Witness the Dead (11 page)

His eyes tried to follow the report, but they kept drifting back to the eyes that gazed at him from the paper. He couldn’t help but compare the images to the ones he had taken in the Necropolis and on Caledonia Road. Couldn’t stop himself from comparing the faces in front of him to the sleeping bloodied forms he’d photographed. Eternity stared back at him from the ink.

He closed the newspaper over, shutting the girls away, and handed over his cash to the shopkeeper. When the bell rang to betray his entrance into the café, he saw that Rachel was sitting in the rear wooden booth and already had a copy of the
Sun
in front of her. The way her mouth was knotted suggested that she was far from impressed.

‘If it’s Toshney, then I’m going to kill him myself,’ she hissed, her hands tightening their grip on the paper.

‘You get brown sauce on that roll?’

‘Just bloody eat it once it comes. I think this shoe stuff is bollocks. Why no shoes, then one? It doesn’t make any sense. I’m not buying it. Addison’s going to go ape shit though. This Cinderella stuff will have him diving off the top board. Christ, at least there’s nothing about the writing on their stomachs. Although it does mention the first girl’s hands being placed palm up and the other’s clasped in prayer.’

‘You sure it came from inside?’

She looked up at him, as if realising that she’d been talking out loud and had said more than she’d meant to. Even when they’d been together, she’d always tried to keep their personal and professional lives completely separate, putting up a barrier and on a need-to-know basis that annoyed the hell out of him. Even voicing her opinion of the missing shoes was more than he’d normally get.

‘Yeah. Probably. Maybe.’

He heard the all-too-familiar sound of the cell door slamming shut in his face.

‘You do remember that I took photographs of those girls? And that I was there in the Necropolis? And that I know about the shoes? And that we were more than colleagues?’

She smiled back at him sarcastically and perhaps slightly sadly. ‘Yes, I do remember. Doesn’t mean I should be talking to you about them. Or talking about who might have leaked this to the bloody paper.’

‘You mean Toshney?’

She glared at him and glanced around the café before opening her mouth to retort. The words never came though because she was interrupted by the waitress setting down an orange juice and a coffee. By the time the girl had left, Rachel’s tone had softened.

‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to shout at you. It’s just been . . . difficult lately.’

Winter nodded. ‘How’s your dad?’

Her face fell. ‘Not good. He’s gone through a bit of a bad spell.’

‘And how are you?’

She shrugged but he could see the pain behind her eyes. He wanted to hug her yet knew he couldn’t. Shouldn’t. ‘If there’s anything I can do to help . . .’

His hand edged cautiously towards her across the table. Rachel stared at it, seemingly considering the offer. ‘Tony . . . I want to . . .’

Her mobile phone rang and vibrated on the desk, slicing through whatever was passing between them. Rachel looked at the screen and mouthed an apology. She hit the answer button on the phone but didn’t have the chance to say as much as hello before the voice on the other end began blaring through. Even from the other side of the table, Winter could tell it was Addison. His own conversation was over.

Narey put the mobile to her ear but just as quickly had to take it away again and hold it a foot away as Addison ranted down the other end. ‘Yes, I’ve seen it,’ she eventually managed to say. ‘I’ve got a copy of it in front of me now. No, I don’t know. Of course it bloody wasn’t me! Yes, I know you think it was him. Yes, maybe but—’

Addison continued his tirade, an angry buzzing bouncing off the wooden panels of the booth. Narey grimaced at the noise and made several stuttering attempts to butt her way into the onslaught before finally managing to bring the DI to a halt.

‘Look,
sir
, I’m not exactly Toshney’s biggest fan, as you know. No . . . no . . . Let me finish. Everyone at the scene heard you hammer Toshney for that. As soon as you did that . . . Hang on . . . As soon as you did it gave everyone else a free hurl at blabbing it to their friendly local journo, knowing full well that Toshney would get the blame. Or even just mentioning it to someone else who then told the paper. No . . . no, I’m in the Hyndland Café. No, I’m on my own. Right, okay, see you soon.’

Winter raised his eyebrows questioningly at Narey as she hung up, but she shrugged unapologetically.

‘The more Addy ranted that it was Toshney, the more I felt inclined to defend the twat. Anyway, I’m right. Everyone at the scene at the Necropolis heard Toshney make that stupid Cinderella joke. It could have been any of them. It could have been you.’

Winter just looked back at her, his face impassive. ‘I thought we were going to have a chat.’

She sipped on her coffee, eyes closed. ‘Sorry. We can’t. I’ve got to go. Now. Addy wants a brainstorming situation. Which is ironic, given that he’s already doing my brain in.’

‘Bit of a bad mood?’

‘He could probably run his car on the steam that’s coming out of his ears.’

‘Yeah? I’ve had better starts to the day myself.’

‘Sorry.’

In moments she was gone, swept through the front door in a bustle of coat, leaving him sitting alone in the booth. Winter pushed aside the bacon roll, appetite disappeared, and stared at the space where she’d sat.

Five minutes later, he left the café, trying his best not to look as crestfallen as he felt and headed back to Partick station to get the subway into town. He still had a while before he was due to start work but he decided to head into Pitt Street early. God knows, there was enough for him to do.

He cut through a housing estate on his way to Crow Road, his head full of questions about relationships and shoes and tattoos and young women lost in the night. The camera in the bag on his back still held images taken in the two cemeteries, and a bit of him itched to take it out and go through them. A more rational part resisted and he left the camera where it was, weighing down on his shoulder like a nagging conscience.

At the foot of Crow Road he turned left onto Dumbarton Road and hoofed it the rest of the way to the station. The Glasgow underground was the third oldest in the world after London and Budapest. It had just two routes, the inner and outer circle, meaning that there wasn’t necessarily going to be a station near where you wanted to go.

The trains rattled round in circles all day long. Until recently, they were liveried in a colour that was officially something other than orange, even though orange was exactly what it was. Only in Glasgow would it have to be formally described as ‘Strathclyde PTE Red’ to appease sectarian sensitivities. It made even more of a joke of the subway’s supposed nickname – the Clockwork Orange. A joke because no one in Glasgow ever used the phrase.

Winter descended to the platform, walking despite the escalator. As he got down to track level, his eyes were immediately drawn to the LCD screen that showed the local television headlines. A report about NHS funding lingered briefly before being replaced by a bulletin that mimicked the morning paper. M
URDER HUNT FOR
‘C
INDERELLA
’
KILLER
. Below the heading was a photograph of uniformed cops stationed outside the Southern Necropolis and below that was the subheading S
HOELESS GIRLS KILLED AT CITY CEMETERIES
.

There weren’t many people waiting for the next train, but Winter saw a young couple nudge each other and nod in the direction of the screen. The girl, a neo-punk with platinum-spiked hair, cuddled into her boyfriend for protection. They turned away but Winter stood and stared. He watched the screen change to the next story and waited patiently for it to come round again, willing in vain for it to have new information by the time it next appeared. But each time it rolled around there were two girls dead and nobody seemed to be any the wiser.

On the train, he took up a seat opposite a large woman in her early fifties who was evidently viewing the screens on the platform wall behind him.

‘Oh my. You see that?’

Winter hoped she was talking to someone else but, on lifting his eyes, he saw she was looking for an answer from him, shock and incredulity writ large on her doughy features.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, despite knowing the answer.

‘Two lassies killed. Oh, my Goad. Killed in cemeteries, it says.’

‘Aye. Ah read that in the paper this morning,’ another chipped in, a twenty-something girl who looked like a student. ‘Two of them murdered. Took their shoes aff them and everything. Left their bodies in the graveyard.’

‘Oh wheest,’ the older woman breathed. ‘That no’ terrible? In a graveyard, that’s dead creepy, that is.’

‘Ah know,’ replied the student. ‘According to the paper, one was the same age as me. Just oot for a night oot, too. Terrible.’

‘It is. You better watch yoursel’, hen. Dinnae be going oot by yourself. An make sure your mammy knows where you are.’

The girl gave a shiver. ‘Well, my mammy’s deid but, aye, ah know what you mean. Makes you think, eh?’

‘Ah saw this programme last night about a murder,’ butted in a man with a beard and a woollen hat pulled down low on his forehead. ‘This guy killed three women.’

The student and the older woman looked at each other and both shivered. ‘In Glasgow like?’ the student asked.

‘Naw, New York. It was pretty good.’

‘Pretty good?’ the older woman shrieked.

‘Aye, him that used to be in the West Wing was in it. You know, the one with the hair. It wisnae real if that’s what you were thinking.’

The two women breathed again. ‘Aw, that’s awrite then. Him with the hair? The good-looking one that was in that thing with Meg Ryan?’

Winter closed his eyes and tuned out. He’d been on the London Underground dozens of times and had never once heard strangers have a conversation. Sometimes – quite often, in fact – he wished that Glaswegians had the same view of people they didn’t know. In Glasgow, a stranger was just a friend you hadn’t had an argument with yet.

He got off at Cowcaddens and instinctively looked at his watch. It wasn’t that he wanted a drink but he was only a few hundred yards from the Station Bar and checking if it was opening time was a reflex action. It was just after 10.30, so the answer was an emphatic no in any case.

He wandered over to Cambridge Street and from there on to Sauchiehall Street, where he walked against the rising tide of humanity who were going up the hill towards the city centre. Late workers and early shoppers, some sticking their faces in windows to see what they couldn’t afford, others interested in nothing more than the cracks in the pavement. At Antipasti, he turned left into Pitt Street, soon seeing the corner of the crumbling, red-brick monolith of the force’s HQ up ahead.

As he got closer, he saw a man pacing agitatedly outside the main entrance. It was hardly unusual given the nature of the place: there was always likely to be somebody worried about someone or something inside. It was only when Winter got nearer that he recognised the broad figure for who it was.

‘Uncle Danny. What the hell are you doing here?’

Danny Neilson was Winter’s mother’s brother. A former police sergeant himself, he had virtually brought Tony up after the death of his parents. The two were close, although it was a strange kind of closeness. They could go months without seeing or talking to each other but slip back into a certainty of understanding within minutes.

Danny was Danny. A big, bluff, understanding man who had been there, seen it and told it to sit on its arse. He was the smartest man Winter had ever known, even though a first glance might make you think he was the oldest nightclub bouncer in town. The one thing you rarely saw with Danny, however, was him in any kind of fluster. And that’s exactly how he was now.

‘Danny, what’s up?’

‘About time, Anthony. What kind of time do you call this to start work? Half the day’s gone already.’

‘It’s called shift work, Uncle Danny. Come on, spill. Were you working late last night? You look like shit. What’s wrong?’

Danny was a taxi-rank supervisor, working all hours and in all weathers, even though he’d retired from the police twelve years before. Winter had told him often enough that he didn’t need the hassle of refereeing drunks, but Danny always said it was his job and he’d keep doing it. Now, he ran his hand through his full head of grey hair, blowing hard and angry. Winter had never seen him like this.

‘I worked till two but that doesn’t matter. It’s those eejits in there. Where do they get them from these days? I spent half an hour trying to get past the muppet on the desk and, when I finally got to speak to someone in CID, I was back on the street in fifteen minutes with my arse barely touching the street on the way out.’

‘Yes but what—’

‘Then I said I wanted to speak to you but they gave me some shit and said I couldn’t. I had to give it the old “Do you know who I am?” bollocks again and that’s when they said you hadn’t started yet. So I waited. Either for you or for anyone else that I knew by sight who I could speak to.’

‘But why, Danny? What’s this all about?’

‘Those murders that were in the paper this morning. The two girls found in the cemeteries?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, I know who did it.’

Chapter 15

The King’s Café on Elmbank Street is, despite its name, a chippy. However, there are tables and chairs enough that it doesn’t contravene the Trade Descriptions Act, and Winter and Danny sat down and ordered two cups of tea. Winter’s mind turned briefly to Addison’s lyrical waxing over the best chips-and-cheese in town, but the consideration lasted all of two seconds before his stomach lurched in protest.

They had the place to themselves and the sole member of staff paid them no attention after handing over the steaming cups of tea. That seemed to suit Danny fine. He continued to be agitated and had told Winter that he wouldn’t explain anything until they were sitting down away from the eyes and ears of others.