if only as a means of watching his own back.
He missed the familiar faces of his own team back in Glasgow. Here he was very much on his own and the sooner he elicited help from Ray’s own CID department, the better. It was not only dredging through the paperwork that was required, though that tedious stuff had to be done; he had to decide what had gone wrong at each and every stage of the investigation and to do that effectively, he wanted to have the fullest cooperation from the folk down here in Greenock.
A knock on the door made him turn from his thoughts and as the door opened he was heartened to see a solid-looking woman in her early thirties smiling at him, a mug of something hot in one hand.
He knew that face, didn’t he? It was…?
‘Kate Doherty.’ She smiled at him. ‘I was one of your trainees. Don’t know if you remember me.’
‘Kate!’ Lorimer exclaimed, his brain whirling as he struggled to place her. ‘You went to Kilmarnock as a DC, didn’t you?’
‘Well done,’ she said, coming closer and proferring the mug. ‘Tea. No sugar. Okay for you?’
‘Aye, fine,’ Lorimer replied. ‘In fact,’ he added, thinking swiftly, ‘even better if you were to join me.’
‘Ah, fraternising with the new SIO. Bit risky, don’t you think?’ Kate’s voice was as full of good humour as Lorimer remembered.
‘I didn’t know you were one of Colin’s team,’ he began, sipping the strong brew gratefully.
‘Well, you wouldn’t recognise the name. It’s Clark, not Doherty now.’ She grinned, wiggling her wedding ring finger. ‘And I wasn’t at your meeting yesterday. Midwife’s appointment.’ She grimaced then, pointing to the burgeoning swell beneath her shirt. ‘This wee rascal’s fairly making his presence felt. They think it might be a breech birth.’
‘Ah.’ Lorimer nodded. Yes, he’d seen all their names on the ACPOS — the management policy file — but apart from DI Martin, and now Kate, he hadn’t yet put names to all of their faces.
‘Maybe I should just wait and meet you officially this afternoon? ’ Kate suggested, the faintest hint of warning in her voice.
Lorimer looked up at her. Would she be singled out as the new chap’s favourite, a friend from the past, and thus given a hard time by anyone who resented Lorimer’s presence here in K Division? There was always that possibility. And he couldn’t afford to alienate the one person who might be able to fill him in on the background to this case without a sense of prejudice.
‘Take your point, Kate. But I’d love to have a chance to catch up with you properly some other time.’ Lorimer gave her what he hoped was his best smile, blue eyes widening. ‘Anyway, thanks for the tea. Just what I needed right now.’
‘No bother, boss,’ she said, striding out of the room with a grin. ‘See you later.’
Lorimer drank his tea, heaving a sigh of relief. For a moment he had experienced a feeling quite unfamiliar to him: loneliness. But seeing Kate Doherty’s — no, Kate Clark’s — friendly face had turned his mood around. Perhaps the afternoon’s meeting that he had been dreading would not be so bad after all.
CHAPTER 10
The Southern General hospital lay sandwiched between the approach road to the Clyde tunnel and a Govan housing scheme, its sombre facade dominated by the clock tower that seemed to remind one of how fragile life really was and that one day everyone’s time would be up. Its reputation as one of the city’s best teaching hospitals was undeniable, however, and it had the country’s finest spinal injuries unit, one that Lorimer had visited during a previous case. These were thoughts uppermost in his mind as he raced up the back stairs towards the ward where Mrs Finlay had been taken. She would be in expert hands, he told himself. They’d be doing everything that they could.
Lorimer gave a quick glance at the wall to see the signs for the various wards then, stopping to give his hands a rub from the fluid dispenser outside the swing doors, he looked along the corridor leading to where he hoped to find his mother-in-law.
She was in a room of her own and sitting up in bed, propped by a bank of snowy white pillows, her eyes bright and shining as she recognised him. Lorimer tried hard to conceal the dismay he felt at the down-turned side of her mouth as she attempted a smile. And the traces of a bruise could be seen from under that dressing on her forehead.
‘Mum’s not up to talking tonight.’ Maggie turned towards him from her place beside her mother’s bed, a clear warning in her eyes. ‘So we’re expecting lots of stories about your day.’
Drawing a chair up, Lorimer affected a grin. ‘Don’t know how much I can tell you. Confidential stuff, you know.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘But I did run into an old friend.’
It was amazing how much of a one-sided conversation could be drawn out of his meeting with Kate Doherty (now Clark) and his attempt to brighten up the atmosphere by giving a little description of each member of the Greenock investigation team. He balked when it came to a thumbnail sketch of Rhoda Martin; instead he simply mentioned that a female DI had greeted him on arrival. All through his watered-down account of his first day at K Division, Lorimer was aware of Maggie relaxing by his side. She must have had a hell of a day, being called away from school and seeing her mum like this.
The bell to signal the end of visiting time came and with it a sense of relief that he didn’t have to continue to fill up the empty space between the two women any more. He planted a swift kiss on Mrs Finlay’s papery cheek. ‘Take care now, you. Remember guid folk are precious,’ he told her with a wink.
Maggie’s fingers found his and held them tight as they walked together down the corridor.
‘How is she, really?’ he asked at last.
Maggie looked up at him, her eyes brimming over with unshed tears. ‘Oh, I don’t know. They’ve still to do more tests. But it seems to have been quite a bad one. Her whole side is paralysed and she can’t talk at the moment. She was talking before…’ Maggie broke off and Lorimer put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her against him. They were halfway down the stairs and had other visitors at their back, so he had to make do with holding her close by his side as they headed for the exit.
‘So she was better when you first came in?’
Maggie bit her lip to stop the trembling before she answered him. ‘Well, she wasn’t exactly lucid but she was able to make me understand her if I listened really carefully. Now, though — oh it’s horrible to see her like this! But she’s so tired. Maybe it’ll come back. There’ll be a speech therapist in to see her tomorrow, they said. So that’s surely a good sign. And they’re going to do more ECGs and stuff to check on her heart.’
‘Any idea what set it off?’
Maggie shook her head. ‘No. She thought she had a fall. They did tell me that she’d managed to crawl to the phone and call an ambulance, bless her. But she’s still a bit hazy on the details.’
‘Here, you’re shivering,’ Lorimer said as they left the building. ‘Have you had anything to eat?’
‘No. Wasn’t hungry,’ she mumbled into his jacket. ‘But I’m starving now.’
‘What d’you say to us murdering a fish supper, eh?’
‘Ah!’ Maggie breathed, making a white mist against the dark shadows in front of the hospital steps. ‘With pickles?’
As they finally drew up outside the house, Lorimer heard Maggie give a sigh. ‘Oh, I needed that,’ she told him. ‘Nothing like fish ’n’ chips, is there?’
‘Standard comfort food and mandatory fare for surveillance teams,’ he told her, trying to inject some levity into his tone.
It had been a difficult evening, not just the visit to the Southern General but taking Maggie over to her mum’s house to fetch all the things she’d require for a longer stay in the hospital. Being inside Mrs Finlay’s home had depressed them both; the curtains open to reveal the dark night outside, the kitchen worktop full of neatly stacked dishes that were still to be tidied away as if the dishwasher had just been emptied. Looking at it with his detective’s eye, Lorimer wondered if the old lady had been about to do just that when the stroke had made her fall on to the kitchen floor. The cutlery basket was still beside the sink, its contents gleaming in the artificial light.
