to the city by a late train. Whoever had murdered Edward Pattison had had to leave the scene on foot, however. There were no buses from Erskine at that time of night so either the killer lived in the vicinity or had simply walked away. Unless there had been another person waiting for them in those woods, of course.
The police would be able to examine any CCTV footage of the Erskine Bridge itself. It was a magnet for suicides, Solly knew, recalling the Samaritans placard on the approach to the footpath. But he felt intuitively that the killer would have taken a less public route from the scene of crime, losing themselves in the labyrinth of housing estates that comprised the town of Erskine. He was not much given to using his intuitive powers, though, preferring to look at the facts in a logical manner.
He blinked as he continued to type, remembering the family of Carol Kilpatrick. Their home was only a few miles from the scene of crime; a walk that might take a fit man less than an hour. And then there was the death of Miriam Lyons, whose body had been found on the other side of the river that separated Erskine from Clydebank and Bowling. Could there be a link between the death of the deputy first minister of Scotland and these poor street girls?
Solly shook his head, smiling once again. No. He was being fanciful, seeing things that simply weren’t there. Coincidences did happen and, sadly, murders took place all over the city and its environs. For now his remit was to examine everything he could about the possible type of mind that had planned and carried out the killings of these three men. Heaving a sigh that Lorimer would have recognised as pity for the women whose cases were being regarded as of secondary importance, Solly continued his work, frowning in concentration as the words continued to grow on the computer screen.
Images of these lonely places loomed up in his mind as Solly tried to visualise the cars and the bodies that had been left for some unsuspecting person to discover. A frown formed as he pictured each scene. The men had been sitting in the driver’s seat, hadn’t they? So, he wondered, what had taken place before the shots that had killed them? Had they been coerced into driving to these outof-the-way spots, a gun forced against their sides, perhaps? Or had they known their assailant? Trusted them, even? Solly removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes as though that small action would aid his thought processes. If each of these men had been abducted, he reasoned, it would have taken at least one strong man to have overpowered them. But that did not make sense if he was looking for someone who fitted an obsessive disorder of this sort of magnitude. The assassinations had to have been carried out by a single killer. Someone who had cowed the men into meekly obeying orders to drive into a quiet and dangerous location. Solly stroked his beard thoughtfully. All three victims had been big men, physically, and surely strong enough to have at least tried to fight back against a dangerous gunman? Solly only had photographs and written descriptions of the first two victims but since his death images of the deputy first minister had been plastered over every newspaper and television screen until he could conjure up his face at will.
For a long moment the psychologist stared at his computer screen, not seeing the paragraphs he had already written but a vision of Edward Pattison sitting at the wheel of his white Mercedes, his familiar smile directed at an unseen companion.
‘Aye, I kent her,’ Doreen Gallagher nodded, her dangly earrings bouncing off each pale cheek as she took the cigarette from the other woman. They were standing on the pavement outside the drop-in centre in Robertson Street, having a friendly chat as the woman who had identified herself as a journalist had put it. ‘Ta,’ she grunted, leaning forwards to get a light. ‘Aye, Tracey-Anne wis a regular here a’right. Pair lassie didnae ken whit time o’ day it wis half the time, mind.’ Doreen blew the cigarette smoke upwards then fixed the other woman with a stare. ‘Whit’s it tae youse anyhow? Thought ye’d be all ower that ither murder. Big cheese in the Scottish parliament.’
‘Someone else is dealing with that,’ the dark-haired woman told her. ‘I’ve been assigned to this one.