The Bird That Did Not Sing (DCI Lorimer) (23 page)

S
trike up a conversation with any Glasgow taxi driver and he will begin to tell you his stories: stories about people who have travelled with him (dropping as many famous names as he can manage), stories about things that have happened to him, quirky or dangerous, but omitting the regular drudgery of cleaning vomit off his upholstery.

There was not much to say about the girl sitting in the back of his taxi today. She was young, had one arm in a sling and the usual expression of any teenager who’d fallen out with her mother. At least he supposed the big woman who had instructed him to wait was the mother. A quick glance via the rear-view mirror had produced nothing from the black girl, not a flicker of interest, no response to the winning smile he had darted towards her. She just sat there staring at the floor, a look on her face that he’d seen hundreds of times from his own girls. And yet… it was a lovely face, the taxi driver told himself, taking more time to study the smooth dark skin, the perfect oval shape, those high cheekbones that gave her the air of an exotic princess.

She must have sensed his stare, for she looked up and he saw her eyes, huge dark pools observing him gravely. A man could lose himself in eyes like that, he told himself, the thought making him suddenly uncomfortable.

She was just a kid, his wiser self reminded him.

But as she looked away, he wondered if there was a story here after all. What was it the big mama had hissed at him as she’d slammed the taxi door shut?

Make
sure
she
doesn’t
get
out!

Lorimer listened to the officer’s report as the evening sun shone through the slatted blinds. The second shift was still outside the flat, McAlpin’s van right at the mouth of the close, and with each successive hour the likelihood that the ginger-haired man was upstairs on a plumbing job diminished. The name of the owner had been checked out: the flat was registered to an Asian landlord who had numerous properties all over the city, the current tenant being a Mrs Swanson, who paid her rent on time and was no trouble, according to the factor. So what was the big man with the tattoos doing in her flat with another man who looked vaguely Nigerian, as Hammond had put it?

Wait
and
see,
the voice of reason whispered in his ear after he had finished the call.
Something
will
emerge
in
time.

Lorimer stretched his arm out and pulled on the blind cord, letting the stream of brightness into the room, particles of dust dancing in the air. He was not good at sitting in the director’s chair, waiting and wondering, planning the next move of a team who were only half aware of all that was transpiring in their city.

The tall man might have been telling that little voice to sod off as he gathered up his jacket and strode purposefully out of the room, leaving only a sense of the aerial motes being disturbed by his passing.

Asa stretched out on the bed, feeling the tingle in her bare toes. It was safe up here, high above the city, its traffic only a dim sound, like the rumble of thunder across the veldt. Shereen had brought a brown paper bag with some food: a hamburger in a roll with bits of slippery lettuce and a carton of thin chips that were already cold. But the girl had wolfed them down, realising that the pain gnawing in her belly was actually hunger.

‘Food,’ Shereen had said, waving the bags in the air as she entered the hotel room. Asa had grinned then, knowing that word. Food was after all a basic for all humankind, like water, the latter appearing in the form of a six-pack of Highland Spring, the label sporting the same logo that Asa had seen displayed as they had journeyed across the city.

She had pointed to the bottle and nudged the woman who sat beside her devouring her own burger.

‘Thistle,’ Shereen had told her. ‘Thi-ssil. Okay?’

‘Thiss-ill,’ Asa repeated, looking at the green and purple emblem flowering on the top of the label.

Shereen squashed the empty carton and pushed it back into the paper carrier bag. Then she looked at Asa.

‘Listen,’ she told the girl. ‘You’re safe now, understand?’

‘Safe?’ Asa’s puzzled face made the older woman give an exasperated sigh. Opening her arms and coming closer, she enveloped the girl gently in her arms, rocking her back and forth.

‘Safe,’ she murmured. ‘Safe.’

For the first time in many weeks, Asa allowed her body to relax against the woman’s warm bulk. The word had a gentle sibilant sound, like the trickle of a breeze through the thorn trees. It meant that they had escaped danger together. And that now she might finally trust one other person with her life.

When the detective superintendent eased himself into the back of the van, neither of the officers made any comment. It was for Lorimer to explain his unexpected presence, not for them to question why he was there. The night-time vehicle of choice was a dark burgundy van with an engine under its bonnet that did not match its ageing number plates. Anybody passing by would see a dilapidated-looking vehicle with an ancient roof rack. To outside eyes the van appeared empty. Several attempts to break into it had been made by opportunistic neds, but the sudden flashing lights caused by their efforts had always scared them off. Happily there had never been a need for either of the officers to leave their post and deal with the intruders.

Hidden in the back of the van, where they had a clear view of the outside world aided by an infrared camera lens, the two watchers sat quietly, well used to the strictures imposed by the job they had chosen to do.

‘Any change?’ Lorimer asked.

The man closest to him on the padded bench shook his head. ‘Not much. A few other folk coming and going; one of the arrivals looked like another Nigerian. No lights on this side. Probably both gone to bed,’ he said. Beside him, his partner had the camera trained on the top floor of the building, waiting, seeking, praying perhaps for some form of activity.

It was nearing midnight and the place was completely deserted apart from the white transit van, that glowed like a shabby ghost under the yellow street lamp, and their own vehicle, parked several metres along on the opposite side of the road.

It was a tiny movement, a small beam of light flittering like a moth along the ground, that made each of the men in the back of the surveillance van look towards the lane that ran between the houses. Then shadows loomed against the gable end of the building, followed by two black-skinned men carrying something between them. As they passed under the street lamp, there was a faint sheen from the rolled-up tarpaulin, the criss-crossed rope holding its contents securely.

The three watchers saw the men place their burden on the ground, heard the hinges of the van’s rear door protest as the taller of the men pulled them open and the thud as the bundle hit the floor.

Just then a third figure emerged from the close, taller and heavier than the others.

‘That’s McAlpin,’ one of the officers whispered as they watched him slip into the driver’s side of the van.

The rear doors closed again with a grind and a screech, locks crying out for oil, then the Nigerians jumped into the van. The whirr of an engine starting up, a faint plume of white from the exhaust and the van glided away from the pavement.

In seconds Lorimer found himself seated behind the two officers, the panel between the back of the vehicle and its cabin open, eyes boring along the street where the plumber’s van had disappeared.

It was going to be difficult to follow their quarry at this time of night, with so little traffic on the road, and so they kept a decent distance behind the white van as it travelled through the city towards the outskirts of Rutherglen. Several times their driver had to stop in a side street, out of sight, as McAlpin’s van came to a set of traffic lights: to be sitting on their tail was a dead giveaway.

Lorimer listened as the officer in the front passenger seat gave their location to someone back at base, through Rutherglen Main Street, along and up past the stone villas of Cambuslang, their bay windows like closed eyelids against the little drama passing them by in the night. On and up they travelled, round bends and through recently built housing schemes until the road flattened out into a junction where four roads met at oblique angles.

The dark red van sat in the shadows, its engine ticking like a patient heartbeat as they waited to see which way McAlpin was headed.

‘Cathkin Braes,’ Lorimer said as he watched the tail lights disappear across the main road and head left. They followed slowly, their own lights now switched off for fear of alerting McAlpin to their presence. It was a necessary ploy, Lorimer realised as they turned off the narrow road and headed along a farm track. Several times their vehicle lurched and bumped as its wheels found unseen potholes. It was not absolutely dark; the night sky was a velvet blue studded with stars, no sodium glow from street lamps out here in this unspoiled part of the countryside. A stand of pine trees blotted out the view for a moment, then Lorimer saw that they were approaching what might be a little village.

The shapes of farm buildings and barns loomed large on their left, rows of neat cottages flanking their right. Somewhere a dog barked as they passed, and Lorimer looked up at the cottage windows to see if anyone was aware of their presence. But all the windows looked out with covered eyes, the residents slumbering safely within.

‘He’s heading for the nature reserve,’ Lorimer said suddenly, remembering now where he was. The police had approached the lowlying pond from a different entrance, officers tramping across tussocky grass to reach the place where the African girl’s body had been found.

The driver gave him a sharp look. ‘How do you know?’

Lorimer shook his head. ‘Recent crime scene,’ he replied tersely. But despite the officer’s intent stare, the detective superintendent was not ready to divulge just what the nature of that crime scene had been. MI6 might be looking at a potential terrorist, but Lorimer was beginning to believe that the men they followed along this narrow farm track were suspects in a murder investigation. And just how to extricate each of these tangled threads from the other was troubling his mind.

They came to a halt beside some scrubby bushes, well enough out of sight of the occupants of the white transit as it rolled over the track, its nose suddenly tilting forwards.

‘They’re stopping,’ Lorimer said at last, seeing the beam from the headlights suddenly cut off. ‘There’s a pond down there,’ he whispered, remembering the body that had been fished out just a few weeks before.

The surveillance officers glanced at one another before looking back at the transit, their high-definition binoculars trained on the yawning gap that was the opened rear doors, and the sudden activity of the two figures.

‘Could be a body,’ one of them suggested, as the bundle was lifted out of the van. ‘Right sort of weight,’ he murmured. ‘What do you want to do, sir?’

Lorimer bit his lip. What he wanted to do was grab these men, uncover the heavy thing they were now carrying between them and haul them back to HQ for questioning. If McAlpin was compromised now, would it drive the rest of the terrorist group underground? Or could they use this event as something totally unrelated to their search for the cell? So far Lorimer had been unwilling to involve other police units as this was an MI6 operation, but the time for such considerations was clearly over.

‘Call for back-up,’ he said, leaning across and pointing towards the passenger door. ‘I’m going after them. Don’t let that van get away. Switch on a full beam as soon as I’m close enough.’

His feet made a soft thud on the long grass, then he was heading downhill, half crouching, half running, careful to keep to the shadows of the bushes, grateful that there was no traitor moon shining overhead. As he crept closer he could hear voices. Faint at first, then louder as one of them cursed and he saw the tarpaulin-covered bundle fall to the ground. More curses came, and then the massive figure of McAlpin swung a fist at one of the others, who cried out in pain.

Lorimer hunkered down behind a row of gorse bushes, their jagged branches digging into his side, the heady coconut scent of their yellow flowers sweetening the air, watching and waiting, listening and hoping for the sound of an approaching police car.

The three men had picked up the tarpaulin again, and now he could see them heading further downhill, heads bobbing out of sight as they approached the margin of the pond.

There was a splash as something heavy hit the water, then the place was flooded with light.

Lorimer stood up and began to run, aware of the footsteps coming behind him.

‘Police! Stay where you are!’ he called, his voice ringing out across the lowlying marshes.

For a moment the three men turned and he could see their faces illuminated in the full beam of headlights shining from the surveillance van.

One of the men slipped and slithered as he tried to regain the bank; another had jumped clear and was making for the transit, McAlpin himself seeming to hesitate for a moment.

Lorimer saw the big man’s upraised arm, then heard a faint splash as something hit the water.

Whatever it was, the man now running towards the white van had wanted rid of it. He had caught up with the other African now, and Lorimer’s mouth opened in astonishment as McAlpin struck out at the man, felling him to the ground.

Lorimer sped across the last few yards, intending to throw himself at the bulky figure. If he caught hold of his leg they would crash together to the ground, he thought, imagining the man’s yell.

It happened so quickly. His quarry stopped and turned, so close now that he could see the naked hatred in those eyes.

Then, with an animal cry, McAlpin lashed out with both fists.

Lorimer heard the sickening blow to his head, felt a blinding pain. The last thing he saw were tufts of grass as the ground came up to hit him.