A Pound of Flesh

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.