A Pound Of Flesh Read online

  ‘Ur you no’ the lassie that wis gassin’ tae that polis woman?’ The woman’s thick accent wasn’t local, reminding Tracey-Anne of a woman she knew as mad Moira. Falkirk, maybe? Or some place the other side of Edinburgh?

  ‘Aye,’ Tracey-Anne agreed, though most of the girls who came here had talked to Helen James at one time or another. So many of her mates were dead and gone, three of them murdered; others lost to the drugs; it was no wonder the polis kept an eye on them all. Helen was there to warn them, she always insisted, wanted them to avoid dangerous situations, as she put it, so yes, she let the policewoman buy her the occasional cuppa. But she’d never spoken again about the night that Carol had been killed. Couldn’t bring herself to go over any of the details, she’d told her, crossing her fingers under the table. There were some things she’d been warned to keep entirely to herself. But, aye, the polis wifie was okay, spoke nice to you an’ that. It didn’t make you a grass or anything to have a wee blether. Not when the woman was doing her best for you, handing out leaflets about getting off the game and into a better place.

  ‘Och, she’s awright,’ Tracey-Anne shrugged, her eyes passing over the woman for a moment. She was older than most of the others, probably somewhere in her forties, her dark hair crimped around a thin narrow face, shards of rainbow light flashing from her dangling earrings as she shook her head uncertainly. It was odd that she had never set eyes on this one before, but then perhaps she was new to the city?

  ‘Are ye not from around here, then?’ Tracey-Anne asked.

  ‘Naw,’ the woman replied, fixing her with a gimlet stare that seemed to say that no more questions were welcome.

  A tap on the window made both women turn to see who was there. A man’s pale face stared in at them, his breath fogging up the glass.

  Wearily Tracey-Anne rose from her seat, picked up her handbag and headed for the door. Tam was peering at her through the window, one hand beckoning her over, making it clear that she should get out of there pronto and go and find her next punter.

  ‘C’mon, hen. C’mon. Whit’s keeping’ ye?’ he demanded, jerking her from the doorway so that her coat fell open revealing the thin blouse and short lycra skirt. Tracey-Anne hardly had time to pull it back around her before he was urging her along Robertson Street.

  Tracey-Anne just kept her head down and let him lead her up through the city to her pitch. It was better not to cross Tam when he needed to score. Usually he was too out of his head to be a threat, but sometimes, like tonight, she’d glimpse a mean streak that gave her the feeling he might turn nasty. Just get him the money and he’d leave her alone for the rest of the night. She’d be back at the flat some time, hoping he’d left enough for her. What was it Helen had told her? A vicious circle or something. Well that was right enough, Tracey-Anne thought as they headed up the hill towards Blythswood Square. There was never a good time to come off this drug that held her in its grasp. Never a good time to leave Tam either. Besides, where would she go? Helen’s other warnings faded from her mind as she tried to concentrate on the here and now.

  The red lights from that fancy hotel twinkled as they approached. Funny how so many posh folk in their big cars came after the likes of her, Tracey-Anne often thought. But then punters were men and men all had that desire between their legs that needed to be satisfied. She felt a jab on her back through the fur coat as Tam staggered suddenly, pushing her against the railing.

  ‘See and get back tae me within the next hour, d’ye hear me? Ah’m jist aboot ready tae top myself,’ he warned her, releasing his grasp on her arm at last.

  Then, slouching off into the night, Tam left her to shiver once more as she stepped to the edge of this pavement that had become more familiar to her than any home Tracey-Anne really knew.

  Be careful, Helen had warned her. Remember what happened to Carol and the others. The policewoman’s voice came back to her now in the silence of the night.

  Tracey-Anne had listened and nodded, hoping that Helen would stop going on about the dangers that certain predatory men posed for a vulnerable woman like herself. Och, but who really cared? So what if someone was to end it all tonight? Nobody would miss her, would they? Not even Tam, who would just find another junkie woman to scrounge off, she thought wearily. Her thoughts were interrupted as the big car rounded one side of the square and slowed almost to a standstill.

  Tracey-Anne was at the door, her best smile directed towards the driver, before she had time to consider any of the consequences. It was a punter. He was asking How much? And she was already getting into the car, thinking about how easy this was, how soon she could be back at the flat and how marvellous she would feel again when this deadly cold was stopped for a while by the fire rushing through her veins.

  The woman standing on the steps of the hotel wrapped her black cashmere coat around her more closely as she watched the car’s tail lights vanish over the hill. She had recognised the prostitute, known that she might be recognised herself had she stepped further into her orbit. Maybe it was a good thing that poor, junked-up Tracey-Anne was now using Carol’s old pitch. Any punter comparing her to the attractive dark-haired woman who sometimes stood across from her on Blythswood Square would find it easy to choose between them, wouldn’t they? But that other woman was not coming out to play tonight, she thought, turning back into the warmth of the hotel. She was biding her time. And it paid to be patient, didn’t it? The police inquiries were simply all over the place, officers at a loss as to who had despatched those two men in their fancy white cars.

  She smiled as the duty manager nodded at her. She hadn’t been here often enough to have become a familiar figure, a businesswoman who patronised their establishment, sometimes staying over, coming and going at odd hours of the night when different members of staff would simply glance as she went past. Had they ever noticed the changes that she went through? The sleek night clubber returning as an insomniac jogger? Possibly not. But perhaps she might think of shifting her custom a little way down the hill to the Malmaison. After all, it paid to be cautious.

  Tracey-Anne stood with her back to the road, wiping her hands furiously with the antiseptic wipes she kept in the bag at her feet. Just a hand job. Only a measly tenner, not enough for either Tam or herself to score a bag of gear. And she needed that fix. Oh, dear God how she needed it!

  The white car rounded the corner of the square as she straightened up. Could her luck be in this time?

  For a moment she froze, striving to remember something Helen had told her. Or was it something she had meant to tell Helen? A fugginess like the mist around the lamp post swirled in the young woman’s brain. The white car. She should step back and wave it off, shouldn’t she? Make that phone call, like she’d promised. But the thought of a whole bag of gear and being back at the flat instead of standing here for hours in the cold made her shake her head as if to dispel any residual fears.

  Stepping forward, Tracey-Anne saw the tinted window being rolled down, the shape of a man’s head leaning towards her, an arm being raised to open the door.

  ‘Want tae do the business?’ she asked, trying to make eye contact with the driver.

  ‘Get in,’ a heavily accented voice told her. ‘I pay double your usual. Okay?’

  It was hard to keep the grin off her face as she climbed into the car, taking in its warmth, the rich leathery scent of its interior. She knew a classy car didn’t always mean a nice punter, but this one didn’t even look at her as she buckled on the seat belt.

  CHAPTER 9

  ‘White female. No vital signs. Request doctor at scene and mortuary van.’ The officer who stood at the edge of the pavement tried not to look back into the cobbled lane as he spoke into his radio. Finding the woman’s body had not been part of his plans for tonight’s shift. All he’d expected was a quick recce round the drag, shining his torch into the pends and back courts, then down to the chippie to chat up that new bird, Patricia, who’d been allocated as his neighbour on the beat. Now he was virtually on
his own as the rookie cried her eyes out over the road, the victim his responsibility until the duty doctor and the scene of crime officers arrived.

  ‘Sooner the better,’ Fraser MacDonald whispered under his breath as he listened to the voice from the control room.

  The ground glistened under an early morning frost as PC MacDonald turned back to the lane. His boots slipped on the shining cobblestones and he put out one leather gloved hand to the wall beside him to steady himself. They’d almost passed her by, he thought, glancing at the bundle in the corner beside the red industrial garbage bins. A heap of rags, he’d presumed at first, seeing the curled shape, not recognising it as anything human.

  What the heck’s that? Patricia had asked, waving her torch at it.

  Fraser had been on the point of hurrying her on when something had stopped him; some instinct that told him to take a second look. He’d only seen the coat at first; a discarded old furry thing thrown over a heap of other rubbish.

  Only it hadn’t been a litter dump. When Fraser had lifted the coat he had seen the woman’s naked body curled, foetus-like, underneath, the stab wounds livid even in the weak lamplight, blood darkening the ground where she lay. He’d felt for a pulse, knowing as he did that it was a waste of time. Poor bitch was as dead as a doornail. She wasn’t anyone he knew, but then, Fraser had reasoned, it was only the second night shift he’d done on this particular beat.

  ‘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.

  CHAPTER 10

  ‘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.

  Solly turned at last and let his eyes roam over the extensive library that covered an entire wall of the spacious room. There was something he needed to look up, a chapter he had marked with a lurid pink Post-it note somewhere along the shelf third from the top. It was in one of that collection of stiff-backed books with the bevelled spines he had bought at auction, their faded gold lettering meaning he had to peer more closely to see which one he wanted.

  Having researched and written a book, albeit a fairly slim volume, about female serial killers, the professor was hoping to follow it up with a history of British crime relating to underage killers. The Jamie Bulger case might seem an obvious one to begin with, given that it had generated more media coverage than any other, but Solly wanted to go back a lot further than that and his reading currently included material from as long ago as the early nineteenth century.