Keep The Midnight Out (William Lorimer) (20 page)

It was over, he thought suddenly. There would be a winding-up process, he supposed. Receivers, probably, seeing what they could salvage from the wreck of his business. He turned to look for his wife, but she too was nowhere to be seen.

That would be a bigger problem, he knew, as his hand reached across the bar to take hold of the whisky bottle; taking her away from this place where she had been haunted by the ghosts of their past.

‘A
nd that’s what happened?’ Solly looked at his friend, trying to catch his eye, but Lorimer was gazing past him towards Fishnish Bay and the hills of Morvern.

‘Aye,’ he replied. ‘Came back to the division and everything had changed. They’d charged both the McKerrell brothers with the Asian boy’s death. Each of them swore blind that they’d had nothing to do with the first one. That red-haired lad.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’ Lorimer asked.

‘Were they convicted? Of either of the crimes?’

‘Just the Singh boy’s death. Poor wee lad had got himself mixed up with some drug dealers. Got ripped off by a junkie and lost the McKerrell clan a shedload of money. Their way of solving that particular problem was to…’ He shook his head. ‘You don’t want to know the details, Solly.’

The psychologist winced, his imagination filling the blanks in Lorimer’s story. The policeman had talked about several things this morning as the two men sat outside Leiter Cottage: how Maggie’s sadness at being unable to bring a baby to full term had affected them both, the old wounds opened up by the death of this boy practically on their own doorstep. He had known this man for years now, guessing many things about his past and his life, but until now Lorimer had never spoken about the tragedy of losing that first baby.

‘And the boy you never identified? Were they tried for his murder?’

‘Ach, there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge them with that. Besides, they had a lawyer who wouldn’t countenance it being brought to trial.’

‘So, you never found out who he was?’

Lorimer shook his head. ‘No.’

There was a pause as both men looked at the view. From where they sat side by side on the wooden bench the entire scene appeared to be framed by the ancient oak trees and the row of silvery green willows that bordered the garden. Earlier, Solly had taken a walk beyond the extensive grounds, stopping to listen to the little burn trickling over the brown stones, its margins fringed by reeds and meadowsweet. The sound of chuckling water had raised his spirits, making him smile. Such elemental things, he had mused. The immutable forces within nature guaranteed to give us a different perspective upon life.

‘Do you still think these… who were they? The McKerrell brothers?’

Lorimer glanced up and nodded.

‘Did you think they knew who the boy was?’

Lorimer made a face. ‘By the time I got back after Maggie had lost the wee fellow it was in other hands. I wasn’t even given a chance to talk to them. Och, everything was so different back then, Solly,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘There were no crime scene managers and we didn’t have such a big liaison with the fiscal as we have nowadays.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘We didn’t even have encrypted radios, for goodness sake! Anyone with a mind to do it could listen in to police calls.’

‘What about George Phillips? He was a decent sort, as I recall from the few times we met.’

‘Aye, he was,’ Lorimer replied shortly. ‘But you have to remember I was pretty much at the bottom of the food chain in those days. A lowly detective constable.’ He gave a rueful grin. ‘I did make a bit of a nuisance of myself, though, and poor old George put up with me. The case is still officially open.’ He smiled at Solly in a meaningful way.

‘And the McKerrells? Are they out now?’

Lorimer shook his head. ‘One of them is back inside. Assault to severe injury on his common-law wife. The other one was gunned down in Sighthill. Never found out who the gunman was. We always suspected it was the work of a rival gang.’

‘So you could still talk to one of them?’

Lorimer raised his eyebrows. ‘About a case from twenty years ago?’ He picked up the empty mugs at their feet but lingered on the bench as though reluctant to tear his eyes away from the sweep of water and the gently curving hills. ‘I suppose I could,’ he murmured.

Even as Lorimer spoke, Solly knew that the policeman was responding to some inner voice rather than the friend sitting quietly by his side. Would Lorimer travel back to Glasgow? Ask questions that had not been asked for all these years? And what of the lad from Newton Mearns? Could there be any possible link between Rory Dalgleish and the dreadful things that had happened in Glasgow twenty years ago? The tall man staring out to sea evidently thought that there was and Solly Brightman had learned over the years to trust the detective superintendent’s instinctive feelings for such things.

‘Nothing on the database,’ Stevie Crozier, said, tilting her chin defiantly. She had gone through the correct procedure, had double-checked everything and still there was no sign of a similar sort of murder anywhere on HOLMES. What the hell had he expected? A flurry of red-haired corpses hog-tied and chucked into the drink? She paused for a moment. What if she were wrong? What if there was a link between that twenty-year-old cold case in Glasgow and Rory Dalgleish’s murder? She’d come out of all this looking like a real fool, wouldn’t she? The DI tapped a pencil on her desk, wondering, then looked up impatiently as DS Langley entered the room.

‘Any word?’

The DS shook his head. ‘No sign of them yet, ma’am, but the patrols are all out searching the peninsula.’

Crozier banged her fist on the desk. ‘How hard can it be to spot the man’s vehicle?’

‘There’s a lot of tree cover…’ Langley began but a withering look from his superior officer made him close his mouth again.

‘What we really need is the Eurocopter,’ she muttered. ‘There used to be two of them, but the one that crashed in Glasgow was never replaced.’

‘I’ve seen them being used on TV,’ Jamie Kennedy said, looking up from where he had been working through several witness statements. ‘It can track a fugitive by their body heat, can’t it?’

‘Well our chances of having aerial support for this case aren’t exactly high,’ Crozier said gloomily. ‘Hicks from the sticks like us aren’t usually given priority.’

‘Maybe if you asked Detective Superintendent Lorimer…?’

There was a sudden silence as the two men looked at Crozier, her face frozen in a tight mask of suppressed rage. For a few moments nobody spoke then a telephone ringing broke the tension. Jamie bent his head once more to his task as Langley answered the call.

Crozier sat still, hands clenched, fuming inwardly. Did the men think she was incapable of carrying out the necessary actions? But, she conceded, PC Kennedy was probably right. Lorimer would carry just the right sort of clout to get things moving. Perhaps it was time to admit she needed his help. Besides, there was a man with a shotgun who might very well be a dangerous killer running about the countryside – surely the detective superintendent would be able to make a case for the EC135 helicopter to be scrambled?

‘You okay, son?’

There was no answer from the shape beneath the grey blankets but Jock Maloney could see Richard’s head moving in what he took to be a nod.

They had driven all day and half of the night, down tiny farm roads, doubling back through forest tracks in an effort to cover their tracks. It was like being on patrol again, Maloney thought, recalling his younger days in Northern Ireland when he had been a soldier with the British army. He’d seen plenty in the few years he’d been garrisoned there, explosions that had killed military personnel as well as civilians; nothing like the bad old days of the sixties when the IRA had held the country in thrall, but bad enough for a raw recruit whose only desire had been to handle a gun.

His eyes shifted to the shotgun leaning on the chair by his side. It was a long time since he had taken aim and fired at a living human being but he would do it again if he had to.

They were safe enough here for now, he told himself, looking around the room. The bothy he had found was pretty remote and they had spent hours sealing the entrance to the forest trail and covering the roof with pine branches to conceal it from prying eyes. Apart from a few birdwatchers and wildlife photographers, the bothy was rarely used, or so the Forestry Commission online guide had informed him. He’d switched off his phone before leaving Lochaline, aware that any signal could bring the police hastening after them and now, sitting in the half darkness, Jock Maloney felt the twitchiness that came from being out of contact with the rest of the world.

What do we do next?
Richard had asked when they had closed the door behind them, his eyes looking accusingly at his father. And Jock had looked away, unable to answer his son’s question. What was he to do? He’d fled Tobermory with Richard, terrified that the police would come for them.

The man looked down at the slumbering form of his younger son. Why had he got mixed up with that red-haired boy? If only he’d never set eyes on Rory Dalgleish… But all the
if only
s
in the world wouldn’t change the facts, would they?

Thank God wee Fiona had told him about the old woman! He’d had to get them away fast. And all because Jean had looked out of her window that night and seen him quarrelling with the boy. That particular bit of gossip was guaranteed to bring Jamie Kennedy and his lot straight to their door, wasn’t it? And somehow Maloney knew that Jean Erskine’s words would have the police scouring the countryside for them, even now. He drew a breath, silently cursing all old women and their spying eyes. Perhaps they were already near at hand, ready to pull him and Richard from their hiding place, take them away…

Jock fingered the gun. He wouldn’t let that happen. So much had been lost already, he wasn’t going to let them take Richard from him too.

‘W
e’d have to locate them first,’ Lorimer explained as he stood beside the detective inspector’s Mercedes that was parked in the lay-by near Leiter Cottage. ‘Have the patrol ask at every cottage and farmhouse on the peninsula if they’ve seen his pickup.’

‘And if we do…?’ Crozier looked at him but he failed to see the expression in her eyes behind the large designer sunglasses.

‘I think that would merit the Eurocopter being flown in,’ Lorimer agreed. ‘Better at night, though, when he isn’t expecting anyone to come.’

‘And the thermal imaging camera would be able to follow him if he caught sight of us?’

Lorimer nodded. ‘I’ve used the ’copter before in night cases when a fugitive was holding someone hostage,’ he explained. ‘It’s a wonderful bit of kit. Can be scrambled in four minutes and keeps radio contact with the units on the ground.’

‘Even in a remote part of the country like Ardnamurchan?’ Crozier risked a doubtful smile.

‘Even there,’ Lorimer agreed. He looked up at the sky. It was one of those rare Hebridean days where the sun had burned off an early mist leaving a panoply of blue stretching from the hilltops; a pair of buzzards mewed faintly overhead, mere specks against the unseen thermals. A helicopter would easily be seen on a day like this, he thought. ‘There’s no way they’re going to sanction its use until we have a better idea of Maloney’s whereabouts, though.’

Crozier made a face. She’d already told him about the patrols from Oban spread out from Lochaline to Kilchoan, explaining that the network of single-track roads and remote trails on the Ardnamurchan peninsula made it slow work for the officers involved.

‘What can you tell me about the man?’ he asked. ‘I only know him from his work at the garage. Always struck me as a particularly pleasant man, I must admit. Bit of a blether, but seemed a decent type.’

‘Originally from Northern Ireland. Came to the island from Glasgow twenty years ago,’ Crozier told him. ‘Ex-army, works as a mechanic in the garage in Tobermory as you already know. Was married but the wife ran out on him some years back, leaving him to raise his two boys. Got a drink problem, but that’s not a secret apparently.’

‘What about his sons, they’re both still at home?’

Crozier shook her head. ‘The older one lives on the mainland, it’s just the younger one, Richard, who lives with his father.’

‘And the ferryman at Fishnish reckons they were both in Maloney’s pickup when he left the island?’ Lorimer nodded towards the dark outline of the forest across the bay; somewhere, hidden from their sight, the Fishnish ferry was accessed by a road that snaked through these trees.

‘Correct,’ Crozier said. ‘We’ve had officers around the older boy’s place but he hasn’t seen or heard of his father or brother in months. Or so he says,’ she added darkly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

‘And the mother?’

‘Lives in Edinburgh, Keith Maloney thinks. They’ve had no contact with her since she ran off with her Italian boyfriend. He’s a waiter in one of the big hotels there. We checked.’ She tilted her chin upwards as though to assure the detective superintendent that she had left nothing to chance.

‘So intelligence has it that he’s holed up somewhere in the wilds of Ardnamurchan.’

‘Aye, and I hope the midges are eating him alive,’ Crozier muttered, waving a hand across her face as a swarm of the tiny insects swooped towards them. The lay-by was close to a burn that trickled underneath the road, a haven for insects brought to new life by the unexpected warmth.

Lorimer risked a smile. DI Crozier had moderated her appearance since coming to the island. Gone were the high-heeled shoes and dresses. Today she was wearing a pair of light camel-coloured slacks and sturdy flat loafers, a checked shirt rolled up past her elbows. She’d made time to make up her face and put on tiny silver earrings though, he noticed, a concession to her feminine side. And possibly some sort of hairspray or perfume that was beguiling these tiny biting insects?

‘Do we know if Maloney has a licence for the gun?’

‘No.’ She shook her head, swatting away the midges and turning sideways to avoid the small cloud that seemed to be attracted specially to her. ‘I mean, no we don’t
know
if he has one or not. That’s still being investigated.’

‘But he kept it under lock and key in a proper gun closet, that suggests it was legit.’

‘Or maybe he was simply not bothered who knew he had one,’ Crozier countered. ‘He was ex-army, remember. Might just have been careful not to let his boys near it. We’ll know soon enough. Point is,’ she sighed, waving a finger at the detective superintendent, ‘he’s got it with him and we suspect him of being a killer.’

She took off her sunglasses and looked up at Lorimer. ‘See, what I’m thinking is: Maloney killed Rory Dalgleish, heard that he’d been spotted quarrelling with the boy beforehand and so tried to bump off the old woman before she could tell the police what she’d seen.’

‘Any reason why a man who had lived quietly in Tobermory for twenty years…’ He paused, gazing into space for a moment. ‘Peaceably with his neighbours, by all accounts, no hint of any trouble with the police… why would someone like that suddenly kill a young chap from a nice part of Glasgow, someone he could scarcely have known? And Jean Erskine? It takes some sort of nerve to murder a person in cold blood,’ he said, looking Crozier in the eye.

She glared back then dropped her gaze, shaking her head slowly.

‘It’s him. Got to be. Why else has he gone and done a runner?’

Lorimer watched as the Mercedes turned slowly back towards the main road. He lifted a hand in a perfunctory wave but the car sped past, its driver not even looking his way.

Could she be right? he thought. Could it be Jock Maloney who had committed these terrible crimes? The Jock Maloney he remembered didn’t seem to fit the frame somehow. Appearance and reality had lulled better persons than William Lorimer into thinking a man was incapable of murder. And, a little voice murmured in his ear, Maloney had come to Mull twenty years ago; perhaps just at the very time Lorimer had been investigating another death back in Glasgow. Yet there had to be a reason, another, more persistent voice insisted. Nobody simply killed at random unless some serious mental illness took over their behaviour. So, what reason had Jock Maloney for killing the lad from Newton Mearns? And why had he become a fugitive from the law?

He remembered then what Solly had said when they had discussed the Irishman’s flight from the island.
Perhaps he’s not running away from anything
, the psychologist had remarked quietly.
Maybe he’s running
to
something
?

‘I want to go home,’ Richard mumbled.

They were sitting in the hut, the door firmly closed against the sunlight outside, the boy sitting on the edge of his bunk, head dropped into his hands.

‘You want to give yourself up to the polis?’ His father gave a short laugh. ‘Know what’ll happen if they find you? Off to the nick and then on remand somewhere like Barlinnie or Peterhead.’ He leaned over his son, one hand on the back of his neck. ‘And you know what they do to pretty boys like you inside, don’t you?’

Richard looked up, his eyes large with fear. ‘But why would the police want to put
me
in prison?’

Jock let go of his son’s collar and took a step backwards. ‘You know fine,’ he said, looking into the boy’s grey eyes. He gazed hard at his son as though searching his face for some hidden thing. But Richard Maloney continued to stare his father out, unblinking, and so it was Jock who was forced to look away, sudden doubts clouding his mind.

‘You tryin’ to tell me you had nothing to do with that boy?’ Maloney muttered, looking at the dusty floorboards beneath his feet.

‘What do you want me to say?’

‘I want the truth, Richard, just the truth!’ Maloney snapped, grasping his son’s shoulders with both hands and shaking him till he fell back against the wall behind the bed.

‘No you don’t!’ the boy yelled. ‘You don’t want that at all. You just want me to be different from how I am, don’t you?’ He cringed away as if expecting his father to rain blows down upon his head but Jock Maloney staggered to his feet and strode towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’ The boy pushed himself into a sitting position. ‘Dad? Don’t leave me here…’ he whined.

‘Just getting something from the car,’ Maloney muttered. ‘Stay here and don’t make any noise, okay? They’re out there somewhere and we need to lie low until I can be sure they’ve searched and given up. Okay?’

He looked at the pale face of his younger son as the boy nodded, a wave of compassion washing over him as he reached for the door handle; it wasn’t Richard’s fault, was it? These things just happened and there was nothing that Jock Maloney could do to change them now except hide them both away for as long as he possibly could.

If George Phillips was surprised to hear his former colleague’s voice on the telephone then he did not show it.

‘Lorimer! How are you? Still giving the Glasgow criminals sleepless nights I hope?’

‘George. Hello. Actually I’m on holiday up in Mull. Or supposed to be,’ he added with a hollow laugh.

‘Oh, aye? I read about that lad’s death in the
Gazette
. Didn’t see your name on that one, though,’ he added shrewdly. There was a pause and then former Detective Superintendent George Phillips asked, ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Well, I want to pick your brains, George. Can you cast your mind back twenty years to that missing person we pulled out of the Clyde?’

‘Good lord! That was a while back. Nineteen ninety-five, eh? Lot of changes since those days.’

‘We never made an identification,’ Lorimer continued. ‘Or connected the young man’s death to Desi Singh’s.’

There was another silence as Phillips digested Lorimer’s words.

‘You went off on compassionate leave,’ he said slowly. Then Lorimer heard him sigh. ‘Aye, that was a hard time for you and Maggie. Always thought you two had been given a raw deal by Mother Nature. How is she, by the way? Maggie, I mean.’

‘She’s well, thanks. A bit upset that I had to find a body down on the shore, of course.’

‘Ah, that’s how you’re involved.’

‘Initially,’ Lorimer replied. ‘The SIO has asked me to help out in other ways, though.’

‘And do they include raking over a cold case?’

It was Lorimer’s turn to pause now before answering. ‘Not really,’ he confessed, ‘but there are points of similarity. Both boys happened to be red-haired, a possible coincidence, but what’s more startling is the way they were both bound up then released from their bonds post-mortem before being thrown into the water. Crozier reckons from the data on the more recent victim’s laptop that it was a case of BDSM gone wrong.’

‘Strangled first?’

‘Exactly. Both boys approximately the same age.’

‘And your SIO hasn’t made any links on the database?’

‘No. However there is something I wanted to find out. Did a chap called Maloney ever come under our radar at that time? John Maloney, calls himself Jock though he’s originally from Northern Ireland.’

‘Don’t recall that name at all, Lorimer.’

The detective superintendent gave a sigh – his old boss’s memory for names and faces was legendary.

‘Just a long shot. Thought I would see if there was any link. Oh, well.’

‘No, sorry. Don’t suppose we’ll ever find out who that poor lad was. Sometimes it’s better to let these old cases go, Lorimer,’ his old boss told him gently. ‘Concentrate on the here and now.’

‘Lachie? Can you give me a lift back to Tob?’

Fiona stood at the edge of the kitchen garden, watching as the handyman-gardener raised his head.

‘I’ll be off in about half an hour. That do you?’

‘Aye, thanks. I’m staying at Eilidh’s for now,’ Fiona told him. ‘Can you just drop me off at hers on your way?’

‘Aye.’ The word was dropped carelessly as the man turned back to his work, apparently weeding between rows of vegetables. The hot summer had made most of them shoot far too early, Fiona noticed. Lachie hadn’t been vigilant enough to prevent that happening. Och well, she thought as she gave the garden a last backward glance, he’s always at the beck and call of Mr Forsyth for all these wee inside jobs. How can Lachie be expected to carry on two jobs at once?

It was fair handy having the older man to give her lifts back and forth. Lachie spent most nights at his sister’s place in Tobermory, when he wasn’t away on one of his fishing trips, and Fiona had taken to travelling with him more and more since the death of her great-aunt. Okay, she could have taken more time off, but being back in Tobermory under the scrutiny of everyone’s sympathetic smiles had made the girl decide to return to her work at the hotel. And it was peaceful down here at Kilbeg, especially now that the hotel was so quiet.

It was funny, she thought, glancing back at the gardener; Lachie had never said how sorry he was about Aunty Jean. Morose old bugger, she told herself as she walked back inside the hotel. Hasn’t got much to say to anyone at the best of times. Still, he’d never refused any of them lifts in his old van, had he? She couldn’t fault him on that.

The gardener bent once more to his work, a hand fork easing out the intruders to his rows of beans and cabbages, mostly buttercups whose runners had spread all across the rows, their bright yellow flowers blowing in a breeze that came straight off the sea. Beside him sat a large plastic trug, almost full of dead and dying weeds. It was painstaking labour but the man seemed not to notice, steadily clearing more and more of the dusty earth, his eyes shielded by the brim of the old hat he wore.

It was not until a shadow fell across the ground that Lachlan Turner looked up.

Hamish Forsyth stood looking down on him, hands clasped. Lachie rose slowly, noticing the way his employer was fidgeting, his fingers moving round and around. Something was wrong, he decided.