Snapshot (30 page)

‘Tony,’ she called at his back.

‘Yes?’

‘I really hope Addison is okay. I don’t know what’s going on but I’ve heard the rumours. Whatever the truth is, I hope he makes it.’

He nodded at her silently and left.

Tuesday 20 September

Narey had half expected, half hoped, for the phone call that she received that morning when she got into the office but it brought as many problems as it did promises. With Addison shot and Jan McConachie dead, the Nightjar team were two officers down and Alex Shirley needed her back on the team.

She couldn’t help but think it was where she should have been in the first place. It was a thought that scared her; she’d seen with her own eyes what had happened to the officers that were on it. More than that, whoever did it, whoever it was that had the phones that once belonged to Sturrock and the others, had her number too. Had her name. She shouldn’t have told Winter about it the night before, it was information he didn’t need and now he was going to plague her to keep out of sight. Fat chance of that.

For a start, the pressure was on to get the McCullough killing wrapped up as quickly as possible. The message was clear: it was way down the priority list compared to Dark Angel and if necessary it would be put aside until there was time to deal with it. Narey wasn’t for having that. As desperate as she was to be part of the sniper investigation, with her own neck on the line, she hated to let this one go completely and leave the McCulloughs without an answer.

She had to get back to the basics. It was all she knew to do when she ran into a brick wall and that was what was staring her in the face this time. Oonagh’s parents hadn’t been much help and Pamela had told her all that she knew or was willing to tell. All that was left was to go back to the slog of going through the CCTV tapes from the night that Oonagh was killed. Addison had already been through them but that was no excuse not to try again. It was the only bit of available footage they had and there just might be something he’d missed.

She felt a surge of guilt for doubting Addison when he was at death’s door but the truth was he was probably thinking about nothing other than Quinn and Caldwell when he watched the tapes so missing something was a real possibility. Christ, she hoped he pulled through. The tapes made for slow, depressing viewing. There was just her and the CCTV operator, a WPC named Imelda Couper, and neither had much stomach for frame-by-frame examination of the life forms that crawled through the red-light area. What made it bearable was the thought that they might just be able to put one of these pervs away.

The two of them watched every frame for half an hour before the estimated time of Oonagh’s killing and every frame for half an hour after it. Nothing but half-hidden sleaze bags and passing cars. Nothing that held out any real hope of finding a murderer among the punters. Still it was all Narey had, so she’d keep going, jotting down meagre notes and hoping for the best.

When they had exhausted the two half-hour windows, Narey had the WPC go back till an hour before Oonagh was killed, with the intention of doing the same for an hour after it. It meant they would have been sitting there three hours in all by the time she was done. Narey’s bottom was already starting to go numb and she could see that Couper’s eyes had glazed with boredom.

They were half an hour into the second sitting, back to the point where they’d started and the temptation was to skip that rather than going over it yet again but no, she’d make herself sit through it. She owed it to Oonagh’s mother and to prove to the father that some of them
did
actually care.

Twenty minutes before the estimated time of death and something, someone she hadn’t quite noticed before.

‘Hang on, Imelda. Back up a bit,’ she said quietly, trying not to get ahead of herself.

‘What is it, Sarge?’ said the WPC. ‘You see something?’

‘Maybe . . . back a bit further.’

She saw the shadowy figure that had caught her eye.

‘There. Freeze it.’

‘The guy in the dark jacket?’

‘Yes, that’s him.’

Narey didn’t speak for a bit, but studied the man on the screen. About five foot five, lanky fair hair and upturned collar. The glint from a pair of steel spectacles causing an orange tinge under the streetlight. Was it him? She couldn’t be sure but it looked promising.

‘Do you know him, Sarge?’

‘Yeah. I think I might, Imelda. Can you close in on him?’

The operator picked out an area around the man and a larger image appeared in front of them.

Narey laughed out loud.

‘Rubber Johnny,’ she sniggered. ‘And here was me thinking he had retired and got out of the pervert business.’

Couper turned and looked at her in confusion.

‘His name is John Petrie,’ explained Narey. ‘A long–time customer of Her Majesty’s Constabulary. God knows how many times he’s been collared over the years. He’s a freak-out creep of the first order. Hadn’t heard of him in ages. Thought he had lost the taste for it.’

‘The taste for what?’ the WPC asked warily.

‘He likes to frequent the work space of the ladies of the night,’ Narey told her. ‘Rarely approaches them, never lays a finger on them, but likes to spy on them when they get down to business. Sometimes he gets charged, sometimes he just gets chased and that’s the end of it.’

‘What a weirdo,’ remarked Couper.

‘It gets worse,’ Narey said. ‘Rubber Johnny got his nickname for one very good reason. He watches the girls getting it on with the punters, waits for them to leave then ducks back down the alley, picks up the discarded condoms and makes off with them.’

‘That is fu— That is gross, Sarge.’

‘You were right the first time, Imelda,’ Narey agreed. ‘He’s the grossest of the gross. Takes the used rubbers home with him and keeps them as some kind of freaky souvenir. You have to wonder what he does with them.’

‘I’d rather not know,’ the WPC replied.

‘Ah well, that’s where we differ. Because I really do want to know what he does with them.’

Narey swung over to the computer that sat behind her and punched Petrie’s name into the PNC database where she found his current address. She pulled her mobile from her pocket and found Corrieri’s number in her address book.

‘Hi, Julia. Where are you? Okay, good. Meet me in Summerston, say twenty minutes. Islay Street. I don’t want to count any chickens because this could be nothing but on the other hand it might be just what we need.’

Corrieri asked what the lead was but Narey wasn’t for telling. Partly because she wanted to get straight in her own head how to play this. And partly because she was quietly pleased with herself and wanted to savour it.

Rubber Johnny lived in a block of flats deep in Summerston. It was a first-floor hellhole with broken bikes and bags of rubbish on the landing and junkies for neighbours.

There were people hanging out of windows shouting to those sitting smoking on the front steps, kids running around half naked and everyone yelling when speaking would have done.

Narey briefed Corrieri quickly on the street outside Petrie’s flat, enjoying the look of confusion on Corrieri’s face when she mentioned Petrie’s name.

‘The condom guy?’ she’d asked doubtfully.

‘The one and only,’ Narey replied.

‘You think he’s our man?’

‘I doubt it. He’s a watcher, not a lover or a fighter. He’s never so much as touched one of them so it doesn’t seem likely he’d start bumping them off now. No, I’m interested in Rubber Johnny for his collection rather than for the murders.’

‘Fucking gross.’

‘Funny, that’s exactly what Imelda Couper said. Come on, let’s go in.’

They climbed the steps to the first floor where Narey knocked sharply three times on Johnny’s door. They soon heard soft footsteps coming towards the door and the shadow under it gave away that someone was standing there. The footsteps didn’t retreat but the door didn’t open.

‘Open the door, Johnny,’ Narey said gently.

There was a pause before the sound of a chain being pulled back and the snib turning on the door. It swung back and revealed a sandy-haired man in his early fifties with steel specs and a few days’ growth on his face. On someone other than Rubber Johnny it might have qualified as designer stubble. He was wearing a dark, baggy T-shirt and there were slippers sticking out from beneath his faded jeans. It was obvious that he recognized Narey but was weighing up Corrieri with suspicion.

He didn’t say anything, just turned and walked back into the flat with the two cops following behind him. Johnny knew the routine and couldn’t be bothered arguing the toss on his doorstep.

With a wave of his arm he directed them to a settee before falling back into a well-worn armchair.

‘Well? What do you want?’

‘Nice to see you too, Johnny,’ said Narey.

‘I remember you,’ he muttered, looking at her. ‘Detective Sergeant.’

‘DS Narey,’ she reminded him. ‘This is DC Corrieri.’

Petrie managed a barely perceptible nod in Corrieri’s direction.

‘What do you want?’ Johnny repeated. ‘I’ve not done anything wrong,’ he continued. ‘Done nothing. We’ve been through this a hundred times and the judge said that as long as I didn’t go near the girls then there was “no state of fear and alarm”. Anyway the samples were in a public place.’

Narey knew she and Corrieri were thinking the same thing, smiling inwardly at his legalese and self-delusion and their skin crawling at the thought of his little hobby. Whatever some twat of a judge said, Rubber Johnny was a gold-plated weirdo.

‘Nobody’s arguing about that, John,’ soothed Narey. ‘We’re not here to do you for that. Truth is we could do with some help. We’d just like to take a look at one or two of your samples.’

‘No, no. No way. No. Judge says there’s nothing wrong with it. Nothing you can do. No.’

He was getting hysterical.

‘Calm down, John. It’s okay. We don’t want to take them all away,’ said Narey. ‘There’s one we think can help us with a case and I can take it if it is evidence.’

‘For fuck’s sake. Fuck’s sake. Show me a warrant. I want to see a warrant. No, no, no way.’

‘Johnny, you know the routine by now,’ said Narey, her voice firmer. ‘I can go away and come back with the paperwork and a really bad temper or you can just help us out seeing as we’re already here.’

Petrie looked doubtful. He looked between the two of them trying to suss out if there was another agenda than the one they were laying before him.

‘You’re not in any bother, John. We’re just looking for your help,’ Corrieri chipped in. ‘Someone has been messing with the girls,’ she continued. ‘Some not very nice stuff. We want your help to catch the guy.’

‘And I’m not in trouble?’

‘Absolutely none,’ Narey confirmed.

Rubber Johnny stood up, scratched his head and sat back down. He got to his feet again and nodded towards the door off the living room and for them to follow him.

Petrie held the door open behind him and the three of them traipsed into what turned out to be the kitchen of the tiny flat.

He paced across the worn lino to where an upright fridge freezer sat in the corner, stopping with a hand on the fridge door before he turned and stared at Narey again.

‘And if I help you, you’ll only look at the sample you need and leave me the rest?’

‘Just the one that we need, John. No interest in anything else.’

The man nodded, satisfied.

He swung back the upper door to the fridge and proudly stepped back to let them see what was inside. It was unbelievable.

There were four white, evenly spaced, moulded plastic shelves. On the top one sat two supermarket ready meals, a jar of jam and a tub of margarine. The other three were neatly packed with sealed, transparent sandwich bags, each labelled and ordered, maybe a dozen bags to a shelf. Each containing what was very obviously a used condom.

There seemed an obsessive precision about the way they were laid out, all overlapping each other by the same amount. The numbered sticky labels were placed in exactly the same position in the top left-hand corner of each bag and the painstakingly neat, handwritten numbers were colour-coded.

In the fridge door were two cans of lager and the remains of a pint of milk.

Narey suppressed a laugh at the look on Corrieri’s face. She looked like she would have taken a pair of rusty shears to Johnny’s bollocks there and then before locking him up and throwing away the key without handing him a sticking plaster.

She was now at the fridge door and was beginning to reach out towards the sandwich bags.

‘No, no, no. No! Don’t touch them,’ shrieked Johnny, pushing himself between Corrieri and the fridge. ‘They’re in order. Don’t mess them.’

Corrieri couldn’t help but snigger and that got her a black look from both of them. Narey tried to make up for it.

‘Johnny is very particular about order. Aren’t you, John?’

‘It’s important,’ Petrie said. ‘Need to be in the right place.’

‘Well how are we supposed to . . .’

Narey cut off Corrieri’s objection by holding a photograph up in front of Rubber Johnny’s face. It was the photograph of Oonagh McCullough that they’d got from her parents.

‘You know her, Johnny?’

He looked confused for a few moments but then he nodded.

‘It’s an old picture. But that’s Melanie.’

‘Okay. And would you have any . . . samples in there of her?’ asked Narey.

Petrie nodded again. Didn’t have to give the matter any thought. ‘Three,’ he said.

‘When was the most recent, John?’

Johnny looked briefly to the ceiling as if seeking confirmation of the day that flashed up in his mind.

‘Sunday.’

‘You sure?’ asked Corrieri.

Petrie glared at her.

‘Of course I’m sure. Got a very good memory. Anyway, it’s in my log.’

‘Can you get the log for us, John? It’s important.’

Rubber Johnny nodded at them and opened a chipped, wooden kitchen drawer and carefully produced a ring-bound black folder which he placed open on the kitchen table.

They saw columns of meticulously tidy script, all in the same hand as the numbers on the condom-filled sandwich bags, each column under the headings of sample number, date, time, place, girl and customer.