by T F Muir
He stepped off the hallway and into the blackness of the kitchen, the soles of his shoes pulling on something spilt on the floor. By the dimmed silhouette of the kitchen window he caught the dull silver flash of water running from the tap into the sink. By the corner of the window, a curtain fluttered, and a cold wind blew in through a broken pane.
He reached forward, turned off the tap.
The kitchen fell into silence.
He stood still, cocked his head in the darkness, strained to catch any sounds, no longer within earshot of Jessie. His eyes were developing their night vision, and shape by shape the kitchen came into view – the sink unit, overhead cabinets, dark blots for pictures on walls, a table, chairs and—
His blood chilled. His breath locked.
He gripped the sink unit to steady himself, his eyes straining at the shape on—
A lock clicked.
The door burst open.
He dropped to the floor—
A light flickered, flashed at his eyes.
‘Andy?’ Jessie stepped across the threshold. ‘You all right?’
‘Bloody hell,’ Gilchrist snarled, pulling himself upright. ‘You scared the . . .’ But his voice trailed off as the light from Jessie’s mobile shivered around the room and settled on a body slumped on the kitchen table.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ Jessie said. ‘I thought I was moving up to Fife for a life of handing out speeding tickets. That’s two, and we’re not even through the first day yet.’
Gilchrist shuffled to the kitchen table and almost stumbled.
He looked down at his feet. ‘Make that three,’ he said.
* * *
They found the fuse box in a cupboard off the hall, under the staircase, and switched on the lights to a scene straight from hell.
The knees of Gilchrist’s jeans were stained with days’ old blood that spread across the kitchen floor, semi-congealed, thick and dark as treacle.
Both victims were young women, about the same age as the woman off the Coastal Path, as best Gilchrist could tell. And both appeared to have been killed by multiple stab wounds to the chest and neck.
The woman on the floor lay supine, her eyes half-closed, her blouse as bloodied as a slaughterer’s apron. Her long blonde hair lay wrapped round her neck like a blood-soaked rag. Through the mess, Gilchrist counted eight stab wounds. Cooper would likely find more when the body was stripped of clothing – clothing that looked familiar: white blouse, short black skirt, burgundy high heels to match a leather belt, and bare legs sufficiently parted to confirm no knickers. Tattoos round both ankles in the shape of barbed wire had him frowning for an explanation, and failing. But they might help confirm identification.
The woman slumped against the table appeared to have fewer wounds, but with her body pressed to the table, Gilchrist was not sure. She was dressed as if ready for bed, and other than the flimsiest of negligees was naked.
‘You seen this?’ Jessie said to him.
Gilchrist bent closer to the body on the floor.
Jessie traced the scuff marks on the skin. ‘Rope burns,’ she said, then pointed to four raised welts on the inner arm, close to the elbow. One looked fresher than the others, still glistening with a blister. ‘And how about these?’
‘Cigarette burns?’
‘Human ashtray.’
Gilchrist returned to the dead woman by the table, lifted her left arm from her side. Rigor mortis had come and gone, so the body was at least twenty-four hours old. ‘No rope burns or stub marks,’ he said, ‘but plenty of needle wounds.’ He walked round the back of the chair, did the same with her right arm – no burn marks – then let it dangle once more by her side. He cocked his head to the sound of approaching sirens.
‘Keystone Kops are on their way,’ Jessie said.
Gilchrist opened the back door, revelled in the icy freshness of lungfuls of cold air. The smell of blood coated his tongue. He coughed up, spat on to the back lawn. From the front of the cottage, he heard the squealing of tyres. Then behind him, the heavy trundle of footsteps running along the hall.
Nance burst into the kitchen, followed by a uniformed constable.
She stopped when she saw the mess.
She glared at Jessie, then Gilchrist. ‘Anybody hurt?’ she demanded.
Jessie pulled herself to her feet, looking short and flabby next to Nance’s lithe figure. ‘Could’ve been sliced and diced by the time you got here.’
‘Did you call it in?’ Nance said.
‘I did.’
‘Next time don’t say it’s an emergency when it isn’t.’
‘Didn’t know it wasn’t when I called.’
‘It looks friendly enough.’
‘We haven’t checked upstairs yet,’ Jessie said.
Without taking her eyes from Jessie, Nance turned her head to the PC behind her and said, ‘Check it out.’
Jessie snorted.
Nance stepped forward, eyes to the floor, making sure she did not step in any blood. She leaned down for a closer look, and eased back a clotted strand of bloodied hair. Then she gasped, and pushed herself upright. ‘Ah, fuck. She’s been decapitated.’
Gilchrist frowned. ‘And her head replaced?’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Christmas present?’ Jessie said.
Gilchrist and Nance stared at her.
‘Surprise-surprise, is what I mean. But it also explains the mess.’ Jessie stared at the floor as if to emphasise her point. ‘All ten pints by the looks of things,’ she said, then crouched down for a closer inspection.
Gilchrist turned away. Cooper would send him the details. Overhead, the sound of creaking floorboards gave an indication of the PC’s progress. Gilchrist scuffed his shoes on a rug, clearing the tackiness from his soles, then left the kitchen.
Although tight, the attic had been built out to create a bedroom of sloped ceilings low enough for Gilchrist to tilt his head. The air was thick enough to taste – a stale mixture of body odour and urine, with a faecal undertone. A plain quilt, nailed to the floor, ceiling and walls of a bay window, was edged with heavy binding tape, as good as any blackout curtain. Four single mattresses, stripped of sheets, and stained with urine and bloodied spots, lined a wooden floor as bare as an army barracks. Crushed bedsheets that had not seen the inside of a washing machine for weeks, maybe months, lay crumpled in the far corner.
The young constable – Gilchrist now recognised PC Dan Morton – was on his knees between the first two mattresses. He looked up as Gilchrist approached. ‘Look at this, sir.’
Screwed into the floorboards was a metal ring, heavy and thick enough to moor a fair-sized yacht in Crail harbour. A frayed rope end was knotted round it. Despite its apparent sturdiness, PC Morton gripped the ring and twisted it against its base, managing to ease it from the floorboards by a quarter of an inch or so to reveal a rough-edged rim.
Gilchrist brushed his fingers on the floor beside the ring, collected frayed pieces of rope fibre, and came to see that someone – the Coastal Path woman? – had rubbed her way free from this bed. He pushed to his feet, almost bumped his head on the ceiling. Between the other two mattresses, an identical ring was screwed into the floor. He knelt down, gave it a tug, but it was fastened to the floorboards as securely as a metal-to-metal weld. He eyed the mess, already computing the obvious.
Four mattresses. Three bodies. One missing?
‘For crying out loud, can someone open the window?’ Jessie stood framed in the doorway. ‘This place smells like a hooker’s jock strap.’
Morton looked at her as if she had spoken in Chinese.
Jessie stepped into the attic room. ‘Rugby, son. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.’
From downstairs, Gilchrist heard the subdued shuffle of feet.
The SOCOs had arrived.
‘What’ve you found?’ Jessie asked him.
‘This.’ He showed her the metal ring.
She fingered it, her touch light, as if considering a piec
e of jewellery. Then she stood up and, short though she was, was that close to the wall that she had to duck her head. ‘Is there another one of these between the other two mattresses?’ she asked.
‘There is,’ said Gilchrist. ‘Why?’
Jessie stared off to some spot over Gilchrist’s shoulder, then came back to him with a burning look. ‘Two years ago we infiltrated a trafficking gang run by the Krukov twins, a pair of Russian gangsters. As big as the Klitschko brothers, they were, only they didn’t believe in the Queensberry Rules. Whatever they wanted, they took. And whoever stood in their way, they killed.’
‘Infiltrated?’
She nodded. ‘One of our team worked undercover for almost a year, gave us names, addresses, how many women they were bringing in, when, and where from, the works. We had everything set up to take them down, and enough evidence to lock them in Barlinnie and throw away the key. But the day before we were planning to move in, our man turned up in the Clyde with his head missing and his tongue crammed into his arsehole. Talk about hitting the fan? We went ahead and raided the place, forty-four of us, everyone ready to gut the brothers from their balls to their throats, except . . .’
Gilchrist waited while she stared at the metal ring on the floor.
‘He beat us to it.’
‘He?’
‘Kumar. That’s all we know about him. Could be his first name, or his last, no one really knows for sure. Could even be a nickname.’
‘Beat you to it . . . ?’ Gilchrist asked.
‘The brothers,’ she said. ‘They owned a farm in Duntocher, just west of Glasgow, and kept the women chained up in a barn which used to house cattle over the winter.’ She nodded to the metal ring. ‘These rings are for shackling cows to the walls.’
Gilchrist felt his gaze being pulled to the ring on the floor, the knotted end of rope still looped round it. Not yachts, he thought. But cows. And now girls. Shackled like animals.
‘The barn was used as a kind of holding area,’ Jessie continued, ‘while photos were taken, documents forged, passports, driving licences, fake addresses, even fake electricity and phone bills were produced. And all of it was added to the already exorbitant costs of setting them up in a new country. Illegal aliens, no longer illegal, who had to spend the next five years on their backs with their legs behind their ears before they had any chance of getting back to square one.
‘Brutal, the Krukovs were. When the girls first arrived, they were locked in the barn. No heating, no running water, just cheap, nasty mattresses like these, spread on the concrete floor. The week before the raid we thought we were about to land the motherlode. But when we broke in, the girls were gone, and the barn deserted, except for the Krukov brothers, lying on their backs, stark naked, with their heads sitting on their laps, sucking their cocks.’
Gilchrist let out a rush of air. ‘Kumar killed them?’
‘It’s his calling card, his modus operandi. Head on lap. Cock in mouth. Tongue in arse. That sort of thing. The guy’s a freak and a half.’
‘But you don’t know for sure—’
‘Oh we know it’s him,’ she said. ‘He recorded the beheadings, then sent the DVD as a present. Our man, Gordie, and the brothers getting their heads cut off. But you never see his face. You only hear his voice, telling us he’s teaching us a lesson.’ Her lips pressed together in a white line as tight as a scar. ‘I learned a lesson, all right,’ she said. ‘I learned never to delay. I learned to just go in with guns blazing and worry about the consequences later.’
‘Could get you in trouble,’ Gilchrist offered.
‘Could’ve saved Gordie’s life,’ she said, and moved to the door.
Silent, Gilchrist followed.
At the doorway, she stopped, and faced him. ‘But d’you know what I couldn’t work out?’ she asked, her eyes dancing as if on fire. ‘The metal rings,’ she said. ‘When we broke into the barn, six of them had been removed from the walls. I always wondered why.’ She nodded to the floor. ‘I’d say that’s two of them right there.’
CHAPTER 9
Jessie did not return home until after 10.15 that night.
Angie was still awake but looked as if she was on her second bottle, maybe even her third. She took a sip from a champagne flute and said, ‘Long first day?’
Jessie kicked off her shoes, slumped into the settee. She shook her head when Angie held the bottle out to her. ‘I’m buggered,’ she said. ‘How was Robert?’
‘No trouble at all. In his bedroom. On his computer. It seems to be all kids do these days. All day long—’
‘And night,’ Jessie chipped in.
‘But he’s been fed and watered. Pizza and chips. Hope you don’t mind.’
‘Why would I mind?’
‘Not exactly proper food, is it? But I was knackered. Left you some pizza. Chips got scoffed, I’m afraid.’
‘I’ll have a slice for breakfast.’
Angie took another sip. ‘So how was your first day at the office?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘No, really, I do. Tell me.’
‘Three bodies. Two murdered, one frozen to death.’
Angie guffawed. ‘I can see a joke coming out of this.’
‘No joke.’
‘You serious?’
‘As I said, you don’t want to know.’
‘Jesus, Jessie. I don’t know how you can do that job of yours.’
‘Well, I won’t be doing it for much longer if Robert can get my comedy routine up to snuff.’
‘How’s that coming along?’
Jessie snorted, then shook her head at the reality of it. ‘More or less shite.’
Angie chuckled. ‘Seriously.’
‘I am being serious. I don’t think I’m any bloody use at it. I’m really doing it for Robert. Trying out his jokes for him.’ She felt a smile tug her lips at the thought of Robert having his hearing fixed and being able to follow his dream. Her smile stretched to a yawn, and she said, ‘I’ll stick my head in and see Robert before I hit the hay.’
‘Want me to waken you in the morning?’
‘Don’t bother. I’ll be up before you. Andy wants me in at seven.’
‘Andy?’
‘Fife Constabulary’s Detective Chief Inspector Andrew James Gilchrist of St Andrews Crime Management Division.’
‘At seven in the morning? The slave-driver. You sure he’s not going to try you out for an early-morning knee-trembler?’
‘Once he sees my dog’s balls for eyes,’ Jessie said, ‘he’ll be trembling all right.’
‘What’s he like? Could you fancy him?’
‘Not half. He’s a looker, even for his age. But I’m not his type. Dr Rebecca look-at-me-posing-like-a-haddy-in-my-green-wellies Cooper call-me-Becky,’ Jessie chimed, ‘is more his type. He doesn’t have the time of day for someone like me.’
Angie lifted her fluted glass. ‘Away with you. A bit of eyeshadow, some lipstick, and those sultry eyes of yours’ll have him eating out of your hand, or anywhere else you’d like.’
‘Give up, Angie.’
‘That’s what I do.’
Jessie looked at her, waiting for the punchline. But Angie returned her look with an impish grin. ‘That’s what you do?’ Jessie said.
Angie nodded. ‘Want some details?’
‘Got any more of that champoo then?’
Angie pushed herself to her feet, stuttered for a moment as if working out whether to sit or stand, then said, ‘It’s not real champoo, just cava.’
‘Perfect.’
Jessie’s morning arrived with a start and a snorted grunt.
She fumbled for the light switch, scrunched her eyes from a burst of brightness, then picked up her mobile. She peered at it through eyes that hurt – 6.25. Bloody hell. How can you sleep through an alarm?
She slapped her feet to the floor and staggered to the bathroom.
The mirror almost gave her a fright but she ran her fingers through her hair, working out if
she could go another day without washing it. This late, she had two choices – go to the office with straw hair, or have a shower with no time to blow dry and go with rat-tails.
Rat-tails won, and ten minutes later she was towelling herself down.
She pulled on black denim jeans, the ones with the elastic waist, tucked her blouse and her stomach in, zipped up, and turned sideways. Not as bad as in the nude. She exhaled, slid her feet into black suede kitten heels, hoped it wasn’t raining – a peek through the curtains to reveal a morning as black as midnight, so was none the wiser – then pulled on her grey turtleneck cashmere sweater she bought for a fiver. Well, it felt like cashmere. A dab of lipstick, a smudged finger stroke of kohl pencil, and DS Jessie Janes was good to go.
Except she felt like shit warmed up.
She stuck her head into Robert’s room – sound asleep – and couldn’t resist creeping in and giving him a kiss on his cheek. His skin felt damp and clammy, and she worried that he might be developing a cold. She pushed her fingers through his hair, with a whispered promise to text him later.
She was only eleven minutes late when she reached the office, and Gilchrist was already briefing his team. She expected him to say something like, Good of you to turn up this afternoon, DS Janes, the way Lachie always did, but Gilchrist gave her a smile and a nod without missing a beat.
‘. . . and Mhairi, bring Angus in and sit him down and go through the pile, see if he can ID our man. He’s our best shot. We need him to make that ID.’ He searched the faces, found who he was looking for, and referred to his notes. ‘Right, Baxter, you take McIver, Wilkes and Rennie, and do house-to-house through Kingsbarns. Somebody’s seen something, heard something, thought something. They must have. And if you come up empty-handed, spread out. Focus on hotels, restaurants, shops, anywhere our man might have shown his face. He has to eat, so he has to shop, and he’ll likely drink alcohol, regardless of his denomination. Nance is in charge of putting names to the faces and fingerprints. AFIS for starters.’
