Lawless

by Alexander McGregor

  His thoughts could not extend beyond two subjects – both named Gilzean. The young man held in a prison twenty-two miles away whose hairs had been found on a tie used to strangle Alison Brown and again on the inside of the police hat which had been used so violently to propel a broken nose bone into the brain of Lynne Ireland. And his father, Adam Gilzean, who had seemed to set a whole chain of events in motion from the moment he had approached McBride in the High Street bookstore.

  It was Adam Gilzean’s most recent visit to him which troubled him most. Christ sake, McBride muttered silently. He was practically forecasting another murder. Then it happens the same night. And a few hundred yards from where they’d spoken. It made no sense. But it made all the sense in the world if you were trying to make a point – and were prepared to kill to prove it.

  He needed to speak to Petra. Needed her input. Wanted to know where the police investigation had reached. He called her but was diverted to her voicemail. He left a message but did not say what was in his mind – just left an invitation to stop off at his apartment on her way home.

  She did not arrive until 10 p.m. – fourteen hours after her day had begun. McBride did not need to ask if it had been a good day at the office – her face gave him the answer. The small amount of make-up she ever wore had disappeared, her mouth was taut and her hair was as untidy as his own. Even her fitted black jacket was creased. Only two things were familiar – the newly applied perfume and the fact that she still looked stunning.

  She did not speak but took off her jacket, stepped out of her shoes, walked to the window overlooking the river and sat in the seat he had occupied for the last hour. She put her feet up on the window-ledge and uttered only two words, ‘Wine, red.’

  They were three-quarters of the way through the bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape before she started to give him a rundown on the day’s events. Once she began, Detective Inspector Petra Novak paused only to have her glass topped up.

  Much had happened, she told McBride. Operation Tribune was no longer a tolerated but ignored concept – it was in full throttle and a briefing room at headquarters had been cleared to accommodate the joint team of officers drafted in from Fife and Grampian to support the Dundee murder squad. No one was in any doubt now that a multiple killer was being sought – or that there was a high probability he would strike again.

  ‘The brass admit to “probability”,’ she said wearily. ‘I make it certainty.’

  McBride nodded firmly. ‘You can put money on it – as much as you’ve got. This is a game that isn’t over.’

  She looked at him earnestly. ‘I’ve been asked to make a special plea to you,’ Petra said. ‘They’re desperate that none of the joint operation details get out. If the public get the idea that a triple or quadruple killer is on the loose, it will create nightmares for us. They’re also well aware that you hold some kind of fascination for the person responsible. They need your co-operation both ways – to keep them informed of any developments at your end and not to let the public in on any of it. Deal?’

  McBride burst out laughing. ‘Here we go again!’ he exclaimed. ‘Cheeky bastards. You use the rhubarb principle on the press – keep us in the dark and throw the occasional bucket of shit over us – then, when you’re stuck, it’s grovel, grovel.’ He laughed louder. ‘I suppose the request came from your superintendent, the “helpful” Mr Hackett? And I bet DCI Brewster from Aberdeen was backing him to the hilt? Two wankers.’

  Petra nodded twice, looking apologetic. ‘You can understand …’ She didn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘Aye, I can understand. It’s a one-way street until the police find themselves in another cul-de-sac.’ McBride was enjoying himself but decided to put her out of her misery. ‘OK,’ he said eventually, ‘tell them they have a deal. But the bargain is that, if this thing ever gets wrapped up, I get a day’s start on the rest of the hack-pack with all the stuff you know but I don’t. Deal?’

  ‘No problem – I can guarantee it,’ Petra said, her face brightening for the first time.

  McBride had waited all night to discuss the subject that was starting to obsess him. He introduced it cautiously, anxious not to look foolish. ‘Adam Gilzean …’ he said slowly, ‘any thoughts?’ He was not sure what reaction he expected – curiosity, probably. It was not what he received.

  ‘A few,’ she said at once. ‘As a matter of fact, I spent two hours with him this afternoon.’

  McBride could not conceal his surprise. He raised his eyebrows but said nothing, mainly because he couldn’t think of an appropriate response.

  ‘We had him in,’ Petra said simply. ‘We needed to speak to him about the hair from the hat – his son’s.’

  ‘And?’ McBride asked.

  ‘And he didn’t have a clue – not the faintest. He was staggered, to put it mildly.’

  ‘You believed him?’

  ‘Yes,’ Petra said, nodding her head slowly. ‘If he was putting it on, he should be nominated for an Oscar. It would be the performance of a lifetime.’

  She looked at McBride, noting his disbelief. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said. ‘I did too – for a spell. You know – that he might have killed Lynne Ireland and planted the hair so his son would look innocent.’

  McBride recounted the visit Adam Gilzean had made to him in The Fort and the direction their conversation had taken. ‘Lynne Ireland lived – and died – a few hundred yards from The Fort,’ he told Petra. ‘Adam Gilzean was in the area at the time, he had a warped motive and he was in the position to have had one of his son’s hairs to plant as some kind of evidence of his son’s innocence. What if Bryan Gilzean did murder Alison Brown and all this is some sort of elaborate killing spree to get him out of prison?’ McBride demanded.

  ‘Oh, sure! And what if the Pope’s really a Muslim? Even for the fertile mind of a journalist, that’s pretty far-fetched.’

  McBride was about to protest when she raised a hand, turning the palm towards him as a silencer. ‘Besides,’ she said, a note of triumph rising in her throat, ‘he’s alibied, solidly. Lynne Ireland was seen alive and well by a neighbour at 9.20 p.m. Adam Gilzean reported for duty at 9 p.m.’

  ‘For duty?’ McBride asked, astonishment spreading over his face.

  ‘Yes – as a Samaritan. He was on a night shift that evening and his whereabouts can be vouched for – every minute from nine o’clock until the next morning – long after Lynne died.’

  ‘Samaritan?’ McBride was still incredulous.

  ‘Been one for a year or two. Giving something back, he said. He’s an alcoholic and hasn’t touched a drop for years. No chance of him sharing a glass of wine with Lynne Ireland – or anyone else. Not unless he wanted to topple head first off the wagon. And there’s been no hint of that.’

  McBride fell silent, absorbing what he’d heard. Petra drained her glass but waved away his offer to open a fresh bottle. McBride remained thoughtful for several more moments. Finally he said, ‘So how come he seemed to think a policeman might be involved in an unsolved murder?’ He started to explain the thrust of the conversation Adam Gilzean had had with him in The Fort.

  Petra lifted her hand once more. ‘He told us about that too,’ she said. ‘Your friend Richard Richardson had apparently been to see him and planted that seed in him. Don’t ask me how he knew but he’s obviously been ferreting around.’

  It had not been a good night, so far, for McBride so, when Petra rose from her seat to reach for her shoes and jacket, he decided against pushing his luck.

  She asked for the phone number of the nearest cab company and, after a little hesitation, he gave it to her.

  47

  McBride woke early – even before his normal seven o’clock. It was becoming a habit he did not like but could do nothing about. He ran for an hour and, by 8 a.m., he had showered, breakfasted and worked his way through most of the morning papers.

  He positioned himself at the main window of the apartment, faced west and waited. He knew the po
stman would appear at the far end of the Esplanade between 8.15 and 8.30 and arrive at his house about seven minutes after that. McBride also knew beyond doubt that he would carry a plain white envelope with his computer-generated name and address on it. Inside there would be only a single sheet of white paper containing a short message. It would be anonymous and, like the envelope, bear no fingerprints or traces of DNA.

  McBride was right. He was also wrong. The postman delivered the letter at 8.22. It was white, without a signature and with a brief pronouncement. But, in addition, it included a page from the previous day’s Courier. The communication was concise and unambiguous. ‘Last message,’ it read. ‘No need to stake out the library.’

  Page three of The Courier carried Richard Richardson and Kate Nightingale’s sparkling prose about the background surrounding the killing of Lynne Ireland. The page was intact except for a small passage which had been painstakingly extracted with a sharp instrument. The precise handiwork was only too familiar.

  McBride found the jacket he had worn the day before and removed the copy of that day’s Courier from the pocket. He opened it at page three and scanned it quickly to locate the missing words. They were from the closing paragraph of Double Dick’s report. He had been expounding his views about the consequences of a murder and its effects on a community. The entire paragraph read:

  It may have seemed like just one more killing. A big one. It will be all over the front pages for a few days then the circus will move on, another town, another corpse.

  The sharp blade had extracted twelve words from the middle section – ‘just one more killing. A big one. It will be all over’.

  McBride scanned it several times but it was an unnecessary exercise. Its meaning was quite unambiguous. Another murder was promised. It would be significant. Then there would be no more. All that troubled him was what made a death ‘big’ in the eyes of the executioner. Big in size? A fat person? A tall one? A big name. The Queen? Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself, her father wasn’t a cop.

  He was starting to lose it.

  48

  Whatever way he figured it, McBride had hit a brick wall – at speed.

  Four dead bodies. All females in their thirties. All murdered in their own homes. All after sex and having shared a drink with their killer. All the daughters of policemen. All despatched to the next world by a piece of police equipment. All with clean records. So many similarities but also so many differences. None of them acquainted with the others. None who looked remotely like the others. None with any friends or colleagues in common. None of them with any grudge against the law. None of them put to death in the same way. None of them with the same sexual partner. Yet the last face they looked at on earth appeared to have belonged to the same person.

  McBride knew a lot about killing. He’d seen plenty of it. Sat often enough in the Old Bailey listening to the extraordinary evil that apparently ordinary men were capable of. Knew there was no kind of wickedness that could go unexplored by people who considered themselves members of the human race. He’d seen other kinds of killings in places in the Middle East and Northern Ireland and Eastern Europe. The exterminators called themselves freedom fighters but they were still butchers. Whatever the act, the outcome was always the same. Someone died. And there was always a reason, however obscure.

  So, what was the link between Alison Brown, Ginny Williams, Claire Bowman and Lynne Ireland? McBride asked himself for the twentieth time that day. If they had never met, what or who did they have in common? What was the hellish bond that united them in their violent and untimely demise? Why was another cadaver promised? And why would there be no more after that?

  He was still agonising over the answers when a knock sounded on the door of the apartment. Like bell-ringers, McBride was a skilled profiler of door-knockers. This was not a stranger but someone he knew. It was that kind of knock. Not formal. Not heavy, demanding entrance. Not the uncertain tap of a salesman. It was cheery, familiar. An acquaintance. Someone who felt they had a right to be standing on the doorstep.

  McBride opened the door to find Richard Richardson facing him. He was smiling, waiting to be invited inside. McBride threw the door wide, beckoned him to enter and led the way to the upstairs sitting room.

  ‘So, this is chez McBride, is it?’ Double Dick’s eyes swept round the room, taking in the newspapers scattered on the floor, the white envelope and its single sheet of paper, a half-finished bottle of Budweiser from the night before. Without being asked, he sat down on the sofa positioned against the back wall. He could have taken either of the seats beside the window and its wide panorama of the estuary, which most folk would have done. The sofa seemed a defensive move.

  There was no hint of self-protection in his demeanour. Double Dick was flippant, chiding, easy. He took control, pointing his toe in the direction of the Bud. ‘Any more of those?’ he asked. It did not matter that it was still morning – he could drink at any time of day.

  McBride moved round the room, rearranging the mess and lifting the papers and the single item of that morning’s mail. When he had done that, he brought his caller a chilled beer from the kitchen.

  ‘To what do I owe the honour of this royal visit?’ McBride asked.

  ‘Nothing in particular – just passing,’ Richardson lied. ‘Thought I’d take a look at the place that’s staged a hundred shag-fests.’

  McBride laughed – genuinely. It never took Double Dick long to steer the conversation round to sex, usually the kind he imagined McBride was having.

  ‘Had Katie Nightingale round yet?’ Richardson asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, he added, ‘Fantastic backside, eh? Missionary job, I reckon.’

  McBride said nothing. Shook his head slowly. Smiled. Double Dick was not the sort who required encouragement.

  They exchanged banter while the Courier’s chief reporter emptied his bottle. The swallowing of the last drop seemed to be the signal for Richardson to move on to the purpose of his visit.

  ‘Read your piece in the Mail,’ he said. ‘Insightful – even if it was over the top, as usual.’

  McBride inclined his head in mock acceptance of the half-compliment. ‘Yours too,’ he told his guest. ‘Over the top, I mean – not insightful.’

  ‘So, that’s why you were reading it before I came in,’ Richardson said. He was eager to let McBride know he’d noted the page from The Courier which had been lying on the floor. Richardson spoke again. ‘Are you doing a piece for tomorrow?’

  ‘Haven’t decided. Not much is happening. Unless you know something I don’t,’ McBride said, throwing the question back.

  Richardson shook his head. ‘Not a dickie bird.’ He wasn’t aware of what he’d said.

  ‘Still without a woman in your life, then?’

  Richardson looked blank.

  McBride persisted. ‘Not a Dickie’s bird!’

  ‘Very funny.’ The penny had dropped. He moved on, becoming serious. ‘So, if you’re stuck for a new line on the story, do you need help?’

  McBride lifted an eyebrow but said nothing.

  ‘Maybe you want to collaborate? Share? You tell me what you know and I’ll do the same? Could work for both of us,’ Richardson said.

  Jesus. How can someone be so subtle when he writes but so obvious when he speaks, McBride thought. But he said nothing, trying to make it seem as though he was weighing up the offer.

  After a few moments he responded. ‘Thanks but no thanks. I’m not under any pressure from any news desks – meantime. When I am I’ll let you know.’

  Richardson shrugged. ‘Up to you. You know my number.’ He rose from the sofa. ‘Thanks for the beer. Once this settles we’ll get together in The Fort. Might even have Kate in tow.’

  McBride accompanied Richardson downstairs. They said their farewells and Richardson started to walk towards his car when he turned and with a parting shot said, ‘By the way, if you think it was a cop who did it, you can forget it.’ He did not wait for McBride to reply
before driving off.

  Back inside, McBride nursed a coffee and sat at the window, gazing out over the river. Two bottle-nosed dolphins suddenly surfaced, hung suspended in a lazy arc, then dropped gently back into the water in perfect symmetry.

  He thought about Richardson’s final comment and nodded his head. God knows how he knows but he’s absolutely right, he said to himself. Whoever’s out there slaughtering women, it isn’t a police officer. It had suddenly become obvious. It’s someone who hates the police – someone with a grudge. The bits of uniform weren’t used as a smokescreen. They were used out of contempt for the people who wore them.

  49

  That thought had not yet occurred to Superintendent John Hackett who was briefing his detective teams in the incident room of Operation Tribune on the upper floor of Tayside Police headquarters.

  Behind him was a picture gallery of death. Photographs of four young women when they were alive and even more of them lying open-eyed but seeing nothing after their lives had been extinguished. In front of him were weary officers waiting for instructions on how they might work their way out of all the blind alleys they were lurching into.

  Hackett was unable to illuminate them. Even when he was at his best, he was never burdened by inspiration. He was also charisma free and would not smile at another man in case it was misunderstood. His most distinguishing feature was a fish-and-chip-supper stomach which hung over a belt straining on its last notch.

  Usually Hackett followed rule number one of detective school – put your best officers on to the potentially most productive lines of inquiry. Give the donkey work to the domestiques, the foot soldiers who knocked on doors, scrabbled on hands and knees searching for evidence and fed the computers.

  He invariably ignored the reality that the biggest crimes were frequently solved by the most lowly soldier. Sometimes a junior typist keyed the words into a PC that unlocked the mystery that had perplexed the ones with all the scrambled egg on their hats. A dumb piece of equipment that didn’t give a damn who had died or how, just clicked everything into place and extrapolated a name that had been hidden away.