Street entrance cordoned off from the public and platform 7 was out of commission meantime, but the station would open for business as usual. Lorimer yawned. It wasn’t yet daylight and he had hours of work still ahead of him. These nine-to-five commuters didn’t know they were living.
Chapter Two
It had been a long day. Rosie stretched out with a yawn that made her jaw crack. It was good to be finished at last, she thought, sinking into the leather folds of her favourite chesterfield in the University staff club. The post-mortem had shown death by strangulation and it looked like the ligature was the dead woman’s own scarf. Forensic testing would verify that eventually, of course.
Lorimer had brought along his lanky Highlander to observe. Give the lad credit, thought Rosie, swirling the ice cubes at the bottom of her brandy glass, he’d not blanched at the sight of her opening up the cadaver. Some of them simply fainted away, usually the big macho ones that wouldn’t flinch in a bar room brawl when glasses were flying. But DC Cameron had watched with an interested detachment as if he’d been one of her senior med. students.
The staff club was quiet tonight, just three elderly gentlemen discussing academic something-or-others over by the fireside. Rosie found the sound of their low voices soothing. She didn’t want to make small talk or any other sort of talk until she had to. Despite her tiredness there was an underlying excitement. Solly would soon be here and then she could give him an account of the day’s events.
Lorimer had assured her that the psychologist would be invited on board for this investigation. Although he was the Senior Investigating Officer, the procurator Fiscal still had to be consulted. However, he hadn’t shown any worries over Solly’s involvement.
The queer sight of that carnation pressed between the woman’s hands still bothered Rosie. Straight forward murder was OK but weird stuff like that gave her the willies. She considered the wording of her draft report. She’d outlined the position of the praying hands resting on the woman’s vulva. It was a point she’d already endowed with significance in her own mind though the report afforded no room for symbolic speculation. That was the area of expertise that she expected from Solomon Brightman.
Solomon. She gave a tiny sigh. There was something otherworldly about him that she found both attractive and exasperating, his timekeeping, for instance. He was notoriously late for everything and tonight he’d already kept Rosie waiting for the best part of an hour. So why did she do it? Rosie asked herself. She was not a naturally patient person, just the opposite, but since getting to know Solly she’d found herself habitually waiting in the staff club where they’d meet up after work. He didn’t drive so Rosie often dropped him off home even though his flat was less than ten minutes’ walk through Kelvingrove Park.
Rosie Fergusson was hooked and it surprised her. Solly wasn’t her type at all. He had no great interest in socialising other than to sum up his fellow man, but he seemed happy enough in her company even though he’d been a bit shy to begin with. They’d met in the most inauspicious of circumstances, the locus of a grisly murder in Garnethill, and she’d taken an instant liking to him.
The ice had melted in her glass. Rosie slurped the watery dregs, considering whether to have another and leave the car parked overnight. She could always take a taxi home. If she didn’t get a better offer, a bad little voice murmured in her head. Rosie grinned at the delicious naughtiness of the thought then looked up to catch the barman’s eye.
‘Same again, please,’ she smiled at him, holding out the glass.
‘Rosie.’ Suddenly Solomon was standing there looking down at her, his eyes twinkling gently behind those horn-rimmed spectacles.
‘So sorry I’m late. Had to take another class for one of my colleagues. Fellow I told you about, remember? He’s having a bad time of it, poor man.’ Solly unwound an enormous knitted scarf from his neck as he spoke, his expression somewhere between apologetic and glad to see her, as Rosie noted with delight. ‘There,’ he plonked himself down beside her and flung an arm around her shoulders, giving a friendly squeeze.
‘Never mind that,’ Rosie told him. ‘You’re here now and I’ve been dying to tell you what happened today. Lorimer’s got a new murder case and he says you’re going to be asked onto the team.’
‘In that case I’d better have a drink, don’t you think?’ Solly grinned at her. ‘Before you tell me the nastier bits.’
Rosie waited impatiently as he sauntered over to the bar then returned with a pint glass of orange squash.
‘That all you’re having? I thought you’d be needing a double vodka at least,’ she joked.
‘Really? OK, let’s hear it.’
‘Well, it started off this morning. Early. And I mean early. Something like four o’ clock. Peter and I were called out to Queen Street Station. It was bloody freezing. Anyway. A woman’s body had been discovered in the lift between the upper and lower levels. Strangled. Probably with her own scarf.’
‘Any idea who she is?’
Rosie shook her head. ‘Looks like a prostitute and there are plenty of traces of semen. No handbag, nothing in her pockets; young, probably early twenties. She’d been dead long enough for rigor to set in.’
‘Sounds pretty normal,’ Solly put in. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound callous, but why do they want me?’
‘Ah, that’s the interesting part. Whoever strangled her didn’t just leave her lying there in a heap in the corner.’ Rosie paused for dramatic effect. ‘Wait till I tell you. They stuck a flower in her hands then put them together in a praying position. Like this,’ she added, placing her hands palm to palm, pointing down between her legs.
Solomon did not respond for a moment, gazing at Rosie’s hands.
‘What sort of flower?’
‘A red carnation. One of the long-stemmed sort. Why? Could that have any significance?’
‘Possibly. For the killer, at any rate.’
‘What about the praying hands? D’you think that might have some religious meaning?’
‘How can I tell? I haven’t even seen a report, let alone been asked officially to comment.’
‘OK, let’s look at this clinically. We’ll say that God created Eve with the anatomical advantage of having arms that stretch towards the genitals; that might simply be the way they fell but I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘Wait till you see the photographs. It really looks like he’s made a kind of ritual out of the flower and the hands. It’s been done so carefully. But what I wanted to ask you is, why place the praying hands downwards like that? Why not fix them up so that they looked as if they were really praying?’
‘You’re hoping I’ll make the leap between the genital area and a sexual motivation,’ Solomon gave her a half smile.
‘Sort of. I don’t know. She’d certainly been sexually active. There was semen in her mouth as well as in the vagina.’
‘Lorimer thinks it’s a stranger killing, then? Just because of the flower?’
‘I think so too, Solly. It wasn’t like the killer was sneering at her. It was different. As if…oh, I don’t know. As if he had some sort of remorse, maybe.’
‘A valedictory message, perhaps?’
Rosie squinted up at him. Her excitement had evaporated between waiting for Solly to arrive and his almost diffident response to her news.
‘I thought you’d be pleased to be working on another case with us,’ she huffed.
The psychologist gave a sigh. ‘I’ll be highly flattered to be asked, but my workload right now is pretty scary. With Tom’s classes…’
‘Solly, you don’t mean that!’
‘No, of course I don’t.’
‘Then you’ll come on board with us?’
‘If you’re sure I’ll be asked. What about Superintendent Mitchison?’
