‘Bit of a bad mood?’
‘He could probably run his car on the steam that’s coming out of his ears.’
‘Yeah? I’ve had better starts to the day myself.’
‘Sorry.’
In moments she was gone, swept through the front door in a bustle of coat, leaving him sitting alone in the booth. Winter pushed aside the bacon roll, appetite disappeared, and stared at the space where she’d sat.
Five minutes later, he left the café, trying his best not to look as crestfallen as he felt and headed back to Partick station to get the subway into town. He still had a while before he was due to start work but he decided to head into Pitt Street early. God knows, there was enough for him to do.
He cut through a housing estate on his way to Crow Road, his head full of questions about relationships and shoes and tattoos and young women lost in the night. The camera in the bag on his back still held images taken in the two cemeteries, and a bit of him itched to take it out and go through them. A more rational part resisted and he left the camera where it was, weighing down on his shoulder like a nagging conscience.
At the foot of Crow Road he turned left onto Dumbarton Road and hoofed it the rest of the way to the station. The Glasgow underground was the third oldest in the world after London and Budapest. It had just two routes, the inner and outer circle, meaning that there wasn’t necessarily going to be a station near where you wanted to go.
The trains rattled round in circles all day long. Until recently, they were liveried in a colour that was officially something other than orange, even though orange was exactly what it was. Only in Glasgow would it have to be formally described as ‘Strathclyde PTE Red’ to appease sectarian sensitivities. It made even more of a joke of the subway’s supposed nickname — the Clockwork Orange. A joke because no one in Glasgow ever used the phrase.
Winter descended to the platform, walking despite the escalator. As he got down to track level, his eyes were immediately drawn to the LCD screen that showed the local television headlines. A report about NHS funding lingered briefly before being replaced by a bulletin that mimicked the morning paper. MURDER HUNT FOR ‘CINDERELLA’ KILLER. Below the heading was a photograph of uniformed cops stationed outside the Southern Necropolis and below that was the subheading SHOELESS GIRLS KILLED AT CITY CEMETERIES.
There weren’t many people waiting for the next train, but Winter saw a young couple nudge each other and nod in the direction of the screen. The girl, a neo-punk with platinum-spiked hair, cuddled into her boyfriend for protection. They turned away but Winter stood and stared. He watched the screen change to the next story and waited patiently for it to come round again, willing in vain for it to have new information by the time it next appeared. But each time it rolled around there were two girls dead and nobody seemed to be any the wiser.
On the train, he took up a seat opposite a large woman in her early fifties who was evidently viewing the screens on the platform wall behind him.
‘Oh my. You see that?’
Winter hoped she was talking to someone else but, on lifting his eyes, he saw she was looking for an answer from him, shock and incredulity writ large on her doughy features.
‘What’s that?’ he asked, despite knowing the answer.
‘Two lassies killed. Oh, my Goad. Killed in cemeteries, it says.’
‘Aye. Ah read that in the paper this morning,’ another chipped in, a twenty-something girl who looked like a student. ‘Two of them murdered. Took their shoes aff them and everything. Left their bodies in the graveyard.’
‘Oh wheest,’ the older woman breathed. ‘That no’ terrible? In a graveyard, that’s dead creepy, that is.’
‘Ah know,’ replied the student. ‘According to the paper, one was the same age as me. Just oot for a night oot, too. Terrible.’
‘It is. You better watch yoursel’, hen. Dinnae be going oot by yourself. An make sure your mammy knows where you are.’
The girl gave a shiver. ‘Well, my mammy’s deid but, aye, ah know what you mean. Makes you think, eh?’
‘Ah saw this programme last night about a murder,’ butted in a man with a beard and a woollen hat pulled down low on his forehead. ‘This guy killed three women.’
The student and the older woman looked at each other and both shivered. ‘In Glasgow like?’ the student asked.
‘Naw, New York. It was pretty good.’
‘Pretty good?’ the older woman shrieked.
‘Aye, him that used to be in the West Wing was in it. You know, the one with the hair. It wisnae real if that’s what you were thinking.’
The two women breathed again. ‘Aw, that’s awrite then. Him with the hair? The good-looking one that was in that thing with Meg Ryan?’
Winter closed his eyes and tuned out. He’d been on the London Underground dozens of times and had never once heard strangers have a conversation. Sometimes — quite often, in fact — he wished that Glaswegians had the same view of people they didn’t know. In Glasgow, a stranger was just a friend you hadn’t had an argument with yet.
He got off at Cowcaddens and instinctively looked at his watch. It wasn’t that he wanted a drink but he was only a few hundred yards from the Station Bar and checking if it was opening time was a reflex action. It was just after 10.30, so the answer was an emphatic no in any case.
He wandered over to Cambridge Street and from there on to Sauchiehall Street, where he walked against the rising tide of humanity who were going up the hill towards the city centre. Late workers and early shoppers, some sticking their faces in windows to see what they couldn’t afford, others interested in nothing more than the cracks in the pavement. At Antipasti, he turned left into Pitt Street, soon seeing the corner of the crumbling, red-brick monolith of the force’s HQ up ahead.
As he got closer, he saw a man pacing agitatedly outside the main entrance. It was hardly unusual given the nature of the place: there was always likely to be somebody worried about someone or something inside. It was only when Winter got nearer that he recognised the broad figure for who it was.
‘Uncle Danny. What the hell are you doing here?’
Danny Neilson was Winter’s mother’s brother. A former police sergeant himself, he had virtually brought Tony up after the death of his parents. The two were close, although it was a strange kind of closeness. They could go months without seeing or talking to each other but slip back into a certainty of understanding within minutes.
Danny was Danny. A big, bluff, understanding man who had been there, seen it and told it to sit on its arse. He was the smartest man Winter had ever known, even though a first glance might make you think he was the oldest nightclub bouncer in town. The one thing you rarely saw with Danny, however, was him in any kind of fluster. And that’s exactly how he was now.
‘Danny, what’s up?’
‘About time, Anthony. What kind of time do you call this to start work? Half the day’s gone already.’
‘It’s called shift work, Uncle Danny. Come on, spill. Were you working late last night? You look like shit. What’s wrong?’
Danny was a taxi-rank supervisor, working all hours and in all weathers, even though he’d retired from the police twelve years before. Winter had told him often enough that he didn’t need the hassle of refereeing drunks, but Danny always said it was his job and he’d keep doing it. Now, he ran his hand through his full head of grey hair, blowing hard and angry. Winter had never seen him like this.
‘I worked till two but that doesn’t matter. It’s those eejits in there. Where do they get them from these days? I spent half an hour trying to get past the muppet on the desk and, when I finally got to speak to someone in CID, I was back on the street in fifteen minutes with my arse barely touching the street on the way out.’
‘Yes but what—’
‘Then I said I wanted to speak to you but they gave me some shit and said I couldn’t. I had to give it the old “Do you know who I am?” bollocks again and that’s when they said you hadn’
t started yet. So I waited. Either for you or for anyone else that I knew by sight who I could speak to.’
‘But why, Danny? What’s this all about?’
‘Those murders that were in the paper this morning. The two girls found in the cemeteries?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, I know who did it.’
Chapter 15
The King’s Café on Elmbank Street is, despite its name, a chippy. However, there are tables and chairs enough that it doesn’t contravene the Trade Descriptions Act, and Winter and Danny sat down and ordered two cups of tea. Winter’s mind turned briefly to Addison’s lyrical waxing over the best chips-and-cheese in town, but the consideration lasted all of two seconds before his stomach lurched in protest.
They had the place to themselves and the sole member of staff paid them no attention after handing over the steaming cups of tea. That seemed to suit Danny fine. He continued to be agitated and had told Winter that he wouldn’t explain anything until they were sitting down away from the eyes and ears of others.
‘So?’ Winter asked.
‘So what do you know about these killings? Were you working the case? I know you’ll know more than was in the paper.’
‘Danny, I thought you were going to tell me something rather than ask questions. What’s got you into this state?’
‘Son, did you photograph these girls?’
‘Yes. Yes, I did. But you know I can’t just go blabbing to you about what was there.’
Danny’s gaze hardened and Winter saw what a lot of men had seen over the years: a look that would make them think twice about arguing with the man in front of them. Danny had never given Winter any reason to be afraid of him, just as he wasn’t now, but he saw the look and what it meant.
‘Okay, son. Here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to tell you what I think. What I’m fairly sure of. Then I’ll expect you to tell me what you know. Okay?’
‘Maybe. Why don’t you tell me, then we’ll see?’
‘When the fuck did you become the play-it-by-the-book guy, Anthony? Never mind. When you hear what I’ve got to say, you’ll tell me.’
Danny blew on his tea, buying himself a few seconds. He sipped on it, the three-sugar sweetness failing to remove the sour taste that had so obviously taken up residence in his mouth.
‘There was a case, years before you were born, but you’ll know it. The Klass killings.’
Winter’s brow slowly furrowed in scepticism. ‘Right. The Klass. You think these two murders are connected to that? You think this is him? Come on, Danny.’
Danny gave him the look again, even fiercer this time. Shut up. Listen. His next statement came out low and slow, like a growl.
‘Son, I worked the Klass killings for two years solid. I lived and breathed it. I know as much as anyone alive about that case except for the bastard that did it. And I know there’s a connection to those two girls. I feel it.’
The two men stared at each other for an age. Winter tried to make sense of Danny’s words, seemingly so unlikely, yet had to weigh them up against the look of hard certainty that was chiselled onto his face. Danny stared back, intent on convincing Tony of every word he said.
Of course Tony knew about the Klass killings. Everyone in Glasgow knew about them. They were as much a part of a kid’s education as never answering the question about what team you supported or never eating yellow snow.
Four young women had been murdered across two separate weekends in the city, two months apart. All four had been to Klass, the disco on West Nile Street, easily the most popular in the town. All four had been raped and strangled.
It was the early seventies and the city descended into genuine panic. Girls weren’t allowed out and young men who remotely resembled the suspect were stopped for questioning. For months, maybe years, a shadow haunted every night out in Glasgow. All the cops ever had was two names — one imagined, one real. They never made one fit the other.
The name of the legend was Red Silk, so called because witnesses spoke of a man with a red silk handkerchief in his jacket pocket who had been seen talking to two of the victims. It was a name that caught on. It fitted newspaper headlines and fired imaginations. Red Silk’s gonnae get you. Careful that Red Silk disnae catch you on the way home.
For forty years, the name had been a fixture in books, newspaper articles, documentaries, even a movie. Red Silk grew bigger even than the horrendous acts he’d committed — simply because he’d never been caught. There were theories — dozens, maybe hundreds of them. Academics, journalists, ex-cops, psychics and psychologists — everyone had an idea of who Red Silk might be. And everyone had an idea of why the killings stopped as suddenly as they started. It was a cottage industry based on the ferocious murders of innocents.
The real name, the one that the theories finally agreed upon, came years later. A man convicted of other vicious crimes against young women. A killer whose murderous brutality certainly matched the handiwork of Red Silk and who had lived and worked in the city at the time before moving south.
His name was Archibald Atto. A former English teacher who was serving consecutive life sentences for the sadistic murders of four women but was suspected of many more. He’d been in prison for eleven years and across that time had twice directed police to the unmarked graves of victims in return for prison privileges. No one was in any doubt that he knew the precise locations of other bodies but that he kept the information to himself as a future bargaining tool when he required it.
No fewer than nine other families were desperate for Atto to give them some measure of peace by disclosing the locations of their daughters, sisters, nieces and granddaughters. They’d ask if he would even just confirm that they were dead and that he’d killed them. Atto chose to give them nothing except silence. The search for the missing girls and the families’ continued suffering kept the case in the headlines and his name in lights. It seemed that Atto enjoyed both.
Not everyone thought Atto had committed the Klass killings and it was something he’d never confirmed or denied. There was even a school of thought, endorsed by a former chief constable, that there was no single Klass killer, no Red Silk. His view was that the killings were unconnected, merely tragic coincidences. It wasn’t a view shared by many.
But Atto had been inside for over a decade. How could Danny possibly think that he was connected to the killings in the cemeteries?
‘Like I said, I know the Klass killings inside out. I know every other case that Atto has either been convicted of or suspected of. I know how he works and this stinks of him. The report in the paper said that the first victim had her palms turned up, the second had hers clasped together. That’s not natural. It’s how Atto would place his victims.’
‘But Danny—’
‘Yeah, he’s inside. I know that. I’m not senile yet, son. And it doesn’t change anything. I know what I know. Killings on successive nights over the weekend, girls on a night out, strangulation, rape. Girls disappearing into thin air and emerging dead somewhere else. The hands. The locations where they were found too — classic Atto. I’ve never believed in coincidences, Tony, and I’m too old to start now.’
Winter exhaled hard and rubbed at his eyes. ‘So what happened when you went into Pitt Street?’
‘They basically told me I was nuts and that I should bugger off. Some DS, Teven his name was, took my details and pretended to write down what I said. He didn’t even make an effort to hide the fact that he saw me as a stupid old sod, stuck in the past and with some harebrained idea to get himself noticed again. He thought I was a crackpot and the report’s probably already in the bin.’
Danny was angry and agitated. Being dismissed on account of his age and sell-by date was never likely to be something that would sit well with him. But heaped on top of his age issues was frustration. Winter knew all of that but couldn’t help himself from pointing out the obvious.
‘You can’t really blame them, Danny. You’ve been behind that desk and seen
the nutters crawl out of the woodwork whenever something like this happens. I know you’re not a nutter, but Teven doesn’t know you from Adam. Look at it from his point of view.’
Danny growled. ‘I’m looking at it from a cop’s point of view. He should do the same.’
A silence fell between them. Sips and gulps were taken of unwanted tea.
‘Okay,’ Danny started again, looking out of the café window but seeing nothing. ‘So I need to give DS Teven a bit more to work with, something to convince him that there is a link. You’ve got the photographs you took, right?’
‘No way, Danny. You know I can’t do that. I cannot do that. I’ll get fired if I’m lucky and arrested if I’m not. Dan, you know I’d do anything for you, but that’s asking too much.’
‘Anything? And yet not something that anyone else will ever know about?’
‘They won’t know about it because it’s not going to happen. This is crazy.’
‘Son, that’s the second time today that someone has suggested I’m off my head. I didn’t expect it from you.’ He threw a couple of pound coins on the table. ‘That’s for the tea. If I had thirty pieces of silver, you’d be welcome to them.’
‘Danny…’ Winter’s plea was in vain as his uncle turned his back and walked out of the café, the door slamming shut behind him.
Chapter 16
July 1972
The queue outside Klass ran a good thirty yards down West Nile Street as well as up the three flights to the disco itself. It was another warm night without even the rumour of a breeze, and he knew it was going to get hot inside.
He’d ditched the three-piece suit on account of the heat. He’d been loath to give up on the gold stripe but it had to be done. The last thing he could afford was to look out of place, so he’d gone for a pair of new hip huggers with particularly wide bell bottoms teamed with blue platforms. His light-blue floral shirt was half covered by the width of his navy paisley-patterned tie. It was a fair leap from the suit, but he liked it.
Witness the Dead Page 9
