The Photographer

by Craig Robertson

‘I’m Detective Inspector Rachel Narey. How can I help you? Please, sit down.’

  She was still intent on standing, that was obvious, but Narey took a seat and waited until the woman had little choice but to follow suit.

  The woman was perhaps in her mid-thirties, brown eyes, nervous and agitated, as Masterson had said. There was something off about her look. She was pretty but wore too much make up, particularly around her eyes and cheeks, as if she was hiding behind it. Something else too; Narey just couldn’t figure what it was.

  ‘It’s Leah, is that right?’

  ‘Yes, Leah Watt. I need someone to help me. To listen to me. I’ve been here before but things have changed. What I mean is, my case is still open but there’s . . . I mean, I know something I didn’t know before. Shit, I’m not making sense. What I . . .’

  The words tripped over each other in her rush to get them out.

  ‘Slow down Leah, please. Look, let me get us both a tea or coffee. I’m happy to take as long as you need but this will work better if we relax. Okay?’

  ‘Okay, okay. Thanks. Coffee, please. Thanks.’

  Narey left the interview room and headed for the front desk.

  ‘Gordy, can you get someone to rustle up two coffees? One black and sugar, one with milk and no sugar. And she’s talking about her case, saying it’s open. Can you get me the crime report and see what’s there?’

  Masterson handed over the papers. ‘Just done it.’

  Narey cast her eyes over the headline points and her heart sank. ‘Shit.’

  They had to wait nearly forty-five minutes until a SOLO could get to the station, a specialist Sexual Offences Liaison Officer whose job was to take the statement and work a victim through the reporting process. Louise Crichton was dark-haired and intense, content to listen as Leah Watt told her story to Narey.

  ‘It was three months ago. I’d been out with friends, had a few drinks then home to my flat in Partick West. I’d watched a bit of TV but I was tired and starting to nod off so I went to bed. I fell asleep pretty much right away. It was the sound of breaking glass that woke me.

  ‘I knew what I’d heard even though I’d been dead to the world. My heart was thumping like crazy and I was scared but a bit of me was also wondering if I’d just dreamed it. Then I heard footsteps inside the flat. I froze.

  ‘I just didn’t know what to do. I was terrified. I was thinking that I had an alarm, one of those personal alarms that go in your bag and sound a siren if you’re attacked. But my bag was in the other room and so were the footsteps. I still hadn’t moved when the door flew open and he was standing there. In the frame of the door, tall and all dressed in black. A balaclava over his head.

  ‘He moved so quickly. Just rushed across the room and punched me in the face. It hurt like hell but it was more the shock. I’d never been punched before. He punched me again and again. I could taste blood, feel my teeth coming loose. My nose made this horrible noise as he hit it and I nearly passed out but he kept hitting me, I don’t know how many times, until I blacked out.

  ‘I came round, briefly, a while later, God knows how long. The light was on in the room. He was above me. Naked. He was dripping in sweat. And I saw his face. He didn’t see me at first but when he did he swung his fist at me, at my eye. He called me a slag like he was mad at me for waking up. Slag. Slag. Slag. He battered at my face until I disappeared.

  ‘The next thing I knew, it was daylight. My body was in agony and I could only see through one eye. There was blood everywhere, the sheets were soaked in it and so was I. Everything hurt. My head, my eyes, my lips. Inside me. I knew I’d been raped. I couldn’t move, could barely breathe. My head hurt so much. My phone was next to the bed but it’d been smashed. I screamed. It was all I could do, but a neighbour heard and called the police.

  ‘They had to break the door down, found me unconscious – I’d passed out again. Called an ambulance and got me to hospital. I didn’t know anything about it until I woke up there three days later, wired up to machines. They’d put me in an induced coma to prevent my body from collapsing in shock.

  ‘They said I’d been raped several times. There was no semen, no skin under my fingernails, no DNA that was any use, no fingerprints in the house that weren’t mine or family and friends.

  ‘My eye socket was smashed and had to be repaired. It still isn’t right, still tender to the touch. My cheek was broken and it’s still a bit flatter on that side than the other. Two teeth were pushed back into my palate, my lip was burst. I had two broken ribs. Lost a lot of blood.

  ‘They think he left me for dead. I very nearly was.

  ‘When I could, I gave them a description of him. Tall, maybe six feet two or three, but slim. Wiry. He had these very pale blue eyes. Like ice. He had thick, dark hair, not long but not short either. His face was lean, like he was a runner or something. I remembered a smell too, like musk or sweat. It was all I could tell them and it wasn’t much use.

  ‘Nothing happened. Nothing.

  ‘I’m sure they did all they could but they got nowhere. They were nice and kind but they couldn’t find him. Couldn’t catch him.

  ‘When I was fitter, I moved back home, with my mum and dad. I just couldn’t go back to the flat. Couldn’t face it. The Family Protection Unit came round to see me, kept me up to date with what was happening. Which wasn’t much. I got counselling and that helped but I still didn’t sleep much, didn’t go out. I was scared all the time, scared he’d come back and find me. That he’d do it again.’

  Narey sat in silence through most of it. She felt useless, able to offer nothing more than a sympathetic ear. She had to fight back tears, something she wasn’t used to. Murder investigations called for a cool head, leaving your emotions at home. This was different and something that, unlike the SOLO, she simply wasn’t trained for. Leah’s story shifted her compass.

  She wasn’t in her mid-thirties as Narey had thought – she was just twenty-seven. The heavy use of make-up was explained, so too the raised eye socket that she couldn’t quite pick up on at first. The nervousness was obvious and completely understandable. The agitation was new, though. Something had caused that and brought her running through the night and the rain. Narey braced herself to hear what it was.

  ‘I’d been in my room reading a few hours ago. I stay up late now because I struggle to get to sleep, so when I went downstairs my mum and dad had gone to bed. The newspaper was there, the Daily Record, and I picked it up to flick through it. And I saw him.

  ‘It was definitely him. I maybe couldn’t have described his face but I knew it when I saw it.

  ‘It was a story about his company, how he’d made all this money before and sold the business for a fortune. A chatroom site. He had some new venture and there were photographs. A photograph of him.

  ‘His name’s William Broome. It’s him. I know it’s him.’

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘I screamed into a pillow so my mum and dad wouldn’t hear me. I was nearly sick. Seeing him made it all real. I know that probably doesn’t make any sense but until I saw that photograph, it was like the bogey man had broken into my house and did that to me. Like it was just some horrible, never-ending nightmare. But he’s real. He’s living a life. He’s still out there.

  ‘That fucking bastard beat me and raped me and now he’s getting his picture in the paper like he’s a star.’

  Leah’s hands were knotted into nervous bunches and her voice was cracking. Narey felt the urge to sweep her up and hug her.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. I was crying in my room for maybe an hour. Part of me didn’t want to do anything. Just curl up and forget I’d seen it. A big part of me still does. But I’m here because I’m scared and because I want someone to do something about him.’

  With that she looked Narey straight in the eyes, leaving no doubt as to who that someone was. Narey could feel the SOLO fidget beside her, and knew she was looking at her but ignored it.

  ‘Leah, I’m here to help you and
I really will do anything I can, but I’m not a specialist in this field. I can’t pretend that I am. That’s Louise’s job. It might be better if we let her—’

  ‘No! Please. I want you to—’

  They were interrupted by a rap on the interview room door.

  ‘Yes?’

  Gordy Masterson opened the door and stuck his head round. ‘Do you have a minute, DI Narey?’

  She gave him half a smile. ‘I’m busy right now, Sergeant. Can it wait?’

  ‘It can, ma’am. Fresh coffees?’

  ‘That would be great. Thanks.’

  The door closed behind him and Leah looked at Narey curiously. ‘What was that about?’

  ‘He was checking if I needed an excuse to get out of here, but I don’t.’

  ‘An excuse in case I was some kind of crazy?’

  ‘Something like that, yes. Gordy is old school. He knows that officers can get trapped in interviews when members of the public want them to go on longer than maybe they need to. So, if he’s in a good mood, then he’ll come into rescue them after a while.’

  ‘But you don’t need rescuing?’ It was as much a plea as a question.

  ‘No. You’ve got us for as long as it takes.’

  Leah started crying, snuffling and wiping at her eyes. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me yet. Let’s see what we can do. Tell us more about this newspaper article.’

  She sat up, as if startled by remembering something, and reached into her bag to produce a doubled-over piece of newspaper. With nervous fingers, she unfolded and laid it out in front of Narey.

  An advert took up the lower half of the page but the rest was devoted to a story headlined: REALITY CHEQUE: GLASGOW TECH FIRM WINS MULTINATIONAL INVESTMENT

  The photograph grabbed her attention. A stripped-back office, spiked by floor-to-ceiling pillars, peopled with casually dressed twenty-something employees and a slightly older man, mid to late thirties, taking centre stage in a brown leather armchair. She didn’t need the caption to tell her this was William Broome.

  He looked confident, bordering on arrogant. Not smiling at the camera, content to let it smile on him instead. He wore jeans and a dress shirt not tucked in at the waist, barefoot as his long legs dangled over the edge of the chair. Narey had no problem in taking a dislike to someone based solely on how they looked.

  She knew she was probably projecting, seeing the man through Leah’s detailing of what he’d done to her, but there was a coldness to his eyes that unsettled her. She’d seen it before in others and it rarely meant anything good.

  Broome’s name was vaguely familiar but his face wasn’t. ‘Reclusive’, the article called him in one line. ‘Camera-shy’ in another. He was described as a technology entrepreneur, the founder of a social media platform called ChitChat which he’d sold for a fortune to a bigger company.

  His new company was called HardWire, and they were working on the next big thing. Of course. The story was shouting about investment from Germany and Japan that would let them continue their work on virtual reality software. It seemed a leap from social media, but then again, maybe not.

  HardWire was based in the Templeton building at Glasgow Green, a huge, ornate Victorian building originally built as a carpet factory, which seemed an even greater leap from whatever technological advances they were planning.

  ‘Had you ever heard of this man, Leah?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘I’m wondering if you’d ever come across him, maybe had mutual acquaintances. Some reason that he’d know you. What do you do for a living?’

  ‘I’m a hairdresser. Was. I haven’t worked since it happened. I gave my job up because I couldn’t be around people I didn’t know.’

  ‘Could this man have been a customer in the past?’

  ‘No. Well, not one I’d ever seen.’

  ‘And do you know anyone that works in technology or computing or even works for this company?’

  ‘No!’

  Louise Crichton fired a warning glance at Narey. The DI read it but already knew she’d been pushing too hard and cursed herself. She had to dial this back quickly before she lost Leah to the other side of the edge she was swaying on.

  ‘Okay Leah, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m here all the way for you but you need to answer some questions from Louise. We need a full statement. Is that okay?’

  It was. Leah was there for another two hours, Crichton gently leading the questioning. Sometimes the words came fluidly and sometimes not, sometimes she was certain and others she was hesitant, eyes all over the room, suddenly less sure of herself. It was completely understandable, but made Narey worry what her reaction would be if they got as far as a court and she had to make the same statement in front of judge, jury and the accused.

  There were more tears and unspoken pleas for reassurance, and promises of support. Somewhere in the middle of a wet October night, they all found something to cling on to.

  William Michael Broome was born on 23 March 1979 in Glasgow. His parents were Michael and Elspeth Broome, the father a banker, the mother a bookkeeper. The father left home when Broome was just three, and he was brought up by his mother from that point.

  He went to school at Merrylee Primary and Hillpark Secondary before going on to the University of Glasgow to study computing science. He lasted just two years before a mutual parting of the ways, something not explained in his records but apparently not an academic issue. He managed to get another chance at Glasgow Caledonian, where he graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Computing.

  He got jobs with a few start-ups, never staying anywhere too long before forming his own company, ChitChat, in 2005. It never quite rivalled Facebook or Twitter but it caught enough of the market to encourage a buyout by one of the major American companies in 2007. No figures were officially quoted, but words like millions and fortune were regularly used in the press. Even allowing for journalistic exaggeration, he seemed to have done well from the venture, and used the money to launch HardWire.

  He wasn’t really a public figure though, generally only attracting the interest of the trade press and tech blogs. He shunned interviews, was rarely photographed and earned himself the tag ‘King of Unsocial Media’.

  Both the Criminal History System and the UK-wide Police National Computer declared him clean, nothing so much as a parking ticket. The only mention was on a command and control system which flagged up a public row between him and a girlfriend in 2003, which didn’t lead to any police action.

  Now, though, he stood accused of a savage beating and a violent rape. The only evidence Narey had was the word of the victim who, by her own admission, was barely conscious at the time she saw him.

  She needed more. Much more.

  CHAPTER 3

  It had taken five phone calls to identify someone who both could and would talk to her about the end of Broome’s time at the University of Glasgow. It began with a call to a friend who worked in the library there, seeking a handle on the disciplinary procedure and someone who could point her in the right direction.

  Lesley had directed her to a lecturer she knew who’d previously served on the Senate as one of the Assessors for Student Conduct. He had laid out some of the issues that might have caused a student to be thrown off a course but had no knowledge of Broome.

  Serious matters, he told her, would be sent up to the Senate Student Conduct Committee and maybe she should be looking there, providing her with another name to try. The administrator she was put in touch with hadn’t been there long enough but suggested another. It was this person who paused when Narey mentioned Broome’s name and said she remembered the case but that it was ‘complicated’.

  She said that she wasn’t sure anyone would talk about the incident, that she certainly wouldn’t unless forced to, but if anyone would it would be Maurice Fenton.

  Professor Fenton had said that yes, he certainly did remember the Broome case but wouldn’t talk about it over the phone. So it was tha
t Narey was in Gilmorehill in the West End, where the university’s principal campus was situated, climbing a winding set of stairs in search of Fenton’s office.

  She rapped on the door at the end of the second-floor corridor and was called inside. A tall, slender man with long, silver-grey hair was at his desk, reading a sheaf of papers. He was perhaps in his mid fifties, and wore a pair of black spectacles on the end of his nose.

  ‘Professor Fenton?’

  ‘It’s Maurice. DI Narey, I presume.’

  ‘Yes, thanks for agreeing to see me.’

  ‘Take a seat. As I said on the phone, I’m happy to talk to you but I’d rather it was all off the record. At least until such time as you’re conducting an official investigation. Which you say you’re not.’

  She settled into a chair opposite the desk. ‘I’m not. I’m more carrying out background checks, seeing where something might lead. You dealt with this situation involving William Broome in 1999, is that right?’

  ‘Whether anyone actually dealt with it is open to debate but yes, I was involved. I was on the Senate Student Conduct Committee at the time. A student made a complaint that Broome tried to assault her in her room.’

  Narey had to make excuses to herself for the excitement that rippled through her.

  ‘She said that nothing actually happened, but only because she’d hit him on the head with a lamp. Broome, of course, made a counter complaint that she’d struck him. We don’t have the power to investigate sexual assault but as it had stopped short of that, we interviewed both parties.

  ‘Her story was that she’d been chatting with him in the corridor of her student halls. Or she’d been chatted to, was probably more accurate. She made to leave, opened her door and he followed her inside, trying to grope her and push her onto the bed. She warned him off but he only got more insistent so she picked up the lamp from the bedside table, hit him with it and he ran out.

  ‘His version was that they were getting on great, she gave him all the signals and led him into the room then changed her mind and lashed out at him.