was scant reward for the pleasure of seeing her mother so animated tonight. Somehow Flynn’s presence had made all of their own fears about her mother’s discharge from hospital disappear.
Supper over, Lorimer strolled over to the drinks cabinet. ‘A wee tot to finish you off, Flynn?’
‘Och, no fur me, Mr Lorimer. Anyhow, I better keep ma head clear fur the morrow. Thon interview, mind?’
‘Some of this, then?’ Lorimer held up the orange bottle that was known as Scotland’s Other National Drink.
‘Where would you be working if you got the job?’ Maggie asked.
Flynn turned towards her. ‘Och, all over. It’s a landscape business based in Erskine but they do stuff all down the coast. Contracts fur they new housing developments in Wemyss Bay, contracts fur the horse place out by Bishopton, wan fur that technology place up the back of Greenock-’
‘Jackson Tannock?’ Lorimer asked, interrupting Flynn as the young man counted off the businesses on his fingers.
‘Aye, that’s it. Couldnae mind their name. I knew a lad worked in that place. Daft eejit name of McGroary.’
‘David McGroary?’ Lorimer shook his head in disbelief at two coincidences landing on his lap at once.
‘Aye. Huv ye come across him?’ Their young friend screwed up his eyes and for a moment Lorimer recalled the scruffy lad that had been hauled off the Glasgow streets. There was still that element of the wee hard man about Flynn that hadn’t been completely softened by the experience of a near-fatal accident. Had McGroary figured in Flynn’s past life?
‘He’s been nicked. At Greenock. I’m down there doing a review of a case,’ Lorimer said carefully.
‘Ah, Davie’s a bit of a space cadet. Used to be a pure nutter in the old days,’ Flynn said. ‘But I thought he’d got a bird and a hoose,’ he added, regarding the detective thoughtfully.
‘How did you come across McGroary?’ Lorimer asked, screwing the top back on to the bottle of Irn Bru.
‘Same course. He wis oan the… whatdyou call it… induction course wi me at Bellahouston when I started ma training. He’d been in the nick. Didnae make ony bones aboot it neither. We hung aroon wi some o’ the other lads at weekends. He wis okay maist o’ the time. But when he’d had some skag then he wis mental. Know whit ah mean?’ Flynn pretended to blow smoke from his lips, two pointing fingers describing an arc through the air as if they were holding a joint. He grinned. ‘You know ah’m off the stuff, though, eh?’ He looked up slyly as if expecting to see a pair of disapproving faces looking at him.
Lorimer nodded, his thoughts racing. This was an unexpected source of information that could serve to enhance any background reports DI Martin might already be requesting. Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow he would talk to her, see if anything else Flynn could tell them tonight would be of value in their respective cases.
‘See McGroary,’ he began again. ‘Was he the type to hold a grudge?’
Later, as he drove home again from dropping Flynn at his flat in Govanhill, Lorimer pondered the lad’s words. David McGroary was a tough nut; that much he had seen for himself, but according to Flynn he’d also been eager to mend his ways. The gardening course had given him lots of big ideas, Flynn had said. McGroary had seen himself as the big businessman. Never mind that no bank in its right mind would lend someone like him the necessary capital, McGroary patently had enough self belief (or sufficient drug money stashed away) to realise his dream of making it on his own. The leaflets dropped through neighbourhood letterboxes had been testament to the man’s desire to better himself. Okay, it was easy enough to label him a bad wee toerag given his past record. And he was obviously still a dealer, despite his attempts to go straight. But was he capable of cold-blooded murder? Lorimer shook his head. McGroary was a nasty character but somehow Lorimer had believed him when he had protested his innocence.
The Jackson fire wasn’t the work of local vandals. Of that Lorimer was almost certain. And even though McGroary had a motive of sorts, it didn’t really seem likely that he would have torched his employer’s home like that. Different from setting fire to rubbish behind empty warehouses when he’d been a laddie. No, the perpetrator of this fire was someone who had wanted to kill those two people. And Lorimer needed to look more closely at their lives in order to find out why.
CHAPTER 26
Solomon Brightman smiled and sniffed the air. The damp earth bordering the swards of grass smelled rich and pungent. A few saffron-coloured crocuses were growing at the foot of a great chestnut tree, its bare branches waiting for warmer days. A scattering of snowdrops lay against a curve on the grass, a drift of white like the snow so recently melted from the park. It had been a bitter winter, snowfalls throughout the country bringing traffic and commerce to a standstill at times. But now the days were becoming lighter and the spring flowers in the Botanic Gardens would soon brighten the dull greens and browns. Solly watched as one of the gardeners drove an open truck along the pathway; boxes of primulas jigged up and down as the vehicle passed, a dazzle of pink, yellow and purple. By this afternoon the empty beds would be filled with these little plants, another sign that winter was losing its grip.
Solly thought of his conversation with Lorimer. He’d thought of apologising and saying (truthfully) that he was too busy with work to manage any extra commitments. But, listening to the man he knew so well, the psychologist had made his decision. Lorimer needed help and he could tell from the inflection in his voice that the detective was under considerable strain. Maggie’s mum was never mentioned but she was there all the same, an anxiety hovering in the background.
The frown furrowing his brow made the psychologist suddenly sombre. Three elderly ladies had come to grief on their own back doorsteps. Doorsteps that began at the top of a steep flight of stairs above a concrete patio. Pushed to their death. By whom? He would visit the scenes of the crimes with a uniformed officer from Greenock, he had told Lorimer. Then he’d just have to see what came of it after that. It wasn’t that he was being deliberately vague, Solly told himself, remembering the acerbic tone in his friend’s voice after a lengthy pause in their conversation. But he had to have ideas of the locations in his head before he could begin to see the picture of the crimes as a whole.
There were no lectures this afternoon so he would take a train from Central Station down to Greenock, a journey he had rarely made since his arrival in Glasgow so many years before. It was a terminal for ocean-going liners and car ferries, Rosie had told him; one of the older towns strung like beads along the Clyde coast.
Terminal. It was a word that meant the end of things, wasn’t it? But, perhaps in this case, it might also signify a beginning.
After the train had pulled out of Saint James’s station, the urban landscape began to give way to green fields and the hint of a countryside that was emerging from its long winter’s sleep. As Solly let his gaze sweep across the view from the window he saw flocks of wood pigeons, a few ducks in a stream and even caught a glimpse of a pair of hinds feeding quietly. Bishopton was the first rural village on the line, then Langbank where the view suddenly changed and the Clyde was there and Dumbarton Castle on the far side, its massive rock towering above. He could see the hills and mountains but what their names were he didn’t know. Was that Ben Lomond with snow still on its peak? Solly wasn’t certain about the geography of this area and resolved to look up a map on his return home.
Maps meant a great deal to the psychologist and it was one of the integral parts of his job as occasional criminal profiler. Mapping murder had been seen as a vital part of the search for serial killers by Professor David Canter from the University of Liverpool and now every behavioural psychologist worth their salt took a serious look at the pathways and routes surrounding crime scenes. The three deaths in Port Glasgow were fairly close together but that didn’t mean he would ignore the way they were grouped on a map of the area. On the contrary, Solly expected their location to give him some insight into the mindset of the killer.
If Dr Solomon Brightman was surprised to be met by a uniformed officer instead of DI Martin he didn’t show it.
