In a moment he was upon him, fists pumping the other man’s face, sickening blows that made the stricken man kick out and begin to whimper.

  ‘No, be quiet!’ he hissed, but the man’s cries only became louder as he thumped him again and again.

  ‘Shut up,’ he said between clenched teeth, hands reaching below the hood, searching for his throat. ‘Shut. Up.’

  In seconds it was all over, the struggle ended, the man limp in his gloved hands.

  He looked around to see if there was anyone there but the streets were silent and the pavements bare. Who would want to be out on a night like this? he thought, snow stinging his eyes as it whirled in the gathering wind.

  The body was already beginning to be covered with white, dark jacket disappearing.

  The shadow of this tree would hide it until daylight showed, but for now he had little option but to retreat, hide his own presence there. He glanced up at the sky as he hurried across The Meadows, seeing the huge flakes continue to tumble earthwards. Time to move on. Nature was his ally now and no trace of him would be found here by morning.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ‘See there’s been a murder in Edinburgh.’ Niall Cameron nodded to Lorimer as they sat sipping coffee in the detective superintendent’s office, a quiet twenty minutes before the morning’s briefing.

  ‘Oh, aye?’

  ‘Young guy was found lying in the snow,’ Cameron remarked. ‘Lived in one of those sheltered accommodation places.’

  ‘A disabled man?’ Lorimer looked up.

  ‘Not physically,’ Cameron replied with a shake of his head. ‘Radio report described him as mentally challenged but able to live in a supported community. Poor fellow.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Usual sort of report. Investigation continuing. Nearest relatives informed. No name given out yet.’

  Lorimer looked out of the window. The sky was a pale blue and though there had been a frost whitening the grass when he had left home there was no sign of the snow that had fallen across the country. The east–west divide marked more than just a difference in attitude and culture, the weather could also be more severe in Scotland’s capital city.

  Maggie was there now, he thought, recalling her voice from the previous evening’s phone call. She had sounded happy. The tour was going well and Ivy had assured her that the size of her audiences were much larger than any she had seen before for a debut author. He made a face. The papers had had a field day over the previous weekend, Maggie’s photograph not only splashed across the pages of the supplements dealing with books but along with some of the main news items. That publicity woman had made sure that the public was going to see just how much his wife resembled those two dead women. Thank God they knew nothing about the MIT’s search for Celia Gemmell. Today he was hoping to have some communication from Professor Dawson. She had narrowed down the possible sites where the soil on these boots had originated. Now it was a matter of pinpointing the place where Celia had once walked.

  Where are you? Lorimer asked himself, the latest news about the Edinburgh murder already fading from his mind.

  Emily, the bookseller with the long red hair, seemed different today, observed Maggie, noticing the woman’s downcast expression, so markedly changed from the ebullient personality of the previous evening. Boyfriend trouble? she wondered, ready to be sympathetic whatever the situation.

  It was Ivy who whispered the explanation as they watched the books being set out on a table at the back of the hall.

  ‘Seems like a lad she knew was killed last night,’ Ivy told her behind a discreet hand. ‘I heard it on the news this morning in my room. Happened in the middle of this very city, can you imagine that?’ She gave an exaggerated shudder.

  ‘Poor Emily! Was it someone close?’ Maggie asked, glancing towards the bookseller.

  ‘One of her regular customers,’ Ivy shrugged. ‘Think he was at one of your talks,’ she added. ‘They say he was mentally challenged, poor bloke.’

  Maggie froze. Could it be … ?

  In a few swift strides she was along the aisle and standing next to Emily.

  ‘Your friend … ? I heard about the tragic death … ?’ Maggie faltered. What could she say?

  A huge sigh that might have stifled a sob issued from the woman and Maggie laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Edwin was in the shop last night,’ Emily said. ‘You might have noticed him. Always sat right at the front. Probably stared and stared … ’ She sniffed then rummaged in her skirt pocket for a handkerchief. ‘He loved your book,’ she added then blew noisily into the hanky. ‘Whoever did this deserves to be locked up for ever. I mean … he was a harmless soul … ’ She sniffed again. ‘Result of a brain tumour when he was a kid … lost both his parents … Oh, Lord, how can such awful things happen to one decent human being?’

  ‘Did he … ? Was he wearing a navy anorak?’

  Emily nodded. ‘Never wore anything else, bless him. Like a uniform, it was. Sorry, I shouldn’t be bothering you with all of this. Now, let’s see if we can open the doors and let in your latest audience. Tickets to the primary schools have gone really well for this event,’ she added, rubbing her eyes and attempting a tremulous smile.

  Maggie nodded then turned to walk back towards the podium, her heart thudding. So, now she knew his name, but she would never sign the young man’s book or know what had happened last night after he disappeared from the bookshop. As a policeman’s wife, Maggie was aware that there would be a call for any information following a sudden death like this. Did Emily realise that? She retraced her steps, stopping to place a hand on the bookseller’s arm.

  ‘Emily, have you spoken to the police?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You need to let them know where that young man was last night before he was killed,’ Maggie insisted. ‘They need to know all of his movements in the hours leading up to whatever happened,’ she explained.

  But there would be no need for either of them to do that, Maggie realised, as two figures strolled into the shop followed closely by a female officer in uniform.

  ‘It’s me.’ Maggie sat in a corner of the bookshop staffroom, phone to her ear.

  ‘Maggie!’ She heard his voice and felt an enormous sense of relief. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Yes, something’s very wrong,’ she blurted out. ‘A young chap who spoke to me at last night’s event was killed not long afterwards. They found his body lying in the snow. Over in The Meadows.’

  ‘I heard about that,’ Lorimer told her. ‘Grim business. And he spoke to you?’

  ‘Yes. The police have been in here this morning. The event was cancelled.’ She sighed. ‘Emily wanted to carry on but the police had us all in here … I mean the staffroom, that’s where I am right now. Oh, Bill! And Christopher hasn’t turned up either. Do you know where he is?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Christopher,’ Maggie repeated, feeling a little confused now, her head still spinning from the questions the detectives had asked her earlier. Had she felt that Edwin Ramsay was worried about anything? Had he seemed agitated at all? ‘You know,’ she insisted. ‘Christopher. My guardian angel. Security guy you sent to look after me.’

  There was a pause then she heard her husband clear his throat before he spoke again. ‘Maggie, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I sent nobody to look after you. Who is this man?’

  ‘I told you,’ she insisted. ‘Christopher. I said I had him to take care of me. If you didn’t arrange this then who—’ She stopped suddenly, trying to remember just what she had said to Bill after meeting the older man whose presence she had found so reassuring these past few days.

  ‘You spoke about a guardian angel, right enough,’ he said gruffly. ‘I thought you were talking about the Thornton woman.’

  Maggie felt herself go weak at the knees and a faint buzzing sounded in her ears as the shock of his words hit home.

  ‘Maggie? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied weakly. ‘Oh, Bill, I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.’

  *

  The detective inspector who had spoken to them was looking at her intently. Maggie could see his jaw working and she realised he would probably have torn her to shreds had she not been the wife of Detective Superintendent William Lorimer. DI Morrison was sitting across from her in an interview room, the kind of place that must be familiar to Bill. It was warm and stuffy, the single window barred and covered in metallic mesh, the sort of thing she remembered from Florida to keep out biting insects. But here, in this room with its grey painted walls and scratched furniture, the aim was to keep people in. There was a pungent smell of disinfectant, something that might have been applied to clean up some mess or other, or perhaps the staff mucked these rooms out on a daily basis, the human vermin that came and went spitting on the floor, or worse.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again, her stomach churning with guilt for having been so foolish. A security person with the name of Christopher Stevenson did not seem to exist, Morrison had informed her coldly, the business card something that could have been made up in any of the Quick Print shops that were found in shopping malls across the country.

  Who was he? And why had he taken it upon himself to look after her? Maggie’s head was aching after the barrage of questions from DI Morrison, a man who looked about her own age but whose eyes had seen more awful things than she ever would, including the dead body of young Edwin Ramsay.

  ‘Tell me again what this Stevenson bloke … we’ll call him that for now,’ he added grimly. ‘What did he say after you had spoken to Mr Ramsay?’

  Maggie bit her lip, trying hard to recall the man’s words, her shock at discovering his alias making her head pound. ‘He said,’ she began, ‘I mean he asked me if Mr Ramsay was bothering me,’ she told him bleakly. ‘I thought he was just being sort of over-protective, doing his job … oh dear … ’ She put her hands across her mouth to stifle a sob.

  ‘It’s okay.’ DI Morrison sighed. ‘Take your time, Mrs Lorimer.’

  ‘He seemed angry,’ Maggie recalled. ‘As if anyone paying me too much attention was some sort of threat to me. At least, that’s what I thought at the time. How I interpreted his reaction,’ she explained.

  ‘And what did he do then?’

  ‘Well, Mr Ramsay had gone. I’d hoped to sign his book but he had left. I think Christopher – the man calling himself that – went out shortly afterwards.’

  DI Morrison nodded and Maggie looked up at him across the table in this interview room.

  ‘Did you catch any sight of him on CCTV?’

  Was that a faint glimmer of a smile behind that stony face? Morrison shook his head. ‘You know better than that, Mrs Lorimer,’ he chided her. ‘We don’t give out information. We ask the questions. However,’ he heaved a sigh, ‘I think your husband might want to talk to me later, so no doubt you will be filled in on some of our casework. You know not to talk about anything that has passed between us, don’t you?’

  Maggie nodded, feeling utterly miserable. As a senior policeman’s wife she had learned all about procedure over the years but nothing had prepared her for the ordeal of being questioned in a murder case.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again, squirming as her own apology sounded hollow.

  ‘Not your fault. Better folk than you have been conned before,’ Morrison told her, his tone a shade gentler now. ‘But we need to find this chap. And soon. So,’ he stared at her intently, ‘if he comes back you must let us know right away. And do not under any circumstances be on your own with him, is that understood?’

  Ivy’s face was a picture when they at last met up in the hotel, her expression almost one of delight.

  ‘Well?’ she began. ‘What can you tell me? Is there anything we can use to help the publicity side of things?’ she asked eagerly, drawing Maggie on to a chair beside a roaring fire in the same room where they had breakfasted that morning.

  ‘I can’t say anything,’ Maggie told her stiffly. ‘And to be honest, Ivy, if we were to cancel the rest of this tour I wouldn’t be sorry.’

  ‘You don’t mean that?’ Ivy drew back, her mouth open in astonishment. ‘The show must go on, Maggie. Kids are expecting Margaret Lorimer to talk to them about this book, sign their precious copies,’ she wheedled. ‘Look,’ she laid a hand on Maggie’s knee, ‘I know how horrible this is, but these sorts of things happen in any big city. Just because the guy was at your event has nothing to do with what happened to him afterwards,’ she protested.

  Maggie remained silent. She had sworn not to say a word to anyone about Christopher Stevenson, or whoever the middle-aged man really was, and she was determined to keep to that.

  ‘All right,’ she sighed. ‘Where to next?’

  ‘That’s my girl!’ Ivy beamed at her. ‘Just let me settle up here and we’ll be on our way. Quite a few Waterstones bookshops for signings then we head down to the Borders country and across to Dumfries.’ Ivy gave a sigh of pleasure. ‘Oh, wait till you see where I’ve booked you in tonight.’ She grinned.

  Maggie failed to return the woman’s smile. It had been a long morning, she was tired and anxious and above all she was desperate to see her husband again. But, being a teacher had taught her how to put a brave face on anything from masking a physical pain to brushing aside something more emotional. The show must go on, Ivy’s words echoed in her brain as the publicity woman left her by the fireside. And she must hide her fears, suspicions and questions. Above all: who was this man who had elected himself as her protector?

  ‘Christopher G. Stevenson,’ Lorimer murmured to Solly who was sitting next to him in his Helen Street office.

  ‘Interesting alias,’ Solly agreed, looking at the piece of paper Lorimer had handed him with the words scribbled underneath. ‘Does he have a sense of humour, do you think, or has he some sort of religious connection?’

  ‘Christopher G. Stevenson’ had been replaced by ‘St Christopher Evensong’, the simple anagram revealing something of the mystery man’s mind.

  ‘He saw himself as a friend to Maggie,’ Solly tried to reassure Lorimer. ‘He was her guardian angel, that’s how she described him, yes?’

  Lorimer nodded. ‘And St Christopher is the patron saint of travellers.’

  ‘Of course, and he may have wished to make that subliminal suggestion to her,’ Solly said, half to himself.

  ‘It’s too close to these other murders for my liking, Solly,’ Lorimer said, clenching then unclenching his fist. ‘Dave Harkness. Have Darkness. It’s as if this comes from the same sick mind,’ he added. ‘But it must be a coincidence, surely? Edinburgh, after all, nothing to do with the two victims here in Glasgow,’ he muttered, though the expression on his face was at odds with his words.

  ‘Let’s get back to this man,’ Solly suggested. ‘Maggie describes a middle-aged fellow, grey-ish hair, small moustache … could be a fake one, of course … but she said he looked nothing like her idea of a security officer.’

  ‘That’s right. Her first impression is important but she can be let off for assuming he was good at making himself blend into a crowd. Where did he go after he left that shop? CCTVs in Edinburgh only show him taking the same route as the murdered man. And we have no clear image of his face, just a back view. There’s absolutely nothing to show that he followed Ramsay to The Meadows. Besides, the footage isn’t that good. Blizzard conditions made for blurry images.’

  ‘Anything fresh from the SIO yet? What about the post mortem?’

  ‘Nothing yet. PM in Edinburgh isn’t scheduled till later this afternoon.’ Lorimer bit his lip. He’d been told that the victim had no living relatives and it had been down to the warden at the Centre to identify the body as Edwin Ramsay. He pushed aside the half-empty coffee cup on his desk.

  ‘DI Morrison promised to keep me in the loop, though I suspect that was merely out of a sense of professional courtesy rather than a need for a senior officer through in Glasgow knowing his every movement.’

  ‘And Maggie? Is she coming home?’

  Lorimer shook his head and sighed. ‘Ach, maybe she’s better being on the road with the Thornton woman. We know where she’ll be on each stop of the tour and if this guy should turn up, Maggie knows to notify the police immediately.’

  ‘The publicity lady knows nothing of this, then?’ Solly asked, his expression curious.

  ‘No. Why do you ask?’ Lorimer frowned. ‘Maggie isn’t stupid. Morrison has warned her about keeping quiet to anyone expect me.’

  Solly stroked his dark beard and merely gave his friend a nod. Maggie was strong enough to carry on the tour, even if her PR had no knowledge of the unhappy things going on in her author’s mind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The area on the map she was regarding was further away from Scotland’s largest city than she had expected. However, Lorna Dawson knew that a burial site, if that was what it proved to be, was bound to be found somewhere off the beaten track. The soil sample from the missing woman’s boot had led her to this place, some miles from the border between Ayrshire and West Renfrewshire; now it remained to be seen if there was any disturbance in or around the ground that might show where a body had been laid twelve months previously. That was for the geophysicists to locate, their expertise in finding burial sites often linked with her own in police investigations. Four seasons of wind, snow and rain could have changed the upper layers somewhat but the deeper strata would have remained fairly constant apart from the hazard of animals like foxes and dogs digging on the site. It would not be the first time in a cold case that the professor had assisted in locating a body only for the police to discover a missing limb or even a skull.

  Lorimer would be pleased at any rate, she knew, thinking of the detective who had asked for her help. Whether there was anything to be found there remained to be seen.

  ‘It’s a few miles from Gateside,’ Lorimer told the assembled team of officers. ‘Perhaps some of you are familiar with Hessilhead Wildlife Centre?’