A Pound of Flesh

Chapter 33





It was the first morning that Professor Brightman had felt any warmth from the morning sun as he crossed Kelvingrove Park and headed towards the university. Tilting his head upwards, Solly enjoyed the brightness and his heart lifted as he paused. Smiling to himself, he walked on, glancing at the base of the trees. His smile broadened as he caught sight of clumps of snowdrops and the first tentative buds of yellow crocus. He might still have to wrap his long striped scarf around his neck, but these first signs of spring meant that the long nights of winter were nearing their end.

His smile faded as though a dark cloud had blotted out the sun when he thought of the cases that Lorimer had entrusted to his care. Would that they were also at an end, he thought. Much still needed to be done to create a proper profile of each of the killers; a woman, he believed, who had shot dead three men and some psychotic person, almost certainly male, who had dispatched these street women to their deaths. His disquiet following that visit to the west end sauna had continued late into the night; the fear those two women in Govan had revealed and the angry dismissal he had received yesterday spoke volumes about the person or persons behind that organisation. It was well known, of course, that saunas tended to be fronts for nothing more than brothels and the police had little time to make raids on such establishments unless there was something seriously criminal going on behind the scenes. Helen James had spoken about the saunas as though they were places of safety for her street women and so they probably were, but there was something wrong with those two particular establishments.

The psychology professor had tried Googling the name, Andie’s, but had come up with nothing more than a list of retail outlets and restaurants. It was, he felt, time to hand over the investigation to police officers who could make searches into companies and the like. Besides, hadn’t he been smartly warned off? Told that if the police wanted to see the owner they would have to come in person? Solly gave a sigh. Lorimer had plenty on his plate right now and an additional detail like the psychologist’s unease might prove quite unwelcome. Yet something, perhaps his own fright at the treatment he had received yesterday, made Solly decide to contact his friend at Pitt Street.


‘I need to speak to Mr Lorimer, please.’

‘Lorimer speaking.’

‘You said to call if I needed … ’

Lorimer sat up immediately. ‘Is that you, Lily?’ he asked, his voice suddenly more gentle.

‘Mr Lorimer. Something bad happened last night. The gritter man said I had to tell you about it. A man …’ The girl’s voice cracked and Lorimer caught the sound of a muffled sob. ‘He came at me. He was, he was goin’ to kill me,’ she whispered.

‘Where are you now, Lily?’

‘At a flat. I sleep over here with some other girls. You can’t come here, though!’ The girl’s voice rose in alarm.

‘I would like to see you, though, Lily. Can you come into town? Meet me at the drop-in centre in Robertson Street, perhaps?’

‘Well …’

Lorimer heard the doubt in her tone. Had that been a bad idea?

‘Could I meet you in the bookshop?’ she asked.

‘Waterstone’s? Sauchiehall Street? The one opposite Marks and Spencer?’

‘Uh-huh. I can be there in about a quarter of an hour. Downstairs in the coffee bit,’ she added.

Lorimer looked at the clock on the wall. He could be there and back within the hour, he supposed; time enough to see the girl before his daily meeting with the press.


‘I’m sorry he’s not available at the moment, may I take a message?’ the woman asked.

Solly paused, wondering. Then, ‘To whom am I speaking?’ he asked.

‘It’s DC Knox,’ the voice replied.

‘Ah,’ Solly nodded to himself. He remembered this enthusiastic member of Lorimer’s team. And surely he could entrust a little thing like this to her?

‘Well,’ he continued. ‘It’s like this.’ And the professor told Barbara Knox all about his two visits to Andie’s Saunas and his unsatisfactory results.

‘Want me to check up on them for you?’ she offered.

Solly beamed, though there was nobody to see his sudden relief. ‘Would you? That would be a load off my mind, DC Knox. Don’t really want to bother your boss, you know.’

The psychologist put the telephone down and immediately turned his mind to his next tutorial session. The subject of dreams had come around once more, he realised with a sigh, remembering a similar session the previous year that had resulted in the strangest and saddest of consequences. A student with red hair, a hit man on the loose and a throwaway remark had all combined to form one of Lorimer’s more notable cases.

Solly raised his glasses on to the top of his dark curls and rubbed his eyes as though to erase the memory. These were different students and he owed it to them to be as objective about the subject as possible.


Barbara Knox sat quietly, thinking about the task she had offered to undertake. The professor had sounded a little uncertain. It was strange how you could always tell how a person was feeling from their voice. A psychologist, especially, would agree with that. She really ought to have permission to tackle this, but, what the hell! Barbara grinned to herself. She was good at showing initiative and besides, if what she had heard about the demise of this unit was true then she needed all the brownie points she could get for her career to maintain its upward trajectory. It would be easy enough to find out what the professor wanted to know and then to dig a little deeper.


Lorimer could hear the hiss of the coffee machine and the undercurrent of chatter as he rounded the balcony. His eyes roved across the customers seated down below until they lighted on the girl. She was sitting hunched up on one of the deep leather armchairs, her head turning this way and that, obviously searching to see if he would come. Lorimer stepped swiftly down the main staircase and strode over to where she was sitting.

‘Oh,’ she said, clutching the arms of the chair with her tiny white hands. ‘You’re here!’

‘Of course,’ Lorimer replied lightly. ‘What can I get you? Coffee?’ He looked more closely at the girl, noting her thin, pale face. Had she even eaten today?

‘Or,’ he continued, smiling his best avuncular smile, ‘how about breakfast?’

He nodded as her eyes lit up. ‘Right, breakfast it is.’


Lorimer sipped his black coffee watching the girl as she wolfed down her food. He’d spent a few quid, wouldn’t miss it at all, but he guessed that for Lily this was a feast. Fresh orange, a large cappuccino and a plate full of pastries disappeared in minutes, the girl’s attention totally taken with assuaging her desperate hunger.

‘Better?’

She nodded, eyes on him now, wiping a few flakes of croissant from her lips. ‘Thanks, Mr Lorimer.’

The detective shrugged. ‘That’s okay, Lily. Now. You wanted to tell me all about this man?’

She nodded, hunching over once again as though to protect something painful deep within her body. Lorimer read the signs, knowing that whatever hurt this girl was more mental than physical.

‘I was out on the drag last night,’ she began.

Slowly the story unfolded: the waiting by the kerb; the white car crawling along; the strange-looking man and then his attempt to catch her. Lorimer listened without interrupting, taking in each shudder as Lily recounted her experience. A look of pained relief crossed her face as she told how the gritter lorry had stopped and the driver had jumped down from his cab, catching her in his arms as she fled. The big man with the scarf had turned and disappeared back down the lane, but the lorry driver told her afterwards that he had got a good look at his face.

‘And you’ve got the driver’s name and other details?’

Lily nodded. ‘He said I was to go straight to the police but when I told him about you he said that sounded all right. Didn’t want to call you in the middle of the night,’ she added, shamefaced as though the incident were her fault.

‘The white car,’ he began at last. ‘Did you notice what type of car it was?’

Lily’s face grew doubtful. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not very good at cars. It was really big, though.’

Lorimer nodded then took out his pen and doodled on a napkin. ‘See this?’ he said, turning the paper towards her. ‘Did the car have something like that on it?’

Lily squinted at the circle he had drawn, the lines creating the three segments of the Mercedes-Benz logo, then looked up at him and nodded. ‘I think so,’ she said at last.

‘Can you describe the man, Lily?’

The girl bit her lip, looking uncertain for a moment.

‘He was very tall. Bigger even than you,’ she began. ‘And he looked different. He was kind of good-looking,’ she stopped then blushed, realising her gaffe. ‘I-I didn’t mean that,’ she stammered. ‘I mean you look nice and …’

‘Lily,’ Lorimer said gently. ‘Let’s concentrate on trying to picture exactly what he looked like, eh? Colour of hair, shape of face, that sort of thing.’

The girl nodded again. ‘Sorry. He frightened me. Like one of those vampires you see on TV. They’re dead handsome as well, aren’t they?’ Her blush deepened as she tried to extricate herself from the unintended insult.

‘Take your time, now. Remember we can always get one of our clever folk back at headquarters to create an e-fit image from anything you and the lorry driver tell us.’

‘Would I have to go there?’ A worried expression crossed her face.

‘Not if you don’t want to,’ Lorimer shrugged. ‘But it might help us to trace this man.’

Lily looked into his eyes as though she were making a momentous decision.

‘There’s this woman called Doreen,’ she began. ‘She said I’d get money if I told her things.’


The morning simply flew past as DC Knox tapped away at her computer keyboard, her eyes gleaming. Andie’s Saunas were owned by a company purporting to be part of a health organisation, according to what she had found. Barbara had snickered at the blurb, wondering how healthy the punters felt after a quick shag. It was a registered company all right, but then any company that was trading had to give some account of itself for legal purposes. And the police were able to access such classified information pretty speedily if they wanted. Barbara scrolled down, wanting to see the names of the directors. She sat upright, suddenly, her lips parting in astonishment as she read the three names.

Vladimir Badica and Alexander Badica sprang out at her as though their names had been illuminated. ‘Bad Vlad!’ she exclaimed in a whisper. Then she nodded in sudden understanding as she read the first name on the list: Andrea Badica, owner.

‘Andrea. Andie’s!’ Barbara sighed. It was one of the oldest tricks in the book. Put a company into the wife’s name and if anything goes pear-shaped then the real owner gets off scot free. Or, she mused, maybe Bad Vlad had put it into this woman’s name for tax purposes. But who was Alexander? The son, most probably, Barbara decided.

The owners didn’t want poor Professor Brightman snooping around. Wonder what they’ve got to hide? Barbara asked herself, grabbing her jacket from the back of her chair. The woman’s large face split into a grin.

A bit of nosing around the Badica place might just be in order.


Lily waited while the tall man opposite finished his telephone call. There was a way out for her, he had explained, after Lily had admitted her age.

‘They’ll put me into one of these homes,’ she’d cried. ‘And I know what happens in these places,’ she’d insisted, her eyes pleading with Lorimer. The policeman’s face had remained impassive. Then he’d made that suggestion, told Lily about a kind man, a minister, who helped girls like her.

‘If you wait here, I can ask Richard Allan to come and fetch you. He runs a place out in the country, near Stirling,’ Lorimer told her. ‘It’s on a farm and there are other girls and women there too.’

‘Is it a refuge?’ Lily asked.

Lorimer nodded. ‘It’s a special sort of refuge,’ he told her. ‘Girls go there voluntarily to get over their problems.’

‘You mean they get them to come off the drugs?’ Lily’s fifteen-year-old face was suddenly older and wiser in a way that Lorimer found disquieting.

‘Yes, that can happen,’ Lorimer said. ‘They do all sorts of things to help,’ he continued, trying hard not to look at his watch. It had taken a little while to establish trust with this girl and he was reluctant to leave her on her own now but the press pack would be assembling in Pitt Street and he needed to return there now.

‘Okay,’ Lorimer said, nodding briefly as he listened to the person on the other end of the line. ‘I’ll ask her.’ Cupping his hand over the end of his mobile, Lorimer looked at Lily.

‘Someone can be here in about an hour’s time,’ he told her. ‘Will you wait here for them?’

The girl’s face clouded. ‘Can’t you stay here with me?’ she asked in a small voice.

Lorimer bit his lip. If he were to miss the daily meeting there would be hell to pay. But, on the other hand, if Lily wouldn’t wait for Richard Allan or one of his team to arrive, then what would become of her? She was obviously still traumatised by the man twisting that scarf in his hands. Lorimer’s mind flew back to the other two street women who had been strangled. If what he thought was correct, then Lily had had a lucky escape.

There would be a crowd of reporters gathering at HQ and here he was with one young girl, dithering about what he should do.

Words came to him, then. Something Richard Allan had said. Words that echoed lessons from his past when he had been too young to rebel against being sent to Sunday School. Hadn’t the shepherd left all his flock to go and rescue one lost sheep?

He looked at the girl, her face turned up to his and made his decision. Duncan Sutherland would just love to take the press conference, wouldn’t he? And, besides, it might help to build bridges between them if he relinquished some of his responsibility to the red-haired officer.

‘Okay, Lily. Just let me make another call, will you?’

The girl brightened immediately. ‘And maybe we could go and see about that thingummy, the photo stuff you said …’


Jim Blackburn had made a careful study of page after page of faces in a pile of folders as well as looking at the database on a computer screen. As each image appeared, Jim had shaken his head.

‘That’s them all, Mr Blackburn.’

‘You mean he’s not in any of your files, then?’ Jim said, a sense of desolation sweeping over him.

The officer’s face remained impassive. ‘If he has no record then your description is all the more important for us to find him, sir.’ Jim brightened at that. The last couple of hours had seemed interminable, his head swimming with the images, all the while trying so hard to keep the picture of that brute in his mind. ‘So I can still help you, then?’

‘Oh, yes, sir. Now let me explain how this works.’


‘I hate to raise any hopes and call this a breakthrough,’ Lorimer began. ‘But I’m not one for believing in coincidences. Lily Winters was almost attacked by a man wielding a scarf, perhaps the same person who attacked and killed Miriam Lyons and Jenny Haslet. Of course, unless we find and apprehend this man we have no way of matching his DNA on our current database. But it is surely not a coincidence that he was at the end of the same lane where Carol Kirkpatrick and Tracey-Anne Geddes were both attacked. And he was driving a white Merc when he went after Lily Winters.’

‘What’s with the Mercedes?’ a voice asked. ‘Surely we’re not looking for another link to the Pattison case?’

Lorimer stifled a sigh. Duncan Sutherland was always going to play devil’s advocate, wasn’t he?

‘We could be doing just that, Duncan,’ Lorimer admitted. ‘If what Dr Brightman thinks is correct, then we have a scenario where a female perpetrator is picking off punters in a white Merc in revenge for the prostitute killings.’

‘A prossie shooting three innocent men?’ Sutherland’s tone was full of derision.

‘Perhaps not a street woman, but someone close to them,’ Lorimer replied evenly. ‘As we have seen, this series of murders has required an organised mind and a lucidity that would probably not be found in most of these women.’

‘Too doped-up to see straight, never mind hit their target,’ someone else added.

‘Right,’ Lorimer agreed. ‘So we have two concurrent cases.’ He curled his fist, sticking up his thumb. ‘One, we see four prostitutes murdered in our city over a period of less than two years, all of them known to have worked the drag. Two,’ he lifted his index finger, ‘during that same period three men are killed in their Mercedes cars, one of them, our deputy first minister.’ Lorimer swept his gaze over the room of officers, each one focused on his words.

‘Now for the third part of this series of coincidences,’ he said quietly, raising a third finger. ‘It had initially escaped our notice, but each of the women just happened to have been murdered on the night of a full moon.’

There was a rustling of diaries as some of the officers checked the date.

‘Last night wasn’t a full moon, sir,’ Rita Livingstone said at last.

‘No, it wasn’t,’ Lorimer said. ‘But Lily wasn’t murdered, was she?’

‘Are you seriously wanting us to believe that some head case is out there baying to the moon?’ Sutherland asked.

‘It has been documented that patients suffering some types of mental disorder can be more seriously disturbed on the nights of a full moon.’

‘Looks like we need to be careful next week, then,’ another voice chimed in. ‘Tuesday the seventh is the next one.’

Lorimer gave a start. That was the date of his fortieth birthday, an evening he had promised to keep free to spend with Maggie for the celebration dinner she’d arranged.

‘Once we have circulated a photofit of this man,’ he pointed to the picture behind him on the screen, ‘there might not be any need for extra vigilance on that particular date. Maybe we’ll have caught him by then,’ he said grimly.

All eyes turned to the black and white image behind the detective superintendent. A man with dark hair and high Slavonic cheekbones stared back at them. It was not the picture of a monster some of them might have expected to see; in fact the technician responsible for creating the e-fit had shown the suspect’s features to have a certain boyish charm. That, thought Lorimer, was one of the enduring things about chasing criminals: many of them look just like you or me, he continued to tell his junior officers. And this lot here knew that full well, even hardened cynics like Sutherland who saw junked-up street women as simply worthless and killers as evil monsters. The truth was usually far more subtle than that.

‘What are you going to tell the press?’ a voice asked and Lorimer turned to see DC Barbara Knox, her eyes bright and eager as though this was something that concerned her.

‘I think we have to tread warily,’ Lorimer answered. ‘If we give them this photofit then that could drive the man underground.’ He turned back to point at the image. ‘I think you’ll agree that there is a slight hint of Eastern European about him. And we don’t want him to head for those particular hills. So,’ he went on, ‘officers at all airports and seaports will be given this picture and a briefing, but the press will be kept out of it for now. If we fail to make any real headway, it might mean a nationwide alert, though. So, it’s back to some of our original ground. If we are right, and this man was responsible for attacking Carol Kirkpatrick and Tracey-Anne Geddes, then someone in the city may have supplied him with the weapon he used. So, let’s see if this picture can jog a memory or two.’


As Lorimer entered his room he could hear a ‘woooooo!’ coming from the far end of the corridor, no doubt some clown (Sutherland?) mimicking a wolf howling at the moon.

He scratched his cheek thoughtfully. The Malmaison Hotel where he was to dine with Maggie wasn’t too far away from headquarters. If he had a surveillance team organised for that night, would the man in the white Mercedes make an appearance? Or would it be better to have special officers focused on the CCTV cameras around the drag? Perhaps undercover police officers might be required to take the places of the Glasgow street women that night? These and other questions filled the detective superintendent’s mind as he considered his strategy.