Stranglehold

by Rena George

  Drummond forced himself to breathe. 'Can you tell us who Alan Rogers is?'

  'Angus rolled his eyes to the ceiling as though he was trying to recall the name. 'Rogers?' he said, shaking his head. 'I don't think I know any Rogers.'

  Drummond blinked. What was the man playing at? He was in total denial. 'The lady in the house where we arrested you said you were Alan Rogers. She also said she was your wife.'

  'I've no idea what you're talking about. My wife is in Inverness.'

  DCI Buchan leaned forward. 'So, what were you doing in that house?'

  McLeod's gaze never wavered. He stared wide-eyed at Joey. 'I had a call on my mobile to go there. The woman said I wouldn't know her, but it was urgent, so I went. That's why I was in that house.'

  'Where is your mobile now, Mr McLeod?' Drummond asked quietly.

  The man shrugged. 'I don't know. I must have dropped it, perhaps when your officers so brutally attacked me.'

  'Convenient,' Drummond muttered under his breath. 'We knew exactly where to find you. How do you think we managed that?'

  McLeod pursed his lips and examined his fingers. 'Surely it must be clear to you that I am being persecuted. Someone is trying to make trouble for me. That woman in the house in Shawlands…I never set eyes on her before.'

  'So why is she saying you're her husband?' Drummond asked, trying to keep his expression bland.

  'You'll have to ask her that.' The man was actually smiling. So, this was it, McLeod was going to deny everything. Drummond thought he must be deluded if he imagined he could get away with that. Both Rachel and Judy would give evidence against him and then there would be the testimonies of the women's neighbours. He didn't have a leg to stand on.

  He cleared his throat. 'I'll ask again. Can you tell us who Alan Rogers is?'

  McLeod gave a vacant look. Drummond had no intention of giving up. 'Isn't that the name of the banker in Stornoway that your father, the Rev Murdo McLeod, asked to take you under his wing and introduce you to banking?'

  'Is it? I don't remember.'

  'Can you remember Alan Rogers was found hanged in his garage?' He paused and tilted his head at McLeod. 'Surely you remember that, Angus?'

  The man gave another shrug. 'Are we finished now? I need to go to the toilet.'

  One more question and then we'll take a break. 'Where is your mother?'

  For a split second Angus McLeod's carefully ordered composure slipped. Drummond's eyes were glued to the man's face. 'Are you sure you don't want a solicitor?' he asked, allowing a cold smile to spread over his face.

  'All I want is a toilet,' McLeod said. 'Right now!'

  Thirty-Four

  Drummond followed DCI Buchan back to the incident room where the dead faces of the killer's victims took up much of the Murder Wall. 'What's keeping those DNA results?' he said, his eyes scanning the pictures and taking in the familiar scenes where the bodies had been found.

  'Good question,' Joey said, stabbing at her phone. 'OK, Maurice! Where are those results? You're supposed to be fast-tracking them.' Drummond watched her brow crease. 'We're all busy,' she hissed back. 'We have a serial killer making himself comfortable in one of our cells and I can't charge him until I have those results.'

  Drummond was only listening to the call with half an ear. He'd been so immersed in these murders, but nailing the killer no longer felt as important as exposing Angus McLeod.

  'Why didn't you say that in the first place? I'll send somebody down to collect them.' Joey ended the call with a grin. 'The results are in.' She punched the air. 'We've got him!'

  'What if it's not him?' Drummond swung round to look at her.

  'It's him,' she said, signalling to one of the young detectives to come over. 'The DNA results for Dalrymple are ready,' she said. 'Can you get down there and grab them?'

  DC Murray Anderson nodded. He looked excited. 'Right away, Ma'am.'

  Drummond watched him stride from the room, the jauntiness in his step showing he was clearly motivated having been charged with such a potentially important task. He was obviously confident the Glasgow Strangler was about to get his comeuppance and he was the one who would bring the proof of his guilt. Drummond hoped he and Joey were right.

  It was ten minutes before Anderson came back and handed the file to DCI Buchan. Every pair of eyes in the room watched as she scanned the words. A slow smile crossed her face and she punched the air. 'It's him!' she shouted. 'We've got him!'

  A cheer went around the room and Drummond caught the excitement. How could he not be delighted when they were about to take a killer off the streets?

  'Come on, DI Drummond, you've earned the right to be there. Let's go tell James Mortimer Dalrymple the good news.'

  Two uniformed officers brought the man to the interview room next door to where they had questioned McLeod. He avoided their gaze. Behind the dark-rimmed spectacles his eyes darted nervously about the room as they entered. The solicitor by his side gave a cursory nod. Joey put her folder on the table and waited as Drummond set up the recorder.

  Each of the four identified themselves for the tape.

  'You can't keep me here.' Dalrymple's voice was shaking. 'I've done nothing wrong.' He still wasn't looking at them. 'I can have you for wrongful arrest, you know.'

  The lawyer put a warning hand on his arm. 'If you have evidence against my client tell him now, otherwise we will be leaving.'

  Joey looked down at her file. She was in no hurry. She opened it and glanced over the contents. 'We have the results of your DNA test, Mr Dalrymple.'

  The man moved uneasily in his chair.

  Joey smiled at him. 'And guess what?' She waited, enjoying the moment. 'We have a match.'

  Dalrymple shot a wild look to his solicitor.

  'The forensic evidence we collected at the scenes of where four murder victims were found places you at each one. Your DNA was also found on Joanna Flugg. What do you have to say about that, Mr Dalrymple?'

  Drummond watched the man's hands trembling. His shoulders slumped and his dark, curly hair shone greasily under the light. The solicitor put a hand on the man's back and bent to whisper something in his ear. Dalrymple leapt from his chair and backed away, his eyes on fire. 'Let me out of here. I've done nothing wrong.'

  Joey's nostrils flared. 'Tell your client to sit down, please.' She was in no mood for compromise.

  'Do as the officer says, Mr Dalrymple,' the solicitor said quietly. 'Come back and sit down.' He nodded to the chair.

  Dalrymple wrapped his arms around himself and backed further into the corner. 'It was them, not me. They wanted to die.'

  The solicitor jumped to his feet and put a hand out to the man. 'Don't say any more,' he said sharply. He drew his client back to the table. 'Sit down, Jimmy.'

  Joey Buchan waited until the man sat and gave him time to compose himself. He was still trembling uncontrollably. 'You said they wanted to die, Jimmy. Can you tell us why you said that?'

  'It wasn't my fault. I've done nothing wrong,' the man bleated.

  'You can help yourself by just telling us what happened. You said it was their fault. Why was it their fault? Why did you kill those women?'

  Drummond gave the man a hard stare, ignoring the wave of anger that swept over him. He forced sympathy into his voice. 'The court will take your co-operation into consideration, Jimmy. What is it you'd like to tell us?' He could feel Joey's eyes on him. She wouldn't like him jumping in like this, but they needed answers – and quickly.

  Dalrymple kept his eyes fixed on the table. They could hear the involuntary rapping of his feet on the floor as his legs trembled violently. They waited. The man raised his head and looked directly at Joey. There was a sneer on his face.

  'I did it,' he said. 'I killed the four whores and I almost got the other one.' He raised his voice. 'They were tarts. They wanted it!'

  Drummond held his breath. He desperately wanted to smash his fist into this man's insolent face. How could he have no conscience about what he'd done?
There wasn't an ounce of remorse in him. He had taken the lives of women he probably didn't even know and had the audacity to suggest they deserved it. He fixed the man with a disgusted stare.

  'Which other one?' he asked coldly.

  'The one that got away,' Dalrymple said, shaking his head. 'That shouldn't have happened. I slipped up there.'

  Drummond shot Joey a glance and she gestured for him to continue. 'Haven't you left somebody out?'

  'I don't think so.'

  Drummond tried to steady the way his heart was thudding in his chest. He hardly dared ask what he had to say next. He took a deep breath, aware that the others were watching him. 'Emily Ross,' he said, keeping expression from his voice. 'The young woman you killed in the alley behind the pub in the city centre. Have you forgotten about her?'

  Dalrymple frowned. 'She wasn't one of mine. I don't know anything about her.'

  Drummond's heart gave a mighty lurch. Emily wasn't killed by the strangler! He had to stop his fist coming down on the table. The piece of scum who killed Emily, the girl he'd taken pity on and had tried to help, wasn't the Glasgow Strangler. It was Angus McLeod. It had to be him. He just needed to prove it. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together and the net would soon tighten.

  A cocktail of emotions swirled around Drummond's insides. He had interviewed hundreds of offenders in this small, claustrophobic room but he had never before felt the walls closing in on him.

  The Glasgow Strangler had held such power over all of them for so long. Detectives had been pulled in from all over Scotland to join the hunt. Their prey had seemed almost invincible, killing one woman after another and every time escaping unchallenged into the night.

  And now here he was…the serial killer every cop in Joey's team had been looking for. Through narrowed eyes Drummond stared at the twitching, pathetic creature in front of him. It felt like an anticlimax. Maybe he hadn't been so committed to catching this killer as he'd thought. Could it be the chase that excited him and not the conclusion? He hoped not, but he didn't know.

  DCI Buchan got to her feet. 'Stand up, Mr Dalrymple,' she said. Drummond watched the man's face as the murder charges were put. He looked confused. Buchan signalled for the PC behind her to take Dalrymple away.

  The man's face twisted into a grin. 'Is that it? Can I go now?'

  Joey Buchan frowned. 'The only place you are going, Mr Dalrymple, is back to a cell. And if there's any justice in the world you will stay locked up for a very long time.' She and Drummond stood back while the man was led away. They followed him out and watched as he was escorted along the corridor.

  'I won, didn't I?' he called back at them. 'I won the cat and mouse game. I had you all fooled. You didn't know it was me.' He was still calling out as he rounded the corner back to the cells. 'I'd like to go home now.'

  Drummond shook his head. 'He's a total nutcase.'

  A grim smile crept over Joey's face. 'It's down to the procurator fiscal now, but I don't think there will be any problems.' She hugged the file she was carrying to her chest. 'We've caught the bastard. I'm beginning to like this day.'

  There was a spring in her step as she and Drummond walked back to the incident room to give the troops the good news that Dalrymple had confessed.

  'What about Emily Ross?' Drummond asked.

  'Four out of five isn't bad.'

  'Is that it?' Drummond stopped and swung her round, his eyes blazing. 'Is that how much you care about Emily Ross? For God's sake, Joey. She was seventeen years old and some evil bastard squeezed the life out of her and left her body amongst the filth in that alley.'

  Joey glared at him. 'You know I didn't mean that. What's wrong with you, Drummond? If Emily Ross wasn't one of Dalrymple's victims, we'll find out who did kill her.' She gave him a sideways look. 'You still think it was the stepfather, don't you?'

  Drummond cast his eyes to the floor and nodded. 'I know it was. Angus McLeod murdered Emily.'

  There was a buzz of exhilaration around the incident room as the news of the strangler's confession spread. Several bottles of whisky had unsurprisingly appeared from desk drawers and most people were sipping amber liquid from plastic cups.

  Drummond's heart wasn't in the celebrations. He was thinking about the other man they still held in custody – Angus McLeod. He had to get his head together. Detectives from Inverness were already on their way to Glasgow to pick him up and take him back north to be interviewed about the attack on his wife, Rachel. But in Drummond's eyes murder took precedence and he had no intention of handing him over until he'd got some answers about Emily's death.

  He glanced around the room and caught sight of Joey. She beckoned him into her office. 'What's happening about your man McLeod?

  Drummond knew Rougvie's pal, Sergeant Michael Mackintosh from Stornoway, or somebody very like him, could also be turning up soon to snatch him away for interviewing about Alan Rogers' death and maybe even the disappearance of McLeod's mother and her lover all those years ago. Whatever the future held for the man, his life from now on wasn't going to be easy, and neither should it be.

  Drummond heaved a weary sigh. 'I haven't finished with him yet. Can I take those files?' He nodded to the pile of fat folders on her desk. They contained the printed interviews with witnesses in the strangler case.

  Joey shrugged. 'Be my guest, although I doubt if you'll find anything new there.'

  He hoped she was wrong. She had to be. Now that a different killer was in the frame for Emily's murder everything had to be scrutinized differently. He needed a break, a tiny scrap of evidence that placed McLeod in that alley with Emily.

  Joey had taken two glasses from her drawer and extricated a half bottle of whisky from the file cabinet. She poured two generous measures and handed one to Drummond. 'Ease up, Jack. You deserve this as much as any of us.' She was smiling at him in a way he might have responded to at a different time. He lifted the whisky and threw it back in one go. 'I can't let it go, Joey, not yet. McLeod killed Emily; I know he did.'

  'Let the Inverness boys take him. He'll go down for what he did to his wife. There's plenty of time to investigate his involvement or otherwise in his stepdaughter's murder.'

  Drummond met her eyes. 'What about the woman in Shawlands who's pregnant with McLeod's child…his second child to her? She also believes she's his wife and she's right here on our doorstep.'

  'You don't let go, do you, Jack?'

  'I'm just doing my job,' he threw back at her, but he knew it was more than that. Angus McLeod had got to him. The man was a sanctimonious, bigoted bully – and he'd killed Emily. He wasn't getting away with that, not if Drummond could help it.

  'OK, go, if that's what you want,' Joey said. She sounded annoyed as she turned and poured herself another whisky. 'But you don't know what you're missing.'

  Drummond scooped up the folders, looking away as he left the room. He did know what he was missing.

  He felt Joey's eyes on his back as he walked away. He still felt guilty about how their relationship had ended. It had been a fling, a little dalliance, nothing more. It wasn't his fault if she'd read more into it – or was it? Drummond's reputation with women wasn't great, but violence never had, and never would play a part in it.

  The number of people in the incident room had thinned out. His colleagues were beginning to drift away to further celebrations in the pub. He wouldn't be following them, not tonight. He dropped the folders onto his desk and they landed with a thud. He pushed his fingers through his hair as he sat down. There was a lot of reading to do.

  'Call me if you come up with anything, I'll be in the pub,' Joey called across to him as she left incident room. He raised a hand in acknowledgement without looking up. Pulling Emily Ross's file in front of him he flicked it open and began to scan the pages.

  In his mind's eye he was back in that dark alley staring down at the girl's body and seething with anger at the bastard who had done that to her.

  He pressed his lips together, thinking. Emily had
been dressed for business – a short, tight black skirt and low-cut red blouse. The clothes had been very different from the jeans and sloppy T-shirts she wore around his flat.

  He forced himself to remember how her body had been sprawled amongst the rubbish that had escaped from the bins at the back of the pub. It had been established that Emily had died in that lane. She hadn't been taken there after death, like the strangler's victims. Once again Drummond cursed the useless, broken CCTV system. If it had been operational that night they might have seen the girl's killer.

  Drummond sat back in his chair and ran his hands over his hair. There was nothing to connect McLeod to that alley, but the man didn't know that.

  They had established that McLeod hadn't been in Inverness that night, so where had he been? Would pregnant Judy give him an alibi? That's where he had to start. He closed the file and grabbed the jacket he'd carelessly thrown over the back of his chair and headed for the back stairs to the car park.

  Judy's mother opened the door him. 'It's that detective, Judy, the one that took Alan away. He wants to speak to you.'

  Judy came hurrying to the door, her hands steadying her bulge. 'Have you brought Alan back?' She strained to look behind Drummond. 'Where is he? I don't see him.'

  'He's back at the police station,' Drummond said quietly. He cleared his throat. 'We need to ask him more questions.'

  The woman's shoulders slumped, and she turned away.

  'You'd better come in,' the older woman said.

  Judy went into the front room and they followed her in. The big TV in the corner was on, but he got the impression nobody had been watching it. Judy lowered herself carefully into an armchair and stared into the fire.

  'We went to the police station, but nobody would tell us why my husband has been arrested.' She turned huge confused eyes on Drummond. 'That can't be right. Why won't they tell me what Alan's supposed to have done?'