Was he trying to prove that the house was his home and his alone? Was it the action of a man who secretly believed his wife would never return? Was he trying to tell himself that he could do what the hell he liked? Lorimer shook his head as if trying to clear away all this introspection. Psychobabble was for the likes of Solomon Brightman.
‘No he’s no’,’ Sadie Dunlop protested. ‘He’s as normal as you an’ me!’
‘Well, what’s he doin’ takin’ a wee lad into his hame, then? Looks guy fishy tae me.’
‘Aye, well a lot of things look fishy tae you, Martha McKinlay. Ah’m telling ye, Lorimer’s straight.’
‘Aye, well, it’s jist whit they’re all sayin’, know what I mean? Mebbe that’s why the wife up and left, eh?’ The cleaner finished rubbing down the glass shelving and dropped the paper towel into the waste bucket. The snap as she removed her rubber gloves seemed to reinforce her opinion.
Sadie Dunlop seethed as she watched the other woman waddle through to the kitchen. What a thing to suggest about Lorimer! OK he was on his own while that daft wife of his was off gallivanting in America but that was no reason to suggest that he had turned into a shirt lifter. Heaven sakes, the very idea was ridiculous! It was all the fault of the wee man who’d got himself killed in the Concert Hall. Now he’d been a real poofter, Sadie told herself and not the only one in the band, from what she’d heard. That was what all this was about, all this investigation into a homosexual murder. Sadie gritted her teeth. Once an idea had taken hold, though, it was hard to convince folk of its validity. Despite the current trend to recruit gay officers into the force, Lorimer would be in for a less than charitable time in the run up to Christmas if gossips like Martha had their way.
Chapter Sixteen
Maggie Lorimer put down the phone, her hand trembling. What on earth had possessed him? The lad could be into anything. Hadn’t he already admitted dealing in drugs, for heaven’s sake? Yet the sensible half of her had kept quiet as Lorimer related his plans for Flynn’s recuperation. Her husband was a policeman, after all; he knew the score better than any of them. Any error of judgement regarding this boy would be utterly out of character for him. So why did she feel so shaken?
It’s your home, that’s why, a little voice reminded her.
Suddenly the vision of her untidy lounge with its shelves of books on two walls came to mind. It would be dark there, now. Would the table lamp be switched on? She’d left it on a timer, but that was back in August when the nights had still been light. Maybe it was raining, the cold wind sweeping the rowan leaves over the grass at the front. would any of the neighbours have lit their Christmas trees at the windows yet? OK, it was still only November, but here the razzmatazz of ‘the holiday’ as they called it had been in force since Hallowe’en. Fairy lights flickered all along the street where Maggie lived, her own apartment windows blank. It was something they always left until the last minute, usually when school broke up at the end of term.
Then Maggie would fling herself into a frenzy of shopping and decorating, usually ending up asleep on Christmas afternoon.
She wanted to be there, she realised, preparing things for this stray that Bill had found. ‘You’re jealous!’ she whispered aloud, the truth of her feeling shocking her. This boy, this vagabond, who had usurped her home; she wanted to be there to provide for him, to make up a Christmas stocking, to see that he was warm and loved. But it was Bill who would be responsible for these things, if he thought about them at all.
‘Maggie Lorimer, stop all this at once!’ she scolded herself, recognising the latent maternal instinct for what it was.
Christmas. Christmas had always been home with Mum and Dad then just Mum and the two of them. What had Christmas been like for this Flynn person? And what, since Mum and Bill were intending to come over by December 25th, would it be like for him this year? Had Bill even thought this through? In their conversation nothing had been mentioned about where the boy would go when her husband left for Florida. Surely he wouldn’t leave him there alone? But then, where else would the lad go? Maggie asked herself fretfully.
Her hand hovered over the telephone once more then dropped. No. Bill would sort it out. She’d left him to get on with his life in Scotland. Somehow it robbed her of her rights to make decisions about their home. Maggie bit her lip. Not for the first time she wondered at the driving force that had taken her all the way across the Atlantic.
Lorimer pushed his foot against the cupboard, hearing a clatter as the vacuum’s nozzle fell against the closed door.
Well, at least he’d made up for all those weeks of indolence, he thought with some satisfaction, then smiled wryly as he recalled Maggie’s dictum that real housework only got done whenever they were expecting guests. It was true, he supposed. Flynn’s imminent arrival had catapulted Lorimer into a frenzy of vacuuming and cleaning. Several black bin bags were stacked by the front door to be taken to the dump, some full of bottles for the bottle bank. when Maggie had been here, she’d religiously taken stuff every week, papers and all, for recycling.
The spare room was tidy now, at least; the single bed made up with an extra cover over the duvet in case the boy felt cold after the heat of his hospital room. The weather had been bitter all through November. Lorimer had spoken to the social worker attached to the hospital about Flynn’s longer-term prospects. It was agreed that it ‘was not reasonable for the patient to continue to occupy temporary accommodation’ (i.e. Lorimer’s spare room) when the DCI was to be away in Florida. There would be a furnished flat made available to Flynn, well away from his old haunts and from anyone who might try to harm him.
The hostels were out of the question. All too often pushers from outside preyed on the vulnerable men and women who sought temporary refuge in the spaces provided by these bleak rooms. It was a moral dilemma for the case-workers attached to the Hamish Allan Centre. By law they had to find accommodation for these folk, but sometimes they knew only too well that there were pushers just waiting near the hostels to march some poor soul up to the benefit office for the handover.
And the movement of drugs within the hostels was rife; there were no locked doors, a double-edged sword that was meant to protect the men and women who tried to shelter from the streets but which could also make them a danger to one another.
In the end it had been fairly straightforward to arrange for the boy to stay for a short time. Flynn could at least apply for a benefit book now that he was to have some sort of an address, then it would be transferred to his new flat. That way the social services could recoup the housing benefit. There had been no mutterings about setting a precedent and disregard for correct procedure, as Lorimer had feared. In fact the senior emergency services officer had been more than helpful; a community nurse would be calling on a regular basis, he was told. Flynn’s neck injury was healing and the broken ribs and fractured skull no longer required quite so much in the way of pain relief.
Lorimer experienced a sudden twinge of guilt. Would Flynn be better off in some country nursing home? Somehow he doubted whether he’d be able to keep tabs on the boy if he were to be hauled out to Mearnskirk Cottage Hospital or wherever they went these days. This was an ideal opportunity to let the boy open up to him, to reveal what he could of the life he’d been living in the streets of Glasgow. That hadn’t been his underlying motive, though the thought had come pretty hard on the heels of his offer to stay, Lorimer admitted.
They’d reached an impasse in this case now, a state he’d never contemplated happening in the beginning. With a wealth of forensic material and hundreds of statements, he had been pretty sure that an arrest would have been made by now. Solly was busy drawing up a profile on what evidence there was, though there had been little feedback from the psychologist so far.
In some ways there was simply too much to handle. Much of the work done was now on computer, and the IT boys had sorted things into a variety of patterns for Solly to see.
Several of the instruments in the City of Glasgow orchestra had been bought from George Millar and their provenance was being investigated. It was clear that most of the musicians had been genuinely astonished by the First Violin’s scam. Over and over their statements expressed a gratitude at having a decent instrument made available by instalments to a colleague whom they had trusted.
As Lorimer had foreseen, the overtime bill on this case was massive. Today was the first whole Saturday he’d spent in the house since that night at the Concert Hall. Working practices were quietly ignored at times like this, despite Mitchison’s continual attempts to bring them into line with maximum shift times.
