Random

by Craig Robertson

  ‘Your body temperature has dropped to 95 degrees. You have hit mild hypothermia and your body is undergoing its maximum shivering stage. It is contracting your muscles to generate more heat. Don’t worry. It won’t last long.’

  I waited and watched and waited some more.

  The shivering was violent and broken by pauses. Then the pauses got longer and the shivering shorter.

  Before long he had stopped all attempts at movement, no real efforts to move his legs. All he did was shiver. Then eventually, as I knew it would, the shivering stopped too.

  ‘Oh dear. Heat is draining away fast now. Half of it is disappearing through your head alone. Your ears must be so excruciatingly cold. You are below 95 degrees now. That’s bad. Every one degree drop below 95 means that your cerebral metabolic rate falls off by five per cent. You are losing it. When your body temperature hits 93 degrees then amnesia will start to prey on you. Pity that, I don’t want you to forget anything. Not just yet.’

  He just sat slumped in front of me now, occasionally raising his head to look at me with a half-hearted glare. It was the best he could manage. His skin was turning blue. His pupils were dilated.

  ‘You’re in profound hypothermia now. Your temperature has fallen to 88 degrees and your body can’t be bothered trying to keep itself warm any more. Your blood is thickening. Feel it? Your oxygen intake has fallen by over a quarter. Your kidneys are working overtime. If you hadn’t already pished yourself then you would probably do it anyway. Your body is giving up the ghost.

  ‘In case you are wondering, and you probably are, there is no specifically defined temperature at which the body perishes from extreme cold. Nazi doctors, those sick bastards that experimented with cold-water immersion baths at Dachau, calculated death at around 77 Fahrenheit. Sometimes it’s lower, sometimes higher.

  ‘Chilling, isn’t it?’

  His chest was heaving. His breathing was severely troubled.

  I watched him intently.

  ‘You will now be about 88 degrees and your heart is in overdrive. Chilled nerve tissues are blocking the heart’s electrical impulses. It is becoming arrhythmic, pumping less than two thirds of the normal amount of blood. There’s less oxygen, your brain is slowing. You might be suffering hallucinations.

  ‘It’s going to get worse. Two degrees lower and you are going to feel really weird. It’s the strange bit. You are going to feel hot. Really hot. It’s at this stage that people freezing to death feel so hot that they start ripping their clothes off. Sadly that’s not an option open to you. You will just have to suffer.

  ‘No one really knows why but they think it’s because constricted blood vessels suddenly open and create a sensation of extreme heat against the skin. It will feel like you are burning up.

  ‘Your body is shutting down. It doesn’t want to play any more. That’s happening now. You are drifting away. Gone. Bye, bye.

  ‘You’re not dead though. They call it a metabolic icebox. You’re not blue any more, you’ve gone grey. If I looked I might not find a pulse or detect breathing. But you’re not dead. Not yet.

  ‘If, like the Nazis, I let your temperature plunge further then you would have a pulmonary oedema. There would be cardiac and respiratory failure. That would be fine except that I wouldn’t know when. You would be fucking dead and I wouldn’t know when. And I want to know when. I want to know the exact point of your fucking death. I want to know to the second. You remember that cardiac arrhythmia that you are having? It is very dangerous. Any sudden shock is likely to set off ventricular fibrillation and result in certain death. You need to watch that.’

  I opened the door to the freezer room and walked quietly up to Wallace Ogilvie. Oh it was cold, very cold. But I wouldn’t be long.

  I stood next to him. His head slumped. His body showing no sign of life.

  I leaned into him. Put my mouth close to his ear.

  And I screamed. I roared. I fucking bellowed my hate into his ear. I thought my lungs might burst with the effort.

  His heart jumped once. Just once and I knew it was done.

  I left the room, shivering through more than cold, closing the door behind me. I pulled the switch back to off, shutting down the freezing process, and slumped with my back against the wall. I slid to the floor, crying my eyes out.

  I would cry until near morning, until Wallace Ogilvie was warmed just enough that I could saw off the little finger of his right hand and take his body elsewhere. Somewhere it could be found.

  ‘La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid.’

  I said it out loud although no one was listening.

  CHAPTER 18

  Memories are like landmines. You never know which one will blow up in your face. You can be mugged by your memories when you least expect it. I was shaving one time, drawing the blade across my cheek when a memory leapt into my head.

  Menorca. 1996. The image of Sarah at a restaurant table with the biggest ice cream you’ve ever seen matched only by the size of the grin on her face. She thought she was the luckiest girl in the world. She was wearing a bright yellow T-shirt with a vivid orange sunburst on it, her blonde hair pulled behind her in a ponytail. A sliver of ice cream slipped from her mouth and trickled down her chin. She laughed till she nearly wet herself. All three of us laughed so much that people turned to look at us.

  I remembered that and stared at myself in the mirror. I had the sudden urge to gouge my face with the razor. To bite it deep into my cheek and twist it till it tore a chunk of skin and cheek. I stood and stared at myself as my hand and my mind battled over the grip of the razor.

  I didn’t do it.

  I did try not to let it linger but sometimes the thought would slip under my guard. To meet up with her again. Not to wait. To make it happen. To catch her up before the smell of her left me. Before I couldn’t conjure up her face in an instant.

  Movies portray sudden flashbacks of memory with bursts of light and images exploding in your head. I used to think that was just bollocks but it is precisely how it happens. For me at any rate.

  You can be driving, talking, walking, in mid sentence or mid bite when you are jumped by your past. The memories are always there, lurking, waiting.

  Sometimes I had to shake my head to stop them, to clear them out of my mind. Then there was guilt at doing that. For not enduring them. For not putting up with the pain of the memories the way a proper father would.

  I’d hear her voice too. Not voices like killers heard, nothing crazy. Just her voice, finishing sentences for me and sometimes telling me what I should or shouldn’t be doing. Her being silly or laughing or saying how she loved this film or that food. I’d find myself nodding and saying, ‘I know. I know, sweetheart.’

  Guilt came at you just as often as memories did. Just as random, just as unexpected, just as deadly. Guilt at what you had done and what you hadn’t. Guilt for breaking the biggest promise of all. The one that every father makes to their child. To look after them. To protect them. No matter what.

  Sometimes I lay awake wondering what I wouldn’t do to have her back. To have her back for good or for five minutes. To have her back in the world even if she wasn’t with us. To have her laughing and running. Growing, working, playing. Smiling or crying. Happy or sad. Good times and bad. Just to have her back.

  The answer was anything. Anything and more.

  Kill? Obviously so. The question was how many and I didn’t have an answer that didn’t scare me.

  The darkness of the night and the blackness of my soul were strange and dangerous places to consider such things. Maybe that was when I descended into insanity but more likely it was desperation. I would try anything, do anything, think anything, hope for anything.

  In the early days, the black, black days, I would hold my breath. I’d convince myself that if I closed my eyes and didn’t breathe for a full minute then when I opened them again it would be back to the time when everything was alright. It never worked but I’d try it again and again. I’d
screw my eyes so tight it would hurt but it would never work.

  I’d make mental pacts. If I did this or that then time would turn.

  I’d give up everything I owned. That was easy. Every penny I had or would ever have. My house, my health. I’d give my life, of course I would.

  I tried to wish myself dead. I tried to make deals with the God I didn’t believe in. With any God, with any Devil. I’d scream within myself, demanding that someone listened. Take me. Bring her back.

  The things I’d promise would get darker and worse. They had to because the first lot didn’t change anything.

  If giving up my life wouldn’t do it then I’d offer up the lives of others. If wishing someone dead would change things then I’d wish it. Instantly.

  One person. Two. Ten. A village. A city. A country.

  There wasn’t a limit. How could there be? What kind of father could draw a line and say I’d do this or that for my daughter but no more? There is nothing that a father wouldn’t do.

  I’d imagine a tsunami was summoned up by the God that I didn’t recognize and was about to flood the entire eastern seaboard of the United States. The God would say to me that I could halt it with a single word and save the lives of millions. Or I could have five minutes with the girl that was taken away from me. No contest.

  In the middle of the night it is easy to wish away the lives of millions of people. You close your eyes as tight as you can and condemn them to death and hope beyond hope that when you open them again everything will be alright. But no matter how many you kill with your mind it is always the same.

  You begin to wonder if one actual death would do more than millions of pretend ones. Maybe if it was the middle of the day rather than the depths of night then you’d dismiss the idea. Maybe if you weren’t driven to distraction by the unbearable awfulness of being alive. Maybe if you weren’t me.

  Otherwise you grab at any straw, any hope, any chance. You know, of course, that it won’t change things. Time cannot turn. You are not stupid, you know that. Yet you try, you have no choice, your mind demands it.

  One death. It’s not much. Not for a life. Not for her life. A bargain.

  Then you may wonder about more than one killing. You may wonder about how much revenge would be worth in a pact with the God or the Devil. You offer up the lives of others and you promise retribution. Surely either would do. Both would be a guarantee.

  It becomes an easy decision to make. You promise to do something that suddenly seems easy and right in return for the one thing that you want above all else. Who wouldn’t do that for the person that means more to them than any other? Not you. Not me. Definitely not me.

  What sort of father wouldn’t do anything for his daughter?

  CHAPTER 19

  Same anonymous envelope, same procedure. Once the police found Wallace Ogilvie’s body then they’d be expecting it. There would be an expectant queue at Rachel Narey’s desk awaiting the post.

  But the finger went to Keith Imrie at the Daily Record. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be expecting what was going to land on his desk. I just hoped that after shitting himself that he would be able to find out what he needed to know.

  I couldn’t be sure from his stories if he was up to it or not. Much of the stuff he had written up till then had been crap. But he was getting the scoop of his life dropped in his grubby lap and all he needed to do was make a few phone calls. These guys had contacts, all he had to do was use them. Just in case, I gave him a helping hand as well as the finger. I included a printed slip of paper with five names on it.

  DS Rachel Narey.

  Jonathan Carr.

  Billy Hutchison.

  Thomas Tierney.

  Wallace Ogilvie.

  A finger and five names. Nothing else. I didn’t want to join the dots completely for him. Four unsolved murders. One cop. One severed finger. One big fat scoop. Work it out Imrie. Come on. You can do it.

  Phone Rachel. Phone the cops that take your back handers, the cops that let you buy them drinks, the cops that take used cash for information. Get off your lazy arse and do the work.

  Imrie didn’t let me down. The headline in the Record screamed ‘Jock the Ripper’. Above it a strapline roared ‘Serial killer stalks Glasgow. Four dead’. In full glorious and gory colour, across the front page was a huge picture of the severed right pinkie of Wallace Ogilvie.

  The cops would be furious. I was pleased.

  Inside there were photos of Carr, Hutchison, Tierney and Ogilvie. There were quotes from anonymous police sources. There was an abrupt quote from Rachel Narey. There was sensationalism all through it.

  It was perfect.

  CHAPTER 20

  SERIAL KILLER STALKS GLASGOW. FOUR DEAD JOCK THE RIPPER

  EXCLUSIVE by Keith Imrie.

  Friday, 16 October 2009.

  FOUR VICIOUS unsolved murders which have baffled Strathclyde Police were carried out by the same person – a crazed psychopath who mutilates his victims. The Daily Record has uncovered stunning proof that links the four cases and reveals that a serial killer is stalking Glasgow.

  Scotland’s number one newspaper has handed over vital evidence to the police which may lead to the capture of the barbaric murderer. The killer of city lawyer Jonathan Carr, bookmaker Billy Hutchison, drug dealer Thomas Tierney and businessman Wallace Ogilvie has sparked the biggest murder hunt since the city was terrorised by the Bible John case in the 1960s.

  Full story on pages 2 and 3.

  FINGERS UP TO COPS

  A PSYCHOPATH who has carried out four brutal and seemingly unrelated murders in Glasgow is taunting police by sending them body parts from his victims. The Daily Record can exclusively reveal that each time Jock the Ripper strikes, he saws off the right little finger from his prey and then posts it to police officers. Detectives are said to be infuriated at being mocked by the sick killer. It has made them even more determined to catch him but it is believed that they have no significant leads.

  The latest sawn-off pinkie was acquired by this reporter. It has been handed over to Strathclyde Police and they are currently carrying out DNA tests to establish identity. However there seems little doubt that it belongs to the Ripper’s fourth and most recent victim, businessman Wallace Ogilvie.

  Police sources say that they are working on the basis that there is no link between the four murders. While they maintain an open mind on the matter, they believe the killer strikes at random.

  Sources close to the investigation say that detectives had deliberately withheld from the public and the press the fact that all four were murdered by the same person. They did so for ‘procedural reasons’ and to avoid public panic. However, the force was last night blasted by community groups and local politicians for not releasing information which could have helped saved people from the Ripper. Councillor Bill Houston said that Strathclyde Police had been derelict in their duty to the public.

  ‘There is a serial killer in our midst and the people of Glasgow have the right to know that. There is no way that the police should have kept this information to themselves. Someone who is deranged enough to murder four innocent people and cut off their fingers is completely out of control and people need to know that they must take appropriate safety measures.’

  Tam Pearson, community councillor for Maryhill, said that there was great unease in the area and people were terrified the Ripper would strike again.

  ‘People are afraid to leave their homes at night. It is an utter disgrace that the police knew there was a killer like this on the loose and didn’t see fit to tell anyone. Somebody should lose their job for this.’

  The Ripper first struck on February 10 when he murdered lawyer Jonathan Carr in a layby near Milngavie. The killing of the 37-year-old was originally thought to have been a robbery gone wrong or a revenge attack from someone involved in a previous case of Mr Carr’s. However the Record’s startling revelations now make this look unlikely. Strathclyde Police have consistently refused to reveal the ma
nner of Mr Carr’s murder but we have learned that his mouth was sealed and his nostrils glued together until he suffocated.

  Victim number two was popular Maryhill bookie Billy Hutchison. The 58-year-old was found electrocuted in May and his death was originally thought to have been a tragic accident. However the subsequent involvement of murder squad detectives gave the first clue that all was not what it seemed.

  The Ripper struck for the third time when he murdered smalltime Baillieston drug dealer Thomas ‘Spud’ Tierney. The 26-year-old was stabbed to death in what was viewed as a retaliatory attack by a rival gang on September 27. Tierney was a known associate of Glasgow businessman Alexander Kirkwood.

  Victim number four is businessman Wallace Ogilvie (52) who was murdered on Monday. The cause of his death was not made known by officers but they appealed for anyone who had information as to his last-known whereabouts to contact them.

  The Record can exclusively reveal that Mr Ogilvie had been frozen to death before dying of a heart attack. As well as a finger being removed from each victim and sent to the police – initially to the CID and then specifically to Detective Sergeant Rachel Narey – the Record can reveal that there is DNA evidence conclusively linking the four deaths.

  Although Strathclyde Police refused to confirm it, sources maintain that on two separate occasions, DNA of one victim was found on the body of another. It is thought that the same implement was used each time to sever the finger of the victim and that blood, skin and tissue was transferred from one to another.

  One officer close to the case said, ‘It is grisly stuff but it looks like the killer didn’t even bother to clean the blade of whatever he used – we think it was a pair of gardening type shears – after he hacked the fingers off these people. The lab guys found bits of skin and tissue belonging to Carr and Hutchison on the finger cut off Spud Tierney. There were then DNA particles of both Carr, Hutchison and Tierney found on Ogilvie.

  ‘No doubt we’ll find the same thing once the results come back on the latest victim.’