Glasgow Noir Box Set

by Gavin Graham

Trust nobody

  One who is loyal to The Devil, is weak to the flesh, unfaltering as a servant to the masters of darkness…

  “You can’t be serious, Boss, you think I’m the killer? A Satanic serial killer, really? Is this some kind of a joke? Because, I’m not seeing the punch line, is it coming soon?”

  “Don’t underestimate me, Son, it’s not a wise thing to do.”

  “OK, I’m dying to hear this, so what evidence do you have that implicates me as The Unsung Satanist? This will be interesting, right enough, especially considering I was there with you at each and every one of the crime scenes.”

  “You were never there with me when I took the calls, so that doesn’t mean anything, you could have done the murders, dumped the bodies then called-in the crimes yourself…”

  “I was never with you when you took the calls, Mac, because you’re always at the pub, on the fucking lash…” he growled at his senior with total disrespect.

  “Don’t you dare play that smart cunt with me, Jimmy, you hear me?” Mac punched down on the table with a clenched fist that had the size and constitution of a rock, it seemed like the whole room shuddered, as did Jimmy. Mac was stronger than he looked and apparently had once killed a bareknuckle boxer in a street fight. “Do you fucking hear me?” he growled back, like a mad, salivating dog.

  “Aye, Boss, I hear you. I’m Sorry, I was out of order.”

  “So, since you want to be so smart about your whereabouts, perhaps you can explain all the lies?”

  “What lies?”

  “Your dying mother, Jimmy, why don’t you tell me all the sob stories again? Cancer, was that it? Private hospitals in Germany? You’ve got a hell of an imagination, so it would seem, perhaps you should write a book? Maybe you can do that in your cell in Barlinnie, eh?”

  Jimmy bowed his head and took a deep breath.

  “Is your mother even alive, Jimmy?”

  “No, she’s dead, she killed herself around twenty-odd years ago, got a shooter from somewhere and put a bullet in her head. I never even found out where she got the gun from.”

  McGreavy flinched, as he saw that he’d touched a raw nerve, one of apparent truth. “Have you ever been to a brothel, here in Glasgow, Jimmy?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Maybe, why?”

  “And, I imagine you have availed the services of John Moffat’s mother in the past, have you not, Jimmy? You’re the one he was referring to, you are the one…”

  His face cringed in a twist of ridiculous confusion. “What? I’ve got no idea what you are talking about, Boss, I really don’t.”

  “I know Moffat is connected somehow to these killings, and I know you were at Broadmoor, Jimmy, I have hospital records and CCTV footage to prove it. Why were you there, Jimmy, who were you there to see? Because, you certainly weren’t there on official business, so what was it? Did you see Moffat? Are you two working in collaboration? How is it working between you two, exactly?”

  “Moffat? No, Christ no, that hadn’t even crossed my mind. It’s my dad, he’s in Broadmoor, I’m allowed visits.”

  “Your dad now, is it? Son, running your parent’s names through the mud like this is more than just a tad disrespectful, OK? You’re not scoring any points, not with me, I can assure you.”

  “My old boy did some bad things after Mum died, he went off the rails, he lost his mind. Deep down, I always knew he had mental issues, but they were never openly discussed, I mean, back then mental health wasn’t something people spoke about, was it? He wasn’t a drinker, or a gambler, never touched drugs.”

  Something changed, suddenly, in Mac’s demeanour, his body language softened, as if he realised that he could have gotten it all wrong after all, that he may have jumped the gun so-to-speak. He pulled out a chair and sat down to listen to what he had to say. “So, what was it?”

  “Women.”

  “What, was he sleeping around behind your mum’s back, doing it with hookers?”

  “No, nothing like that…”

  “So, what…?”

  “I just always thought, he was, you know…”

  “What…?”

  “A bit of a pervert.”

  “A pervert?”

  “After Mum killed herself, he started to obsess over women that looked like her, you know, if he saw one on the TV or in the papers or a magazine, he’d obsess over them. He used to cut up the papers and keep a box under his bed. He used to take the box into the bathroom and, well, you know…”

  “Masturbate?”

  “Aye.”

  “Nothing illegal about that, Jimmy, I do it myself, quite regularly.”

  “It got worse, he started to take an interest in women in the area, the ones that had the right look. He’d follow them, watch them, you get the picture?”

  “Oh Jesus, he was a stalker?”

  “For want of a better word, yes, he was that, to begin with…”

  “To begin with?”

  “Yes, things got even more out-of-hand, and he wanted to get close to them, to go into their houses and smell their bed sheets, to touch them, do stuff…”

  “Oh, Jesus, is this why you took so much interest in the Casanova case?”

  “Yeah, they were two men of the same ilk, but my dad was much madder than Moffat. He wasn’t as violent, but he lost his marbles completely, and when he finally took it too far he wasn’t even fit for trial.”

  “What did he do, did he rape one of them? Kill one?”

  Jimmy just looked up at Mac with big, watery child-like eyes and he did something he hadn’t done since his mother had passed away, he allowed his face to crease up, eyes closed and mouth wide open, and he began to yelp and sob in the most painful way imaginable.

  Chapter 65

  A roasted bin of charred human flesh, for the innocent die young

  Children should be the ones who bury their parents, not the other way around…

  It was a horrendous thing to confront, nothing could have prepared Mac for what he saw, the bodies of two young children, stripped naked, bound in rope and put head-first into an empty garbage bin, doused in petrol and set alight to burn to death.

  It was hard, to take it all in at first, and he wanted to puke.

  He wanted to cry, like the way Jimmy had cried under interrogation, for it was soul-destroying; but, he did not weep.

  He wanted a fucking drink like you would never imagine.

  He cleared his throat and kept it professional, looking to his side, where he saw a van with its rear-doors open, the insides were completely red, thick with spilled blood and a bucket sat at the centre of the metallic floor. “Vehicle?”

  “The transit van was reported stolen from Dunblane Avenue approximately two hours before the bodies were discovered by an old lady walking her dog,” Colin informed him.

  McGreavy nodded before casting his eyes over to the third most prominent and perhaps telling feature of the scene – more Satanic poetry – the mad ramblings of an obsessed mind, this time written upon a white bed sheet in blood and pinned up against the side of a shed where the two bodies had been left to bleed, then burn:

  I am The Unsung Satanist, a servant to the cause, bathed in darkness, the pulsing smut of their torn innocence. What you have done to them, shall be done unto you, death is a certainty as the Soldiers in Black may slay, the fearsome servant will never stray, from darkness to light, we own the day. Brains and innards shall rot in the sodden dirt as the maggots come out to play, fear not the coming of Darkness, because I reign in the Master’s shadow, occult magic in a rising moon, the void beckons, unknown victims will die, guilty as they are hung out, drenched in blood, to dry beneath a cold sky, a destiny of tremendous nothingness. Gods of the Chamber, the hunger never fades, a thirst for blood like nothing else ever known, yet now you shall know it. Snake, venomous, with her licking tongue, the poison of her labia, rancid and vile, the venom of her sting, provocative and magnificen
t, the power of her sex and the promising scent of death to come, the pungent stench of her oozing honey-sickle. The trickle of her fickle; wet, warm and ravenous. Virile heat, tightness to behold, the sun sets to profanities told. Rise, all Children of The Unsung Satanist, savage animals to guard thy door and eliminate all doubt. For me to be, for Him to see, the Whores of Babylon shall sing. My wine is in you, my ripest juice, to wet my darkest thirst. Be with me, now, for this is the true Glory, in life and in death. A promise, a pact, a declaration, to serve in Satan’s Palace. Giving and taking, it is the true Architect’s structure of enlightenment, to know thy Glory in murder and in blood. The delicious taste of her crimson orchid as her corpse lies bleeding, their passing is a mist and death covers my flesh like sweat, a sweet perfume in this shadowy dimension, to be used, like a warm cunt to fuck. A virile vixen and a clammy white stain, Crowley’s mockery behind a cold blue moon, you can hear The Beast as he laughs in the final death of winter; can you not? He laughs now. Yes, he does. Hail Satan! 666.

  “What you have done to them, shall be done unto you,” McGreavy repeated the words that apparently resonated most with him. “It sounds like a crime of retribution, almost, a crime against the children, as punishment for something that someone else did to children. What do we know about the parents?”

  “Mum wasn’t working, Dad was a Physical Education teacher at the local primary school.”

  “A P.E. teacher?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Nothing,” McGreavy said. “Nothing at all.”

  Chapter 66

  At the end of the day, it’s a grand game of smoke & mirrors

  It is true what they say then: it takes a heathen to know a heathen…

  “Is it true then, Jimmy, about what they said?” Siobhan asked, drunk now, on her second bottle of Chardonnay already.

  “What’s that, that I’m a Satanic serial killer?” The Swede was just as drunk, half-way down on a bottle Double Black, he’d been through the mill of recent days, with all the accusations and talking about his father, and it had exhausted him, physically and emotionally.

  “No, that you were in bed with a porn star and you said another woman’s name?” she was in a very amorous and sexual mood, getting close to him and unbuttoning his shirt, for he had a barrel of a chest that women liked, muscled and fuzzy, Siobhan herself having said that he reminded her of a young Sean Connery.

  “Christ, Siobhan, you never give me a break, do you?” he was peering down at her, watching as she splayed open his shirt and ran her hands all over his chest, down the fleshy river of a long scar that had been put there by a sword-wielding madman, squeezing and feeling too around the puppy-fat at his otherwise hard and muscled stomach.

  “Who was it?” she whispered to him, putting her head down and sucking on a hard and mottled man-nipple.

  He gasped and closed his eyes with a sudden punch of pleasure. “What?”

  “The other woman’s name? Who was it you were thinking about when you had your penis inside that glamorous actress?” she looked up at him with callous eyes as she ran her wet tongue around his gnarly chest.

  “Have I not had enough interrogations, lately? I’ve been accused of being a bloody serial killer for God sake.”

  “Jimmy McGhee, my very own serial killer, that actually turns me on,” she moved her head up and was whispering in his ear now, with a naughty giggle, still stroking his body, biting on his ear lobe.

  He laughed. “You’re a bad girl, you’re not right in the head, you know that?”

  She laughed, bringing herself to mount him and putting his glass to the side, then she pressed her mouth down onto his lips and tasted the honey-like sting of his whisky-infused tongue, grinding on his crotch with the stretched inner-segment of her tight leather pants. “The thing is, if I let you take me to bed now and fuck me, are you going to get confused?”

  He shook his head and said: “No, no confusion,” and they continued to indulge in a sensual play of wet, vulgar kissing.

  “Good, because I have a secret for you, Jimmy,” she stopped kissing him and raised her gaze to look him dead in the eye.

  Jimmy suddenly frowned and flinched for she had an alien look of darkness in her eyes.

  Then, she smiled, a sexual smile. “I think about you too when I fuck other men,” she was cradling his jaw line in her delicate fingers, stroking his face, as she smirked and raised her eyebrows.

  Jimmy smiled back, for they were on the same page, in more ways than one…

  Siobhan always slept well after sex.

  They’d both been hornier than usual and they’d taken it to unimaginable levels of filth and sadism. She dug her nails into his back, making him bleed, and she made him enclose a hand around her neck and strangle her as she etched closer to her most trembling and vocal of orgasms.

  She fell asleep in his arms as her Police colleague lay awake to think and let his mind wander.

  Jimmy stroked at her body and her Thai tattoo, enjoying her womanly scent, feeling her radiating warmth, her skin, and the hotness of her breath as she lay at rest. He was struck by a bitter-wood dryness of the palate, a whisky drouth, so slipped out from beneath the sheets to go down and fix himself a glass of water. He pulled on his boxers and tip-toed out of Siobhan’s bedroom and closed the door, silently, and moved across the landing with a careful step. At the top of the stairs he noticed flickering lights at the base of the door to her spare room.

  Why the heck would candles be burning in her spare room?

  Was there somebody there, lurking behind the door?

  He looked back to the bedroom, Siobhan was out-for-the-count, should he have a look? Would it be a violation of her privacy? His curiosity got the better of him. He used a strong grip to slowly but solidly press down on the handle and open the door without it straining on the hinges. As the door opened up he was hit in the face by a blast of cold air, like a gust of wind had been trapped in there, but there was no window open. There was a smell too, something not right, a deathly kind of a smell. His whole sense of the room was wrong, like there was a presence in there, some kind of a ghost.

  Jimmy rarely felt scared, he was as hard as they came, harder than most of the gangsters in Glasgow; but, right then, he was scared by what he saw.

  There were several framed photographs sat upon a table that was populated with tea candles that must have been burning away since that afternoon. One of the framed pictures was of an infamous American serial killer whom he recognised to be Richard Ramirez – The Night Stalker. He couldn’t recall a great deal about Ramirez, but he remembered enough to know that he was a self-styled Satan-worshiper who went in to people’s homes in the night to rape and stab and shoot innocent people, killed fourteen, tortured dozens more. Ramirez fell into the serial killer Hall of Fame alongside the likes of Ted Bundy and Charles Manson, becoming a thing of celebrity in the US, women lining up to see him in prison and have sexual relations with him, regardless of his despicable hygiene and black, rotten molars. The picture she had was an iconic image of Ramirez in the courtroom holding his hand up to show a Satanic pentagram. Why the hell would she have a picture of him, framed, and surrounded by candles? He presumed it was some kind of study that she was doing, a case study, or something like that. She was a smart woman and it didn’t surprise him really that she would use such innovative methods to enhance her policing skills.

  Another picture was of Aleister Crowley, one of the most famous members of the Ordo Templi Orientis, a notorious occultist who was also believed to have committed numerous ritualistic Satanic killings in America. Maybe she was looking to find some inspiration or understanding that would assist the team in catching The Unsung Satanist.

  The third one, to Jimmy’s shock, was of John ‘Casanova’ Moffat – the lady killer of Glasgow who’d used Tinder to lure his prey and rape, sodomise and stab them to death before mutilating their torn corpses. Next to the young psychopath’s photo, carved into the wooden table, was written – THE ASH MAN,
4EVER, XXX.

  It made no sense to him, none at all.

  The more he looked at it, the more the room appeared to be a shrine to the crimes and ideals of these evil men. What was it? Was it really her approach to the job? A method for getting her mind into an investigation? Getting to know the killer’s mind-set and actually meditating to that cause? Was it meditation, or, was it worship?

  No, it was too far-fetched, surely…

  It was weird as hell though, to say the least, but he was sure there was a valid explanation for it all, she’d be able to explain, he was sure of it. Then again, if he asked her about it, she’d know he’d been snooping about in her private things. That would not be good, no, so he decided to let it go for now.

  Chapter 67

  When in doubt, send a lamb to the slaughter

  We all know, what The Devil’s greatest trick was, do we not? Convincing the world that he doesn’t exist…?

  Siobhan had been summoned to McGreavy’s office. As usual, she was dressed in leather, and she had that ‘punk’ vibe about her.

  His desk was a mish-mash of papers, files and books on serial killers and criminal profiling. A singular steel skull sat at the front of his desk and it was generally the first thing people saw as they walked into the drab room. Behind the desk was a wall scattered with post-it notes, diagrams, newspaper cuttings and photographs.

  Three investigations were open.

  ‘The Lollipop Man’; a known paedophile who had been discovered by a vigilante Facebook group who lured him with a fake profile, pretending to be an under-age schoolgirl. He’d been driven underground but the naked and abused body of a dead child recently discovered head-down in a shallow river had been directly connected to him after tiny remnants of dead skin had been recovered from the girl’s anus. If they didn’t catch him first then the vigilantes surely would.