Alex Gray - A Pound Of Flesh

‘Go on, let me guess,’ Barbara began, deciding that a mildly flirtatious approach would do no harm. ‘You’re an international lawyer of some sort, or, no, let me think, you work for one of those global corporations.’

‘You shouldn’t be able to guess,’ the woman told her, a serious note creeping into her voice. ‘Actually, I’m a journalist.’

‘Ah.’ Barbara’s face fell and she quickened her step. What the hell was she playing at, trying to charm one of the press pack?

‘Oh, it’s not what you think,’ the woman replied quickly, one hand on Barbara’s arm, slowing her down. ‘I’m freelance. In fact,’ she turned around, a furtive gesture as though to ensure that nobody was listening, ‘I work mostly undercover. On really important cases.’

DC Barbara Knox found that they were standing at the corner of Bothwell Street now, outside Starbucks. Her eyes travelled towards the door, wishing she had the nerve to ask, biting her lip in sudden confusion. She always turned up far too early for work and there was time today…

‘Coffee?’ the woman asked and before she knew it, Barbara was inside the place, its familiar smell of coffee overlaid with cinnamon and vanilla tickling her nostrils.

It was easy after that, talking about work, telling her new friend about the case she’d been on with DCI Mumby and how Lorimer now had her up at Pitt Street to help out with this work, keeping the details deliberately vague.

The amazed expression on the journalist’s face had made her falter for a moment. ‘What?’ she’d asked, puzzled.

‘But that must be the case I’m working on too!’ the other woman had whispered, drawing her seat closer so that their knees met under the table, giving Barbara a fluttery feeling deep within her stomach. ‘The story of the men killed in their white cars!’

Afterwards Barbara wondered what sort of fate had led Diana Yeats to sit opposite her on that particular morning. That was her name, the woman had confided, but she had uttered it in a manner that made the policewoman wonder if it was a pseudonym of sorts, something to be used in her profession or with a stranger met on a train. She had left her there quite reluctantly, a smile between them and a promise to meet up again after work.

And, as Barbara Knox turned up into Pitt Street her feet seemed not to notice the steep incline. A red letter day, some folk called it; a day when good things happened. And beginning to work with Lorimer and meeting Diana all on one day surely justified that expression?

Thoughts of the woman were kept to a secret corner of DC Knox’s mind, however, as she entered Strathclyde Police headquarters, the word for welcome etched on the double glass doors in more than a dozen different languages. The commissionaire nodded as she showed him her warrant card and directed her upstairs away from the small foyer with its empty black seating.

The woman who had called herself Diana sat on in the coffee house, her second latte still untouched. Was there such a thing as coincidence? Or were the fates that had driven her to seek out Carol’s killer bringing her more help in the rather unlovely shape of this lesbian police officer? Spotting that article in the police magazine had been a piece of complete luck. The feature had been more about the Serious Crimes Squad itself and the woman had sensed the politics behind the editor’s desire to elevate the squad’s profile when she knew fine the department was going to be mothballed. It had paid off having contacts in the right places even after all this time. And one of them had even tip-toed around the matter of Barbara Knox’s sexual orientation. Then it had been a matter of catching the right train at the right time, looking for the face that matched the photo in the magazine, hoping that she could ingratiate herself with the police officer. Forging a liaison with this Barbara person was immensely risky, but then, perhaps the risks would outweigh the final consequences.

‘I want every car dealership and every paper that advertises private sales to be contacted,’ Lorimer said. ‘And don’t forget these car auctions places either,’ he added, remembering the fate of his old Lexus. ‘It stands to reason that anyone owning a white car of that particular make is going to become jittery, so expect a small flood of car sales or trade-ins.’

‘What about the owners?’ DI Sutherland wanted to know.

‘I was coming to that,’ Lorimer told him. ‘We could work on the theory that there is some obsessive killer on the loose who is randomly targeting men in white Mercedes sports cars. Professor Brightman will bring us up to speed on that one,’ he added. ‘But we cannot rule out the possibility that whoever has been luring these men to their deaths actually has some prior knowledge of the victims.’

‘But surely Wardlaw and Littlejohn were just in the wrong place at the wrong time?’ Sutherland protested.

‘Could be,’ Lorimer agreed. ‘Or it could also be the case that there is a link between all three men that we have yet to discover. A link,’ he added, turning to the rest of the officers assembled in the incident room, ‘that may be shared by other Mercedes owners and that could possibly give us some sort of clue about these deaths.’

The expressions on the faces of his officers were far from happy, Lorimer could see. The nitty-gritty business of police investigation was always laborious and time-consuming but they had no alternative but to throw all their resources at this case, given the third victim’s public profile.

‘Delegate as much as you can to Mumby and Preston’s officers but it is imperative that every single one of you report even the smallest finding back to me. This is a team effort and I don’t want any mavericks looking for glory,’ he added sternly. ‘You’re part of an elite squad so you don’t have to prove yourselves to me or to anyone else. Okay?’

As he left them to carry out their various actions, Lorimer felt a pang of envy. His present remit was to go downstairs and face the group of journalists who would no doubt be already assembled and waiting for him.

Professor Solly Brightman smiled to himself as he typed in the information to his preliminary report. Cases of obsessive personalities fixating on one particular set of circumstances or objects that led to murder were actually quite rare and it intrigued the psychologist to think that there might be someone of that description out there in the city who needed to be taken into custody. Solly was the sort of person who was able to look at the facts dispassionately, however. Three men had been lured to their death by a person or persons unknown. Each had been found in a quiet place, far from main roads, the first two beneath railway bridges, suggesting that the killer may have made his way back to the city by a late train. Whoever had murdered Edward Pattison had had to leave the scene on foot, however. There were no buses from Erskine at that time of night so either the killer lived in the vicinity or had simply walked away. Unless there had been another person waiting for them in those woods, of course.

The police would be able to examine any CCTV footage of the Erskine Bridge itself. It was a magnet for suicides, Solly knew, recalling the Samaritans placard on the approach to the footpath. But he felt intuitively that the killer would have taken a less public route from the scene of crime, losing themselves in the labyrinth of housing estates that comprised the town of Erskine. He was not much given to using his intuitive powers, though, preferring to look at the facts in a logical manner.

He blinked as he continued to type, remembering the family of Carol Kilpatrick. Their home was only a few miles from the scene of crime; a walk that might take a fit man less than an hour. And then there was the death of Miriam Lyons, whose body had been found on the other side of the river that separated Erskine from Clydebank and Bowling. Could there be a link between the death of the deputy first minister of Scotland and these poor street girls?