he was just being moody.’