The Bird That Did Not Sing (DCI Lorimer) Read Free Page A

venue. Sitting back in his chair, Lorimer read the letter again. A school reunion. To take place next spring. Would he like to attend? The policeman’s first instinct was to bin the whole lot. As if he’d have the time for something as inane as that! But as he continued to read to the end, a small frown appeared between his blue eyes.
    Vivien Gilmartin. The surname was unfamiliar, but Vivien…? Could it be the same person he had known all those years ago? Turning to the pages of names, Lorimer’s eyes scanned the list. There it was, Vivien Gilmartin, née Fox!
    For a moment he let the papers slip on to the desk, his eyes seeing beyond the four walls of the Stewart Street office to a place and time that seemed to rush back at him with an intensity that took his breath away.
    Vivien.
Foxy
, they’d called her, not only because of the obvious surname but for her mass of glorious red hair.
    He’d slipped his teenage fingers through those tresses in his first fumbling attempts at sex, believing himself to be in love. And tall, lanky William Lorimer and his red-haired girl had listened over and over to the words of cheesy pop songs and his mother’s ancient collection of vinyl as though they had been penned just for them.
    It had been the summer before his final year at Glenwood High school, a time of waiting for exam results, walking through the park on hot dusty days, dreaming about the future. He was going to become a famous art historian. Travel the world, maybe. Vivien would be somewhere in his plans, a vague figure but one he was sure of back then, in that idyllic time of carefree youth when everything was possible.
    Her own plans had involved the theatre. That was something he could not fail to recall. And when she told him that RADA had accepted her and she was leaving Glasgow for faraway London, he had felt nothing short of betrayal. How could she abandon him? Why not take up the offer of a place at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, as it was then known? He was destined for Glasgow University; they could be together!
    Alone in his bedroom he had indulged his sorrows in the words of an Incredible String Band song, wallowing in its poignancy. At the time it had seemed so apt. Now, many years on, he hardly remembered the lyrics; something about first love,
young
love
: wasn’t that right? What came after that? He had forgotten much of the rest except the lines referring to a girl’s long red hair that had fallen on to the boy’s face during their first kiss. Was that a real memory?
    The telephone ringing on his desk brought Lorimer back to the present, and as he picked up the handset, the contents of the letter were pushed to one side.
    Moments later he hung up again with a sigh. This was the day when the new alarm system was to be installed, and the engineer would require access to his office in half an hour. Minimum disruption, they’d all been told, but he doubted that. Still, the security of Police Scotland had to be maintained and upgraded to meet these new national standards.
    Lorimer looked again at the papers lying on his desk, memories of the people he used to know swirling in his brain. He’d never kept up with the old gang, eschewing Friends Reunited and Facebook, preferring the caution of anonymity given his chosen profession. And now, as if the years had been peeled away, he had this burning curiosity to know what had become of them.
What
has
become
of
Foxy?
a little voice teased him.
    It had all been so long ago, that summer he wanted to forget and the terrible months that had followed. He’d been in the art studio in late September when the head teacher had drawn him into the upstairs corridor with the news about his mother’s death. A brain aneurysm, something sudden and unforeseen.
    As the son of aged parents, Lorimer had never known his mother as a quick and graceful woman, the person so many of her friends had described at Helen Lorimer’s funeral. Dad had died when he was just a