Alex Gray - A Pound Of Flesh

What had she written on that lined page? One short sentence that, reading it now, made her mouth turn up into a secret smile: He doesn’t know.

Lorimer closed the door behind him, glad that the daily task of facing the press pack was over. It had been a much more subdued meeting than usual, perhaps the intense cold had made them want to scurry back quickly to the warmth of their offices. And there had been a new one in their midst, that dark-haired woman sitting silently at the back, listening but not asking any questions. That in itself had drawn him to regard her with a flicker of interest. Perhaps she’d been sent by her editor as a substitute for the regular news reporter; this weather was playing havoc with everybody’s travel arrangements, after all.

Then, as the telephone rang, commanding the detective superintendent’s attention, all thoughts of the strange woman disappeared.

Maggie Lorimer listened as the rain pattered onto the skylight window. It was well after two in the morning and the thaw that the weather forecasters had promised seemed to have arrived. If only it didn’t turn to ice afterwards, she thought, shivering as she closed the bathroom door behind her. At least the schools would be back today and they could catch up with all the missed lessons. Padding quietly back to bed, she paused for a moment, looking down at her sleeping husband. He’d not missed a single day at work despite the dreadful weather. Crime didn’t take off snow days, did it? Especially crimes like the vicious murders that concerned Detective Superintendent William Lorimer.

Slipping into bed, Maggie let her thoughts wander. What would life be like if Bill hadn’t joined the police force? Would he have become an art historian as he had always intended? She closed her eyes, willing sleep to come, and drifted into a halfdream about pictures in a gallery, but they were all the same subject; a woman lying in the snow, blood spilled artistically from a wound beneath her curvaceous body. Then they were not flesh and blood people at all but pictures of a broken statue and the blood was not that bright red colour at all but a sickly brown as water coursed past, leaving the marble muddied and wet, its surface gleaming in a chiaroscuro light coming from somewhere that only the artist could see. Then she was falling off the edge of a pavement…

Maggie woke up suddenly, aware of the dream but with it already slipping from her consciousness. She heaved a sigh, turned on her side and let her head sink deeper into the pillow.

The Glasgow streets had been washed clean by the rain but there were still lumps of brown-tinged snow in car parks and untreated side roads where huge drifts had been piled up by the relentless snow ploughs. Lorries with their flashing lights had been a familiar sight, scattering their ever-diminishing supplies of grit like pebble dash onto the icy roads, sometimes flicking the tiny particles onto other vehicles as they made their lumbering night-time way along motorways and city streets alike.

Jim Blackburn was listening to the request programme from Radio Clyde as his gritting machine moved slowly along Sauchiehall Street. He signalled right as the pedestrian area loomed ahead, then turned the wheel and headed uphill, across Bath Street and upwards into the shadows of the buildings that lay on either side of Blythswood Street.

His eye caught the figure hovering near the corner of the pavement. She was not quite close enough to the kerb to be making a move to cross, yet neither was she lurking in the shadows, since the light from a street lamp let Jim see her clearly enough. In the moments it took for his gritter lorry to pass her by, he saw a skinny wretch of a girl. She was clad in a black jacket, a pale blue miniskirt that barely covered her decency (a phrase his granny had sometimes used in an offended Presbyterian tone) and kneelength boots. Jim’s glance took in the white of her bare legs. He swallowed, realising just what she was and why she was standing there at this hour of the morning. Not only would her legs be bare, he thought, but she wouldn’t be wearing knickers either. Somehow the thought did not arouse any other feeling than pity in the man; as he saw her in his wing mirror he realised she was about the same age as his own wee lassie, Kelly, a schoolgirl who was strictly forbidden from going into the town after a certain time of night. Jim’s mouth tightened in a grim line. What sort of life led a young lassie like that onto the streets? He sighed and gave a shake of his head at the thought, leaving the girl behind as he drove up to the square, letting the grit scatter over the icy tarmac.

Jim Blackburn did not think much more about the prostitute that night but later she was to haunt his dreams for many months to come.

Lily shivered as she stood on the pavement. It’ll be fine , the other girls had told her, you’ll make a fortune . For the first half-hour Bella had waited just across the road, nodding encouragement whenever she had looked up. Lily had smiled back but inside she’d been hoping against hope that it wasn’t really happening and that she might just be allowed to go back home again. But home wasn’t on the agenda any more, was it? Not since her mother’s boyfriend had come on to her…

This bit of pavement was special, one of the others had told her; it had been another girl’s pitch. Lily thought she knew who they had meant: the dead girl whose face had been in all the papers. Her shivering became so bad that her teeth began to chatter. A spiteful little wind had begun to lift the debris from where she stood, swirling it into crazy patterns as Lily stared into the cobbled lane. That was where her body had been found, wasn’t it? She wrapped her arms around her chest, wishing she’d remembered to bring a scarf. You look the part , one of them had told her after they’d chosen her outfit and made her twirl before that big mirror in the bedroom three of them shared. The approving glance in her eye had made Lily smile then, basking in the glow that the pills had given her. The clothes had seemed quite glamorous, certainly a lot more expensive than anything she had ever owned before. But that feeling had dissipated as the night had worn on and now she saw herself for what she really was, a fifteenyear-old girl who had run out of options and needed to sell her flesh to survive.

A car had stopped opposite and taken the other girl away so now Lily stood on her own, waiting and wondering. Would he be nice to her? Would he be gentle? Some of them were old enough to be her father , one of the girls had giggled. Her grandfather more like , another had hooted and back there in the flat it had all sounded like a bit of harmless fun. But there was nothing nice about being out here at the mercy of the elements, waiting for a stranger to offer her money for sex.

Only the gritter lorry had passed in the last half an hour and Lily had begun to wonder if it would be safe to return to the flat, telling them she’d not had any custom, when a sleek grey Jaguar turned into the street and began to slow down. Lily stepped forward. Maybe he was a stranger in this city? Perhaps all he was going to do was ask for directions?

A middle-aged man wearing an open-necked shirt smiled at her as though he could see what she was and didn’t mind. Lily could see a thick gold chain around his neck and a heavy gold signet ring on the hand that was beckoning her closer.

She was supposed to ask him if he wanted to do the business, but the cold seemed to have frozen the little speech that she had been rehearsing all night.

‘Get in, girl,’ the man said, looking at her as though she was a girlfriend he’d been expecting to pick up. Some of them had that sort of fantasy, Lily had been told.