Black left Penny where she lay. There was nothing further to be done. He closed the door gently behind him. The corridor was quiet and still. Nothing to indicate the shocking violence which had taken place.
Black made his way out, and halfway to his car, he called the police. Perhaps something he should have done three hours earlier. He felt sudden despondency. Death followed him. He was the last person Penny Sinclair saw, before oblivion. A stranger. The despondency turned to shame. She had died not knowing why. Not with her mother or father. Not with anyone she loved or cared about.
He got to his car. There was a chill in the air. Or perhaps it was the chill in his bones. The sun was low, casting a wistful hue. There were few people about. Term time had finished, he surmised, and without the clamour and energy of young men and women, the place seemed bleak and sombre.
Penny Sinclair had been killed. Her life held no consequence to those such as Malcolm Copeland. Her death was a casual act of violence. She was training to be a lawyer, had worked in her father’s firm. Probably doing little more than filing. Perhaps looking up obscure points of law. But to the mind of Malcolm Copeland, she was a link to his connection with her father. Thus, she had to die. Black saw the logic. But it was the logic of a monster.
Black pulled away, leaving Aberdeen University behind him.
Monsters were there to be killed.
That, to Black, was the perfect logic.