Alex Gray - A Pound Of Flesh

‘Get your arse over here,’ he growled under his breath at the police officer who stood shivering across the road. ‘You’ll be expected to be at the scene when the van arrives,’ he called louder, so she could hear him. ‘You need to have some clue what’s going on in case you’re cited as a witness later,’ he reminded her as she re-entered the lane, still sniffling into a paper hanky.

‘I … I’ve never seen a dead body like this before,’ the girl mumbled, her eyes flicking over the dead woman in the corner. ‘Just the ones in the mortuary,’ she added quietly.

‘Well you’ve seen one now,’ Fraser snapped, growing increasingly impatient with his colleague. What had she joined up for if she hadn’t expected to see things like this? he wondered.

‘Look, you need to have a note of the time we arrived here and the actions undertaken. Okay?’

The girl nodded and stuffed the handkerchief back into her uniform pocket.

‘Now can you take a look at her? There’s nothing to be scared of,’ Fraser said, a more gentle tone creeping into his voice as he saw the girl take a deep breath. ‘The dead cannae do you any harm. It’s the living you need to be wary of,’ he told her, touching her sleeve. ‘All right?’

The young policewoman drew her torch out once more and shone it over what was now officially a crime scene. Fraser had not replaced the coat and Patricia couldn’t help thinking that the dead woman’s body looked far too small to be human. As she took a few tentative steps towards it, she saw the open gashes on the sides and back. Blinking hard to focus on what she was seeing, Patricia tried to remember what she had learned in basic training about knife wounds. But her mind refused to let her remember the dispassionate facts that she had written up in her notebook. This was a real person, had been a real living woman just a few hours ago before someone had ravaged her poor body, cutting into vital organs, perhaps. Patricia saw each entry wound, wondering at the kind of person that could harm a poor wee woman like that.

‘Don’t get too hung up about her,’ Fraser said suddenly. ‘Remember she was only a prostitute. They’re all oot their heads on dope. She probably didn’t even feel a thing.’

‘How can you say that?’ Patricia protested suddenly. ‘A prostitute and a junkie she may have been, but once upon a time she was someone’s wee girl. Maybe she was even some fellow’s wife or girlfriend.’

‘Look, hen,’ Fraser sighed, ‘you need to try to distance yourself from this. Take in the facts. Do your job. That’s all. If you get all emotional about every victim of crime you see you’ll never be able to cope.’

Fraser saw the look in the woman’s eyes as she struggled to reply. There were tears of what? Righteous anger? Self-pity?

‘We’ll find out all about her in due course. But for now we’ve got a job to do here. DCI James will want a full report given the other women in her case load. Okay?’

The rookie cop nodded, knowing that what he said was right. The unsolved deaths of several street women had been taxing their Senior Investigating Officer for months now, long before Patricia Fairbairn had joined the force. Patricia raised her head as a squad car appeared at the mouth of the lane then looked up at her neighbour, noting the sense of relief on his face. So he wasn’t immune from the total horror of this either. Fraser MacDonald wasn’t that much older than she was. Maybe blokes were just better at hiding their feelings. Or maybe she wasn’t cut out for this sort of job. Was this really what she had been expecting? The training at Tulliallan had been such fun, a bit like school, really. And she’d been good at school too, hadn’t she, with that dream of becoming a police officer always at the front of her mind.

She shrank back against the wall as several officers emerged out of the darkness. Some were clad in white boiler suits, their breath making small clouds in the frozen air. A blue light beating behind them made the figures seem like something from a science fiction movie, the sort that gave her the horrors.

This was the stuff of nightmares, Patricia told herself, shivering. Not the stuff of her daydreams after all.

‘Lorimer.’

The detective superintendent listened, nodding from time to time as the voice on the other end of the line explained the situation. Not only had DCI James been rushed into hospital for an emergency gall bladder removal but there was one more street woman dead on her patch.

Lorimer knew Helen James. She was the sort of police officer he liked, firm but fair. They had been at Pitt Street together a few months ago, watching the demonstration of some high tech stuff that he’d subsequently used in a case. James had been a mite scathing about the device but it had proved its usefulness after all. How long had it been since that first prostitute murder? A year? Eighteen months? The press coverage had been relentless and he recalled the DCI’s drawn face and air of determination. It was something that every senior officer experienced during a murder case. Lack of sleep, lack of evidence, lack of witnesses to come forward, but no shortage of column inches decrying the police for getting nowhere with any of those cases. It was little wonder the woman had suffered some sort of internal disorder. Stress took its toll on so many cops. Ulcers, heart attacks, sudden bouts of depression — these, and James’s gall bladder removal, were hardly the stuff for the features pages of the popular press, were they?

Lorimer’s frown deepened as he considered the latest in the four murders. Tracey-Anne Geddes had been stabbed in what one of the officers described as a frenzy, a similar MO to that first one, Carol Kilpatrick. There had not been any suggestion until now that the killings could be related even though the girls had all worked on the drag. Miriam Lyons, the second victim, had been pulled out of the Clyde down near Bowling, while Jenny Haslet had been strangled with her own tights and thrown into a back court in Cathcart. Was there enough to justify calling his old friend in on this case?

The policeman’s face softened as he thought about Solly. He was Professor Brightman now and father of little Abigail, their god-daughter. Their friendship aside though, Lorimer respected Solly as a professional, and the psychologist’s input on a case such as this could make a real difference. Budgetary constraints were worsening by the month but perhaps an initial appraisal by Solly might be justified? Whatever, it looked like this particular lot of murder cases was also to be placed squarely at the door of Serious Crimes. Well, he decided, Mumby and Preston could just battle it out between them over the murder of those two businessmen.

Solomon Brightman smiled and sighed as he heard the last of the footsteps receding from his door. It had been a productive morning with interesting classes and this recent tutorial but now he was alone and free at last to pursue his own work. As he gazed out of the tall windows at the road that sloped down past the old university buildings, a gothic statement in darkened sandstone, his eyes searched out a paler block. There was a gateway where, if one turned and walked a few yards, one would come to an insignificant-looking door and a vestibule where a porter might ask what business took one to that particular establishment. But Solly did not need to be asked why he went there or whom he wished to see; everyone in the Department of Forensic Medical Science knew that the professor was the husband of Rosie, one of their very own consultant pathologists. Solly’s smile deepened. She was not there right now, of course, but back home caring for baby Abigail, yet the very sight of his wife’s place of employment still served to give Solly a warm glow.