A Pound Of Flesh

by Alex Gray

  ‘These are luxury cars,’ she told him reprovingly. ‘Not the sort of vehicles available to every Tom, Dick and Harry,’ she sniffed.

  ‘So,’ the police officer continued, ‘what sorts of people do hire them out?’

  ‘People with good taste,’ she fired back. But seeing his eyebrows draw together in a frown of disapproval hastily added, ‘Businessmen usually. The sort who are used to good quality and don’t wish to compromise when they’re away from home.’

  ‘Do you have records of everyone who has hired a car from here in the last two years?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I suppose so. I could check, perhaps.’ Then, turning away from her desk, she took a few steps towards a half-glazed door marked PRIVATE and pushed it open.

  Watching her closely, the officer thought he could discern a certain timidity in her approach as she looked around. It was, he realised, unfamiliar territory. The boss’s office, he guessed; somewhere sacrosanct, or a place where secrets were hidden?

  On the desk beyond the door lay an opened laptop and the woman stood before it, making a show of clicking on buttons, her tongue nervously darting in and out over her lips. There was an old-fashioned high-back chair, ornately carved, but the receptionist chose to remain standing as though to sit in her employer’s place was a breach of protocol.

  ‘There’s a diary here of transactions going back to 2009,’ she said at last. ‘What exactly was it you wanted?’ She looked up but her eyes were not on the policeman, they looked beyond him as if to check that her boss was not going to come in the front door and interrupt them.

  Barbara Knox tapped the information onto the page, nodding silently to herself. This was good stuff. Not only had they found a series of Mercedes owners (all men, she thought with a grin) who wanted to offload their white sports jobs, but now there was this company who actually hired them out. Vladimir Badica was the owner of these hire cars, many of them white ones used for weddings. She grimaced as she read the list of couples that had hired the larger and more expensive ones for their big days. Waste of money, she thought. Better to spend it on a holiday somewhere like Mauritius. Barbara’s face became thoughtful again. Diana hadn’t exactly said they should take a holiday together, but had hinted that something like that would follow as a reward for their joint efforts.

  She shrugged the idea away. Probably wouldn’t happen, knowing her luck. Better to concentrate on the job in hand. See who had hired the white Mercedes during the past couple of years in case there was some sort of tie-in with the three shooting victims.

  Lorimer read the report for the second time. It simply didn’t make any sort of sense that the three people named by Catherine Pattison had reason to murder her husband. One of them, Zena Fraser, was out of the picture anyway because of her alibi. Raeburn had no apparent motive for killing his close friend and somehow Lorimer could not believe that Frank Hardy would have been so forthcoming to a senior police officer had he had anything to hide. Why, then, he thought to himself, had Pattison’s widow been so adamant that these people had been worth the time and effort it had already taken to check on their backgrounds and their whereabouts on the night of the murder?

  She may well have been aware of the liaison between Ms Fraser and her husband. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, he reminded himself. Had it been some sort of female spite to name Zena Fraser as a possible killer? His frown deepened. There had been something in Frank Hardy’s words that had suggested that the Labour MSP’s sympathies lay with not against Catherine Pattison. So what on earth would make the woman suspect that man of killing her errant husband? Cherchez la femme, Solly had told him, meaning something quite different at the time. But, he wondered, was there something worth searching for in Catherine Pattison née Cadell’s own background? Picking up the telephone, Lorimer dialled the 0131 ex-directory number.

  Catherine Pattison put down the telephone, her fingers trembling. Had Frank said something? She bit her lip as she turned towards the window. Outside the snow had stopped falling and the garden was shrouded in silence. Once she would have gasped in girlish delight at the frosted leaves on her holly trees or the bare branches covered in glittering white against that powder blue sky. But years of waiting and wondering had robbed her of the capacity to enjoy such simple sights as this. She rubbed her thumb repeatedly across her forefinger as though to warm it against the chill outside, but her eyes had taken on a faraway look as if her thoughts were somewhere other than this Edinburgh suburb and its winter landscape.

  She had given Detective Superintendent Lorimer Frank Hardy’s name as a double bluff. That was what they had agreed, after all. What had Frank told that policeman? She shifted restlessly as she recalled the tall man with those piercing blue eyes that had seemed to gaze into her very soul. Or, was that simply something she had made up since then? A false memory born of a conscience that one could only brand as guilty?

  She turned at the sound of a door opening and blinked as her mother entered the room, bearing a tray laden with home-baked marmalade loaf and a small pot of coffee. Catherine looked up as the older woman laid down the tray and began to fuss with the pair of folded linen napkins.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, more sharply than she had intended, seeing the shadow that crossed her mother’s face. ‘Leave it just now, will you?’

  ‘Thought you said you were hungry,’ Mrs Cadell murmured. ‘Who was that on the phone just now?’ she added.

  ‘Lorimer,’ Catherine answered, turning away from the buttered loaf that had been made as a treat for her. It was all she needed to say; one single word to explain why her appetite for her mother’s home baking had suddenly vanished.

  ‘Well,’ the older woman said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘Did you tell him what really happened?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Catherine replied crossly. ‘What sort of fool do you take me for?’

  ‘The sort of fool that makes most women wish their husband was gone so they can make the same mistakes all over again,’ Mrs Cadell sighed, shaking her head wearily.

  CHAPTER 22

  Rosie lifted the lid of her husband’s laptop and was soon keying in his password. It was something that they had agreed on when they had moved in together, even before their marriage. No secrets, shared case studies, the lot. If Solly chose to ignore the gorier aspects of forensic pathology, that was up to him, Rosie thought with a grin. But the no-holds-barred policy meant that she had access to all his ongoing cases and she was curious to see what her beloved had made of the four prostitute murders. Reading through them on screen was like being back at work, Rosie told herself; or at least it felt like that while Abby was slumbering soundly in her crib. And, besides, hadn’t she performed the post-mortem on at least one of the women?

  The telephone ringing made her shoot out of her chair and grab the nearest handset, panic filling her lest the sound wake her baby and make her lose this precious time she had set aside for herself.

  ‘Maggie!’ she gasped, hearing the voice of her friend. ‘What a surprise! Shouldn’t you be at school this afternoon?’

  ‘We were all sent home early yesterday because of the snow and the council has decreed in their wisdom to keep the schools shut until at least tomorrow,’ Maggie said, the unconcealed glee in her voice making Rosie smile. Outside the huge bay windows that overlooked Kelvingrove Park Rosie could see children playing on sledges, some of them little more than tin trays.

  ‘Ah, right, so you’re footloose and fancy free,’ Rosie said. ‘Don’t suppose you’d like to come across town to see your god-daughter?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ Maggie replied, ‘but it’s only Bill’s car that’s going anywhere in this weather. Mine’s well and truly stuck in the garage, I’m afraid. What are you up to yourself? Abby being a good wee girl?’

  ‘She’s asleep, actually,’ Rosie said, trying not to whisper.

  ‘Oh, sorry, hope I haven’t woken her up.’

  ‘No, don’t think so. I was
just trawling through that case our husbands were both working on, the prostitute killings, you know?’

  ‘Aye, something nasty in them,’ Maggie said. ‘Not that I’m given all the gristly details, mind.’ She paused. ‘See if I was in Solly’s shoes, I’d be looking for a class one nutter, you know? Someone who howls at the moon.’

  ‘Best not let him hear you refer to the mentally unstable like that,’ Rosie chuckled. ‘Listen, why not come over this weekend if you can thaw out that car of yours? We could take the wee one to the park if it’s not too cold. Wrap her up in her sling.’

  ‘Okay, but I’ll let you go now in case Abigail wakes up. Speak soon. Bye.’

  Rosie put down the telephone, listening hard for the sound of a baby’s plaintive cry but there was nothing. Breathing a small sigh of relief, she returned to the laptop, pressing the space bar to make the screen re-appear. It would be funny if Maggie was right, she thought, then, more to amuse herself than anything else, Rosie jotted down the four dates when each woman had been murdered then Googled them to see if there had indeed been any planetary influence.

  A few minutes later she stared at the notes she had scribbled on a pad, blinking in disbelief. The very thing that Maggie Lorimer had uttered in jest had actually taken place. Carol Kilpatrick, Miriam Lyons, Jenny Haslet and Tracey-Anne Geddes had all been murdered on the night of a full moon.

  ‘Why wasn’t this picked up before?’ Rosie asked accusingly as she rocked the baby back and forth in her arms.

  ‘It isn’t something that most people would think to do,’ Solly answered quietly. ‘In fact I might not even have thought of it at this stage. Thanks to Maggie, however, we now have something that links all four of these girls, albeit,’ he smiled ruefully, ‘something that might not be looked upon by the police or even the courts of law as anything more than a strange sort of coincidence.’

  ‘But Lorimer … ’

  ‘ … doesn’t believe in coincidences,’ Solly finished for her. ‘No more than I do, darling. No, what we have here is the possibility of a psychotically motivated series of killings. But what else must we see in this picture?’ he murmured, no longer looking at his wife but rather talking to himself. ‘Remember Lorimer’s mantra: means, method and opportunity,’ he said, counting them off on his fingers. ‘Opportunity might have come easily enough either from someone frequenting the sauna or out on a familiar patch of the streets – all the victims were vulnerable young women. The methods tended to differ inasmuch as two were strangled and the others stabbed in something of a frenzied attack, but we still have to keep an open mind about that. Then the means. Someone,’ he said slowly, ‘had a way of attracting each of these girls into a situation where they could be overpowered and murdered.’

  ‘A drug dealer, maybe?’ Rosie suggested, breaking in on his train of thought. ‘They were all on the game to feed their habit, remember.’

  ‘But Jenny and Miriam had got work in a sauna. Doesn’t that indicate that they were making some attempt to clean up their act?’

  ‘Aye,’ Rosie said sceptically. ‘If you believe that you’ll believe anything, love. Don’t think the owners of these places are all that particular about what their girls get up to.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Solly replied. ‘There was mention of the Big Blue Bus project. These people go all out to get the girls off drugs, don’t they?’

  Abigail, who had been content to listen to the voices around her, let out a familiar whimper.

  ‘Oops, sorry, wee one, time for your feed,’ Rosie said, patting her baby’s back and making shushing noises as she walked into the nursery.

  Solomon Brightman stood watching as Rosie set Abby gently against her breast. It was an age-old gesture that spelled out the wonder of motherhood, something that was a privilege to behold.

  Had someone else’s mother held her son to her like that, a son who was destined by dint of some abnormality in his genetic make-up to become a cold-blooded killer? Perhaps, Solly told himself sadly. All the joys and tender moments of motherhood would be destroyed watching one’s beloved child grow into some sort of monster. And, if he were to be instrumental in any way in finding this man, then that mother too would become a victim.

  Back in his study, the psychologist lifted his desk diary, hearing the creak of the still-new spine as he turned the pages. Blinking owlishly, Solly stopped at a particular date. Scribbled under the seventh of February he had written Lorimer’s party. Keep free. Babysitter? But above the date, floating quietly on a white space were the words: full moon.

  The woman who sometimes called herself Diana walked slowly towards the red brick building, her heavy boots slipping in the slushy snow. She paused for a moment to peer in at the entrance, curious to see what she could see, but it looked simply like any other reception area of a big organisation, though the familiar badge of Strathclyde Police dominated the view for any passersby. Detective Superintendent Lorimer worked somewhere up there, she knew. Barbara had been fulsome in her praise of him and something had drawn her here, wondering just what this man was like. Yet caution prevailed over womanly curiosity and she walked on, smiling a little to herself. If only they knew she was here, she thought, walking past their front door like any ordinary citizen!

  Up there within the myriad offices of Strathclyde Police headquarters the detective superintendent in charge of the Serious Crimes Unit was indeed in situ, frowning over the email that Solly had sent him. He’d be much happier if he could devote some of his time to Helen James’s cases, he thought, instead of being sent on what he now believed were wild goose chases to Edinburgh. That Catherine Pattison had her own agenda, he was now certain. Her voice had given her away, even though her words had striven to reassure him. James has all of these dreadful guns, she’d told him, faltering slightly as though she was perfectly aware that her accusation against the MSP was ill founded. And yet, and yet … the memory of Raeburn’s words had come back to him time and again. Nothing to hide, the man had told him. And that gun book had been there for all to see. Had it been a deliberate show, perhaps?

  Lorimer shook his head wearily. How many man hours had been spent collating the background checks on those three people, officers struggling through these hazardous conditions over in the capital where the snow had become so bad that the army had been called out to clear main roads like Princes Street? Perhaps, he thought, it was time to delve into Mrs Pattison’s own background. Frowning again, Lorimer realised that this was an action that would be delegated to a more junior officer. Being in charge of this department had meant more paperwork and meetings, not the sort of day-to-day work that he really enjoyed. His naturally restless spirit made him want to be out and about, the way he used to be as a detective inspector; tramping the streets, asking questions, meeting up with his own snouts.

  He sighed. He was not quite forty and yet had already gained this rank, this prestigious appointment to Serious Crimes, so why was he feeling such a sense of detachment from the cases under investigation? Was it being here at HQ in Pitt Street, away from the cut and thrust of a division? And there were killers out there on these mean streets, he told himself, biting his lower lip; killers that he wanted to catch before any other innocent victims became their prey.

  Standing up, he wandered over to his window and looked down on the snowy street below. There were a few people about and he could see their figures walking gingerly on the filthy pavements where ice had formed under layers of compacted snow. Suddenly the room was too warm, too confined and Lorimer felt that old sensation of claustrophobia that had dogged him from childhood. He had to get out, even if it was only to walk around the block for ten minutes. Looking at his watch (a Christmas gift from Maggie) he saw that his next meeting with the press was not for another half an hour, plenty of time to breathe in the cold air and clear his head.

  The road outside led upwards to Blythswood Square and its patch of gardens surrounded by elegant Georgian buildings. As he approached this city centre oasis of greenery
he looked up at the façade of the Blythswood Square Hotel, a luxury establishment that dominated one entire side of the square. Perhaps he could take Maggie there some evening for a meal, he thought idly; she might enjoy a bit of high living.

  The sound of birdsong made the policeman stop suddenly at one corner of the gardens and look up. He blinked then blinked again, hardly daring to believe what he was seeing. There, fluttering from one bare branched tree to the next, were several small buff-coloured birds, their tiny crests making them easily identifiable. Lorimer stood gazing upwards as the high pitched notes floated down, the little birds hopping from branch to branch before taking flight, displaying the blobs of red on their open wings, and making for the original tree once more. Waxwings! Here in the city centre, he thought. The severe weather must have made them rest there to feed on the plentiful berries in the trees and bushes, he told himself. Slowly he walked to the opening where a path led around the interior of the gardens, taking care not to slip on the patches of ice. Overhead the grey skies had begun to clear and there were swathes of blue making a backdrop for the silhouettes of leafless trees. He stood still, watching the birds, then inhaled a deep draught of frosty air, his warm breath forming a cloud around his face.

  The walk back to Pitt Street took only minutes but it seemed to Lorimer that he had been away from his office for far longer, such was his feeling of liberation. As he entered the building he reminded himself that his tenure here was not for ever. Serious Crimes would be shelved eventually, and then he would be looking for a new challenge, something that would hopefully take him back to a more hands-on role in policing. Smiling at the thought, Lorimer took the stairs two at a time, ready for the more imminent daily task of facing the journalists, this time expecting their endless questions about the murder of Edward Pattison.