Murderabilia

by Craig Robertson

  She turned and Rachel could see her face. So beautiful. Perfect. A movie star. She turned slightly more and she could see the swell of her belly and the obvious proof of her near-full-term pregnancy. It was going to be okay. Sharon was alive and looking at her, and that meant her baby was going to be born.

  Then it came. The red. The white dress turning red before her eyes and the river of blood dripping from it. She wanted to cry but looked up again to see that it wasn’t Sharon Tate standing there but herself. The so-pregnant woman with the blood-soaked dress was her.

  She could do nothing but watch. It was a dream, she told herself that, but still wanted to scream. Suddenly, something fell from the bloodied vision of herself and hit the floor with a sickening bump. It was a baby, a baby boy. Tears flowed from both her and the woman that was her.

  She looked and the boy, the lifeless baby boy, was Martin Welsh. The face from the poster but with the eyes cold and lifeless.

  She wanted to scream for help but her mouth wouldn’t work and her head wouldn’t move. All she could do was stare and when she looked she saw the man standing behind the woman. He’d killed them, killed them both. He was death and he terrified her.

  CHAPTER 51

  Winter parked at the far end of Balerno, a few hundred yards from Dalrymple’s house, and walked the rest of the way on foot. He wanted to see before he was seen, gain any little advantage he could.

  He stood in the shade of a tree where he had a vantage point facing the white-walled cottage, and waited. It took only a few minutes before he saw Dalrymple walk across in front of the bay window framed by climbing plants. He was at home.

  Winter stood there for ten minutes, seeing Dalrymple on the move a further twice. After a few minutes more, reasonably sure now that the man was alone, he emerged from under the tree and approached the cottage door.

  He knocked and waited, but no one came. He knocked louder and quickly repeated it. If Dalrymple was hoping an unwanted visitor would go away thinking there was no one in, he was going to be disappointed.

  He had to knock once more before the door was hesitantly opened. The look of surprise and unhappiness on Dalrymple’s face had already made the trip worthwhile.

  ‘What do you want? I thought we’d finished with your interview.’

  ‘There are a few more questions I’d like to ask you.’

  This didn’t seem to please him at all. ‘No, I don’t have time for this. I think I’ve said all I want to say about it. I’d really rather not go through this again.’

  ‘I think it’s important, Mr Dalrymple. Or should I call you Alastair?’

  The man’s face froze. Winter might as well have slapped him.

  ‘You are Alastair Haldane, aren’t you?’

  Dalrymple stared over Winter’s head, anxiously looking left and right, presumably in case anyone was in earshot. Seeing no one, he turned back to glare at the visitor on his doorstep.

  ‘You’d better come in.’

  Neither Dalrymple nor Haldane offered Winter a seat but he took one, anyway, positioning himself in the armchair, which gave him a full view of the living room. It let him watch his reluctant host pace the floor.

  ‘You do understand how this changes my article, I’m sure.’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘I saw a photograph from a newspaper around the time of Martin Welsh’s disappearance. You’ve changed but not so much I didn’t recognise you.’

  Dalrymple chewed at his lip till Winter worried he might bite a chunk of it off.

  ‘All I did was change my name. There’s nothing illegal about that.’

  ‘You’ve got to realise how suspicious it looks, surely?’

  ‘I can’t do anything about how it looks. People have always thought what they wanted, anyway.’

  ‘So why did you change it if you’ve nothing to hide?’

  Dalrymple stopped pacing long enough to open and close his mouth. He composed himself and started again. Whatever he was going to say was swallowed down. ‘I don’t have to explain myself to you. Changing your name is a common and perfectly legal process. It’s my right and I think you should leave.’

  Winter was going nowhere.

  ‘I’m giving you a chance to explain yourself. If I run a story about Martin Welsh’s teacher, who collects murderabilia, including several items relating to Martin, and that he’s hiding under a false identity, well it’s going to look a lot better for you if you can explain why. I’m giving you the chance to put your side of the story. I’d recommend you take it.’

  Dalrymple stopped marching and stared at him, seemingly trying to make his mind up.

  ‘Have you got any idea what it was like? Being all but named as the person who murdered Martin Welsh? I was only twenty-five and I just didn’t know how to cope with it. I was in every newspaper, every television news bulletin. My picture was everywhere. And I could do nothing to prove I was innocent. Nothing. I didn’t have an alibi because I was home alone. I had no one to prove it.

  ‘My windows were broken. People called me murderer, paedophile. And that works just great for your career when you’re a teacher. Parents went to the school and said they didn’t want their kids in my class. Enough of them said it until I was asked to leave. My lawyer said I could fight it but I’d still never work again. So I took a payoff and left.

  ‘That broke my mother’s heart. She’d been a teacher and all she wanted was for me to do the same. She believed me, probably the only one who did, but it still hurt her when I left the job. She was never quite the same after all that and she died ten years later. She just lost the will to go on.’

  Dalrymple stopped and Winter thought the man was close to tears.

  ‘I was engaged when Martin disappeared. Well, pretty soon my fiancée disappeared too. She couldn’t handle it and, worse than that, although she never said so, she wondered if I did it. How could I blame her? The world was saying that I did it. And, once she’d gone, no one else wanted to know. Her leaving just convinced them they were right and I had to be guilty.

  ‘So I left the area. I had to. But, in the new place, people still knew who I was; they still whispered when I went past in the street; they still talked behind my back or swore in my face. So I had to move again, this time to England, to Leicestershire, but this time I changed my name as well. I wasn’t Alastair Haldane, teacher, any more, so I may as well not be Alastair Haldane at all. I became Robert Dalrymple. It made life . . . simpler. After a few years, with my hair cut and different glasses, a bit older and a new name, I moved back up to Balerno.’

  ‘And did you start collecting before you became Robert Dalrymple or after?’

  He swore low under his breath. Telling any of this was not his first choice.

  ‘Martin’s disappearance, his murder, it shocked me. It shocked everybody. But I was right at the centre of it. It was like being thrown into the middle of a whirlpool with no way out. I knew I was innocent but no one else seemed to believe it. I became fixated with it, with the police investigation, with what happened to him. I cut out every newspaper article I could find and I kept them, filed them. I couldn’t really have told you why, but I did. And I couldn’t stop.

  ‘I started collecting other things, too. Magazine articles, videoing documentaries and the Crimewatch re-enactment. It got me into reading about other killings, other disappearances. And I began buying things related to those other cases, too. I guess I became a bit of an expert, a bit of a fanatic. And, when I got the chance, I bought things connected to Martin’s murder. It didn’t seem odd, not to me. I knew I hadn’t done it. It just made me feel . . . I don’t know, like I was doing something.’

  ‘Something for Martin?’

  ‘I don’t care if you don’t understand or don’t believe me. It gives me a connection to it. Something I need. It’s like the more I have the more I know. And maybe one day I’ll know enough that I can prove to the world I’m innocent. And maybe I can help him.’

  ‘It’s not ju
st that you’re obsessed with it?’

  Dalrymple’s face glowed in anger.

  ‘You don’t know anything about it. Nothing. It’s not obsession: it’s . . . It’s just something I need to do.’

  ‘That pretty much sounds like the definition of obsession.’

  Dalrymple lashed out an arm, deliberately knocking over a lamp and sending it spinning to the floor.

  ‘My life has been ruined by this! Martin Welsh wasn’t the only one who suffered that day. I’d have been married. I’d have kids. I’d have been a head teacher. My mother would have died old and happy. Don’t come in here and lecture me. Just don’t.’

  The man’s face was contorted into a twist of rage and the words were being spat out like nails. The rage had been sudden and fierce.

  ‘Leave my house, please. Now!’

  ‘Do you see why people might find your collection odd? Or distasteful given how close to the case you were?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How it might look very suspicious to the police?’

  ‘Are you threatening me? You’ve come into my house to threaten me? With what? With spurious allegations that have already been investigated and reinvestigated by the police and found to be nonsense? If you print one word suggesting I killed Martin Welsh then you and your newspaper will be sued.’

  ‘I’m giving you the chance to—’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re after a story and that’s all. So, yes, I changed my name. And, yes, I collect things. Neither of those changes the fact that I didn’t kill Martin Welsh, that I had nothing to do with his disappearance and that the police cleared me on both counts. You can stick that in your paper.’

  ‘Okay, I will. I’m not out to crucify you. But you can see why this would be of public interest.’

  ‘No. I can see why the public would be interested in it. That’s not the same thing at all. I can’t stop you from writing about my collection or that I’ve changed my name. I’d rather you didn’t and I’m asking you not to. I’m begging you not to. But, if you suggest that I killed Martin, I will sue.’

  ‘I will make sure my boss knows that. But let me ask you one more thing: how do you fund your collection? You said you couldn’t work as a teacher again and I assume this stuff doesn’t come cheap.’

  He frowned. A mind-your-own-business sort of grimace.

  ‘My mother left me some money. Plus, although I’m retired now, I did get another job, just not as a teacher.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I became a librarian.’

  CHAPTER 52

  ‘So what did you tell him, this journalist? Didn’t you just tell him to fuck off?’

  Alastair Haldane glowered at the receiver and through it at the person on the other end.

  ‘No. It wasn’t as simple as that.’

  ‘Sure it was. You should have slammed the door in his face and told him to do one. He had no right to question you.’

  ‘He was there, though. He knew some of it already. Enough to bring him to my doorstep. He knew about my . . . more legitimate collecting. I admit I panicked a bit but I thought I had to talk to him about that and not make him more suspicious by shutting the door in his face as if I had something to hide.’

  ‘But you do have something to hide. We all do. That’s why you shouldn’t have spoken to him. Christ! It’s bad enough that we have this woman digging around the dark web looking for us, but you have to bring this as well.’

  ‘I told him what he wanted to know, but it was stuff he already knew or could find out whether I talked or not. It’s public more or less. All there, bought and sold on surface websites. Nothing that actually matters.’

  ‘It all matters right now. Christ, you think it’s a coincidence he’s nosing around at the same time she’s digging online? Don’t be so naïve. And I’m not buying for a second that you just told him enough to get him out the door. I know you, remember? I know you’d have got all puffed up about your collection and couldn’t help yourself. You were boasting about it to him, weren’t you? You showed him some of your Martin Welsh stuff. Didn’t you?’

  The silence was a tacit admission.

  ‘I knew it! You arsehole.’

  ‘I was just trying to make sure he had what he wanted and he’d go away.’

  A bitter laugh. ‘Well that worked well, didn’t it? He came back, and now he knows more. He knows who you are and he won’t stop digging until he knows it all. You’ve put all of us at risk, you fucking idiot.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that. It’s easy for you sitting there and not having to deal with it. He was at my door. In my house.’

  There was a pause that dripped with malice.

  ‘No, that’s where you’re wrong. I am going to have to deal with it. Because you didn’t. We’re all going to have to deal with it. With both of them.’

  Haldane didn’t like being spoken to like that but he liked even less what it meant. He asked, anyway.

  ‘Deal with it? How?’

  ‘I’m going to speak to the others, but we can’t have our arrangement plastered all over the newspapers. We’ve got too much to lose. If this were all to come out . . . It just can’t. So we have to stop it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We have the perfect tool at our disposal.’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘Yes. We need to contact Nathan.’

  CHAPTER 53

  ‘Don’t run it? Don’t run the story? Are you kidding me?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  She was calm, which should have pleased him, but he was irritated by the way she was just lying back in bed and coolly telling him to ditch the best story he’d had in his year-long career as a journalist. It was a stick-on front-page lead. A splash. A certainty to be picked up and run with by every other media outlet in the country.

  Alastair Haldane, prime suspect, living under an assumed name and collecting murderabilia about his alleged victim. It was golden. And she was telling him not to run it.

  ‘Rach, I’ve had Archie Cameron on my back all week demanding to know when I was going to give him something that would justify all my time away from my desk. To justify my job. Now I’ve got that, and more, and you’re saying I should forget it. He’s going to boot my arse out the door and back onto the street.’

  ‘Not if you play him right, he won’t. Anyway, I’m saying don’t run it yet. Dalrymple, Haldane, isn’t going anywhere. The longer you take to run it the more spooked he’s going to be. You will run it. Just wait.’

  ‘Wait? Play him right? Archie’s been playing this game for over twenty years and I’ve been doing it for five minutes. He’s going to see right through anything I try.’

  ‘Not if I tell you how to play him,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Very funny. First, tell me why. And it better be good. Why shouldn’t we run it?’

  ‘Because we haven’t finished. You haven’t finished. You’ve got half a story.’

  ‘I’ve got enough of a story to fill the front page. I know that much.’

  She laughed bitterly. ‘Maybe that’s the difference between the police and journalists. I’m used to working on a whole different level of proof. And I need a whole different kind of outcome.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Justice.’

  ‘Sounds kind of smug, doesn’t it? Holier than thou?’

  ‘Well, holier than thou, that’s for sure. You think there’s something wrong with wanting justice, wanting all the ends tied up in truth and not just some half-arsed exposé that gets a big headline but doesn’t answer the real questions?’

  He groaned wearily, beaten down by her self-righteousness. ‘If you say so . . .’

  ‘I do. But more than that: if you run it now then you’ll tip everyone else off and you’ll most likely miss out on the bigger story that’s still to come.’

  ‘The bigger story?’

  ‘Who killed Martin Welsh.’

  ‘So what do you suggest I tell Archie? He’s not
going to be happy if I go back in empty-handed. And he’s certainly not going to buy me telling him that I’m fighting for truth, justice and the West Highland Way. He’ll tell me to stick that where the sun don’t shine. And he’ll be quite right.’

  ‘So you don’t tell him that. Have I taught you nothing? And you don’t go in empty-handed. You give him a story. Give him something that keeps him happy and keeps you in a job.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And what’s that?’

  ‘You give him the story about Aiden McAlpine and Calvin Brownlie. You link two high-profile killings. You have the MSP’s son. You have the lover trying to sell the clothes. You have a guaranteed front-page exclusive.’

  ‘No, no, no. I’ve already made my mind up on that. The Brownlie kid was just stupid. He only did it because he was hurting. And it got him killed. My running that story is just going to rubbish his name for no good reason.’

  ‘You really aren’t going to make it as a journalist thinking like that. And I mean that as a compliment. But you’re wrong: it is for a good reason. For a start, you need to give Archie Cameron something, but also you can do Calvin a bigger favour than keeping his name out of the paper. This is about finding out who killed him.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Whoever killed Aiden killed Calvin. That much seems obvious. And, if I’m right, he’s killed others. I want to flush him out. You run this story and it might just spook him.’

  ‘It might spook him enough to hide.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s who he is. He isn’t the kind to run: he’s the kind to come out fighting.’

  Archie Cameron’s office door was open but he was on the phone. He wasn’t saying much and seemed more intent on rubbing away at the little hair that was left on top of his head. He was making occasional ‘uh-huh’ noises of agreement but they didn’t sound very convincing to Winter. It had all the hallmarks of a conversation with someone who couldn’t be disagreed with. Management.

  He sensed Winter standing there and looked up with a scowl, annoyed at being seen to be tugging his forelock to the bosses. He waved an arm angrily, a movement that Winter couldn’t be sure meant come in or piss off. He assumed the one that suited him and took a chair in front of Archie’s desk. He soon saw it was the wrong interpretation.