Praise for Craig Robertson
‘Robertson’s work is marked by crisp prose, smart storylines and an inventiveness most authors would envy’
Eva Dolan
‘The writing is stellar, the characters vivid and memorable and the plot strong and full of surprises. The Last Refuge should certainly enhance Craig Robertson’s reputation as one of Scotland’s leading crime writers’
Ragnar Jonasson
‘Masterful! Craig Robertson certainly knows how to hook a reader’ Kati Hiekkepelto
‘It’s a great murder mystery’ James Oswald
‘A tense torch-lit trek through a hidden city you never knew existed’
Christopher Brookmyre
‘Doing for Glasgow, what Rankin did for Edinburgh’
Mirror
‘A revenge thriller with a twist’ Sun
‘Cracking dialogue, a captivating plot and that wonderful sense of place’ The Australian
‘Every man has to have a hobby’
– Ed Gein, American murderer and grave robber who made household objects from human body parts.
He gave the reply when asked why he’d done what he did.
Prologue
We saw her the minute she stepped inside, thinking herself so clever just for being there. It must have taken all of two seconds for her to switch from smug to scared. The unwarranted confidence spilling from her like blood from a slashed wrist.
Coming in here is like entering a maze with all the lights turned off. We’re here, waiting for her, watching her stumble around in search of us. She’s sure we’re inside but now she’s afraid because she realises she doesn’t know where she’s going. Us? We can see in the dark.
This is our place. Us and people like us. She, on the other hand, is an intruder.
She’s just blundering around, pushing buttons, hoping for the best. She’s treading on mines and traps every step she takes but she’s too stupid to even notice.
She is inside the most dangerous place on the planet and she doesn’t know it.
This is the darkest place you can imagine. She’ll find that out soon enough.
We don’t mind her coming looking because it was inevitable that someone would eventually do so. We do resent her misplaced confidence, though. We object to her cheek.
Someone must have given her a key, because there’s no other way in. This place is impenetrable without an invitation. Governments have tried and failed to get in – and stay in – here. Experts in terrorism, fraud, money laundering and people trafficking have spent millions trying to be inside. Representatives of every significant branch of law enforcement have done the same. It remains beyond their reach.
This is a place where people are actively working to have a world leader assassinated. Where you can buy or sell children. Or guns or drugs. Where you can have someone killed or abducted, provide a new identity or the opportunity to disappear. And us? We deal in murder.
In this place you will find anything you want and everything you fear.
Welcome to the dark web. Good luck trying to get out again. Good luck trying to stay alive.
CHAPTER 1
THURSDAY 21, APRIL 2016
A Glasgow railway station on a cold April morning is a lonely place to die. It’s a pretty soulless place to wait for a train, too.
Not even the promise of sunrise offers much hope of chasing away the chill and putting heat into their bones. They’re all sleepwalkers, lumbering from foot to foot and shivering as they await their train north.
Nathan watches them with amusement and contempt, seeing the same old dance ready to repeat itself. Unsociable bastards, the lot of them. They barely look at each other, instead staring at the electronic noticeboard high above Queen Street’s concourse, willing the platform number to appear. They all know it will soon say platform seven but, no, they need the proof before their eyes.
They need to actually see it change before they’ll allow themselves to shamble through the barriers and get on board in search of a seat to themselves. It’s always the same.
He looks around and doesn’t see any familiar faces, but they’re all recognisable in their own ways. There’s the guys in the suits stuffed with self-importance and trying to hide whisky breath with packets of mints. There’s women in sharp two-piece numbers, clutching laptops, newspapers and handbags, their collars turned up against the morning air. Then there’s the rucksack crew in walking shoes and fleeces and three days of stubble, all ready to sleep until somewhere north of Perth. There are teenagers in hoodies, night-shift workers heading for their beds and a few who look like they missed the last train and are being poured onto the first one instead.
There are holdalls and suitcases, sports bags and shoulder bags and there are plastic bags that clink with fuel for the journey. They’re all here, cold and weary and ready to go. All waiting for the platform number to become the magic seven.
Nathan isn’t any different. He’s keen to get going, too, and frustrated at seeing the four-carriage train just sitting there but not being allowed on board. Come on. It’s bloody freezing out here, just finish whatever it is you have to do and let us inside.
It isn’t six o’clock yet but there are maybe fifty or sixty people waiting and doing the cold-feet shuffle. Some of them are hugging plastic cups of coffee, others are rubbing their hands and blowing out air that fogs in front of their faces. All just looking at the board and waiting and . . .
There. The digital numbers flash and change and, sure enough, it’s platform seven. About time. You can almost hear them all think it. Everyone moves.
Here we go, the same old nonsense as they get on. Look at them pretending not to hurry but desperate to get there before anyone else, quickening their step in the hope of a seat with a table and no neighbours, ready to put down bags or newspapers to mark their territory and, above all, eager to be facing forward. Oh, and his personal favourite, the selfish sods that sit on the outside of two seats to stop anyone else sitting beside them. People are pathetic.
There they go, moving to the far carriages in the hope that they will be empty and they won’t have to look at anyone else or have their space invaded. And God forbid they might actually have to talk to another human being. Train passengers may be the most unsociable bunch on the planet. Nathan despises them and maybe that just makes him as bad as they are.
He shakes his head as he watches them go to the far end and smiles, knowing they won’t be able to get the peaceful commute they seek. It’s like a plane load of tourists all flying to the same deserted island in search of paradise. It just doesn’t work out the way you want.
He gets into the first carriage. It will do him just fine.
There’s still four minutes to go and the seats are filling up around him. A young Chinese couple get in the seats in front and he can hear their low chatter, doubtless complaining about the cold. A large guy sits down across the aisle and spends a couple of minutes noisily stuffing a jacket, a coat, a scarf and hat and a duffel bag into the overhead space.
It’s 05.55 and the doors are closed. One minute to go until the first train stretches and yawns and lurches out of Glasgow towards Aberdeen. The guard on the platform looks like he’s just fallen out of his bed, hair dishevelled and eyes bleary. He takes a final scratch at his beard and a last look at the clock before raising his flag and blowing his whistle. 05.56. Time to go.
The train rocks and moves and the carriages are reluctantly forced to follow. The Chinese teenagers move their heads together and kiss. All the antisocial bastards in their individual little neighbourless seats breathe a sad wee sigh of relief that they’ve secured some room for themselves.
They slide down the right-hand side of Queen Street’s walls, a low rumble as they take their
leave. The nose of the train enters the tunnel under the city’s streets and leads them slowly into blackness before remerging just moments later back into the mist-shrouded break of day.
He hears the first scream, or maybe it’s the second. It’s distant but unmistakable and ripples back through the carriages in waves. The people round him hear it, too, and there’s instant confusion and panic. The young couple in front are straining forward to hear and the large guy opposite is standing as he tries to see what the hell is going on.
The screams are closer and louder and multiplied. They’re not rippling back now, they’re flowing. It’s a tsunami. Shouting and obvious panic from up ahead.
Then a screech and a sudden stall that sends everyone back in their seat as the train slows dramatically. He knows someone has pulled the emergency cord and stopped the beast in its tracks. The brakes are on and they are only inching forward now.
The screams become deafening. The screams are from the carriage in front and from his.
Everyone is looking at it. The blue latticed bridge up to their right. The bridge and the naked body that’s hanging from it.
He pushes his face to the window, frosting the glass with the sudden explosion of his breath. The man’s head is slumped forward, choked at the neck, but they can all still see his eyes bulging, wide and terrified but lifeless. His arms are by his sides and two dark streaks of red run from his chest down across the white of his bare flesh. It’s blood, streaming down his torso and thighs.
From around him, Nathan hears familiar metallic clicks and looks up and down the carriage to see people on their mobile phones. They are photographing the body that is swinging from the rope.
The Chinese girl has her head buried in her boyfriend’s chest but, even as she does that, he is snapping away. Click. Click. Click.
They don’t know what else to do. They scream and they photograph. They are horrified and bewildered and disgusted but they click and click and click.
Nathan takes a photograph too. He takes several. However, he isn’t as shocked as everyone else is to see the hanging body. Nathan put him there.
CHAPTER 2
Standing still in a crime scene is like catching your breath in a whirlpool. Controlled chaos reigns around you and for a moment you can be fooled into thinking it’s you who are moving and that everything and everyone else is a frozen blur.
Tony Winter stood just long enough to fall into the trap. He drank in the familiarity of his surroundings, the barked orders and the frenzied flit of bodies, the unhurried haste and the guilty vibe of people high on the rush of something awful. It had been his world for so long and, even now, when it had turned upside down, it seemed as right as it was wrong.
A few yards away, and maybe forty feet above his head, hung the body that was at the centre of the vortex. Everything worked round that. It was their reason for being.
He took the camera that was slung around his neck and used the zoom to focus in on the man. Fair hair, pale skin turned paler still. Already there was vivid purple discoloration in his legs and feet, gravity causing the blood to settle. The twin streaks of blood down his pallid torso were – Winter closed in further – coming directly from the man’s nipples. Or rather where the nipples should have been.
Winter’s camera picked out the rough fibres of the thick rope that clung to the victim’s neck and suspended him from the bridge. He traced back down to the man’s slumped head and those straining eyes, down, down, all the way to the rough ground spattered in blood and the strange stack of clothing that sat way below the body.
He backed up a few yards, taking in more of the scene between him and the hanging figure. Lifting his camera again, he made a few quick adjustments to change the exposure, then framed the man and let the busy army of uniformed cops, detectives and forensics walk across his shot. The effect was to leave the body perfectly in focus but the white-suited figures became shadows of themselves, a welcome party of ghosts for the recently departed.
Slowly, however, one of the ghosts turned and looked straight back at him through the lens. This one was fully focused.
‘Tony, what the hell are you doing behind the tape? You forget you don’t work for us any more?’
It was less than a year since Winter had made the leap from police photographer to photo-journalist. From Forensic Services to the Scottish Standard. He still wasn’t sure if it made him poacher turned gamekeeper or the other way round. Maybe it just meant he was now outside the tent, peeing in. Except he had just been caught sneaking inside.
He shrugged unapologetically at DS Rico Giannandrea, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. ‘No, but I think a couple of the uniforms forgot again. They recognised me but no one wanted to stop me.’
Giannandrea scowled at him. ‘Well I’m stopping you now. Do I need to rip the memory card from that camera or are you going to remember the rules? And the law?’
‘No need. I’m just trying to do my job, Rico.’
Giannandrea shook his head and lowered his voice. ‘Just don’t make mine any harder. You know if it was anyone else I’d kick their arse. And don’t call me Rico. Not here. Go on, beat it, Tony. You’ll be in even more trouble if she catches you in here.’
Winter didn’t doubt the truth of that but in itself it wouldn’t make him stop. He had a job to do and so did she. The trouble was that his job and hers weren’t always exactly compatible.
Giannandrea’s phone buzzed and he listened briefly before ending the call. ‘That’s her coming now, Tony. Do us both a favour and get fifty yards back that way as fast as you can.’
With a sharp nod, Winter hustled back towards the station, managing to duck under the tape next to a startled constable just before she got there. Job to do or not, he didn’t see the point in making life any more difficult for himself than he needed to. In any case, he already had what he came for.
When DI Rachel Narey reached the tape and saw him standing there, a fleeting look of exasperation crossed her face. Her eyebrows lifted in a familiar expression. It said, ‘Here we go again.’ It said, ‘Speak later’ and it said, ‘Stay the hell out of my crime scene.’
Narey and Giannandrea were standing on the rubble-strewn path next to the track out of Queen Street. Directly above their heads the naked figure swung slowly in the morning breeze, making them dizzy.
They stretched their necks back, looking up into the light mist, seeing the soles of the young man’s feet, seeing the streaks of red down his torso and legs, and the purple settling of lividity. His eyes popped and his neck was scored raw by the rope that hung him. It was a horrific sight and they couldn’t help but stare.
Beyond the body, all they could see was bridge and brick, then a misty, miserable canvas of grey. Against that, he swayed, ashen white as if crucified on an invisible cross. A scrub of fair chest hair was daubed in blood and his mouth hung open, frozen in a twist of terror.
‘Fuck.’
The word slipped so casually from Giannandrea that she wasn’t sure he even knew he’d said it. They’d both seen plenty in their time and this was more of the same but different. Another shade of the familiar still had the power to shock.
The site smelled of death and daybreak. Something dead and something reborn. She imagined she could smell his flesh decaying over the freshness of morning dew and clean air.
The ground at their feet was a minefield of blood spots and they had to pick where they stood with care. Looking straight up, necks craned, it was all too easy to imagine fresh drops falling like rain onto their faces. Narey blinked but, when she reopened her eyes, the body was still there, still swinging, still dead.
Behind them, the noise from the station was chaotic. Restless engines rumbled, eager to move but confined to base. Sirens blared as emergency reinforcements arrived, struggling to be heard over the incessant excited chatter that rose to the roof and back again. Closer, the scene buzzed with people and questions, everyone with a job to do but everyone taking time to sneak another look at th
e young man on the rope.
‘Fuck,’ Giannandrea muttered again.
The area within the arc of the body was already salted with yellow numbered markers indicating blood drops and a couple of partial footprints. Marker number six was next to a neat pile of clothing positioned on the stones way below the body. Jeans, shirt, jacket, sweater. All perfectly folded and stacked on top of a pair of white trainers. It looked like they’d been tidied and placed there by an over-attentive mother.
The corners of each piece of clothing matched the others perfectly. It was obsessively neat. Like a return from the best laundry in town, except they were spattered with blood drops from the swinging figure above.
Narey crouched down and saw that the clothes were worn but fresh, good-quality and fashionable. She poked a gloved finger into the pile and revealed a designer label sticking out of the collar of the shirt and saw another expensive logo on the breast of the sweater.
She knew the initial search of the clothes had produced a photo driving licence in a pocket of the jeans. It declared him to be Aiden McAlpine, a twenty-three-year-old from Knightswood in the city’s West End. As she looked up again, he looked even younger. Pale and scared. Lost and needing to be rescued. He needed to be taken home to his mother.
Narey stood again, turning to walk across to the track, positioning herself where the train would have been, trying to see what the passengers would have seen. They couldn’t have missed him.
Giannandrea had said it had been the first train out of the station. The driver saw him initially but then the whole train did. Someone hit the emergency alarm and the driver slammed on the brakes. It hadn’t picked up any speed so was able to stop quickly. That turned out not to be the best idea, as it left two carriages with a front row-seat.
In seconds, the bloody photos were all over Twitter. Ghoulish? Of course it was, but that’s how people are. It went viral in no time. In the twenty minutes it had taken her to get to the track, the body had been seen all over the world.
Murderabilia Page 1
