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.
CHAPTER 14
Edward Pattison smiled to himself, blissfully unaware that it was only a matter of hours from now when all smiles would stop together, as the poet, Robert Browning, had put it, the expression of murderous intent hedged about with cunning euphemism. Pattison was no poet, however, nor a lover of poetry. Politics had thrust him into quite a different sphere of creativity and now, as Scotland’s newly appointed deputy first minister, he was enjoying the sort of power over his peers that the ‘Last Duchess’ of Browning’s poem would have recognised. Sitting here, on the front row of the debating chamber, Pattison knew that he was a presence to be reckoned with, his smile more for the cameras that were recording the debate than for any of his colleagues. Changing his colours for those in the current ruling