Witness the Dead

by Craig Robertson

  ‘Four? And you are Red Silk?’ Big push, big risk.

  Atto just stared back at him, finally letting his eyelids slowly but briefly close over and give the merest upward motion of his shoulders. It wasn’t a yes or a no; it was barely a maybe.

  ‘You’ve forgotten the big question of the game, Anthony. The one that we started with when we discussed why men kill. Do you remember what it was?’

  Winter hesitated, thinking. ‘Whether people are born to kill or whether something makes them that way. Nature or nurture.’

  Atto nodded. ‘Yes. Nature or nurture. It’s simplistic but it takes us to the heart of the matter. You’ll remember then that I told you how it was much more relevant to what’s happening than you might think?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Our time is almost up but there’s so much more we have to discuss. However, that’s for another day, I think, Anthony. You will need to come back too because there will be so much more that you’ll want to know. And that your police friends out there will want to know too. It’s like I said before: every answer I give you will just raise another question.’

  Atto was teasing him again, drip-feeding him half-clues to keep him hanging on. Push it, damn it. Push it and ask the question.

  ‘Okay, so what’s the nature-and-nurture stuff? And why will your answer just lead to more questions?’

  Atto leaned as close as the table between them would allow.

  ‘The person who has been contacting me… he killed those girls. Why he is contacting me and why my DNA was at your crime scene is the same answer. He is my son.’

  Chapter 38

  ‘So you see, nature or nurture is the key argument. They say that the apple never falls far from the tree, Anthony. Looks like it’s certainly true in this case. What do you think?’

  Think? Winter’s thoughts were racing at warp speed and spinning in all directions. Ahead of him and to his side, he saw the prison officer’s jaw drop and the governor step forward, then fall back to the wall as if he’d been shoved there by his own incredulity. Atto’s expression hadn’t changed; he might as well have pointed out what day of the week it was.

  ‘I think… that’s an interesting development.’

  Atto preened again as if it hadn’t previously occurred to him that anyone would find this interesting.

  ‘How did he make contact with you?’

  ‘By email. You were right: I’ve got a device that allows me to pick up such things and talk to the world. I’m not alone. A lot of the guests here have computers and all it needs is a small, easily hidden attachment and it becomes a passport to the rest of the world. God, it’s a different place to when I came in here. Very different. The email came out of the blue. Like a message from another planet. Like a message from the 1980s.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘The gist of it was that he was my child. Well, “your spawn” was the exact phrase used. A bit unnecessary, I thought. Spawn has all those connotations of the Devil. Devil’s spawn, spawn of evil. All that rubbish. Still, I can understand it, he was upset. Just talking emotionally. I don’t hold it against him.’

  Time to push it again. Ask the big question while he’s in the mood. Push.

  ‘Who is he?’

  Atto’s face screwed up into mild confusion, not quite understanding why the question was asked. ‘I don’t know. He’s never said what his name is. Not even his mother’s name, and, well, that wouldn’t have been much help, anyway.’

  ‘You don’t know who the mother could be?’

  He laughed. The high-pitched giggle that sat so at odds with everything else he did or said. Atto obviously found that question particularly hilarious.

  ‘No. Of course I don’t. I must have. Briefly. But I don’t know her or remember her. Let me explain, Anthony. My child — my “spawn” — says that his mother had cancer. It was only when she was on her deathbed that she told him who his father really was. Me. I suppose it must have been a bit of a shock. People know who I am and they have… an opinion of me. The boy had always thought some other person was his father but the mother told him just before she died that it wasn’t this bloke: it was me. I think it kind of… disturbed him.’

  This was all way too much. Winter hadn’t signed up to psychoanalyse the relationship between a killer and his illegitimate son. Christ, between a killer and his son, a killer. He had to deal with this and explain it to everyone waiting on the other side of the door.

  ‘So how can you not remember who his mother was?’

  Atto shook his head in disappointment the way a teacher might do at a kid who can’t get simple arithmetic.

  ‘The mother told the child that I’d raped her. She was married to some bloke and let him think that the kid was his, but she knew better. It was me.’

  The bile that was in Winter’s throat was pure acid and threatened to erupt over the wooden table. He couldn’t stomach much more of this.

  ‘So did you? Did you rape her? Surely you know who she was?’

  Atto smiled, one of those rare ones where both sides of his mouth turned skywards at once, and held his arms wide.

  ‘Who knows, Anthony? I didn’t always stop to ask their names. Even if I did, I’d have forgotten.’

  When Winter went into that room at first, he’d wished that Danny had been by his side. His confidence at being able to get the job done would have been so much higher if he’d been with him. That notion slowly disappeared when Atto boasted and taunted, knowing the rage that Danny would have flown into. Now, though… now, he knew that Danny would have launched himself over the table and tried to strangle Atto with his bare hands. And he couldn’t quite make up his mind whether he wanted that to have happened or not. He swallowed back the disgust that was climbing up his throat and pushed on.

  ‘Do you still have these emails?’

  No. Of course not. I read them, answered them, memorised them, deleted them.’

  ‘So what did he tell you that he was going to do?’

  ‘To kill. The way that Red Silk did. And as often as Red Silk did. To be honest, I think the shock of discovering who he is has sent him a little bit… nuts. So there’s your nurture as well as your nature, Anthony. A trigger as well as a predisposition. A lethal combination. Oh, and I have to tell you: your time is running out.’

  ‘How long is it since you heard from him? Before or after these girls were murdered?’

  Atto gave him a strange look, a sly near-smile, before slowly turning his head towards the prison governor. ‘How long?’

  ‘I don’t… how could I know?’ Walton stuttered.

  ‘How long do we have left in the interview session?’

  ‘Oh.’ Walton looked at his watch. ‘The time’s up but we can—’

  ‘No, we can’t. An hour was what was agreed. Anthony will come back. Won’t you, Anthony?’

  ‘Yes. You know I will.’

  ‘Good. Tomorrow, then. Same time. And Anthony, when you go out and tell this story to your little friends out there, I’d suggest you tell them not to go too crazy trying to find how I get online. This goes for you, too, Mr Walton. For a start, I don’t think you’ll find it. But are you sure you want to? If you manage to trace it and remove it then the boy won’t be able to contact me again and the only lead you have will be gone.’

  When the door slid back to let Winter and Walton back into the outer room, it must have sent a spark of electricity among the waiting group, because they all snapped to attention and were staring at the door as the two men emerged. Winter was trying, but largely failing, to keep his face expressionless, while the governor looked shell-shocked.

  It was Alex Shirley who took a step ahead of the pack. ‘Well? What happened?’ he demanded, the unease clear for all to see and hear.

  Winter’s eyes closed over and he blew out hard, his knees ready to give way beneath him as he lost the adrenalin that had been holding him up. He fell back into the nearest empty chair and took the time to compose himself bef
ore giving them what they wanted.

  ‘C’mon, son.’ Danny was as anxious as the rest.

  ‘Aye, okay, Danny. Give me a minute. That wasn’t easy in there.’

  It was Rachel who came over to him, a glass of water in her hand. She let her fingers brush against his as she handed it over, and it felt good. A hug would have been better, but he’d settle for that and wonder just what it meant.

  ‘Okay,’ he sighed, long, deep and weary. ‘The bottom line is that the person who killed Kirsty McAndrew and Hannah Healey is Atto’s son.’

  None of them said anything. Shirley, Addison, Kelbie, Rachel and Danny all stood and looked back, not trusting their own ears. After a few seconds, Kelbie spun on the spot, turning himself away from the news; Addison’s hands came to his head; Shirley stood stock still in something approaching shock; and Danny nodded soberly at the confirmation that he’d been right. Rachel looked at him as if wondering what he’d been through.

  Then they all had questions at once, bombarding him from every angle, tripping over each other, each more desperate than the others to get an answer. How does he know? Who is he? Where is he? Is Atto going to help?

  ‘Enough!’ Shirley declared. ‘Just shut up and let me speak. Okay, Winter, tell us what he said. And tell us how sure you are that he’s telling the truth. Christ, this is going to have the press going ballistic if they find out.’

  ‘Atto has something, probably a dongle or the like, which allows him to connect a computer to the Internet. He was contacted by someone saying they’re his child. His “spawn” was how he put it. He says the mother was a rape victim of Atto’s and only told him on her deathbed. Now the kid is following in the father’s footsteps and copying the Red Silk killings. Which means he isn’t finished. There are two more to come. And our time is running out.’

  ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Shirley looked ready to burst. ‘We’re going to have to go public with this. We can’t take the risk of people not being warned about what he’s planning to do. We’ll rightly get crucified if another two girls get murdered.’

  ‘They won’t. Not if I have anything to do with it.’ Addison was the defiant one. ‘What else did he say? You need to be as precise as you can, Tony.’

  ‘I can’t be because Atto wasn’t. He says he deleted the emails as soon as he’d replied to them. They’ll all be recoverable somewhere in the cloud but it’s going to take time you don’t have. Atto says the son’s never revealed his name, never said where in Glasgow he is, who his mother was. Atto says he’s raped so many that he couldn’t think who she might be.’

  ‘Well, that bastard might not be able to remember, but the police national computer can. Its memory isn’t so conveniently forgetful.’

  ‘That might not help. I got the impression from Atto that it wasn’t reported.’

  ‘Yeah, well, impression isn’t good enough and I can’t take the chance you’re wrong. Rachel, tell Andy Teven I want him to go through every rape case that was linked to Atto, every rape case that fitted his method, every rape where there was an attempted strangulation. Get him to cross-check the victims against recent deaths, say in the last year to eighteen months. Get him to chase them down and tell him if he wants to moan about it then he should come and see me.’

  ‘Now hang on,’ Kelbie interrupted, trying to assert some authority. ‘I think we should—’

  ‘And we’re going to need to pull every file on the Red Silk cases,’ Addison said, riding right over him. ‘Lay it all out, separate the myth from the truth and look at it from scratch. Whoever did the two cemetery killings knows this case inside out and we have to make sure we know at least as much about it as he does. Sir…’ Addison turned to Alex Shirley. ‘I want Danny Neilson on the inside on this. He knows stuff the case files won’t hold because he was there first time around. We need him.’

  ‘Agreed. Mr Neilson, you’ll help us?’

  ‘Yeah. I will. You better believe it. I want to catch this guy as much as anyone does.’

  ‘Okay, Danny, good. Sorry for doubting you.’ Addison got a nod in return, cop to cop, no more needed to be said. ‘Now, Tony, we need more from Atto. Much more. Is he still communicating with this psycho? Never mind wondering how the hell he was able to do it in the first place.’

  Tom Walton blanched at the barb but Addison wasn’t expecting any kind of excuse or apology. There wasn’t time for that.

  ‘Yeah, he is. But he’s going to wring as much out of this as he can. He’s already hinting that there’s more he can tell us. We’ve set up another interview for the same time tomorrow. And he’s also said to send a not-very-subtle message about the dongle. Basically he says you won’t find it and, even if you do, you’d be better leaving it where it is or else he won’t be able to keep in touch with the son.’

  ‘Oh, does he? Well, that wanker’s got another think coming. Can I suggest that DCI Kelbie gets IT all over this? I don’t know how the hell it works but Atto must need some kind of Internet service provider to do this and there has to be a way of monitoring these emails. Doesn’t GCHQ do this sort of thing? It needs someone of the DCI’s rank to get people’s arses into gear.’

  Kelbie regarded him suspiciously, lips curling back. ‘You throwing me a bone, Addison?’

  ‘Yeah, there’s a good dog. Fetch.’

  ‘Addison!’

  ‘Sorry, sir. That was uncalled for. But may I suggest that DCI Kelbie does that and does it fast? If this kid is copying his father, then my money would be on him trying again this weekend. Tonight or tomorrow, maybe both. That would fit with the 1972 killings, wouldn’t it, Danny?’

  ‘Yeah. That would be my guess, too.’

  ‘Okay, that means we’ve got around twelve hours before this bastard intends to kill again. But we’re going to stop him.’

  Chapter 39

  August 1972

  The undercover job at Klass had gone on for three weeks now. Whether it had been successful or not rather depended on how you looked at it. They hadn’t caught the man the papers were calling Red Silk but, then, he hadn’t killed again, either.

  The long, endless nights were taking their toll on him and, although he’d see it through to the end, whatever the end might be, it had better come soon. Every shift was becoming more difficult than the last, both in the disco and at home.

  He’d told Jean, his wife. In the end he’d had no choice even though he knew full well that she’d be less than pleased about it. Night after night going out dressed up to the nines — it was hardly surprising she was getting suspicious. He couldn’t blame her for that.

  He’d borrowed a life lesson from one of his favourite films, The Secret of Santa Vittoria, which he’d seen a couple of years earlier. Anthony Quinn plays a drunk called Bombolini, who becomes mayor of the town just before the Nazis move in to take all of Santa Vittoria’s million bottles of wine. Bombolini persuades the townsfolk that they have to let the Germans find enough of the wine to convince them that they have it all. The message was the benefit of admitting a small lie to cover up a bigger one; the moral was to give up something small to save something greater. Both of which were fine as long as you could work out which was which.

  The girl, Jenny, had been in Klass a few nights a week. Sometimes he couldn’t make his mind up whether he’d rather she’d been there more than that or less. He knew that he’d started to look out for her as much as he did the man he’d been sent to catch. He was still doing his job, no less determined to get the man, but he knew his mind wasn’t always where it should be.

  He thought maybe others had noticed that too. Billy Moffat and Geordie Taylor had started giving him knowing glances, sly little smiles that said, I know, and you know I know. Liz Grant had done the same and he was sure Moffat had filled her head full of gossip. That was why he’d had the three of them shifted back onto days. He’d convinced his DI that the same faces were becoming too well known and that it was time for a change in the Disco Dancing Division. He, Brian Webster and Alice McCutcheon
stayed and were joined by three more: Kenny McConville, Colin Black and Sheila Mottram. The new Triple D Squad.

  He’d only danced with Jenny once more since that last time. She’d been getting hassle from a wee hard nut in a black pinstripe, the kind who wouldn’t take no for an answer. He’d watched her dance with the ned once in the hope that would keep him happy. It didn’t, and he kept coming back for more, and it was easy to see she was getting sick of it. He’d stepped in, knight-in-shining-armour style, and asked her to dance. The guy was far from happy and you could see he was thinking of squaring up and staking his claim, but he was giving away six inches in height and two or three stone in weight, so wisely thought better of it.

  He liked to think that she’d been pleased to see him and not just because he’d scared off the pest. She’d smiled and said ‘Hi’ even though she knew he wouldn’t hear her above the music. They danced and then danced one more just to be sure. When they were particularly close, she’d shouted and asked how he’d been. He’d said fine and asked the same of her. She’d laughed and said she was fine too. When the second song finished, she’d looked at him expectantly, but he managed only an awkward smile and a bit of a shrug before turning away off the floor. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to.

  She’d left early that night, slipping off with her pals just before the food was laid out, signalling the last hour. Maybe she wasn’t hungry; maybe she had somewhere better to go. Either way, she’d left without a glance over her shoulder. The last he saw of her was her red tresses snaking through the crowds and then disappearing from sight.

  That was nearly a week ago, and he’d looked out for her every night since, half glad when she hadn’t shown, knowing it kept them both safe, albeit in very different ways. He’d been a grouchy, stalking presence in the disco, his mood scaring off would-be dancers even when the slow number came on at the end. Alice McCutcheon had been on duty with him twice and had sidled up to him on the pretence of chatting him up to ask what the hell was wrong with him. He’d said he was just fed up with the dancing routine and that he had been arguing with his wife. Admitting a small lie to cover up a bigger one.