Lorimer smiled at her. It was refreshing to have someone like Kate around: for others it might mean the nuisance of the woman being off on maternity leave fairly soon, but it gave Lorimer a sense of normality. Birth and new life was a wholesome contrast to the sort of work they did, often involving violent deaths.
‘Does that mean I’m to lose all of my best officers for today?’
Kate shrugged. ‘DI Martin’s away to the scene just now. An old lady’s been mugged at her own home; or so her neighbour seems to think.’
The woman’s tone gave no indication that she felt anything for the victim. But in this job an officer had to maintain a detachment from the tragedies that occurred each day. Start feeling sore at every crime that came along and you’d end up a basket case, Lorimer remembered one of his lecturers at Tulliallan saying. And it was true. But it hadn’t stopped him having feelings for the victims in his own cases. Feelings of outrage, sometimes; feelings of pity for a life cut short. And shouldn’t there be some heartache for an old person too? Especially one who had been brutally attacked.
Lorimer’s thoughts turned to Maggie’s mum. How would they feel if it had been her?
DI Martin saw that the blood had not been completely washed away by the thunderstorm, though some of it had been watered down by the driving rain.
‘Jean Wilson’s her name, Ma’am,’ the uniform offered. ‘Her son’s on his way over here from his work now.’
‘Okay. Get family liaison on to it, will you,’ Rhoda ordered. ‘And see if the doctor wants a pathologist over here as well.’
There was a small group of people gathered at the foot of the stairs, surrounding the body. Attempts had been made to conserve the scene of the crime and treads had been placed from the entrance of the house through the hallway and kitchen out into the back garden where the victim lay on the concrete slabs. Rhoda Martin seethed inwardly. The Detective Sergeant who was usually the scene of crime manager (and responsible for keeping everything as intact as possible for forensics) was at a funeral, leaving her in charge. It was demeaning, she told herself. She should be the SIO in the case, not the crime scene manager. It was all Lorimer’s fault, taking staff away from them, she decided pettishly. Still, she’d put her name on this one if nobody more senior turned up. And delegate all this stuff to the DS when he came back from the crematorium.
A neighbour had called the police. A woman putting out rubbish in her bin had caught sight of the old lady lying there on the patio. She was back inside her own home now, having tea poured into her by one of the uniforms. Rhoda would have a word with her as soon as she was free here. A large tarpaulin tent was being erected now around the body, the gusting wind threatening to blow the whole thing sideways. Further along the rows of back gardens she could see one or two figures standing, watching the process. Nosy beggars, she thought to herself, wanting to go across and shout at them to mind their own bloody business. They’d be door-stepped soon enough, their fascination with this crime scene tempered by the routine questioning from police officers. At the top of one set of back steps two white-haired women stood, huddling together, their faces turned towards the scene three houses along from them. The gardens were separated by low wooden fences, easily stepped over by neighbours seeking a short cut to visit. Or by someone hoping for a quick getaway, Rhoda thought.
‘Did she fall or was she pushed?’ A voice behind her made Rhoda turn to see DS Wainwright.
‘The pathologist’ll let us know in due course, if we’re to call one out, but it looks to me as if it could just be an accident.’
‘Any reason to think otherwise?’
‘Och, the woman who rang us up said her neighbour had been mugged. The sight of all that blood must’ve made her panic.’
‘Right. But you’re obviously not taking any chances, are you?’ Wainwright’s eyes found Rhoda’s own and she gave him a little smile. They all knew she’d taken too many chances when DCI Ray had been in charge and now it was time to exert a little more caution, especially with Lorimer in the background.
Gary Wilson sat slumped in the chair of his mother’s sitting room. Someone had switched on the electric fire and its artificial coals were glowing in the hearth but even that couldn’t stop the trembling. His hands were round a mug of hot sweet tea and he’d drunk most of it without realising. Now he held onto it as if it were the most precious thing in the whole room. A uniformed policeman had spoken to him on his arrival and later there was this older woman, talking quietly to him and giving him some of the facts of his mother’s sudden death. He’d cried when he’d seen her body; face down on the patio, her legs splayed at an awkward angle, rain soaking through her skirt and tights.
The questions were still coming at him and he only nodded or shook his head, not trusting his voice to speak. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever experienced before. Dad’s death had been a call in the night from the hospital and a quiet bedside farewell with whispering nurses hovering around him, painless and sanitised, not like this.
For a moment the female police officer excused herself and Gary’s eyes wandered over the room. Mum’s coffee table with its lace cover, a new pile of library books, her laptop over there on the desk with some papers to one side. Gary set down the mug on the carpet, his fingers brushing against a hard, leather-covered book. Bending over, he saw what it was. Mum’s diary. It was almost a standing joke that Mum could tell you what the weather had been like years back, since she’d kept her diary for as long as he could remember. Carefully, almost reverently, Gary Wilson lifted the little book and opened it.
There was no entry for February fourteenth. Saint Valentine’s Day, Gary thought with a pang. What a day to die! Now it would be forever associated with Mum’s passing. Drawing the diary towards him, Gary began reading the last entry. Then the one before that. Leaning forward, he skimmed over the pages, his eyes widening as he read his mother’s words.
The family liaison officer came into the sitting room, another mug of tea in her hand. Gary Wilson looked up at her and held the diary aloft.
‘I think someone better have a look at this,’ he told her.
‘She wasn’t a frail old lady,’ Gary Wilson insisted. ‘Ask anyone. She was old, aye, and had rheumatism, but she got around just fine. I don’t think this was an accident,’ he said, his mouth closing in a firm line.
DI Martin sat beside the man, his mother’s diary in her hand. She’d read the entries but she’d also seen other books lying on top of the coffee table. The old lady was into crime, it seemed. The made-up sort. And she was a member of a writers’ workshop. So did these diary entries bear any resemblance to facts or were they, too, a bit of fanciful fiction?
As if reading Rhoda’s thoughts, Gary Wilson turned sideways in his chair to face her. ‘Mum’s diaries were totally factual,’ he said. ‘We always knew what had happened on a day-to-day basis. You could depend on her diary.’ He smiled a little, his eyes looking into the distance as if remembering. ‘If you wanted to know what happened on any given day a couple of years back, Mum’s diaries would tell you. She even kept a note of what we had for Christmas dinner.’
‘So this cyclist…?’
‘Was real,’ Gary told her, his fist thumping the arm of the chair. ‘She made stuff up for the writers’ group, but it was mostly articles she wrote. And sold,’ he added, the tinge of pride unmistakable in his voice. ‘She wouldn’t invent this man, whoever he was.’
DI Martin nodded. It did look as if the old lady had been stalked. The mentions of the cyclist and the old lady’s additional observations were pretty clear. A hooded man, riding so slowly I thought he might fall off that fancy bike of his, Jean Wilson had written. Back again, today, she’d put in another entry. Is he following me??? In all, the cyclist had been mentioned five times, too many for it to have been a mere coincidence, a fact that the victim had also been shrewd enough to set down in her final entry.