by Zach Abrams
Alex knew they weren't the type of photos used to titillate and the only conceivable purpose in Stevenson having them was for blackmail. He had always classified Stevenson as one of the most hateful forms of vermin but this new revelation took his opinion to a new nadir as he considered blackmailers to be the lowest possible form of scum. For the second time in only a few minutes, he resisted the temptation to leaf through pictures, wanting Connor's team to finish their work first, but this time he had no interest in the artistic value; he merely wanted to identify a further group of people with a grudge against Stevenson and to search for clues to help him identify the actual murderer.
Alex was in no doubt that the person who trashed this house was the murderer. Stevenson must have driven him, or her, over the edge. To kill Stevenson in that way was unlikely to have been premeditated. Stevenson must have pushed them too far and they lashed out. They then must have been desperate to find the source Stevenson was using to blackmail them so they stole his keys to search his house. That meant they must have known where Stevenson lived, or been able to find out within a very short period of time.
While waiting for Connor's crew to get on with their work, Alex phoned through to Sandra to make her aware of the latest developments.
“Nothing's changed, you still need to do all the same groundwork, but because of the photos, I now think the murderer's more likely to be a blackmail victim than someone Stevenson's conned. So we can maybe go a bit easier in that direction. The only silver lining I see is that maybe some of his con victims needn't undergo further torture. How's progress with you.”
“I've put in a request for all CCTV footage in the area and it should be delivered by first thing in the morning. I've assigned teams to do a door to door, and we've got the mobile incident unit set up outside the shop. Anything else you want from me?”
“Nope, you've done well. I'm going to hang on here until I can get access to have a proper look round and collect everything we need to work with, then I'm calling it a night. I'd like to meet up with you at the incident van first thing tomorrow and we'll take things from there. Wait a minute. Check out next of kin and any known family, friends and contacts. That way, come tomorrow, we can hit the ground running.”
Alex and McAvoy waited in the car until they were given free access to the house. The dry interlude had not lasted and a heavy sleety shower was descending. Alex switched on the engine to give them a modicum of heat and he had the wipers on intermittent with the demister on full and facing the screen to give them some visibility as thick condensation had clouded all the other windows. Once admitted, they conducted a slow and careful search for any items of interest. They lifted carpets looking for a safe but there was none. They collected and boxed all the photos and any paperwork relating to bank accounts and investments, without paying much attention to the content. Uniformed officers were assigned to make enquiries of the neighbours and then, sometime after 10.00pm, with the temperature dropping and a white covering already forming on the grass and pathways, they left the house. Warren made a four mile detour so he could drop McAvoy at his home in Croftfoot, a cottage flat, a quarter villa on the south side of Glasgow, then he found his way back to his own flat. Warren also lived on the south side. He rented a two-bedroom apartment in Shawlands, on the first floor of a traditional red sandstone tenement built more than a century ago. Although requiring little space himself, he maintained the larger property for the odd occasions when he was allowed to have his boys stay over with him. The flat itself comprised of an entrance hallway, large dining kitchen, bay-windowed lounge measuring eighteen feet by fifteen feet and overlooking a small private park and two spacious bedrooms, one with a double and the other two single beds. All the rooms had high ceilings, nearly ten feet tall, and they were bright and airy. Furnishings were adequate but minimalist and mostly had been provided by his landlord. Alex's one precious keepsake was a watercolour painting he had commissioned from the artist Brian Large. The subject was his two boys when they had been aged two and four, pictured in happier days, when they'd been on a family holiday in Spain. Alex had provided Brian with a photograph and he had produced a remarkably detailed reproduction. Alex had been privileged to have known Brian for years as Alex´s uncle had attended school with him. Despite having received commissions from royalty and from the admiralty, Brian now lived the much clichéd, frugal life of an artist residing in a flat in a seaside town on a small island in the Clyde estuary, about forty miles from Glasgow.
Alex was worn out by the exertions of the day and he just wanted some sleep so he went straight to his bed. However, try as he might, sleep eluded him. He tossed and turned. Every time he came close to drifting off, images of Stevenson lying across the chaise longue returned to haunt him. He got up and made himself a hot milky drink, Horlicks, but it didn´t help. He lifted the box of photos he'd taken from Stevenson's house and scanned through them but he was too tired to study them properly. All he really absorbed was the abundance of naked bodies indulging in a variety of sex acts. Realising the context, his reaction was pity rather than stimulation. He collapsed back onto the bed and tried again to sleep, but it was well after three am before he finally drifted into a fitful slumber and his alarm had been set for seven.
Chapter 4
Warren overcame the challenge provided by an icy cold rain carried by a moderate wind and, at a few minutes before eight am, with bleary-eyes and arms weighed down by a large cardboard box of photographs, he stumbled into the incident caravan to find Sandra. She was the only other person already there, working her way through a stack of filed reports which had already arrived. With a loud bang, he allowed his burden to land onto a spare desk and he slumped into a chair.
“You look like shit,” she uttered, taking advantage of their privacy to speak more personally than she might have dared had subordinates been present. “What the hell have you been doing?”
“Nothing, that´s the sad part,” he murmured. “Just lack of sleep and thinking about the job.”
Alex gazed across with strained vision and it struck him that Sandra appeared particularly attractive this morning. She looked bright and fresh. Her cheeks were rosy, her deep brown eyes sparkled and he could see her rich, black hair was freshly washed, showing to best effect the Vidal Sassoon-style cut and the fresh, fragrant, soapy aroma of her shampoo wafted in his direction. She was wearing a smart, white, open-necked blouse and a tight-fitting black skirt which stopped a few inches above her knee. Standing as she was next to her desk and leaning over her files, Alex was treated to the pleasant view of her athletic, curvaceous outline. As was regulation when on duty, she wore no jewellery and had little or no make-up on, but the pure and wholesome look just seemed to add to her allure.
Alex hadn't realised he'd been staring until Sandra enquired,” Are you okay? You don´t seem yourself.”
He blinked a couple of times and then cast his eyes down at the desk.
“Yeah, yeah, fine. Just thinking about where to start,” he lied. “Okay let´s compare notes. Where are you up to?”
“There´s nothing unexpected. We've had the ME´s report already though. Duffie may have arrived late but he must have worked half the night to rush it out. Death most likely occurred sometime between twelve noon and three pm, which is consistent with what we've already been told. The victim had a hearty breakfast of fried bacon, sausage, black pudding and eggs about four hours before death, probably sometime about 10am. The cholesterol didn't kill him though. Death resulted from being stabbed in the abdomen with the tusk. It did have a sharp pointed end but not razor sharp. It must have been swung with some force, penetrated the abdomen and was then forced upwards puncturing his heart. Death would have been quick. The assailant must have been very strong, almost certainly a man. He must have used both hands to wield it and, from the angle of entry, he would most probably been right handed. It doesn´t narrow down the search too much but I suppose it helps.”
Alex was satisfied with the summary. He nodde
d as she was talking, making a mental record of each piece of data while intending to read the full report later to pick up on any lesser details which may come in useful.
“Next, we had a call from Connor. He promised the report for this morning but that was before you called him out to Whitecraigs. So he can´t deliver. He expects to have prelim' reports on both incidents by early afternoon.” Alex nodded again and tried to withhold a scowl.
“Next, the door to doors. So far a big fat zero. No one saw anything. No one heard anything. Zilch, and that´s for both locations. You predicted as much. There´s still a few doors to go back to but I´m not hopeful. Nobody´s been told the details of what´s happened yet and there´s been plenty of complaints about Stevenson but that´s all. It´s all been documented,” she added, pointing to a stack of cardboard covered files.
“I´m still waiting for the CCTV footage and I´ve asked for the same in the vicinity of the house. It could be a breakthrough if we tracked a car to both locations but there's nothing to say there couldn't be dozens and it´ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack. I´ve assigned Fitzpatrick to work on it, when it arrives. He´s not that sharp at the pit face, but he´s got a really good eye for detail so the job will suit him. Mind you, we might need to pay for a couple of packets of Aspirin and a visit to Specsavers for his next pair of glasses as compensation.”
“Finally, I´ve checked up on Stevenson´s family. He had been married but there were no children and their bliss ended about fifteen years back when the ex moved to London. We´ve no more details on her yet. His father died five years ago and his mother stays in a care home, not far from where he lives, or lived, I should say. It´s called Eastwood House and it´s just along from Eastwood Toll. He has a sister, a few years older than him. She moved down south ages ago. She´s married to a guy called Grant Nelson. He works as a bookkeeper and they live in Bristol. They have two teenage kids.”
“Right, I want to see the mother myself. I want to find out what she can tell us. I´d better take you with me though. Phone ahead to see if the home can have a nurse present ´cause we don´t know how she´ll take the news. Arrange for the local force to pay the sister a visit. We can get McAvoy to man the caravan and keep his eye on things while we´re away.”
Alex indicated to the box. “We can start our own porn factory with what´s in here. We need to give this a lot of attention.” Seeing Sandra´s smile, he added, “No, seriously,” but he couldn't continue without grinning. “It looks as if our Mister Stevenson´s been a very naughty boy. He´s been blackmailing a lot of people by the look of it. I´ve only had a quick browse but there seems to be a lot of victims. I reckon he´s had a room wired with cameras and arranged for some prostitutes, both male and female to bring their punters there. All the photos seem to be in the same flat and at least one of the girls is in several photos with different partners. A few kinky ones amongst them. Judging from the way we found them, the murderer´s already been through them and picked out any that implicated him. We didn´t find much in the way of money in the house, although that could have been lifted along with the photos, and there wasn't a safe. I´ve got all Stevenson´s banking records, at least all that I found, and we´ll need to study those. Blackmail´s a cash business normally so I reckon Stevenson´s got a stash somewhere else. Maybe he´s even got copies of the photos somewhere and if we can find where, then we could have our murderer.”
“It´s hard to solve a crime when there seems to be no leads to follow but it´s even worse when it´s like this one and there´s just too many. Where in God´s name do we start?”
“Let´s keep religion out of this one. It´s about the only complication we don´t have. Now down to business. Here's what we need to get going. We want to get Fitzpatrick started on the videos. We want to have someone work through the finances. We can see if we can borrow one of the specialists for that. We need to see what Connor´s lot have to give us and find out if their infotech geek´s been able to rescue anything from his computers or his security system. I want someone else researching Stevenson´s businesses. It can be done in tandem with the finances. Find out any companies he owns or is a director of. Find any premises he or his companies own or lease and check them out. You know the procedure. I´m locking these photos away just now ´cos I want you, me and McAvoy to work on them together. I want us to go through them carefully, catalogue them according to who's in them and what they´re doing. I want to work out who the whores are and see if we can pick out any faces we recognise.”
“Only their faces?” Sandra replied with a broad grin.
“Fair point,” he replied sternly, without rising to the bait. “There could be tattoos or other distinguishing features”
“A lot of distinguishing features, from what you´ve said. I´ve not seen any yet,” she continued undeterred and showing a mock petted lip.
Alex couldn't keep a straight face any longer and they both howled with laughter only to be interrupted as McAvoy entered the cabin.
“Sounds like I´m missing out on all the fun,” he muttered with a grim face, which only made Sandra laugh all the more. McAvoy's lacklustre attitude was matched by his appearance; his creased, plain grey suit complemented his untidy, silvery-grey hair and his sun-deprived, grey pallor.
“Not a bit of it,” Alex replied. “But come to think of it, what is it about ´first thing' you don´t understand?”
“Sorry, Boss, the wife needed the car today for a hospital appointment and the bus across town took longer than I expected.”
“Right, let's get on, here´s the plan,…” Alex said and repeated what he had in mind as priorities, finishing with the instruction for them to meet up later in the morning and take the photos into their Pitt Street office where they could work on them in privacy and with the benefit of the technology infrastructure which wasn't fully accessible from the cabin.
By 9.30, all arrangements had been made and bodies assigned to each of the tasks, and Alex and Sandra set out for Eastwood Court taking the same route Alex had the previous evening. Seeing the sign for the care home only at the last moment, Alex turned sharply to pull the Hyundai off the busy road and found the only available space large enough for his SUV next to the home's own minibus. He sat for a moment and looked around. The building was unusual in shape and most of it looked relatively new. The main central area was three stories high and was constructed with a rustic-style, golden-red brick finish. Off to the right the building was of a lower level with large windows. Through the windows he could see that inside was laid out with lots of dining tables and chairs, each made up with four place settings and a vase of flowers. Beyond was a kitchen and what looked to be a storage area. The central area had a large bright conservatory attached to the front of the building. The whole front was glass and Alex could see bookcases and several large squashy bamboo framed couches and chairs. To the left of the conservatory a porch-style entranceway extended out from what must have been the original building, a two-storied structure built from blonde sandstone. At the far corner, the stones were more rounded and formed a medieval-style, turret-shaped tower.
Alex had an awkward feeling about the place and couldn't think why. Then he remembered. Only a short while after he had joined the force, while he was still a raw recruit, he had attended the scene of a terrible accident somewhere very close to this location. It was back in 1990; a Bell JetRanger helicopter had been chartered by the police. A sudden and severe snowstorm had started and the aircraft's engine had failed resulting from snow blocking the air intake. The helicopter was flying low but dropped from a height of seventy feet and collided with an apartment block. One officer died after being thrown out by the impact and others suffered serious injury. The incident was still vivid in Alex's memory and he shuddered at the thought.
“What's up, Boss? Aren't we going in?” Sandra's words broke into his reminiscing.
“Let's go then,” he responded, releasing his seatbelt. He strode towards the front door to ring the doorbell.
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sp; Within a few moments, a receptionist let them in. After checking their warrant cards, she took them into a side room and introduced them to a nurse.