Watch Him Die

by Craig Robertson

  She spun, head still woozy but adrenalin washing the effects way. He was dressed in black with a balaclava masking his face. A knife lay on the lawn near his feet. She grabbed his wrist, twisting hard till his arm was wrenched behind his back in one slick, practised move, making him squeal and beg. She reached up with her left hand and ripped the balaclava off his head.

  ‘Stop. Don’t. Please.’

  She twisted his arm further, knowing it was close to breaking and not caring.

  ‘Please!’

  ‘I actually like it when they beg.’

  She saw his head half turn towards her in confusion.

  ‘Do you remember saying that? I like it when they beg, but the crying becomes a pain. So don’t cry, whatever you do.’

  His head twisted round, seeing her face properly for the first time. Confusion and rage contorting his features. She wrenched his arm tighter.

  ‘Why don’t you beg some more, huh? Go on!’

  The voice emerged from the side of the building. Urgent. ‘That’s enough, Rachel. Rachel, let him go. We’ve got it from here.’

  Narey turned to face Giannandrea, impassively returning his stare. Without looking at the man she held, she twisted his arm fiercely one more time and waited till the two uniformed cops had hands on him before releasing her grip. They took an arm each and lifted the man near clear off his feet so that he was facing her.

  ‘Fraser Anderson, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Eloise Gray on or around April 12 2019 at an unknown locus, as a result of electronic communications evidence. You do not need to say anything but anything you do say will be noted and may be used in evidence. Do you understand?’

  Anderson grinned wildly before throwing his head back and laughing. The sound filled the air, echoing off the walls of the house.

  Narey stared at the former IT consultant, itching to slap the laughter off his face. Instead, she nodded at the firearms cops and they wheeled him away as he spewed invective at anyone who would listen.

  Giannandrea was at her shoulder, joining her in watching the constables load the man into the back of a newly arrived van to take him to the station.

  ‘You’re okay, right?’

  ‘I’m fine, don’t worry. It was just a bit of chloroform. Not enough to knock me out in that time.’

  ‘Respectfully, Rachel? If I may?’

  ‘Go on, Rico. Just say what you’ve got to say.’

  ‘It was a really stupid fucking idea. What if he’d come behind you with a knife rather than a soaked cloth?’

  ‘I’m wearing a stab-proof vest. You know that.’

  ‘Not round your neck you aren’t.’

  ‘Then we’d have had a cast-iron case and Tony and Alanna would have done very well out of the insurance and the compensation.’

  ‘That’s not fucking funny, Rachel.’

  ‘Oh come on, Rico, you had eyes on me at all times. The uniforms were ready to move. It was our best shot and I wasn’t going to put anyone else in the position of doing it. And I wanted to do it. More to the point, we’ve got him.’

  ‘Did you know it was Anderson, before you turned around? That he was Marr?’

  ‘No. But he seemed most likely. He ticked all the psychological boxes, he had the ability to be different things to different people, he had the IT knowledge. And he was violent. He fitted the description of the guy dumped by Brianna Holden. Andy, the married guy who probably didn’t tell her his real name and shortened his surname instead. Thing was, it didn’t matter. Whoever was standing behind me was the person who murdered Eloise and the others. That’s all I needed to know.’

  *

  Two hours later, Narey and Giannandrea sat at one side of a desk in the custody suite at Dalmarnock. On the other sat a clearly manic Fraser Anderson and a dour duty solicitor named Eric Rennie.

  Anderson had replied with a firm ‘no comment’ to each of her opening questions, but she knew it wouldn’t last. His temperament was like a beach ball being held under water and would soon erupt. She’d make sure it did.

  ‘Are you going to beg, Fraser? I know you hate it when they beg.’

  His eyes flared and she knew she’d got to him. No time to delete and retype, no time to consider or hide his reaction.

  ‘Luck,’ he blurted out. ‘It was just luck. Nothing else.’

  Rennie glared at his client, urging silence. Narey pressed.

  ‘What was luck?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘I always believe you make your own luck. You contacted Vikki on that website but you could have contacted any of fifty women on that site and it would have been me you got. We put every one of those profiles up in the hope you’d come after one of them. And we left enough info lying around on social media pages we constructed to let you find what you needed to carry out your pathetic little seduction charade.’

  ‘No. I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I bet you don’t, but it’s true. And I suppose you won’t believe that we chose photographs of young women who all bore a resemblance to Brianna Holden. Just the way you like it.’

  ‘That’s not why I picked her. Not why I messaged her.’

  She leaned across the desk and laughed in his face. ‘Sure, you keep telling yourself that.’

  He exploded, words tumbling out of his mouth, every other one a fuck, barely coherent as they were strangled by his anger. Spitting words at her like arrows.

  His crazed laughter was replaced by fury. The rage of the entitled who don’t get their own way. In that moment, his eyes burning, face twisted, hands forming claws, she saw what Eloise must have seen. What Brianna Holden must have seen. Ellen Lambert. Stuart McLennan. Kris Perera. Chrissie Ramsay. Irene Dow.

  She saw a homicidal madman.

  And she saw her chance.

  ‘Is this how you were when you killed Eloise and the others? So riled up with rage that you couldn’t control yourself?’

  ‘I was in control. I killed that stupid bitch the way I wanted because I wanted to. Don’t think you know me. Don’t think you have any idea how I think or why I do anything. I made all that happen. I’m in control. I’m in control!’

  ‘Yes. Sounds like it. You’ve admitted to killing Eloise Gray, why stop there? Keep going, Fraser. Keep going.’

  *

  Later, Narey and Giannandrea stood in the corridor outside the custody suite, a quiet calm finally enveloping them. It lasted all of thirty seconds before being crashed by a chirpy voice floating towards them.

  ‘Great work, boss. I loved the sound of that bastard squealing as you took him out on the lawn.’

  Kerri Wells was walking with a ten-pound note held out in front of her and a wide smile on her face.

  ‘Don’t say I don’t honour my debts. Ten pounds for the winner of the Matthew Marr Sweepstake Challenge.’

  Narey managed a laugh. ‘Put that away before someone sees it. You’ll have me up in front of the chief. I’m not actually going to take money for a lucky guess on a murder suspect.’ She stopped and hesitated, looking at them both. ‘Oh fuck it. You know what? Yeah, pay up. A tenner each.’

  Wells grinned and Giannandrea shook his head as he too handed over his ten pounds.

  ‘Okay, come on. Let’s go see what we can buy in the Station Bar for twenty quid. I think we could all do with a drink.’

  CHAPTER 58

  It was four in the afternoon in LA, midnight in Glasgow. Just as it always seemed to be.

  Maybe it should have been too late for wine for one and too early for the other, but Narey and O’Neill were enjoying a glass together an ocean apart thanks to the wonders of modern communication.

  Celebrating wasn’t the right word. Job done was more like it. Relief for sure. Tired for certain. There was undoubtedly an element of personal satisfaction, but people were still dead, people were still grieving. It wasn’t a time to have a party, not a public one anyway.

  The two cops were separated by five thousand miles but connected by the devices i
n front of them and everything they’d been through. It took one to know one.

  Rachel was the only person still up in the house on Belhaven Terrace, her husband and daughter asleep after they’d properly enjoyed each other’s company as a family for the first time in what seemed an age but was only a week. She was curled up on the sofa, legs tucked underneath her, wind rattling at the windows, glass in hand and O’Neill a few feet away on the screen.

  Cally was in her apartment in Willowbrook, blinds closed to keep out the fierce late-afternoon sun. The next few days were going to be filled with endless interviews, forms, lawyers and unhappy cops. She and Salgado now had more cases than days in the week so when her lieutenant offered her the chance to go home early before the onslaught began, she jumped at it.

  A glass of red was raised in Glasgow. It was matched with a chilled white in LA. They sipped, and breathed, nodding at each other without the need for words. Rachel was first to break the contented silence.

  ‘So how is Dylan Hansen doing?’

  O’Neill closed her eyes and exhaled hard. ‘He’s going to make it.’

  ‘Thank God. You really had me worried.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry for scaring the shit out of you when we found him.’

  ‘Ha. It’s cool. The strange thing was, even though we knew you were going to say he was dead whether he was or not, I still couldn’t tell if you were faking it. It was because we’d no idea what you’d find. You did too good a job of acting.’

  O’Neill grinned. ‘I was only partly acting. When I found a pulse, it was actually easier to be mad at that bastard on the other side of the camera. My rage was real.’

  ‘When you came up with the plan, I wasn’t sure about it, but it certainly worked. It convinced Marr . . . Anderson, I mean . . . that Dylan was dead and it was his turn. It flushed him out.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it was risky. Especially when you were putting yourself on the line. And without a gun. I don’t know how you guys do that.’

  Narey shook her head. ‘And I don’t know how you guys can carry one. I’ve been doing this job for years and I’ve never felt the need for a gun. It would scare the shit out of me to have one, and to think that the bad guy had one too. Is Hansen able to talk?’

  ‘Not yet. All he’s been able to do is nod, but he’s let us know he’s aware he was held hostage, doesn’t know where, didn’t see the face of the person who took him. We’ve shown him a photograph of Garland, but it meant nothing to him. He’s taking liquids intravenously, but the docs are hopeful he’ll be feeding himself in a week or so. He’s very disorientated and we haven’t told him the full story yet.’

  ‘He’ll make a full recovery?’

  ‘Hopefully. In time. The docs were very worried about brain damage, but he’s come through the tests they gave him and they’re much more optimistic. What it will do to him emotionally is another matter, but they’re going to be working on that from the start, so he’ll have the best chance of recovery.

  ‘He suffered kidney failure and they’re worried about his heart and liver. They all took a severe pounding. He’s looking at dialysis or a transplant for the kidneys. But it could have been much worse. One of the specialists said that if we’d been as little as six hours later, then brain damage might have been irreparable. If we’d been twelve hours later, he’d have been dead. We got lucky.’

  Narey disagreed with her. ‘Like I told someone yesterday, you make your own luck. You got that info from Garland’s ex-wife because you put the work in, you asked the right questions and eventually you got the right answers. It had nothing to do with luck.’

  O’Neill smiled. ‘Yeah, you’re right. And if you want to email my captain and tell her that then I won’t stop you. So, do you think it was luck – good or bad – that Garland and your man Anderson found each other?’

  Narey sighed and tipped her glass towards the screen. ‘That’s a big question for a second glass of wine. You can believe it was fate or just the simple practicalities of two psychopaths inevitably going to the same twisted forum on the same twisted subject. But given that Garland was convinced his father was Elizabeth Short’s murderer, it makes most sense that their mutual interest in the Black Dahlia brought them together. But I’ll get it out of Anderson.’

  ‘Garland was convinced of it because his father claimed it himself. Zac was happy for other people to think he was the Dahlia killer, but he was determined to have Ethan believe it. It’s one way to make your kid proud of you.’

  ‘The psych that’s been working with me, Lennie Dakers, has no doubt that’s what did the damage to Garland – the effect of believing that his father was a notorious killer, the man responsible for one the highest profile murders in the US. And crucially, he says, a murderer that was never caught. The power imbued by that knowledge left him feeling invincible, uncatchable, smarter than all of us. Nurture and nature at work, getting the worst kind of nurturing from the man that also gave him his DNA. For Ethan to be how he was, it didn’t matter that Zac hadn’t killed Elizabeth Short, it only mattered that he believed it.’

  ‘Rachel, I don’t mean to be rude but you’re a bit harder to understand when we’ve both had a couple of drinks.’

  ‘That’s funny. I was thinking you’re easier to understand.’

  O’Neill laughed. ‘Touché. What’s Glasgow like, Rachel? I’ve always wanted to go to Scotland but never been. I guess like most Americans I’ve got an idea in my head that’s probably completely wrong.’

  ‘Well, you should come.’

  ‘I’d love to!’

  ‘Then do it. You can stay with us and I’ll show you around. Listen, if the idea about Scotland in your head is Brigadoon then yes, you’re completely wrong. And if you’re thinking it’s like Trainspotting then you’re still completely wrong. The truth is maybe somewhere between the two. Scotland is a small country but manages to squeeze in a whole load of very different places. Different cities, different islands, scores of different accents. Glasgow isn’t Scotland but it might be the best and worst of it. You’ll find out.’

  ‘I can’t wait to. If you’re serious, I’m booking a flight.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Cool. Now what about Anderson? Have you got anything out of him?’

  ‘He’s admitted to four murders and denied any memory of another three. He’s lying, and he knows we know he’s lying. He’s playing games simply because he’s irritated at being fooled. He’s trying to take back control.

  ‘But what really gets to me is how matter-of-factly he describes what he did. No emotion, no remorse, as if he was telling us how he changed a tyre on his car. He will describe the most terrible thing and be genuinely surprised if we find it shocking or dreadful. He thinks it’s the most natural thing in the world that he and Garland operated together. To him, it makes complete sense.’

  ‘I think it would have done to Garland too. I really regret we never got the chance to do the same with him as you can with Anderson. It’s going to leave a lot of unanswered questions. And a lot of families not knowing what happened to their loved ones, or why. Of course, if he hadn’t died from that heart attack then we might never have known about any of this.’

  ‘You’d have got him eventually.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. That’s the thing. It scares me how many of them are out there. Unknown serial killers. Murders that we don’t even know are connected. It scares me how many men are like Garland, like Anderson – emotionless, pathological, compulsive killers. Little or no reason to what they’re doing and therefore so much harder to catch.’

  ‘No point in it scaring you. They’re there whether we’re scared or not. Our job is to catch the fuckers.’

  ‘It doesn’t really scare me. Scared is for other people. It’s our job.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I know you know.’

  They both laughed and took gulps at their wine.

  ‘Why do you do it, Rachel? Why do you put it all on the line, time after time? Go
after people like Garland and Anderson?’

  ‘Obviously I could ask you the same question.’

  ‘Well, obviously, but I asked you first.’

  ‘Fair enough. I guess I’ve thought about this before. First, my dad was a cop, so it was in the blood. I grew up taking it for granted that the good guys went after the bad guys. For a long time, I thought my dad was a superhero – and he was, to me – but then I came to realise that he was just an ordinary man doing extraordinary things. The bottom line is, someone’s got to do it. And I want it to be me. It’s my job.’

  O’Neill raised her glass in salute before sipping from it.

  ‘Okay, Cally, your turn.’

  ‘Oh, much the same. You know the quote about how all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men – always men of course, not women – to do nothing?’

  ‘Supposedly by Edmund Burke, but he never said it.’

  ‘Right. Well that. Whoever said it first, it’s right. I think people have three choices. Be the bad guy, be the good guy, or do nothing and hide your head in the sand. I don’t like sand in my face.’

  ‘Nor me. I guess that’s why we have to do it, because no one else will. It has to be someone like us.’

  ‘Someone like you. Someone like me.’

  More from the Author

  The Photographer

  Murderabilia

  In Place of Death

  The Last Refuge

  Witness the Dead

  Cold Grave

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book took far longer to complete than it should have done but would have taken even longer without the help, creativity and dedication of my editors at Simon & Schuster, Jo Dickinson and Bethan Jones, and my agent Mark ‘Stan’ Stanton. My gratitude goes to all three.

  I owe a huge debt to Katherine Ramsland, Professor of Forensic Psychology at DeSales University in Pennsylvania. She is possibly the world’s foremost expert on the minds of serial killers and was kind enough to school me on Matthew Marr and how best to interview him.