Glasgow Noir Box Set

by Gavin Graham

  “Well, in that case, I’ll be buying the drinks then, I know a good wee pub in Luss village. After all, you know what the say…” she replied.

  “Whit dae’ they say, then…?”

  “Always be prepared, Mac, always be prepared…”

  McGreavy smiled, knowingly, but he said nothing.

  ‘When this monster entered my brain, I will never know, but it is here to stay. How does one cure himself? I can’t stop it, the monster goes on, and hurts me as well as society. Maybe you can stop him. I can’t.’ - Dennis Rader (The BTK Killer)

  ‘All of a sudden I realised that I had just done something that separated me from the human race and it was something that could never be undone. I realised that from that point on I could never be like normal people. I must have stood there in that state for twenty minutes. I have never felt an emptiness of self like I did right then and I will never forget that feeling. It was like I crossed over into a realm I could never come back from.’ - David Alan Gore (The Vero Beach Killer)

  Part 2

  The Man with the Crucifix Tattoo [Glasgow Noir, II]

  2004

  Chapter 26

  The grand scent of death

  Death mingles with cool, wet air; the stench of the demon…

  A nauseating freshness.

  It became increasingly pungent as the wind howled and the rain thrashed, pummelling across a wild landscape of tall grass and hilly fields.

  Staggered waves; the bloody-minded persistence of harsh Scottish weather.

  ‘Agricultural’ freshness they call it - cow dung and horse manure - that kind of freshness. The kind of freshness that makes you frown and retch and look away.

  The young man with blood on his hands embraced it though, in all of its pungent and agricultural glory.

  The grand scent of death; on that day, it was.

  A soul had transgressed into the unseen Kingdom of darkness; there would be no Pearly Gates for her.

  Yes, the grand scent of death.

  It lingered in the air, for all the maggots and all the pigs to reluctantly taste with undeniable curiosity.

  The young man - a killer - was the almighty bringer of this foulness. The one, who’d left a girl hung up from the rafters. He was on the run now…laid-up in a wet field in North Lanarkshire.

  Dark and wet.

  Shivering, with damp and cold.

  Hidden, underground.

  Scrunched up at the entry-point of a rusted old sewage pipe.

  Rank and filthy.

  It was a safe-spot to hide though, that’s all that mattered, as long as he held his position he knew they would never catch him. I mean, round those parts it wasn’t like in the American films, where a girl gets killed and a 50-man team goes scouring the fields for clues. An instantaneous call-to-arms, to hunt down the murderer, collecting any traces of evidence that might be uncovered along the way.

  In a small Scottish village like Cleland, the best you might get is a ‘chopper’.

  And, right then, that’s what he had…

  A Police helicopter was circling the nearby area, a conical light shining down from the belly of its fuselage, illuminating the area where a man might be identified.

  A running man.

  A frightened man.

  A guilty man.

  By now, they would have discovered the dead body, out by the farm house. They would have realised that the corpse was still fresh and warm and that whoever had done those God-awful things must still be in the area.

  God-awful, indeed.

  He’d humiliated her and violated her sex as she lay unconscious, right down in the mud-slick of the road with her face pressed down against the gravel, before letting her hang and watching her die with cold-blooded arousal.

  She hadn’t been just a random victim, she’d been a target.

  He killed the sweet little blondie for a very specific reason - to send somebody a message. He’d planned it, to the last detail.

  It all worked out beautifully.

  But, still, he hadn’t planned on touching her like that. Abusing her, sexually. That is why the chopper was circling and the Police were hunting him down, because round those parts he’d be referred to now as a Beast - a sexual offender.

  Not as bad as a paedo, but second-in-line.

  Up at the ‘Big Hoose’ – HM Barlinnie – they all wanted a piece of a Beast…

  He’d been following her for several days and eventually his time had come.

  He’d picked her up at around 1 am outside a discotheque in Motherwell.

  It was teeming it down and she was staggering down a quiet street, arched over, with her jacket pulled up over the back of her head. She could barely walk against the strong wind and it appeared as though she might blow over at the push of a gust; wobbly on her heels, like an unsteady circus clown on stilts.

  She was right there, all alone, needing a cab.

  And there he was, too, in his fake taxi. He pulled up on the kerb and wound down the window. “Taxi, hen?”

  “Aye, I’m going to Newarthill.”

  “Nae’ bother, jump in, before you catch your death of cold…”

  She clumsily dumped herself in the back, slamming the door shut as the killer drove off into the wet night and the rain came down harder; she was none the wiser.

  She was hammered, reeking of chippy grease and doner meat, ready to pass out.

  Ripe for the taking.

  She stank of cheap white wine too; they always did, trollops like her.

  “Good wee night at the dancin’ hen?”

  “Aye, ma’ pals were doing my head in though. That Lisa thinks she’s something special and can have any guy she wants…total bitch…had her hands all over Stu McCready…he disnae’ even like her…a’ cannie’ wait to get home to my bed,” she was slurring her words, head to the side, eyes closing over slowly and heavily.

  “Aye, nae’ bother, darlin’,” he said, watching her with loathsome eyes in the rear-view mirror as she got all slumped and sleepy.

  He tried not to be too obvious.

  Soon, though, she dozed off and he swiftly initiated the ‘re-route’. He was taking her out to an old abandoned farmhouse, just outside of Coltness and accessible off a tight wee bend at the bottom of the brae.

  You’d barely notice the turn, unless you knew it was there.

  The killer knew the turn though, he knew it very well.

  He drove as fast as he could.

  Once off the main road, he killed the lights. He managed the winding bends well, narrow and tight as they were.

  Steep up-hill segments.

  Down-slopes too.

  It took a fair bit of skill to navigate across those roads in the blind-dark, smoothly manipulating the gearbox and accelerator. God help him should an oncoming car have approached. Would be tricky, for sure, but The Devil’s luck was on his side that night and he met with no other vehicles.

  They soon reached the old shed.

  “Oh Jesus, I’m gonna’ be sick…” she said, her body spilling out the door as she puked up her guts. “Oh Mister, I don’t believe it, I’m so sorry…I think that doner kebab just turned on me,” she said, embarrassed and sweetly apologetic, perfectly polite in her own little common way. She looked around in drunken bewilderment, her brain cells still behind the drag curve, naively wondering where the Hell she was. She had no time, in fact, to properly process it in her mind.

  Murdoch slammed the boot shut and came for her at the side of the car, swinging hard at her head with a baseball bat. He struck her temple dead-on and she went down like a rag-doll. Her left cheek went down hard against the vomit-stained stones of the smooth gravel road, scattered with dark puddles that shimmered eerily in the deadly moonlight.

  Her arms and legs landed at weird angles as she slumped over and her flimsy little skirt folded itself up, nicely above the waistline, to reveal a tight-fitted pair of pale blue silken panties.

  Her rear was fleshy and round, he couldn’t h
elp but stare, the skin looked so delicate and white. He darted his eyes around the nearby houses to check for any lights-on or voices. Nothing, the whole place was dead, as he knew it would be. He knew it was wrong, but he wanted to touch her. He craved for the feel of her soft skin, particularly so what lay beneath the delicate silken pantie; the horns were out.

  She had a perfect rump.

  It was dormant provocation; The Devil had been conjured.

  He felt his penis draw hard from what he saw laying down before him - an object - nothing more, nothing less.

  She wasn’t dead yet.

  Still live.

  Still usable.

  It was the killer’s prerogative, was it not? To use and abuse the victim as he saw fit? Yes, she was teasing him, provoking him to act on his sordid urge; inviting him in for a feel.

  A hot surge of blood burned in his bladder and fell deep in his balls. He felt a straining erection as he dropped the bat and just stood there in the rain looking at her, gritting his teeth and breathing hard.

  Her still-live body; enticing him.

  Her fleshy rear; seducing him.

  She didn’t move, at all; in fact, she looked dead. But, he knew she was still alive. She was getting soaked in the rain. The more she got drenched, the more he wanted to rape her, even despite her noxious stench of vomit. He imagined the slippery feel of her wet skin as he entered her heat, mounting her rear on the rancid dirt road, feeling her move as she slowly began to wake up to the smells of agriculture and death, coming back to life and wriggling around in semi-conscious confusion.

  He was breathing heavily now.

  He unbuckled and methodically began to pull down his jeans.

  It wasn’t supposed to be a sexual thing, no, it was just supposed to be a straight kill. But, this was something he had no control over.

  Things were about to get primitive.

  After all, he was just an animal at heart.

  Mad Dog.

  She looked so innocent and vulnerable.

  The way he himself had been when his father had come to visit him in the bedroom late in the night. Not long after the Witching Hour, the Beast would appear in the shadow of his doorway, to abuse the innocence of his tiny body. Leaving him to cry and bleed the night away.

  Karma’s a bitch.

  What goes around, comes around.

  The innocents continue to suffer and die.

  He got down upon her, pulling her pale blue panties to the side, and he entered her with an abrupt push. It was clumsy and aggressive and he made no attempt to finesse the act with human sensuality.

  No, he kept it primitive, like the rabid dog he was. He raped her the way he’d been raped, and somehow in his own mind it would partially make it better; somehow.

  Then she would hang, like his own father had hung, before The Devil came and took his cursed soul to Hell.

  Chapter 27

  A bloody good hanging

  The unseen pain of abuse always manifests in the continuation of evil…

  He used her, clumsily, jerking with his hips and pushing into her body as deep and hard as he could.

  Even with a condom on, he came quickly, as she’d laid there like a dead body and that had turned him on; more so than he’d expected.

  Perhaps, one day, he’d try that for real.

  Sex with a corpse.

  Yes, he would.

  It was written in the stars…

  He carefully concealed the condom in a tissue and stuffed it deep into his pocket. He wore a rubber for forensic reasons but there was also a personal thing to it. His father had always used condoms, see, when he interfered with the kids; the sick monster that he was.

  He was the real Beast.

  Frankie had always wondered if it was because he’d picked up a disease from one of the prostitutes that he regularly picked up from The Drag red-light district in Anderston and took into the back of his work van for bare-back sex.

  Was it a display of love, that he didn’t want to pass it on?

  Or, had he suspected Francis, his own son, of being infected with some kind of sexually transmitted disease?

  Strange, the things that had ran through his head during those early years, as a scared and confused little boy. He could remember thinking those things and feeling somehow guilty…even dirty…like it was somehow his fault and that he ought to be the one who felt ashamed.

  Anyhow, he’d done his deed with the girl, unplanned as it was. He’d had his filthy, animal release and afterwards he threw her into the back of his car, so he could get the prep going for the main act of the night - a bloody good hanging…

  Her hands were tightly-bound behind her back, tied up with a bowline knot and sat in the backseat with a potato sack pulled down over her head. Meanwhile, Mad Dog surveyed the shed and inspected the open joist-beams for rigidity and tautness.

  He’d read a lot of comic books as a kid, about a bogeyman called The Hangman of Dumfries, who lived in the fields and hid amongst the trees. If he caught an unsuspecting girl or boy walking alone in the woods at night, he’d be waiting in the shadows and pounce on them, to hang them up from the nearest tree.

  They were good wee books.

  He learned a lot about hanging from The Hangman of Dumfries as they were always well-presented with graphic illustrations to boot. The Hangman had a big hunchback and would throw his victims up and over a medium-height branch where gravity would pull them down against the noose. The bodies would slump and slightly convulse (this part was subject to the reader’s own imagination).

  Sometimes, the neck would snap and they’d die quickly.

  Sometimes, the neck would remain intact and they’d die slowly.

  Their feet would hang down.

  Their toes would fall rigid - twitching little danglers - swaying in the cold darkness of night, about six feet above the ground. The Hangman would grip down on the rope, looking up over his shoulder to watch them die, seeing how their faces would change colour from pinkish-red to a magnificent purplish-blue. When the bodies went limp and they were surely dead he’d take a spike and just pin that rope into the ground, leaving the body to hang there till somebody came and found them.

  As more victims came, to pass through the woods…searching…he’d pounce on them too and before long bodies would hang from every tree across the woodland.

  They were good wee books.

  He backed up the car so the bumper was ready for the rope to be attached. He’d made a good, strong noose. He’d been practising and reading up on knots, you see, as there was only so much he could learn from the murderous ways of a bogeyman. He tossed the rope up over a solid high-beam, not that the farm house roof was that high, but it was high enough.

  Everything was going according to plan.

  He went back to the car to grab his victim, waking her up with a few hard slaps to the lower part of the potato sack where he could catch her on the chin. She coughed and shook her head from side-to-side as he dragged her limp body out of the door and across the ground to the filthy centre of the shed. He pulled her to her feet and removed the sack. The noose was placed carefully over the head, down beneath her chin and tightened at the rear of her neck.

  She was mumbling and shivering as she came to, blinking chaotically.

  Disorientated.

  Dumb-struck.

  She was still confused, somewhat oblivious as to the dire gravity of her predicament. When he’d removed the hood though, he saw it in her face.

  The crippling fear.

  The wide, terrified eyes.

  Suddenly realising that she was in a very bad place, with a very bad human being.

  Mad Dog got into the car.

  She had no time to ask questions or plead for her life as the Hangman was quick to start the engine and release the parking brake. Slowly, he began to ease forward on the accelerator till he felt tension against the rope. He continued, pushing down further on the throttle till she was gradually raised up into the air.


  His eyes were glued to the rear-view mirror, watching with the same evil eyes that had ogled her as she fell asleep in the backseat. She was choking to death and would die slowly, touching helplessly at her neck as the rope strangled her.

  Her toes dangled just a few feet above the ground, like they did in the comics.

  He watched, with no emotion, just a profound sense of arousal in watching another human being die.

  He felt nothing in the way of empathy.

  He smiled, a wicked smile, his dark eyes still gleaming in the rear-view mirror.

  It wasn’t him smiling, in fact, it was the demon who’d followed in his shadow since birth.

  He set the brake, once again, and jumped out to see the last part of the show - the best part - her face was already turning a ruddy shade of angry purple. She danced the jig, the swing of death, and her feet went fully-straight as her sweet little dancing toes searched for the earth below.

  It was a curious thing to watch and, again, the demon smiled with neutral malevolence.

  He watched the body go limp as she continued to sway from side-to-side.

  She was dead now.

  As he stood there in the wet howling night, he began to feel aroused, once again. She looked so sexy in her moment of death, her lavender face taut and beautiful. She looked seductive in the most macabre way. The way her tongue stuck out, straight down like a tasty cut of bacon, and the way her eyes were latched back in the sockets, both looking up in the same direction (up to the right).

  It was erotic.

  It was vile.

  It was delicious.

  He squeezed at his crotch in the slinky night shadow of the sultry, hanging dead. He took another condom and unbuckled, to pleasure himself one more time in the dead night air, careful as ever to contain his demon seed.

  He put it on, hurriedly, then pulled himself in a frantic flurry of jerks, mouth agape as he lusted over the girl’s dead body, entranced by an unknown form of esoterica - a ghoulish state of fiendish arousal - finding himself as The Devil’s own - the true spawn of Satan.