A Pound Of Flesh

by Alex Gray

  Picking up the telephone, Lorimer dialled a number he knew off by heart. A small smile of pleasure softened his features as he heard the man’s voice.

  ‘Solly? Any chance you’d have time to see me right now?’

  ‘I just can’t make head nor tail of it any more, Solly,’ Lorimer said as they walked through the university grounds. ‘Mrs Pattison swears now that she was with Hardy in his Edinburgh place. And of course that puts paid to Hardy’s earlier claim that he was with his wife all night in Erskine. One of them’s lying and I think it’s probably him.’

  ‘Do you really think there is enough evidence to build a case against them?’ Solly asked quietly as they passed through the ancient arches of the quadrangle.

  Lorimer shrugged wearily in reply.

  ‘Let’s take it step by step,’ the psychologist suggested. ‘What you want to know is the identity of the person who shot three men in their white Mercedes cars.’

  ‘Person or persons,’ Lorimer replied glumly.

  Solly shook his head. ‘No, you’re looking for one person, Lorimer,’ he said firmly. ‘And to find that person you should be asking yourself why anyone would want to kill these men in the first place.’

  ‘You make it sound very simple,’ Lorimer sighed.

  ‘Let’s look at what you have on the Pattison case. The man has been caught on CCTV camera leaving Blythswood Square in the company of a person we think may be a prostitute. With me so far?’

  Lorimer nodded, trying to suppress a yawn. He’d been over and over this territory till his head swam.

  ‘Why would a street girl want to kill men who came to them for sex?’ Solly asked.

  Lorimer frowned. ‘D’you really want an answer to that?’

  ‘Yes. Give me any reason why someone kills another person.’

  ‘Money, drugs, falling out, spite … ’ He yawned for real now.

  ‘Or, perhaps, some notion of revenge?’

  ‘What are you cooking up in that brainy head of yours, pal?’ Lorimer smiled despite himself as they headed around the corner towards the university chapel.

  ‘It’s not that difficult, really,’ Solly replied with his customary modesty. ‘A woman with a gun who targets specific victims has an agenda. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed,’ Lorimer said, ‘though we don’t know if the perpetrator was a woman.’

  ‘Let’s say it was,’ Solly came back firmly. ‘The last known person with Mr Pattison was a woman, from the image of her on that CCTV footage. Now, if a woman sets out to kill men who pick up prostitutes, there has to be a reason for it, doesn’t there?’

  ‘What on earth are you suggesting?’ Lorimer asked, frowning.

  Solly stopped at the foot of the steps leading up to the chapel and turned to his friend, his hands spread out as he began to explain.

  ‘If a woman wants to kill someone over and over again like that she must be under some kind of compulsion. Not necessarily one that afflicts her mental state.’ He paused for a moment as though searching for the right words. ‘I think you should be looking for someone who has a deep-seated grudge against someone she doesn’t even know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Doesn’t it stand to reason?’ Solly asked. ‘All she knows is that her intended victim picks up prostitutes in a particular type of white car. She can’t possibly know his identity or else she wouldn’t have killed three times already.’

  ‘Unless she’s a prize nutter,’ Lorimer put it, glad to see the psychologist wince at his political incorrectness. The two men climbed the stone steps and entered the chapel. Rays of sunlight from the stained glass windows made shapes of colour dance across the ancient flagstones. All was quiet within, save for the sound of their echoing footsteps.

  ‘Let’s say that she is not,’ Solly continued, sitting down in a row of wooden seats that faced the main altar. ‘The killings are planned and show an orderly sort of mind. Now,’ he went on, wagging a professorial finger, ‘most of these women are in thrall to drugs and often not capable of doing anything at all like this, agreed?’

  ‘Ye-es,’ Lorimer said slowly, flicking the tails of his coat as he sat down beside the psychologist.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Solly smiled suddenly. ‘If this killer is a woman from the streets she is unlikely to be an addict. The unidentified hair sample suggests as much. Plus,’ he went on, ‘she must have obtained the gun from somewhere and knows how to use it.’

  ‘And she’s forensically aware,’ Lorimer pondered, following Solly’s line of thought now.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Solly went on then paused as though to gather his thoughts or, Lorimer suspected, to choose his words carefully. The policeman glanced sharply at his companion; he had a feeling that whatever Solly was going to tell him was not something he wanted to hear.

  ‘I’ve been going over this from different angles,’ he began.

  ‘Thinking out of the box, you might say,’ he added. ‘What have the three men in common apart from their cars and the way they were killed?’ he asked quietly.

  Lorimer’s frown deepened. This was something he’d been over and over with other officers. ‘Nothing, so far as we know,’ he muttered.

  ‘Let’s say that the woman who picked Pattison up was a Glasgow prostitute. Just for argument’s sake,’ Solly said.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘She gets into the cars after making some sort of proposition to each of these men, shall we say?’

  ‘Go on,’ Lorimer said, wondering where this was leading.

  ‘Well,’ Solly said, ‘think about it. There has to be a verbal exchange of some sort. She doesn’t get into the car until she has spoken to them and they with her. Don’t you see? She’s looking for a particular person, but since none of these three men had any visible resemblance to one another that just leaves one thing, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You mean…?’

  ‘Their voices,’ Solly said firmly. ‘Each of these men came from a place outside Glasgow. Two of them had English accents and Pattison had a cultured, Edinburgh accent, something that Glaswegians sometimes associate with an anglicised accent. There have been studies into this, by the way,’ he added as though to reassure the detective.

  ‘I can see what you’re saying and it does make a sort of sense,’ Lorimer admitted. ‘She’s looking for somebody who drives a type of car like that, a man from outside Glasgow who picks up prostitutes.’ He shook his head as though he were failing to convince himself. ‘But why?’

  ‘Ah.’ Solly wagged his finger in the air once more. ‘That’s my point exactly. Why is this mystery woman seeking to kill the man in the white Mercedes?’

  ‘So, let me get this straight. You think that these three men may have been killed by mistake?’ He shook his head at the idea of such callousness, then paused. ‘Well, doesn’t that mean that she is still looking?’

  Solly nodded. ‘It’s possible. There may be a target that fits all of the killer’s criteria but her knowledge of him is so scanty that she is taking a chance on anyone who ticks these particular boxes.’

  ‘We’ve been looking for all the owners of white Mercs,’ Lorimer said slowly. ‘But not with this in mind. We just wanted to see if there was any sort of pattern we could establish that might help find the killer.’

  ‘I did wonder …’ Solly began and looked into the distance as though he were too shy to look his friend in the eye.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, this mystery woman. Is she really a prostitute?’

  ‘We’ve got information about the first two victims. They did use street girls. And so did Pattison,’ Lorimer began slowly. ‘But I can see what you’re saying. This woman has to have had a clear head for what she did. And we know most of our poor lassies are usually doped to the eyeballs when they’re out on the game.’

  Solly smiled sadly. ‘I have given this a lot of thought,’ he said.

  ‘And the more I consider it as a possible theory the more it seems to make sense.’

&
nbsp; Lorimer nodded but said nothing. He had sought help from this man to clear his head, make things a little more objective. But all the while Professor Brightman had been creating a profile for the killer they sought and now he had begun to share it with him. It might be true, or at least have some grains of truth in it. Solly’s previous profiling had been invaluable and Lorimer had learned to listen without prejudice. But would the rest of his team take this idea onboard? And how would they set about finding this mystery woman?

  ‘You’re not being permitted to charge her,’ the deputy chief constable told Lorimer.

  ‘And what would we charge her with anyway? Wasting police time? I see that might not be in our interest right now,’ Lorimer replied, unable to keep the cynicism out of his voice.

  ‘Probably not,’ Joyce Rogers agreed. ‘The newspapers would have our guts for garters. Poor widow being hounded by police when they should be finding her husband’s killer etc., etc. Aye, I know what you’re thinking and believe me it sticks in my craw as well that so many man hours have been wasted. Our budget’s shot to buggery as it is,’ she added gloomily.

  ‘There is one thing that has come up,’ Lorimer began.

  ‘Oh?’ Joyce Rogers raised her eyebrows as she heard the tentative tone in her senior officer’s voice. ‘Am I going to like it?’

  ‘Oh, maybe not,’ Lorimer said with a long sigh. ‘It’s something Professor Brightman suggested.’

  The deputy chief constable listened to Solly’s theory, not interrupting once, though her eyes grew wider as Lorimer went on.

  ‘So, if it is true that there is a woman behind all of this, we need to decide on our next plan of action.’

  ‘This isn’t just one of his latest hobby horses, is it? I know the professor was writing a book about women serial killers,’ Joyce asked.

  Lorimer shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. He’s quite correct about the killer being organised and although we’ve seen psychopaths committing crimes that show a degree of organisation, Professor Brightman doesn’t think this protagonist fits into that sort of category.’ Lorimer bit his tongue. The profile that was emerging was one that might well fit an experienced police officer; a woman who was not only adept with firearms but was forensically aware. He was certain Solly was thinking along the same lines though as yet neither of the men had voiced this particular theory.

  ‘Does he not, indeed?’ Joyce replied tartly. ‘Well, that remains to be seen once you’ve caught her. If it is a her,’ she added darkly.

  ‘Meantime, what is this I’ve been hearing about you wandering around the drag during the wee small hours?’

  Lorimer bit his lip. Curse the man! Sutherland’s tongue must have been wagging, he thought. ‘Well … ’

  ‘Moonlighting, are you? Hoping to combine this with Helen James’s cases?’ She looked keenly at him and nodded. ‘Well, for God’s sake don’t let the chief know about it. I can only keep a lid on this for so long. He’d have something to say if he thought you’d deliberately crossed him, Lorimer.’

  ‘It’s not quite like that, ma’am,’ Lorimer protested. ‘Okay, I’d love to find out who killed Tracey-Anne Geddes, but it’s more than that. With the CCTV footage of Pattison there’s every chance that the two cases might be linked.’

  ‘Because a girl got into his car in Blythswood Square?’ Joyce Rogers asked. ‘That’s pretty flimsy linkage if you ask me, Lorimer.’

  ‘Frank Hardy told me that Edward Pattison used prostitutes in Glasgow,’ Lorimer went on. ‘And we know that Littlejohn and Wardlaw also used girls from their own neck of the woods so there’s reason to suppose they might have tried it out here too.’

  ‘And their deaths happened not long after Carol Kilpatrick was killed and just before the attack on Tracey-Anne,’ she said slowly. ‘You really think there’s something behind these poor lassies’ deaths to do with the car killings?’

  Lorimer nodded. ‘With your permission, ma’am, I’d like to continue my own investigation into this. I’d thought I might take a trip on the Big Blue Bus, ask some of the girls there if they know anything about Pattison or the other men.’

  Joyce Rogers smiled. ‘I can’t stop you, of course, but see if you can confine your nocturnal wanderings a little, hmm? Otherwise tongues will wag and I’d hate to see you castigated for something as stupid as this.’

  The meeting with the deputy chief constable was a lot easier, Lorimer decided later, than the one with his squad of handpicked detectives, who were not afraid to criticise Solly’s theory. However, with the exception of Duncan Sutherland who had stood with a leering grin on his face throughout, all hands had been raised when Lorimer had asked for their support in tackling the case from a different angle. Barbara Knox, in particular, had shown her enthusiasm, her hand shooting straight up in a manner that made Lorimer fear the big woman actually had a crush on him. Some of the actions would be going over old ground, like visiting the owners of several white Mercedes cars.

  Solly had not voiced any explanation about why such a person might have sparked off a killer’s intent, but it was there all the same: somebody had deserved to die. That was the thinking of this mystery killer, wasn’t it? And from there the next logical step was to ask what it was they had done to provoke such a desperate chain of events.

  CHAPTER 29

  She woke with a cry, sitting up in bed, staring into the empty darkness. Carol’s face had come floating towards her, hair lapping on the endless waves as though they were both deep underwater, drowning together, helpless as each sought to clutch the other’s hand. Then, that noiseless cry as she felt the tug of the current pulling her under.

  It was only a dream, a fantasy bred in the subconscious mind. Everyone had dreams that impinged on their waking thoughts, didn’t they? But it had been Miriam, not Carol, whose body had been washed up from the river. Dreams, like newspaper reports, they always got things a bit muddled, she told herself, rolling onto her side and tucking the duvet around her shivering body. Reality, now that was a different thing altogether. In real life she was capable of shooting her gun and killing a man. But this time she would find the right target, thanks to dear little Barbara.

  The woman’s smile faded as she thought of the lesbian officer. It was as if she had prostituted herself with the girl. But then, perhaps she now had an inkling of what it had been like for Carol, having to give her body in return for something she wanted.

  The cold, long month of January was drawing to its close, she thought, clenching her fists and drumming them together in a determined beat. And soon there would be a new month and a new opportunity to seek out and destroy the man who had robbed her of everything she had held most dear in this sorry world.

  Barbara Knox grinned at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. The cost of that stylist had made a pretty big hole in her budget but the result was well worth it, she told herself, turning her head this way and that to admire the sharp cut and flecks of deep red that tipped each spiky lock. A quick dab of gel and fingers raking through was all that was required now to make her look the part. Her smile faded as she moved away from the mirror; that ever-present muffin top revealed above the elastic of her pyjama trousers. Scowling now, Barbara turned from the glaring truth of her image and began to pull her clothes out of the walk-in cupboard that served as a makeshift dressing room. Okay, so she was fat. All the women in her family had been the same. It was a hereditary thing. Something she simply couldn’t help. But some folk liked a bit to cuddle, didn’t they? And Diana didn’t seem to mind.

  Cheered by that thought, Barbara began to hum tunelessly to the music on her radio. Today might be just another working day for most folk but for Barbara Knox it was something much more exciting. Being part of the Serious Crimes Unit, however temporary that might prove, was a hell of a lot better than being dogsbody to Mumby, wasn’t it? Now that the case had taken this strange twist there might well be an end in sight. Detective Superintendent Lorimer had spoken with such conviction yesterday, though the li
ne of enquiry was pretty surprising. He’d been fairly impassioned and DC Knox had listened to all that he’d said, nodding her approval even though that tosser, Sutherland, had had a face on him like a fried egg. They’d all discussed it afterwards, of course, and Barbara had been gratified to hear that most of them had taken Lorimer’s side.

  Her work on the cars had come in for a wee mention too, Barbara remembered, smiling in satisfaction as she recalled the titbit of praise the boss had handed out. He was fair minded, that man, but oh how driven! Sutherland had been passing round rumours that Lorimer had been mooching around the drag, but that one had been nipped in the bud by the man himself when he revealed that he had spent time talking to the street women on his own. Crazy! Some of them had said, Imagine getting up in the middle of a bleak January night. But it was his devotion to duty that had prompted him, though Lorimer hadn’t said that himself. He didn’t need to, Barbara thought as she pulled on her trousers. It was there for anyone to see and if Duncan Sutherland thought he could sully that good man’s reputation, well, he’d have the entire squad down on him like a ton of bricks. The actions had been given out and Barbara had not been at all surprised to learn that she had more stuff to do with contacting the owners of these white Mercs once again.

  A name flashed into her mind as she switched off the bedroom light and made her way into the kitchen. Vladimir Badica. A Romanian garage dealer. ‘Bad Vlad,’ she said aloud then raised her eyebrows thoughtfully. Would Diana be interested in this new line of enquiry? Or had she chanced her arm enough for the dark-haired woman, the very thought of whom made her pulse beat faster?

  Frank Hardy sat quite still, watching the woman opposite weep silently into her hands. It was odd this sudden urge to take her into his arms, comfort her, tell her it had all been a terrible mistake. He had expected screams of recrimination, Jill throwing things at him, crashing plates off the wall; all the classic stuff he’d seen in films. But Frank Hardy had not been prepared for this display of genuine grief. Had Jill had no inkling at all of his infidelity, then? Even when he’d asked her to lie to the police, hadn’t she suspected a thing? And now, seeing her so broken, it was not just guilt that Hardy felt but a stronger emotion, something that he might once have called love.