Alex Gray - A Pound Of Flesh

‘Ye-es,’ Lorimer said slowly, flicking the tails of his coat as he sat down beside the psychologist.

‘Don’t you see?’ Solly smiled suddenly. ‘If this killer is a woman from the streets she is unlikely to be an addict. The unidentified hair sample suggests as much. Plus ,’ he went on, ‘she must have obtained the gun from somewhere and knows how to use it.’

‘And she’s forensically aware,’ Lorimer pondered, following Solly’s line of thought now.

‘There’s something else,’ Solly went on then paused as though to gather his thoughts or, Lorimer suspected, to choose his words carefully. The policeman glanced sharply at his companion; he had a feeling that whatever Solly was going to tell him was not something he wanted to hear.

‘I’ve been going over this from different angles,’ he began.

‘Thinking out of the box, you might say,’ he added. ‘What have the three men in common apart from their cars and the way they were killed?’ he asked quietly.

Lorimer’s frown deepened. This was something he’d been over and over with other officers. ‘Nothing, so far as we know,’ he muttered.

‘Let’s say that the woman who picked Pattison up was a Glasgow prostitute. Just for argument’s sake,’ Solly said.

‘Okay.’

‘She gets into the cars after making some sort of proposition to each of these men, shall we say?’

‘Go on,’ Lorimer said, wondering where this was leading.

‘Well,’ Solly said, ‘think about it. There has to be a verbal exchange of some sort. She doesn’t get into the car until she has spoken to them and they with her. Don’t you see? She’s looking for a particular person, but since none of these three men had any visible resemblance to one another that just leaves one thing, doesn’t it?’

‘You mean…?’

‘Their voices,’ Solly said firmly. ‘Each of these men came from a place outside Glasgow. Two of them had English accents and Pattison had a cultured, Edinburgh accent, something that Glaswegians sometimes associate with an anglicised accent. There have been studies into this, by the way,’ he added as though to reassure the detective.

‘I can see what you’re saying and it does make a sort of sense,’ Lorimer admitted. ‘She’s looking for somebody who drives a type of car like that, a man from outside Glasgow who picks up prostitutes.’ He shook his head as though he were failing to convince himself. ‘But why?’

‘Ah.’ Solly wagged his finger in the air once more. ‘That’s my point exactly. Why is this mystery woman seeking to kill the man in the white Mercedes?’

‘So, let me get this straight. You think that these three men may have been killed by mistake?’ He shook his head at the idea of such callousness, then paused. ‘Well, doesn’t that mean that she is still looking?’

Solly nodded. ‘It’s possible. There may be a target that fits all of the killer’s criteria but her knowledge of him is so scanty that she is taking a chance on anyone who ticks these particular boxes.’

‘We’ve been looking for all the owners of white Mercs,’ Lorimer said slowly. ‘But not with this in mind. We just wanted to see if there was any sort of pattern we could establish that might help find the killer.’

‘I did wonder …’ Solly began and looked into the distance as though he were too shy to look his friend in the eye.

‘What?’

‘Well, this mystery woman. Is she really a prostitute?’

‘We’ve got information about the first two victims. They did use street girls. And so did Pattison,’ Lorimer began slowly. ‘But I can see what you’re saying. This woman has to have had a clear head for what she did. And we know most of our poor lassies are usually doped to the eyeballs when they’re out on the game.’

Solly smiled sadly. ‘I have given this a lot of thought,’ he said.

‘And the more I consider it as a possible theory the more it seems to make sense.’

Lorimer nodded but said nothing. He had sought help from this man to clear his head, make things a little more objective. But all the while Professor Brightman had been creating a profile for the killer they sought and now he had begun to share it with him. It might be true, or at least have some grains of truth in it. Solly’s previous profiling had been invaluable and Lorimer had learned to listen without prejudice. But would the rest of his team take this idea onboard? And how would they set about finding this mystery woman?

‘You’re not being permitted to charge her,’ the deputy chief constable told Lorimer.

‘And what would we charge her with anyway? Wasting police time? I see that might not be in our interest right now,’ Lorimer replied, unable to keep the cynicism out of his voice.

‘Probably not,’ Joyce Rogers agreed. ‘The newspapers would have our guts for garters. Poor widow being hounded by police when they should be finding her husband’s killer etc., etc. Aye, I know what you’re thinking and believe me it sticks in my craw as well that so many man hours have been wasted. Our budget’s shot to buggery as it is,’ she added gloomily.

‘There is one thing that has come up,’ Lorimer began.

‘Oh?’ Joyce Rogers raised her eyebrows as she heard the tentative tone in her senior officer’s voice. ‘Am I going to like it?’

‘Oh, maybe not,’ Lorimer said with a long sigh. ‘It’s something Professor Brightman suggested.’

The deputy chief constable listened to Solly’s theory, not interrupting once, though her eyes grew wider as Lorimer went on.

‘So, if it is true that there is a woman behind all of this, we need to decide on our next plan of action.’

‘This isn’t just one of his latest hobby horses, is it? I know the professor was writing a book about women serial killers,’ Joyce asked.

Lorimer shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. He’s quite correct about the killer being organised and although we’ve seen psychopaths committing crimes that show a degree of organisation, Professor Brightman doesn’t think this protagonist fits into that sort of category.’ Lorimer bit his tongue. The profile that was emerging was one that might well fit an experienced police officer; a woman who was not only adept with firearms but was forensically aware. He was certain Solly was thinking along the same lines though as yet neither of the men had voiced this particular theory.

‘Does he not, indeed?’ Joyce replied tartly. ‘Well, that remains to be seen once you’ve caught her. If it is a her ,’ she added darkly.

‘Meantime, what is this I’ve been hearing about you wandering around the drag during the wee small hours?’

Lorimer bit his lip. Curse the man! Sutherland’s tongue must have been wagging, he thought. ‘Well … ’

‘Moonlighting, are you? Hoping to combine this with Helen James’s cases?’ She looked keenly at him and nodded. ‘Well, for God’s sake don’t let the chief know about it. I can only keep a lid on this for so long. He’d have something to say if he thought you’d deliberately crossed him, Lorimer.’

‘It’s not quite like that, ma’am,’ Lorimer protested. ‘Okay, I’d love to find out who killed Tracey-Anne Geddes, but it’s more than that. With the CCTV footage of Pattison there’s every chance that the two cases might be linked.’

‘Because a girl got into his car in Blythswood Square?’ Joyce Rogers asked. ‘That’s pretty flimsy linkage if you ask me, Lorimer.’

‘Frank Hardy told me that Edward Pattison used prostitutes in Glasgow,’ Lorimer went on. ‘And we know that Littlejohn and Wardlaw also used girls from their own neck of the woods so there’s reason to suppose they might have tried it out here too.’