Alex Gray - A Pound Of Flesh

Doreen had talked about easy money, hadn’t she? Money that didn’t come from the police. Should she have told him about Doreen? No, she decided. She’d be Doreen’s eyes and ears, maybe pick up something for her efforts.

But as Lily stood there in the misty night something stirred within her, something that she vaguely recognised as regret.

*

The young girl was the only person he had managed to see in his walk around the drag and Lorimer felt a keen pity for the lassie standing at the entrance to that lane, waiting for her next customer. She had looked not much older than one of Maggie’s senior pupils, sixteen maybe. Far too young to have her life wasted like this, he raged, as he opened the door of the Lexus and climbed in. For a moment he understood the crusade that DCI Helen James had been waging in the war against prostitution. But was this night-time wandering helping to find the girls’ killer?

The road back home was a dark grey ribbon, its surface glossy with rain. An orange pall hung over the city behind him, reflected in the rear-view mirror with only blackness ahead as he drove south. Yet he was part of this great city with its beating heart, even though he and Maggie had chosen to live in the suburbs. Glasgow was still a special place to him despite all its broken dreams and those girls who wandered its streets looking for someone who would buy their flesh.

As he turned into the drive Lorimer looked up at the bedroom window. The curtains were now closed against the night but Maggie would be there, waiting for him. Who, if anyone, might be waiting up for the girl called Lily?

Alexander turned in his sleep, pulling the corner of the blanket over his shoulder and dislodging one of his pillows so that it tumbled silently to the floor. The sleeping man was quite oblivious to the figure standing in the darkness looking down at him, who saw Alexander’s expression in repose as childlike, innocent even. Vladimir stood still, his back to the window, his jaw hardening as he gazed. Looking at that figure slumbering so peacefully it was hard to imagine the heartache he had brought into everybody’s lives. Vladimir had made a promise, though, and it was a promise that he intended to keep. Yet his fingers twitched by his side even as he imagined picking up that discarded pillow and pressing it down on that handsome face.

Perhaps it was the lack of sleep but as Detective Superintendent Lorimer sat at his desk next morning his head seemed to swirl with all the disjointed pieces of information that simply refused to make anything like a whole picture. It was, he thought gloomily, as if he had lost his usual ability to see things objectively. Images of that wee lassie, Lily, her hair slicked against her head with the rain, kept coming back to haunt him. He pushed the thought aside, wearily regarding the piles of officer appraisals he was meant to be reading. He hardly knew any of the officers in this unit, yet somehow he must put words on paper so that when the time came they would have a decent billet to go on to. Joyce Rogers had given him fair warning that the Serious Crimes Squad was winding down and it was only a matter of time before he’d be making decisions about the futures of some of the men and women in Pitt Street.

The rain had stopped some time during the night and now a freshening breeze had brought some hazy blue to the skies above the city. The sight of it from his window ought to have lifted his spirits, reminding him that January was drawing to a close and lighter days lay ahead, but it was as though the dark storm clouds still held him in their grip as he sat, pondering where his next step should take him. All the officers were out on actions relating to the Pattison case, he thought. Perhaps nobody would notice if he were to absent himself for a little while.

Picking up the telephone, Lorimer dialled a number he knew off by heart. A small smile of pleasure softened his features as he heard the man’s voice.

‘Solly? Any chance you’d have time to see me right now?’

‘I just can’t make head nor tail of it any more, Solly,’ Lorimer said as they walked through the university grounds. ‘Mrs Pattison swears now that she was with Hardy in his Edinburgh place. And of course that puts paid to Hardy’s earlier claim that he was with his wife all night in Erskine. One of them’s lying and I think it’s probably him.’

‘Do you really think there is enough evidence to build a case against them?’ Solly asked quietly as they passed through the ancient arches of the quadrangle.

Lorimer shrugged wearily in reply.

‘Let’s take it step by step,’ the psychologist suggested. ‘What you want to know is the identity of the person who shot three men in their white Mercedes cars.’

‘Person or persons,’ Lorimer replied glumly.

Solly shook his head. ‘No, you’re looking for one person, Lorimer,’ he said firmly. ‘And to find that person you should be asking yourself why anyone would want to kill these men in the first place.’

‘You make it sound very simple,’ Lorimer sighed.

‘Let’s look at what you have on the Pattison case. The man has been caught on CCTV camera leaving Blythswood Square in the company of a person we think may be a prostitute. With me so far?’

Lorimer nodded, trying to suppress a yawn. He’d been over and over this territory till his head swam.

‘Why would a street girl want to kill men who came to them for sex?’ Solly asked.

Lorimer frowned. ‘D’you really want an answer to that?’

‘Yes. Give me any reason why someone kills another person.’

‘Money, drugs, falling out, spite … ’ He yawned for real now.

‘Or, perhaps, some notion of revenge?’

‘What are you cooking up in that brainy head of yours, pal?’ Lorimer smiled despite himself as they headed around the corner towards the university chapel.

‘It’s not that difficult, really,’ Solly replied with his customary modesty. ‘A woman with a gun who targets specific victims has an agenda. Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ Lorimer said, ‘though we don’t know if the perpetrator was a woman.’

‘Let’s say it was,’ Solly came back firmly. ‘The last known person with Mr Pattison was a woman, from the image of her on that CCTV footage. Now, if a woman sets out to kill men who pick up prostitutes, there has to be a reason for it, doesn’t there?’

‘What on earth are you suggesting?’ Lorimer asked, frowning.

Solly stopped at the foot of the steps leading up to the chapel and turned to his friend, his hands spread out as he began to explain.

‘If a woman wants to kill someone over and over again like that she must be under some kind of compulsion. Not necessarily one that afflicts her mental state.’ He paused for a moment as though searching for the right words. ‘I think you should be looking for someone who has a deep-seated grudge against someone she doesn’t even know.’

‘What?’

‘Doesn’t it stand to reason?’ Solly asked. ‘All she knows is that her intended victim picks up prostitutes in a particular type of white car. She can’t possibly know his identity or else she wouldn’t have killed three times already.’

‘Unless she’s a prize nutter,’ Lorimer put it, glad to see the psychologist wince at his political incorrectness. The two men climbed the stone steps and entered the chapel. Rays of sunlight from the stained glass windows made shapes of colour dance across the ancient flagstones. All was quiet within, save for the sound of their echoing footsteps.

‘Let’s say that she is not,’ Solly continued, sitting down in a row of wooden seats that faced the main altar. ‘The killings are planned and show an orderly sort of mind. Now,’ he went on, wagging a professorial finger, ‘most of these women are in thrall to drugs and often not capable of doing anything at all like this, agreed?’