by Gavin Graham
“We’re so lucky to be just an hour’s drive from such beautiful Scottish scenery.”
“Drink your water, sweetheart, your throat sounds a little dry.”
She was hardly listening to him as she looked onwards to the upward-sloping, winding roads. The increasingly rural habitat, evermore one of isolation, with rising mountainous terrain that truly made it a beautifully-rugged landscape.
Take your Rohypnol dear, it will soon be time to die…
Subconsciously, she followed his order, and uncapped the bottle of Highland Spring, subtly spiked with liquid Rohypnol (or ‘date-rape’ as it is more commonly known) and took several healthy swigs.
Soon, the mountains were floating to the left and to the right as all her visuals went swirly and blurry and dark shadows formed at the corners of her peripheral vision. She frowned and closed her eyes, bringing a hand up to pinch at the bridge of her nose, her consciousness was now swaying all over the place. “Shick, I mean shitch, I shink I’m geshing a migrainshe…” her words were all slurred and she couldn’t hear properly.
She noticed though how he was starting to laugh and how he had a wide smile on his liquid-like, wobbly face, like a weird-looking joker or some kind of evil circus clown.
She started to feel so, so sleepy.
His laughter got louder, his vocal chords morphed and deep, as if electrically modified.
She looked at him, his face was melting, she smiled too and tried to join him, in laughing at whatever he was laughing it. Whatever it was, it must have been something very funny. But what? The car was on fire, floating in the mountains, black smoke filled the void of her being and the entirety of her vision. Closing…closing…closing…until there was nothing more…just darkness…
She passed out.
The Cabins on Loch Lomond.
The killer had become quite adept at being in two places at once. Right then, for example, he was in a sports bar in the City Centre watching Rangers-Celtic game and enjoying a full-rack of BBQ pork ribs. This is what had allowed him to kill freely, why the blood of human immorality had continued to spill in the memory of his dear mum. The killing game would continue too, even without his decoy, after he’d killed him. It would continue until hundreds of women were dead and the very name of The Casanova Killer would live on in history - Scotland’s most evil sex killer - the one who haunted the entire world.
The cops would never catch onto his tactics and methods, he was too smart for them and would always be one step ahead, for he was a master of disguise and those coppers had barely a braincell between them.
He wore a red baseball cap, VOTE TRUMP written in big letters across the front. It was pulled down low over his eyes and he did his best to imitate an American accent. “Hey now, I would like to book one of those there cabins at the end of that parking lot down there, would you happen to have one available for a humble tourist form the US of A?” he spoke to the rotund, blonde receptionist thinking that she would be very much Tom’s ‘type’. Her ruddy face and green fleece-jacket made her look like a helper in a garden centre, her thick hips stretching out her faded old pair of jeans. Not womanly at all, he thought; but she wasn’t the type he would want to kill.
He avoided direct eye-contact.
“Is it just yourself, is it?” she enquired, as if he was some kind of weirdo pervert, up there to wank himself silly with a gas mask and a butt-plug. She smirked as the thought passed and created an obscene image in her mind’s eye.
“Oh no, my lovely girlfriend is out there in the rental car, she fell asleep during that journey there up through those beautiful high-lands of yours. Quite a country you have here, I can tell you that, I always wanted to visit this fine land of the Scots,” he was over-cooking it and sounding like a bit of a dick.
The girl was barely even listening to him though, unable to care less if she tried.
“I just didn’t have the heart to wake her up, you know what I’m saying?” he wasn’t good at accents in all honesty, at least not as good as he thought he was, and his American seemed to interchange between Texan gunslinger and Mississippi bluesman.
“I do know what you mean, actually, I’m gagging for a wee nap myself…”
As she said the word ‘gagging’ he couldn’t help but imagine her tied up with a rotten old sock rammed down her throat and a Gurkha blade stuck in her chest.
“How’s business?”
“Dead,” she replied.
An apt choice of word…
“So, are those other cabins down there occupied?”
“No, you’ll be the only ones down there tonight, so you can make as much noise as you want. You’ll have total privacy.”
Moffat couldn’t hold back his smile.
“How many nights?”
“Just one night, thanks…”
“OK, just fill this form in and give me a one hundred pounds deposit, cash is fine,” said garden-girl, placing the key for cabin number three on the desk.
“Fuckin’ weirdo,” she muttered to herself as the Trump supporter sauntered back to his car, where a woman sat slumped in the passenger seat.
Something didn’t feel right to her.
She decided to go to the back of the restaurant where a window looked back onto the carpark and the Loch-side cabins. She watched as the American pulled up to the door, noticing that he’d covered up the girl’s face with some kind of garment. He left her sitting there and went into the cabin by himself, to case-out the surroundings. He then re-emerged at the car and, when he was sure that nobody else was around, he dragged the motionless body out of the vehicle’s passenger seat and up into the cabin.
She picked up the phone and dialled 999.
Chapter 24
Addiction, escapism & ghosts in the night
One man’s potion is another man’s poison…
What is the reason for this addiction to alcohol?
Social prowess?
Machismo?
The obtainment of pleasure?
No, it is escapism.
An escape from the tortures and horrors of life, the slain and the quartered, and those that die (and kill) slowly, refusing to be caught up by the banality of social righteousness and the foreign land of knowing right from wrong.
From one’s own weakness, mental and emotional, and a self-nurtured tendency to succumb to The Devil’s calling.
From the shortcomings of our own inner-strength and morality, coupled with an acutely inert inability to change the things that we need to change.
From loneliness and the burden of loss; loved ones who were taken ahead of their time.
From the realisation of a painful destiny, the one that you can’t escape from, no matter how hard you try and no matter how much you drink.
From the omnipresent anxiety, the awful feeling that weighs you down like the drowning current of quicksand, and from the acceptance and fear that something very, very bad is going to happen. Because for the Inspector, it usually did, it just went with the territory.
It was all about this beautiful ‘escapism’ and he knew it, he didn’t care to fight it either, nor change it. He’d been kissed by the sweet lips of addiction and the seducing curse of alcohol; that’s just the way it was. It was his ‘way out’.
He lifted the glass and drank more whisky as he sat, almost naked, on a sad, lonely sofa in his sad, lonely apartment. He tilted it all the way back, with dramatic form, and drained the glass to the very last dreg. He enjoyed the sting and the old familiar burn as his body glowed like a dying ember.
The bottle was empty.
Sooner or later, it always is…
The moon was full, pale and magnificent. Within the angelic nothingness of that curious astronomical body was a face. The face smiled and McGreavy attempted to smile back, for it was a familiar face. “Hello, my dear,” he said in a broken voice, embarrassed by his drunken state.
That is when she came forward, out of the lunar object and towards him. A floating figure. An angel in whi
te that came to his window. She hovered outside and looked in at him, smiling, a morbid and sinister smile; loving, nonetheless.
She wore a satin night dress and her hair was brushed neatly to the side.
The eyes were dark, black with the confirmation of a self-inflicted death - suicide - and a trapped soul, caught between worlds. McGreavy looked up with a gaping smile, he was so happy to see her again, his eyes were glazed with intoxication and tears; if only his sceptical daughter could be here to see, that it was real, that he wasn’t crazy.
“What message do you have for me, dear?” he asked.
Stop drinking…stop killing yourself…
“I can’t dear, I’m too weak, The Devil has got me where he wants me. I’ll be with you soon though, I promise, and we can be together once again…”
Bang, bang, bang!
A loud series of knocks rattled the door, loudly in its frame, causing McGreavy to jump in his skin and drop the empty bottle of Bell’s whisky that he’d been loosely holding on to. He looked to the door, startled, then looked back at the window - she was gone, until next time…
“Who the Hell is it?”
“It’s Siobhan, Boss. We have two solid leads on Casanova, he’s taking a woman up to Loch Lomond, tonight, he’s going to kill her at the cabins.”
He opened the door and Siobhan looked at him with both pity and frustration, seeing him in all his pathetic vulnerability. Seeing him for what he really was - a lonely old drunk - just like his daughter had said.
“Jesus. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
McGreavy forced a bemused smile, for he truly had seen a ghost.
“Boss, this is him, we need to move, now! Go and get cleaned up and I’ll put a pot of coffee on…”
The cabin was atmospheric, a secluded retreat, and a perfect place to commit a murder.
The spilled blood would add a striking dimension to the pale oak flooring and the tartan-themed furniture. He enjoyed the sight of blood, since early childhood, when he saw an old lady get hit by a train on the track that led into Central Station. The body had been mangled and pieces of flesh, bone and brain had been turned into mincemeat, coated along the battered track lines.
Seeing death hadn’t affected him.
It was no different for him than finding a dead bird in the garden.
He’d wondered though, what she’d been doing there in the first place, if she was already dead when the train had hit her, if her body had been interfered with prior to mincing. He wondered about her sex and was keen to know if she’d been violated. He was curious like that, it hadn’t affected him though, if anything the sight of blood had gotten him deeply aroused.
It still does…
The girl would be out for hours yet, so he made a sandwich and just sat there, watching her and imagining how she would look once he had transformed her into ‘mother dearest’. This one was a cunt, and that was the word that would be painted on the walls in her blood - CUNT.
He had a bag of his dear mother’s jewellery, that he permanently kept in the back of his Mercedes, with her necklaces and make-up and of course - all the fake designer sunglasses that had been gifted to her by one of her clients - she knew that it always got her a beating but it didn’t really seem to bother her; it certainly didn’t stop her from being open about it. He would arrange her on the couch with her arms slumped over the backrest and her legs spread, like his mother had done for him, when he’d licked and tasted her vagina and his father had been laying dead on the floor. He remembered how good those days had been, the best days of his life, and by honouring his dear mother in this way he got to re-live those tantalising moments of violence, blood and incest.
He couldn’t wait to get started on her, she would soon wake up…
“Right, what in the holy name of Jesus am I looking at here?”
“Mannequins.”
“What on earth?”
“They were stood all around the McConnell household, in random spots: the kitchen, bathroom and the living room. Each one had a polaroid photo stuck to the head, of each of the girls he’s murdered, just as we found them.”
“Jesus…what else?”
“There was a shrine dedicated to his mother, with her belongings, like make-up and underwear and sunglasses. Also, pictures of his mother in a variety of sexual poses, one of them had John Moffat in the picture, he appeared to have taken the picture whilst performing oral sex on her.”
“What the fuck, are you serious?”
“There is more too.”
“I’m not sure that I can take anymore, the boy is clinically insane…so, tell me…”
“There were two areas in the house where he’d drawn a large circle, with blood and put an ‘X’ in the middle. Appears that they may represent crime scenes, perhaps where he made his parents ‘disappear’. One area is in the living area, by the dining table, and the other one was upstairs on his mother’s bed. Both areas were scanned with ultraviolet light and showed excessive traces of semen that match with our Casanova Killer; he’s our man alright.”
“Aye, no fucking shit he’s our man…how much longer till we get to the Cabins?”
“Forty-five minutes, McGhee is approaching now though with a full armed-response unit. Question now is, can we save the girl? Or, is it too late?”
Chapter 25
The bonnie, bloodied banks of Loch Lomond
In the end, justice will always be done, by any means necessary…
In the cabin, she was coming too and enjoying the mysterious show.
He stuck her with his blade, right in at the solar plexus and ripped her down to her genitalia, stopping the cut at a point just above a perfect little triangular mound of red pubic hair. She watched, looking down at her belly, with sheer fascination as the killer pulled out a slimy coil of human intestine and threw it to the side with no more care than a father might have for the Turkey’s giblets on Christmas Day.
She looked back up at him, like she wanted to ask a question but couldn’t quite find the air.
She gasped, lurching with her eyes and her face and her entire being.
She wanted to be saved, but it was too late.
All she can do now, is sit quiet, and enjoy her stinking death…
After he’d enjoyed his necrophilic sex with her de-bowled corpse, Moffat soon returned to the blood and semen-soaked cadaver.
He had the bag of his mother’s belongings: underwear, jewellery, sunglasses… “Are you ready to be done up for the scumbags that come and find you? Oh, that’s good…”
Just then though, his world imploded and he heard the wailing sirens, approaching cars of the Strathclyde Police and Glasgow CID. Now he was the one with the confused look on his face. “Oh shit,” he said. “Sorry dear, looks like we might have to cut this short. Pardon the pun. It would appear that those great Police Officers have tracked me down, perhaps I underestimated their sheer determination, in the endless pursuit of a real-life God. At least you got a decent send-off, eh? You got a good fuck before I gutted you, didn’t you? Well, I suppose they might send me to jail now, but that’s OK. Perhaps I will write you into a book and the whole world can know of the great Casanova, Scotland’s most elusive and charismatic lover. What do you think? Yes? Good then, so any chance of another quickie before they come and get me?”
By the time they’d rammed the door at the Cabins on the Loch, the girl was already dead and torn. Armed men had stormed into the living room where the Casanova Killer was having sex with the mangled and mutilated remains of a middle-aged woman who had been raped, strangled and gutted.
It was a blood bath.
When the Officers had engaged him with weapons trained upon his head and torso, he had just halted, mid-thrust, and looked up at them with a kind of demonic smile. In that moment, he had looked like the most evil man on God’s earth, naked in his act and drenched in blood.
It was a nightmarish scene and one that those Officers will never forget for as long as they live; i
t would stay with them and haunt them, forevermore.
When Siobhan drove down to pull into the carpark, McGhee was stood by a patrol car with one of them in handcuffs, it was impossible to tell but they presumed it was Zebrowski.
It was, too.
They all stood and watched as the actual killer was walked out in handcuffs, naked and blood-soaked, and quietly escorted into the back of a Police van. Moffat didn’t even look his accomplice in the eye, knowing full well that it could only have been him that had given him up, he just looked ahead starey-eyed and grinning. It was his own fault, he accepted, he never should have been so greedy for another ‘quick kill’.
“What lovely friends you have,” the Inspector said to the Pole.
“It was only supposed to be one,” explained the Pole. “He said that he just had to get it out of his system, you know? I didn’t agree with what he did and I had no idea it would be so disgustingly violent. I wanted out, but once I was involved, I couldn’t walk away. He said he would make sure that I was sent down alongside him.”
The Inspector just looked at him and shook his head with contempt.
“What now, will I be put in a witness protection scheme, taken to a safe-house?”
Mac, Jimmy and Siobhan all laughed, as if the Polish boy had just told the joke of the century. “Are you daft, laddie? You’re going to jail…”
“But, you promised…”
“We do and say and promise whatever we have to, to make sure that drug dealers like you and murderers like him get caught, and more importantly that you get locked up. That’s the way it goes in Glasgow, my friend, and you are about to learn about it the hard way…”
“Those big bruisers are waiting for you,” Jimmy said with a cheeky smile as he led the Pole away to another Police vehicle.
“You know what, I think I need whisky, I have a very bad feeling that something else bad will be happening in the very near future,” said the Inspector, to Siobhan.