Killing With Confidence (25 page)

It was now in the
possession of the murderer. Crosbie checked the time on Watt’s
prized watch, which he now kept in his top pocket, as he stood
overlooking his victim’s body.

The forensic team
gathering evidence in Watt’s front room would collect a small DNA
sample that would perfectly match that of DCI Crosbie. It would
later be dismissed as erroneous after Crosbie’s assignation to
investigate Watt’s murder. He would receive a verbal rebuke from
his superior DS Cruickshank for contaminating a crime scene for
which Crosbie would apologise profusely then mutter under his
breath, ‘You don’t know the half of it, dickhead.’

In a few months’ time
he would receive a promotion for his work in solving the murder of
Selina Seth, concluding that her late husband Martin had killed her
after witnessing his wife having sex with persons unknown. Crosbie
had managed to convince his superiors to take the ‘theoretically
possible’ option, that the widower had committed suicide, from
Martin Seth’s autopsy report. Eager to bring the high profile case
to a speedy conclusion, they readily agreed.

In actual fact,
Crosbie had killed Selina. Aroused by watching her liaison with
cheating
Daily Herald
editor Nigel Bent, he had approached
Selina on her way back to her own car and asked if she fancied
another shag. She had looked him up and down and dismissed him with
the remark, ‘Well, certainly not with you again – I only
shagged you last time to get off with my speeding ticket.’

It had been Crosbie
who had pulled Selina over all those years ago, and it had been
Crosbie who later had sex with her in the back of her Jaguar in the
Lidl car park. He recalled how his uniform had turned Selina on and
how she had even insisted he wear his hat as they ‘did it’. He had
been fixated with her ever since that moment.

In his head, she’d
held a candle for him after all this time. He’d followed Selina in
his spare time, like an obsessed stalker, and watched how she would
wine and dine with powerful businessmen before disappearing off to
expensive hotels to spend the night. But finally witnessing ‘his
Selina’ have sex with another man then so ruthlessly reject his
advances, as if he had meant nothing to her, had been too much to
bear.

His attack on her had
been a crime of passion. He was a man whose love for Selina had
been a one-way street, just like her husband’s Martin, on whom,
with no remorse, he would later pin the crime.

Crosbie had wrapped
up his next case when he found the mutilated body of Osiris Vance,
which forensics confirmed was linked to the death of the
streetwalker Jackie McIvor. Osiris was also wanted in connection
with a dozen other cases of murdered prostitutes in England and
Wales, dating back to the 1970s. He had killed twenty-one women in
his lifetime, but he would only be linked officially to half that
number. The total fell well short of Osiris’s ambition to be the
UK’s most prolific serial killer. That dubious honour would remain
with Doctor Harold Shipman, who murdered over two hundred of his
patients.

Osiris’s family chose
to cremate the killer. Ironically, something similar had already
happened to his genitals, which the autopsy report had simply
stated as ‘missing’.

Hiding in the shadows
as usual, the serial killer had witnessed DCI Crosbie’s violent
attack on Selina. His ego had got the better of him, and the
copycat killing of Jackie McIvor had been his downfall. Osiris had
bargained neither on Selina’s killer being a psychotic,
high-ranking police officer nor on Jackie’s brother being far more
intelligent, dangerous and ruthless than he could ever hope to
be.

Crosbie had received
a tip-off about where to find Osiris’s body from one Colin Harris,
who also had a number of other interesting propositions for the
rising DCI that he could hardly refuse. Harris knew Crosbie had
murdered Selina Seth, and he had the DCI in his back pocket …
for now.

Crosbie had crossed a
line. He could never go back to being his old pathetic, insecure
self. That man was dead. The DCI felt reborn. And this time he was
ready to have some fun with his newfound lease of life.

Epilogue

April had
promised herself she wouldn’t do it. In fact, she had promised
several people, including her eternally disapproving daughter. But
as she stood sheltered from the elements in a cigarette
butt-littered lane outside the
Daily Herald
, she lit up and
drew deeply on her Menthol Light. It felt like the embrace of an
old friend.

Four whole years of
being an ex-smoker had gone up in a puff of smoke.

The world had changed
since April had last smoked. There was now a smoking ban in public
places, which meant smokers now huddled in groups outside their
favourite pubs and restaurants like social lepers. But the lure had
always been there, pulling April in like a magnetic force, until
she could resist no more.

She could almost hear
in her mind the interminable lecture Jayne would give her if she
was ever caught. She already had her excuses ready. Being attacked
by Osiris … Discovering Watt’s dead body … Not to mention
the stress of being suspended, confronting her boss and seeing two
of the most hated men in the
Daily Herald
’s history off the
premises.

But in truth April
began smoking again because it made her feel very, very
naughty – like a teenager again.

‘Hey, maybe smoking
will help me lose some of this excess weight I’ve been carting
around,’ she said aloud. She took another deep drag, savouring
every moment, before staring at the glowing tip of her
cigarette.

There had been a time
when April had smoked at her desk, with an overflowing ashtray
spilling over everything. With hundreds of hacks puffing away at
the same time, it had been hard to see from one end of the newsroom
to the other through the fug of smoke.

‘Imagine that now?’
She laughed to no one in particular. ‘Smoking at your desk? You’d
be frogmarched out the building.’

Even when the company
had built an ultra-modern, steel and glass, air-conditioned office
block next to their crumbling old one, staff were still allowed to
smoke at their desks, such was the power of their unions. But when
the government’s smoking ban was finally made law, smokers were
banished outdoors to converted bus shelters that did little to
protect them from the relentless Scottish weather.

April smoked her
ciggie right down to the butt then crushed it under the ball of her
foot. She took great pleasure swivelling her shoe from side to side
as she mashed the evidence into the ground. But her moment of
immense self-satisfaction was short-lived.

With a heavy heart,
April made her way slowly back to her office, her wide hips swaying
from side to side like a duck’s bottom. For the second time in
recent memory Scottish newspaper legend April Lavender had gone to
work wearing a pair of mismatched shoes.

Matt Bendoris has worked
in the newspaper industry since 1989 when he began writing a pop
column for the
Glasgow Guardian
. He soon made the leap into
national titles before moving to London where he was hired twice by
Piers Morgan. Matt first worked under Piers at the
Sun
before joining the showbiz team at the
Mirror
under Morgan’s
editorship. There he became deputy to Matthew Wright, currently a
morning host on the Five TV channel.

In 1996 he returned
to Scotland as Chief Feature Writer for the
Scottish Sun
where he continues to interview subjects from celebrities and
politicians to the occasional serial killer. During that time he
ghost-wrote two autobiographies, the Krankies’
Fan-Dabi-Dozi
and
Simply Devine: The Sydney Devine story
.

When his office was
relocated to Glasgow city centre, Matt began commuting by train and
wrote
Killing with Confidence
on his battered old BlackBerry
to pass the time on the short journey between Croy and Queen Street
station. He lives in Kilsyth with his wife Amanda and their two
children Andrew and Brooke.

Copyright © 2013 Matt
Bendoris

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without
written permission from the copyright holder.

The right of Matt Bendoris
to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted in
accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction.
Names, character, places and incidents are either the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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