Alex Gray - A Pound Of Flesh

When she turned to him with a proper smile, not the junkedup glassy stare of so many of the women he’d been with in this city, he knew that this one would be special.

‘I know a place,’ she told him, her voice tantalising the erogenous zones, making him feel that surge of male power, that urge to dominate one of those girls in the street.

He jerked his thumb, a command to get in, then, as soon as she’d clicked her seat belt in place Pattison drove off, head held high as the big car leapt into the night. Another conquest was beginning; another woman was fit to be given a doing.

After giving him a few directions she didn’t speak again until the city had fallen behind them, its myriad lights cast off like a spangled garment.

‘Next left,’ she intoned, one hand placed for a second upon his thigh.

He risked a glance at her and she smiled encouragingly.

‘Not far now,’ she assured him, her fingers sliding slowly up the webbing strap of her seatbelt.

The country lane by the wood looked safe enough, Pattison told himself as his foot pressed the brake. There was a double click as they undid their seat belts and he reached across for her, hungry to begin.

‘Wait.’

The word made him back off as she rummaged in the bag at her feet. He thought he understood, heart beating with anticipation. They all used protection after all. And it would have been crass stupidity on his part not to be careful. Never knew where they’d been.

When she straightened up again he saw her hands full of a dark shadow that became an explosion of light and pain.

Then total darkness as his heart burst into shattered pulp.

The nightly garbage collection cleared Glasgow city streets of more than the usual detritus that night. The woman added the clothes she’d worn, rolled tightly in a double layer of supermarket carrier bags, to the pile lying in the doorway of the cobbled lane. Any residue from the gun or contact traces from her victim might have found its way onto her hair and clothing, traces that she was keen to destroy.

It was a place she knew well. And somehow it was fitting to leave the evidence (that would never be found) in the very spot where two women had been brutalised, the place no longer cordoned off by police tape. If she could have taken any of her victims there she would have enjoyed some dramatic irony in the situation. But it was too much of a risk. Thrusting her tart’s clothes deep into the heavy duty bin liner was as near a twisted joke as she could contrive.

Walking slowly uphill to Blythswood Square and the hotel, she was already planning her next outing. Not this week, though, and probably not the next. She would watch the aftermath of the shooting impinge itself on the city’s consciousness. And, above all, she would follow the progress of the senior investigating officer’s investigation. Or rather, she smiled to herself as she asked for her room key, their lack of it.

Killing time, she told herself, liking the phrase so much that she spoke it out loud as she walked up the back stairs:

‘Killing time.’

There was the semblance of a day job, of course, and what it entailed, but she could pretend to herself that there were shift patterns; days off and the need to maintain an appearance of normality. Washing the car, shopping for groceries, doing the laundry; all the things that filled in the space between the day-to-day obligations and what had become more than a duty. This was no mere act of revenge on her part, she told herself. Revenge was mindless and all her actions had been well conceived, purposeful. If he’d been caught, Carol’s killer would be serving some piffling sentence in Barlinnie, Saughton or wherever they could squeeze him in. Then, early release. Always early release. She ground her teeth in silent rage. No. Revenge was far less sweet than what she would ultimately feel when he finally fell into her trap. It would be a vindication, a meting out of justice. She’d be the one to apprehend him, try, sentence and execute all on one starlit night. Meanwhile she killed time, taking pleasure in watching as the media’s interest in the shootings quickened.

He had passed the junction for Erskine hundreds of times in the past, but now Detective Superintendent Lorimer was taking the turning near the Erskine Bridge. The call had come some time after two a.m. with a barked instruction from the chief constable to get his arse over to Renfrewshire asap. Hearing the victim’s name had galvanised him into action and now he was here on this darkened stretch of road, flicking his lights on to full beam.

The presence of a police car let Lorimer know to swing left off the main road and slowly follow the narrow track that led into woodland. The thermometer in his new car registered minus one but there was no wind and the thick pine trees ahead glistened with frost, illumined by his headlights. He stopped the silver Lexus round the next corner behind a line of other cars, the familiar blue and white tape some yards ahead barring further entry, and lifted his kit bag from the passenger seat beside him.

‘Detective Superintendent Lorimer, Serious Crimes Squad,’ he told the uniformed officer standing guard at the side of a muddy path. The man looked at him warily so, suppressing a sigh, Lorimer flipped open his warrant card and the officer immediately stepped aside.

‘Just watch your feet, sir, it’s a bit icy further along,’ the man told him, pulling his coat collar up around his ears.

Lorimer edged carefully over the hard ground, almost slipping once or twice as his feet connected with a frozen patch. The scene of crime was a few yards further along the narrow track and Lorimer could make out several white figures moving about in the swirling gloom. As he drew nearer a pale shape flew silently past, a barn owl hunting for its prey. The arcs of torchlight up ahead had done nothing to deter this bird from its usual nocturnal habits, Lorimer thought, his eyes trying to focus on what was happening. He peered into the darkness, looking for the victim’s car. Was that it? A white blur partly obscured by dense foliage?

‘Can you keep back please?’ A thick-set man suddenly stepped towards him out of the darkness, torch in hand. ‘Only official personnel allowed.’

For the second time Lorimer whipped out his warrant card and held it close to the man’s torch beam so that he could read it.

‘Sorry, sir, we weren’t expecting you this soon. Scene of crime personnel are still attending the scene and we’re waiting for the pathologist. I’m DS Jolyon, scene of crime manager from K Division.’

‘Good to meet you, Jolyon,’ Lorimer said, giving the man a brief handshake. ‘Just let me get geared up will you?’ Turning aside to a patch of dark grass that looked reasonably flat, Lorimer laid down his kit bag and took out the regulation garments that were essential to protect a crime scene from any contamination. Soon he was clad like the others in a white hooded suit and latex gloves, his shoes encased in bootees to prevent any contamination of the soil around the crime scene.

The slam of a car door made Jolyon and Lorimer turn around and they waited until another figure appeared, similarly geared up and carrying a medical bag, stamping along the path to join them.

‘Doctor White,’ Lorimer nodded at the pathologist who was serving as Rosie’s locum.

‘Lorimer,’ the dark haired woman nodded briefly then strode past them both as if she had no need of torchlight to see the locus of this particular crime.

The victim was lying slumped to one side; the hole in his chest black against his white dress shirt. Headlights from nearby patrol cars had leached all sense of colour from the man’s face. Lorimer looked once, then looked away. It was true, then. Edward Pattison, deputy first minister for Scotland, was dead, shot in this quiet woodland, far from his Edinburgh home. The first officers on the scene had identified him from the bank cards in his wallet, then the call had gone out, wakening even the chief constable who had then instructed Lorimer to attend the scene as SIO.