Alex Gray - A Pound Of Flesh

‘So,’ the police officer continued, ‘what sorts of people do hire them out?’

‘People with good taste,’ she fired back. But seeing his eyebrows draw together in a frown of disapproval hastily added, ‘Businessmen usually. The sort who are used to good quality and don’t wish to compromise when they’re away from home.’

‘Do you have records of everyone who has hired a car from here in the last two years?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I suppose so. I could check, perhaps.’ Then, turning away from her desk, she took a few steps towards a half-glazed door marked PRIVATE and pushed it open.

Watching her closely, the officer thought he could discern a certain timidity in her approach as she looked around. It was, he realised, unfamiliar territory. The boss’s office, he guessed; somewhere sacrosanct, or a place where secrets were hidden?

On the desk beyond the door lay an opened laptop and the woman stood before it, making a show of clicking on buttons, her tongue nervously darting in and out over her lips. There was an old-fashioned high-back chair, ornately carved, but the receptionist chose to remain standing as though to sit in her employer’s place was a breach of protocol.

‘There’s a diary here of transactions going back to 2009,’ she said at last. ‘What exactly was it you wanted?’ She looked up but her eyes were not on the policeman, they looked beyond him as if to check that her boss was not going to come in the front door and interrupt them.

Barbara Knox tapped the information onto the page, nodding silently to herself. This was good stuff. Not only had they found a series of Mercedes owners (all men, she thought with a grin) who wanted to offload their white sports jobs, but now there was this company who actually hired them out. Vladimir Badica was the owner of these hire cars, many of them white ones used for weddings. She grimaced as she read the list of couples that had hired the larger and more expensive ones for their big days. Waste of money, she thought. Better to spend it on a holiday somewhere like Mauritius. Barbara’s face became thoughtful again. Diana hadn’t exactly said they should take a holiday together, but had hinted that something like that would follow as a reward for their joint efforts.

She shrugged the idea away. Probably wouldn’t happen, knowing her luck. Better to concentrate on the job in hand. See who had hired the white Mercedes during the past couple of years in case there was some sort of tie-in with the three shooting victims.

Lorimer read the report for the second time. It simply didn’t make any sort of sense that the three people named by Catherine Pattison had reason to murder her husband. One of them, Zena Fraser, was out of the picture anyway because of her alibi. Raeburn had no apparent motive for killing his close friend and somehow Lorimer could not believe that Frank Hardy would have been so forthcoming to a senior police officer had he had anything to hide. Why, then, he thought to himself, had Pattison’s widow been so adamant that these people had been worth the time and effort it had already taken to check on their backgrounds and their whereabouts on the night of the murder?

She may well have been aware of the liaison between Ms Fraser and her husband. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, he reminded himself. Had it been some sort of female spite to name Zena Fraser as a possible killer? His frown deepened. There had been something in Frank Hardy’s words that had suggested that the Labour MSP’s sympathies lay with not against Catherine Pattison. So what on earth would make the woman suspect that man of killing her errant husband? Cherchez la femme , Solly had told him, meaning something quite different at the time. But, he wondered, was there something worth searching for in Catherine Pattison née Cadell’s own background? Picking up the telephone, Lorimer dialled the 0131 ex-directory number.

Catherine Pattison put down the telephone, her fingers trembling. Had Frank said something? She bit her lip as she turned towards the window. Outside the snow had stopped falling and the garden was shrouded in silence. Once she would have gasped in girlish delight at the frosted leaves on her holly trees or the bare branches covered in glittering white against that powder blue sky. But years of waiting and wondering had robbed her of the capacity to enjoy such simple sights as this. She rubbed her thumb repeatedly across her forefinger as though to warm it against the chill outside, but her eyes had taken on a faraway look as if her thoughts were somewhere other than this Edinburgh suburb and its winter landscape.

She had given Detective Superintendent Lorimer Frank Hardy’s name as a double bluff. That was what they had agreed, after all. What had Frank told that policeman? She shifted restlessly as she recalled the tall man with those piercing blue eyes that had seemed to gaze into her very soul. Or, was that simply something she had made up since then? A false memory born of a conscience that one could only brand as guilty?

She turned at the sound of a door opening and blinked as her mother entered the room, bearing a tray laden with home-baked marmalade loaf and a small pot of coffee. Catherine looked up as the older woman laid down the tray and began to fuss with the pair of folded linen napkins.

‘Don’t,’ she said, more sharply than she had intended, seeing the shadow that crossed her mother’s face. ‘Leave it just now, will you?’

‘Thought you said you were hungry,’ Mrs Cadell murmured. ‘Who was that on the phone just now?’ she added.

‘Lorimer,’ Catherine answered, turning away from the buttered loaf that had been made as a treat for her. It was all she needed to say; one single word to explain why her appetite for her mother’s home baking had suddenly vanished.

‘Well,’ the older woman said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘Did you tell him what really happened?’

‘Of course not,’ Catherine replied crossly. ‘What sort of fool do you take me for?’

‘The sort of fool that makes most women wish their husband was gone so they can make the same mistakes all over again,’ Mrs Cadell sighed, shaking her head wearily.

Rosie lifted the lid of her husband’s laptop and was soon keying in his password. It was something that they had agreed on when they had moved in together, even before their marriage. No secrets, shared case studies, the lot. If Solly chose to ignore the gorier aspects of forensic pathology, that was up to him, Rosie thought with a grin. But the no-holds-barred policy meant that she had access to all his ongoing cases and she was curious to see what her beloved had made of the four prostitute murders. Reading through them on screen was like being back at work, Rosie told herself; or at least it felt like that while Abby was slumbering soundly in her crib. And, besides, hadn’t she performed the post-mortem on at least one of the women?

The telephone ringing made her shoot out of her chair and grab the nearest handset, panic filling her lest the sound wake her baby and make her lose this precious time she had set aside for herself.

‘Maggie!’ she gasped, hearing the voice of her friend. ‘What a surprise! Shouldn’t you be at school this afternoon?’

‘We were all sent home early yesterday because of the snow and the council has decreed in their wisdom to keep the schools shut until at least tomorrow,’ Maggie said, the unconcealed glee in her voice making Rosie smile. Outside the huge bay windows that overlooked Kelvingrove Park Rosie could see children playing on sledges, some of them little more than tin trays.

‘Ah, right, so you’re footloose and fancy free,’ Rosie said. ‘Don’t suppose you’d like to come across town to see your god-daughter?’