they’re hiding something it’s a load of girls upstairs,’ Lorimer laughed. ‘Or maybe you simply frightened the guy in Partick. Maybe he’d never met a real psychologist before,’ he joked.
‘There’s something that still bothers me,’ Solly went on. ‘If Jenny and Miriam had been given work there one would have assumed that they would have been safe from any predator, yes?’
‘Maybe,’ Lorimer replied. ‘That would depend on the level of care shown to the girls. Helen James reckoned that getting them all off the streets was a good start.’
‘Have you told her about the man who tried to attack Lily?’
Lorimer nodded. ‘The picture is being circulated amongst the girls out on the drag over this weekend as well as in the Robertson Street drop-in centre. It was a calculated risk,’ he added as Solly’s bushy eyebrows rose in surprise.
‘You don’t think any of them will blab to the papers?’
‘As I said, it’s a risk I was prepared to take. Anyhow, the press have to clear it with us before they print a single word, never mind something as highly sensitive as that.’
‘And you’re going to set up your officers for Tuesday night?’
Lorimer nodded again. ‘Aye,’ he gave a rueful grin. ‘My big four-o.’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘Maggie’s got me on a date that night and I can’t disappoint her.’
Solly ducked his head and rummaged in his coat pocket, bringing out a large white handkerchief to blow his nose. It was a simple enough ruse to cover up any hint that he knew what Maggie Lorimer was really up to. The policeman was good at reading anybody’s body language and Solly knew he had to keep one step ahead if he was to avoid giving the game away.
‘Coming down with a cold?’
‘No, probably just all the dust in here,’ Solly answered, shrugging his shoulders.
The pub suddenly erupted as one voice raised in a chorus of ‘The Irish Rover’ was joined by several others and Solly smiled to see Lorimer beginning to mouth the words, his head turned away to look at the crowd of singers. As a Londoner he should feel like an outsider but years of living in Glasgow had given Solly a feeling of kinship with these people, gathered together; Celts united in song who would only be divided by eighty minutes on the rugby field before heading for the pubs once more, the afterglow of success or failure bringing the supporters together again. Tonight was all about the thrill of anticipation, tomorrow the tone would be one of telling over and over what had taken place at Murrayfield and putting to rights any poor play shown as though each and every one of the men talking was a seasoned rugby coach.
Was that how the undercover officers felt as they waited for the next full moon to rise over the Glasgow rooftops? Solly wondered. Was there a sense of camaraderie, all of them hoping fervently to trap this man who had wreaked such havoc in their city? He had worked on several cases now with Lorimer but this was the first time he had felt a bit adrift, not really a part of the whole set-up. Yes, he had been trying to create a profile of a killer, yes he had come up with some suggestions that were even now being acted upon, but there was not the same sense of being part of a team at Pitt Street as there had been in Lorimer’s previous division. And he was certain that the detective superintendent felt it too.
‘What will happen to you when they wind up the unit?’ he asked, but Lorimer was in full song now and did not hear the psychologist’s question.
The hotel was eerily quiet tonight, most of the staff having left earlier in the evening, as the woman in the darkened booth sat drinking her second glass of Pinot Grigio. The food had been exquisite, the room where she slept becoming almost like home, but it would soon be time to leave here for good and as she contemplated her uncertain future, the woman who had called herself Diana Yeats wondered just what would happen four nights from now. She would check out on Wednesday morning, she decided, and return home to pack. A new beginning was called for, somewhere far from Scotland, far from all the memories that had haunted her for too long now. She had played with Barbara, hinting at a trip to Mauritius, so perhaps that thought could