‘What do I want you to say? Let me think. Maybe what will win the three-thirty at Haydock or why women talk so much without actually saying anything. Or hang on, I know: maybe you could fucking tell me why you were visiting a serial killer who you seem to think is involved with an active murder case?’
‘Because he’s involved in your bloody murder case!’
Danny’s blurted reply brought a smile to Addison’s face and caused Narey’s grimace to deepen.
‘Okay, so now we’re getting somewhere. Not anywhere sane but at least it’s a start. Right, Danny, so tell me why you think he’s involved. And how the bloody hell he can be.’
Danny sighed and rubbed at his eyes, a rueful frown stealing its way onto his face. He shook his head and sank into his chair.
‘I’ve already been through this with your DS Teven. I told him chapter and verse and he wasn’t prepared to listen.’
‘Obviously he did listen and obviously he told me. And I’m listening now. But it better be good.’
‘No, it isn’t good, son. If I’m right, it’s all bad. These killings stink of the Klass case. Stink to high heaven of it. Jesus Christ, do your computers not tell you that? The way the victims were laid out, the positions they were in? Pure Atto.’
Addison turned to look at Winter. ‘Aye? And how exactly do you know the positions they were laid out in? If it involves crime-scene photographs, then someone is in deep shit.’
‘Never mind that,’ Danny came back at him. ‘The point is they are so similar. The positions of subservience, begging, praying. The killer making out he is all-powerful and taking the piss out of the victim and the cops. The age of the victims. The time-frame between killings, the city-centre locations. It’s either Atto or someone copying him. It’s too pat to be a coincidence.’
Addison stared at Danny, thoughtfully though, rather than with the angry bemusement of earlier. He turned to Narey and the pair shrugged at each other, too smart to dismiss what the old cop said but too smart to think it could be true.
‘Okay, copycat I can just about buy,’ he said finally. ‘That’s worth looking at. But Atto being involved? That’s just nuts.’
Danny’s eyebrows rose furiously. ‘Son, I’ve already had your DS Teven dismiss me as crazy. I’m not keen on it happening twice.’
‘Right, haud your horses. It was a turn of phrase. I know you’re not nuts. But this whole situation is. How the . . .? How can Atto be involved with this?’
‘Because he’s devious. Because he is highly intelligent and twisted beyond belief. Because he’s always had a way of manipulating people to do things that he wants. DI Addison, I don’t know how he’s involved. But I’m sure he is.’
‘Jesus, I can’t believe this.’ Narey’s patience had snapped. ‘Danny, the guy’s been locked up for fourteen years. Seriously?’
‘Rach, I know how hard it is to believe but trust me: this guy is capable of just about anything. You can rule nothing out where he’s concerned.’
Addison’s brows furrowed slightly and Winter recognised a familiar mischievous look in his eyes, a look that usually spelled trouble for someone.
‘Rach? So how well do you two know each other?’
Narey didn’t blink. ‘We’ve met.’
‘Hmm. Cosy. Okay, here’s how it is, Danny – and dickhead. We will look into Atto and any link to this case. But you two idiots have way overstepped the mark. I have to decide whether you’ll face charges. In the meantime, you’re going back in those cells. But if I do decide you will be let out then you will not go anywhere near Atto again. Understood?’
Winter looked to Danny but his uncle looked straight back at Addison, deadpan and determined. ‘I can’t promise that, DI Addison. I’m sorry but I can’t. This means too much to me.’
Addison returned the look. ‘In that case I can’t promise I won’t arrest you again and put you away.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘No, it bloody isn’t,’ Narey said, standing, exasperated. ‘This is stupid. Two women have been murdered and we’ve not got time either to go on wild-goose chases or to run after these two idiots. We need to get this nipped in the bud here and now. Just charge them.’
‘Rachel, Atto is involved in this, believe me.’ Danny had both hands flat on the table, ready to push himself to his feet. ‘He told us as much when we spoke to him. Don’t dismiss this because it seems unlikely. You’re better than that.’
‘What did he say, Danny? What do you mean he told you as much?’
‘He said he knew a lot about what had happened. I asked him what he knew about the cemetery killings and he said he knew a lot. And it wasn’t just what he said: it was the way he said it.’
Addison dropped his head into his hands while Narey wheeled away, shaking hers, unable to stand in one place and take in what she was hearing. Addison looked up, a pained expression writ large. ‘The way he said it? Jesus, Danny. How do you know he wasn’t just winding you up? The guy’s famous for pissing people about with his stories.’
‘I heard him, son. He knows about these killings. He knows way more than he’s telling.’
‘Tony?’
Winter nodded. ‘I agree. I didn’t want to be any part of this and I didn’t want it to be true. But Danny’s right. The way Atto said what he did? I’d say he meant it. I know how crazy it sounds and I’m not telling you I’ve got the first idea of how he’s involved, but I’d say he is.’
‘Enough,’ Addison shouted, waving his arms at the two uniformed cops. ‘I’ve had enough. Take them back to the cells. If only you two eejits had the brains to make life easier for yourselves.’
Winter and Danny trooped out, the interview room door closing behind them. Addison pinched the top of his nose, his eyes screwed shut. ‘Christ, if this is even half . . . This is all I need. Rachel, do you have any idea where the circus is these days, because I’m going to run off and join one. These two clowns should probably do the same. Archibald Atto? My arse. It just can’t be.’
The tirade that was just building up a head of steam was abruptly curtailed by Addison’s phone ringing in his pocket. He pulled it out irritably and stared at the screen, clearly not knowing who was calling.
‘Yeah?’
Whoever was on the other end of the phone, their voice made Addison’s face change. ‘Oh, hi . . . Miss, um . . . Sam. Hi.’
Narey could hear the soft lilt of a female voice escaping from Addison’s mobile and watched his face, as he was obviously self-conscious about speaking in front of her.
‘I’m very well, thank you. And you? Good, um . . . You do? Well that’s . . . What do you mean? I don’t see how it can’t . . . What? You’re fucking joking me. You seriously have to be fucking joking me. No . . . sorry . . . I know you’re not . . . and there’s no doubt . . . Fuck me gently. No . . . I mean . . . I’ll call into the lab. Yes, yes, bye.’
Addison thrust his phone back into his pocket, his face perplexed and clearly none too happy. His mouth was tight and skewed to one side. He looked at Narey looking at him and shook his head despairingly.
‘That was Sam Guthrie at the lab. The DNA results from the trace evidence that Baxter’s people picked up at the side of the church have come back in. She wanted to give me a heads-up on this before it got to Kelbie and Shirley. They’ve got a match.’
Narey’s features crossed into some bewilderment of her own. ‘Great . . . Isn’t it?’
Addison’s head tilted to one side and his mouth turned upside down. ‘Maybe not so great. The DNA they found was a match to Archibald Atto.’
Chapter 31
1972
It sounds awful, but when you go into the station on a Sunday morning, probably nursing a head from the night before, the last thing you need to be told is that some wee lassie has been murdered. Actually, the last thing you need is to be told that you’re the one that’s been landed with investigating it.
Look, it’s human nature. Maybe not exactly at its best but it’s the way it is
. You’ve already got enough on your plate, maybe juggling fifty cases, and there’s a good chance there’s already a murder or two among them. It’s Glasgow, those are the odds. Then the CID clerk welcomes you through the door and hands you another one.
You might huff, probably sigh, complain about the lazy sods on the night shift or moan about why some other bugger couldn’t do it. Anything, everything, except thinking what you should think. A wee lassie’s been murdered.
You become hardened to bad news in the morning so that even such a terrible thing becomes another number, a form 3:24:1 to be filled in and handed over. A crime that will become a 3:24:2 if it’s cleared. One piece of paper that gets turned into another.
The CID clerk tells you that the wee lassie has been raped and strangled. God help you but the first thing you think isn’t that it’s the end of the world. Of course, inside, you know that it’s the end of someone’s world and those who knew her. But, outside, those pieces of paper have to keep getting filled in.
You tell yourself that wee lassies get killed in big cities and you can’t save the world by treating each one as if she’s your daughter or sister. That can only lead to the nuthouse or the bottom of a bottle. You give them your best. Everything else you keep for the people at home. Those are the rules for survival.
And sometimes you break them.
Sometimes they sneak past your defences, coming to whisper to you in the night. Not ghosts as such but just as capable of haunting you. They get under your skin, smiling up at you from collect photographs, calling out to you in the voice of their mother or sister, demanding justice. Demanding that you deliver it.
That’s how it was with him and Brenda MacFarlane. Eventually.
Looking back, of course, there was guilt at the indifference he felt when George Scott, the CID clerk, first handed her over to him. The old boy stood at the uniform bar and called him over with a conspiratorial wave, as if he were doing him a favour. And he probably thought he was. In the morning, the clerk was armed with every crime that’s happened on the night shift – maybe thirty or forty in a city-centre station like Cranstonhill – and, if he liked you, he might just give you the good stuff to work on. If he didn’t like you or you’d pissed him off, you’d get the crappy jobs that no one wanted. This was George giving him a good one but for him it was just yet another case and another job to do.
It changed. Not only did Brenda become a real person with a sister and parents and friends whom he had to talk to, but before long she wasn’t alone. She was joined by Isobel Jardine, then Mary Gillespie. He’d been picked up by a tornado and placed at its eye, Brenda, Isobel, Mary and half of City of Glasgow police revolving around him till his head spun.
No one on the force ever called it the Red Silk murders. It would be the Springburn murder for victim one or the Govanhill Park murder for victim two. Not until the third killing, the London Road murder, when the Klass connection had been made and the major-incident room set up, might they collectively be known as the Klass murders. Even then, that was informal. The Red Silk tag was a figment of the press’s imagination and for their use only.
It wasn’t just another case – or just another three – but in many ways it had to be tackled as if it were. Same procedures, solid police work, lots of boot leather worn out, lots of doors knocked on, lots of familiar faces spoken to. Notebooks filled with barely legible scribbles that had to be transcribed quickly or their sense was lost for ever. Pieces of paper for everything.
They would work for all they got and hope to force that little something extra. A guilty conscience, an informer or a set of fingerprints. Fingerprints were the holy grail of detection. Stick-on certainties for conviction and brilliant, except for the bloody mess you had to make to get the things done. If he had a pound for every time he covered his hands in black bloody ink he’d have been able to afford a fortnight in Spain.
He was regularly banging on to his inspector about how they should get some training in how to do this properly, but he’d have been as well shouting at the moon. Jock Binnie was old-school and training was something you did round football parks in the dead of winter. When he’d suggested to Binnie that they get specialists to do that sort of thing for them he was told that soft modern coppers didn’t know they were born.
So it was, quite literally, a case of getting your hands dirty and hoping for the best. Flicking through endless A4 sheets of prints, giant blow-ups of offending loops, whorls and arches, seeking a match. And, if you were lucky, you might even have forms that had been filled in properly.
Each page of prints had a descriptive form filled in by the arresting officers, but sometimes the guys got bored on long night shifts and filling in forms got old pretty quickly. So, after a while, instead of being asked ‘eyes’ and putting blue, brown or whatever, they’d put ‘two’. He’d even seen forms where, when asked if suspects had any distinguishing peculiarities, some jokers had written ‘Roman Catholic’.
God knows, they’d all either done that sort of thing or been tempted to, but it wasn’t what you wanted to read when you actually needed proper information and some other idiot had done it.
Still, the fact that he had an absence of usable fingerprints made it someone else’s problem for now. He had the streets, the tenements, the nights in Klass and an array of contacts to speak to. All the open doors and the closed ones. All the avenues that might be lubricated with the help of a little alcohol.
It was a fact that the best way to crack a case was often to crack open a bottle. Pub owners were usually glad to see a familiar face from CID at closing time, as it would be guaranteed to get any lingering bampots on their way without too much fuss. Once the doors were closed, a bottle would be opened and all sorts of secrets and interesting gossip would tumble out. Few people heard more about what was really going on than the boss man behind the bar.
The same trick worked for contacts, informants, call them what you will. Whisky was much more likely to get them talking than a set of thumbscrews. He remembered Jock Binnie telling him that the heat of the sun would take the coat off a man’s back more quickly than the strongest wind. So pour them a large dram, sit back and listen. Although, wouldn’t you know it, all that was changing too.
A year earlier, they’d got a new chief constable, David McNee, and he’d come down on them like a ton of bricks. Nae bevvying. It was as if he’d told them they had to stop arresting crooks, the fuss that was made.
McNee had come up through the ranks from being a beat bobby, so he knew just how much booze the guys were shifting before, during and after their shifts. Legendary amounts, so it was, and everyone could tell you a tale about their mate being pissed on duty. Listen, they were good guys doing hard jobs in a city where people liked a drink, so it was hardly surprising that they did the same; but McNee knew it had to stop.
He put the word round, backed it up with action, and within no time everyone knew the score and everyone knew the rhyme. Only drink tea or you’re in front of McNee.
It didn’t stop them all. For some, it was so ingrained that they’d take their chances. But it was the beginning of the end. The irony for him, of course, was that he was boozing officially, supping lagers and whisky in Klass on Davie McNee’s tab.
Irony wasn’t exactly in short supply, though, so he didn’t fuss too much. The rules said that treating the victim as if she were one of your own would lead to the bottom of the bottle, but that was probably okay, since the boss had knocked drinking on the head yet was actively encouraging you to do it on duty. There was no point in trying to work out the sense of that one.
He’d learned a different truth. Wee lassies might always get killed in big cities, but only if people like him didn’t stop it from happening in the first place. Catching the bastards who did it was all very well, but stopping it from happening – that was the thing. It was too late for Brenda, Isobel and Mary, but not for the next one. And if he got his fingers burned by caring too much then so be it.
Chapt
er 32
Thursday morning
The swivel chair behind the desk in Alex Shirley’s office was empty, almost ominously so, but in front of it three seats were already filled. Addison, Kelbie and Winter sat silently in mutual resentment. None of them and all of them wanted to be there.
All three seemed to find a disproportionate fascination with the bare walls of the office, it being preferable to looking at each other. Only Addison, being Addison, allowed his gaze to drift occasionally to the family photograph that sat on the superintendent’s desk. It wasn’t the first time he’d admired the portrait of Shirley’s wife and 20-something-old daughter, and probably wouldn’t be the last.
When the door behind him flew open and just as quickly slammed shut again, he wrenched his eyes from the photo and joined the other two in studying the paintwork. He sensed rather than saw Shirley storm past them and drop forcefully into the chair opposite. Only then did all three pairs of eyes switch dutifully to the man behind the desk. It took one look to see that Shirley was raging.
He stared fiercely, taking them in in one all-encompassing glare that managed to be an accusation and a string of questions. Each of them sat and wished that one of the others would say something so that Shirley would stop bloody staring. Finally, he spoke.
‘What the frigging hell is going on?’
None of them spoke. Winter was sure it wasn’t his place to do so, knowing that, if anything, he was there to get bollocked. Or worse. However, neither Addison nor Kelbie seemed keen to put his neck on the line first. Shirley had to make the choice for them.
‘When I ask a frigging question, I expect a frigging answer. DI Addison, I understand that you were the one who spoke to the lab, although I would like to know why that was the case, so you’re it. What is going on?’
Addison took a deep breath and began to open his mouth, but, before he said a word, Kelbie cut across him.
‘I’d also like to know why the lab gave the DNA results to you, Addison. If you were trying to subvert procedures, then I for one won’t be happy.’
Witness the Dead Page 21