Witness the Dead (35 page)

Chapter 42

Saturday morning

The morning after the Friday night before is usually a time for sore heads and self-recrimination, never-again promises that will never be kept and muddied memories of things that shouldn’t have been said or done. This Saturday morning was different. The first waking thought of those lucky enough to have managed sleep was whether Glasgow was one soul lighter.

It was certainly the question that immediately went through Winter’s mind as he lifted his watch from the bedside cabinet and saw that it was just 6.30. He hadn’t set his alarm, sure that he wouldn’t need one as fitful sleep was always its own wake-up call. Next he grabbed his mobile, but there were no unread texts, no missed calls, just as he knew there wouldn’t be. The first buzz of either, and he’d have been wide awake.

He hit the shower, any thought of going back to sleep easily banished by the not knowing. Still, he was sure he’d have got the call to arrive with his camera if there had been another victim, Alex Shirley having reluctantly lifted his suspension when asking him to speak to Atto. He was back on the inside as well as the outside of this case.

Head raised to the jets that blasted his face, he let the water roll over him and wash away the last vestiges of half-sleep, steeling himself for whatever was out there. No call didn’t mean no body: it meant no body had been found yet. Atto had been certain that the spawn would try again, although even he couldn’t be sure that—

The ringtone from his mobile pierced the shower cabinet and the water flow, causing him to stop and think twice whether he was actually hearing it. He reached up and turned off the water, pushing through the shower door in the same movement and picking up the phone where he’d left it in easy reach on an adjoining shelf. It was Addison.

‘Yeah?’

‘Another one.’

‘Shit!’

‘The Western Necropolis. Uniform found it on a sweep of the cemetery at first light.’

‘What? I thought it was being—’

‘Don’t you fucking start. Just get yourself over there. The place is huge and it’s in a city full of bloody cemeteries. Just shift your arse.’

Addison was gone, the phone left silent in Winter’s dripping hand. He dropped it back onto the shelf and snatched a towel from the rail, rubbing himself dry as quickly as he could before jumping into the first set of clean clothes that he could find. His heart was pounding and he told himself over and over to stay calm and get a grip. Just get moving, just be professional.

He was due to meet with Atto again in just a couple of hours, and his mind was flash-filled with the thought of the man sitting there with that superior, told-you-so look on his face. Winter’s stomach clenched at the image, dreading being there and forced to indulge Atto in his sick self-satisfaction.

The Western Necropolis was up off Maryhill Road near Gilshochill railway station and no more than a ten-minute drive at that time of the morning. Winter pushed the accelerator as far to the floor as he dared, worried less about the certainty of cop cars flying to the scene than he was about his own concentration. Driving with a head full of an unknown young woman, probably strangled, probably raped, didn’t exactly improve his chances of keeping the car on the road.

He wrenched his Civic left just after Jaconelli’s onto Lochburn Road, winding his way past cars coming in the other direction with barely enough room to pass, dipping under the low bridge and racing on into the wilds of Lambhill. Swinging onto Cadder Road and climbing the hill, he punched on the radio and searched for news but got nothing. A couple of minutes later, driving straight across the mini-roundabout onto Tresta Road without thinking, he saw that the news had found him.

As he passed the primary school on his left and the flats on his right, he saw the road ahead packed with the familiar yellow and blue that rarely meant good news. He parked up on the nearest available bit of pavement, throwing the door closed behind him and barely paused to fire the remote to lock the car, running the rest of the way to the cemetery gates with his camera bag banging against his back.

The two cops on duty recognised him and there was no need to bother with the hassle of fishing out his ID, as he rushed straight by them with no more than a nod. He saw more cops up ahead, their garish yellow vests visible in the half-light, and he charged in their direction, wondering if he could have simply driven in but now too late to take the option. The bag weighed heavier with every step, not least because he knew what it was going to be used for.

Christ, this place was huge: grey granite rows on either side as far as the eye could see, field after field; whole orchards of trees and endless messages to the dead; acre after acre of statues, crosses, angels and obelisks. It was Billy Connolly who said, ‘Glasgow’s a bit like Nashville, Tennessee: it doesn’t care much for the living, but it really looks after the dead.’ He had a point.

Winter ran, eyes left, right and straight ahead, his senses peppered by the fields of death, some sparse with irregular headstones, others busy in neat, ordered rows. They pushed him on towards the lights and chatter that grew nearer and louder and yet darker and more grim. Panting, sweat clammy on his brow, he arrived among them, the hi-vis vests parting to allow him into the inner sanctum where he recognised the back view of Addison and Narey standing side by side in front of three large winged angels perched atop tall, adjoining, granite headstones. The sight of Rachel standing there jolted him into a new reality: her presence was hardly unexpected yet still caused his heart to drop into his stomach.

He walked to Addison’s side and knew that all three stone angels had seen evil that night, even if they hadn’t heard it or spoken it. The proof lay at their feet: a bloodied streak across the grey face of the central headstone leading down to the sitting form of a blonde woman whose head was slumped on her chest as if sleeping. It was the longest sleep she’d ever have.

Addison didn’t turn to look at Winter, just staring at the girl and knowing instinctively that it was he who was standing there.

‘Her name’s Ashleigh Fleming according to the cards in her bag. She worked in PR for a London hotel. London phone number, too, so she was only up here visiting. Take her pictures, wee man. I want to get her out of here as soon as we can.’

Winter nodded and moved forward, sensing and sharing Addison’s uncustomary sensitivity but also gripped by the task in front of him. He remembered and repeated his earlier urge to himself to stay calm, to be professional. He pulled his camera from the bag at his shoulder and, in the very movement of doing so, he felt something switch inside him. The only thing he was unsure of was whether it had switched on or off.

He framed the girl
in situ
, an inevitably macabre scene-setter with grim-faced cops unwittingly bookending the towering headstones that she sat against. He grabbed a tighter shot, too, expelling the police from the picture and taking in the curious gaze of the angels instead, seeing them stare down with pity and disapproval.

The girl’s legs, long and bare, were crossed in front of her in a position that might have suggested she’d been reading a book, propped against a tree on a summer’s day. There was no book, though, and instead her arms were spread wide in a plea for mercy that would never come. Her blonde hair was dappled darkly wet with dew and blood, sparkling coldly in the early light and acting as a curtain to her face, hiding her reaction to whatever horrors she had seen.

The black cashmere dress that was rucked high on her thighs exposed dark dots moving slowly across her greying flesh: beetles crawling over a fetid feast. Winter’s instinct was to wave his hand above her leg and send them scurrying off but a deeper impulse first made him fire off a shot from his camera, freezing the tiny skin vultures for ever on the dead girl’s skin.

Checking for evidence of footprints at her side, he dropped to the ground so that he could photograph her face without disturbing the body, feeling the damp grass immediately seep into his clothing and begin to eat away at his threads. Raising his camera, he saw her. Young, pretty and confused, her mouth slackly open. Her eyes seemed questioning rather than afraid despite the physical evidence, a car crash of blues and purples on her neck that screamed brutal strangulation.

Her skin was smooth and still lightly tanned, despite the lifeblood draining away behind the outer mask. Her lips, swathed in nude gloss, formed a perfect pout of disappointment and her sculpted eyebrows arched in surprise. A girl in the wrong place at the wrong time and a long way from home.

He focused in on her neck, slim and taut yet made into an ugly canvas by the violent swathes of colour that disfigured it. The attack had been vicious and prolonged – he’d seen more than enough cases to know that – throttling her to the point of death and beyond. Tell-tale purple spots were almost certainly petechiae, caused by broken capillary blood vessels and a probable sign of asphyxiation. His lens had also picked them out in the whites of her eyes.

Winter pulled away reluctantly, easing himself up off the grass and turning his camera to the dark crimson splash above the girl’s head that streaked like a vein across the headstone and partly concealed the family name etched there: T
HOMSON
. The source of the blood was all too obvious and strangulation clearly had not been enough for the murderer. The girl’s hair was thickly matted and her skull broken, much as Hannah Healey’s had been, where her head had been battered against the monument that she’d rested against.

Moving down, his lens picked out a thin trail of blood on the girl’s dress by her right-hand side, a rusty track against the cashmere that seemed unlikely, given its position, to have come from the wound to her skull. There was some spatter too on the grass nearby, vivid droplets of blood that stained the ground. Winter positioned his camera under her right hand, so that he could shoot up towards it without the need to move her, and fired the shutter.

Withdrawing the camera, he studied the image he’d taken, seeing immediately that he’d found the source of the blood. He stood, taking a succession of images of the girl’s arm, securing the position it and the hand were in, before turning to Addison.

‘You’ll want to turn her hand round and look at it. It’s odd and a bit nasty.’

Addison looked at him questioningly, knowing full well Winter’s idea of what constituted nasty. He moved forward and as he did so, Tony and Rachel found themselves staring into each other’s eyes, a shared look that went on moments longer than it needed to.

Addison bent down and took the girl’s pale wrist in his gloved hand, turning it as gently as he could given the effects of rigor. The back of her hand was darkly purple with lividity but the most striking detail was her middle finger. While the other four nails were neatly manicured and painted bright red, the middle fingernail had been ripped out, leaving the exposed nail bed a raw and bloody mess.

Addison sighed heavily. ‘What kind of sick bastard would do that? And where the hell is the fingernail?’

‘He’s got it.’ Narey crouched down and ran her own finger above the line of the girl’s violated digit.

‘Okay.’ Addison accepted it reluctantly. ‘But why?’

‘A trophy of some sort. Same as Kirsty McAndrew’s shoes and Hannah Healey’s bag. Find them and we find our killer. And I’m also wondering why she hasn’t got a coat on.’

‘And you’ve some idea of why he’s taken what he has?’

Narey nodded. ‘I think so. Give me a couple of hours? It might be complete guesswork and I’d rather check it out.’

Addison rubbed at his eyes and exhaled. ‘Okay. But not any longer than that. We’ve got enough problems without you going all Nancy Drew on me.’

Narey narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I’m going to start making a list of every time you use Nancy Drew, Juliet Bravo, Miss Marple or Jessica bloody Fletcher from now on. As soon as you hit ten, you’ll be up in front of a tribunal.’

‘Aye, okay, Sarah Lund. Add that to your list. Time of the month, is it?’

‘You’re a prick, sir.’

‘I know. Now let’s get on with this. Tony, you done?’

Winter nodded to Addison: he was finished.

The DI moved in, his face set firm in readiness for a task he wasn’t looking forward to. On his knees next to the girl, he reached out towards her, then stopped, rethinking the situation. ‘Rachel,’ he called out to her. ‘Come on, I need your help with this.’

Knowing what he needed, Narey moved to the girl’s other side and knelt on the ground. She looked at him to signal she was ready.

‘Okay, support her back, then we’ll slide the dress up.’ Addison looked up to see uniforms, detectives and forensics all watching them intently – and it pissed him off. ‘This isn’t a fucking peepshow. Go and find something to do. I think you’ll find there’s plenty. Tony, you stay there. The rest of you piss off.’

The cops and SOCOs dropped their heads in embarrassment, some muttering about Addison but not daring to let it be heard, turning away to busy themselves with some task or other.

‘On three . . . lift.’

They eased Ashleigh’s body from the ground, feeling her cold and damp even through the nitrile gloves. With their spare hands, they took hold of the black dress and began to work it up her thighs until they were completely exposed, revealing a tiny pair of black panties and a small daisy tattoo on her right hip, and finally pulling enough material beyond her midriff until it too was indelicately on show.

They’d seen it as soon as they’d lifted the dress above her navel, the first glimpse of lipstick and they’d known. There had been no doubts in either mind about what would be revealed, about what would be daubed there.

SIN

The word was carved on her flesh in artless stabs of wax, branding her and disfiguring her, if in name only. Sticks and stones will break my bones, Winter thought. As Addison and Narey turned towards him in an unspoken request to photograph the girl’s stomach, he quickly shot a couple of frames and captured them crouched grimly either side of her exposed midriff. In the same movement, he stepped forward and filled his lens with the word, stealing it from her skin.