As he turned into the huge open gateway at the garden centre, Lorimer watched other drivers parking as near to the entrance as they could. They’d be returning in an hour or so with trolleys full of stuff for their gardens. It was almost mid-February and the planters by the automatic doors were full of winter pansies and snowdrops. Too late for planting bulbs and too early for bedding plants, these keen gardeners might well be paying attention to stuff like feeding their winter grass or mending some storm-wrecked fencing. Or did they simply want a quick getaway after their morning coffee? The rain was never far away here on the west coast. It might be bright and blue now but give it another wee while and dark clouds could obliterate that sunshine.
Colin Ray was sitting with his back to Lorimer as he entered the capacious tea room. He remembered Ray as a big man but seeing him sat there hunched over the table, Lorimer felt that he’d been diminished by his wife’s death.
‘Colin?’ The man stood up and for a moment each looked into the eyes of the other, hands clasped in a warm grasp that betokened nothing more than one man’s feeling for the other. That was all it took, just that one handshake and a look that said how sorry Lorimer was, how grateful it hadn’t been his Maggie and how he wanted to make things easier for the man who’d lost the love of his life.
‘Aye,’ Colin Ray said at last, the word drawn out like a sigh. ‘Well, here you are, then,’ he added, nodding his head as though he were acknowledging his fate.
‘Tea or coffee? And something to eat?’
‘Coffee. Just something with milk. Oh, and see if they’ve got any Danish pastries, will you?’
Lorimer grinned as he turned away. He’d order a plateful of them, reasoning that Ray probably hadn’t had breakfast; besides, he’d a weakness for Danish pastries, himself, a fact that was well known back in his own canteen.
‘I didn’t get down to see her often enough,’ Ray began, looking down at the mug of coffee, one finger hovering over the selection of cakes. ‘Too busy.’
Lorimer nodded but said nothing. It was a perennial problem with senior officers: the job taking precedence over home and family life, sometimes to the detriment of a marriage. They were always too busy. Crime didn’t take a holiday, did it?
‘Tried to see her when I could and then…’ Ray broke off with a shrug that expressed more than mere words could achieve. ‘Well, the job suddenly wasn’t important any more, was it? Grace was running out of time, you see. I just couldn’t be arsed, if you want to know the truth.’
‘Don’t think I’ll quote that in my report.’ Lorimer smiled at him gently.
‘Och, I’m past bothering what you write, frankly. Retired, pensioned off. Who gives a monkey’s what I say now?’
‘Actually I do,’ Lorimer told him.
‘How’s that?’ Ray’s head came up suddenly, frowning as he looked his former fellow officer in the eyes. ‘Stickler for the details, is that it? Didn’t have you down as a pen pusher, Lorimer. Thought that was more Mitchison’s style.’
‘Stickler for the facts, maybe,’ he replied. ‘Look, Colin, I don’t like doing this review any more than your former officers like having me hanging round their necks, but there are things I really want to know about that fire. Call me a nosy beggar, if you like, but there were rumours at the time that not everything was being done by the book.’
Colin Ray held Lorimer’s blue gaze as long as he was able, his own eyes fierce with a sudden anger. Then he looked away again, taking a sip of his coffee as if to delay his answer.
‘What are you saying, Lorimer?’
‘I’m asking you, Colin. About the case. It wasn’t just that you spent time with Grace. And God knows no one in their right minds would blame you for that. No. It’s the way the finger was pointed at local villains. But not at anyone in particular. Get what I mean?’
‘You think that smells funny?’
‘Aye, I do. Strikes me that not a lot was done to investigate the victims’ own background.’
Colin Ray shook his head. ‘Och, well, I suppose it’ll all come out somehow and better you hear it from me than one of the others.’
Lorimer stopped his cup halfway to his mouth and put it back on to the table.
‘Was hauled in to Pitt Street for a wee chat with our Chief Constable. David Isherwood. Did you know that he lives up in Kilmacolm? No? Well, anyway, he wanted to warn me off any sniffing around Jackson’s business affairs.’
‘And ordinarily you might have ignored that and just got on with the job?’
‘Aye, I’m as ornery a bastard as you are, Lorimer.’ Ray smiled properly for the first time that morning.
‘But Grace…’
‘… was a damn sight more important than bothering my ginger with what I was supposed not to do, see?’
‘And now?’
Colin Ray gave another wintry smile. ‘If I were in charge of a review I’d make it my business to see everything that had been missed. No stone unturned. No ignoring any wee slimy creatures that could be lurking among Jackson’s affairs.’
The sky had closed in, grey and louring, by the time he left Cardwell Bay and headed back up the coast road, the first few drops of rain spotting the windscreen. A typical change in the weather, Lorimer thought to himself, turning the heater up a notch. The keen gardeners round these parts might well be spreading sharp sand on to their perfect lawns, but surely it would be a good while before the appearance of spring flowers heralded some warmth in the ground. As if in tune with his thoughts, a blast of wind from across the river shook the big car and the rain began in earnest.
He’d spent a productive hour with the retired DCI. And now Lorimer knew where he wanted to begin on the pile of paperwork that waited back at Greenock HQ.
Thinking of the man who had shaken his hand as they’d parted, Lorimer wondered what sort of life the former police officer could enjoy now. Ray hadn’t mentioned any family but Lorimer thought he’d remembered Maggie saying something about a married daughter.
I’ll be put out to grass one day, too, if I survive to pensionable age, Lorimer suddenly thought. And then what? a little voice asked. Something related to policing? There were no children to follow them on, so there would be no wee ones to tug his trouser legs in years to come and call him Grandpa. Lorimer shook his head as if to rid himself of such notions. That prospect was years away and, besides, he had plenty to occupy his thoughts right now without worrying about the distant future.
But what about Maggie’s mum? How was she coping and, if she was able to come home from hospital, would she be fit to stay in her own little house again? That was something they’d need to discuss. But not until the subject arose, he told himself firmly. Meantime he’d concentrate on the case in hand. And, now that he’d spoken to Colin Ray, it offered the prospect of being a more interesting investigation than he’d at first assumed.
CHAPTER 12
Dr Solomon Brightman smiled and hummed a little tune to himself. Outside the windowless lecture theatre the rain might be sweeping down in sheets; here it was warm and dry and the babble of student voices told him that there were lots of young minds eagerly awaiting his thoughts on behavioural psychology. The spring term, so-called, lasted right up until Easter when the students would suddenly be seized with panic at the thought of final exams on the horizon; but now, with Valentine’s day imminent, there was a more genial atmosphere in his classes.
‘Love,’ he began and, at the sound of his voice, all heads turned towards the bearded man with eyes twinkling brightly behind his horn-rimmed spectacles, the chatter suddenly silenced.