Unbound Ties: When the past unravels, all that’s left is death ... A Gritty Crime Fiction Police Procedural Novel (Gus McGuire Book 7)

by Liz Mistry

  Head bowed, Jimmy continued, ‘When I was in prison – about five or so years into my sentence, I heard tell of prossies being strangled around the docks area. A couple of the lads in Barlinnie with me were there protesting their innocence’ – he looked up a sardonic smile on his face – ‘I know, I know – they all say they’re innocent, but to me it seemed strange that two separate lads were convicted for two separate but very similar crimes. It was the strangulation that stuck in my mind. I knew what Ben had done and I chose to protect him. That didn’t mean I didn’t know deep down inside that he was…’

  Jimmy paused for so long that Gus wondered if he’d lost his train of thought.

  ‘Different. That’s the only word I have for it. He wasn’t like John, but he was my kid. I tried not to see the enjoyment – the happiness in his face as he looked at what he’d done to his own mum. I told myself I’d imagined it.’

  ‘You’re telling us that when you were in Barlinnie, you think Ben started to kill prostitutes?’

  Jimmy nodded. ‘Aye, that’s what I thought – and he admitted it to me too.’

  ‘What do you mean, he admitted it to you?’

  ‘Well, on my release, I got a mate to help me find my boys. They’d been adopted to separate families and I just wanted to make sure they were OK. John was doing fine – he had a girlfriend in the family way – bit young for settling down I thought, but I was happy for him, so I kept my distance, didn’t make contact with John initially. It was Ben I needed to talk to. He was happy to see me at first, thought he could play me, I suppose, but Barlinnie changes a man. You don’t come out as soft as you went in. I told him what I suspected about the prostitutes and he laughed in my face – right at me. Taunting and nasty. I almost raised my fist to him then, but I’d never hit my kids and I didn’t want to start then. I told him I’d go to the police with everything I knew if he didn’t stop.’

  Jimmy rolled his shoulders and Gus realised that he was holding his own breath, waiting for Jimmy’s next words. ‘He told me I was a stupid fool and that he wouldn’t stop for me. He said if I didn’t disappear and forget he even existed then he’d make sure someone I loved got hurt. Of course, the only person I could think of that Ben could get to was John. So, I went to John telling him all about Ben and what he’d done to their mum and…’

  ‘He didn’t believe you.’ Carlton’s soft voice brought a nod of acknowledgement.

  ‘No, he didn’t believe me. Said I was frightening his girl and his folks, and he took out a restraining order. But he also contacted Ben and told him what I’d done. Ben was furious and he found me one night and knocked the hell out of me on my way home from the pub. Told me that the beating was just for starters and that if I kept an eye on the papers I’d see what my real punishment was.

  ‘For a couple of weeks I bought the Daily Record every day, dreading what I might find – but there was nothing until … can I have some water, Bernie?’

  Bernie put a plastic beaker in front of him with an elongated straw that allowed him to drink. ‘Then one day, I picked up the paper and it was there. Rory’s picture and the article about him strangling his wife to death and trying to pass it off as a suicide…’

  A stunned silence hung in the room. Gus had been expecting this, but hearing it said out loud made it worse somehow. He looked at Jimmy and in that moment any doubt he felt of the veracity of the man’s story was gone. Before him sat a broken man, one weighed down with a guilt he could never assuage. One with responsibilities that would never allow him to stop self-harming.

  In barely a whisper he continued, ‘Of course, I approached Ben again, told him it had to stop and well … he initiated a restraining order against me too. Who would believe a convicted murderer’s word against that of a well-spoken young man? Ben promised me that I’d just signed another death warrant and within a couple of months Tracie was dead and I was blamed and I did the only thing I could, I pretended to be insane…’

  Jimmy leant forwards, rested his brow on his arms and wept. It was as if the dam that he’d kept so tightly in place for so long had erupted and demolished every semblance of the fortitude Jimmy Cameron had maintained for so long.

  Dr Mara threw an ‘aw shit’ look at Carlton. No doubt wondering why her skills hadn’t led her to conclude that Jimmy was hoaxing everybody. How could a rational person pretend to be such a different person for so long and not be affected by it? Jimmy was guilty of many things – perverting the course of justice, interfering with a crime scene, aiding and abetting a criminal, and that was just a few of his crimes. But he had been incarcerated first in Barlinnie Prison and then in Bellbrax for most of his adult life. Would he be released? Would he be able to function in the real world after all this?

  Gus empathised with him, of course he did, but at the same time, Jimmy had covered up many deaths and if Gus’s supposition was right, he was indirectly responsible for the current spate of killings in Bradford.

  ‘Where is he, Jimmy? Where is your Ben now?’

  ‘You know where he is – he’s in Bradford. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? That’s why that woman has been in talking to Rory. I heard the news report, he’s done something else, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Did he take any of Rory’s drawings?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, but some are missing. I see Rory counting them again and again, saying they’ve been stolen. He had opportunity. He’s clever, my lad.’

  Despite the horror of his son’s crimes, a note of pride entered Jimmy’s voice. ‘He can hack anything, can find out anything he needs to. He’ll know everything he needs to about you and Corrine and everyone you have anything to do with. He’s been going on about Corrine every time he visits. He asks Rory about her. Asks me about her. He blames her. Thinks if she’d not deserted me, things would be different. There’s no rationalising with him.

  All the time they’d been talking, Gus had felt the repeated vibrations from his phone, and feeling he’d got as much as he could from Jimmy for now, he motioned to Carlton and they left the room. Whoever was texting and phoning him was insistent. He only hoped it wasn’t more bad news.

  Chapter 71

  Scotland

  By the time Gus and Carlton were brought up to speed on Dr Mahmood’s death, Gus’s dad had arrived. Gus and Carlton agreed that having Corrine and Fergus in Scotland made them safer, and had decided that for now, they would keep Dr Mahmood’s death from them. Gus was sure if his mum heard about it, she’d be devastated, and her guilt would make her want to high tail it back home. Besides, neither of his parents seemed to think twice about keeping secrets from him. So, using the excuse of the team needing them, Carlton and Gus were taking Corrine’s car and heading down south, leaving Corrine and Fergus to reconnect more with Rory.

  ‘So, there’s no real reason for me not to see Jimmy, is there, Angus?’

  Corrine McGuire had listened as Carlton recounted all the revelations Jimmy had made. By the end, she wept a little, then stoically, straightened her spine and looked at Gus, daring him to refuse her request.

  ‘Look, all this has to be verified. He needs to have more psychiatric evaluations…’

  Corrine humphed. ‘And a lot of good all those psychiatric evaluations did him in the past.’

  Gus had to agree that she had a point, but that didn’t mean that Jimmy Cameron was completely benign. He’d seen flashes of the hardened criminal in him during the interviews. Besides, he was complicit in many crimes. However, despite his persuasive arguments, Corrine had dug her heels in, booked extra nights in the hotel and refused to leave Scotland till she’d had adequate time to visit both her foster brother Rory and her half-brother Jimmy.

  Corrine was adamant and Gus suspected it would be more than he was able to do to convince her not to meet with him, so he left that particular ball in Dr Mara and his father’s court. He had more pressing matters to deal with.

  They had a main suspect now – although they couldn’t physically identify him, Gus was determ
ined to catch him before he killed anyone else. Huddled together like a group of holiday makers taking their leave from each other, Gus, Carlton, Corrine, and Sadia chatted in low voices about their discoveries. Sadia was waiting for a lift to take her back to her home in Livingston and Gus was curious to put a name to the person she’d declared her love for on the car journey from Bradford.

  Each time he looked at Sadia a pang of regret contracted his heart. They had been good together … until they hadn’t. A suave silver Merc glided into the car park, its tyres sending a slight flurry of pebbles into the air. It parked up and a tall man got out, leaning on the roof, he waved. ‘Sadia, come on. Let’s be having you.’

  Sadia turned, her face broke into a smile and she waved back, before turning back to hug Corrine. ‘It was so good to see you again, Corrine. Come and visit before you head back home.’

  Sadia was moving on to hug Carlton, when the back door of the Merc opened, and a whirlwind erupted onto the gravel. ‘Mummy, Mummy, I’ve missed you.’

  Plump toddler legs pumped across the gravel as Sadia, turned, dropped to her knees, arms outstretched, her bag and jacket falling heedlessly to the dusty ground. The little boy launched himself into her arms and she swiped him up, twirled him round, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I’ve missed you too, Billy boy.’

  ‘How much?’ The little boy’s hands dimpled with puppy fat cupped Sadia’s face.

  ‘To the moon and back a trillion squillion times.’

  Placing the boy on the ground, Sadia held his hand and turned back to the group. Although her words were to everyone, her eyes made contact only with Gus. ‘This is Billy.’

  Gus’s eyes narrowed, as his gaze moved to the little boy with the curly sun-bleached sandy hair and the blue eyes. A strange light-headedness gripped him and for a second, he thought he was going to faint. He lifted his eyes to his mum. Corrine’s eyes swayed between the little boy, drinking up his features, tears in her eyes, to her own son. She wrung her hands as she met Gus’s look. He looked at Sadia. The smile had died on her lips as she studied Gus’s reaction. He quirked an eyebrow and got an almost indeterminable nod in return. Head about to explode, he turned to his parents and instead of releasing the tirade of anger and rage that pulsed through him, he said only two very quiet, very damning accusing words before walking away from them. ‘You knew.’

  Corrine took a step towards him, but Gus was too quick. Carlton, seeing he was heading to the car, grabbed his own bag, muttered a hurried farewell, and followed, barely managing to slam the passenger door shut behind him as Gus accelerated out of the parking lot.

  Chapter 72

  Bradford

  Alice and Nancy had just returned to The Fort from Dr Mahmood’s crime scene. It had been one of the most difficult crime scenes for Alice to attend. Although she’d forced herself to focus on the mechanics of the scene – the positioning of the body, the fact that the cleaner had been drugged, and shoved in a cupboard, the way the desk had been shoved towards the back wall, and the fact that the security cameras had been jammed in some way – she’d found herself remembering flashes of her own sessions with the doctor and it took all her strength to park her grief at the door and concentrate on picking up clues that would lead them to the bastard. Despite the change of MO, Hopkins and Smedley had both been killed in their own homes – in their own beds – Dr Mahmood’s proximity to Gus and Corrine McGuire plus the strangulation bruises round her neck were more than enough to convince Alice that this was the work of the same depraved killer. The fact that Dr Mahmood had been killed so soon after his last ritual kill indicated that he was accelerating – spiralling – and that he would move quicker onto his next few kills.

  ‘We need Gus back here right now.’ Alice’s short hair was spiked up all over her head, more due to her frantic fingers than the copious amounts of hair gel she used.

  Nancy glared at her. Despite her pallor, the older woman had a resolute glint in her eye. ‘You listen to me, DS Cooper. We do not need Gus here. He’s on his way and he’ll get here as soon as he can, but we don’t need him. We’re perfectly able to implement his instructions – hell, we live in the 21st century. He’s a phone call away – not a millennium away. Pull yourself together and stop being silly. We’ve got work to do.’

  If Nancy had actually slapped her, Alice couldn’t have been more shocked – not by Nancy’s sentiments but by her use of the word ‘silly’. What the f…? Alice prided herself on being anything but silly. However, she had the good grace to realise that Nancy was right. They had a job to do and, in their absence, the teams that had been sent to check out Gus’s theory at the terraced houses had done so. Each team had located the point of entry and the CSIs were now combing the attic spaces, while officers questioned the neighbourhood regarding the comings and goings at the entry point houses. Things were in order in that respect and Alice took a moment to inhale a deep calming breath as she considered the other balls that were in the air.

  She turned to Compo. ‘You found anything in Dr Mahmood’s cloud thingy doo dah?’ As she spoke, she wafted her arms in a ‘you know what I mean’ gesture which caused Compo to grin while simultaneously shaking his head in horror. ‘Actually, yes.’

  As he spoke his expression sobered and his eyes narrowed. ‘This bastard is a ghost, but I see him. I just can’t quite catch him yet, but I will. He’s been accessing various files from Dr Mahmood’s client list – mine, yours, the bosses, DCI Chalmers, the boss’s mum.’

  Alice frowned, she hadn’t been aware that Compo had used Dr Mahmood’s services, but now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. Instead, she stored that little nugget away to consider later on. Before she had a chance to ask what exactly the killer had accessed, Compo stuffed a Twix in his gob and around the chewing sounds managed to articulate a ‘The bastard knows everything about all of us.’ Grabbing an energy can, he yanked it open, took a swig, and then pressed another button showing some sort of encode stuff that looked like gobbledygook to Alice. ‘I checked our servers, too. The bastard’s been in and accessed our confidential police files too – all of them.’

  Nancy had been sitting in silence, absorbing all the information, but now she jumped to her feet, prodded Compo in the shoulder and said, ‘Your job is twofold, DC Compton. You find out everything that killer has accessed, and you make sure he can’t access anything else from our servers. I’ll take the heat if the big boys can’t handle being locked out of high-level security for a few days. Can you chase him backwards – maybe see the trail he’s followed, find out who might be next on his list, because, I think we’re all aware that he’s heading for an endgame – and it will be soon. Very soon.’

  Compo, nodding effusively, agreed. ‘I’ve used the Hudson Clinic’s database to isolate possible targets – assuming of course he continues to select from there and remains in Bradford. So far, we have over three hundred women in the Bradford area who are registered for the clinic’s services. Of those, two hundred and thirty-two are currently pregnant.’ Compo paused; his mouth open revealing crumby, chocolate-coated teeth. Without warning he jumped to his feet and rushed over to the crime scene board.

  Alice and Nancy exchanged glances as they followed him. While Compo paced between each victim’s details he mumbled under his breath.

  Trying not to get her hopes up that Compo had discovered something, Alice shoved her arms behind her back and crossed her fingers saying the mantra, please find something, please find something, please find something, in her head. Her eyes were glued on Compo’s bright red Bat Out of Hell T-shirt that had the slogan ‘Two out of three ain’t bad – three out of three’s a whole lot better’ emblazoned across front and back. It made her think of the three dead pregnant women and she couldn’t straighten out in her own mind if this was a good or bad omen.

  ‘Got it!’

  At Compo’s words, Alice jumped. She’d been so engrossed in her superstitious mantra that she hadn’t registered that her colleague had turned round with a huge grin
on his face.

  ‘Out with it then, lad.’ Nancy’s abrupt words belied the flicker of excitement that made her cheeks flush.

  Cracking the heel of his hand against his forehead, Compo grimaced. ‘I should have seen it before.’ He looked at Alice and then Nancy, and seemingly registering the risk of another shoulder prod if he didn’t spit it out, he spoke his words hurried and almost running together. ‘It’s the verses. Each woman has a different verse and there’s five verses, yeah?’ Not waiting for a reply, he rushed over to the Brookes foetal scan. ‘Look, victim one, verse one, scan three months.’

  Looking at their blank faces, he skipped to the Flateau scan victim two, verse two, scan four months.’

  Before they could respond, he was beside Karen Smith’s scan, victim three, verse three, scan.’

  ‘Five months…’ Alice jumped up. It was tenuous, of course it was. There was no way of knowing for sure if this was a deliberate ploy on the killer’s part, but to date, he’d been methodical and accurate in all that he did, so this was too good a lead to miss.

  Compo, once more at his computer bank, was pressing keys until a list of names came on the screen. There were twelve names. ‘Each of these women is in their sixth month of pregnancy…’

  Alice turned to Nancy. ‘I know we’re really pushing it here, but…’

  ‘Of course, I’ll draft in officers for double shifts and so forth. No way will he get to any of those women.’

  As Nancy turned to begin a series of phone calls, Alice’s phone rang. Smiling, adrenalin rushing through her, she answered with a smile that was immediately wiped right off her face. ‘OK thanks. I’m on it.’

  She turned to her colleagues, the need for words negligible as her face told them all they needed to know.

  ‘Too late. We’re too fucking late.’ Compo slammed his fist against the wall, then despite the pain that must have resonated up his arm, and the tears springing from his eyes, he asked, ‘Which one…?’