always sunny, the cloisters full of friendly shadows. The work had been hard, especially all the studying, but the compensations of having his own vocation made up for everything. There were days like today when the wind blowing from the west reminded him of the gardens with their high walls clad with espaliers and creeping vines. If he closed his eyes he was back there once more, the mumbling sound of bees as they staggered from one lavender bush to the next making his head feel drowsy. The soil had been fine and black beneath his fingernails, a joy to cultivate. And they’d been so pleased with him, hadn’t they?
A cold shadow crossed his face, making him look up as the sun disappeared for some moments. The nights, too, had been his. He’d plundered the hours of darkness, his footfall a bright echo on the stones of the chapel. A candle. He remembered there had been a candle, tall, the colour of honey, its flame bent side ways by the draught of his passing. The candle had stood for a sentinel on these special nights between midnight and dawn, flickering its pinpoint lights against the metal cross that lay within the coffin.
The bodies were always carefully dressed in white robes, the faces of the deceased facing skywards. Sometimes, watching them for long hours at a time, he wondered if their eyes would open and see him staring. In dreams he saw their dead eyes glaze like pale gobs of jelly, their heads turn accusingly in his direction. Perhaps that’s why he had given them the flower, to appease them, stop their looks of disdain. They seemed to know everything, to understand his innermost thoughts. He’d decided that they were dangerous, these dead people, especially the very old ones with their wrinkled flesh hanging in folds, the candlelight magnifying each crease on the tallow skin.
The first time he had placed a red flower between the praying hands the wind had sighed outside the chapel door like a benediction. Then he knew it was all right. He had a blessing. The priests had sounded their delight. Bells had rung in his honour and the clever boys had lifted him shoulder-high through the college gates. He’d been feather-light, a wisp on the air, able to float down into the coffin and embrace the cold figures lying there so stiff, so stately. Death was sweet. Couldn’t they understand that? Death released them all. He released them now, these women, from their hateful lives. Better to be dead and in a clean white coffin. Clean and cool with the flicker of candle-flame.
He groaned as the pain filled his thighs. Would they never leave him alone, these waking dead? Was he burdened with this task for all eternity?
Chapter Thirteen
Number twenty-eight Murray Street was one in a row of faded red sandstone tenements, once the glory of the tobacco merchants who had helped the city to prosper, but now split into a mismatch of bedsits and small flats. Kirsty MacLeod had rented one of the basement rooms.
Lorimer had spoken to the landlady briefly on the telephone. Now their feet thudded on the uncarpeted wooden stairs that led them in a spiral down to the lower level. Lorimer took in the landlady’s scuffed leather shoes and much-washed cardigan as she turned the stairs below him. Her clothes were covered in an old- fashioned overall, the kind his granny had worn to the steamie to wash the household linen, but he noticed the hem of her skirt was unravelling at the edge. Whatever rent her tenants were paying, it didn’t seem to make a fortune for the woman.
‘How long had Miss MacLeod been renting from you?’
‘Well, let me see,’ the woman turned her head towards Lorimer. ‘She’s been here about eighteen months.’ Lorimer caught a glimpse of tears start in her eyes. They had reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped outside a door marked 3B.
‘I can’t believe she’s dead,’ her words fell in a whisper and she looked away, suddenly embarrassed at her own emotion. She fiddled with the key in the lock. Lorimer cast his eyes over the green painted walls. The place reminded him of an institution rather than a warren of bedsits, although the faint smell of joss sticks lingering in the corridor spoke of a student life he remembered well. Lorimer stood on the threshold of the room. The dark green curtains were still drawn and his eyes took a few blinks to adjust to the dim light.
‘Have you been into this room since Miss MacLeod left for work on Thursday?’
The landlady looked fearfully at him, shaking her frizzed grey hair.
‘Oh, no, Chief Inspector. I didn’t like…Well. You know. it didn’t seem decent,’ she trailed off, her hands wringing the flowered cotton overall. She hovered in the doorway, uncertain.
‘You don’t need to stay if you have other things to get on with. I’ll bring the keys when I’m done. All right?’ His face creased into the reassuring smile that he brought out of his stock expressions for the old and vulnerable. The woman nodded and disappeared along the corridor. He waited a moment until he could hear the sound of doors banging and pots being clattered before turning into the room once more.
Kirsty MacLeod would have kept the curtains shut whenever she’d had a night shift, he told himself. Security-conscious. Even when the windows looked out onto a brick wall, he mused, leaning over a wide desk and drawing the heavy folds aside to let in the daylight. He stood with his back to the desk taking in the contents of her room.
The neatly made up bed was up against one wall, a scattering of soft toys over the pillow. Lorimer recognised a rabbit with floppy ears and a stupid grin embroidered onto its face. It was a Disney character but he couldn’t remember which one. There was the usual tired-looking furniture that every city bedsit seemed to afford: dark varnished wardrobe, chest of drawers, bedside cabinet. At least they matched, he thought. A stereo system had been rigged up in one corner on top of a steel cabin trunk. Lorimer looked at the walls, expecting to see the usual wallpapering of pop posters but there was only one of a Runrig concert dating from several years back and a travel poster depicting the standing stones of Callanish.
Lorimer flicked on an angle-poise lamp that stood on the desk and gazed at the picture. The stones seemed to heave out of the Lewis earth as if they’d grown there from ancient roots. So, Kirsty had reminders of home. That was hardly surprising. Lorimer’s gaze continued along the line of photo frames on the mantelpiece. There was one of a laughing girl with her arms around an older, white-haired woman. It took him a moment to realise that it was Kirsty. Images of her body sprawled across that concrete floor flicked through his brain. He’d only seen her once, dead at the Grange. This was a younger, carefree teenager and the old lady might be a relative, the aunt, he thought, taking in the background of hills and sea. The other photos included one of her graduation, a close up of a collie dog, its tongue lolling, and an old black and white photograph of a man and woman outside a cottage. Her parents, probably. No young men were included in the line-up. A surprise, really, given that she’d been such a pretty girl.
An empty coat hanger swung from a discoloured brass hook on the back of the door. Her personal clothing had been taken from the nursing home to forensics for examination. Lorimer turned suddenly at the noise of a bluebottle buzzing at the closed window. It heightened his awareness of the silence in the room. No hands would come to switch on the stereo. Nobody would sing a Gaelic song as they tidied or made up the single bed. There was a feeling of utter emptiness, as if the room itself knew that Kirsty was never coming back. Remembering the landlady, Lorimer supposed that another tenant would eventually move in. He sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets. Life went on. It had to. Someone would come to take the girl’s personal effects away later in the day. More forensics. More grief for the relatives, wherever they were. For now Lorimer had to gauge the sort of girl Kirsty had been and hopefully find some helpful documentation. A neat, tidy person; from the look of the room, she would have her paperwork somewhere to hand, collated and sorted.
The desk drawer was the obvious place and Lorimer was not disappointed. A red leather five-year diary sat on top of a sheaf of papers. He rustled through them. Payslips were clipped together, a plastic bag contained a pile of receipts and a guarantee for the stereo. Bank statements lay in order in a blue ring binder. Lorimer flicked through them. Nothing obviously wrong there. A floral paper file held letters with a Lewis postmark. It would all have to be taken away for close perusal. Suddenly it all seemed so intrusive to Lorimer. It didn’t stop with the killing. Even after death, the girl’s private life had to be dissected as thoroughly as her cold corpse.
His fingertips brushed against a small, metal object in a corner of the drawer and Lorimer pushed it into sight. It was a tiny key. Lorimer picked it up. Her key to the diary, surely? He fitted it into the lock and turned. The red book sprung open as if someone had breathed life into its pages. Flicking from the back, Lorimer noticed that the diary had spanned all of the last five years, its tightly written pages giving details of Kirsty’s life.
