Lawless

by Alexander McGregor

  The woman who spoke to him was unknown yet familiar. ‘Campbell?’ The voice was gentle, accent-less, enquiring. He wondered why so many people seemed not to expect the person who owned the mobile they were calling to be the person who actually answered it. It was another of life’s paradoxes. So, he reflected, was the fact that he could be at his most philosophical and fractious in the earliest part of the day.

  ‘Campbell who?’ he asked with mock awkwardness. It had the desired effect. Silence. He visualised the consternation on the face of the mystery caller.

  After several moments. ‘Oh, McBride … Campbell McBride. Is he there?’ Her poise had vanished.

  ‘You’re in luck. This is he.’ He immediately felt guilty. ‘Sorry,’ he hurried, ‘just my little early-morning joke. Now, tell me who you are.’

  ‘Anneke … Anneke Meyer. We met at Next Generation. Petra Novak introduced us.’

  McBride’s recall was instant. The face of the athletic blonde with the sensual nose sprang into his mind. He regretted his flippancy even more. He apologised again. As he gushed his words of contrition, he struggled to think of a reason she would be calling him and at 7.20 a.m. He knew it would not be for the purpose he might have wanted.

  ‘I need a sample – DNA. Petra gave me your number so we could arrange it,’ she said.

  He had forgotten she was employed in the science lab of Tayside Police. ‘No problem. When? Where? I’m completely at your disposal.’ McBride grovelled in his attempt to atone for his off-putting levity at the start.

  ‘ASAP. I’m going out of town before lunchtime. That’s why I’m calling so early – sorry about that by the way but Petra said you were an early riser. Don’t know how she knows that. Not even exactly sure what she meant by it!’ Now it was Anneke Meyer who was being provocative.

  McBride permitted himself a smile at how Petra might have reacted had she heard the last part of the conversation. He laughed at the thought and also at what he was about to say in response to her veiled enquiry. ‘Are you asking how I stand with Petra?’ This time both of them chuckled but it conveniently left the unasked question hanging in midair.

  When Anneke spoke again, it was to arrange when she would enter his mouth with a swab. ‘Your place or mine?’ she offered. ‘Whatever is most convenient. I’m based at headquarters in West Bell Street but I can drop round to your flat if it’s better for you.’

  McBride mentally debated the alternatives for one-tenth of a second.

  ‘Make it my place in two hours, then.’

  All the way home, he thought about women. Even when he fought with the convoys of vehicles pouring through the confused Claypotts junction and its forest of traffic lights, he could not get three dead females and two very-much-alive ones out of his mind. The corpses should have taken up most of his deliberations but it was Petra Novak and Anneke Meyer who kept displacing them.

  The two women were the same but different. Both magnetically attractive but one raven haired, the other blonde. Both athletic but one fragile like a ballet dancer, the other powerfu1l with a well-defined physique. Both successful in their careers but one vulnerable and sensitive. He was attracted to each of them but knew which he preferred. He also knew he would move for the other one.

  He was still struggling to work out the logic of that contradiction when he passed under the 400-foot twin wind turbines powering the giant Michelin tyre plant at Baldovie. The two whirling brutes, the most massive in a urban setting anywhere in the world, were said to resemble graceful pieces of industrial sculpture. Fine if you only had to view them on the journey home, not so satisfactory if your home sat in their endlessly rotating shadows.

  When McBride finally turned out of the wind, he allowed the breeze at his back to help him pick up his pace. He ran away from the factories on either side of him and set off along a narrow road dividing a patch of countryside. As he pushed up an incline that would soon take him back to his apartment on the riverside, he realised he was within the telescopic range of Adam Gilzean. Idly, he wondered if the man who had been responsible for bringing him back to live in the area had his eyepiece focused upon him. He lifted a hand and waved in Gilzean’s direction without knowing why.

  When he was half a mile from home, McBride accelerated again, this time to raise his heart rate as close as possible to its maximum 190 beats a minute. The only other occasions when it reached such a level were when he was engaged in a different kind of activity and always with a woman. He thought of Anneke Meyer and the light sweat that covered his body and wondered whether he should still be in his after-shower towel when she arrived to sample him.

  Such musings disappeared the moment he opened the front door of his apartment. Lying on the carpet was a long white envelope, of the identical type he had recently passed to Detective Sergeant Rodger. The neatly folded piece of paper inside bore only two computer-generated words: ‘Wrong library!’

  37

  This time he did not take the scenic route. He sped through the outskirts of the city behind the wheel of the Mondeo, unaware but indifferent that he passed the headquarters of the police traffic department at 20 mph above the speed limit in his haste to hit the motorway for Aberdeen. McBride may not have been a good driver but he was invariably a lucky one. Like every other occasion when he was in breach of the Road Traffic Act, which was most times he drove, he escaped a ticket.

  His mind raced almost as swiftly as his driving. He could not believe his stupidity. Like a simpleton, he had naively believed the man he hunted would turn up on cue at the local library and walk straight into the arms of the detectives waiting in their disguises. Sure, he would show but not where he was expected. It was obvious now – just as it had been obvious to Petra that he wouldn’t appear.

  But, as he cursed himself, McBride had the satisfaction of knowing he was almost certainly correct in his prediction that his quarry could not resist leaving another message. He was convinced it would be waiting for him where they filed the newspapers in the main public library in Aberdeen.

  He had other reasons to regret his dash north. When Anneke Meyer called with her swabs, she had been inclined to linger. Wanted another coffee. Wanted to discuss his fitness. Wanted to touch him when they spoke. Wanted intimacy.

  He had wanted it too – but not then.

  When they parted she thanked him for his co-operation and bade him a formal goodbye. She also took a notebook from her briefcase and wrote quickly on a page which she removed and placed on the small table near the door. McBride knew without looking that it was her home telephone number.

  When he reached the library, he did not waste time asking for the recent files of The Courier but instead asked to be directed to those of The Press and Journal, the morning paper for Aberdeen. He was starting to get inside the head of the person who had silently sent him there – local murder, local paper. It was a pity the logic had taken so long to penetrate.

  All libraries look the same even when the decor and shape are different. But unlike Dundee, there were no stunning breasts to captivate or sweaty creep to aggravate him. Just a friendly woman in her middle years who took his arm and led him to where he wanted to go. She left him alone to make his discovery.

  The report of the press conference given by Detective Chief Inspector James Brewster was impressively lengthy considering how little the gag-a-minute cop had actually disclosed to the assembled hacks. McBride did not trouble to read any of it. He was riveted by the gap in the text – it had been left by someone with an obsessive predilection for neatness, manipulating an exceedingly sharp blade. He had fully expected a passage to be excised yet, when actually faced by its absence, it still had the capacity to startle him. Once again he reluctantly admired the meticulous craftsmanship of the deadly hand which had removed the words. It was not something he dwelt on. Of much greater importance was the nature of the words themselves. He needed to know where the trail of death was heading and if the journey was nearly over.

  McBride noted the paragr
aphs on either side of the missing passage so he could ascertain what had been cut out. Then he travelled across the city to the headquarters of The Press and Journal to purchase an undamaged copy of a paper of the same date. As he entered the two-storey block off the Lang Stracht, McBride remembered that, only a few months earlier, his old employers, DC Thomson’s, owners of The Courier, had purchased the rival Aberdeen Journals group in a £132-million deal that had taken the newspaper world by surprise. Not for the first time, he marvelled at the business acumen of the reclusive Dundee press barons who made little fuss but much money and still retained a contented and loyal workforce.

  He had personal reasons for his sense of satisfaction at the takeover of the Aberdeen titles. As a junior Courier reporter, he had been sent as a one-man team into the disputed Mearns area to fight a circulation war with a rival six-strong pack of Press and Journal hacks.

  Got you in the end, he said silently.

  The receptionist who came back from the circulation department bearing the newspaper was polite but not really interested. She took his money and went back to picking at her cuticles.

  McBride began reading the paper before he was out of the building. The story of the murder of Claire Bowman led the front page but the part of the report he was after was in the carry-forward contained in the main body of the daily. He stopped walking and pulled his notebook from a pocket to remind himself of the paragraphs he had jotted down. Then he scanned the words of the local reporter to locate the few words that had forced him to drive at speed from Dundee.

  They had been spoken by DCI Brewster before he had lapsed into comedy mode – ‘… it isn’t over yet – there is still some work to be done. Once it is complete, everyone will have a clearer picture of what this is about …’

  A chill raced up McBride’s spine and stopped at the collar of his shirt. The hairs on his neck jerked up. He felt a hand grab inside his stomach and the saliva in his mouth drained away. The passage referred to the routine early stages of police investigation and, in their context on the page, were unremarkable. But the message he was being given appeared to be unmistakable. The killing of Claire Bowman isn’t the end – it’s part of the series … the deaths aren’t being forecast to continue – they’re being promised. Uncomfortable as this thought was, it seemed the only logical conclusion McBride could arrive at.

  38

  In a small conference room off the main corridor in the headquarters of Tayside Police, three detectives sat looking at each other. On the table between them were six photographs. Three of the pictures depicted females smiling, relaxed and vibrantly alive. The remainder showed the same women after they were dead – two of them with the life choked out of them, the other lying in a pool of blood that had poured from her innards.

  Although she was the junior officer, DI Petra Novak was directing the meeting because she had called it. She looked in turn at each of the two men sitting opposite and waited for them to say something. For the previous fifteen minutes she had spoken uninterrupted and had tried to persuade them that there was a good and urgent reason why they were there. Their silence and expressions told her they did not agree.

  Detective Chief Inspector James Brewster stood up and took off the jacket of his polyester suit. Sweat stains darkened his armpits and the shirt that had once been white was now starting to stick to his back. He opened the button of the too-tight collar and slackened the knot of his unremarkable tie.

  He was the first to speak. ‘Sorry, dear,’ he said, shaking his head and looking at Petra. His eyes were lifeless and betrayed a complete lack of interest. ‘I just don’t buy it. Serial killer? More like serial waste of time. You haven’t even come close to making a case.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the photographs. ‘Where’s your identical MO? Two of them strangled – by different methods – and the other so viciously assaulted up the jacksie that she bleeds to death.’ He was dismissive. ‘Did nobody tell you at police college that serial loonies always revert to type?’ Brewster sat down and looked at the other man in the room for support.

  Detective Chief Inspector Michael Law was everything that Brewster was not. In his perfectly pressed navy-blue suit, crisp shirt and fashionably discreet tie, he was cool, in control. He’d recently been made up to a divisional head of CID with Fife Police – the name had probably helped. He nodded slowly, wanting to disagree with his pedestrian opposite number from Aberdeen, to distance himself from him, but he was unable to. He spoke deliberately, reluctantly. ‘I understand where you’re coming from, Petra, but Jim’s right. There’s no evidence – just some coincidences,’ he said.

  The DCI from the south side of the River Tay picked up the photographs of Alison Brown, Ginny Williams and Claire Bowman. He leafed through them, studying their laughing faces again but taking no time over their death masks. ‘The fact they all had fathers in the police is interesting but it’s hardly a clincher,’ Law said. ‘Do you know how many policemen there are in the world? It’s a coincidence – maybe a big one – but still just a coincidence.’ He pressed on. ‘All the women come from different parts of the country – one of them from a different part of the world – so where’s your connection?’ He spread his hands. ‘There’s not a single piece of evidence to indicate that their paths might have crossed, never mind them actually knowing each other. OK, there might have been sexual activity before they died but the DNA is different so we have different killers.’ He looked at Petra, crossed his arms over his immaculate jacket, leaned back in his seat and waited for her to respond.

  She did so at once. ‘Surely they told you at police college that the victims of serial killers rarely know each other,’ she said, defiance filling her voice. ‘I’m not aware that the thirteen women Peter Sutcliffe hit with his hammer attended tea parties together. Or, for that matter, that the thirty-plus victims of Ted Bundy ever clapped eyes on each other. They came from different states across America, for God’s sake. The thing that unites the victims is the person who put them to death. You both know that. I understand what you’re saying about sex but who’s to say that the person who left the DNA has to be the murderer? I can give you an explanation for that.’

  ‘Give it,’ Brewster and Law said in unison.

  ‘Right, what about this?’ Petra said. ‘You have a perv – let’s say he’s a cop – who watches through the window as the victims have sex with their boyfriends. But he’s not just a peeping Tom who gets his satisfaction by doing this and playing with himself – he’s a homicidal maniac who has to do more. So he waits until the boyfriends leave. Then he goes in and pleasures himself in the way he likes best – by satisfying his blood lust. OK, I know you can easily pick holes in all that but it shows there are possibilities.’

  Brewster and Law looked at each other but said nothing.

  Before they could respond, Petra rose from her chair and walked round the table until she was standing beside them. She looked at them in turn again, this time not inviting them to speak but willing them to remain silent. ‘It’s because you can’t cope with the idea that a policeman might be who we’re after, isn’t it? You just can’t handle that, can you?’ She knew she was being insubordinate but didn’t care.

  DCI Law looked up at her, ignoring her rebelliousness. His lips moved slightly. He smiled sardonically. ‘And you can’t manage the idea that your boyfriend from the press might be wrong, can you?’ he said, his eyes not leaving her face.

  Almost before he stopped speaking a crimson flush had rushed up from DI Novak’s neck and into her cheeks. ‘He’s not my boyfriend – definitely not.’ She spat out the last two words with firmness. ‘Are you really saying the notes he was sent and the pieces cut from the newspapers in the library have no relevance?’ She struggled to keep a mocking tone from her voice.

  Brewster and Law fought to be first to reply. The detective chief inspector from Aberdeen won. ‘How do you know someone’s not just having him on? Taking the piss?’ Brewster said. ‘It has been known. Just because he’s a
flash investigative reporter from London doesn’t mean somebody can’t make a horse’s backside of him.’ Brewster laughed at the prospect.

  The composed DCI Law waited for Brewster’s mirth to subside. He brushed non-existent fluff from the razor crease of his trousers, smoothed down the silk tie with its shadow stripe. ‘Look, Petra, just because poor Claire Bowman was raped and murdered by an ASP baton, it doesn’t follow it was a policeman who was using it,’ he said. ‘They’re not exactly impossible to acquire if you’re a civvy.’

  She had been saving some ammunition. ‘It wasn’t just a police baton,’ she said softly. ‘The tie used to strangle Alison Brown was black. So was the belt that throttled Ginny Williams. I’ve checked and the belt is identical to the kind issued to some forces. Sounds like parts of a police uniform to me.’

  Law interrupted, ‘The tie – full length, was it?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Novak answered, an unspoken question on her face.

  ‘That rules us out then,’ Law replied with a gleeful smile. ‘All our guys wear clip-ons. Or is that something else they neglected to explain to you at police college? Can’t have the villains strangling us when we’re fighting them off!’

  Law looked over at Brewster. They laughed together, simultaneously licking their index fingers before holding them up. ‘One–nil,’ they said in unison.

  Petra remained silent, allowing them their moment of triumph. Her mind was in overdrive. She had a flashback to a semi-formal evening at the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan. ‘Not quite, gentlemen,’ she said slowly. ‘Some senior officers still prefer proper length ties. Ask around and I think you’ll find I’m right.’ She wet the index finger on her right hand and lifted it. ‘One–all, I think,’ she said.