A small weeping

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The feather wafted upwards, a fine wispy curve, and for seconds it sailed the air. Slowly, slowly it began its downward journey, tacking and spinning on the currents; slight, light, hovering and shimmering. The dust motes danced against the sunlight like a cloud of gnats as the white feather passed them by. It sank at last in a curtsey and settled on the bed, still as the body below the sheets.

There was something appropriate about the fog blotting out everything beyond the station, thought Lorimer as he made his way through George Square. It was as if the natural world was trying to obliterate whatever waited for him behind the swirling curtain of mist. The red surface below his feet was darkened to the colour of old blood, statues loomed out of the mist like silent sentinels and even the tops of buildings were obscured by the pall of dankness, giving an impression of walking through some subterranean chamber. He’d be doing that soon enough. The woman’s body had been discovered in the lift between the upper and lower platforms of Queen Street station. Who she was and how she came to be there at all were the questions uppermost in the Detective Chief Inspector’s mind.

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