Alex Gray - A Pound Of Flesh

‘Why do people do these terrible things?’ the girl asked him.

Professor Solomon Brightman smiled sadly. Today he had been presenting a seminar on intention, the discussion drifting, as it often did, into the mentality behind criminal behaviour. He looked at the girl, feeling a pang of despair. This fresh-faced second-year student showed a lot of academic promise in her subject, yet Solly felt that she had been sheltered from the reality of life in many ways and suspected that her education at a private school down south had failed to give her any insight into the sort of world that many of these case studies inhabited.

‘Well,’ Solly began. ‘There is no easy answer to that question, I’m afraid.’ The discussion had ended with a debate about the link between sex and violence, the outcome of which had been terminated by the clock, but this particular student had lingered, wanting more.

‘Recent research has come up with a model that shifts our perception of mental illnesses that present aggressive behaviour and sexual arousal,’ he told her. ‘Psychiatrists thought at one time that such illnesses might be caused by chemical imbalances, but the most recent thinking is that neural circuits in the brain might actually be overlapping.’

The girl frowned, concentrating on her professor’s words.

‘What I mean is this,’ he went on. ‘There are two sets of neurons that control sex and violence and in most people these are mutually exclusive. So, while these two circuits overlap physically, there is a sort of switch that keeps them apart. Follow me?’

She nodded.

‘Then if a scenario arises whereby there are too many or too few connections between brain cells, those two behaviours cease to be mutually exclusive.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘so it’s not their fault if they become violent when they’re having sex?’

‘A pathology might well occur from such a physical situation,’ Solly admitted. ‘But it would be very difficult to say just how far a person was capable of controlling his or her violent behaviour.’

‘But they might not be able to control it at all,’ his student insisted.

‘There might indeed be a predisposition for sexual violence in an individual whose neural pathways were intermingled in such a way as to … ’

‘Make them killers?’ the girl finished off with a gleam of triumph in her eyes. ‘Thanks, professor, that’s much clearer now,’ she said cheerfully, swinging her bag onto her shoulder and smiling at him as she left his room.

Solly closed his door with a sigh. It was true that much research was ongoing into the behaviour of sexual offenders and perhaps in time better treatments might be offered to them. The theory was absorbing for so many of his students. But the sigh he had given expressed the dichotomy between this girl’s academic approach and the reality of his own preoccupation with the case that Lorimer had given him. At least two of the dead street girls had been brutally murdered by someone who could well fit the profile of a sex offender that he had just outlined to his student.

Violent sexual behaviour might be tolerated by some for the simple reason that, were the women who suffered to complain, it would lose them money. Solly’s mind turned once more to the sauna in Govan. There was another place down in Partick, Lorimer had told him, also called Andie’s. Who, he frowned, was this Andie person? With a twinge of guilt, the psychologist realised that he had done nothing yet to follow up this particular line of enquiry. It was, he consoled himself, something that he normally left to the police. But with the Pattison case absorbing so much of their manpower, there was little left over for a search into the two saunas. A quick look at his watch told Solly that if he was to forego his lunch then he could spare two hours until his next class. A walk to Partick would do him good, too. It was a cold February morning but the skies were clear and a weak sun was making its hazy presence felt through thin wisps of milky cloud.

Solly turned up his collar against the breeze as he crossed Byres Road and headed left. Once sheltered from the wind that blew down University Avenue the psychologist’s mouth turned up in a smile. Being out on the streets was something he always enjoyed; taking in snatches of conversation as people passed him by, watching the way everyone went about their business, catching glimpses of human behaviour in the raw. It was an absorbing walk down to the corner where the classy shops and cafes gave way to a more homely type of area altogether in Dumbarton Road. Native Glaswegians had informed the professor that Partick had been a village at one time in the city’s history and today Solly caught an inkling of what that still meant.

Andie’s Sauna was a fair step along the road, past Partick Library and down a small side lane that led away from the busy main road. Like the one in Govan, this place was fronted by a large window, but here the difference was that a dusty Venetian blind had been pulled down to give some notion of privacy.

Solly pushed open the door and entered. There was a reception desk straight ahead and a row of bentwood chairs placed along one side, a pile of well-thumbed magazines laid on top of the one nearest to the door. Nobody was there but he could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner somewhere beyond the door behind the reception area. Perhaps Joe Public was not expected at this time of day, Solly mused. There was no sign of a bell on the counter so he walked up and down, hands behind his back, taking in the state of the place. Lorimer, he knew, was fond of telling his younger officers how much one could learn about a person from the house that he inhabited. What, Solly wondered, could he find out about this establishment from this front-of-house area?

It needed a good clean, he told himself, looking at the dusty sills and fly-blown window panes, and there had been little attempt to make the place attractive. No vase of flowers graced the reception desk and, as Solly peeped over its edge, all he could see was a telephone, a thick ledger and an open laptop with several unopened letters laid to one side. There was an ancient swivel chair behind the desk, some of its seat padding ripped and worn; Solly nodded to himself, concluding that there was probably only a single member of staff who fronted the sauna. The same person who was now behind the vacuum cleaner, perhaps? As he paced back and forth, Solly became aware that the flooring beneath his feet was slightly uneven; whoever had laid the thick blue linoleum had not bothered to put down any underlay. At each step, the professor could hear the squeak of floorboards and he was so fascinated by this, looking down at his shoes, that he failed to notice a door opening to his left.

‘Who are you ?’ A man’s voice demanded.

A short, thin fellow in blue jeans and a checked shirt, its sleeves rolled up past his elbows, stood before him, one hand on the hose of the vacuum cleaner.

Solly gave a start then turned and gave the man a smile, holding out his hand. ‘Professor Brightman, University of Glasgow,’ he said.

‘We’re no’ open yet,’ the man said shortly, scowling suspiciously at Solly. ‘And I don’t remember any Brightman in our appointment book,’ he went on, confirming Solly’s first impression that this was a one-man business.

‘Are you Andie?’

The man’s face changed immediately as he hooted with laughter.

‘Me? Naw, son, ah’m no’ Andie. Why? Is that who ye’re looking fur?’

‘Actually,’ Solly stepped forward, nodding in a confidential manner, ‘I’m here on behalf of Strathclyde Police. It’s to do with the murders of some of the Glasgow street girls,’ he went on. ‘I’m a professor of psychology, you see, and sometimes I help the police to establish things like criminal profiles.’