Alex Gray - A Pound Of Flesh

‘I’d love to,’ Maggie replied, ‘but it’s only Bill’s car that’s going anywhere in this weather. Mine’s well and truly stuck in the garage, I’m afraid. What are you up to yourself? Abby being a good wee girl?’

‘She’s asleep, actually,’ Rosie said, trying not to whisper.

‘Oh, sorry, hope I haven’t woken her up.’

‘No, don’t think so. I was just trawling through that case our husbands were both working on, the prostitute killings, you know?’

‘Aye, something nasty in them,’ Maggie said. ‘Not that I’m given all the gristly details, mind.’ She paused. ‘See if I was in Solly’s shoes, I’d be looking for a class one nutter, you know? Someone who howls at the moon.’

‘Best not let him hear you refer to the mentally unstable like that,’ Rosie chuckled. ‘Listen, why not come over this weekend if you can thaw out that car of yours? We could take the wee one to the park if it’s not too cold. Wrap her up in her sling.’

‘Okay, but I’ll let you go now in case Abigail wakes up. Speak soon. Bye.’

Rosie put down the telephone, listening hard for the sound of a baby’s plaintive cry but there was nothing. Breathing a small sigh of relief, she returned to the laptop, pressing the space bar to make the screen re-appear. It would be funny if Maggie was right, she thought, then, more to amuse herself than anything else, Rosie jotted down the four dates when each woman had been murdered then Googled them to see if there had indeed been any planetary influence.

A few minutes later she stared at the notes she had scribbled on a pad, blinking in disbelief. The very thing that Maggie Lorimer had uttered in jest had actually taken place. Carol Kilpatrick, Miriam Lyons, Jenny Haslet and Tracey-Anne Geddes had all been murdered on the night of a full moon.

‘Why wasn’t this picked up before?’ Rosie asked accusingly as she rocked the baby back and forth in her arms.

‘It isn’t something that most people would think to do,’ Solly answered quietly. ‘In fact I might not even have thought of it at this stage. Thanks to Maggie, however, we now have something that links all four of these girls, albeit,’ he smiled ruefully, ‘something that might not be looked upon by the police or even the courts of law as anything more than a strange sort of coincidence.’

‘But Lorimer … ’

‘ … doesn’t believe in coincidences,’ Solly finished for her. ‘No more than I do, darling. No, what we have here is the possibility of a psychotically motivated series of killings. But what else must we see in this picture?’ he murmured, no longer looking at his wife but rather talking to himself. ‘Remember Lorimer’s mantra: means, method and opportunity,’ he said, counting them off on his fingers. ‘Opportunity might have come easily enough either from someone frequenting the sauna or out on a familiar patch of the streets — all the victims were vulnerable young women. The methods tended to differ inasmuch as two were strangled and the others stabbed in something of a frenzied attack, but we still have to keep an open mind about that. Then the means. Someone,’ he said slowly, ‘had a way of attracting each of these girls into a situation where they could be overpowered and murdered.’

‘A drug dealer, maybe?’ Rosie suggested, breaking in on his train of thought. ‘They were all on the game to feed their habit, remember.’

‘But Jenny and Miriam had got work in a sauna. Doesn’t that indicate that they were making some attempt to clean up their act?’

‘Aye,’ Rosie said sceptically. ‘If you believe that you’ll believe anything, love. Don’t think the owners of these places are all that particular about what their girls get up to.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Solly replied. ‘There was mention of the Big Blue Bus project. These people go all out to get the girls off drugs, don’t they?’

Abigail, who had been content to listen to the voices around her, let out a familiar whimper.

‘Oops, sorry, wee one, time for your feed,’ Rosie said, patting her baby’s back and making shushing noises as she walked into the nursery.

Solomon Brightman stood watching as Rosie set Abby gently against her breast. It was an age-old gesture that spelled out the wonder of motherhood, something that was a privilege to behold.

Had someone else’s mother held her son to her like that, a son who was destined by dint of some abnormality in his genetic make-up to become a cold-blooded killer? Perhaps, Solly told himself sadly. All the joys and tender moments of motherhood would be destroyed watching one’s beloved child grow into some sort of monster. And, if he were to be instrumental in any way in finding this man, then that mother too would become a victim.

Back in his study, the psychologist lifted his desk diary, hearing the creak of the still-new spine as he turned the pages. Blinking owlishly, Solly stopped at a particular date. Scribbled under the seventh of February he had written Lorimer’s party. Keep free. Babysitter? But above the date, floating quietly on a white space were the words: full moon.

The woman who sometimes called herself Diana walked slowly towards the red brick building, her heavy boots slipping in the slushy snow. She paused for a moment to peer in at the entrance, curious to see what she could see, but it looked simply like any other reception area of a big organisation, though the familiar badge of Strathclyde Police dominated the view for any passersby. Detective Superintendent Lorimer worked somewhere up there, she knew. Barbara had been fulsome in her praise of him and something had drawn her here, wondering just what this man was like. Yet caution prevailed over womanly curiosity and she walked on, smiling a little to herself. If only they knew she was here, she thought, walking past their front door like any ordinary citizen!

Up there within the myriad offices of Strathclyde Police headquarters the detective superintendent in charge of the Serious Crimes Unit was indeed in situ, frowning over the email that Solly had sent him. He’d be much happier if he could devote some of his time to Helen James’s cases, he thought, instead of being sent on what he now believed were wild goose chases to Edinburgh. That Catherine Pattison had her own agenda, he was now certain. Her voice had given her away, even though her words had striven to reassure him. James has all of these dreadful guns , she’d told him, faltering slightly as though she was perfectly aware that her accusation against the MSP was ill founded. And yet, and yet … the memory of Raeburn’s words had come back to him time and again. Nothing to hide , the man had told him. And that gun book had been there for all to see. Had it been a deliberate show, perhaps?

Lorimer shook his head wearily. How many man hours had been spent collating the background checks on those three people, officers struggling through these hazardous conditions over in the capital where the snow had become so bad that the army had been called out to clear main roads like Princes Street? Perhaps, he thought, it was time to delve into Mrs Pattison’s own background. Frowning again, Lorimer realised that this was an action that would be delegated to a more junior officer. Being in charge of this department had meant more paperwork and meetings, not the sort of day-to-day work that he really enjoyed. His naturally restless spirit made him want to be out and about, the way he used to be as a detective inspector; tramping the streets, asking questions, meeting up with his own snouts.

He sighed. He was not quite forty and yet had already gained this rank, this prestigious appointment to Serious Crimes, so why was he feeling such a sense of detachment from the cases under investigation? Was it being here at HQ in Pitt Street, away from the cut and thrust of a division? And there were killers out there on these mean streets, he told himself, biting his lower lip; killers that he wanted to catch before any other innocent victims became their prey.