Lorimer’s head began to ache. School holidays … there was a link there surely? Abruptly his phone rang and he put his hand up in apology.

  ‘Sorry, have to take this,’ he said and turning on his heel strode back to his own room and shut the door behind him.

  ‘Morning, darling.’ Maggie’s cheerful voice made Lorimer grip the telephone harder. It was obvious she hadn’t a clue what was going on.

  ‘You haven’t seen the papers this morning?’ he asked gruffly.

  ‘The Press and Journal? No, why, have I made the headlines?’ She laughed.

  ‘Something like that.’ Lorimer sighed. ‘It’s the Gazette.’ And he picked up Enderby’s article, conscious of her indrawn breath as he read it aloud.

  ‘Who … ? Ah, it must have been Ivy,’ Maggie said quietly. ‘She’s been hinting that I needed a wee boost of publicity.’

  ‘You don’t think she’s behind this?’

  ‘Goodness, no!’ Maggie protested. ‘I still think it must be someone at Muirpark. Some daft boys having a laugh at my expense. But Ivy would be the first one to capitalise on it,’ she admitted.

  For a moment Lorimer considered asking his wife to come home or at least to ask the PR woman to talk to him, but what was the point? The damage was done now and if this was silly lads having a lark just because their teacher looked like the two victims he’d not only be wasting police time but making a complete fool of his team and their investigation.

  ‘Just be careful,’ he said at last. ‘Don’t give any more interviews to the press, okay?’

  ‘Of course.’ Maggie’s voice was worried now. ‘I’m really sorry this is causing such a bother. These poor families have enough to think about without some stupid person using their tragedy as the basis for some teenage nonsense.’

  That was typical of her to consider others before herself, Lorimer thought, wishing he could fold his wife into his arms there and then.

  ‘I don’t want to sound alarmist,’ he told her slowly, ‘but if you see or hear anything odd, let me know right away. My phone will always be switched on.’

  ‘There’s been nothing else,’ Maggie told him. ‘Honestly.’

  ‘Okay, but be careful.’

  ‘I will. Promise,’ she whispered. Then, ‘Love you.’ Lorimer felt a pang listening to her voice. Did she sound a little hoarse, as if there were tears not far away?

  ‘Love you, too.’

  Maggie put down the phone and stifled a sob. This was so stupid! Why had Ivy contacted the press? She gritted her teeth, angry at the woman for meddling and making a complete fool of her. It was simply playing into the hands of whoever was behind this. She racked her brains, trying to recall any incident when she had been forced to mete out a punishment to any of her pupils, but nothing came to mind. That happened so rarely in her classes; perhaps a talkative student would need a raised eyebrow on occasion but generally Mrs Lorimer had a reputation as a popular teacher, her lessons full of imaginative tasks that never seemed like work, an accolade put on Facebook by Kyle Kerrigan, one of her former pupils.

  The Kerrigans! Maggie sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed. The older brothers were a bad lot and the father had been in and out of jail more times than she could remember. Did they still have a grudge against the Lorimers after that awful case that had divided the staff at Muirpark Secondary? But that was ten years ago, she calculated. And Kyle was now a young man, following a successful career as a PE instructor in the army. No, she realised, there was not one pupil in her classes that she would have said had the urge to do anything like this. It was well known that her husband was a top police officer and so perhaps targeting Mrs Lorimer was nothing to do with her personally. Had Bill put away any family member of a pupil in her school? Someone outwith her own classes who harboured bitterness against him? Maggie would be an easy target and seeing her picture in the Gazette may well have sparked an idea to pester her in at attempt to get back at Bill.

  She lifted her phone again and began to text her husband, smiling wryly at her economy of words, the very exercise that she had given her second years before the holidays.

  ‘It’ll do you no harm,’ Ivy insisted as she held the newspaper aloft, pre-empting Maggie’s protestations. ‘If there is a kid at your school making mischief, they’ll think twice now before attempting anything else.’

  ‘They’ll think twice when I find out who it is!’ Maggie replied angrily. ‘Wee devils have no right to do things like that!’

  ‘It will all peter out, I’m sure,’ Ivy soothed, seeing the dark expression on Maggie’s face.

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘Of course,’ Ivy said briskly. ‘You’ll find today’s newspaper in tomorrow’s cat litter tray. People have short memories, but we can work this to your advantage, all the same.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Ivy leaned across the breakfast table and Maggie saw a gleam in her small dark eyes.

  ‘The nationals can run their own version of this,’ she declared firmly. ‘Maybe just a small bit, but it will be enough to draw attention to your new book. The end of each article will have details of the title and publisher, just like that original article in the Gazette when you gave such a brilliant interview.’

  ‘It was Martin Enderby who wrote that as well,’ Maggie murmured.

  Ivy shrugged her shoulders. ‘Good freelance writer,’ was all she said as though by contacting him she had done Maggie a favour. ‘And that’s my job, remember,’ she added, fixing Maggie with a glare. ‘I’m here to promote your new book and if I had let this opportunity go by then I would have been doing you a disservice.’

  Maggie drew in a deep breath, suppressing the words she wanted to express. Ivy’s argument was not what she wanted to hear but until the end of the tour in a few days’ time she would put up with whatever the woman decided.

  ‘Remember, I’m an old hand at this job,’ Ivy went on, lifting her napkin and spreading it across her lap as a waiter approached their table.

  ‘Celia Gemmell.’ Niall Cameron nodded at the photograph again. ‘She worked in the school off and on for a few months then disappeared last year. About this time,’ he told Lorimer.

  ‘Any follow-up from Missing Persons?’

  Cameron shook his head. ‘The mother didn’t push them much. Notes taken at the time recorded that she didn’t seem overly worried if she never saw her daughter again. Something rotten in that relationship, if you ask me,’ he remarked gloomily.

  ‘And thereafter? Any sign of the woman using credit cards or a passport?’

  ‘It wasn’t followed up that far. If every missing person was pursued in that manner we’d never get to grips with real crimes.’ Cameron sighed.

  And it was true enough; there were many reasons why someone would want to disappear, begin a new chapter of their lives without any interference from family members: an abusive relationship, money problems, even a new relationship elsewhere in the country … The list was endless and, besides, people had a right to disappear and begin over if that was their own choice.

  ‘Get on to Missing Persons again,’ Lorimer said at last. ‘See if there has been any sign of credit card, phone, bank or any internet activity from Celia Gemmell.’ He sighed. ‘If that’s what she’s still calling herself.’

  He did not need to add the unspoken thought that hung in the air between them: If she is still alive.

  The photograph lay side by side with the three others now on his desk: four faces that bore an uncanny resemblance to one another. Carolyn Kane, her bright smile shining out from the newspaper article about her success as a young accountant; Patricia Donovan, face turned coquettishly over one shoulder, the pose practised so often for the cameras; Maggie’s delight at her new success evident in those bright eyes and now Celia Gemmell, that small photo showing an attractive woman whose features so resembled the others. Yet there was a sombre cast to Celia’s face that was missing from the other three and Lorimer wondered what the school kitchen assistant would have looked like had she smiled into the camera instead.

  ‘Where are you, Celia?’ he said softly. ‘And who would have wanted you dead?’

  The rented flat where Celia had lived had long since been let out again, her possessions dumped in the basement, something that Molly appreciated. It would have been easy enough for Grafton, the landlord, to have chucked them into a skip. As it was, the rooms were now occupied by a different tenant and there was little point in trying to send in a forensic team after all this time. What on earth were they supposed to be looking for anyway? It wasn’t as if the missing woman had turned up dead, she fumed, as she carted box after box of Celia Gemmell’s stuff back to her car.

  ‘Didn’t have an awful lot to begin with,’ the landlord said, standing on the pavement watching the detective. Molly glanced up at his face, seeing a tinge of pink grow along the jawline. A guilty conscience if ever there was one, she told herself. Probably he’d creamed off the best stuff and left the rest in case anyone came looking. His words rang true, though. There weren’t a lot of clothes and those that had remained were packed into an old suitcase with some shoes and a pair of mud-caked wellingtons thrust into a large polythene bag.

  ‘D’you know if she owned any other luggage?’ Molly asked him, watching the clasped hands tightening, the man’s nerves showing in a different manner.

  Grafton shook his head. ‘She arrived with just the one case, I do remember that,’ he told Molly. ‘But I never saw her leave, you know. She still owed me rent,’ he grumbled, letting his eyes slide away from Molly’s stare.

  The detective paused for a moment. ‘Didn’t you think that was strange, Mr Grafton? Just disappearing like that, leaving most of her things behind?’

  ‘Not the first time someone’s done a moonlight on me,’ he huffed. ‘And there was only the old woman here to ask questions. Told her what I told you. She just didn’t come back one day as far as I can tell.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘She didn’t want any of her things either,’ he added. Then, stepping closer to Molly and dropping his voice to a whisper, ‘I think there was bad blood between them, you know.’

  Molly nodded. Mrs Gemmell was next on their list but first she had to get all of these boxes back to Helen Street for their tech guys to examine.

  ‘Was there anything else? A laptop? Mobile phone?’ Molly caught another guilty expression on the man’s face. ‘Perhaps you put them somewhere else for safe keeping?’ she suggested, giving Grafton the opportunity to jump on that idea, a way out if he had nicked them for himself. ‘Police have ways of tracing such devices,’ she smiled, keeping him in her gaze.

  ‘Ah.’ He slapped his forehead in a theatrical gesture. ‘Sorry, sorry, forgot all about them!’ He scuttled back into the main hall and disappeared, leaving Molly to shake her head at the simple duplicity of human nature.

  She had just slammed the boot of the car closed when the landlord reappeared carrying another cardboard box.

  ‘So much on my mind,’ he mumbled, handing over the carton, avoiding Molly’s eyes as he did. ‘Sorry, sorry … ’

  ‘Here’s my card,’ Molly told him, after heaving the box into the back seat. ‘If you hear from Ms Gemmell at all, please contact us immediately. And,’ she added slowly, ‘we may need to talk to you again, ask more questions, all right?’

  Grafton nodded miserably, watching her climb into the car, and Molly wondered just what they would find on the laptop and phone. Had he wiped them clean? Put them back to factory setting hoping to sell them on? She gave a sigh as she drove into a space in the traffic. At least they had them, she thought, a small feeling of excitement swelling inside. Celia Gemmell had left them behind when she had disappeared. But had she intended to? Or was her disappearance so sudden that she had not had time to gather up any of her belongings? Worse still, had someone else taken these very choices from her?

  ‘Nothing, absolutely nothing!’ Lorimer shook his head as he let the reports fall back on to his desk. ‘What does that tell us?’

  Solly raised his eyebrows but did not offer an explanation.

  ‘You think she’s dead, don’t you?’

  The professor looked back solemnly at Lorimer. ‘It would be uncharacteristic of a killer to pick on two women so suddenly without having had any previous experience, don’t you think?’

  ‘You’re assuming our man is some nutter—’ Lorimer stopped himself and sighed, the word had escaped him before he’d had time to think. ‘Somebody with a mental health problem,’ he said instead.

  ‘If he is fixated on a particular type of woman then, yes, it is possible that he has taken other lives before those of Carolyn and Patricia. What bothers me is … ’ He trailed off and looked thoughtful for a moment. Lorimer waited, accustomed to Solly’s long pauses as the psychologist formulated what he wanted to say.

  ‘It’s the school holidays,’ Solly said at last. ‘This missing woman disappeared during the school holidays and that was when our attacker took the other women’s lives,’ he told Lorimer. ‘It could be a coincidence, of course, but as you are fond of telling me, you don’t believe in coincidences.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Lorimer admitted. ‘So, let’s look at this. A woman on the kitchen staff disappears, we don’t know where or why, but we do know that she had a habit of poor timekeeping and she was practically estranged from her family. What was that all about?’ he murmured thoughtfully.

  ‘Our perpetrator uses school holiday times because these are the only times he has free to follow his prey,’ Solly suggested.

  ‘Is he a teacher, d’you think?’

  ‘Or someone who works in a school and gets more time off around then. A janitor? Handyman?’

  ‘We need to talk to the staff at Celia Gemmell’s school,’ Lorimer said firmly. ‘But that can wait till we hear back from DS Newton.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Lorimer nodded. ‘She’s visiting the missing woman’s mother. And,’ he glanced out of the office window, ‘I’d love to be a fly on the wall to hear just what she says.’

  Janet Gemmell’s home was not quite what Molly had expected. The retirement complex in the small Renfrewshire village had taken the detective by surprise, its creamy white walls and trim gardens full of swaying daffodils much more in keeping with the older properties than any new building ought to be. And yet, the architectural details, like those crow-stepped gables picked out in grey paint, or the leaded windows glazed like several of the grand houses nearby, gave Oakwell Court the traditional look its architect had obviously intended.

  Each apartment was situated off a wide octagonal space, the roof partially glazed so that light shone down on the reception hall. Outside each white-painted door lay plant pots, some with simple greenery, others with bright azaleas.

  Janet Gemmell’s name was fixed to her door on a Rennie Mackintosh style plaque:

  It gave Molly an inkling of the woman right away; she wanted to show that she had a hint of class, the detective decided. And it intrigued Molly to see if she was correct.

  The doorbell was silent from outside and Molly stood patiently, hoping that it actually worked. Soon enough, the door opened and a small woman stood, her grey hair cut into a severe shape close to her skull, looking up at Molly with an expression that was far from welcoming.

  ‘DS Newton,’ Molly began. ‘We spoke on the telephone.’ She smiled encouragingly.

  ‘Better come in.’ The woman’s deep voice was gruff, the sort that indicated a lifetime’s smoking habit.

  ‘Through here,’ Janet Gemmell directed, walking ahead of Molly into a small sitting room that was furnished in pretty pastel shades, the two-seater sofa and matching armchair covered in a floral fabric with pink roses and butterflies. Here and there Molly noticed well-polished silver-framed photographs and an array of china ornaments, the whole effect reminding her of a great-aunt’s house where children had been terrified to touch a thing lest it break. Floor-to-ceiling bifold doors led out to a small terrace where a chair and table sat; Janet Gemmell’s smoking spot, she guessed, as the sitting room itself had no smell of cigarettes.

  ‘It’s about Celia, then,’ Mrs Gemmell began, fixing Molly with a pair of dark eyes that held no trace of sympathy. ‘What’s she done now?’

  ‘You haven’t heard from her?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ Janet Gemmell snapped. ‘Typical of her just to swan off and leave me to pick up the pieces.’

  ‘Oh? How was that?’ Molly ventured.

  ‘Had to pay her outstanding rent, didn’t I? She pushes off and I have to fork out. Again.’ The woman bristled with indignation.

  ‘Celia had a habit of disappearing?’

  Janet Gemmell’s eyes slid away from Molly’s gaze. ‘Well,’ she began, ‘she wasn’t what you would call very dependable.’

  That was vague enough to be a no, thought Molly. ‘She didn’t disappear like this before, did she?’

  Janet Gemmell looked down, hands twisting in her lap. Molly saw the slight shake of the head.

  ‘She didn’t even call to tell me where she was going … ’ The words came out as a whisper and Molly watched as the old woman swallowed hard, trying to keep her emotions in check. Was this a sort of grief? Or a simmering anger? Hard to tell.

  ‘You reported her missing after she failed to turn up for work,’ Molly said, consulting her notebook to check on the dates. ‘Yet you didn’t persist in asking Missing Persons to locate Celia. Why was that?’

  The sigh and the silent shrug were all she gave in answer.

  Could she push the woman on this? It might just make her clam up, Molly decided. And that was the last thing she wanted.

  ‘I need to ask you about Celia,’ Molly told her firmly. ‘We are trying to establish her whereabouts in connection to an ongoing case, so anything you can tell us will help to create an idea of what sort of person she is.’ Molly drew in a silent breath, aware that she had been about to say was. For now they had to go on the theory that Celia Gemmell was alive and missing of her own volition, no matter what alarm bells were ringing amongst the officers in the MIT.