Alex Gray - A Pound Of Flesh

‘So? It could have been a coincidence, couldn’t it?’ Kilpatrick blustered.

‘This girl was one of Carol’s friends,’ Solly continued, his eyes never leaving the man’s face. ‘And I have to tell you that the method used by the killer was identical to that used on your daughter,’ he added.

‘Another street girl?’ the father asked, his face twisted into a mask of disgust. ‘Why should we care about her?’

‘Because some evil bastard is out there and we want to catch him before he sends another unfortunate victim to her death!’

All three of them turned to stare at Connie Bryant, whose mild manners suddenly seemed to have deserted her.

‘You’re not the only parents who have lost a child to heroin, you know,’ she continued heatedly. ‘There are hundreds like you all over this city and every city in the country. We try to stem the tide but it’s not easy,’ she went on. ‘So many young girls are lost to their families and friends then turn in desperation to selling their bodies on the streets for the price of a fix.’ She paused for breath, cheeks flushed. Then her voice dropped and her tone became gentler and more persuasive. ‘The police have done a sterling job of cleaning up the streets, protecting the girls as best they can, but until we have help from people like you two then we’re not going to change the public’s perception of prostitution.’

There was silence in the room but Solly still felt the woman’s words reverberate in the air around them. Robin Kilpatrick was staring at Connie Bryant, his lips parted as though to speak, but it was his wife who spoke first.

‘How can we help?’ Mrs Kilpatrick said, raising her head at last.

‘Tell us about Carol,’ Solly told her gently. ‘What she was like as a girl, why you think she went off the rails. What contact you had with her after she left home.’ He paused then stared into space, wagging his dark beard thoughtfully. ‘That would be particularly helpful to begin with.’

‘Carol left home when she was sixteen,’ Mrs Kilpatrick said, her lip suddenly trembling. ‘We had no contact with her after that.’

Solly frowned. ‘Did Carol leave home because she had an addiction to heroin at that time?’ he asked. Sixteen? It seemed so young to be leaving her family. A quick memory flicked into his brain of himself at that age, steeped in his school exams, home and family a secure and loving support. How different Carol Kilpatrick’s experience had been!

‘Why?’ he added, shaking his head slightly. ‘Why did Carol leave home then?’

There was a silence that he longed to break, an uncomfortable minute when things that had long been hidden were coming close to the surface for this mother and father. Things, Solly felt sure, that would give him more insight into the woman that Carol Kilpatrick had been.

Robin Kilpatrick gave his wife a swift glance but once more she had elected to disappear into some world of her own, her head bent so that she was staring at a spot on the carpet. The psychologist wanted to take her to a place where he could talk to her alone, search her soul for whatever was troubling her, driving her deep into herself. Something, he felt certain, that had to do with their daughter.

‘She left home because she wanted to live with her friends,’ Robin Kilpatrick said, in a voice that sounded suddenly weary. ‘That’s all we can tell you.’ He rose stiffly and glanced at the door. ‘Do you mind? I think my wife and I would prefer to be left alone now.’

‘Funny couple,’ Connie Bryant muttered as they drove away from the house. ‘Never did find out much about Carol from them.’

‘Was it assumed that Carol left home because of her drug habit?’ Solly asked.

‘Hmm. Well, you’ve seen what they’re like. Nobody on the investigation team ever doubted that they’d kicked her out. Did you hear what they called her? An alien!’ Bryant’s voice quivered with indignation.

‘No,’ Solly corrected her. ‘What they said was that she had chosen a way of life that was alien to them.’ Still, the family liaison officer’s words remained with him, troubling him. Was Mrs Kilpatrick now riven with guilt and regret that she had chosen to cut all ties with her child? Or was there still something else that he needed to know about the relationship she had had with the teenager who had become a heroin addict and prostitute?

‘ … Daddy’s coming home, bringing pockets full of plums!’

‘Hello, you two. Here I am,’ Solly beamed at his wife and baby daughter as he closed the door behind him.

‘Hiya,’ Rosie smiled back at him then held the baby up. ‘Go to Daddy, you wee rascal. Let me get dinner sorted while you give her a bath, eh?’ She handed over baby Abigail who gave a delighted chuckle as Solly swung her high above his head then let her little fingers pluck the end of his beard. All around him lay the chaos that only a young baby can create: soft toys littered one corner of the elegant drawing room, Abby’s bouncer sat in the cradle of the bay window, where Rosie had placed it earlier in an attempt to catch the last warm rays of the sun, while evidence of a busy mother could be seen in a discarded muslin dropped on the floor. Solly smiled, seeing past the untidiness, imagining instead the shared moments mother and child had enjoyed throughout the day. He carried Abby through to the bathroom and his smile grew into a chuckle as he noticed that one of his beloved paintings in the hall was slightly askew. This, Solly thought to himself, was as it should be. The days of living here alone with only his artworks for company were gone; now this place was filled with the love and laughter of his little family.

A few minutes later he was holding Abigail’s shoulders, gently whooshing her back and forth in the warm water, grinning as she gurgled and laughed. Once upon a time Robin Kilpatrick might have done just this sort of thing with his own baby daughter, Solly suddenly thought. When at last he gathered Abigail up in a fluffy towel, the psychologist held her close to his chest and sent up a silent prayer that his little girl would never come to such terrible harm.

The place was in darkness when she awoke, only the light from a distant street lamp letting her see the dim shapes of this unfamiliar room. Somehow she had slept here, glad to be away from her own place, thoroughly exhausted after that storm of weeping but now the facts of Tracey-Anne’s death came back at her and she shuddered, remembering the words from last night’s television report and the scene where Carol’s friend had died.

Her fists still clutched the edges of the silken counterpane, the tips of her fingers pulsing blood red with rage: how could she have got it so terribly wrong? She had seen Tracey-Anne get into that car last night. Not a white Mercedes sports car. If only she had kept a lookout at that corner of the square … Then a queasiness began to fill her stomach as the doubts formed. Had Tracey-Anne been lifted by another punter later on? That had to be it, surely?

She had dispatched two men to their death. Two innocent men , a small voice suggested. The deepening pain in her belly made her want to retch. Trembling, she rose from the bed and staggered towards the adjacent bathroom. The black and white tiles were chilly under her feet as she leaned over the washbasin and turned on the cold tap to splash water on her hands and face.

She stood up, shivering now, and grabbed the fluffy towel that someone had placed on the heated towel rail. A huge sigh seemed to ripple through her whole body as she buried her head in the warm towel. It was a small comfort.

What had she done? How had she got it so wrong? She’d been so certain each time … As she took the towel from her face she looked at the mirror above the basin. A dark-eyed woman frowned back at her, hair straggling over pale cheeks, mouth open as though to utter some words of disparagement. And didn’t she deserve them? Didn’t she deserve to be cursed for these dreadful mistakes? For deciding that these men had to die? For condemning their loved ones to the same sort of suffering that she had endured for so long?