I’m equally grateful to Aileen Sloan, recently retired inspector at Police Scotland, whose diligent checking of my police procedure saved me from too many embarrassing errors.
Above all, I owe all the thanks and all the love to Alexandra Sokoloff – wife, lover, friend, muse, sounding board, and bestselling novelist.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
During his twenty-year career in Glasgow with a Scottish Sunday newspaper, Craig Robertson interviewed three recent Prime Ministers, and attended major stories including 9/11, Dunblane, the Omagh bombing and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. He was pilloried on breakfast television, beat Oprah Winfrey to a major scoop, spent time on Death Row in the USA and dispensed polio drops in the backstreets of India. His debut novel, Random, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger and was a Sunday Times bestseller.
Also by Craig Robertson
The Photographer
Murderabilia
In Place of Death
The Last Refuge
Witness the Dead
Cold Grave
Snapshot
Random
Craig Robertson
The Photographer
A dawn raid on the home of a suspected rapist leads to the chilling discovery of a disturbing collection hidden under floorboards. DI Rachel Narey is terrified at the potential scale of what they’ve found and of what brutalities it may signal.
When the photographs are ruled inadmissible as evidence and the man walks free from court, Narey knows she’s let down the victim she’d promised to protect and a monster is back on the streets.
Meanwhile, Tony Winter’s young family is under threat from internet trolls and he is determined to protect them whatever the cost. He and Narey are in a race against time to find the unknown victims of the photographer’s lens – before he strikes again.
Available in print and eBook
Turn the page to read an extract now . . .
PROLOGUE
GLASGOW, MARCH 2008
Lainey Henderson drew down hard on her cigarette with one eye on the clock, her free hand working continually to waft the smoke out of the window. Less than thirty seconds to go, her cheeks sucking the life out of the death stick.
The nerves were to blame but she thought of them as a good thing. What kind of person would she be if she wasn’t nervous on behalf of the woman who was about to walk through that door? The woman expecting Lainey to make everything all right when nothing could possibly do that.
It was an ISS, an Initial Support Session. They were the worst and the best.
The worst because you got it all in the raw. The open wound of a victim talking, often for the first time, about their worst nightmare. They might be calm or hysterical, might talk or might not, might lash out at you because there was no one else there or they might cling on for dear life. They might just break down and cry in a way that ripped at your emotions and left you feeling worthless. That happened a lot. An ISS could break your heart.
But it could be the best too, because if you managed to take away even an inch of their pain then it would all be worth it.
The knock at the door was quiet, almost apologetic.
‘Just a minute.’ Lainey encouraged the final swirls of smoke out the window and pinged the butt out after it. She leaned far enough out that she could see a couple of dozen pieces of evidence of previous guilt and swore under her breath, making a mental note to clear them up before she got fired. The cigarette packet went in her pocket – she liked to have it at hand even when she couldn’t smoke. ‘Come in.’
The door slid open barely enough to let the girl slip through the gap. Lainey knew she was supposed to say, and think, woman rather than girl, but the ghost of a teenager who was gliding over the carpet made Lainey want to sweep her up in her arms and mother her. But she wouldn’t. Or she’d try not to.
An ISS had rules. The idea was to make the client feel welcome, to assess them and find out what they wanted from the service. The case worker wasn’t to ask a lot of questions or offer advice. Lainey had never been one for rules though.
The girl was a shade over five feet tall, dressed in baggy black from top to toe, pale as the moon with dark auburn hair that had been brushed with her eyes closed. She glanced nervously round the room, looking for the monsters that Lainey had seen others search for.
‘Jennifer? I’m Lainey. Do you want to take a seat? Coffee, tea, water?’
‘No. No thanks. Well yes, water would be good. Thank you.’
Lainey poured her a glass from the bottle, taking the chance to gently touch the back of the girl’s hand as she passed it to her. Jennifer flinched, but only slightly. It was a good sign.
Their chairs were just a few feet apart, facing each other. Lainey would rather have moved them till they were touching but she knew better or, more accurately, had been told better. She sat back and gave Jennifer the chance to speak first but soon realised it would be a long wait. The girl studied the walls even though there was precious little to see, just a couple of cheap, bland prints and a shelf studded with leaflets. When she finally returned her gaze to Lainey, Jennifer’s eyes were wet with pleading. Please talk. Ask me something. Say something. So she did.
‘The first time I came here, I had no idea what to expect. No idea what to say. Or even what to think. I might have sat here all day with my mouth shut and a million ideas running riot in my head if someone hadn’t finally saved me from it. She told me that it was always scarier in your head than it was when said out loud. It’s tempting to think if we don’t say it then it’s not real, it didn’t really happen. That doesn’t work though. If we leave them inside, they just get bigger and bigger. Let them out and they get small.’
Jennifer bobbed her head, although still not entirely convinced. ‘Have you . . . Do you know what I’m going through?’ There was a second question in there, unasked but unmissable.
‘I do. Maybe not exactly because cases are different. But yes, I know.’
A little noise escaped from the girl. Relief of sorts. She swallowed and nodded and readied herself.
‘I was raped. A man broke into my flat and raped me.’
Lainey just nodded to let her know she’d heard and understood. The words were unnecessary but important for Jennifer to say. The evidence of it was all over her, it was why they were here. The stomach-churning damage to her face was proof, too, that the rape had been accompanied with a fearful beating.
‘Was it someone you knew?’
‘No. I don’t think so. He wore a mask. A balaclava.’
Anger twisted in Lainey’s gut, something more too, and she had to wear a mask of her own to hide it. It wasn’t going to do either of them any good if she had a meltdown. Her cigarette packet found its way into her hand and she began tapping on the top of it the way she always did when she was in desperate need of a fag.
‘We’re here to help in any way we can, Jennifer. Whatever you want from us.’ The words sounded trite, meaningless, and they were. She wanted to be able to say she’d hunt the bastard down and cut his balls off with rusty shears.
‘He kept calling me a slag. Like he knew me and it was my fault. He called me a slag every time he punched me in the face.’
Lainey felt like she’d been punched too. Sudden and hard. She looked at Jennifer, unable to say anything. Transfixed by her words and suddenly, though she’d tried not to be, by her face.
‘He just kept thumping me. Pounding his fist into my nose and my cheek. Slag. Slag. Slag. Punch. Punch. Punch. I couldn’t see. Just heard the noise. Heard my nose breaking. My cheek being smashed.’
Lainey’s heart had stopped, her throat closed over.
‘He had me pinned down. His knees on my chest and arms. I tried to fight but I couldn’t move. He hit me till I passed out. Then he . . . he . . .’
Lainey managed to nod to save Jennifer from saying the rest. There was no need. She knew.
The girl’s nose was almost at forty-five degrees to her pretty fa
ce, like a rugby player’s or a boxer’s. Both eyes were blackened and one was barely open at all. Her ashen skin was a canvas for violent patches of purple and red. Her lips were twice the size they should be.
Lainey had to resist the temptation to put her hand to her own face, mimic the places, feel where her own wounds used to be. There was a burning she wanted to cool with her touch.
Jennifer talked on, about waking to find herself naked, a searing pain between her legs, the bed sheets bloodied, her flat empty again. She saw herself in the mirror and screamed at the sight. She called a friend who called an ambulance.
Lainey knew the rules and the reasons for them. Jennifer had been raped, any semblance of control wrenched from her. It was Lainey’s role to empower her as a survivor, not to reinforce the trauma by offering unwanted touching. If she sensed that the touch, the consoling hug that burst to be released from within her, was wanted then she had to ask permission to do so. Rapists never asked permission so counsellors had to.
Her gut told her Jennifer wanted and needed it. She could see it in the girl’s eyes. Lainey teetered on the edge of asking and hugging and holding. And couldn’t do it.
The words came out of her mouth by rote.
‘What happens now is I need to ask if you want to proceed, then we put you on the waiting list and when you get to the top, your new worker will give you a call to arrange your first session.’
‘New worker? It won’t be you?’
‘It might be me,’ Lainey blurted out. ‘But not necessarily.’ It wouldn’t be her.
‘Oh. Okay.’
They said goodbye and Jennifer slipped out the door as quietly as she’d come in. Lainey waited as long as she dared to make sure the girl had gone then rushed to the corner of the desk, picked up the waste-paper basket and vomited into it.
Craig Robertson
Murderabilia
The first commuter train of the morning slowly rumbles away from platform seven of Queen St station. And then, as the train emerges from a tunnel, the screaming starts. Hanging from the bridge ahead of them is a body. Placed neatly on the ground below him are the victim’s clothes.
Why?
Detective Inspector Rachel Narey is assigned the case and then just as quickly taken off it again. Tony Winter, now a journalist, must pursue the case for her.
The line of questioning centres around the victim’s clothes – why leave them in full view? And what did the killer not leave, and where might it appear again?
Everyone has a hobby. Some people collect death. To find this evil, Narey must go on to the dark web, and into immense danger . . .
Available in print and eBook
Craig Robertson
In Place of Death
A tense and gripping crime novel set in the dark underbelly of Glasgow . . .
A young man enters the culverted remains of an ancient Glasgow stream, looking for thrills. Deep below the city, it is decaying and claustrophobic and gets more so with every step. As the ceiling lowers to no more than a couple of feet above the ground, the man finds his path blocked by another person. Someone with his throat cut.
As DS Rachel Narey leads the official investigation, photographer Tony Winter follows a lead of his own, through the shadowy world of urbexers, people who pursue a dangerous and illegal hobby, a world that Winter knows more about than he lets on.
And it soon becomes clear that the murderer has killed before, and has no qualms about doing so again.
Available in print and eBook
Craig Robertson
The Last Refuge
John Callum is fleeing his past, but has run straight into danger.
When John Callum arrives on the wild and desolate Faroe Islands, he vows to sever all ties with his previous life. He desperately wants to make a new start, and is surprised by how quickly he is welcomed into the close-knit community. But still, the terrifying, debilitating nightmares just won’t stop.
Then the solitude is shattered by an almost unheard-of crime on the islands: murder. A specialist team of detectives arrives from Denmark to help the local police, who seem completely ill-equipped for an investigation of this scale. But as tensions rise, and the community closes rank to protect its own, John has to watch his back.
But far more disquieting than that, John’s nightmares have taken an even more disturbing turn, and he can’t be certain about the one thing he needs to know above all else. Whether he is the killer . . .
Available in print and eBook
Craig Robertson
Witness the Dead
Red Silk is back . . .
Scotland 1972. Glasgow is haunted by a murderer nicknamed Red Silk – a feared serial killer who selects his victims in the city’s nightclubs. The case remains unsolved but Archibald Atto, later imprisoned for other murders, is thought to be Red Silk.
In modern-day Glasgow, DS Rachel Narey is called to a gruesome crime scene at the city’s Necropolis. The body of a young woman lies stretched out over a tomb. Her body bears a three-letter message from her killer.
Now retired, former detective Danny Neilson spots a link between the new murder and those he investigated in 1972 – details that no copycat killer could have known about. But Atto is still behind bars. Must Danny face up to his fears that they never caught their man? Determined finally to crack the case, Danny, along with his nephew, police photographer Tony Winter, pays Atto a visit. But they soon discover that they are going to need the combined efforts of police forces past and present to bring a twisted killer to justice.
Available in print and eBook
Craig Robertson
Cold Grave
A murder investigation frozen in time is beginning to melt.
November 1993. Scotland is in the grip of an ice-cold winter and the Lake of Menteith is frozen over. A young man and woman walk across the ice to the historic island of Inchmahome which lies in the middle of the lake. Only the man returns.
In the spring, as staff prepare the abbey ruins for summer visitors, they discover the body of a girl, her skull violently crushed.
Present day. Retired detective Alan Narey is still haunted by the unsolved crime. Desperate to relieve her ailing father’s conscience, DS Rachel Narey risks her job and reputation by returning to the Lake of Menteith and unofficially reopening the cold case.
With the help of police photographer Tony Winter, Rachel prepares a dangerous gambit to uncover the killer’s identity – little knowing who that truly is. Despite the freezing temperatures the ice-cold case begins to thaw, and with it a tide of secrets long frozen in time are suddenly and shockingly unleashed.
Available in print and eBook
Craig Robertson
Snapshot
A series of high-profile shootings by a lone sniper leaves Glasgow terrorised and police photographer Tony Winter – a man with a tragic hidden past – mystified.
Who is behind the executions of some of the most notorious drug lords in the city? As more shootings occur – including those of police officers – the authorities realise they have a vigilante on their hands.
Meanwhile, Tony investigates a link between the victims and a schoolboy who has been badly beaten. Seemingly unconnected, they share a strange link. As Tony delves deeper, his quest for the truth and his search for the killer lead him down dark and dangerous paths.
Available in print and eBook
Craig Robertson
Random
Glasgow is being terrorised by a serial killer the media have nicknamed The Cutter. The murders have left the police baffled.
There seems to be neither rhyme nor reason behind the killings; no kind of pattern or motive; an entirely different method of murder each time, and nothing that connects the victims except for the fact that the little fingers of their right hands have been severed.
If DS Rachel Narey could only work out the key to the seemingly random murders, how and why the killer selects his victims, she would be well on her way to catching him. But as the
police, the press and a threatening figure from Glasgow’s underworld begin to close in on The Cutter, his carefully laid plans threaten to unravel – with horrifying consequences.
Available in print and eBook
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First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2020
Copyright © Craig Robertson, 2020
The right of Craig Robertson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-6536-8
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-6538-2
Audio ISBN: 978-1-4711-9393-4
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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