‘Colin?’ She stopped again, hovering outside Colin’s bedroom door, listening. It was firmly shut and there was no sound from within. Where was the boy? He was the only one likely to return home early from a party. She turned to look at the front door but it was shut fast. Had she not closed it properly? And had the wind blown it shut?
Frowning slightly, Kirsty padded down the unlit corridor, one hand out ready to flick on the light switch as she reached the kitchen. But something made her turn left into the living room instead, just to see if anyone was at home after all.
At first she imagined the girl had fallen asleep, sprawled out in front of the television.
‘Eva?’
Kirsty moved forward and bent down, expecting the girl to sit up and yawn. One hand reached out to touch the back of her head but then she drew back as though guided by some inner instinct.
She stood up again and stepped around the recumbent figure, unaware that she was holding her breath.
Then, as Kirsty saw the expression in the dead girl’s eyes, the thin wail escaping from her open mouth turned into a scream of terror.
Detective Superintendent Lorimer crouched over the body, aware of the sounds of voices coming from the hall. The dead girl was lying on her back, one arm flung out, the fist curled tightly in the moment of death. Her head was bent to one side, blond hair partly obscuring her features, but Lorimer could see enough to make him wonder about the cause of death.
‘Manual strangulation?’ he asked, glancing up at the consultant pathologist who was kneeling on the other side of the girl’s body. The on-duty pathologist tonight was his friend, Dr Rosie Fergusson. He glanced at her with his usual admiration for her calm efficiency, knowing how different she could be at home as a doting mother and as the wife of Professor Brightman, an eminent psychologist and sometime criminal profiler who had worked with Lorimer in the past.
‘Looks like it,’ Rosie murmured, her gloved hands smoothing the hair from the victim’s face, letting Lorimer see for the first time what Kirsty Wilson had found earlier that night.
Eva Magnusson still had that ethereal quality in death that had captivated those who had gazed upon her: Lorimer saw the perfect oval face with flawless skin and bow-shaped lips that were slightly parted as though she had been taken by surprise. He watched as Rosie reached out to close the dead girl’s eyelids, seeing for the final time those pale blue Scandinavian eyes staring out at a world that had proved less than kind.
‘It’s not her only injury, though,’ Rosie went on, turning the girl’s head to one side. ‘Someone’s whacked her skull with a hefty object. Feel that,’ she offered, showing Lorimer a contusion towards the back of the victim’s skull.
The detective superintendent stroked the lump under the swathe of pale blond hair, nodding his agreement, trying to visualise just what had taken place in this room. Had someone broken in? Had it been a burglary gone wrong? There was still plenty to examine in this crime scene before a post-mortem even took place, providing them with more answers.
‘Is she okay?’ Rosie jerked her head towards the lounge door, listening to the renewed sound of sobbing.
Lorimer looked at her and sighed. ‘I doubt it. Being a cop’s daughter hasn’t given her any immunity from this sort of horror.’
‘Alistair still here then?’
Lorimer nodded. He had taken his detective sergeant’s call less than two hours ago, minutes after Kirsty Wilson’s hysterical phone call to her father. Like any crime scene, 24 Merryfield Avenue was now cordoned off at street level and the SOCOs had been quick to respond. Several white-suited figures had already come and gone from the lounge area, photographing the body and its immediate surroundings; now they awaited others who would come to take samples that would be sent to the labs at Pitt Street for forensic analysis.
Strictly speaking this was not a case that would usually be handled by an officer of his own rank but Alistair Wilson was more than just a colleague. The night shift DS from A Division who usually acted as scene-of-crime manager hadn’t demurred when he’d arrived to find Detective Superintendent Lorimer and Detective Sergeant Wilson already in the Anniesland flat. DI Jo Grant was already on her way at Lorimer’s request: she would take over as SIO once she arrived and caught up with everything.
‘When do you think you’ll…’
‘Do the post-mortem? Well, I expect it’ll be later on today. I’m on call all this weekend, as you know.’ Rosie made a face and then grinned. ‘Just as well your Maggie takes her godmotherly duties seriously, eh?’
Lorimer smiled back. He and Maggie had tried and failed at the parenting game but since Abigail Margaret Brightman’s arrival last year, that gap seemed to have been filled to everyone’s satisfaction. The baby was a one-year-old bundle of fun as far as Maggie Lorimer was concerned, and with no sleepless nights to spoil the image of her beloved goddaughter, Maggie had taken to her role with relish. Abby’s father, Professor Solomon Brightman, would be attending a conference at the University of Newcastle later today so Maggie was needed to look after Abby until one of her parents returned home again.
Lorimer straightened up as the officers came into the room carrying the body bag. Soon they would carefully transfer the corpse into the black container, zipping it up so that it became one more anonymous cadaver on a stretcher. The sigh that escaped him held an involuntary tremor, as though something deep inside wanted to cry out in protest at the sheer waste of a young life.
Then a real cry of ‘No!’ made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as a young man burst into the room. A uniformed officer struggled to hold him back, but not before Lorimer had time to see the sheer horror on the newcomer’s face.
‘Eva?’ he whispered, his mouth open as he looked at the shapeless form lying on the floor. Then the boy slumped sideways against the door jamb as though his legs had suddenly decided they were too weak to support him and the officer had little difficulty in bundling him back out into the hallway and into the kitchen.
‘Who’s that?’ Lorimer asked.
Rosie shrugged. ‘Must be one of the students who live with Kirsty and our little friend here,’ she nodded, her voice tinged with regret. Dr Rosie Fergusson might be well used to examining the dead, young and old alike, but she had never become so hardened with practice that she could not understand the pain that surrounded a sudden death like this. ‘Poor boy,’ she sighed. ‘At least he was spared seeing her close up…’
Lorimer gave her a pat on the shoulder before leaving the room and following the officer into what was a large, square kitchen. He looked up at the array of plants cascading down from a set of false beams, ducking instinctively lest his six-foot-four frame knocked against them.
Kirsty Wilson was sitting at a big black table, her arms around the young man’s heaving shoulders, and Lorimer hesitated for a moment, reluctant to disturb the pair. He watched as Kirsty sought to calm her flatmate, her voice murmuring something in a soft gentle tone, and the policeman was struck by the girl’s evident maturity: she, who only a short time ago had been stricken with shock, was now capable of administering some tenderness towards another rather than seeking a shoulder to cry on for herself.
‘It’s okay, Colin,’ she was telling him, ‘it’s okay.’
Lorimer pursed his lips into a grim line. It was anything but okay, but what words could you use to console a young man in such hellish circumstances?
The boy looked up then, his pale face streaked with tears, eyes already bloodshot.
‘Who’re you?’ he said, straightening up as he looked at Lorimer.
‘’S okay, Colin. This is Mr Lorimer,’ Kirsty told him, stroking his sleeve as though he were a small child.