nearly apologetic enough. 'But I have information relating to the disappearance of Marianne Scott.' He turned to Lorimer again. 'Or should I say, Marianne Shafiq?'
It gave the psychologist a moment of satisfaction to see Lorimer's jaw drop at the mention of that name.
'How did you know..
'Your good people came to see me, remember?' Solly waved a hand in the direction of Irvine and Fathy. 'I was made aware of the fact that you were looking for one of my students, a young woman whom I had come across by chance during the summer vacation,' Solly continued, drawing Lorimer to his side as he addressed the assembled officers. 'I had been puzzled for some time by something that she said to me,' he went on. 'Something rather strange.' He paused and looked at them intently while they waited, most of them accustomed to the sudden little silences in the psychologist's flow.
Perhaps,' he said, turning to catch Lorimer's eye, 'it might be easier to understand if I begin at the beginning.' He took off his spectacles and polished them with the end of his tie, looked to see that they were clean, then replaced them. 'Marianne Scott began studying with me a year ago. She was a mature student but the difference in her age was not what marked her out from the rest of her class.'
There was complete silence as Solly continued, the officers keen to hear whatever new information he might have.
'Marianne was a very quiet, withdrawn sort of creature. One who liked to keep to the back of a seminar, remain unnoticed,'
Solly said, nodding his head as though he were trying to recall her exactly. 'I remember her as a plain looking woman; hair pulled back from her face, no make-up, rather drab, actually,' he said, a note of apology in his voice as though he were stating some political incorrectness. 'With hindsight, I think that this was a deliberate ploy on her part.'
The quizzical looks that were directed towards him made SoIly nod once more.
'When I saw her a few weeks ago, she was a different person altogether. Vibrant,' he murmured to himself. 'That's the word I keep coming back to. It means being full of life and energy,' he explained. And she was. Her hair was long and loose, that lovely Titian red… she wore something brightly coloured… I can't recall just what it was… but it was her expression that stays in my mind most of all,' he said, folding his arms across his chest. 'She was so full of animation, excitement, joy..
Solly broke off again but this time Lorimer filled the pause.
'How is this supposed to help us find the woman?' he asked, a note of irritation in his voice.
'I was coming to that,' Solly replied mildly. 'She said she had something to thank me for,' he told them. 'Her exact words were, I've a lot to thank you for' He nodded again, this time unsmiling.
'Later I was to find out that I had met her just one day after the death of her ex-husband,' he said.
There was a murmur amongst the officers who did not notice the psychologist's sigh as he spoke. But Lorimer had heard it and came to stand beside his friend.
'You know something about all of this, Solly, don't you?' Lorimer asked.
'Yes,' he replied sadly. 'You see,' he continued, 'I fear it may have been something I said that prompted Marianne Scott to have her husband killed.'
'What?' one officer asked, clearly incredulous at the psychologist's statement. Others began to frown and mutter amongst themselves.
'Okay, let Doctor Brightman explain,' Lorimer waved an authoritative hand, silencing the officers' reaction.
Solly began to describe the scene he had remembered from the seminar on dreams, taking care to repeat his own words, explaining why he had said them.
'It was a careless, throwaway remark,' he shrugged. 'Something to elicit a laugh. But I fear that the woman may have taken it seriously.
You see,' he broke off again, his gaze sweeping the room, 'I think she was haunted by particular dreams of her own death. I believe,' he continued, 'she may have thought her ex-husband was going to kill her.'
A derisive snort came from the back of the room and a male voice called out, 'Well, if you saw her having so many mood changes she probably was a bit unstable. Do we know if she had mental health problems?'
'Problems?' another voice burst out. 'Of course she had problems!'
Everyone turned to see IX: Annie Irvine standing, red-faced, her eyes bright with anger.
'Do any of you know what it's like?' she asked, thrusting her hands forwards in appeal. 'Day after day after day not knowing if he's going to be behind you in the street or the bus or a queue at Starbucks? Jumping every time the phone rings in case it's another load of filth you have to hear? Leaving the home you love just to get rid of him..
Tears were streaming down the policewoman's cheeks now but she seemed totally unaware of them.
'You don't know, do you, any of you?' she said, whirling to look at her fellow officers in turn. 'Marianne Scott was probably out of her mind with the strain of it all. Being hounded like that must have been bad enough, but to be unable to sleep because of him infiltrating her dreams…' She broke off in sobs and Fathy came to stand beside her, proffering a large white handkerchief.
There was an uneasy silence as several of the officers eyed her curiously, others too embarrassed at her outburst to even look in her direction.
'Is that why you joined the police force?' Solly asked kindly and nobody was surprised when Annie Irvine nodded, hand holding Fathy's handkerchief to her face.
'I'm sorry,' she gulped, 'I shouldn't have..
'No, don't apologise,' Lorimer told her. 'Perhaps we need to understand a little more about Marianne Scott and her ex husband in order to see how Doctor Brightman's story is possible.'
'Maybe it was the only way she could imagine being rid of him,' DS Cameron suggested.
'And if she was having such awful, recurring nightmares, she probably wasn't what you would describe as being in her right mind,' Fathy put in.
'If what we have heard is true, and remember it is only a theory – we can't present something like Doctor Brightman's notions as hard evidence – then this woman may need help,'
Lorimer said. 'We need to look into old hospital records, see if there is anything that might suggest injuries from abuse by the husband. She deliberately absconded from what Shafiq saw as a place of safety. Now why is that, do you think?'
There was no answer from the room.
'Well,' Cameron said at last. 'If she knows that her brother is being sought by the police, surely it follows that she's afraid we'll bring her in too.'
'She's still hiding,' Annie said firmly. 'She may have thought that everything in her world was working out when you saw her,' she nodded towards Solly. 'Thought she could sleep peacefully at last.'
'Well, let's hope that Shafiq might lead us to her. No matter what he says, I think someone in the Asian community may have a good idea of her whereabouts,' Lorimer said firmly. 'Brogan's links involve his sister, I'm sure of that.'
Billy sat on the edge of the bed and wept, his shoulders heaving as the sobs racked his body. If only… he sighed, remembering the words of his mum. If only you were more like your sister, she'd scolded him on a daily basis. Instead of running with that bad crowd. Poor old Mum had succumbed to the cancer that had ravaged her body, long since, dying in that hospital where he had rarely visited, knowing he was unwelcome, the black sheep of the family.
He hadn't been able to face that, either, had he? It had always been the same: he'd run away from anything hard. Had she always seen him as a bad lad? Probably, he thought, tears of remorse trickling down his face. Dogging off from as young as ten, trying dope before he'd even reached the end of primary, selling it by the time he was in high school. And while Marianne sat and passed all of her exams Billy Brogan had been receiving a different sort of education altogether. How to hustle, how to drive a good deal, how to ingratiate himself into an established group of businessmen.
Until that time when someone had been stabbed in a fight amongst a rowdy lot of football casuals, out of their heads on a mixture of booze and drugs. That had been the end of it for da, hadn't it? There was no welcome home for his boy after that.
