Witness the Dead

by Craig Robertson

  ‘Yes, she told me that. She told me that when I found out who she was going to meet for lunch. But you know what, Dad? She doesn’t want that any more. Not after I told her why you and I don’t talk to each other. Not after I told her what you were really like.’

  Chapter 50

  Saturday afternoon

  ‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever photographed, Anthony? Or should I say the best?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s relevant.’

  ‘Oh, don’t get all huffy on me again. It must be remarkable to be able to see things like that, to be there so soon after they’ve happened and be able to photograph them. It must be like making them eternal. It’s special, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’re not talking about me: we’re talking about you.’

  ‘But I’d like to talk about you, Anthony. I’d really like to know if that buzz you get when you photograph death is anything like the feeling I get when I cause it. Do you think it is?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Do you? I don’t. I’ve seen the look in your eyes. You come alive when faced with death. Ironic, isn’t it? Would you categorise it as a fascination? Or maybe an obsession?’

  ‘Neither. It’s a job.’

  ‘A job? Ha. A job that gives so much pleasure can’t truly be considered work at all. It’s not just a job and we both know it. If I just wanted to kill someone because they’d enraged me or cheated me, then I suppose I could have them shot or stabbed by some thug who’d be glad of a few hundred quid. But I do it myself, not because I want them killed but because I want to kill them. I want to feel it. The same way you feel it when you photograph them.’

  ‘It’s not the same thing at all!’ Winter could hear his voice rising and knew he was making it obvious that Atto was getting to him, but he was past caring. ‘You cannot compare photographing death to causing it. Do I like my job too much? Yes, probably. Is it a bit sick? Yes, probably. What you do — what you did before you were caught and locked away for the rest of your miserable little life — is way beyond sick. It is abominable.’

  Atto’s switch flicked and Winter could see the killer appear in front of him, eyes wild and nostrils flaring. He sensed the guard and the governor tensing, ready to move, and he felt the hairs on his arm and neck stand on end. He had a sudden and unwelcome insight to what Louise Shillington, Melanie Holt and the others saw before Atto attacked.

  But, instead of coming over the table after him, Atto smouldered, crossing his arms and slumping into his chair in a sulk.

  Addison, Narey, Teven and Toshney were in the operations room, poring over maps, files, witness statements and computer searches, doggedly working their way through every bit of information available to them.

  The pungent smell of canteen coffee filled the air, endless cups of the stuff to fortify the various members of the case team who had been in and out of the room most of the day. The java also had to count as lunch for all but the lucky few who had time to grab a disgusting vending-machine sandwich or a melted chocolate bar.

  Addison worked differently from the rest of them in the room. While they were diligent and constant in everything they did, bees buzzing from one task to the next, the DI would regularly break away and sit in a chair by himself, balling up sheets of paper and lobbing them into a bin from eight feet away. Alternatively, he would pace the room talking quietly to himself, only the occasional expletive being audible, or stand in front of the large wall map and scratch his head.

  If and when the thinking time paid off, he’d dash to a computer or a case file and look for whatever he thought might back up his hunch or inspiration. Stop, start, swear; stop, start, swear. Sometimes he just threw random questions at whoever happened to be there.

  ‘What’s with the fucking cemeteries? Eh? There was nothing in the Red Silk case that connected with the necropolises. One of the victims was buried in the Eastern but that was it. So what the hell is this bastard up to?’

  No one was ever sure if the outbursts demanded a response or not and, as a rule, there was never a right answer. The questions that got a reply usually turned out to have been rhetorical and those that didn’t were followed by furious roars that Addison had asked something and wanted a bloody answer. After a while, only Narey dared to reply to him with more than a ‘dunno, sir’.

  ‘My thinking is that he’s grandstanding,’ she suggested now. ‘Just wanting more attention by making it all Gothic and ghoulish. Murder victims found in cemeteries are guaranteed headline grabbers. I think that’s what he wants.’

  ‘Well, he’s bloody well got plenty of headlines all right, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Toshney replied from his place in front of the map.

  ‘I fucking know he has, you fuckwit. I wasn’t talking to you and it was a bloody rhetorical question anyway! Understand?’

  Toshney’s eyes narrowed in search of an answer but he didn’t get beyond confusion and said nothing.

  ‘Jesus suffering!’ Addison exploded. ‘Am I fucking talking to myself round here or what?’

  The light outside was already beginning to fade despite its being only mid-afternoon, and Danny groaned as he levered himself out of the chair and got up to switch a light on in the Stewart Street operations room. Peering at forty-year-old case files in dim light was guaranteed to knacker his eyes. Actually, just reading them at all was likely to knacker his soul. Still, after the meeting with Barbara, he felt that a knackered soul was about all he deserved.

  What there was to read, he’d seen before. All of it in 1972 and for the two years he worked the case. In the years since, he had dipped into it a few times but this was the first time in a long time that he had immersed himself completely in the horror of it. Handwritten and often barely legible notes triggered butterfly memories of names that had wandered to the far reaches of his mind: Billy Moffat and Geordie Taylor. Billy had died in the mid-eighties of a heart attack and Geordie had emigrated to New Zealand in 1990. Faces of witnesses came back as other names appeared on the yellowing pages, chattering ghouls that hadn’t visited him in years. Addresses immediately had him back standing outside closes in the East End or chapping on doors from Partick to Possil. They were times he wanted to go back to and also the last place he’d rather be. He was walking with ghosts, including his own.

  Some of the information couldn’t be read at all because technology had outstripped itself to the extent that there was simply no equipment still existing to render it useful. Later parts of the investigation had been put onto microfiche but no one had thought to keep the reader to view them on. Some later files had been copied onto five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks, then the original notes discarded, yet of course modern computers didn’t support the old disks.

  The problem with the parts of the old files that could be read was that too much of the information was familiar, making him worry he couldn’t see the wood for the trees. The new stuff was different. The case notes from Operation Oslo, the national investigation into Atto’s movements both north and south of the border, was full of information he’d never seen and went way beyond what was released through the media. Every nugget of it assaulted his thought processes, threatening overload and challenging him to keep up. The details of the confirmed murders were as brutal as the list of potential killings was extensive. The minutiae in between — a catalogue of lesser horrors so frequent that they ran the risk of becoming commonplace as they filled page after page — made Danny want to throw up.

  The further he dug, the deeper his desperation grew.

  ‘So, Anthony, do you think I’m ill or evil?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe you’re both.’

  ‘That’s not playing the game properly. Ill or evil?’

  ‘I’m not sure I believe in evil.’

  ‘Ha!’ Atto’s eyes lit up, delighted at this new turn of events. ‘Why not?’

  Those were the moments Winter hated most: when Atto took delight in anything he said or did, when he gave him something to
play with. He was in the game now, though, whether he liked it or not.

  ‘I just don’t believe that people are intrinsically evil.’

  Atto smiled pleasantly as if he’d received some kind of compliment, possibly the nicest thing anyone had said, or at least implied, about him in a long time. Winter hadn’t finished, though.

  ‘They are, however, capable of committing evil acts. You’ve clearly shown that.’

  Atto frowned, disappointed, but he had obviously been called worse and quickly got over it. ‘So evil acts rather than evil people? But are even the acts evil if the person who does them is ill?’

  ‘Yes.Let’s forget for a minute about whether you are ill or not. If you kill someone’s daughter, then that to them is a grossly evil act. They suffer from that evil whether you are ill or not. That parent will suffer for the rest of their lives because of what you did. The state of your mental health won’t change that.’

  ‘You keep talking about parents,’ Atto complained. ‘I’m not interested in the parents.’

  ‘Perhaps you should be.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re a parent too. You killed someone’s child and now your child kills another person’s child. You can’t escape it. The sins of the father, remember?’

  ‘What he’s doing is nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Rubbish. He’s doing it because of you. Do you know what he’s planning to do tonight?’

  ‘No. Not exactly.’

  ‘Or where?’

  ‘No. So I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to. And I don’t.’

  ‘But you do want to tell me something, though, don’t you? That’s why you’ve got me in here. To tell me about your boy. Proud daddy, are you?’

  ‘You’re trying to wind me up, Anthony,’ Atto hissed. ‘To make me say something I’d regret. But it’s not working.’

  ‘No, of course it isn’t. You’re much too smart for that. Even if you do think your brain isn’t wired up properly.’

  Atto laughed scornfully. ‘It’s wired up correctly enough for that. Either you didn’t listen or it’s another lame attempt at provoking me. Any defects in my paralimbic system would affect only my ability for remorse or empathy. It doesn’t make me liable to be duped by an emotionally damaged cretin who presses a camera button for a living.’

  ‘A cretin? Maybe I am. I’d have to be a bit daft to be sitting in here listening to you talking but not actually telling me anything. But maybe I was just wrong about you wanting to tell me something. You’ve got nothing.’

  ‘He talks to me.’

  ‘And why would he do that? To boast? To check that he’s doing it right?’

  ‘Oh, he’s doing it just fine. And he loves it. He’s feeling it just the way I did. He’s owning them, tasting them. And he’s going to do it again tonight.’

  ‘Who and where?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I do know that you’re wrong about him doing it because of me. It isn’t me, or at least not only me. He says he’s marking them all with his mother.’

  ‘What? For his mother?’

  ‘No. That’s not what I said. He said he’s marking them with his mother.’

  Winter’s mind flash-filled with a series of photographs taken in the half-light of three gloomy cemeteries. Photographs of three exposed stomachs and messages scrawled on cold, pale flesh.

  ‘The lipstick. He’s writing on them with his mother’s lipstick.’

  Stevo Barclay didn’t look or sound very happy. His face was contorted into a snarl and every second sentence he uttered contained the word ‘lawyer’. He was demanding his immediately and refused to be fobbed off by any excuses.

  He sat and bristled in shaven-headed indignation, his fingers rapping the table in front of him, his mouth working its way into a frenzy of chewing at the inside of his cheek. Addison stuck his head inside the door with a cheery grin on his face.

  ‘Mr Stevo, how are you today?’

  ‘Pissed off. What the hell am I doing in here?’

  ‘Helping the police with our enquiries. Has no one told you that already? I do apologise.’

  ‘I don’t see how I can help you. We’ve been through all this before. I’ve asked for a lawyer and I want to know why I haven’t got one yet.’

  Addison pulled back a chair on his side of the table and sat down, an exaggerated look of concern on his face.

  ‘You asked for a lawyer? And no one’s arranged one yet? Let me get onto that once we’ve finished having a quick chat. This is just informal. I’m just trying to get you out of here as fast as we can. But tell me, though, are you worried?’

  ‘Worried? Worried about what?’

  ‘You tell me. I’m guessing that, if you’ve told us everything you know about what happened to Kirsty McAndrew, then you’d have nothing to worry about.’

  ‘No. I mean yes. I told you everything. So I’m not worried.’

  ‘So why are you so desperate to get a lawyer, then? I don’t understand, Stevo.’

  ‘Because I shouldn’t be in here.’

  ‘Don’t you want to help us? That bothers me a bit, Stevo. You met Kirsty. You got intimate with her. Surely you’d want to help us catch the guy that did it.’

  Barclay’s eyes jumped wide. ‘Intimate? What the hell are you saying?’

  Addison leaned in, looking perplexed, seemingly not able to believe his ears.

  ‘You’re kidding me, right? You had your hands all over her back. Beautiful young girl. She must have been, what, half naked? Hey, if that’s not intimate I’ve been doing something wrong all these years.’

  Barclay angrily pushed both hands into the table edge, forcing his seat to edge back. ‘It’s not like that. I want a lawyer. I’m not saying anything till I get a lawyer.’

  Addison remained calm, replaying his puzzled look. ‘There you go with the lawyer stuff again, Stevo. We’ll get you one but I’m really not sure why you can’t just tell me that you touched Kirsty.’

  ‘Aye, when I inked her! That was all.’

  ‘Must have been quite nice, though, eh?’ Addison offered a knowing wink in Barclay’s direction. ‘Nice young thing like that. Must be worse jobs.’

  ‘Okay, so I fancied her. So what? Doesn’t mean anything!’

  Addison blinked at him. ‘It doesn’t? Really? Tell you what, Stevo: I think I need to go and get you that lawyer you’ve been banging on about. It doesn’t mean anything? Really?’

  ‘Yes, really! I didn’t kill that girl!’

  ‘Now you’re talking about killing Kirsty? No, enough’s enough, Stevo. I’m away to see where that lawyer’s got to. It’s for your own good.’

  Addison got to his feet and pushed the chair back, further pushing Barclay’s buttons as he turned to the door.

  ‘No! Wait, wait! Look, I… I…’

  ‘Have you got something to tell me, Stevo?’

  Barclay looked lost, searching for an answer before admitting defeat. ‘No. I’ve got nothing.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. See you later, Stevo.’

  The photographs in both the 1972 files and the later Operation Oslo stuff had Danny in trouble. The ones that he’d seen before were dragging up memories that had been buried under a thousand regrets; the ones that he hadn’t were turning his stomach.

  The long, vertical neon sign that hung outside Klass was like a signpost to his conscience, looking tackier and cheaper than he’d remembered. Much of West Nile Street that surrounded it was long gone just like the sign, torn down and thrown away to make room for something newer. Some things couldn’t be got rid of so easily, though, no matter how hard you tried.

  The photographs of Brenda MacFarlane, Isobel Jardine, Mary Gillespie and Christine Cormack were images that he was never likely to forget. He’d mocked Tony often enough for his fascination with photographing the dead, and he’d meant it, but these images would have been his nephew’s rebuttal if he’d known how familiar Danny was with them. Stark black-and-white shots of the four victim
s, not from a hundred and one angles, as Tony did these days, but just two or three of each.

  The lack of colour in the photographs made him feel old and the events seem even longer ago than they were. His memories were all in colour, though, and his brain was pinning the monochrome horror of Isobel Jardine’s bulging eyes onto a Technicolor recollection of the green of Govanhill Park and the red brick of the bandstand wall. Past and present wrapped up in a bow. The grey tones of Mary Gillespie, exposed by the ripping of the short skirt she’d worn, were similarly fastened onto the reds and oranges of an alley wall and the clear blue sky of a July morning long ago.

  Being visited by the dead that you’d known was no more peculiar than welcoming the new dead. Beverley Collins and Emma Rutherford were strangers united in garish, inglorious colour. Beverley wore the gaudy hues of a blue-and-green dress on the white of her bones while Emma was dressed in the bloody reds and earthy browns of the recently buried. The forest greens of their shallow graves were peopled by the blues, yellows and whites of attending officers.

  There were pictures of Atto, too — not just the familiar post-arrest photographs that had adorned so many newspaper and television features, but also rare casual snaps that had been found in his flat. Of him posing, sickeningly, with a teenager who might have been a neighbour or a student, a smiling, wide-eyed girl. There was no accompanying note to the photograph to say whether she was a victim or had a lucky escape. Long after it was too late to change anything, Danny still found himself praying it was the latter.

  Atto didn’t look too different from the way he did now. Same unremarkable features and middling brown hair, a smile that might have been taken for shy if you didn’t know better and dark, soulless eyes that hid secrets. He wore a bland brown jumper whose dull tones were enlivened only by a badge of some sort over his black heart. Mr Anonymous, dressed to be forgotten.

  In another, Atto was pictured in the back garden of a house, the semi-detached visible in the background as he and a woman sat raising glasses to the camera on a summer’s day. Atto, dressed in a light-blue shirt and jeans, was smiling more broadly than usual. Danny had no idea whether the woman was smiling or even how old she was, as her face had been scrubbed over in black biro, seemingly obliterated by a furious hand.