Glasgow Noir Box Set

by Gavin Graham

  “You’d be very surprised by how sane and intellectual some Satanists can be, in fact, you’re probably not far off the path of a philosophical Satanist yourself, Mac.”

  “Excuse me? A philosophical Satanist? What the hell are you on about?”

  “The so-called Left-Hand Path is not all about sacrificial altars, secret cults and ritualised killings.”

  “Well, for one Glasgow serial killer, it certainly does seem to be very much about all that.”

  “The word Satan for those who practice means adversary…”

  McGreavy frowned as he chewed as it was a word Father Rankin often used, in his freestyle rhetoric, speaking of both God and The Devil.

  “They are those who reject modern conceptualisations of God and religion, people who pity the mass followers who are led like sheep and brainwashed from birth. They are men and women who are passionate about knowledge and wisdom, they celebrate history and science and theories of human evolution, they just don’t believe in Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden and all that stuff.”

  Mac was staring at the Professor like he’d had a bucket of frozen water poured over his head, like his brain cells were being turned to icicles, he even felt his hairs stand on end.

  Sinclair laughed. “You see, Mac, it’s written all over your face. You’ve connected with what I’m saying instantly and are clearly capable of understanding this philosophical shift that certain individuals – the Satanists – choose to embody. Aren’t you an atheist, Mac?”

  “I’m agnostic, actually.”

  “You believe in other-worldly forces, yet you reject mainstream religion, so you conform to a similar line of philosophising whether you like it or not. You have your own superstitions, your own demons, Hell, you even have your own ghosts…”

  McGreavy looked across the table with his eyes set in a scowl that was almost hateful. “There is no need for comments like that, Professor, no need. You hear me…?”

  “Sorry Mac, I’m really sorry,” Sinclair huffed and lowered his eyes as he patted his mouth and stared down at a pathetic piece of meat that looked as though the swearing cook had been aggressively battering it with a hammer, floating in a puddle of stock-heavy gravy and a soggy pastry that he simply found to be vile in the truest sense of the word. He was one of the few people that Mac had opened up to about his utmost secrets and the spirit that haunted him – that of his dead wife – and he felt ashamed now of his own manner.

  Mac had over-reacted and pulled himself together, shaking himself out of the sudden moment of sensitivity, and laughing it off. It appeared that a tear had welled-up in the corner of his eye and he broke free from the hurt with a boisterous and theatrical enactment. “Jesus Christ, would you look at the pair of us, eh? What a pair of bloody misfits…”

  “Symbolism…Mac…symbolism…” Sinclair tactfully diverted them onto the more urgent stream of conversation.

  “What? You mean, the pentagram, drawn on the walls in blood next to the killer’s signature – the logo of The Church of Satan – or something along those lines, not very imaginative though…”

  “Richard Ramirez, the Satanic killer who was dubbed as The Night Stalker, killed men and women around Los Angeles and San Francisco in the mid-eighties. That was how he linked himself to his murders, by drawing a pentagram in white chalk at the crime scene.”

  “You think it’s a copycat killer?”

  “I think the person is an intellectual, someone who is knowledgeable about criminology and Police-procedurals, that’s what I think…”

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “You can’t rule it out, Mac, the killer could be a Police Officer.”

  Mac thought suddenly about what Jimmy had said at the crime scene, he frowned and peered into his glass of Scotch. “What about the poetry, these ramblings, written in blood?”

  Sinclair had been shown a photo by the Inspector in the car, on the journey to the pub, and asked for his opinion. “The words seem to be incoherent, but there is meaning there, deep-rooted meaning.”

  Mac was looking at him with heavily sedated eyes as he drank down his whisky and followed it by downing half his pint of Guinness in two big gulps.

  “Mac, tell me…”

  “What?”

  “I can see you’re holding something back, I can see it in your eyes, I’ve seen that look before.”

  He smirked back at his best pal and shook his head. “I can’t hide anything from you, can I?”

  “We’re a team Mac, me and you, and a pretty solid one at that…”

  “I’ve been getting these letters, from John Moffat, you remember him?”

  “The Casanova Killer?”

  “Aye, I believe he’s somehow connected with the killer, says his mother had some kind of sexual relationship with him. That’s why I’m not convinced that it could be a copper.”

  “You think coppers don’t sleep with whores? After all, she was a whore, was she not?”

  “Amongst other things, yes, she was a prostitute. This is just my gut-instinct. The detail he puts into the letters is uncanny, he refers to the killer as The Unsung Satanist, the signature used in each mural of poetry-in-blood, he even says that the killer visits him in hospital. There is definitely a connection, Alistair, he could be the key to catching this monster.”

  “Mac, is this official or unofficial information?”

  “Unofficial, for now, I want to keep it up my sleeve for the moment…”

  “Wise move, Mac, a very wise move, just tread carefully…” they looked at each other and didn’t have to say a word, as they were both perfectly aware of what sinister implications the letters might have in the long run.

  Chapter 59

  Whores, cocaine & damaged coppers

  Even tortured souls, who are haunted by the dead, must live life for what it is – a feast of the flesh and then some…

  There was one thing about Mac that made him attractive to long-legged, blonde lap dancers like Shona; well, two things actually.

  His prowess between the sheets was one, unlikely as it may seem, but Mac could move his lower-end into a woman’s anatomy like he was half-man and half-hydraulic-driven-pump. He fucked like a man on a cocktail of steroids and Viagra but all he needed was whisky and the occasional line of Charlie. That leads onto the second thing that a sexualised woman of loose morality might want him for – the drugs that he’d recently stolen from several different house-raids and crime scenes – drugs that he used on occasion to bribe gangsters for criminal intelligence. Mac wasn’t a clean cop these days, far from it, and everyone in Glasgow knew that – from Possilpark to the City Chambers.

  Ever since he’d lost his boy to drugs, he’d gone off the rails a bit, he went about the business of policing in more unconventional ways, and by Hell he got the desired results. “That copper’s slippery as a trout,” is what the gangs on the estates would say if they saw his clapped-out old Merc thundering into the scheme.

  Yes, he was a bent cop, a wild-card, he even carried unlicensed shooters, used them too.

  Did this make him a bad cop?

  Well, if a bad cop is one who is an expert in catching serial killers, monstrous and evil men who prey on the innocence of women and children? Then, no, he wasn’t a bad cop. In this respect, he was the best cop that a city like Glasgow could wish for.

  His drug of choice was cocaine; Charlie.

  Mixed with the whisky it gave him the stamina of a racehorse. But, sadly, made him happy on the trigger too. He’d blasted a few half-bit gangsters in the face because of it, and he’d gotten away with it, with all the brazen audacity of a mafia hitman.

  The ‘Untouchable’.

  The ‘Teflon Copper’.

  These were just a few of the nicknames he’d garnered over the years.

  She was laid there on the bed, comatose, drugged-up and shagged-out.

  She was bare and naked, limbs akimbo and her inflamed genitalia was still red and exposed, her fleshy sl
ither of clitoris stationary within a soft cushion of reddish-brown pubic hair. She was like an exquisite corpse, tantalising and mute, a cold beauty in a morbid state of peace. It was only when he saw her like that, alive but dead, he realised how beautiful she was.

  This pathetic junkie.

  A reluctant lover.

  A seasoned dancer.

  A prostitute too; most probably.

  Indeed, she was his now and the spirits of the dead had accepted it.

  He was sat naked on the sofa, fully-awake, just looking at his naked whore. There was another presence in the room too, a more sinister one, a spirit. She was there, in the corner, with her back to him and she had a rope around her neck, a noose from which her grey and blistered spectre hung, her web-like feet dangling just inches above the carpet. She was dead now, in the spirit world too, as she was dead in the real world. It didn’t make sense, how could someone so dead, be so alive in his head? Twice, she’d died, and both times it had been down to him and his need to feed. “Stay away from her Mac, her, and that witch of a fortune-teller,” the ghost of his dead wife had said to him, as the stripper approached him in a club where she was an erotic dancer. He’d been sat there, zoned-out, drunk out-of-his-skull, and she gave the bent cop her telephone number as she leaned over and kissed his cheek, whispering into his ear. “Call me, at night, when you’re sober enough to get it up, I’ll give you some nice chat.” He’d called her back, a few nights later at two am, and he pleasured himself aggressively as she’d whispered sweet sexual nothings down the telephone line.

  The spirit had warned him. “Stay away from that callous little junkie, Mac, or I’ll hang myself…and I’ll show you what it is to really be haunted, to see real horrors, to lose yer’ fuckin’ marbles like I did…” The spectre of her hung spirit was very real as it swayed slowly from side-to-side, in her crumpled-grey hospital rags, her oily hair hung low down past her delicate chin, suitably covering the rotting flesh of her once-beautiful face.

  “Hang in peace, dear, hang in peace…” he spoke to her, as he stared into space and took a long drag on his fag, the fiery end sizzling, refusing to look directly at her hanging corpse. “This is the only way that it can be from now on…a hunter needs to hunt, sweetheart, that’s what you used to say to me, although I suspect you were merely mocking me, when you haunted me in life as you now do in death…”

  Shona.

  She was young.

  She was a stunner.

  She was one of the best lap-dancers in Glasgow town.

  She came to him like an angel, that night, his eyeballs near popping out of his head, wasted on whisky and brought back to alertness with line after line of top-grade cocaine, courtesy of Vlad ‘The Russian’, the crazy albino gangster who owned the club – LEGS N’ HEAVEN – where Shona worked, a seedy den where a blue hue kept the dimness low and plumes of smoke tempered the din of music that wasn’t sensual nor erotic, but fit for a German techno-club, base that tremored in the floors.

  Doom-doom-doom…

  “You’re that copper, aren’t ye’?”

  “Am no lookin’ for a dance, darling.”

  “That’s alright, I wasn’t looking to give you one,” she spoke with a melody that made him stare, at her body, inappropriately, very inappropriately, struck by a strong lust, to taste her and smell her, every part of her sin-ridden, junkie body. That was when she leaned over and kissed his cheek, making her odd proposal, a brazen offering of sultry whispers to excite his nights of darkness and trauma.

  He’d smirked with unexpected arousal and looked at the piece of paper that she’d written a phone number on.

  His face had softened in a way that it rarely did.

  She smiled at him.

  He’d given-in to her slutty charm and here she was, at his place, in his bed. He enjoyed these moments, after all the drink and the drugs and the sex, where he could just sit there and watch her at peace.

  What was it that he felt for her?

  Sympathy?

  Understanding?

  Lust?

  Was she genuinely looking for someone like Mac to be her companion and fall in love with? An over-the-hill washed-out copper with nothing to show for life but a hung corpse that dwelled in his shadow and a string of murdered innocents who haunted his twisted dreams? Or, was he so stupid, so delusional, not to see that she was just using him?

  He was staring at her now with mixed feelings, pity combined with lust, seeing her shapely body, that perfectly soft flesh, the whiteness of her breasts and the perfect shape, all-natural and womanly. He liked that, the way they fell to the sides, it was an attractive feature, strongly suggestive and artistic in a dark way. She looked healthy, and fit, but he knew she was a habitual user of hard drugs. She was rotten, corrupt and infected. An abuser. A damn whore, too.

  A liar.

  A thief.

  She was damaged goods, just like he was.

  God, she was so beautiful and attractive.

  That night in the club, he’d felt so aroused that it defied all reasoning, more so than he’d done in a long, long time. He hadn’t been celibate since the wife passed, no, he even had another woman on the ‘regular’, but that sex wasn’t like it could be with a stripper, a young woman like that, one who could match him on the count of stamina, still kinky and experimental in the bedroom, it wouldn’t come close.

  He could recall the excitement he felt as he sat there, drunk, in a Russian gangster’s strip club. He’d felt the old machine that night as the engine turned over and the throttle growled, deep in his gut, in his balls. He wanted to take her and ravish her, in a domineering and animal way. He couldn’t even recall ever wanting to fuck a woman that badly before, as she put that sultry eye his way, this dangerous Whore of Babylon.

  “Don’t forget to call me,” she spoke sensually, standing from his sofa, and her shapely behind wiggled away from him across the club, through those dim blue lights and all that smoke, men whistling as she sauntered past to go and sit with another punter.

  The phone sex had been a mere appetiser; a tease.

  It wasn’t long before she was in his bed and snorting cocaine from his belly-button hole with a rolled-up ten-quid note as he drank whisky and drowned his eyes in the ashy spectre of the hanging dead. He’d kissed her softly, soft as a lover could, and he’d rattled the bedframe like it had never been rattled before, and she screamed his name in the depressive shadow that plagued his room.

  He’d cried, God, how he’d cried.

  Yes, he’d fucked her, and then he’d cried. She held him, and stroked his jet-black hair, and they just lay there together. Not a single word had to be spoken, because it was what he wanted, and hoped that somehow, in some way, unlikely as it was, that she might want it too.

  That, for a pair of lost souls, was as near to love as they cared to venture.

  And, later, when she lay there too as vulnerable as she could be, in his house, in his bed, a copper’s gaff, he would just sit and watch her at peace, allowing her the space and the freedom to sleep, to sleep like the dead, an exquisite corpse at sleeping rest. And, in the morning she’d wake-up and kiss him gently, assuming he was still there, and she wouldn’t ask any questions about his work, what cases he was working, just like he didn’t ask her any questions about the club, or what other services she might offer to clients for money.

  No, he never asked her any questions, about any of that stuff.

  And, although he did feel some level of jealousy regarding this matter, he would never act on it. Or, at least, he had no intentions of doing so; but, where human emotions are involved, nothing can ever be guaranteed.

  Chapter 60

  The Broadmoor files

  When the proof is in the pudding, the mystery is in the filling…

  The problem with being a habitual user of cocaine is that it makes even the strongest of coffee fade to bland insignificance as an ‘upper’. Nevertheless, he drank it strong and black as he scanned his eyes over the important d
ocuments that had been sent to him from a high-security psychiatric hospital in England; the papers were strewn across the coffee table before him.

  He looked at names.

  Dates.

  Faces.

  The Broadmoor files had been sent personally to him from London and an old contact that he still had in the Metropolitan Police. It was essentially a list of all known visitors to Broadmoor over the last four weeks who could have had access to The Casanova Killer, both listed, and un-listed. Officially, no visitors had been registered for Moffat but the killer insisted that someone had been going there to see him and to pass on information about the murders, maybe through the guards, it could potentially be the killer himself who was doing it, playing a game with the authorities, or maybe Moffat was just full of lies and craving a bit of media attention. Whatever it was, there was a sinister game being played by someone and it didn’t make any sense.

  Every so often, he’d take his eyes from the page and look over to where his sin-ridden lover slept the night away. Sometimes, he’d even smile…yes, smile…it was a thing he rarely did, a thing he rarely had reason to do.

  The coffee was cold now, gave him the jitters, and that was not a good way to start the day.

  He put his focus back to the file and absorbed data, not knowing what he was looking for, but something in his gut said that he’d know it when he saw it. Nothing could prepare him though, for the name he was about to read on one of those pages, and it was an extremely hard pill to swallow.

  He paused.

  He frowned.

  He took a double take.

  JAMES McGHEE – it was there in black and white and his inner voice was telling him that this was no co-incidence, no case of mistaken identity, no administrative error, and it certainly was no Police-related work that he’d been assigned to. He checked the dates and they all coincided with times that fell both shortly before and shortly after the Satanic murders took place and the numerous occasions where Jimmy had claimed to be visiting his sick mother in Germany.