A Pound of Flesh

Chapter 13





Professor Solomon Brightman sat awkwardly on the edge of the armchair trying not to spill the tea from the exquisite little floral cup that he held gingerly between his fingers. His discomfort was not about taking tea from something that resembled a delicate antique, however, but from the man and woman who sat facing him. He had decided that he had to make these two people his priority, not only because their daughter’s death had begun what might be a series of killings, as he had told Lorimer, but also because of the similarities in the MO.

Robin and Christine Kilpatrick had agreed, albeit reluctantly, to permit this visit but Solly wondered if they were having second thoughts now that he and the family liaison officer were actually here in their home. The house was off a road that ran between two villages in West Renfrewshire, easier to see from the M8 motorway that whizzed past the foot of their garden than from the overgrown lane. Solly’s first impression of the place was that it was unloved and neglected. Waist-high weeds obscured half the gable end and there were greenish lines from the tiled roof running down the once-white roughcast walls where moss and water had gathered in the sagging gutters. Even the stone steps leading to the front door were a slick dark green.

Once inside, though, things were rather different. Someone, Mrs Kilpatrick perhaps, had continued to make an effort to keep the place decent; logs crackling in the grate gave the place a warm glow even though his welcome had been a tad frosty.

‘You may remember my colleague, PC Bryant?’ Solly smiled and nodded towards the middle-aged officer sitting next to him as they sipped their tea. Connie Bryant was a motherly looking woman, slightly overweight with thick corn-coloured hair. Solly had taken to her immediately, realising she was well suited to her job; those large blue eyes held an expression of sympathy that was more friendly than pitying.

‘You came to see us afterwards,’ Robin Kilpatrick acknowledged, giving a stiff nod in the family liaison officer’s direction. Mrs Kilpatrick said nothing, her eyes cast down to her cup and saucer.

She’s still in denial, Solly thought. But was it denial of her daughter’s death or of the way she had lived? A discreet look around the room had shown no evidence of any family photographs, though Solly knew from the records that the couple still had another daughter.

‘What I am actually here for,’ Solly began, laying the cup back gently on its saucer, ‘is to ask you about Carol.’

‘Already told the police everything we know, which is nothing,’ Mr Kilpatrick said brusquely. ‘We had a daughter. She chose a … a … ’ he frowned, as though struggling for a word, ‘a route that was alien to us. We don’t have anything to do with people like that,’ he added, as though the entire matter was closed to further discussion.

‘Sadly my own profession sometimes takes me into the worlds of many different souls,’ Solly told him quietly. ‘I see things that I would hate any of my loved ones to see. So I do understand what pain you must have experienced, and not just when Carol died.’

‘Do we have to go through this all again?’ Robin Kilpatrick demanded.

‘I wish I could spare you,’ Solly said, ‘but it is not just Carol’s death that is being investigated.’

‘Oh?’ The man’s head went up and Solly could see that he was suddenly curious in the way that most humans are when other people’s tragedies impinge upon their own.

‘Another girl was attacked in the same place where your daughter met her death.’

‘So? It could have been a coincidence, couldn’t it?’ Kilpatrick blustered.

‘This girl was one of Carol’s friends,’ Solly continued, his eyes never leaving the man’s face. ‘And I have to tell you that the method used by the killer was identical to that used on your daughter,’ he added.

‘Another street girl?’ the father asked, his face twisted into a mask of disgust. ‘Why should we care about her?’

‘Because some evil bastard is out there and we want to catch him before he sends another unfortunate victim to her death!’

All three of them turned to stare at Connie Bryant, whose mild manners suddenly seemed to have deserted her.

‘You’re not the only parents who have lost a child to heroin, you know,’ she continued heatedly. ‘There are hundreds like you all over this city and every city in the country. We try to stem the tide but it’s not easy,’ she went on. ‘So many young girls are lost to their families and friends then turn in desperation to selling their bodies on the streets for the price of a fix.’ She paused for breath, cheeks flushed. Then her voice dropped and her tone became gentler and more persuasive. ‘The police have done a sterling job of cleaning up the streets, protecting the girls as best they can, but until we have help from people like you two then we’re not going to change the public’s perception of prostitution.’

There was silence in the room but Solly still felt the woman’s words reverberate in the air around them. Robin Kilpatrick was staring at Connie Bryant, his lips parted as though to speak, but it was his wife who spoke first.

‘How can we help?’ Mrs Kilpatrick said, raising her head at last.

‘Tell us about Carol,’ Solly told her gently. ‘What she was like as a girl, why you think she went off the rails. What contact you had with her after she left home.’ He paused then stared into space, wagging his dark beard thoughtfully. ‘That would be particularly helpful to begin with.’

‘Carol left home when she was sixteen,’ Mrs Kilpatrick said, her lip suddenly trembling. ‘We had no contact with her after that.’

Solly frowned. ‘Did Carol leave home because she had an addiction to heroin at that time?’ he asked. Sixteen? It seemed so young to be leaving her family. A quick memory flicked into his brain of himself at that age, steeped in his school exams, home and family a secure and loving support. How different Carol Kilpatrick’s experience had been!

‘Why?’ he added, shaking his head slightly. ‘Why did Carol leave home then?’

There was a silence that he longed to break, an uncomfortable minute when things that had long been hidden were coming close to the surface for this mother and father. Things, Solly felt sure, that would give him more insight into the woman that Carol Kilpatrick had been.

Robin Kilpatrick gave his wife a swift glance but once more she had elected to disappear into some world of her own, her head bent so that she was staring at a spot on the carpet. The psychologist wanted to take her to a place where he could talk to her alone, search her soul for whatever was troubling her, driving her deep into herself. Something, he felt certain, that had to do with their daughter.

‘She left home because she wanted to live with her friends,’ Robin Kilpatrick said, in a voice that sounded suddenly weary. ‘That’s all we can tell you.’ He rose stiffly and glanced at the door. ‘Do you mind? I think my wife and I would prefer to be left alone now.’


‘Funny couple,’ Connie Bryant muttered as they drove away from the house. ‘Never did find out much about Carol from them.’

‘Was it assumed that Carol left home because of her drug habit?’ Solly asked.

‘Hmm. Well, you’ve seen what they’re like. Nobody on the investigation team ever doubted that they’d kicked her out. Did you hear what they called her? An alien!’ Bryant’s voice quivered with indignation.

‘No,’ Solly corrected her. ‘What they said was that she had chosen a way of life that was alien to them.’ Still, the family liaison officer’s words remained with him, troubling him. Was Mrs Kilpatrick now riven with guilt and regret that she had chosen to cut all ties with her child? Or was there still something else that he needed to know about the relationship she had had with the teenager who had become a heroin addict and prostitute?


‘ … Daddy’s coming home, bringing pockets full of plums!’

‘Hello, you two. Here I am,’ Solly beamed at his wife and baby daughter as he closed the door behind him.

‘Hiya,’ Rosie smiled back at him then held the baby up. ‘Go to Daddy, you wee rascal. Let me get dinner sorted while you give her a bath, eh?’ She handed over baby Abigail who gave a delighted chuckle as Solly swung her high above his head then let her little fingers pluck the end of his beard. All around him lay the chaos that only a young baby can create: soft toys littered one corner of the elegant drawing room, Abby’s bouncer sat in the cradle of the bay window, where Rosie had placed it earlier in an attempt to catch the last warm rays of the sun, while evidence of a busy mother could be seen in a discarded muslin dropped on the floor. Solly smiled, seeing past the untidiness, imagining instead the shared moments mother and child had enjoyed throughout the day. He carried Abby through to the bathroom and his smile grew into a chuckle as he noticed that one of his beloved paintings in the hall was slightly askew. This, Solly thought to himself, was as it should be. The days of living here alone with only his artworks for company were gone; now this place was filled with the love and laughter of his little family.

A few minutes later he was holding Abigail’s shoulders, gently whooshing her back and forth in the warm water, grinning as she gurgled and laughed. Once upon a time Robin Kilpatrick might have done just this sort of thing with his own baby daughter, Solly suddenly thought. When at last he gathered Abigail up in a fluffy towel, the psychologist held her close to his chest and sent up a silent prayer that his little girl would never come to such terrible harm.


The place was in darkness when she awoke, only the light from a distant street lamp letting her see the dim shapes of this unfamiliar room. Somehow she had slept here, glad to be away from her own place, thoroughly exhausted after that storm of weeping but now the facts of Tracey-Anne’s death came back at her and she shuddered, remembering the words from last night’s television report and the scene where Carol’s friend had died.

Her fists still clutched the edges of the silken counterpane, the tips of her fingers pulsing blood red with rage: how could she have got it so terribly wrong? She had seen Tracey-Anne get into that car last night. Not a white Mercedes sports car. If only she had kept a lookout at that corner of the square … Then a queasiness began to fill her stomach as the doubts formed. Had Tracey-Anne been lifted by another punter later on? That had to be it, surely?

She had dispatched two men to their death. Two innocent men, a small voice suggested. The deepening pain in her belly made her want to retch. Trembling, she rose from the bed and staggered towards the adjacent bathroom. The black and white tiles were chilly under her feet as she leaned over the washbasin and turned on the cold tap to splash water on her hands and face.

She stood up, shivering now, and grabbed the fluffy towel that someone had placed on the heated towel rail. A huge sigh seemed to ripple through her whole body as she buried her head in the warm towel. It was a small comfort.

What had she done? How had she got it so wrong? She’d been so certain each time … As she took the towel from her face she looked at the mirror above the basin. A dark-eyed woman frowned back at her, hair straggling over pale cheeks, mouth open as though to utter some words of disparagement. And didn’t she deserve them? Didn’t she deserve to be cursed for these dreadful mistakes? For deciding that these men had to die? For condemning their loved ones to the same sort of suffering that she had endured for so long?

As she looked at the woman in the mirror she saw the mouth close in a tight line. Don’t be so stupid, the voice scolded her. They were never innocent, trawling the streets for the flesh of young women. And then the face before her dissolved as the tears began to fall once more.

Back in the bedroom she sat at the dressing table and lifted a hairbrush. As each stroke pulled the tangles straight she began to relax once more. She had done nothing wrong but rid the city of some of its vermin. Her only guilt lay in failing to find Carol’s killer. And Tracey-Anne’s.

She frowned again as a thought came to her. Tracey-Anne had known about the white car. The girl had made those two calls to let her know it was around the drag. Why would she have endangered her life by choosing to get into that particular vehicle? She blinked away the thought, remembering that the poor junked-up girl had not always behaved in a rational manner.

What was important now was to find the right man. Her eyes fell on the unopened case. Somewhere in its depths lay the pistol wrapped neatly inside a cashmere sweater. It was waiting for her. Just as it had been the night she had found it, tossed under that wardrobe in an east end flat. She had picked the Starfire up in one gloved hand, its silver blue steelwork winking at her, daring her to take it for herself. And she had. Her fingers curled more tightly around the hairbrush, recalling the feel of the gun in her hand as she pulled the trigger, hearing again that awful blast, seeing the expression of shock on the man’s face.

Yes, she told herself, smoothing down her hair and noting with satisfaction that her cheeks were dry: yes she could do this thing again, even though there was nobody to tell her when a white car might be circling the city streets. She could do it again. And again – until she brought Carol’s killer to a justice of her own.