To go from that to this…
Atto was in full flow in front of him, discussing murder as if it were an electrical appliance like a toaster or a microwave. ‘If I am what I am because of the wiring in my brain, then how can I be held responsible for my actions? How can I continue to be locked up if it’s not my fault?’
Winter, weary after the opening sentence, had heard the same pointless arguments from him again and again.
‘Well, if you are the way you are because of your brain, then that’s why you have to be locked up. Because you’re incapable of not doing it again. Society needs to be protected from you.’
‘That’s not the point, though,’ Atto yelled. ‘I am ill. You wouldn’t lock someone up for being ill. You would treat them.’
‘You cannot be treated.’
‘Not yet maybe. But one day. They will be able to treat all illnesses one day and I will be ready to be set free.’
Winter couldn’t take much more. ‘But you don’t want to be treated, not really. You enjoyed it. You took pleasure in what you did.’
Atto smiled, almost shyly. ‘Yes. Yes I did.’
‘And that’s why you can never be released. And why what you did was monstrously wrong.’
He used the word deliberately, knowing it would rile Atto. Being called a monster was something he couldn’t abide. Winter saw the anger in the man’s eyes and enjoyed it.
‘I am not a monster,’ Atto seethed quietly, the lower register of voice a sure sign that he was on the point of fury. ‘I am ill. It is the fault of my brain.’
‘No, you’re a monster. You did terrible things to innocent girls. You can never get away from that. You took everything from those girls, yet you claim you feel nothing. No regret, no remorse, no guilt.’
‘I took their lives, nothing else.’
‘That’s not true. You took their future, their innocence, their dignity. And you stole from them too. You took your grubby little mementoes, the jewellery. What were they, trophies?’
Atto shrugged dismissively. ‘Perhaps. They’re not important.’
‘Of course they’re important or you’d never have taken them. What was it, something to remind you of them? Taking a bit of those girls with you so you could play with yourself later while looking at their brooches or necklaces?’
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
They loved me. They’d have wanted me to have something of theirs to remember them by. To be close to them.’
Winter recoiled at the sentiment, revolted by Atto’s pathological self-serving. He caught the look on Tom Walton’s face and the prison governor obviously felt the same.
‘You believe that they liked you?’
‘Loved me. Yes.’
‘And that’s why you took items from them? The watches, bracelets and the rest.’
‘That’s between me and the girls. It’s personal. Nothing to do with you or the rest of them.’
‘I guess I can understand that. I’ve loved people and lost them. Having something of theirs makes them feel closer, like they’re still a part of you.’
Atto looked at him warily but nodded, some of the anger seeping away. ‘Yes. You still have things of people that died?’
‘I have a necklace and a bracelet that belonged to my mother. And a watch that was my dad’s. I don’t look at them all that often but I like to know that they’re there if I want to.’
‘Yes. That’s it. I knew you’d understand, Anthony.’
Winter’s skin itched but he continued to push.
‘Most people wouldn’t, I suppose. But it makes sense, really. It means, in a sense, that you’ll always have them.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Do you have a favourite piece?’
Atto shrugged coyly. ‘I like them all. Or I did until they were taken away from me.’
‘That must have been hard. The police taking the jewellery away like that. Must have been like having a little part of you cut away.’
Atto looked at Winter strangely, surprised that anyone could understand but still wary that he did. He edged closer in his seat, speaking softly, seeking a kindred spirit.
‘I hated it when they took it all away. It was, it really was, like losing part of me. Those things were mine, not theirs. They meant something to me but they were completely meaningless to them. They only took them out of spite.’
‘There was no need for that. Come on, tell me. What was your favourite? Was it the silver fish brooch?’
Atto opened his mouth and Winter could see the word ‘Yes’ forming on his lips before he stopped and clamped it shut. It was enough.
‘I’ve seen the photograph of you wearing it. My Uncle Danny found it in the Operation Oslo files. You wearing a brown jumper and posing next to a teenage girl. We also got hold of a photograph of Christine Cormack on her twenty-first birthday in which she was wearing the same brooch. My Uncle Danny remembered that too.’
Atto said nothing but Winter could see the anger gradually stoking flames in his eyes.
‘Do you remember when we first met, Mr Atto? You told me that you were grateful that the police didn’t have such sophisticated techniques forty years ago? Well, we do have them now. I have very sophisticated equipment in my lab that allowed me to take both of those photographs and isolate the brooch, enlarging them to many times their original size without losing any quality. There’s no doubt at all. It’s the same brooch.’
Atto said nothing but just sat and glared at Winter like a petulant child, eyes open but rocking back and forth from his waist, his mouth tightly pursed. Winter enjoyed his discomfort but couldn’t afford to let the man slip into a sulky silence.
‘Was it your favourite? We know you had it, there’s no point in denying that. Share it with me. Was it your favourite?’
Atto looked as if he couldn’t choose between anger and a desire to talk about it. His deep, bleak eyes troubled and searching Winter’s own.
‘Yes. It was my favourite.’
‘Because she was your first?’
‘Yes. She…’
Atto faltered, realising what he’d said, and closed his mouth, his eyes beginning to close over and his head to rock forward rhythmically. Winter pressed on.
‘You told me that you never forget. First kiss, first love, first lover, first kill. Was Christine Cormack all of those?’
Atto continued to rock, eyes locked shut and emitting a low humming sound from tightly pursed lips.
‘She was your first but supposedly Red Silk’s fourth. Wasn’t she?’
‘Hummm. Hummm.’ Atto tried to block out the world the way a child would. Not listening, I’m not listening.
‘You didn’t keep anything from the first three Klass killings because you didn’t do them, did you? Christine was your first. And, because she was, you kept that brooch, kept it beside you, even more precious than all the other bits of jewellery that you stole from those other poor girls. My guess is that you always kept it on you, somewhere secret and safe. So that when you were arrested you were able to keep it from the police.’
The obsessive rocking got faster and the humming got louder.
‘I’m guessing that it was so special that you kept that brooch pinned inside your clothing. Had it on you when you were arrested and kept it ever since in your civilian bundle that is locked away awaiting you if you’re let out. And you thought you would get out if you could ever get someone to believe your fabricated theory about your brain being wired wrongly. Isn’t that right?’
Atto’s eyes had screwed tighter than ever at the mention of the clothes he wore on admission and that were held by the prison. By the time Winter finished, he could stand it no longer and his eyes opened wide and frenzied.
‘You better not go near my things!’ he screamed.
‘Too late.’ Winter didn’t take his eyes off Atto but shouted behind him. ‘Danny!’
The door at Winter’s back slid open and in walked Danny Neilson, a swathe of dressing at hi
s neck and the signs of considerable padding below his ribcage. In his gloved hand, something small and silver was glinting.
‘Recognise this?’
‘That’s mine,’ Atto shrieked, quickly on his feet and his face turning purple with fury. He moved towards Danny and the guard behind him smartly moved off the wall and wrapped his arms around him. Atto shrugged him off, surprisingly easily throwing the officer back and reaching behind to throw his chair out of the way, his eyes an inferno. He got within two feet of Danny, who stood stock still, welcoming the threat despite his injuries and ready for the struggle, before the guard recovered and threw himself at Atto, knocking him to the floor and this time pinning him securely.
Atto lay on the floor, the beefy prison officer on top of him, his legs kicking furiously but helplessly. Danny stood over them, looking down at the little man, squashed and full of impotent rage.
‘You really think this is yours?’ Danny held the brooch out so that Atto could see it from his position of humiliation on the floor, taunting him with it, intent on making him angrier and angrier. ‘This isn’t yours. This is Christine Cormack’s.’
‘It’s mine!’ he screamed. ‘You have no right.’
‘Oh, and you have a right because you killed her? You really think so?’
‘She was mine. It’s mine! You had no right to go through my things. No right at all.’
Danny shuffled closer so that his feet were by Atto’s face, his boots just an inch or two from the snarling contortion of hate that disfigured the man’s bland features. The temptation to swing his boot back and then violently forward was enormous, and he had no doubt how satisfying it would be. Instead, he crouched down as well as the wound in his stomach would allow, holding the brooch between gloved fingers and sliding it past Atto’s nose.
‘Christine’s brooch. Not yours. Hers. And we will find her DNA on it.’
‘It’s mine, you fucking bastard. Mine. I earned it. It’s mine. Give me it!’
‘Earned it? Jesus Christ. Your brain being wired wrongly would only explain half of it. And, yes, we heard every word. All recorded too, thanks to the nice governor here.’
Atto squealed and flapped, a fish out of water and knowing it was out of time.
Danny inched closer. ‘We met once before, didn’t we? Before Tony and I ever came to Blackridge. You were in Klass on the night of the Red Silk for a Night contest. And you took it way too far.’
Atto recovered a sliver of his bravado, sneering up and looking more deranged than ever before.’
‘That’s right. You spilled my drink, ex-Sergeant Neilson. Spilled my drink and couldn’t do your job.’
‘I’ve done my job now, though, Atto. Maybe it’s forty years too late but I’ve still done it. You will be arrested and charged with the murder of Christine Cormack in July 1972.’
Atto laughed, manic but hollow. ‘You think I care about that?’
‘Maybe not but I do. The law does. Christine Cormack’s family does. Oh, and I know you care that people think you were Red Silk. You get off on that like the sick bastard you are. But you weren’t Red Silk, were you? You were a pretender. You were only Red Silk for a night.’
‘You can’t prove that I didn’t kill those first three girls.’
Danny threw his head back and laughed loud and long, causing pain to rip through his stomach wound but not caring in the slightest. When he’d finished, his sight settled on Atto, a huge grin on his face.
‘You pathetic little prick. Are you really that stupid? We don’t have to prove that you didn’t kill them. We only have to know that you didn’t. If you want to claim them as more notches on your bedpost then you are the one that has to prove you killed them. And you can’t, can you? You can’t prove it because you didn’t kill them. You’re a fraud, Atto. Red Silk? Red face more like. You’re nothing.’
Atto put his face to the floor so that Danny couldn’t see it, hiding from him and the truth. But he could do nothing to stop his ears from being filled with Danny’s laughter as he left the interview room, the sound of the last laugh echoing even after the door slid closed behind him.
Winter waited till the door was fully in its lock before he walked over and took Danny’s place crouching beside Atto’s head, a knowing look up at the prison governor as he did so.
‘It’s not nice, is it, Archibald? The humiliation. The loss of face. The loss of legend. All those sordid little trophies will have to be handed back.’
Atto squirmed, his face still firmly to the floor. Winter hesitated.
‘Okay, Archibald. Maybe there is another way. I’ve got a proposition for you.’
Chapter 62
Epilogue
Friday night, Saturday morning. It all rolled into one in Glasgow. Just as you couldn’t tell where the gloom of the night met the darkness of a city street, you couldn’t always tell where the night before became the morning after. No one could see the joins and no one had seen the horizon in a long time.
This night the rain was stoating off the slick, grey surface of Gordon Street in front of Central Station and blurring the distinctions even further. A sodden conga of the barely dressed and the fretful waited in boisterous turn for the taxis that would ferry them out of the city centre towards home. The rain dampened only their clothes and hair; their spirits, whether good or bad, were protected by an umbrella of booze.
It was ever thus and would ever be so. Danny Neilson had spent more time than he cared to remember on this damp bit of pavement. Long after he was gone, there would still be different versions of the same angry little men and daughters of the same leggy teenagers, singing party tunes and eating chips and cheese, waiting on a black hack to Cardonald or Anniesland.
Taxi o’clock, Chloe had called it, but it was time that stood still. On Friday and Saturday nights, he and the other marshals were on until five in the morning when the last of the clubs shook the stragglers out of the doors and onto the streets. Weary, beery and occasionally cheery, they still wanted to be driven home to their mammies or their jammies. It was his job to make sure they got there.
The hi-vis yellow tunic that was pulled over his jacket said, Look at me and listen to me. I’m the man who will get you home. I can’t sleep until you do. Can’t sleep until I know you’re in safe.
They all demanded that of him. Even the arseholes. Daft boys with a bigger thirst for beer than they had a head for sense. One of them tried his luck, edging in from the side of the queue with the gallus bravado of the unashamedly blootered. He was met with the flat palm of Danny’s hand in his chest, looking from the hand to the man behind it and doing a quick bit of mental maths and coming up with the wrong answer.
‘C’mon, granddad.’ He glared. ‘It’s late and I want to get hame. Get oot my way and there’ll be no bother.’
Danny shook his head wearily. Here we go again.
‘Don’t worry, son, there won’t be any bother. Listen, if you’re really in a hurry then the ambulances are pretty quick at this time of the night. You want to get in one of those?’
The guy focused and took a closer look at Danny. ‘Um, nah.’
‘Didn’t think so. Get to the back of the queue and wait your turn like everyone else.’
The boy gave a skew-whiff grin. ‘Worth a try, big man. Eh?’
‘Sure, son. Now away out my road.’
These nights in the rain were seeping into his bones, washing away at the marrow of him. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, do it any other way, though. It was him.
Just as he couldn’t stop watching the news coverage of the digs near Ipswich and Coventry. It seemed that every minute he wasn’t on the street was spent in front of the television. The cameras were kept at a discreet distance but they still spent long hours showing shots of large white tents, the comings and goings of grim-faced coppers and forensics and endless shots of presenters talking into the screen.
Eleanor Holt did most of the TV interviews, telling of her feelings as the digs proceeded. Marjorie Shillington
consented to one or two but she remained, outwardly at least, much more frail than her friend and shied away from the spotlight. The TV stations couldn’t get enough of them — the first two parents finally, after years of heartbreak and not knowing, to discover the potential for some peace. The story was that Archibald Atto had found a conscience and had given police the locations of the two shallow graves where Melanie and Louise were buried. He had also promised that, once they had been recovered and given proper and long overdue funerals, he would divulge the sites where his other victims could be found.
It stung Danny’s soul to hear presenters give credit to a serial killer for finally doing the right thing. To be fair, the acknowledgement was made grudgingly and each time couched with a reminder of his atrocities, beginning they always said, with the four infamous Red Silk murders in Glasgow in the early 1970s.
Mrs Holt and Mrs Shillington had both sent him expensive bouquets of flowers as thanks for the little he had done. Even if he was fond of flowers, which he wasn’t, his conscience wouldn’t have been able to bide the sight of them. Instead, they were being watered from the heavens, propped up on Jean’s grave in Sighthill Cemetery.
He did appreciate the gesture, though, and the display of emotion behind it. But, more than that, he’d appreciated the sight of tears of happiness on the faces of the two women. The recovery of the bodies meant confirmation of something they hoped would never be but that they desperately wanted. Their babies were home again.
There is a price to be paid for everything and the ticket for the women’s peace of mind was that Atto got to glory in murder. Including murders that he didn’t commit. Then there was the tax on top of it: that the real killer of the three girls from Klass had never been caught and now probably never would be because the world thought it was Atto. Death and taxes are the two certain things, so they say.
Witness the Dead Page 40
