Witness the Dead
Craig Robertson
Scottish Police are called to a murder scene in Glasgow's Northern Necropolis. The body of a young woman lies stretched out over a tomb in what looks like a ritualistic murder. Her body bears a three letter message from her killer, daubed in lurid red lipstick. In the 1970s, Danny Neilson was the detective working on the infamous Red Silk murders. Still haunted by the memory of the unsolved investigation, he spots a link between the new murders and those carried out by Red Silk — details that no copycat killer could have known about. But Archibald Atto, the man suspected of the killings all those years ago, is rotting in jail, so Danny has to face up to his fear that they never caught their man. Neilson goes with police photographer Tony Winter, to visit Archibald Atto in prison. But Atto will not speak to them unless it is on his terms. As clues begin to surface, they learn that they are dealing with a killer whose agenda is so terrifying and history so twisted that it will take the combined efforts of police forces past and present to make an arrest.
Craig Robertson
Witness the Dead
To Isaac Paul Berman,
born 2nd February 2013.
Chapter 1
Early Saturday morning
They called it the City of the Dead. The sprawling Gothic land scape that perched over Glasgow and contained the remains of fifty thousand lost souls. Now it held fifty thousand and one.
The flash from Tony Winter’s camera lit up the Necropolis and threw fleeting shadows across the nearby gravestones and the twisted figure of the young woman who lay broken below them.
Along with the dark-blonde hair that was wetly plastered across her ashen face was a look of terror fitting for someone seeing their last in a Victorian graveyard. Winter shut out the angry buzz from the throng around him and saw only the girl, her skirt pulled obscenely above her waist, her arms and legs splayed wide across the flat top of the raised gravestone that she had been laid out on.
Her bare feet, streaked with dirt, hung stiffly from either side of the tomb and were being tickled by rogue blades of grass that grew tall by the grave’s edge. But the grass couldn’t cause her to shiver any more than the dank morning air or the chill wind that whirled and whistled round the Necropolis. She was as cold as the stone slab she lay on.
Under the make-up she could have been anything from eighteen to thirty, but Winter took her to be in her early twenties, Saturday-night glam turned Sunday-morning grim. Her steel-silver skirt had been short enough before her attacker left it high and, to all extents and purposes, absent. Her knickers were minimal, designed more for show than to be practical, and now lay on the grass below her. Her sparkly black top was cut low and set off by the ornate silver necklace that was now wound tightly round her throat. Its sharp edges were biting her skin and had persuaded a dry slither of burgundy to trail towards her cleavage.
Winter focused on the necklace, his lens picking out its flashy knots and the sharp tips that now met the girl’s torn flesh. He photographed her hands, placed palm up as if in supplication, the pale pink fingernails, which showed no obvious signs of having clawed at an assailant. Her skin was tanned.
Her light-blue eyes were now staring into some hell beyond her worst nightmare. Her mouth, its pink lipstick smeared, was locked in mid-scream. Winter circled her, patiently, diligently, capturing her from every angle, seizing scale, perspective and horror. Finally, he stood back and took a full-length shot, encapsulating the dignity that had been stolen from her along with her life.
Words from behind him began to invade his focus, distracting him from the job he had to do. Raped. Strangled. Ritualistic. Barbaric.
Winter realised it was probably the first time he had truly taken in what anyone else was saying from the moment that he and DI Derek Addison had crossed the Bridge of Sighs into the Necropolis itself. As soon as they had got out of Addison’s car, he knew that his sgriob, that tingle of anticipation at the prospect of photographing what lay ahead, was flaring furiously. He’d itched to see what lay on top of the hill that loomed darkly before them and it tingled again when he’d seen the faint glow of light behind the summit that signalled where the others had already gathered.
He’d been almost in a dream as Addison led him through the knot of people gathered around the girl. As they’d parted to reveal the brutal sight on top of the tomb, Winter was struck as much with the guilty pang of an undeclared pleasure as with revulsion. Photographing the dead, particularly those so horrifically murdered, gave him an inexcusable thrill that he didn’t dare try to explain, far less justify, even to himself.
They stood almost reverentially and watched while he worked, their own disgust largely subsumed by professionalism. It was Addison’s words that finally broke his focus.
‘So where are her shoes?’ the DI muttered. Then, louder, ‘Where are her fucking shoes?’
‘We’ve looked within a forty-yard circle of the grave, sir,’ piped up Sandy Murray, the first of the uniformed constables at the scene. ‘But we haven’t seen anything. We’ll do a wider search once the sun is up properly.’
Addison nodded but one of the new DCs, Fraser Toshney, interrupted him before he could reply.
‘Maybe they turned back into something else at midnight.’ He grinned blackly. ‘Along with her pumpkin coach and ball gown made from rags.’
The rest of the team held their collective breaths as Addison fixed Toshney with a furious stare.
‘Son, you’re new round here, and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that that was a nervous mistake. But if the phrase Cinderella Killer appears in any fucking newspaper, then I’m holding you personally responsible. Do you understand me?’
Toshney reddened and stammered an apology.
‘Yes, boss. I was only… Sorry. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Just go and find me a witness from some of the scumbags here in the middle of the night. Anyway, the slippers don’t turn back into anything. They were given to her by her Fairy Godmother, you ignorant bastard. Now piss off.’
Addison knew that the breathing part-time residents of the Necropolis, the neds and drunks with their bottles of Buckfast, sleeping bags and discarded needles, had doubtless scattered at the first sign of the approaching plods. Even if Toshney was able to find any of them, it would most likely achieve the square root of hee-haw in terms of useful information. The DC knew it too but wasn’t stupid enough to annoy Addison further, so disappeared over the hill with a nod to one of the uniforms to follow him.
‘Okay,’Addison barked as Toshney left.‘Now that we are one fuckwit less, let’s continue. Her handbag is just off the path, money in it but no ID. Not a robbery, then, as if we hadn’t already guessed. And any ID that was in there was probably taken to slow us down. Constable Murray, you and your troops search on the perimeter for places he might have dumped it.’
The cop nodded without much enthusiasm.
‘Mr Baxter,’ Addison continued, ‘if you could examine any ground that hasn’t been trampled all over and see if you can tell me if she was wearing shoes on her way up here. Presuming that she did walk here, that is.’
Campbell Baxter, the rotund, grey-bearded crime-scene manager, frowned at being told how to do his job but acquiesced grimly.
For the first time, Winter looked across the gravestone and saw DS Rachel Narey looking back at him. It was barely a month since they, or more accurately she, had agreed it would be better if they split up, and here they were, staring at each other across the cold of an early Glasgow morning, a body between them. Their relationship had always been a secret from everyone else and now its ending was similarly wrapped in silence.
He saw her seek his eyes above the mêlée, a shared moment, nothing more than a rai
sing of eyebrows, but it said everything. This was bad.
They watched Addison crouch by the girl’s body, slowly working his way round the tombstone, his head at times uncomfortably close to the girl’s semi-naked body. Narey’s expression flashed distaste.
Addison finished his circumnavigation and stood, his eyes briefly closing over and exhaling hard. Even for a flippant, war-weary soldier like him, it was harder going than he wished to admit.
He finally turned to Cat Fitzpatrick, the pathologist at the scene, and gestured for her to join him.
‘External signs would suggest she’s had sex recently,’ he said to her. ‘Agreed?’
Fitzpatrick nodded her accord.
‘So, Ms Fitzpatrick,’ Addison continued, ‘I would be grateful if you could tell me two things. One, was she raped? Two, was she alive when it happened?’
Fitzpatrick sighed.
‘We’ll need to get her back to base to give you a definitive answer, but I’ll give you an opinion before we get off this hill. Although I’ll give you an opinion on something else for nothing. The bastard who did this needs his bollocks cut off.’
‘No argument here,’ Addison said softly.
As Fitzpatrick went to work, Addison went over to Narey to get her take on the night’s events, leaving Winter to quietly take shots of the small but busy crowd of cops and forensics gathered in the gloom above the city. He reeled off as many scene-setting pictures as he could despite the risk of the flashgun alerting his subjects to what he was up to. He caught the look of compassion on Cat Fitzpatrick’s face as she worked her way up from the dead girl’s shoeless feet. He framed the solemn discussion between Addison and Narey, his best mate and his former girlfriend, the pair charged with the heavy responsibility of finding out who had done this. He also photographed a young WPC standing on the edge of the group, looking lost and frightened, her damp eyes always returning to the body on the slab. Moving back six feet, he changed his angle and managed to position a seated angel behind the girl, the sculpture’s shadowy head turned away as if the pain of looking was all too much. It was all he needed.
As he lowered his camera and walked towards Addison and Rachel, he slowly tuned into their terse conversation.
‘Is this place not supposed to be locked up at night?’ she was asking him.
‘It is, but there’s always a way in,’ he replied. ‘You can’t keep people out of a place like this if they’re determined enough.’
‘Yes, but surely they can be kept out if they’re carrying a body,’ Narey countered. ‘I don’t see how he could have slipped through or over railings if he had to carry her as well.’
‘The same thing occurred to me,’ Addison agreed. ‘Unless she walked in here alive.’
Narey shook her head.
‘You’re thinking like a man. I don’t scare easy but I don’t think I’d be in a hurry to go into the creepiest place in Glasgow in the middle of the night. Not with someone capable of murder.’
Addison shrugged. ‘Well, maybe some girls are a bit more adventurous,’ he answered, a sly smile playing across his lips. ‘But you’re probably right. I have a fair bit of experience of persuading young ladies to do odd things but I can’t think of too many who’d be keen on coming in here in the dark.’
A sudden voice from behind them cut off Narey’s sarcastic response.
‘Detective Inspector?’
Cat Fitzpatrick had turned to face them.
‘You better see this.’
As they looked, the pathologist began to slowly ease up the young woman’s top, exposing the pale flesh of her midriff. As Fitzpatrick pulled up the material, the other cops crowded in to see what she had discovered.
Inch by inch, she revealed daubs of bright red on the woman’s stomach and it slowly dawned on them that the scarlet marks were forming words.
With an unconscious flourish, Fitzpatrick stood back to let them see properly, one gloved hand still holding the top just below the girl’s chest.
Some of the cops muttered darkly, someone let out a gasp, Addison swore and Winter lifted his camera.
Written in a heavy hand was a single word.
SIN
Chapter 2
Winter pushed his way silently past Addison and Narey. Fitzpatrick continued to hold the young woman’s top above the lurid red lettering and he zoomed in on the wording, seeing clearly that it had been written in lipstick, its waxy swathe standing starkly against her pasty skin. Winter could see the anger that the thick block capitals had been written in. The lipstick had been pressed hard, furiously even, onto the girl’s flesh, the wording thick and smudged where the material had clung to it.
Winter stood back, then smartly to the side to cut off Addison, who was attempting to get a closer look. Winter raised his camera again and rattled off a number of full-length shots, the lettering appearing darkly, almost comically Gothic, on the granite canvas of the gravestone.
Instinctively, he stepped forward again, filled the frame with the word and snapped. Winter knew this photograph was going straight onto his wall. Just three letters, one colour, no blood, no broken bones, but it would hang there with the best and worst of them because it hit every mark.
‘Fucking great,’ Addison was muttering softly. ‘As if this wasn’t bad enough already.’
Narey turned to look at Addison.
‘Worse? A girl is murdered and left draped across a gravestone and you think it can get worse?’
‘You know what I mean,’ he snapped back at her. ‘That’ — he gestured broadly towards the girl — ‘is murder. But that’ — he pointed directly at the lettering — ‘that is frightening. It’s psycho stuff. That worries me.’
Narey didn’t respond beyond a shrug that suggested she wasn’t entirely convinced. Murder was as bad as it got in her book. She edged past Addison and took Winter’s place standing over the body. Almost unconsciously, she traced the shape of the letters in the air with her index finger.
‘What shade of lipstick is that?’ Addison asked behind her.
An amused look flashed between Narey and Fitzpatrick.
‘Rimmel’s Autumn Red?’ the DS suggested.
‘I’d say almost definitely,’ the pathologist replied.
‘Great. But how can you be sure th—’ Addison spotted the grins on the women’s faces. ‘Are you two taking the piss?’
‘Um, yes, sir. It could be a thousand shades and a hundred manufacturers. There’s no way we could tell by looking at it.’
‘Aye, very funny. I haven’t got time for you two—’
‘There’s tests we can run that will tell us what it is,’ Fitzpatrick said, quickly interrupting him, attempting to soothe the savage beast. ‘But it will take a while.’
‘Yeah? Well get it done quicker than that. And, seeing as you two are such experts, one of you explain to me why the lipstick she’s wearing is a different colour to the one that’s been used to write this on her stomach.’
Winter turned to see Narey and Fitzpatrick exchange more wry glances.
‘Women aren’t usually that good at organising their handbags,’ Fitzpatrick explained. ‘If we wear a lipstick for one night out, then we’ll probably still be carrying it around the next time we go out, even though we’ve put something else on.’
‘Or the killer brought this one with him?’ Addison asked them.
‘It’s possible,’ Narey conceded.
‘Well, find out. It’s obviously women’s work, so you two sort it. And, while you’re at it, find if the bastard that wrote this is right or left-handed. Same goes for the way the chain’s been pulled round her neck.’
‘No problem, guvnor,’ Narey mocked. ‘It’s a privilege for us wee women even to be given the opportunity to work. God bless Emmeline Pankhurst.’
‘Just do it,’ Addison grouched. ‘Cat, get on with examining the rest of her. Tony, you come with me. Murray says the guy who found her is at the bottom of the hill.’
Winter fell into line behind
Addison with an apologetic shrug to the two women as soon as the DI’s back was turned. The cop and the photographer walked back onto the gravel path, dodging the puddles that had formed on the rutted surface, and headed back down the hill. Addison paused at the top of the bend and looked at the city waking up below them.
A mist was lifting like steam rising from a pot left to boil too long, the city emerging beneath it, half asleep and half awake, lights on and lights off. High-rises and office blocks, shops, homes and factories, all stretching and scratching and reaching for the first cigarette of the day. The Necropolis overlooked it all, untouched and another world away. Winter quickly reached into his bag and changed the lens on his camera so that he could photograph the emerging cityscape, noting how it was cast in its own sepia tones without the need for fancy filters or Photoshop.
‘Used to come here when I was a kid,’ he told Addison. ‘My pals and I knew the place like the backs of our hands. We even camped out here one night for a dare. It’s based on the Père Lachaise, you know?’
‘The what?’
‘The Père Lachaise, ya heathen. It’s the cemetery in Paris where Jim Morrison’s buried.’
‘Did he no’ used to play for Dunfermline?’
‘Piss off. Anyway, why am I going with you to see a witness? I’m guessing you don’t want me to photograph him.’
‘Well, I do hear he’s a picture, but no. I just wanted some company and those women were doing my head in. Anyway, if I leave Narey up there, then we get finished sooner, and the sooner we get finished—’
‘The sooner you can get breakfast.’ Winter finished for him. ‘You ever think with anything other than your stomach? Actually, don’t answer that. I know the answer.’
Addison grinned.
‘I’m thinking the King’s Café on Elmbank Street,’ he said dreamily. ‘Two rolls, bacon and black pudding on each. Mind you, they do the best chips-and-cheese in the city. You know the secret? They double-deck the cheese. Above and below the chips. Amazing.’
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