Lorimer and Brightman - 08 - Sleep Like the Dead. By Alex Gray (27 page)

officers from K Division had sent in a forensic team to the Gleniffer Braes where the body had been examined then taken to Glasgow City mortuary. The SIO on the case, DI James Martin, had been astute enough to recognise DS Wilson’s name from the stack of cards inside the dead man’s wallet. Now the two divisions were collaborating on the man’s death since it could very well have some link to Scott and the men in Brogan’s flat. ‘DI Martin’s Family Liaison Officer has told us something else that might be of interest,’ Wilson went on. ‘Seems like Jaffrey junior’s been doing his gap year over in Spain.’ He paused to let his words sink in. ‘A place in Mallorca called Cala Millor.’ ‘So that’s the link with Brogan!’ DS Cameron exclaimed. ‘I wondered how on earth he had that sort of information.’ ‘We need to speak to the boy as soon as possible. Family Liaison have advised us of his return flight,’ Lorimer nodded to Wilson. ‘We have to lift him the moment he steps off that plane. Okay?’ Thomson Holidays had asked their passengers returning from Palma if any of them would give up their seat to a young man whose father had died suddenly. The airlines had a special budget for such acts of compassion and an obliging lone traveller could sometimes find himself with an extra day’s holiday plus a few hundred quid to spend. Such a person had not been hard to find and Jaffrey junior was now booked to fly home, arriving at Glasgow International Airport later that evening. ‘What about Mrs Jaffrey?’ DC Irvine asked. ‘Do we know what she’s told Family Liaison so far?’ Wilson shrugged and spread his hands in a who knows gesture. ‘She certainly didn’t report him as a missing person. And the pathologist reckons he’s been dead for several days.’ ‘I think it’s a good idea to speak to her before the boy gets

home. Otherwise he’ll maybe do all the talking for her,’ Lorimer said.

There was a murmur of agreement in the room. It was well known that many Asian families continued the tradition of the male being head of the family, the woman often choosing to be subservient to him. With the death of her husband, Mrs Jaffrey might well look to her teenage son to speak on her behalf.

Annie Irvine made a face. There weren’t many women nowadays who’d let their men folk get off with that sort of behaviour. She thought back to Mrs Galbraith. There was one mother who hadn’t minced her words. Would Mrs Jaffrey have the courage to tell the police anything she knew about her dead husband and his secrets?

She was suddenly aware that the DCI was looking in her direction.

‘Irvine. You and DC Fathy go and see her,’ Lorimer told them. ‘See what you can find out.’

Mrs Jaffrey opened the door just wide enough to let the chain tighten. DC Irvine saw a tiny woman, caught sight of a dark purple sari banded with a design of red and gold, a matching scarf covering her head. But it was the expression of fear in the woman’s eyes that caught the policewoman’s attention.

‘DC Fathy, DC Irvine, Strathclyde Police, ma’am,’ Fathy said, holding his warrant card out in front of him.

The woman was silent as she fiddled with the chain, hands visibly shaking. The two officers exchanged glances. She was still in a state of shock and no wonder. A missing husband who had turned up brutally murdered was enough to numb the mind of any anxious spouse. The door was pulled back as though by a tremendous effort and as they stepped in, Mrs Jaffrey swayed where she stood.

Annie caught the woman’s sleeve before she could collapse. ‘Come on, dear, through here,’ she whispered, guiding her back along the corridor to where she could see a glint of light under a door. Under Annie’s grip, the woman felt like a thin bundle of bones hidden beneath the swathes of clothing. There was no one else in the house and Annie wondered when this woman had last eaten anything. The brightly lit room turned out to be the woman’s bedroom and Annie reckoned from the state of the place that Sara Jaffrey had been lying in her bed, fully clothed, when they’d rung the doorbell. ‘Here, sit down, are you okay?’ Annie asked, helping the Asian woman into a chair beside her unmade bed. A tumbler of water lay on the bedside cabinet and Annie picked it up, setting its rim to the woman’s lips, letting her swallow until she began to splutter. Mrs Jaffrey gave a little cough then murmured something that Annie couldn’t catch. As though exhausted, she leaned back, her eyes staring wildly at the two officers. ‘Have you got him?’ she asked, clasping her hands to her chin in a gesture that was so pitiful that it made Annie bite her lip. ‘Have you found my husband?’ Annie looked up at Fathy. This was going to be a hard one, his expression said. ‘Make some tea,’ she hissed at him, then, taking the other woman’s hands in her own, Annie knelt down beside her.

‘Mr Jaffrey’s been found, Sara. He’s not coming back, though. You know that, don’t you?’ The black eyes full of tears stared at Annie uncomprehendingly. ‘You’ll find him, yes?’

Annie shook her head. ‘He’s not coming back, Sara,’ she repeated gently. ‘The other officers who came here, they told you that, didn’t they?’

Sara Jaffrey continued to look at DC Irvine, eyes wide with disbelief then the first tears brimmed over and a quiet keening noise issued from her lips.

‘We have to ask you things about your husband, Sara,’ Annie continued gently. Tut if it’s too much we can always come back?’

The woman looked blank for a moment then gave a ripple of sobs that ended in a long sigh.

‘What can I tell you?’ she replied, her voice thick with emotion. ‘When did Mr Jaffrey disappear?’ Annie asked.

There was a short pause and Annie realised that Sara Jaffrey was probably struggling to remember what day of the week it was.

‘He didn’t come home on Friday night,’ she said at last. ‘My son …’ she broke off as Fathy entered bearing a tray of steaming mugs. ‘No, thank you,’ she said, a tremulous smile directed at the handsome young Egyptian. ‘Perhaps later . .

Fathy set the tray down on a small table next to the chair and stood beside the door, nodding his compliance at the two women. With Fathy in the room a small change had come over Jaffrey’s widow; a man commanded respect and she should comply with that, her straightening back and folded hands seemed to say.

‘You were telling us when you saw your husband?’ Annie prompted the woman once more.

Sara Jaffrey drew her scarf a little closer to her face in a gesture that both officers recognised: there was something she wanted to keep from them.

‘My son thought his daddy would come home soon,’ she said at last, casting her eyes downwards.

Perhaps that was half a truth, Annie thought. More likely she’d been told not to contact the police.

`So you didn’t worry?’

Sara Jaffrey’s eyes flashed and they caught a flicker of indignation. ‘Of course, I worried!’ she told them. ‘What am I? A wife without feelings?’

‘But your son told you not to worry, surely? Didn’t he, Sara?’ Fathy said, adopting an utterly reasonable tone.

‘Yes, he did,’ Sara agreed.

‘What was he doing out in Mallorca, Sara?’ Fathy asked.

‘Oh, he was on his gap year,’ the woman told them, her voice more confident now that she thought they were on safer ground. ‘My Rashid will be going to Caledonian University,’ she added proudly.

‘And he bumped into an old family friend while he was there, didn’t he?’ Annie said.

Sara Jaffrey gave a little frown as though she were unable to remember.

‘Billy Brogan, Mr Jaffrey’s good friend,’ Annie prompted, smiling.

The woman’s face cleared. `Ah, yes. Mr Brogan is big family friend,’ she nodded. ‘Well liked by many of our neighbours, here in Pollokshields.’

‘Just a coincidence that he was taking a wee holiday while Rashid was there, then?’

Sara frowned again, looking from one to the other. But whatever she saw in the two officers’ faces must have reassured her. ‘Yes, of course. Rashid had no idea that he was there. We thought …’ she put her hand to her mouth as though she had already said too much.

‘Yes, Sara, where did you think Mr Brogan would have been instead?’

But the woman was looking away now, fingers fidgeting on her lap. r

‘How about that cup of’ tea?’ Annie suggested. ‘Then maybe you can tell us more about Billy, eh?’

Solly sat with his head in his hands, staring at the pattern on the carpet. For the life of him he could not begin to understand what the woman had meant.

‘She said she was grateful to me,’ he murmured.

‘Well maybe she meant that you’d been a great teacher?’ Rosie suggested.

Solly raised his head and looked mournfully at his wife. ‘No. It was more than that.’

His sigh seemed to fill the room. ‘Lorimer reckons I saw her the day after her husband was killed.’ He raised his eyebrows in a mute appeal.

‘So what does that tell you?’

‘I don’t know,’ SoIly shook his head. ‘She was so…’ his eyes lost their focus as he paused to remember. ‘Animated. Yes, that’s the right word, I think. Quite unlike the student I recalled from our seminars,’ he insisted.

‘And you think she was happy for a reason?’ Rosie asked slowly. ‘If her husband had been stalking her and she knew that he was dead, maybe that would be cause enough,’ she went on.

‘But why thank me? I didn’t stop any of the things in her life,’ Solly replied, though in truth he was speaking more to himself now than to Rosie.

‘No, there’s more to it than this,’ Solly nodded.

‘Well you’ve told the police all you can,’ Rosie continued reasonably. ‘And it confirms that Marianne was still in Glasgow after Scott was killed.’

‘She must have been living in constant fear,’ Solly went on. ‘That’s why there was no trace of her name on the university

register. Somehow she managed to slip through that particular net, though God knows how she did it.’

‘Well, it’s in Lorimer’s hands now,’ Rosie said, her tone hinting that the subject ought to be closed. She looked over at her husband, noting that expression of concentration she knew only too well. ‘Come on, Solly,’ she wheedled. It’s not your case. Strathclyde Police aren’t hiring you for this one, remember?’ But as the psychologist continued to stare into space, Rosie knew that her words were falling on deaf ears. Solomon Brightman had decided that he was involved in this woman’s fate and in the death of her ex-husband. And Rosie knew in her heart that this time it wasn’t a matter of being brought in to dispassionately examine a case. This time it was personal.

‘Doctor Brightman saw her in the bookshop,’ Lorimer said. He was sitting opposite Superintendent Mitchison, the afternoon sun shut out behind the vertical blinds so that what light there was made faded shadows over the room. Being in this room was like being inside one of these old sepia photographs, Lorimer decided, the furnishings were all browns and tans, even those colours being leached out by the lack of daylight.

‘A coincidence,’ Mitchison said, nodding his head as though it had been Lorimer who had suggested as much and he was simply agreeing with him.

‘It places her in a specific place and time,’ Lorimer went on, trying not to show the irritation that he felt. ‘We believe Scott may have been stalking his wife prior to his death,’ he continued.

Mitchison smiled, his eyes narrowing. It’s usually the one who is stalked that ends up dead,’ he laughed mirthlessly. ‘So how does this give you any more information about who killed Scott?’

‘Marianne Scott’s brother disappears suddenly,’ Lorimer said.

‘She goes to ground.’ I le raised his hands. ‘Isn’t it possible that they were in it together?’

‘You think Brogan killed his former brother-in-law to stop him following his sister around?’ Mitchison’s voice was full of derision. ‘Come on, Lorimer. That’s the most risible theory I’ve heard in a long time. Brogan’s a known drug dealer who’s been lucky enough not to have been caught. Two men dead in his flat, remember?’ he sneered. ‘Or have you forgotten that little matter? It’s about drugs,’ he added, clenching a fist and tapping it lightly on his desk as though he were reminding a foolish pupil of the correct way to do his homework. ‘When the Spanish police finally bring Brogan to ground then you’ll see I’m right,’ he nodded again. ‘Till then I don’t want to hear any more nonsense about Doctor Brightman and his theories. He’s not on our payroll, remember?’

Lorimer strode out of the building and headed for his car. He was still seething after his encounter with Mitchison. The man was a total prat, he told himself. Hidebound by budgetary constraints, blinkered by his desire to see every other murder case in terms of drug dealing. Okay so the city was awash with the stuff. And there were always demands to show that the police were tackling crime of that sort. What Mitchison wanted was a difference in statistics, something to boast about. But did he really think that one less dealer on the street would equate to a drop in drug usage? Aye, right, Lorimer thought cynically. Mitchison hadn’t even given consideration to the facts. There were signs that a hit man had been used to effect at least three of the killings. Okay, so Sahid Jaffrey’s murder showed a different MO. But he’d had dealings with Brogan, hadn’t he? Mitchison hadn’t even bothered to acknowledge that connection.

But even as he drove out of the car park, Lorimer realised that

the two senior officers were at loggerheads for a very different reason. The superintendent wanted the figures to add up while all that Lorimer wanted right now was to find a dangerous killer and justice for his victims.

M

arianne woke from a dreamless sleep. Her eyelids flickered, their grittiness making her blink. The room was

bathed in sunlight, fine cotton curtains blowing gently at an open window. She looked around, wondering for a moment where she was, feeling more relaxed than she had for years. As her eyes registered the rumpled sheets Marianne saw the hollow in the pillow where his head had rested next to hers.

‘Max,’ she said aloud, savouring the name. It was a word redolent with possibilities: maximise, maximum… surely it mirrored that feeling of complete satisfaction that flowed over her right now? Their coupling had surprised her, mainly because it had happened at all. Somehow he dispelled all her fearfulness, treating her like an ordinary woman whose desires matched his own. Her hunger for his body had shown how starved she had been for the merest affection.