Witness the Dead (12 page)

‘So?’ Winter asked.

‘So what do you know about these killings? Were you working the case? I know you’ll know more than was in the paper.’

‘Danny, I thought you were going to tell me something rather than ask questions. What’s got you into this state?’

‘Son, did you photograph these girls?’

‘Yes. Yes, I did. But you know I can’t just go blabbing to you about what was there.’

Danny’s gaze hardened and Winter saw what a lot of men had seen over the years: a look that would make them think twice about arguing with the man in front of them. Danny had never given Winter any reason to be afraid of him, just as he wasn’t now, but he saw the look and what it meant.

‘Okay, son. Here’s what we’ll do. I’m going to tell you what I think. What I’m fairly sure of. Then I’ll expect you to tell me what you know. Okay?’

‘Maybe. Why don’t you tell me, then we’ll see?’

‘When the fuck did you become the play-it-by-the-book guy, Anthony? Never mind. When you hear what I’ve got to say, you’ll tell me.’

Danny blew on his tea, buying himself a few seconds. He sipped on it, the three-sugar sweetness failing to remove the sour taste that had so obviously taken up residence in his mouth.

‘There was a case, years before you were born, but you’ll know it. The Klass killings.’

Winter’s brow slowly furrowed in scepticism. ‘Right. The Klass. You think these two murders are connected to that? You think this is
him
? Come on, Danny.’

Danny gave him the look again, even fiercer this time. Shut up. Listen. His next statement came out low and slow, like a growl.

‘Son, I worked the Klass killings for two years solid. I lived and breathed it. I know as much as anyone alive about that case except for the bastard that did it. And I
know
there’s a connection to those two girls. I
feel
it.’

The two men stared at each other for an age. Winter tried to make sense of Danny’s words, seemingly so unlikely, yet had to weigh them up against the look of hard certainty that was chiselled onto his face. Danny stared back, intent on convincing Tony of every word he said.

Of course Tony knew about the Klass killings. Everyone in Glasgow knew about them. They were as much a part of a kid’s education as never answering the question about what team you supported or never eating yellow snow.

Four young women had been murdered across two separate weekends in the city, two months apart. All four had been to Klass, the disco on West Nile Street, easily the most popular in the town. All four had been raped and strangled.

It was the early seventies and the city descended into genuine panic. Girls weren’t allowed out and young men who remotely resembled the suspect were stopped for questioning. For months, maybe years, a shadow haunted every night out in Glasgow. All the cops ever had was two names – one imagined, one real. They never made one fit the other.

The name of the legend was Red Silk, so called because witnesses spoke of a man with a red silk handkerchief in his jacket pocket who had been seen talking to two of the victims. It was a name that caught on. It fitted newspaper headlines and fired imaginations.
Red Silk’s gonnae get you. Careful that Red Silk disnae catch you on the way home.

For forty years, the name had been a fixture in books, newspaper articles, documentaries, even a movie. Red Silk grew bigger even than the horrendous acts he’d committed – simply because he’d never been caught. There were theories – dozens, maybe hundreds of them. Academics, journalists, ex-cops, psychics and psychologists – everyone had an idea of who Red Silk might be. And everyone had an idea of why the killings stopped as suddenly as they started. It was a cottage industry based on the ferocious murders of innocents.

The real name, the one that the theories finally agreed upon, came years later. A man convicted of other vicious crimes against young women. A killer whose murderous brutality certainly matched the handiwork of Red Silk and who had lived and worked in the city at the time before moving south.

His name was Archibald Atto. A former English teacher who was serving consecutive life sentences for the sadistic murders of four women but was suspected of many more. He’d been in prison for eleven years and across that time had twice directed police to the unmarked graves of victims in return for prison privileges. No one was in any doubt that he knew the precise locations of other bodies but that he kept the information to himself as a future bargaining tool when he required it.

No fewer than nine other families were desperate for Atto to give them some measure of peace by disclosing the locations of their daughters, sisters, nieces and granddaughters. They’d ask if he would even just confirm that they were dead and that he’d killed them. Atto chose to give them nothing except silence. The search for the missing girls and the families’ continued suffering kept the case in the headlines and his name in lights. It seemed that Atto enjoyed both.

Not everyone thought Atto had committed the Klass killings and it was something he’d never confirmed or denied. There was even a school of thought, endorsed by a former chief constable, that there was no single Klass killer, no Red Silk. His view was that the killings were unconnected, merely tragic coincidences. It wasn’t a view shared by many.

But Atto had been inside for over a decade. How could Danny possibly think that he was connected to the killings in the cemeteries?

‘Like I said, I know the Klass killings inside out. I know every other case that Atto has either been convicted of or suspected of. I know how he works and this stinks of him. The report in the paper said that the first victim had her palms turned up, the second had hers clasped together. That’s not natural. It’s how Atto would place his victims.’

‘But Danny—’

‘Yeah, he’s inside. I know that. I’m not senile yet, son. And it doesn’t change anything. I know what I know. Killings on successive nights over the weekend, girls on a night out, strangulation, rape. Girls disappearing into thin air and emerging dead somewhere else. The hands. The locations where they were found too – classic Atto. I’ve never believed in coincidences, Tony, and I’m too old to start now.’

Winter exhaled hard and rubbed at his eyes. ‘So what happened when you went into Pitt Street?’

‘They basically told me I was nuts and that I should bugger off. Some DS, Teven his name was, took my details and pretended to write down what I said. He didn’t even make an effort to hide the fact that he saw me as a stupid old sod, stuck in the past and with some harebrained idea to get himself noticed again. He thought I was a crackpot and the report’s probably already in the bin.’

Danny was angry and agitated. Being dismissed on account of his age and sell-by date was never likely to be something that would sit well with him. But heaped on top of his age issues was frustration. Winter knew all of that but couldn’t help himself from pointing out the obvious.

‘You can’t really blame them, Danny. You’ve been behind that desk and seen the nutters crawl out of the woodwork whenever something like this happens. I know you’re not a nutter, but Teven doesn’t know you from Adam. Look at it from his point of view.’

Danny growled. ‘I’m looking at it from a cop’s point of view. He should do the same.’

A silence fell between them. Sips and gulps were taken of unwanted tea.

‘Okay,’ Danny started again, looking out of the café window but seeing nothing. ‘So I need to give DS Teven a bit more to work with, something to convince him that there
is
a link. You’ve got the photographs you took, right?’

‘No way, Danny. You know I can’t do that. I
cannot
do that. I’ll get fired if I’m lucky and arrested if I’m not. Dan, you know I’d do anything for you, but that’s asking too much.’

‘Anything? And yet not something that anyone else will ever know about?’

‘They won’t know about it because it’s not going to happen. This is crazy.’

‘Son, that’s the second time today that someone has suggested I’m off my head. I didn’t expect it from you.’ He threw a couple of pound coins on the table. ‘That’s for the tea. If I had thirty pieces of silver, you’d be welcome to them.’

‘Danny . . .’ Winter’s plea was in vain as his uncle turned his back and walked out of the café, the door slamming shut behind him.

Chapter 16

July 1972

The queue outside Klass ran a good thirty yards down West Nile Street as well as up the three flights to the disco itself. It was another warm night without even the rumour of a breeze, and he knew it was going to get hot inside.

He’d ditched the three-piece suit on account of the heat. He’d been loath to give up on the gold stripe but it had to be done. The last thing he could afford was to look out of place, so he’d gone for a pair of new hip huggers with particularly wide bell bottoms teamed with blue platforms. His light-blue floral shirt was half covered by the width of his navy paisley-patterned tie. It was a fair leap from the suit, but he liked it.

The queue shuffled its way slowly inside the building and edged up the stairs an argument at a time. The bouncers must have been in an even tougher mood than usual because a succession of dejected young guys came back down, muttering about the bastards on the door, the volume of their protests getting louder the further they got away from the doormen. The crowd on the stairs were still chirpy though. It had been a full week since the last incident and that was a lifetime ago.

The reminders were still there though. At the top of the first landing was a big poster: H
AVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN
? Under the words were an artist’s impression of the only description that the police had. Not that it was worth much. It could have been anybody. It could have been him.

At the top of the second landing, there was another copy of the same poster plus three that had been made by the
Daily Record
. Each one had a sketch of one of the three women with the words D
ID YOU SEE HER
? in large lettering. Under the drawings were the words ‘R
ED
S
ILK
’
MURDERS
and two telephone numbers to call. Red Silk, he thought, what a stupid name. Half the crowd didn’t even bother looking at the posters but some of those who did, particularly the girls, shivered and turned away as quickly as they could. Better not to think about it.

He
looked at the posters, though. He stared at them. He stared and tried not to be seen to be staring.

The queue snaked its way higher, the stairs becoming hotter and stickier as it neared the entrance. Those let in by the bouncers tried to look cool as if they fully expected it, but he knew that inside they were swimming in relief. Others weren’t faring so well, but some of them had a few tricks up their sleeves. Two girls, whom he could see only from the back – but one was a tall brunette and the other shorter with long, bright-red hair – were on the top step before the door and the bouncers were shaking their head at them. One of the girls, the redhead, told them that they were friends of the DJ. The guy on the door didn’t look convinced but he went inside and, two minutes later, the blond-haired DJ appeared at the door, dressed in a yellow suit with blue stripes and enormous red platform shoes. He looked the two girls up and down and winked at them before telling the bouncer that, sure, they were with him. In they went. A couple of other girls cottoned on quickly and shouted up the stairs. ‘Hey, us too. You do remember us, don’t you?’ They also must have been good-looking enough, because the DJ grinned and said yeah, and they were allowed in the door.

It didn’t go down too well with the blokes in the queue. There was a lot of grumbling, but they couldn’t afford to do it too loudly or else there was no way they were getting past the bouncers. He’d be fine, though. Top of the stairs and, sure enough, the bouncer just looked him in the eye and signalled him inside with a backward movement of his head.

It was already pretty busy, murder clearly not being bad for business. Klass had been in every newspaper in the country for three weeks and it did look like there was no such thing as bad publicity. The thought both bothered him and encouraged him.

The DJ was back behind his decks, no sign of the supposed friends he’d invited in, and he had the dance floor almost full already. Foreheads glistened as people moved to the beat, record immediately following record as the DJ made them work. The guy was full of himself, jumping up and down, pointing to girls in the crowd and acting the big man, but he could make them dance.

After a bit, he slid the volume down on Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ and spoke over it. ‘Awrite there, people. Welcome back. I’m Jumping Jimmy Steele and this is Klass, the best disco this side of New York City. I’ll have you groovin’ and movin’ again in two seconds flat but first a few announcements. Next Friday night is Red Silk Lookalike night. You’ve all seen the posters and there will be a very special prize for the guy – or gal – who looks most like Mr Red Silk. An’, as if that wisnae enough for youse, on the following Saturday we are having Glasgow’s very first Be Red Silk for a Night night. Guys, youse are no’ getting in unless you’ve got yoursel’ a red-silk hankie in your top pocket. Youse have been warned. And, as if that wasn’t enough, next week’s band is currently in the top twenty and will be here live on stage. It’s the Sweet! We’re Klass and it’s all happening here. I’m Jumping Jimmy Steele and this . . . is the Sweet themselves with “Poppa Joe”.’

He felt a rage building as the crowd cheered the DJ’s nonsense. It was Glasgow all over, gallus as anything, but it wasn’t excuse enough. It wasn’t right, nowhere near it. If only they knew.

He pushed his way through the punters near the bar and ordered himself a pint of lager. It poured fast and fizzy, turning golden before him. He handed over a fifty-pence coin and had a large mouthful of the lager down his throat before the barman came back with his change. The liquid was gassy, tepid and already a bit stale, but it washed away a nastier taste that had gathered in his throat.