Apart from those who’ve been murdered, Winter thought, but didn’t say. He needed to ask some easier questions before he got to the more difficult ones. Archie Cameron had taught him that if there was one question that was likely to get him thrown out of an interview, then ask it last.
‘What was the first thing you collected?’
Dalrymple was wrestling with himself over how much he could trust Winter. On a scale of one to ten, lack of trust probably registered at eleven. But the alternative was to leave Winter to write it as he pleased.
‘A letter written from prison by Peter Manuel. It didn’t say much except how he was innocent and the legal system was conspiring against him. It was written in his own hand from his cell in Barlinnie.’
‘The same hands that had killed nine people?’ Winter bit his tongue, too late, but Dalrymple didn’t seem to notice or care.
‘I suppose that was part of it. But it’s a piece of history first and foremost. Manuel is the most notorious murderer in twentieth-century Scotland. He went on a killing spree that will never be replicated. I’ve no doubt that a relic belonging to him is as valid as that from a politician, a king or an artist.’
Winter nodded, seeing some of the merit of the argument, whether he liked to or not.
‘And how did you get hold of it?’
‘I bought it. Simple as that. I read that it was up for sale and I was willing to pay the asking price.’
‘From whom?’
Dalrymple shook his head firmly. ‘No. That’s always sacrosanct. Identities are protected. No deals would be done if people didn’t respect each other’s right to privacy. Which leads me to my question. How did you know to come to my door?’
It was a query Winter was ready for. He intended to tell some but not all of the truth.
‘The newspaper front page you bought concerning the disappearance of Martin Welsh? You bought it from me.’
‘That was you? How . . .’ The man was angry at being deceived. ‘How did you get the piece in the first place?’
Winter gave the merest shrug of his shoulders. ‘Identities must be protected. Privacy must be respected. You understand.’
‘You bought it on KillingTime, but how did you get it before me?’
If you’re not fast, you’re last, Winter thought but didn’t say. ‘I got lucky, I guess.’
Winter could see the wheels turning in Dalrymple’s head. Dubious of coincidences and not liking it. Dots being joined and guesses being made. It wouldn’t matter much if he made the right guess or the wrong one. They now operated under some dubious code of honour among thieves.
‘You’re a journalist and yet you own this? Do you have other Martin Welsh items?’ Dalrymple’s enquiry was coy.
‘Not as many as you, I’m sure. But, yes, I have more,’ he lied.
‘I would be interested if you have. What more can I tell you about my collection?’
‘What else do you have? Am I right in saying I can see some of it hanging on your walls?’
Dalrymple looked over his shoulder as if surprised to see it hanging there. ‘Yes. Some of it is framed. Letters, artwork, that kind of thing. I like to have it on display.’
‘May I look?’
‘Okay.’ Winter got the distinct impression that Dalrymple was operating somewhere between being guarded and showing off.
‘Before I show you anything, I must remind you that I will not be photographed, either alongside my collection or on my own. Okay?’
‘I understand.’
‘Fine. This . . .’ – Dalrymple stopped in front of a black frame with a white inset – ‘is a letter from Charles Ng. He raped and murdered somewhere between eleven and twenty-five people. There’s a significant market in his memorabilia.’
‘The more you kill the more you’re worth?’
Dalrymple turned to look at him. ‘Yes. Pretty much. Or the more rare it is. Ng took up painting in San Quentin. They’re not particularly good but the value’s not in the quality of the art. I have this piece . . .’
A simple white frame held an odd watercolour showing a mermaid reaching up to stroke the underside of a swimming shark. Winter couldn’t separate the artwork, if it could even be called that, from its creator. This ‘description’ came from the disturbed mind, the same violent hands that had orchestrated the killing of so many. Was this piece worth more or less because it had been crafted by a mass murderer? And what did it say about the society that deemed it more?
The next frame incongruously held a painting of a clown. Winter stopped and stared at it, Dalrymple sensing, and delighting in, his confusion. ‘It’s a self-portrait by a children’s entertainer by the name of Pogo the Clown. He was a big hit at children’s parties until he got arrested under his real name. John Wayne Gacy.’
Winter moved from frame to frame, killer to killer, seeing an arrest warrant for Clyde Barrow and an original wanted poster for the 1920s American gangster Pretty Boy Floyd.
There were frames with just white sheets of paper containing nothing but signatures. Prison-cell sell-offs by men who’d never see daylight again. Dennis Nilsen. Peter Tobin. Ian Brady. Rodney Alcala. The creepiest of celebrities.
A deeper frame, more like a glass box, held a single piece of red half-brick.
‘It’s from Cromwell Street,’ Dalrymple explained from behind him. ‘Something like that couldn’t be demolished without at least one person helping themselves to a souvenir.’
Cromwell Street. Home to Fred and Rose West. The house of horrors.
‘And you had to have it?’
‘Not just me. There are almost as many pieces of that house floating around as there of the Berlin Wall. It’s popular.’
Winter choked back an answer and toyed with the man’s ego instead. ‘Do you have anything from the Wests that no one else might have?’
There was a hesitancy that had to mean yes but instead only a half-smile played on his fat lips. ‘I’d never buy anything that was illegal. Everything I have is legitimate and above board.’
It was a yes disguised as a no passing itself off as I’m not telling you. Winter moved it on.
‘Would I be right in saying your main collecting focus is the Martin Welsh case?’
Dalrymple was troubled, seemingly not sure how best to answer.
‘I have a number of items connected to that case, yes. I’m not sure if it’s my main focus.’
I am, thought Winter. ‘Can you show me some of the things you have?’
‘I’m really not sure that’s appropriate. The case is still strictly active as no body has ever been found. Most of his family are very much alive, too, and I’d hate to cause them any more heartache.’
‘Perhaps if you could just show me a couple of things that you have.’
He hesitated but gave in, conditionally. ‘Okay, I will, but I’d rather you didn’t include this in any article. Out of respect for his family. I wouldn’t want them to think anyone was profiting from Martin’s demise.’
Winter weighed it up and decided it gave him a bargaining chip. ‘Okay, I won’t.’
‘I appreciate that. And I’m sure Martin’s mother and sister would, too.’
Dalrymple went to a white door and pulled it back to reveal a walk-in cupboard. He closed the door behind him and emerged moments later with a large flat jewellery case that might have once held an expensive necklace. He flipped the catch and opened the case to reveal a letter in a protective plastic folder.
‘This is a letter written to Martin by his mother after he disappeared. She wrote it for publication in a newspaper in the hope he might read it. It’s an original and a one-off.’
‘That must be worth quite a bit.’
The man looked offended at the very suggestion. ‘That’s as maybe, but it’s not why I have it. I’m afraid you don’t understand. It’s not about the value. Let me show you something.’
He went back into the white-doored cupboard and Winter could see him reaching up towards a shelf. When he cam
e back out, he had a small brown box held carefully in his hands.
He placed it on a hexagonal wooden table and eased off the lid. Winter had no option but to lean forward, consumed by curiosity, to see what was inside. There was a clear plastic bag, sealed at the top and preserving a square, yellowing object within.
He turned to look at Dalrymple, ready to ask what the bag held, and saw that the man had slipped on a pair of white cotton gloves. Like a very twisted magician, Winter thought.
He reached into the box, withdrawing the bag and opening it. He brought out a small book, its cover having no words on it but just a mottled design.
‘Hold out your hand. And try not to sweat.’
The two instructions were suddenly contrary to each other. Winter placed his right hand out, palm up, and waited. Dalrymple placed the book gently onto his hand and left it there.
‘The value of this is incredibly difficult to ascertain. Maybe it has none. Maybe it’s priceless. You know of the Edinburgh grave robbers Burke and Hare?’ Winter nodded. ‘William Burke was convicted in 1828 for the crime of murder. He had delivered corpses to the eminent university surgeon Robert Knox. The irony is that, after his trial and execution, his body was sold to the same department for medical research that he’d previously sold to. His corpse was skinned and his skeleton remains in the university to this day. As for his skin, it too was sold. Some of it was made into objects, curios, you might say. Like the one you’re holding in your hand.’
Sgriob. It was a word Winter hadn’t thought of it in a while. It was a Gaelic word, an expression, referring to the buzz of anticipation on the lips before tasting a good whisky. He had his own version of that. His sgriob was buzzing now while he was holding the flayed peel of the serial killer on his own flesh.
Outwardly, and for Dalrymple’s benefit, he flinched.
Dalrymple saw the reaction he was supposed to and smiled, lifting the book from Winter’s hand. ‘Let’s not have you sweating on this now.’
He assiduously placed the book back in the plastic bag and the bag in the box. He stepped inside the walk-in cupboard, the door half-closing behind him, and re-emerged empty-handed. The show was over.
‘So, I asked you earlier how you came to knock at my door. You didn’t tell me the truth – or at least not all of it. Did you?’
He took Winter’s stumbling, surprised silence as an admission of that truth. ‘Because, although I did purchase that newspaper front page, I didn’t have it delivered here.’
It had taken longer to get to this point than Winter had expected, but it was nonetheless inevitable for that. He explained the subterfuge to the man.
‘No, you had it sent to what they call an accommodation service. An address off George Street in Edinburgh. I sent it guaranteed and trackable next-day delivery as requested and rightly assumed you would want it as soon as it arrived. I didn’t have long to wait until you came for it and saw you leave with it tucked under your arm.’
Dalrymple’s faced flushed, one part embarrassment to three parts anger.
‘You had no right—’
‘Well that’s debatable. I’m going to go for “public interest” on this one. But it does make me wonder: if all this is just a hobby like any other, if it’s nothing to be ashamed of, why do you go to all the trouble of hiding it?’
The interview was ended immediately and he found himself standing outside the cottage door with it closed firmly in his face.
CHAPTER 36
She’d had the Sharon Tate nightmare again. The sight of her turning away, the blonde hair and then the bloodied nightdress as the figure disappeared into the blue wall. She’d woken up crying. Crying for herself or for Sharon, she wasn’t quite sure. Tears of fear or of compassion, she didn’t know. She burst out of sleep gasping for air and with soft sobs streaming down her cheeks. It scared her.
She was still following auction sales on KillingTime, monitoring bargains or just watching prices soar. It was research.
There were people out there ready to spend serious money to get what they wanted. Thousands of pounds or dollars on some piece of shit that happened to have been drawn or worn or sung by a murderer.
Sometimes she could see when they were paying over the odds and wondered whether it was just a buyer who didn’t know the market or had so much money they didn’t care. She’d find herself shouting at the laptop. Idiots. Too much.
She still found herself toying with the idea of buying things but managed to resist. Still, if there was something quirky or dark, she’d be interested in it. She’d look up killers she’d never heard of just because a collectible caught her eye. She’d become hooked as surely as if the murderabilia had been liquidised and shot into her veins through a hypodermic.
When she saw Sharon Tate’s engagement ring was up for auction, she sat up in bed and brought the laptop closer to her. She felt a thrill go through her that she barely recognised but knew she didn’t like.
She stared at the photograph. A large, oval, four-carat opal, surrounded by twenty-four garnet gems. Next to the image of the ring was another, showing Sharon wearing it. Her blonde hair tumbled either side of her face, eyes wide, eyebrows raised, lashes heavy, mouth open in a perfect bow. Her hand was by her mouth, one manicured nail tugging playfully at her lower lip, the opal ring clearly visible.
The clincher was that the site claimed Sharon was wearing the ring when she was butchered by the Manson Family. The starting price was eleven thousand dollars.
She didn’t have eleven thousand dollars to blow on a ring. A new bathroom or kitchen, maybe, but not a ring. Not a ring someone was wearing when she was murdered. Yet she bookmarked the item and kept coming back, watching the bids climb and wondering if she could justify it as an investment. She’d rebuke herself, knowing it was only an excuse, and yet she’d check back and then check again.
She did some research on it, despite her sensible head urging her to close the laptop, and learned Polanski bought it for Sharon in 1967, the year before they got married in London and two years before she was murdered. Her morbid curiosity grew and grew. All the while, she could see the blonde fringe and the open mouth as the head turned away from her, disappearing out of view in a waking dream.
Then she read that Sharon hadn’t been wearing the ring when she was killed after all. Not according to her sister Debra, who said the ring wasn’t her style and she gave it to a friend long before she was killed. Debra said she’d never actually worn it, even though the photograph seemed to suggest otherwise. But then there was the deal breaker. Sharon couldn’t wear any rings at the time of the killing because her fingers were too swollen from the pregnancy. Narey looked at her own thickening fingers and knew it was true.
Her interest in the ring fell off a cliff. It was because Sharon hadn’t worn it, she told herself.
CHAPTER 37
Narey had learned long ago that Danny Neilson knew pretty much everything. If he didn’t, he’d know someone who would.
Tony always said his uncle was the smartest man he’d ever known and she wasn’t going to argue. Danny came loaded with both kinds of smart: wisdom born out of a life lived on the streets, and also knowledge, loads of it. And he’d been a cop, which meant he also understood her and what she might need.
Given how much she needed to keep this to herself, Danny seemed her best bet. The hi-tech nature of the subject wasn’t ideal, but he’d know someone – he always did. The problem would be convincing him that she should be doing anything at all, but she thought she had the answer to that.
‘Hey, Danny, it’s Rachel.’
‘Rach! Everything okay?’
‘Oh, I’m fine. Everyone’s worrying over nothing. I’m just bored silly.’
‘You think? Well, I’m going to worry, if it’s all right with you. It’s my job.’
‘Seeing as it’s you, I’ll let you get away with it. Listen, Dan, I wanted to pick your brains about something.’
He made a grunting noise that suggested sceptic
ism. ‘I’m already not liking the sound of this, but on you go.’
He was going to be hard work, but it would, hopefully, be worth it.
‘Okay. There’s things I want to find online. I’m sure what I want is there but I can’t find it. I need to know if there’s some . . . other place, somewhere under the radar that they might be. So I need someone to tell me where I can look. That make sense?’
He made the same sceptical sound. ‘Wait a minute. Complete bed rest and relaxation, that’s the way I heard it. Doesn’t sound to me like that’s what you’re doing. I’m not sure I should be helping you at all.’
‘I’m in bed – and no intention of getting out of it. As for relaxation, I can’t relax with nothing to do. You know what that’s like. You retired and hated it. Couldn’t sit around doing nothing, right? Well that’s the way I am right now. I’m much more likely to be relaxed and stress-free if I can at least give my brain a workout.’
The silence on the other end of the line was Danny weighing it up.
‘It makes some sense. But it hardly answered my question. Tell me you’re not doing anything that puts you or my new nephew or niece at risk.’
‘Great-nephew or -niece. And, no, I’m not.’
‘Nephew or niece. Great-Uncle Daniel makes it sound like I should be in the Wombles or a retirement home. I’m not ready for either of those yet. Okay, what do you want to find? And, more to the point, why do you want to find it?’
She didn’t want to give up any more of this than she had to. Not yet, anyway.
‘If someone wanted to sell something – or buy something, come to that – and the normal sites that dealt in it wouldn’t touch it, is there somewhere else they’d go? I’m not expecting you to know but thought you might know someone who does.’
‘You didn’t expect me to know because I’m old and this is all young person’s stuff? Give me some credit, Rachel. I may be a dinosaur but I’ve moved on a bit from learning about digital watches. I make a point of keeping up with whatever I need to know.’
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