Witness the Dead

by Craig Robertson

  ‘That’s strike number three. And, yes, I know. That had occurred to me. But I do remember seeing a strap-on sex toy in a drawer in Stark’s flat. That would have been enough to simulate it. If it was covered in a condom, tests wouldn’t have shown any difference.’

  ‘Jesus. So what’s Stark saying?’

  ‘Not a thing. He just sits there and blanks anything said to him.’

  ‘So he must know it’s her that’s been doing this.’

  ‘More than that I’d say. We always felt getting the girls into a vehicle and moving them to the cemeteries was more likely to have taken two people. And Foster’s small. I think Stark must have helped her.’

  ‘And he could have raped them. I know you’re keen on your strap-on — as a theory — but it could have been Stark.’

  ‘Yes, it could. Doesn’t matter for now. The point is, where the hell is Faith Foster?’

  The three of them stood in the rain-sodden gloom of Janefield Cemetery, water cascading noisily off the roof of the football stadium just yards away, and realised they didn’t have an answer between them. The Tobago Street flat had been secured by uniformed cops all day and the white van seen racing down Tollcross Road turned out to have false number plates. Funny little Faith, with her goth make-up masking much of her real face, could be anywhere in the city.

  All three of them jumped when Winter’s mobile rang, the blare of the ringtone cutting through their shared thoughts. He took the phone out of his jacket pocket and studied the display. Number blocked. Normally he wouldn’t even consider answering a call from a withheld number but this wasn’t a normal night. He hit Receive.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, Anthony.’

  The self-satisfied tones crept through the line and Winter could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

  ‘Mr Atto,’ the use of his name was more for Narey and Addison’s benefit than his. The look of confusion and concern on their faces was immediate. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m very well, Anthony. Good of you to be so polite to ask when you must be worried about what I might have to say to you. Are you at the Eastern Necropolis, by any chance?’

  Atto was playing with him, taking every chance to show off his knowledge at what was going on. Play him back at his own game, Winter thought, play up to his arrogance.

  ‘Yes I am. What’s going on, Archibald? You’re the one that seems to know everything.’

  Atto couldn’t help but let loose a high-pitched squeal of delight that he quickly turned into a haughty laugh.

  ‘Maybe not everything, Anthony. But enough. The prodigal son contacted me to say that his latest would be found at the Eastern but that it would be there before you expected it. He also said that it was simply a diversion.’

  ‘A diversion?’ Winter repeated it loudly enough to alert Narey and Addison.

  ‘Yes. He said it would give him the time he needed to go after his final target. I did say he’d been keeping a close eye on you and Mr Neilson, didn’t I? That’s why I’m calling you, Anthony. To say that I can’t help you after all.’

  ‘Please, Archibald.’ Using the man’s first name was sticking in his throat but so was the tang of fear. ‘If you know what’s going on then please tell us. You said you didn’t want any harm to come to us.’

  ‘No, I said that I didn’t want anything to happen to you, Anthony. I didn’t say the same about ex-Sergeant Neilson. I don’t like him. Never have done. What happens to him or his is none of my concern.’

  ‘Him or his? What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it seems it has all become rather personal. My child has targeted the child of Mr Neilson’s child. So you were right after all, Anthony. The sins of the father will be visited upon the children.’

  Atto laughed again, clearly pleased with himself.

  Winter’s mind raced. Chloe. Danny had told him that he’d been seeing Chloe. Chloe with her bright-red hair.

  ‘Don’t do this. If you know anything, then for God’s sake tell me.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Anthony. It would be interfering with natural selection. How can I stand in the way of my boy following in his father’s footsteps?’

  Winter knew it was a gamble but it was all he had.

  ‘But it’s not your boy. It’s not a boy at all.’

  The silence on the other end of the line seemed to last an age before Atto finally blurted out a response.

  ‘What do you mean? What are you saying?’

  ‘It isn’t your son that has been doing these killings. It’s your daughter. Your spawn all right, but not your son.’

  ‘That’s impossible. He said—’

  ‘She let you think that. Just a girl, Atto. What was it you said? The inferior species, secretly grateful for men to be in charge of them? Doesn’t seem that way now.’

  Atto screamed with frustration. ‘No. Noooo. That can’t be true. You’re lying to me.’

  ‘I’m not. Think. Did your child ever, even once, say “son”? Or did she say “child”, “spawn”, anything other than “son”?’

  ‘He’s lied to me. He… she’s… not my child. Just a mistake, a bastard born from a whore. Not mine.’

  ‘So tell me where to find her. She’s lied to you, like you said. Just a girl outdoing what you did. Why would you protect her now?’

  ‘Don’t try to trick me. I know what you’re trying to do. I’ll decide. I’m in charge here.’ Seconds passed. Winter could hear him breathing hard, almost hear him thinking. Atto was manic. Addison and Narey stared at him, all sorts of questions written on their faces.

  ‘It’s not my child,’ Atto concluded, his voice cold now. ‘There’s no reason for me to help it. I don’t know exactly where that thing is going to take the girl but I know it’s somewhere she was with Neilson. It said it had watched Neilson there with the girl. That the girl had looked so happy there that it would be a good place for her to die.’

  He picked up after a few rings.

  ‘Danny, it’s Tony. Shut up and listen.’

  Chapter 60

  Danny was in his car within two minutes of Tony’s call. His heart was pounding, hurling itself at his ribcage despite his mental efforts to calm it. The thought that he couldn’t get rid of, and didn’t want to, was that it was all his fault.

  He spun out of Hopehill Road onto Maryhill Road, immediately flattening the accelerator, mouth dry and eyes strained, speeding past the shops on his left-hand side. On Napiershall Street, he should have given way to traffic at the mini-roundabout but he didn’t: he put his foot down even harder and flew straight through, causing a black Astra to jump on its brake, then sound its horn furiously.

  On Great Western Road, he ploughed through a set of traffic lights showing red, forcing pedestrians and other cars to take evasive action. At Lansdowne Church, he forced himself onto the other side of the road and across the front of cars turning right into Park Road. Up and over the hill towards Hillhead he charged, the steeple of Oran Mor towering above everything else in the distance. Cars filled both lanes at the junction to Byres Road and the Botanics, and there was no way past. Instead, he swung across the face of the traffic, the wrong way onto the slip road by the side of Buckingham Terrace, and mounted the pavement on Queen Margaret Drive. He was out of the car and running without a thought of locking it.

  Breathing hard, he ran as fast as his heavy frame would let him through the gates of the Botanics and into the park. He headed straight for the Kibble Palace, seeing it up ahead, its dome strikingly lit and resembling an alien spaceship about to return home.

  As he got nearer, he slowed, just as anxious to get to her as soon as he could but aware of the need to regain his breath and make as little noise as possible. His breathing was so loud, his heart pounding even louder.

  The door to the Palace was open and he slipped inside as quietly as he could, stopping to listen for any sounds inside. The place was hauntingly lit, spotlights shining high towards the dome and giving the gian
t ferns an unearthly look and a warm orange glow to the curve of the ceiling.

  There was something — a noise off to his right. He couldn’t place what it was, couldn’t distinguish even whether it was a voice or a step, but it was something. The noise was gone as quickly as it had appeared. He started in the direction that it came from, feet flat but moving quickly, adrenalin pumping feverishly.

  The noise again. Someone talking. A girl’s voice. Chattering.

  He slowed, crept, fearful, a forest of giant ferns between him and his prey. And her prey.

  The voice was louder now, intermittent as if the speaker was waiting for an unheard reply, more talk, then silence. He pushed past more trees and there in front of him, before he expected it, was a figure prone in the clearing by the white marble statue of Eve. His throat seized as he saw it was Chloe lying flat and unmoving on her back, her flame-red hair set vividly against the virgin white of the statue’s base.

  He felt something cold yet hot at his neck, followed immediately by a blow that made his knees collapse, his hand flailing helplessly towards the point between collar bone and ear where the pain was. As he sank he saw his fingers and they were wet and red, thick with the blood that poured from the wound in his neck. As blackness came, he realised the knife was still plunged into him.

  He woke on his back, looking up to the dome and the heavens beyond it, ferns peering down at him in wonder. He reached to his neck and felt his skin part and nerves tingle. There was no knife there any more.

  He sat up on his elbows, seeing Chloe still by the statue’s base. Crouching by her side was a diminutive figure, all in black. He knew from what Tony had told him that it must be Faith Foster and that the knife must have been hers.

  His head spun and his limbs ached. He’d rarely felt so weak, but he thought he could stand, slowly and quietly pushing himself to his feet, finally upright but swaying. Foster didn’t look up or turn around, but simply raised her voice.

  ‘I can hear you, big, fat man. Very surprised you’re on your feet so quickly. That’s impressive but don’t come any closer. You’d regret it.’

  The girl’s voice was neutral, almost playful. And all the more threatening because of it. Danny strained to see how Chloe was but he couldn’t tell much from where he stood. His brain tried to process the warning from the girl half his size: the threat had to be to Chloe rather than him, which surely had to mean she was still alive.

  Foster turned and looked at him, her face pale and impassive, her eyes lined in black and a black lipsticked bow forming a quizzical centre to her features. She didn’t appear remotely fazed by his being there, and that worried him. The girl was only about five feet tall once the bulky platform shoes were discounted, yet she was eerily calm.

  ‘I might regret it if I get closer,’ Danny admitted. ‘But I’ll definitely regret it if I don’t.’

  The girl shrugged slightly, the merest movement of slim shoulders, and reached into the crushed folds of her long black dress. Still showing no emotion on her blanched face, she produced a long-bladed knife that glinted in the Palace’s artificial light and ran red with the rivulets of Danny’s own blood.

  ‘You will definitely regret it if you do, old man.’

  Danny took one ill-advised lurching step forward and Foster calmly laid the blade across the soft white of Chloe’s neck, stopping him immediately in his tracks. She kept her eyes firmly on his and drew the blade back and forth, just missing skin and jugular by tiny margins.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Danny half ordered, half implored. ‘There’s been enough killing. If you were trying to make a point, you’ve made it.’

  Foster smiled sweetly, her head tilted to the side wearing a powdered face-mask of innocence, the truth being revealed only when it morphed into a lascivious, black-lipped smile.

  ‘You think I’ve made my point? How could you possibly know, old man? You don’t know me. You don’t know what made me. The only point you need to worry about is on the tip of this knife and what it will do to your grandbaby’s pretty little neck.’

  Danny knew he didn’t have much left. He must have lost a lot of blood and most of his energy.

  ‘She’s done nothing. If it’s your father you’re trying to take this out on, then it’s got nothing to do with Chloe.’

  ‘Are you actually trying to psychoanalyse me, you stupid old bastard? This isn’t about taking anything out on my father. He’s about the only one that hasn’t tried to change me. It’s about the rest of the world. At least Daddy did something. My mother just took it. Took it and hid it and infected me with it. Bad enough that she gave it to me but then she had to tell me all about it before she died. Who wants to hear something like that, eh?’

  ‘What, you think you got genes from Atto like you caught some kind of disease?’

  The girl shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. I just know people always told me I was weird. All my life. I thought it was them that were weird but then they all seemed to be the same. So I stayed on my own a lot and maybe I got weirder — or they did. I always liked things that were different from what they liked.’

  ‘Like death? Cemeteries?’

  ‘Yeah. What’s wrong with that? My dad and my gran were buried in Cardonald Cemetery. At least I thought he was my dad. I’d go up there to visit them and it was all right. But the Necropolis was so much better and I’d go there and imagine that’s where they were buried. I had graves there that I’d picked out for both of them and I’d go there and talk to them. Then I started going to all the old ones, looking for graves that were a wee bit special and choosing them for my dad and my gran. I got really into them.’

  ‘This was before you knew about who your real father was?’

  ‘Yeah. The old whore told me about it when she was dying. I’d always hated her. Always. And she’d always hated me. It was her last revenge, I think. Telling me as if it explained how I was. So maybe I decided to prove her right.’

  ‘Prove her right? You murdered people, innocent girls not much older than yourself.’

  ‘They weren’t innocent. They were part of the people that made me different. Those kind of girls always hated me, so I hated them. Like her…’ She pointed the blade of the knife at Chloe’s throat. ‘She’s one of them. Normal, pretty, popular. So I hate her.’

  ‘She’s never done anything to you. Please, let her go. I’m begging you.’

  ‘Beg all you want. My dad used to make the girls he killed beg. I read all about him. Everything that had ever been written about him. He’s pretty famous, you know. So beg, old man. I’m going to kill her, anyway, but beg me not to. She might even be dead already from the amount of Rohypnol I gave, but the knife will make sure. It’s your fault she’ll get stabbed. All yours. If you hadn’t turned up I’d have just strangled her.’

  Danny inched closer, dragging his body forward, desperately trying not to be seen, desperately trying to move the twisted conversation away from any mention of the knife.

  ‘How did you get your boyfriend to help you with this?’

  Foster shrugged. ‘He’s a bit weird, too, I suppose. But he’d do anything for me. You want to know why? I give great sex. Really great sex.’ She smiled at him and licked her black lips. ‘You want some?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘You sure? If you’re fit for it and fuck me good, I might kill her fast so that she doesn’t suffer.’

  Danny was aware of the blue lights that were tingeing the glass curves of the Kibble, strobing above their heads as they sped past. The girl didn’t seem to have noticed but the lights were followed by sirens, the noise filtering through glass and steel and closing in on them.

  Foster swung her head towards the gates where the sirens were blaring and Danny took another tired step. The girl turned back, saw he was closer and licked her lips.

  ‘No time for anything but this, then. Say bye-bye.’

  She drew the knife back and Danny just threw himself at it. He didn’t have the strength or coordination to wre
stle her for it, so he aimed his bulk at the knife itself, intent on stopping it or taking it for himself. All he could do was hope.

  As he landed, he felt his knees crash into the ground and a pain rip through the wound on his neck. Foster’s head snapped back as his weight hit her and crashed against the concrete floor. All at once he felt the slice of cold deep inside him as the knife penetrated his soft flesh and sought his internal organs. He tried to lift his head to look at Chloe but darkness swallowed him up and he dived into a whirlpool of oblivion.

  That was the way they were when Addison, Narey and Winter led the charge of cops through the doors of the Kibble. Danny lying on top of Foster. Chloe to their side. All three unconscious.

  Chapter 61

  Monday morning

  It was to be his last visit to Blackridge Prison, a grudging thanks to Atto for the information that led the police to Kibble Palace. A final opportunity, in Atto’s mind at least, to let him boast about the appalling acts he’d committed. For Winter, it was his last chance to get the man to tell the truth.

  There was a sense of an ending and maybe of something starting anew. He doubted his ability to cope with it and even whether there was enough available space in his head, given all that had happened on the night after the final body was found. Raw emotion, death and failure — an impulsive, reckless mix.

  He and Rachel had gone back to her flat, hand in hand, clinging to the safety of the truth inside each other. Waiting wordlessly for news from the hospital, letting their bodies speak, moving together in echoes of old times and not thinking what the morning would bring.

  He’d held her and watched her sleep, fighting off slumber of his own so that the moment wouldn’t end and be replaced by an awkward reality. He didn’t know much but he knew he couldn’t let her go again.

  When she was finally wakened by the straws of spring leaking through the bedroom window, he caught the look of uncertainty on her face, silencing her with a finger placed gently across her lips. He’d had her mobile phone in his hand, a number already on the display, ready to be called. She’d smiled and nodded. He’d pressed the call button and had left her alone to talk to her dad while he made their first breakfast in far too long.