the man closely, seeing the doubt in his eyes change to despair.
‘It’s not something that I can put in a report since it’s only a theory. If forensic evidence comes to light to corroborate this idea, though…’ Lorimer shrugged to show what might happen in that scenario. ‘But there is something else I think you ought to know, Mr Tannock.’ Lorimer watched the man’s face carefully as he continued. ‘Sir Ian was dying of cancer.’
All the colour seemed to drain from Hugh Tannock’s face as he took in the detective’s words. ‘Are you sure?’ he whispered at last.
Lorimer nodded. ‘I’ve just spoken with his doctor. Sir Ian had insisted that his condition be kept secret from his family. But it does create a different sort of scenario now, doesn’t it? A man with a reason to kill himself, and perhaps to destroy everything he loved.’
‘Oh, Pauline, what have I done to you?’ Tannock whispered, stumbling from the table. He groped his way towards the Belfast sink, holding on to its edge for support. Then he turned his gaze to a picture beside the windowsill. Picking it up, he held to his chest, shoulders heaving in silent sobs.
It should have been a private moment, a signal for Lorimer to leave, but something made him stop. He had seen that image before, hadn’t he?
‘Excuse me, sir, may I have a look at that picture?’
Tannock turned his ruddy face streaked with tears. ‘It’s all I’ve got left of her. Last photo she ever gave me.’ He gulped, handing it over.
Lorimer took it carefully. It was a copy of the one that he had seen in Daniel Jackson’s flat.
His heart quickened.
‘Where was this taken?’ he looked across at Tannock.
‘On the landing. Outside their bedroom.’
‘And how long before the fire was the photograph taken?’
Tannock must have caught the new note of excitement in Lorimer’s voice for his eyes glittered with hope.
‘Just a few days, as I recall. Why?’
Lorimer smiled suddenly. ‘May I take this? I promise it will be returned to you. But I can tell you something, Mr Tannock. Looking at this photograph, I think we may have jumped to the wrong conclusion. I don’t think that fire was started by Sir Ian after all.’
It was perhaps a little cruel to leave the man worried and wondering after Lorimer’s earlier supposition had reduced him to tears, but it was a police matter and one that had to remain as confidential as possible. What he had seen in that photograph gave Lorimer renewed energy to tackle this case.
For, behind the seated woman smiling into the camera’s lens, was a bedroom door with a key in the lock.
But it was on the outside of the room.
So some other hand must have turned that key, deliberately locking the couple in and leaving them to their fate.
CHAPTER 28
‘ Yes!’ Lorimer gazed at the telephone on his desk as if it had conjured up some magic. Somehow the detailed information in this initial forensic report had not filtered through to Ray’s investigative team. He ground his teeth, reminding himself exactly why he was here doing this review. The forensic scientist at Gartcosh had confirmed exactly what Lorimer had wanted to know. The brass door fittings had been intact after the fire had done its worst and now he knew what he had only previously suspected: the key was still in the lock, its mechanism clearly showing that it had been used to secure the bedroom door. And that photograph on the landing told him it had been turned from the outside.
This put a whole new complexion on things: now Lorimer wanted to examine the case from each and every perspective. What reason could anyone possibly have had for killing these two people? And who had easy access not only to sprinkle accelerant around the house but to ensure that the key had been put into the keyhole on the landing side? It was not, he reasoned, something that anyone would have noticed. He doubted whether either of the Jacksons would have been in the habit of locking their own bedroom door when there were only two of them at home. And he doubted very much whether Pauline Jackson had risked having her lover there. Tannock had insisted that their liaison had been discreet. But not discreet enough for the Betty MacPhersons of this world, he told himself.
No, someone had set that fire deliberately to kill Ian and Pauline Jackson.
He considered Serena and Daniel. They stood to inherit vast wealth in the form of the company shares, and money was all too often a motivator in murder. But they had struck Lorimer as already having plenty of the world’s goods. And there had been nothing acrimonious between the children and parents. No, he thought, that didn’t fit. He couldn’t see Daniel killing anybody. The young man had enormous prospects within the firm. And, as for Serena, well, hadn’t she been completely traumatised by the loss of her parents?
The offshore business had intrigued him and it was an area that he had still to investigate thoroughly. Some feelers had already been out in the UK but perhaps it was time to cast the net further afield.
‘DI Martin, could I have a word, please?’ Lorimer poked his head around the door where the DI and several other members of the team were sitting.
Rhoda Martin stood up, brushed invisible fluff off her dark skirt and sashayed out of the room after Lorimer.
‘Take a seat, will you? This won’t take long and I know you’re up to your ears with the Port Glasgow case.’
Martin sat opposite the senior detective, crossed her legs and waited, hands folded neatly on her lap.
‘It’s the Jackson murder. We’ve had a real breakthrough,’ Lorimer told her. ‘Look.’ He handed her the forensic report with his own appended notes clipped on one corner. Martin read the paper, her eyes widening.
‘Bloody hell!’ she said at last. ‘You surely don’t think that it’s one of the family?’
‘That’s what I wanted to ask you. Daniel and Serena Jackson are your friends. Right?’
‘We…’ Martin began, ‘we all went to school together. Serena and I have stayed in touch.’ Matter of fact I’m seeing her tomorrow, she almost told him. She stopped herself, frowning. ‘Daniel is a great guy. Total sporting star, clever, always had the girls following him about. If he’d gone through the US school system they’d have called him a jock. But the nicest type you could want to meet,’ she insisted.
Lorimer nodded. ‘I liked him too,’ he said. ‘And I can’t think of any reason why he would want to commit such a terrible act.’
‘Nor would Serena,’ Martin retorted quickly. ‘Okay, she was a bit daft at school. Played around with all the troublemakers, didn’t work very hard at her subjects. But that was just Serena. She was high spirited in those days,’ Martin added thoughtfully.
‘What happened to make her change?’ Lorimer asked. This description of the young woman he had met certainly did not tally with DI Martin’s account of her friend.
‘She’s a lot quieter nowadays, I’ll grant you that, Sir,’ Martin admitted. ‘But don’t we all grow up eventually? She wanted to make her career as a model, but the lifestyle was all a bit too much for her, I guess. Nice to have the family business to fall back on, though. And she never wanted for a thing. The Jacksons were the most generous of parents. Her twenty-first birthday party was the talk of the village for months afterwards.’
‘Okay, so there’s no apparent motive from either of the children,’ Lorimer agreed. ‘And to be truthful it didn’t seem likely. Did it? No,’ he continued. ‘If it wasn’t an insider, then perhaps it was someone known to the family who had easy access to the house.’
‘You mean like staff? Cleaners and whatever? Or are we back to Davie McGroary?’
Lorimer ran a hand through his dark hair and sighed. ‘I didn’t think McGroary had it in him. But someone had
