looked through the letterbox, saw the body.. `… And dialled 999,' Lorimer finished for him. 'Suppose that was the same person who was sick outside?'
Ramsay nodded. 'Poor guy's still shivering out there in the patrol car. Had to wrap a blanket around his shoulders. He's been trying to give us what information he can.'
'Okay. What do we know so far?' Lorimer asked, looking at the dead man, wondering what his story had been, how he had been brought to this untimely end. The victim was a man about his own age, perhaps younger, he thought, noting the mid-brown hair devoid of any flecks of grey. For a moment Lorimer wanted to place his fingers upon the man's head, stroke it gently as if to express the pity that he felt. No matter what his history, nobody deserved to die like this.
'Kenneth Scott,' the DS told him. 'Thirty-seven. Lived alone.
Divorced. No children. Parents both dead. We haven't managed to get a lot else out of the colleague yet,' he added, jerking his head in the direction of the street. 'Too shocked to say much when we arrived. After he'd seen his pal.'
Lorimer continued to focus upon the dead man on the floor, The victim's eyes were still wide with surprise, the mouth open as if to register a sudden protest, but it was not an expression of terror.
'It must have happened too quickly for him to have realised what was happening,' Lorimer murmured almost to himself. 'Or had he known his assailant?'
'There was no forced entry, sir, but that might not mean all that much.'
The DCI nodded a brief agreement. Men were less likely to worry about opening their doors to strangers, if indeed this had been a stranger. And a strong-armed assassin would have been in and out of there in seconds, one quick shot and away.
Lorimer sat back on his heels, thinking hard. They would have to find out about the man's background as a priority as well as notifying his next of kin. The pal outside had given some information.
They'd be checking all that out, of course.
'What about his work background?' Lorimer asked.
'They were in IT, the guy out there told us, shared lifts to a call centre on a regular basis.'
Lorimer stood up as the door opened again to admit a small figure dressed, like himself, in the regulation white boiler suit. His face creased into a grin as he recognised the consultant forensic pathologist. Despite her advanced state of pregnancy, Doctor Rosie Fergusson was still attending crime scenes on a regular basis.
'Still managing not to throw up?' he asked mischievously, 'Give over, Lorimer,' the woman replied, elbowing her way past him, 'I'm way past that stage now, you know,' she protested, patting her burgeoning belly. 'Into my third trimester,'
'Right, what have we here?' she asked, bending down slowly and opening her kitbag. Her tone, Lorimer noticed, was immediately softer as she regarded the victim. It was something they had in common, that unspoken compassion that made them accord a certain dignity towards a dead person. Lorimer heard Rosie sigh as her glance fell on the victim's bare feet; clad only in his nightwear that somehow made him seem all the more vulnerable.
'Name's Kenneth Scott. His mate came to collect him for work at seven this morning. Nobody heard anything last night as far as we know,' he offered, making eye contact with Ramsay to include him in the discussion. This was a team effort and though he was senior investigating officer Lorimer was well aware of the value everyone placed on the scene of crime manager who would coordinate everyone's part in the case.
'Lim,' Rosie murmured, her gloved hands already examining the body. 'He's been dead for several hours anyway,' she said, more to herself than for Lorimer's benefit. `Rigor's just beginning to establish. May have died around two to four this morning.' Rosie glanced up at the radiator next to the body. 'I take it that's been off?'
'I suppose so,' Lorimer answered, feeling the cold metal under the layers of surgical gloves. He shrugged. It's still officially summertime, you know'
'Could have fooled me,' Rosie replied darkly, listening to the rain battering down once again on the canvas roof of the tent outside.
'That's two whole weeks since July the fifteenth and it's never let up.'
Lorimer regarded her quizzically.
'St Swithin's day,' she told him. 'Tradition has it that whatever weather happens that particular day will last for forty days. Or else it's more of that global warming the doom merchants have been threatening us with,' she added under her breath.
Tut this fellow's not boon warmed up any, has he?' Lorimer said. 'Nothing to change the time of death?'
The pathologist shook her blonde curls under the white hood.
'No. Normal temperature in here. Wasn't cold last night either so we can probably assume it happened in the death hours.'
Lorimer nodded silently. Two until four a.m. were regarded as the optimum times for deaths to occur, not only those inflicted by other hands. He had read somewhere that the human spirit seemed to be at its most vulnerable then. And villains seeking to do away with another mortal tended to choose that time as well.
They'd find out more after Rosie and her team had performed the actual post-mortem and forensic toxicology tests had been carried out. Until then it was part of his own job to find out what he could about the late Kenneth Scott.
'It's okay, take your time,' he told the man sitting on the chair beside him. Paul Crichton was still shivering with shock, a mug of hot sweet tea clasped in his hands. The car had taken them back to police headquarters and Lorimer had insisted on using a family room, not one of the usual interview rooms. Here there were soft furnishings in unthreatening shades of beige and brown; Lorimer had chosen to seat them both in a couple of easy chairs, a low coffee table handy for the tea and biscuits he'd ordered up.
Victims came in all sorts of guises; the dead man on the floor back there, his family and friends, this work colleague who'd had the misfortune to find him. He glanced at the young man again. What age was he? Late twenties, perhaps? His dark hair tumbled over his face as he drooped forwards, the call centre lanyard swinging into space.
Maybe he wouldn't find out much about Kenneth Scott at this interview, but it was always worth a try. Despite the horror of finding their mate lying dead, some people had a strange sort of fascination with the whole scene of crime process. He'd noticed the man's eyes following Rosie Fergusson as she'd left the house, bag in hand. But whatever questions were on his mind had remained unasked. Now it was the detective who sought information and Lorimer hoped that Crichton was in a fit state to give him the details he wanted to know.
'How well did you know Mr Scott?'
Crichton licked his lips. 'We'd been mates ever since he came to the call centre,' Crichton replied. 'Turned out he lived not all that far from me so we decided to car share. Cost of petrol,' he added, attempting a shrug and failing, his shoulders still raised like twin hillocks of tension.
'What can you tell me about him?'
'Oh, he was a decent sort of bloke. Lived on his own. No kids.
Least not any that I know of,' Crichton gave a weak grin as though such a mild joke was permitted under the circumstances.
'Girlfriends?'
Crichton nodded. 'He had been seeing someone from work. A lassie name of Frances Donnelly. Don't think it was anything very serious, though. Just the odd drink and that.'
Lorimer made a note of the name. She'd be near the top of his interview list. Women were often better at giving personal details in between tears of grief.
'It's obviously a huge shock to you, Mr Crichton,' Lorimer continued, trying a different tack.
The man nodded his head. 'Can't believe it. Ken wasn't the sort of person you'd expect anyone to harm. I mean…' he tailed off, as though struggling to find the right words. 'Don't want to sound bad. But Ken was a really ordinary sort of bloke. Didn't do drugs, never really got plastered either. Nice fellow, but..
'Not the type to keep dodgy company?' Lorimer suggested. 'Exactly,' Crichton nodded eagerly, 'Couldn't say he was a boring sort either, cos he was nice, you know? We talked about the footie on our way to work, mostly. And work itself, I suppose.
There was nothing bad about him.'
'Did he ever talk about his previous marriage?'
'No,' Crichton shook his head. 'Subject never really came up. I only knew he'd been married when there was a
