A Pound Of Flesh

by Alex Gray

  ‘Don’t know whit ye’re on aboot,’ Doreen said sharply. Lorimer nodded. The woman’s riposte had been a touch too acerbic. There was something she didn’t want the policeman to know and he was certain it had to do with the woman who had disappeared across George Square.

  ‘I think she’s writing about the death of the deputy first minister,’ he ventured.

  The street woman turned on him, eyes flashing.

  ‘She’s writing about us,’ Doreen broke in, ‘no’ that it’s ony o’ your business.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,’ Lorimer replied. ‘You ladies are very much my business, I’m afraid.’ And before Doreen’s scowl could deepen any further he went on. ‘I’m here concerning the death of TraceyAnne Geddes. I hoped that talking to some of the ladies who knew her might help,’ he said.

  ‘Oh. Well, in that case … ’ Doreen replied, her mouth open in surprise. ‘See, I thought …’ The woman bit her lip suddenly.

  ‘You thought I was working on the Pattison case,’ Lorimer finished for her. ‘And of course I am. But the other case is still something I take an interest in,’ he said blandly.

  ‘Tracey-Anne didnae deserve tae die like that. Some fu— some animal did that tae her!’ Doreen exclaimed, tempering her language as she remembered who she was talking to.

  ‘I know,’ Lorimer said gently. ‘But there is something I wanted to ask, Doreen. Something I’ll be asking all the girls tonight,’ he added, turning slightly as voices behind them showed that more passengers were now boarding the bus. ‘Did you ever see a man in a white sports car, a Mercedes, kerb crawling around the drag, looking for custom?’

  ‘Well maybe I did and maybe I didnae,’ Doreen said slyly. ‘Not always easy to make out whit types o’ car the punters are in. And ah’m not always quite masel, know whit ah mean,’ she shrugged.

  ‘Can I trust you to keep all of this completely confidential?’ he asked.

  The woman nodded, her earrings jangling softly as she looked at him.

  ‘Anythin’ in it fur me?’ she asked, then, licking her lips mendaciously.

  ‘Possibly,’ he replied, his answer deliberately non-committal. ‘And I’d be grateful if you didn’t talk to anyone from the newspapers, okay?’

  ‘Aye, fair ’nuff,’ Doreen agreed.

  Lorimer gave a small sigh of relief. There was so much to think about and sudden interference from the press was something he could well do without. He was taking a risk in talking to the street women too, though. They might well sell a story about a policeman who asked them questions relating to the death of the deputy first minister of Scotland, even if those questions were couched solely in references to the white cars.

  As he moved away, Lorimer recalled what Solly had told him about the two girls from the sauna. Miriam and Jenny had frequented the Big Blue Bus, hadn’t they? He turned back again for a moment.

  ‘Do you know a place called Andie’s Sauna?’ he asked.

  Doreen shifted uneasily in her seat. ‘Whit’s that tae youse?’ she muttered.

  ‘Two young women who worked there ended up dead,’ Lorimer said softly. ‘And we’re investigating all the places they worked prior to that.’

  ‘Ah’m in Andie’s noo,’ Doreen told him. ‘An’ I ken who ye mean. Thon posh lassie, Miriam and wee Jenny Haslet, in’t it?’

  Lorimer nodded. ‘Jenny came here and was given help,’ he said, nodding towards the rack of leaflets. ‘And that’s something Strathclyde Police want as well. Folk like my colleague, Helen James, believe that there should be no women out on the streets endangering their lives.’

  ‘Ye ken there’s two o’ them? No’ jist the wan in Govan where ah work,’ Doreen told him. ‘They’ve got wan ower in Partick an a’.’

  Lorimer nodded. Places like that were never listed in any telephone directory but sometimes business cards would be stuck to the insides of telephone boxes, in toilets or on the walls of the underground railway. Solly had visited the one in Govan but he had not given the policeman any new information about that. Perhaps he could see if his friend would take time to explore this further.

  ‘Thanks, Doreen. Nice to talk to you,’ he added, nodding politely as he got up to leave. The bus had started up and was now lumbering around a corner of the square so it was time to sit with the other ladies of the night and see what they could offer in the way of information.

  As he held on to the back of a seat to steady himself, Lorimer glanced behind him. Doreen Gallagher looked away swiftly, but not before he had seen an expression cross her face: one that he recognised as sheer relief.

  The rest of the night passed calmly enough, the street women proving to be every bit as wary as Lorimer had expected, but his polite and quiet manner did coax a few of them into sharing some of their stories with him. So it was that he heard tales of juvenile rape and incest, stuff that was shrugged off by some of them as though these things were ordinary life experiences. What did amaze the policeman was the women’s resilience in the face of so much hardship and squalor. Early death was taken for granted, stories of girls coming out of prison to meet with their drug dealers and overdosing on the way home were not unknown. One other thing he had learned was that the Revd Richard Allan ran a centre for women up in Stirlingshire, near the village of Arnprior. It was a place of hope, the man had told him, the converted farm catering for women who had lost their way, often through drugs. Fortunately the charities and trusts that funded it had not been hit during the recession and they could continue their good work.

  It was a chastened Lorimer who reached home as the birds began the dawn chorus, grateful that fate had dealt him such a good hand. There but for the grace of God… Richard Allan had murmured. And it was true. He looked at the front of his home with a sudden spurt of joy. They had this lovely house, he and his darling Maggie who was asleep upstairs. He had a job that he loved and good health to enjoy so much of life. As he stood there on his doorstep a blackbird suddenly opened its throat and filled the cold morning air with liquid notes that thrilled him through and through. He inhaled deeply then sighed, his breath making a small white cloud. Life, in all its vagaries, could still have moments of glory, he thought, turning the key in the lock and pushing open the door to his home.

  CHAPTER 31

  ‘Why do people do these terrible things?’ the girl asked him.

  Professor Solomon Brightman smiled sadly. Today he had been presenting a seminar on intention, the discussion drifting, as it often did, into the mentality behind criminal behaviour. He looked at the girl, feeling a pang of despair. This fresh-faced second-year student showed a lot of academic promise in her subject, yet Solly felt that she had been sheltered from the reality of life in many ways and suspected that her education at a private school down south had failed to give her any insight into the sort of world that many of these case studies inhabited.

  ‘Well,’ Solly began. ‘There is no easy answer to that question, I’m afraid.’ The discussion had ended with a debate about the link between sex and violence, the outcome of which had been terminated by the clock, but this particular student had lingered, wanting more.

  ‘Recent research has come up with a model that shifts our perception of mental illnesses that present aggressive behaviour and sexual arousal,’ he told her. ‘Psychiatrists thought at one time that such illnesses might be caused by chemical imbalances, but the most recent thinking is that neural circuits in the brain might actually be overlapping.’

  The girl frowned, concentrating on her professor’s words.

  ‘What I mean is this,’ he went on. ‘There are two sets of neurons that control sex and violence and in most people these are mutually exclusive. So, while these two circuits overlap physically, there is a sort of switch that keeps them apart. Follow me?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then if a scenario arises whereby there are too many or too few connections between brain cells, those two behaviours cease to be mutually exclusive.’

  �
��Oh,’ she said, ‘so it’s not their fault if they become violent when they’re having sex?’

  ‘A pathology might well occur from such a physical situation,’ Solly admitted. ‘But it would be very difficult to say just how far a person was capable of controlling his or her violent behaviour.’

  ‘But they might not be able to control it at all,’ his student insisted.

  ‘There might indeed be a predisposition for sexual violence in an individual whose neural pathways were intermingled in such a way as to … ’

  ‘Make them killers?’ the girl finished off with a gleam of triumph in her eyes. ‘Thanks, professor, that’s much clearer now,’ she said cheerfully, swinging her bag onto her shoulder and smiling at him as she left his room.

  Solly closed his door with a sigh. It was true that much research was ongoing into the behaviour of sexual offenders and perhaps in time better treatments might be offered to them. The theory was absorbing for so many of his students. But the sigh he had given expressed the dichotomy between this girl’s academic approach and the reality of his own preoccupation with the case that Lorimer had given him. At least two of the dead street girls had been brutally murdered by someone who could well fit the profile of a sex offender that he had just outlined to his student.

  Violent sexual behaviour might be tolerated by some for the simple reason that, were the women who suffered to complain, it would lose them money. Solly’s mind turned once more to the sauna in Govan. There was another place down in Partick, Lorimer had told him, also called Andie’s. Who, he frowned, was this Andie person? With a twinge of guilt, the psychologist realised that he had done nothing yet to follow up this particular line of enquiry. It was, he consoled himself, something that he normally left to the police. But with the Pattison case absorbing so much of their manpower, there was little left over for a search into the two saunas. A quick look at his watch told Solly that if he was to forego his lunch then he could spare two hours until his next class. A walk to Partick would do him good, too. It was a cold February morning but the skies were clear and a weak sun was making its hazy presence felt through thin wisps of milky cloud.

  Solly turned up his collar against the breeze as he crossed Byres Road and headed left. Once sheltered from the wind that blew down University Avenue the psychologist’s mouth turned up in a smile. Being out on the streets was something he always enjoyed; taking in snatches of conversation as people passed him by, watching the way everyone went about their business, catching glimpses of human behaviour in the raw. It was an absorbing walk down to the corner where the classy shops and cafes gave way to a more homely type of area altogether in Dumbarton Road. Native Glaswegians had informed the professor that Partick had been a village at one time in the city’s history and today Solly caught an inkling of what that still meant.

  Andie’s Sauna was a fair step along the road, past Partick Library and down a small side lane that led away from the busy main road. Like the one in Govan, this place was fronted by a large window, but here the difference was that a dusty Venetian blind had been pulled down to give some notion of privacy.

  Solly pushed open the door and entered. There was a reception desk straight ahead and a row of bentwood chairs placed along one side, a pile of well-thumbed magazines laid on top of the one nearest to the door. Nobody was there but he could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner somewhere beyond the door behind the reception area. Perhaps Joe Public was not expected at this time of day, Solly mused. There was no sign of a bell on the counter so he walked up and down, hands behind his back, taking in the state of the place. Lorimer, he knew, was fond of telling his younger officers how much one could learn about a person from the house that he inhabited. What, Solly wondered, could he find out about this establishment from this front-of-house area?

  It needed a good clean, he told himself, looking at the dusty sills and fly-blown window panes, and there had been little attempt to make the place attractive. No vase of flowers graced the reception desk and, as Solly peeped over its edge, all he could see was a telephone, a thick ledger and an open laptop with several unopened letters laid to one side. There was an ancient swivel chair behind the desk, some of its seat padding ripped and worn; Solly nodded to himself, concluding that there was probably only a single member of staff who fronted the sauna. The same person who was now behind the vacuum cleaner, perhaps? As he paced back and forth, Solly became aware that the flooring beneath his feet was slightly uneven; whoever had laid the thick blue linoleum had not bothered to put down any underlay. At each step, the professor could hear the squeak of floorboards and he was so fascinated by this, looking down at his shoes, that he failed to notice a door opening to his left.

  ‘Who are you?’ A man’s voice demanded.

  A short, thin fellow in blue jeans and a checked shirt, its sleeves rolled up past his elbows, stood before him, one hand on the hose of the vacuum cleaner.

  Solly gave a start then turned and gave the man a smile, holding out his hand. ‘Professor Brightman, University of Glasgow,’ he said.

  ‘We’re no’ open yet,’ the man said shortly, scowling suspiciously at Solly. ‘And I don’t remember any Brightman in our appointment book,’ he went on, confirming Solly’s first impression that this was a one-man business.

  ‘Are you Andie?’

  The man’s face changed immediately as he hooted with laughter.

  ‘Me? Naw, son, ah’m no’ Andie. Why? Is that who ye’re looking fur?’

  ‘Actually,’ Solly stepped forward, nodding in a confidential manner, ‘I’m here on behalf of Strathclyde Police. It’s to do with the murders of some of the Glasgow street girls,’ he went on. ‘I’m a professor of psychology, you see, and sometimes I help the police to establish things like criminal profiles.’

  ‘’S’at so?’ the man replied, clearly unimpressed. ‘Well, how did ye come in here, then?’

  ‘Andie’s Saunas was the place of work for two of these women,’ Solly explained. ‘Miriam Lyons and Jenny Haslet.’

  ‘Never heard of them, pal,’ the man said quickly. Too quickly, Solly decided, and he was forced to take a step backwards as the man bore down on him.

  ‘I was hoping to make contact with the owner,’ Solly went on, feeling just a shade intimidated: despite the fact that the man was older and shorter in stature there was something menacing about him that put Solly on his guard.

  ‘Well, now, maybe you should write a letter,’ the man sneered.

  Solly nodded. ‘Yes, a letter. Well to whom would I write?’ he asked. ‘And does this Andie have an email address by any chance?’

  The man stopped and blinked. Then, to Solly’s surprise, he let go of the vacuum cleaner and went around to the other side of the desk. Picking up the telephone, he dialled a number and waited, all the while staring hard at the psychologist.

  ‘Boss,’ the man said. ‘There’s a fella here tae see you. Name of Brightman.’

  Solly waited, wondering if he was going to be handed the telephone and allowed to speak to the person on the other end of the line.

  ‘Oh, aye, ’s’that right?’ The man’s eyes flicked across to Solly with an expression of distaste. ‘Aye, aye … okay,’ he continued, nodding as he listened but continuing to regard Solly with what the psychologist recognised as suspicion.

  Then, to his disappointment the telephone was replaced and the man jerked his thumb towards the door.

  ‘See if the polis want tae speak tae ma boss, they’ve tae come ower theirselves. Get it? Now beat it, pal. Ah’ve got work tae dae afore we open up.’

  The man came around the reception area, fists clenched and Solly backed away, fumbling for the door handle and opening it swiftly.

  He stumbled back along the lane, only glancing once behind him to see the man standing, arms crossed, watching him leave, a sneering smile on his face that made Solly shiver.

  As he crossed back over Dumbarton Road Solly reflected that it might have been wiser to have sought out the company of a u
niformed officer. But sparing such a person was hard since every single man and woman in the force had to account for how they spent their time. Babysitting the criminal psychologist was not part of their remit, he told himself, heart thumping. But, if he had not gleaned any information about the owner of these saunas, he had learned quite a lot nonetheless.

  The man in the checked shirt looked to his left and right as he turned the key in the lock. Andie had not been best pleased at the news of such an unexpected visitor. Coming to the sauna as a punter was one thing but nosing around out of hours only meant trouble.

  Micky Devlin pulled his coat around him, buttoning it hastily as he walked along the lane. He could still see the retreating back of the bearded professor as he walked along Dumbarton Road. The psychologist had no inkling whatsoever that he was being followed and that, just as he often watched other people, the man from the sauna was observing his every step.

  Devlin’s eyes bore into the back of the professor’s skull, waiting for him to whip out a mobile and call the police. But nothing like that occurred all the way back to Byres Road and up as far as the university. Dodging nimbly between pedestrians, Devlin managed to keep Solly in his sight without the psychologist once noticing his presence. At last he stood, almost disappointed, opposite the main door to the department of psychology, watching as Brightman disappeared inside.

  Leaning against the fence that ran along the avenue, Devlin keyed a number into his mobile.

  ‘Think he is who he says he is,’ he said then waited as the voice on the other end of the line told him exactly what to do.

  ‘Aye, okay,’ he grinned, and, snapping the phone shut, he pocketed it and walked smartly back the way he had come, whistling softly through nicotine-stained teeth. It didn’t pay to take too many chances in this game and Andie had been dead right to send him after the man with the thick black beard.

  CHAPTER 32