‘Do you want to talk to about Leah?’
‘Thanks, but no. I don’t have the energy to talk about it. Or the inclination. And it goes without saying I don’t want to read about it in your newspaper.’
‘That’s not why I’m asking and you know it.’
‘I don’t know what I know any more. No, that’s not true. I’m terrified for her, I know that.’
‘You think Broome’s hurt her?’
‘Which bit of I don’t want to discuss it didn’t you understand? I don’t know and I don’t want to guess. All I want to do is try to sleep and tackle it in the morning.’
‘Okay but before you do . . .’
‘Uh huh . . .’
‘We need to talk.’
She dropped her head onto his shoulder and groaned. ‘The four words no one wants to hear. Do you know just how shitty a day I’ve had?’
‘Yes, and I’m not trying to make it any worse. But there is something I’ve got to tell you.’
‘Is it something I want to know?’
‘No.’
‘Great. Then don’t tell me.’
‘That’s not an option.’
She pinched the top of her nose, exhaling hard then opening her eyes. ‘Are you having an affair?’
‘No.’
‘Pity. Okay, is it better or worse than that?’
He thought then shrugged. ‘It could go either way.’
‘Go on.’
‘It’s about Broome’s photographs. I’ve got them.’
She sighed heavily. ‘I can’t know about this.’
‘They were emailed to me anonymously.’
‘I can’t know anything about it.’
‘Fine. I won’t mention that I’m trying to track down the women in the photographs.’
‘Good. Thanks for not telling me.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Seriously, I don’t want to know what’s going on. I can’t. I need to be removed from it and be able to deny any knowledge if the shit ever hits the fan. And it probably will. So, this is the last conversation we have about it. But,’ she exhaled long and slowly, ‘there’s someone I think you should meet. Her name is Lainey Henderson.’
CHAPTER 27
Alanna was first up, as was regularly the case. She wasn’t much for crying but she was quick to let you know when she was hungry. If she was up, everybody was up.
So it was that Winter, then Narey and finally Uncle Danny were sitting round the breakfast table watching Alanna stuff Cheerios down her throat and follow it by drinking the milk from her bowl.
They were all a bit biased but each of them was convinced it was more entertaining than anything on television. Alanna loved the attention and the fact that she had a bigger audience than normal. She grinned at them all as if she’d just invented it.
Narey hadn’t slept well, her dreams filled with chases through the maze of the old carpet factory, Leah always just out of reach. The dread still sat in the pit of her stomach, gnawing at her. Only her daughter was getting her through it.
‘I’m convinced she’s a genius,’ Winter told them, obviously trying to lighten the mood. ‘I’m thinking of putting her name down for Oxford or Cambridge. Or Mensa or something.’
Narey was leaning forwards, rubbing her nose against her daughter’s and making her giggle.
‘A genius, are you? Well, maybe Daddy’s right. You’re certainly bright as any button. But maybe we should wait until you work out how to stop getting half the Cheerios on the floor before we get you an application for University Challenge.’
‘That’s just being artistic. An untidy table and floor is a sign of a creative mind. She’s a genius, I’m telling you.’
‘Aye well, is Daddy going to clean up the genius’s Cheerios off the floor before he goes to work or is he expecting her to do it herself?’
Winter looked at his watch. ‘I don’t want her to think I’m curbing her creativity. Stamping on artistic dreams at such a young age can be shattering.’
They all looked at Alanna, who was busy pouring milk over her head.
‘Yeah, she certainly looks like her dreams have been shattered. Go, get to work. I’ll clean them up then head in myself.’
Winter kissed her, whispered in her ear that it would all work out, grabbed a coat and shouted goodbye to his uncle. ‘Don’t you be watching Jeremy Kyle all day, Danny. You’ve got housework to do.’
‘You’re not too big for a slap round the lugs, son. Do what your wife tells you and get to work.’
Danny followed Tony to the front door, out of earshot of the rest of the household.
‘I’ve made some headway with some of those wee dicks on Twitter. They think I’m one of them and are drip-feeding me little bits of info that might add up to something before long. I’m keeping files on each of them. I’m not there yet but getting closer.’
‘Cheers, Dan. I don’t really care if they get nicked or not, I just want it to stop. She doesn’t need any more hassle than she’s getting. She’s going out of her mind with this Leah Watt stuff. But thanks. And thanks for being here.’
‘Shut up and get out. You don’t need to be thanking me. You know I want to do it.’
Winter opened the front door and swung it back before stepping out. ‘I’m grateful all the same though, Danny. It’s a big help that you’re staying.’
He moved towards the doorstep but stopped midstride. ‘What the . . .’
Danny was at his side in an instant, straining to see what the problem was. A shoebox sat outside the door.
‘Don’t touch it,’ Danny cautioned him, ‘Let me. You might want to photograph it though. And close the front door.’
Danny fished in his pocket till he pulled out a Swiss Army knife. He flicked a blade out and eased the lid from the shoebox. There was already a smell that didn’t bode well. Winter had taken his camera from the bag slung over his shoulder and had fired off a couple of shots.
Slowly, Danny eased the lid higher as he bent to see what was inside. When the lid was raised three or four inches at one side, he’d seen enough and let it drop. ‘Fuck.’
‘What’s in there, Danny?’
The older man expelled a blast of breath before taking the knife to the edge of the lid again. With a single flick of the wrist, he sent the cardboard spinning, revealing a large dead rat, its body bloodied.
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Do your stuff as if this was a crime scene. Photograph every angle, get a scale, whatever you do. Then get it the fuck out of here. You got gloves?’
‘In the car. Danny, I am going to break someone’s neck when I find out who’s doing this.’
‘That doesn’t matter right now. Just get this away before Rachel sees it and get it to the cop shop at Stewart Street. She’ll find out about it eventually but the later the better.’
Winter took just a couple of photographs of the rat where it lay. Its eyes were blank and its pink, fleshy tongue poked out of its half-open mouth across sharp teeth. Its earthy brown flank was scarred with rusty blood and a ragged hole where it had escaped from.
Without another word, he rescued a pair of gloves from the car, put the lid back on the box and sat it in the passenger-side footwell. As he turned back to Danny, he saw Rachel looking out of the window, Alanna in her arms and a slightly confused look on her face.
He smiled and waved. All fine here, nothing to see. Move along quietly.
She turned away and he walked to the door where Danny stood, worry etched on the grizzled lines of his forehead.
‘We need to put an end to this, Danny. I’m not having it. Whoever this is, we find them and we sort them. Not in my house. Not in my house!’
Danny nodded, resting an arm on Winter’s shoulder.
‘Let me deal with it, son. It’s why I’m here. Get yourself to work.’
‘Dan . . .’
‘Just go, Tony. I’ll sort it.’
CHAPTER 28
Winter was back in the office o
n Dumbarton Road. He had a line on one of the blondes, the one he’d christened Little Lisa Picasso, and wanted to spend an hour chasing her down and then getting in to the Standard before Archie Cameron sent out a search party or sacked him.
He didn’t hear the knock on the door. He was so caught up in the search that he didn’t hear the door open, didn’t hear it close. She stood there unnoticed for a couple of minutes, breathing it all in, overwhelmed by the images on the whiteboards and fighting the urge to turn and flee.
She’d gone there determined to be strong, steeling herself against what she might find, but her resolve had deserted her. By the time she spoke, there were silent tears making their way towards her chin.
‘How many of them are there?’
Winter looked up, startled at her sudden appearance, seeing her staring wild-eyed at the photographs pinned to his board.
‘Three hundred and fifteen individuals,’ he told her. ‘Who are you?’
‘Women,’ she corrected him, her eyes never wavering from the wall. ‘They’re not individuals, they’re all women. In case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘I’d noticed. You still haven’t told me who you are.’
She had her back to him now, standing directly in front of the photographs, staring at the photo of the faceless, nameless woman whose head had been cut away from the print. She reached out towards it, tracing the shape of the ragged edges in the air.
‘Why has he done this?’ she demanded. ‘Is this the only photo that’s been cut away like this?’
‘As far as I know.’ Winter moved next to her. ‘Assuming I have all the photographs then yes, this is the only one where the face has been removed. And no, I don’t why. You’re Lainey Henderson, aren’t you?’
The woman was still transfixed by the photographs and Winter had to repeat her name twice more before it broke the spell. She turned, her mouth in a tight O as she breathed out hard.
‘Is it okay if I smoke? I need one.’
‘Not supposed to,’ he told her. ‘But I won’t tell if you won’t. Let me open a window, the landlord would go nuts if he found out.’
She lit up, hands shaking, and drew down on the cigarette in short, sharp pulls. Once she had enough in her lungs to anaesthetise her nerves, she began to explain.
‘The bastard that took these.’ She jabbed her cigarette towards the photos. ‘I’ve been tracking him for years. You have the pictures of his victims. I’ve got their stories. Or some of them.’
She slipped the bag off her shoulder and reached inside, pulling out a blue plastic folder that had clearly seen a lot of use. She dropped it onto the table beside her with a clatter.
‘There’s a file in there with nine years’ work in it. It’s a copy. Every case I could find that fits his profile, victims that even the police don’t know about. Some of them will, almost certainly, match the women in those photographs. Some have got names, some haven’t. Some might speak to you, some definitely won’t. Most times, I don’t know which is which. If it helps, then it’s yours. But I want something in return.’
‘It’ll definitely help,’ Winter smiled at her. ‘It’s gold dust. What do you want in return?’
The tears returned to Lainey’s eyes and she bit down on what was left of her cigarette. ‘I want to see the photographs. All of them.’
Winter fetched her a coffee, the only comfy chair in the place and the boxes with the photographs in.
She breathed deep and dived in, sifting through one by one, labouring over each image, studying the faces of Broome’s collection. After a minute, she stopped and flicked back through the ones she’d already looked at and then skimmed ahead.
‘These women are all blonde. Every one of them.’
‘I’ve sorted them into an order,’ he explained awkwardly. ‘It made it easier for me to work my way through them’
‘By hair colour?’ Her disapproval was obvious. ‘You don’t think you were maybe dehumanising them just a bit?’
He groaned inside but didn’t try to explain that he’d already had this debate with himself and lost.
‘I don’t want the blondes,’ she was shaking her head in a mild panic. ‘No blondes. Not now anyway. I need brunettes. I need to see them first.’
The statement confused him, worried him too. It didn’t seem as rational as he’d have liked.
‘I’m looking for two women,’ she told him. ‘Two brunettes. One of them’s me.’
When she didn’t offer an explanation, Winter didn’t seek one. If she wanted to tell, she’d do so when she was ready.
‘The other is a woman called Jennifer Buchanan. Or at least she told me that was her name. I don’t think it’s real and the address she gave me definitely wasn’t. But I do know what she looks like.’
She told him Jennifer’s story. The break-in, the rape, the beating. The failure to come back for counselling, the false address, the disappearance.
He listened in silence, hearing another truth in Lainey’s voice. There was no need to ask why she was also looking for her own image among the pile of photographs in her hand.
She placed them neatly one on top of the other, occasionally stopping to look a second time or third or to wipe away a tear. At one point, she stood up abruptly and walked over to the open window to fire up another cigarette, pacing back and forth as she drained it.
‘Can I ask you something? Why are you doing this? What’s in it for you?’
Winter shrugged. It was a question he’d never stopped to ask himself, not properly. He was chasing a story but there was much more to it than that.
‘I’m a husband. I’m a father. I’m a human being. That seems reason enough.’
As she searched through the prints, he worked too, reading Lainey’s file and beginning to compare the information in there with what he knew. He struggled to concentrate, his eyes constantly drifting over to her, unable to stop himself from monitoring her reactions, looking up as he became aware of her showing interest in one photo or another.
She was scouring her way through the brunettes and also a group of darker blondes that he’d pulled from the other pile. He heard her breathe hard, sometimes muttering or swearing, another cigarette on the go. Her head would fall into her hands and he could only guess at how hard the going was.
‘I don’t know whether I actually want to find her,’ she announced. ‘I don’t know if I want her to be in this fucking pile of shite or not. That’s what’s driving me crazy. I’ve been trying to find her for nine years but I don’t want to find her in this bastard’s private wank collection. And . . .’ she struggled to spit the words out, ‘I really don’t know if I want to find myself in it. I don’t know if it’s better or worse if I find he’d been following me.’
Winter didn’t have words. He just let her search.
Five minutes later, she sat straight back in the chair, a print dropping from her fingers. He watched her pick it up again and study it, holding his breath. She got up and walked round the room, circling the chair, the table and the photograph.
When she had enough in her, she sat down again, picking the print up using just the tips of her fingers. She lifted her head to look at him, nodding slowly.
‘It’s her.’
CHAPTER 29
It had been fifteen minutes since Lainey had identified the petite woman with dark auburn hair as her missing Jennifer. Since then, she’d sat and stared at the three photographs he’d grouped together, working her way through a succession of cigarettes. There were tears and largely incomprehensible swearing, her hand repeatedly slapping the table at one point.
‘I only met her once,’ she announced, more to herself than Winter. ‘Just once. And I’ve spent nine years looking for her. Now I don’t know what to do.’
She turned to face him, eyes red. ‘I didn’t want to find her in here. Didn’t want him to have photographed her.’
Winter crouched down so he was at eye level with her.
‘I’m going to try to find her. The
photographs on the board are my priorities, the ones I’ve been putting most time and effort into because I think they’re my best chance of getting Broome. If it’s okay with you, I’ll put Jennifer’s photograph up there with them.’
Lainey nodded, the back of her hand wiping at her nose.
‘Oh, it’s okay with me. Thanks. But I don’t know how you’re going to find her. And if you do . . .’ she had to catch her breath, ‘she might not want to talk to you. And if she doesn’t then that’s her choice, right? Because I know you’re trying to find women who will go to court. Testify against him. And I want that too. Want that bastard put away. But only if they want to. If they can.’
‘Right. I know that,’ he assured her. ‘And I’ll respect it.’
She sniffled and nodded her appreciation.
‘What address did Jennifer give you?’ he asked.
‘I told you, it was false. I talked to the people who lived there and they’d never heard of her. I described her in case she’d just given a fake name but they didn’t know her. I went to the neighbours, went to the block of flats next door, but nothing. It’s a dead end.’
‘Maybe not. She probably came up with the address for some reason. I doubt she chose it completely at random. There would be something even it was subconscious. Maybe she used to live there, maybe she knew someone that did, maybe she passed it on her way to work. It’s worth another look.’
‘It was almost ten years ago.’
‘Let me try.’
A heavy sigh but a grateful one. ‘It was on Paisley Road West. The number’s in the file. Above an ice cream parlour and a halal food shop.’
Lainey left Winter’s office, taking much of the life of the room with her.
She was why he was doing this, her and Jennifer and the rest, and having that reality shoved directly in his face was sobering. This wasn’t a game. He needed to find at least one woman, preferably more, among Broome’s compilation who could take him where he wanted to go.
The Photographer Page 14