Death Trap: Rosie Gilmour 8

by Anna Smith

  ‘I remember I used to come to my cousin’s some Sundays in Drumchapel and we came up here. I know the place you’re talking about – that old gatehouse thing. I remember it. The caller was right, it’s only a hundred yards or so.’

  Rosie looked over her shoulder and a shiver ran through her.

  ‘It’s a bit scary going up here. I’m feeling a bit jittery.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Matt said. ‘The cops will be here in a minute. Do you want me to go by myself? You wait here?’

  ‘No. I’ll be fine.’

  She took a deep breath and a tentative step into the shadows. Her heart was going like an engine as they picked up their feet and she was consciously counting the yards . . . sixty, seventy . . . They could see the shack up ahead. The sun came out from behind the clouds and it was light again, and the path seemed clearer. They could hear sirens in the distance.

  ‘Cops are on their way, we’d better hurry.’

  Matt walked a little faster, and Rosie quickened her step to keep up. She looked around her over her shoulder and watched for any movement in the woods. She felt sweat on her neck and back. They came up to the gatehouse. Matt turned to her. The sirens were getting closer.

  ‘You wait a second, Rosie. I’ll go in.’

  She nodded and stood where she was, watching the woods, eyes everywhere. Her heart was hammering in her chest. She watched as Matt pulled back the half-open door and stepped inside. He was only in there for a couple of seconds when she heard him.

  ‘Fuck me!’

  ‘Matt, are you all right?’

  She rushed forward, but was relieved when he appeared back out, his face white.

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Is he there?’

  Matt took a breath and tried to push it out as though to stop himself retching. He bent over.

  ‘Aw, Christ! I think so. Well. I don’t know. It’s in bits.’

  ‘A body?’

  Matt’s face was pale.

  ‘Head off, arms chopped! Christ almighty! And the foxes have been at it.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  Rosie knew she didn’t have to go in there. Matt’s pictures would be enough. But she couldn’t help it. She moved towards the gate and Matt.

  ‘Are you sure about this, Rosie? You don’t have to.’

  She looked at him, gritted her teeth.

  ‘I do, Matt. I have to see it for myself. I have to know that he’s in there. I don’t care if he’s in bits. I have to see it. Maybe it’ll help me.’

  The sirens were blaring now, and Rosie knew they were at the edge of the woods.

  ‘Quick. In and out, Matt.’

  Matt went in, snapping everything in sight as he did, the location, the doorway, then inside. Rosie followed him, and the smell hit her first, that sweet sickly smell of decaying human flesh. She put her hand up to cover her nose and mouth. She stepped forward. There he was in the corner, a pile of limbs and torso, legs and bones, a bloodied mass like something from a bombing. But the head lay there, the eyes staring at her the way they had that morning in court, and the same way they had when she looked up as he was dragging the knife across her chest, and the same face that stared at her when Adrian pulled her away from the lock-up. That was all he was now. A pile of rotting, half-eaten flesh. Fuck him! He couldn’t harm her any more. She kept her eyes on him, and her heart stopped for a moment, then she turned and left. Outside, she could see the cops rushing up to the scene.

  ‘Hurry, Matt. The cops are here.’

  She could hear Matt fire off a few more snaps, then he came out behind her, snapping the approaching police as he did.

  ‘Hey. Get that fucking camera away,’ one of the cops shouted.

  ‘Shit,’ Matt said. ‘We’re going to get our arses felt by the plods.’

  ‘It’s my tip-off, so they’d better not kick my arse.’

  Matt put his hands up, as he and Rosie walked out of the area and onto the path. Half a dozen uniformed officers rushed past them, radios blaring. She looked up and could see the DI stepping briskly towards her. He gave her a look and shook his head.

  ‘Christ almighty, Rosie Gilmour! You need to get out more.’ He almost smiled. ‘Is it him?’

  Rosie nodded. ‘What’s left of him. The foxes have been at him. But it’s Boag all right.’

  ‘Excellent.’

  Rosie and Matt were about to walk away.

  ‘Rosie,’ the DI said. ‘Listen. Don’t go anywhere. We need to talk about how you knew about this. This isn’t over yet.’

  ‘It was a tip-off.’

  ‘Anonymous?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘I’d like you to hang around for a moment, if you don’t mind.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘And, I appreciate your tip, by the way. I owe you a drink – if I don’t bloody arrest you.’

  ‘Sure.’ Rosie smiled, and punched McGuire’s number in.

  ‘It’s Boag. They carved him up. Cops are all over it now.’

  ‘What a fucking result. Pictures?’

  ‘Yeah. Matt’s got plenty.’

  ‘Brilliant. How do you feel, Gilmour – I mean, seeing him?’

  Rosie hesitated for a moment.

  ‘I feel good, Mick. And that’s the truth. He can’t touch me any more.’

  ‘That’s the stuff. Get back here as soon as you can.’

  As they were walking towards Matt’s car, Rosie’s mobile rang. It was Jonjo.

  ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Can you meet me for a chat? Same place as the last time. In half an hour?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He hung up.

  Chapter Forty

  Rosie drove her car to the bar where she’d arranged to meet Jonjo. The police protection guys assigned to her had been told to stand down now that Boag’s remains had been found. There was something liberating about it, she thought, as she drove back into the city, her radio blaring, the sun bursting through giving the city an upbeat feel. She shouldn’t really feel this good, given what she’d been through, and she wondered if another panic attack was just around the corner. But she pushed the thought away. Time would take care of that. In a few months she’d be back to as normal as she could achieve. She found herself looking forward to seeing Jonjo, which wasn’t right, because whatever else he was, he was a murderer. She shouldn’t forget that.

  When she walked into the bar, the same barman who’d been there last week raised his chin as a hello and nodded towards the snug at the back. As she was making her way there, one of the men she vaguely remembered from the other day came towards her. She wondered if the squat, fat Italian was the same man who had phoned her this morning. Jonjo got to his feet and took a long look at her when she came face to face with him.

  ‘Rosie. Thanks for coming.’

  Rosie stood a little awkwardly. She wanted to gush and say no, thank you, Jonjo, because I wouldn’t be here right now if you hadn’t saved my life. She wanted to tell him she’d be eternally grateful to him. But that was not what you did with a guy like this. He was no hero, he’d just been in the right place at the right time, though he’d been a hero to her. She looked him in the eye.

  ‘Jonjo . . .’ She hesitated, feeling herself blush. ‘Before you say anything else, I just want to thank you for saving my life. I’ll never be able to repay you for what you did. I know that if it wasn’t for you, I’d have died in that shithole.’ She swallowed. ‘So, thanks.’ There, keep it simple and honest.

  He stood looking at her, then glanced beyond her as though he was taking in the moment.

  ‘You owe me nothing, Rosie. You know that you could have told the plods chapter and verse of what happened the other day and who was there. But you kept quiet. You have more guts than many of the men I’ve worked with in my life.’

  Rosie felt a little embarrassed – being praised by one of the biggest crime figures in Glasgow felt odd. He motioned her to sit down.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘What’s tha
t you’ve got?’

  ‘Tea. Black.’

  ‘I’ll have the same.’

  He looked at the other man. ‘Aldo, sort it will you?’ Aldo disappeared to the bar.

  ‘He was there the other day, I think?’

  ‘Yeah. It was Aldo who heard you screaming. I sent him to look for your mobile after your big pal Adrian said Boag threw it down the embankment. While he was there he heard the screaming. Good man, is Aldo. He’s my right-hand man. All my life.’

  ‘I have to thank him too.’

  Jonjo shook his head. ‘He was glad to help. That’s his style. A real gentleman in so many ways.’ He raised his eyebrows in emphasis. ‘But you wouldn’t want to cross him.’

  Rosie nodded. She wondered if Aldo had played a part in the trussed-up remains of Boag. They sat now with their mugs of tea; she waited to see what he was going to say.

  ‘So you got your pictures then?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked across at him. ‘It wasn’t a pretty sight.’

  He nodded and said nothing for a long moment. Then Rosie spoke. ‘Can I ask you, Jonjo, did Boag say anything? I mean, anything to you, about your son, or about what he had done? Did he even express a scrap of remorse?’

  Jonjo shook his head, his face tight.

  ‘No. Nothing. He’s the most evil fucker I’ve come across, and I’ve seen them all. This was worse than evil. He could have been killing people for years, you know.’ He sipped his tea. ‘Well, he’ll not kill any more innocent laddies.’

  Rosie let that hang in the air for a moment and she could see from his face that he was picturing his son, perhaps in his final moments. But even though she knew she would never be writing up this interview for the newspaper, her journalist mind was riven with curiosity. She wanted to know details. She felt a bit ashamed of that, but it’s how she was.

  ‘Did you do it yourself?’

  He looked at her, a little surprised and a glint of suspicion.

  ‘I’m not going to talk to the police, Jonjo. Not now, not ever. I should, but I won’t.’

  He waited a moment.

  ‘I have people who dispose of garbage like Boag. I’ve had them up from London hanging around here for a fortnight. I knew we would find him. It was only a matter of time.’

  Another silence. The door opened and Rosie heard the sound of traffic.

  ‘So you didn’t play any part in it? Even the “eye for an eye” justice?’ Rosie couldn’t believe she was having this kind of conversation with a man who had been part of what could only be described as a gruesome murder.

  Eventually, Jonjo nodded. ‘I cut him so I could watch him bleed. But it was going to take a while. Let me put it this way. The idea was that he would feel the first of his limbs being severed.’

  Rosie felt a little light-headed picturing the scene.

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘Aye. He squealed like a stuck pig. The good thing is that he knew what was going to happen to him. Of course, he would know from the minute I picked him up from that lock-up that he was finished. But it was important to me that he knew it wouldn’t be quick. It was important that he went the same way as the others he had done. The woman from downstairs, the music teacher . . . my laddie and maybe that other poor boy they haven’t found yet. But not one word of remorse did he utter.’

  Rosie blinked away the sudden flashback of the woman’s severed head that Boag had sent to her in a box. Christ! It seemed like ages ago. No wonder she was having the odd meltdown. She nodded in agreement, not just because she was sitting in front of him, but because she absolutely believed what he was saying. It was and would always be a dilemma for her. Where do I go from here? she thought. I’m sitting opposite the man who kidnapped and helped murder a serial killer – a man who effectively did the world a favour – but he had operated outside the law. She could hear McGuire and Hanlon saying as much, and that was why she knew she could never write this story, any more than she could walk out of here now and tell the police what she knew. It was up to them to arrest people and it was up to the courts to convict and jail the offender. Jonjo Mulhearn didn’t live by those rules, but she did. Yet here she was, as though she was part of the secret, part of the plot. She didn’t know what to say.

  Suddenly, Jonjo broke the silence.

  ‘Anyway. I just wanted to clear things with you, to see that you were all right about what happened to you, and to tell you about Boag. But that’s not the only reason I needed to see you.’

  Rosie looked at him, not knowing what to expect.

  ‘The O’Dwyers. Those fuckers.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Rosie had almost forgotten that she’d asked for his help to see if he could put feelers out on the street and find out who took part in the robbery of the Cimmermans.

  ‘I said I would help you and I have. Here’s the sketch. One of the men involved in the robbery is handing himself into the cops as we speak. He’s in London Road police station at the moment, grassing them all up. He can talk about the Kosovo guy who was there, back up his story, and spill his guts on Rory O’Dwyer and those two prick sons of his. So the O’Dwyers are fucked, as of now.’

  For a second, Rosie didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Christ! I have to say, I’m wondering how you managed to achieve that.’

  Jonjo gave her a long look.

  ‘If you live long enough in this game, you get to call in the favours you’ve done for people over the years; the people you’ve saved from the grubber, the lives you’ve rescued, families you helped. The guys you gave a leg-up to. People deliver for you.’

  ‘So what will happen to the man who sticks them in?’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t know. They’ll do him on a lesser charge. Maybe even get him acquitted. The cops might look after him, but who knows. If they let him go, he’ll have to get off his mark, because the O’Dwyers have a lot of friends. So someone will be out for him.’ He paused. ‘But he’s done his bit. I thought it was important to sort that out.’

  They sat for a few moments, and Rosie looked at her watch.

  ‘I’ll have to go. I haven’t been back to see the editor since this morning, and I know he’ll be going nuts over the pictures of Boag.’ She paused. ‘But in terms of a story, I won’t be able to tell the truth of everything over the last few days, of Boag’s body today and how it got there . . .’

  ‘How does that sit with you?’

  Rosie waited a few seconds before answering. ‘Sometimes that’s how it happens. It’s not right though, not by the book. But what happened to Boag, however bloody and primitive, was justice. I believe that. Completely. So I’m going to have to live with the truth bit.’

  Jonjo sighed. ‘What is it they say about newspapers? They’ll be eating chips out of it tomorrow?’

  Rosie smiled at the old saying – it had been a great leveller for journalists who’d got puffed up with their own importance after they broke a major story.

  ‘Yeah. Makes me wonder sometimes why we take ourselves so seriously. Here today, gone tomorrow.’ She stood up, pulled her bag onto her shoulder.

  ‘But you’re different, I can see that.’ He looked up at her.

  Rosie sighed. Despite what Jonjo was, what he’d done, how he’d led his life – she liked him. She felt safer with him than a posse of cops. She reached out her hand as he got to his feet.

  ‘Thanks again, Jonjo. I mean it.’

  ‘I hope I see you again some time, Rosie. You be careful now.’

  *

  Rosie drove back to the office, her mind in turmoil. She was betraying everything she believed in, that the pursuit of truth was the be-all and end-all of her psyche. But she didn’t feel guilty. Boag had killed innocent people and ruined families and lives. One of her best friends had died in a car crash chasing after him. Why did we have to give a fair trial to people like that? Did this mean she wasn’t a good journalist any more? She wasn’t sure right at this moment. She was ready to go back and write the story of the tip-off, but it wouldn’t b
e the whole story, and other hacks out there would know it. They would perhaps judge her, but they would never know the truth. Perhaps that made her no better than the villains or criminals who lived outside the law, because today she was playing by their rules, not hers. She would talk to McGuire about it, but her mind was already made up. Her mobile rang on the passenger seat, and glancing over, she recognised the DI’s number from earlier.

  ‘Rosie. I thought you might want to know of a development in the O’Dwyer story – about the robbery at the Cimmermans.’

  Rosie was so surprised to get a friendly phone call from the big cop that she didn’t quite know how to react.

  ‘Of course, Jim,’ she managed. ‘I’m all ears. And I appreciate you phoning.’

  ‘Well. You were helpful to us, so as I told you, I’m an old-fashioned cop, and that works both ways – as long as you don’t abuse it.’

  ‘Course not. What’s happened?’

  ‘One of the robbers from the old Jewish couple’s house, who was with the O’Dwyers that night, has given himself up.’

  A smile spread across Rosie’s face.

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Yep. He’s just walked into London Road a half-hour ago, and is sticking every one of them in. And he remembers the foreign guy being there too.’

  ‘Christ. That’s amazing. Your boys must be doing cartwheels.’

  ‘They are. Nobody can understand it.’

  ‘So our Kosovan friend Tadi is off the hook – on all counts?’

  ‘He will be. Once we tied up some loose ends, he will be deported back to Kosovo – he wants to go home anyway. Oh, and by the way, he said to tell you thank you for helping his family. For your kindness.’ He paused. ‘We’ll maybe one day find out how this all came about.’

  ‘Well,’ Rosie said, thinking of Jonjo’s words about calling in favours. Pressure must have been put on this guy. ‘There’s a lot we can’t understand, so the best thing is just to take it when it’s going, and celebrate. The O’Dwyers will be banged up for a long time.’

  ‘You bet. Will Boag’s body be all over the paper tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh yes. Well, as much as we can publish so as not to put our readers off their breakfast.’