Killing With Confidence (6 page)

It helped that Selina
had been, technically speaking, a star in her own right, thanks to
countless daytime TV appearances and her recent film debut in a
low-budget British film
The Only Way Is Up
. The film’s
makers claimed it was chock-a-block with the country’s ‘most
exciting new stars’ – code for a cast of nobodies and minor
Z-listers, the famous-for-being-famous type.

Selina played a ‘sexy
ice queen from Antarctica’ in a fantasy dream sequence, which
turned out to be as awful as it sounds. It was shot inside a giant
freezer in an abattoir in London’s east end, so the producers
wouldn’t need to spend any of their dwindling funds on ‘South Pole’
special effects.

Selina had been
included at the eleventh hour after a silicone-enhanced starlet
from a reality show, the original choice for the role, had
mistakenly feared her breast implants would freeze solid, telling
the stunned producer, ‘I ain’t freezing my tits off after paying
ten grand for these beauties.’

But Selina had
excelled on screen. As far as she was concerned she had been acting
for all of her life, pretending to be something she was not. She
could also see the endless publicity opportunities as businesswoman
turned actress
. Selina gave countless interviews before the
film was even released, ramping up her role and the drama, claiming
she had at one point ‘gone hypothermic’ in the giant freezer and
even boldly stating that she had suffered frostbite, despite the
lack of evidence.

What she had omitted
was the fact that she had paid £15,000 for her role, after
answering a plea for funds from the film’s producer, who claimed
they would not be able to release their production without a final
five-figure cash injection. Fearing her debut movie part was about
to be canned and the humiliation that would ensue after bragging so
publicly about her ‘starring role’, she once again begged her
husband to loosen the company purse strings. He eventually agreed
in the hope of a quiet life.

As a reward for
helping to save his appalling film, the producer even shared his
supply of dope with a grateful Selina. She spent the three-day
shoot getting high, hot and horny with the producer in his trailer.
Then at the wrap party in London, Selina was captured by the
paparazzi stumbling out of a nightclub hanging on to the arm of one
of her hunky fellow co-stars, much to the annoyance of her
producer-lover. She’d been so wasted she barely remembered having
sex with the young actor, and the following day their ‘affair’ had
hit all the tabloids. It helped that Selina was married and had
therefore been unfaithful, but the fact that the young hunk’s
semi-permanent girlfriend was the surgically enhanced reality star
Selina had replaced in the film gave the story extra spice.

A few days later
Selina had taken great delight instructing the company’s law firm
Mallicks & Co. to issue a statement to the media: ‘It is with
great regret that after eighteen years of marriage Selina and
Martin Seth are to separate. The split is amicable … there is
no one else involved … they will continue as active directors
in Seth International, the company they co-founded and now the
country’s largest online jewellery firm, endorsed by celebrities
including Dannii Minogue.’

Martin had laughed at
the absurdity of the ‘amicable split’ reference. ‘How can any split
be amicable? Do you just casually mention over dinner one night,
‘Oh, that was a lovely lasagne, dear, and by the way I’m off, and I
want half of everything,’ he had bitched to a friend. He had
actually welcomed the split, as it was a break from the mental
turmoil. Selina had in fact manufactured the whole separation to
put their flagging jewellery business back in the news. Well,
that’s what she claimed, but Martin knew her motives were far more
self-serving than that. How he had loathed her as she sat in the
study of the house they could ill afford, which Martin believed
perfectly summed up their marriage as ‘all facade’, and waited for
the texts and emails of condolences to flood in. He remembered
thinking Selina had had some sort of seizure when she screamed and
leapt from her chair, brandishing her BlackBerry at head height and
shouting, ‘Dannii’s texted! Dannii Minogue texted!’ Even though
they had paid the antipodean talent show judge half a million quid,
she rarely texted Selina.

‘Oh, this split is
the best thing ever,’ Selina had beamed. ‘We should have separated
years ago,’ she added, embracing her weary husband. Martin
remembered how he had held her tightly and for a brief moment saw a
look of genuine warmth and affection in his wife’s eyes that he
hadn’t seen in years. Sadly, the moment had been fleeting and
Selina quickly wriggled free before heading to their bedroom. For
one glorious moment Martin had thought his wife was going to offer
to make love to him, something she hadn’t done either sober, or
without being in the arms of another man hours earlier, for as long
as he could remember.Instead she had grabbed a suitcase from the
top shelf of their walk-in wardrobe and barked, ‘Pack. There will
be photographers arriving outside soon and we need to give them
what they want.’ Then with her habitual change of mind, she added,
‘No, wait a minute. I’ll get more sympathy if I leave.’

She hastily set about
stuffing clothes and underwear into her case, not forgetting the
wraps of her favourite drug of choice, crysta meth, which she had
become so reliant on. Towards the end of her life Selina had made
little attempt to cover up her drug use. She’d once been stopped
for speeding in her car with flecks of white powder caked around
her nostrils. The police officers had inexplicably turned a blind
eye after Selina had worked her charm on them, giving them free
jewellery from a bag of new stock samples in her boot and promising
the officers they would get lucky with their wives that night. One
of the cops had cheekily replied, ‘I’d rather get lucky with you,’
which he did, two nights later in the back of her Jaguar in a
deserted Lidl car park. Sure, Martin had tried drugs a few times
himself, but he’d been in his early twenties. Why Selina, who was
now forty, felt she needed to snort the stuf daily was beyond him.
She was a middle-aged mum of two, but in her head she was a rising
celebrity who craved the limelight. Selina had picked up her case
in one hand and slipped the other around Martin’s waist, pulling
him close to peck his cheek. She’d smiled. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t
be separated for long. We’ll announce we’re getting back together
in a few months’ time – think of all the magazine interviews I
can do on the back of it.’

Martin remembered her
checking her make-up before she left, ready for the press
photographers who were waiting outside her front gate. She’d
planned to drive slowly past them with her window down to make sure
they got their shot. He’d watched as his wife suddenly turned and
began waving at him. He waved back before he realised it was her
BlackBerry she was excitedly flapping around.

‘Amanda Holden!’
she’d shrieked, ‘Amanda Holden has just texted to say how sad she
is to hear we’ve separated. She must have got my number from
Dannii. I can’t believe it, Amanda fucking Holden.’

He’d laughed wryly at
the expletive Selina had accidentally let slip, which she had tried
so hard to eradicate from her vocabulary, and thought, ‘You can
take Selina Seth out of Glasgow, but you’ll never take Glasgow out
of Selina Seth.’



April
trudged down the same gravel path Martin was currently staring at,
lost in his reminiscences. She was alone this time. Having been
stung the day before when the
Daily Herald
photographer
captured his attempt at a watery grave, Martin had told April via
the video intercom at the main gates to leave the snapper behind
this time.

He was waiting for
her outside the main door. He looked in a terrible state with his
tousled bed hair, dishevelled clothes, which he’d clearly slept in,
and a stubble so dark it looked blue. He rubbed the sleep from his
eyes, sat down on the front step and turned his face up to the
warmth of the early morning sunshine. Before April could speak he
said, ‘I better appreciate the daylight while I still can –
they think I killed her.’

‘Did you kill her,
Martin?’ April asked gently.

‘No,’ he spluttered,
‘I did not.’ He paused for a moment as if he wanted to add
something else, but then thought better of it.

April’s Dictaphone,
which she’d placed at the top of her handbag between them, had
recorded every word while Jack Kennedy’s telescopic lens snapped
frame after frame of the would-be murder suspect and April
together. The pictures would have been actionable as Martin was on
his private property, however, Kennedy had made a point of taking
them from the public road, albeit he’d had to hack some undergrowth
to get a clear shot. His job was done and that was the main thing.
Scribblers, as the snappers called the reporters, could always pick
up a phone to ask questions they’d forgotten. Photographers didn’t
have that luxury.

Kennedy heard
vehicles approaching and quickly returned to his car, his face a
perfect picture of innocence. ‘Rozzers,’ thought Kennedy, ‘they’ve
come to take him away – this will make a perfect shot.’

The electronic gates
swung open to let the two unmarked CID cars through, and Kennedy
quickly took up his position again by the edge of the road. It’d be
the second day in a row the snapper would capture Martin Seth at
the worst points in his life. As the handcuffs were snapped around
Martin’s wrists Kennedy muttered, ‘Poor sod,’ as his shutter
repeatedly clicked.

13

The Second Vic

While
Martin Seth was being taken into custody, Crosbie was speeding
towards another crime scene. The body of a middle-aged female had
been found in deep undergrowth near the New Lanark turn-off on the
M74. Crucially, it was within a five-mile radius of the Seth murder
scene. Crosbie hoped and prayed they weren’t connected.

A motherfucking serial
cunting killer, his inner monologue screamed out, that’s all I
horse cocking need.

The blue lights
flashed and the siren blared from the top of his police car, but
inside Crosbie sighed. He really needed a holiday. He’d just turned
forty, which had made him acutely aware that there was less life in
front of him as there was behind him, and he was also well aware
that the average age a police officer survived after retirement was
a measly five years. If Crosbie got out at the earliest
opportunity, at forty-eight, that would give him just thirteen more
years of life.

The cunting trick then,
fanny face, is not to retire then.

Oh great. His alter
ego had now taken to insulting him. At this rate he’d be lucky to
make it to forty-one in the force before he had a full nervous
breakdown. Was it any wonder, really? He was just about to witness
his forty-third murder victim and yet again have reaffirmed that
humans can indeed do the most awful things to one another.

There was a nip in
the air as Crosbie stepped out into the September sunshine.
Forensics gave him their initial report, which was pretty much what
he knew already, with one added fact: the victim’s neck had been
broken. Crosbie let out a heavy sigh. Even his inner monologue had
the good sense to stay quiet. The detective knew the press would
immediately link the two murders before forensics had had a chance
to even get their samples off to the laboratory, and would splash
that a violent serial killer was on the loose. He hated the term
‘serial killer’ as it made his life a whole lot harder. Apart from
the public hysteria, which would be whipped up into a frenzy by the
media, he believed it would cloud the investigating team’s
judgment. They would look for links that weren’t there.

The same thing had
happened in Glasgow in the 1960s, when three women who had been to
the city’s popular Barrowland Ballroom had been strangled. The
killer had been dubbed Bible John by the press because a tall,
fair-haired, bible quoting man had allegedly been witnessed leaving
the nightspot with one of the victims.

Bible John was never
caught. For a year and a half – from his first victim to his
third – the city had been gripped by fear. Then suddenly he
stopped. Rumours circulated of Bible John’s true identity, from a
criminal who’d been jailed for another crime to a rogue policeman
and a cover up by the force.

Crosbie, too young to
remember the case, always believed his colleagues of old had simply
botched the original investigation. He’d spent hours going through
the case files – with the murders unsolved they were still
active – and could almost feel the hysteria screaming from the
formal reports. Everyone working that case was looking for a serial
killer.

Of course, the
original investigation team didn’t have the benefit of DNA
evidence, but the modern police force did, and in 1998 they exhumed
the body of a prime suspect. At the time Crosbie was new to CID but
even as a rookie detective he suspected this was an unwise move
from a glory-seeking top brass, and unfortunately he was proved
right. The DNA from the dead murder suspect did not match the
evidence left at the scene of the crime. Crosbie believed that the
mysterious Bible John had killed just one, perhaps two, of the
three unfortunate girls whose night on the tiles ended in
violence.

And he certainly
didn’t believe that the same hands which had killed Selina Seth had
killed the battered prostitute in front of him. By the positioning
of her limbs, twisted into the same shape as Selina’s corpse,
someone clearly wanted him to believe that, but this copycat killer
must have seen Selina’s last moments as the crime scene picture of
her body had never been released. He now needed to catch two
killers.