there ended up dead,’ Lorimer said softly. ‘And we’re investigating all the places they worked prior to that.’
‘Ah’m in Andie’s noo,’ Doreen told him. ‘An’ I ken who ye mean. Thon posh lassie, Miriam and wee Jenny Haslet, in’t it?’
Lorimer nodded. ‘Jenny came here and was given help,’ he said, nodding towards the rack of leaflets. ‘And that’s something Strathclyde Police want as well. Folk like my colleague, Helen James, believe that there should be no women out on the streets endangering their lives.’
‘Ye ken there’s two o’ them? No’ jist the wan in Govan where ah work,’ Doreen told him. ‘They’ve got wan ower in Partick an a’.’
Lorimer nodded. Places like that were never listed in any telephone directory but sometimes business cards would be stuck to the insides of telephone boxes, in toilets or on the walls of the underground railway. Solly had visited the one in Govan but he had not given the policeman any new information about that. Perhaps he could see if his friend would take time to explore this further.
‘Thanks, Doreen. Nice to talk to you,’ he added, nodding politely as he got up to leave. The bus had started up and was now lumbering around a corner of the square so it was time to sit with the other ladies of the night and see what they could offer in the way of information.
As he held on to the back of a seat to steady himself, Lorimer glanced behind him. Doreen Gallagher looked away swiftly, but not before he had seen an expression cross her face: one that he recognised as sheer relief.
The rest of the night passed calmly enough, the street women proving to be every bit as wary as Lorimer had expected, but his polite and quiet manner did coax a few of them into sharing some of their stories with him. So it was that he heard tales of juvenile rape and incest, stuff that was shrugged off by some of them as though these things were ordinary life experiences. What did amaze the policeman was the women’s resilience in the face of so much hardship and squalor. Early death was taken for granted, stories of girls coming out of prison to meet with their drug dealers and overdosing on the way home were not unknown. One other thing he had learned was that the Revd Richard Allan ran a centre for women up in Stirlingshire, near the village of Arnprior. It was a place of hope, the man had told him, the converted farm catering for women who had lost their way, often through drugs. Fortunately the charities and trusts that funded it had not been hit during the recession and they could continue their good work.
It was a chastened Lorimer who reached home as the birds began the dawn chorus, grateful that fate had dealt him such a good hand. There but for the grace of God… Richard Allan had murmured. And it was true. He looked at the front of his home with a sudden spurt of joy. They had this lovely house, he and his darling Maggie who was asleep upstairs. He had a job that he loved and good health to enjoy so much of life. As he stood there on his doorstep a blackbird suddenly opened its throat and filled the cold morning air with liquid notes that thrilled him through and through. He inhaled deeply then sighed, his breath making a small white cloud. Life, in all its vagaries, could still have moments of glory, he thought, turning the key in the lock and pushing open the door to his home.
CHAPTER 31
‘Why do people do these terrible things?’ the girl asked him.
Professor Solomon Brightman smiled sadly. Today he had been presenting a seminar on intention, the discussion drifting, as it often did, into the mentality behind criminal behaviour. He looked at the girl, feeling a pang of despair. This fresh-faced second-year student showed a lot of academic promise in her subject, yet Solly felt that she had been sheltered from the reality of life in many ways and suspected that her education at a private school down south had failed to give her any insight into the sort of world that many of these case studies inhabited.
‘Well,’ Solly began. ‘There is no easy answer to that question, I’m afraid.’ The discussion had ended with a debate about the link between sex and violence, the outcome of which had been terminated by the clock,