Witness the Dead (41 page)

He shook himself, feeling the cold all of a sudden. An angry roll of clouds had gathered across the rooftops on Keppochill Road and the wind had picked up, whistling low across the cemetery, making the grass sing a dirge. Between that and the softness of the turf, he didn’t hear the footsteps approaching until they were almost upon him.

‘You managed to find your way here, then?’

He knew the voice instantly. Not Chloe: her mother. He turned his head and saw her glaring down at him, tired eyes under knotted brows.

‘Barbara. I was—’

‘Expecting my daughter. I know.’

It had been fully four years since he’d seen her. A cousin’s wedding and a grudging acceptance of being in the same room as he was had not extended to anything more than a few words of overly polite conversation. Now, with her coat buttoned to the neck and her arms folded tightly across her chest, she didn’t seem any keener to see him than before.

Danny pushed his hands onto the grass, feeling his fingers sink into the wet, and forced himself to his feet.

‘Don’t bother. I’m not staying. I’m only here to tell you that Chloe’s not coming.’

‘What? Is she okay?’

‘She’s fine.’

‘Then why . . .? You told her not to come?’

‘Of course I did,’ Barbara spat, pulling her arms even tighter around herself. ‘What do you expect? Meeting her behind my back.’

‘Barbara, I’m her grandfather for God’s sake.’

‘In name only.’

The bitterness in her voice cut him to ribbons, slicing into his conscience like a stiletto. Three little words, slashing left, right and centre.

‘That’s not fair. Look, you’re here now. Let’s talk. How have you been?’

Barbara laughed, an incredulous snort of derision that broke free from her mouth.

‘How have I been? You have the cheek to stand in front of my mother’s grave and ask me that?’

‘I’m asking because I care.’

‘Aye? Well I’ve been just great, thanks for asking. Bringing up Chloe on my own thanks to a cheating shit of an ex-husband who buggered off with a younger model. Slaving away at a job I hate. And now my daughter is lying to me too by meeting you.’

It was her eyes as much as her words. What a person says isn’t always what they mean, but their eyes – that’s where the truth is. Barbara’s eyes burned rage.

Danny exhaled hard, wondering not for the first time how the hell it had come to this. She had been his world from the first moment she’d been placed in his arms screaming her little lungs out. He knew right there and then that he would do anything for her; yet forty years later, all she wanted him to do was drop dead.

It was her mother dying, he knew that. Deathbed confessions are dangerous things, dropping bombshells on people when their mind is least able to deal with it. Deathbed accusations aren’t much better and Barbara had absorbed the one that was foisted upon her, locked it in her heart and promised herself she’d never forget. So it had stayed there and, naturally, it festered.

They stared at each other, a stand-off above the grave of the person who both united and separated them. His baby girl, her mouth tight and contorted with resentment at the world and all its components. One in particular.

‘Look, it’s been a long time,’ he began again.

She released her arms long enough to thrust away strands of the strawberry-blonde hair that had been blown across her face. ‘Not long enough.’

‘Oh come on, Barbara, it’s been nineteen years since your mum died. She forgave me. Why can’t you?’

‘Forgave you? Maybe, but she never forgot. Anyway, I’m not here to get drawn into this. You know how I feel about it. All I’m saying is that I don’t want you to see Chloe and I expect you to respect that. Forgiveness? Is that what you want?’

Danny felt the first drops of rain as he shook his head slowly in response.

‘No. I just want to talk to my daughter and get to know my granddaughter. Forgiveness is for fools. Believe me, anyone else’s forgiveness isn’t much use to me if I can’t forgive myself. I want to move on. Put all that behind us.’

‘Jesus Christ!’

The acrimony made Barbara look older than she was. Not long turned forty, but when her face screwed up, the corner of her eyes twisted tight and her mouth locked like a vault, she wore the acid features of an embittered widow.

‘How can we put it behind us?’ she snapped, pointing at the headstone at his back. ‘You cheated on my mother and now you’re skulking around meeting my daughter. You obviously can’t be trusted an inch.’

Danny collapsed inside; some things just couldn’t be argued against, mainly the truth. She continued the assault, all the time her finger pointing at her mother’s name carved in guilt behind him.

‘How do you think it made me feel? My mum dying of lung cancer, using her last breaths to tell me that? She barely had a breath in her, yet that was what she chose to use it on. To tell me what you’d done. Not to tell me that she loved me or that I’d be fine after she’d gone. To tell me that you’d cheated on her. To tell me that the man I’d always thought was the greatest guy on earth was actually a cheating piece of shit.’

It was raining more heavily now, large drops slapping against their faces, mixing with and disguising the tears of anger that had begun to run down his daughter’s face. Her voice was rising, giving vent to the frustration of not being able to tell him this in so long. He took it.

Danny knew that Jean had been on heavy doses of morphine in her last hours, a vain attempt to keep the insufferable pain at bay. The drug messed with her mind a bit, not to the extent that she’d said anything that wasn’t true, but Danny doubted that, without it, she’d have inflicted that parting piece of knowledge on Barbara. It would have served no purpose, particularly as they’d worked so hard to keep it from her for so many years.

They had got past it, his one sordid, never-repeated infidelity. They’d got on with their lives and become a family and loved each other. Clearly, Jean had never forgotten, though, seeing that writ large and ugly as her life passed before her. Nor had he or ever would he, the guilt at his unfaithfulness being multiplied by the consequences of his negligence. The death of a young woman and the broken heart of the woman he loved was the burden he deserved to carry with him for the rest of his life.

‘You’re right,’ he told Barbara, his right hand pushing the rain out of his eyes. ‘I am a piece of shit. Or at least I was. I’m trying to make amends.’

‘Amends?’ Her laugh had no humour in it. ‘How are you going to do that, then? Go back in time and not shag that slapper? Bring Mum back to life? Oh, I know: you’re going to spend all hours standing out in the rain at night making sure wee lassies get safely into taxis so that another one doesn’t get killed and it would be your fault.’

The trouble with being slaughtered by someone who knows you as well as a daughter does is that they know exactly where to stick the knife. She’d also have been as well cutting off his tongue because he had nothing to say.

Barbara took his silence for defeat and pushed past him dismissively, all but knocking Danny out of the way as she crouched down and took her place in front of her mother’s headstone. Ignoring the ever-increasing rain, she began pulling at the weeds that grew at the base of the stone, manically ripping them from the dirt and throwing them aside. Her knees quickly became dark, wet circles of neglect, her hands reddening as she worked.

‘Come away from there, Barbara,’ he urged her. ‘You’re getting soaked.’

She ignored him and continued to tear at the weeds, seemingly seeing some that weren’t there. Danny pushed his hands through his hair in frustration before rubbing his palms violently against his forehead and finally finding words to come back at her with.

‘I made one mistake over twenty years of marriage. I’ve had to live with it ever since and I always will. I’m not asking for forgiveness for that. Yeah, you’re right, I work the taxi rank because I feel guilty. Because I’m trying to make something right in whatever small way I can. Is that so terrible? And now I want to see my granddaughter. My own flesh and blood. I want to see her grow up and get to know her. And you know what, Barbara? She wants that too.’

Barbara’s hands, which had continued to scrabble at the earth as he spoke, stopped moving and her head snapped round towards him.

‘Yes, she told me that. She told me that when I found out who she was going to meet for lunch. But you know what,
Dad
? She doesn’t want that any more. Not after I told her why you and I don’t talk to each other. Not after I told her what you were really like.’

Chapter 50

Saturday afternoon

‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever photographed, Anthony? Or should I say the best?’

‘I don’t think that’s relevant.’

‘Oh, don’t get all huffy on me again. It must be remarkable to be able to see things like that, to be there so soon after they’ve happened and be able to photograph them. It must be like making them eternal. It’s special, isn’t it?’

‘We’re not talking about me: we’re talking about you.’

‘But I’d
like
to talk about you, Anthony. I’d really like to know if that buzz you get when you photograph death is anything like the feeling I get when I cause it. Do you think it is?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Do you? I don’t. I’ve seen the look in your eyes. You come alive when faced with death. Ironic, isn’t it? Would you categorise it as a fascination? Or maybe an obsession?’

‘Neither. It’s a job.’

‘A job? Ha. A job that gives so much pleasure can’t truly be considered work at all. It’s not just a job and we both know it. If I just wanted to kill someone because they’d enraged me or cheated me, then I suppose I could have them shot or stabbed by some thug who’d be glad of a few hundred quid. But I do it myself, not because I want them killed but because I want to kill them. I want to feel it. The same way you feel it when you photograph them.’

‘It’s not the same thing at all!’ Winter could hear his voice rising and knew he was making it obvious that Atto was getting to him, but he was past caring. ‘You cannot compare photographing death to causing it. Do I like my job too much? Yes, probably. Is it a bit sick? Yes, probably. What you do – what you did before you were caught and locked away for the rest of your miserable little life – is way beyond sick. It is abominable.’

Atto’s switch flicked and Winter could see the killer appear in front of him, eyes wild and nostrils flaring. He sensed the guard and the governor tensing, ready to move, and he felt the hairs on his arm and neck stand on end. He had a sudden and unwelcome insight to what Louise Shillington, Melanie Holt and the others saw before Atto attacked.

But, instead of coming over the table after him, Atto smouldered, crossing his arms and slumping into his chair in a sulk.

Addison, Narey, Teven and Toshney were in the operations room, poring over maps, files, witness statements and computer searches, doggedly working their way through every bit of information available to them.

The pungent smell of canteen coffee filled the air, endless cups of the stuff to fortify the various members of the case team who had been in and out of the room most of the day. The java also had to count as lunch for all but the lucky few who had time to grab a disgusting vending-machine sandwich or a melted chocolate bar.

Addison worked differently from the rest of them in the room. While they were diligent and constant in everything they did, bees buzzing from one task to the next, the DI would regularly break away and sit in a chair by himself, balling up sheets of paper and lobbing them into a bin from eight feet away. Alternatively, he would pace the room talking quietly to himself, only the occasional expletive being audible, or stand in front of the large wall map and scratch his head.

If and when the thinking time paid off, he’d dash to a computer or a case file and look for whatever he thought might back up his hunch or inspiration. Stop, start, swear; stop, start, swear. Sometimes he just threw random questions at whoever happened to be there.

‘What’s with the fucking cemeteries? Eh? There was nothing in the Red Silk case that connected with the necropolises. One of the victims was buried in the Eastern but that was it. So what the hell is this bastard up to?’

No one was ever sure if the outbursts demanded a response or not and, as a rule, there was never a right answer. The questions that got a reply usually turned out to have been rhetorical and those that didn’t were followed by furious roars that Addison had asked something and wanted a bloody answer. After a while, only Narey dared to reply to him with more than a ‘dunno, sir’.

‘My thinking is that he’s grandstanding,’ she suggested now. ‘Just wanting more attention by making it all Gothic and ghoulish. Murder victims found in cemeteries are guaranteed headline grabbers. I think that’s what he wants.’

‘Well, he’s bloody well got plenty of headlines all right, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Toshney replied from his place in front of the map.

‘I fucking know he has, you fuckwit. I wasn’t talking to you and it was a bloody rhetorical question anyway! Understand?’

Toshney’s eyes narrowed in search of an answer but he didn’t get beyond confusion and said nothing.

‘Jesus suffering!’ Addison exploded. ‘Am I fucking talking to myself round here or what?’

The light outside was already beginning to fade despite its being only mid-afternoon, and Danny groaned as he levered himself out of the chair and got up to switch a light on in the Stewart Street operations room. Peering at forty-year-old case files in dim light was guaranteed to knacker his eyes. Actually, just reading them at all was likely to knacker his soul. Still, after the meeting with Barbara, he felt that a knackered soul was about all he deserved.

What there was to read, he’d seen before. All of it in 1972 and for the two years he worked the case. In the years since, he had dipped into it a few times but this was the first time in a long time that he had immersed himself completely in the horror of it. Handwritten and often barely legible notes triggered butterfly memories of names that had wandered to the far reaches of his mind: Billy Moffat and Geordie Taylor. Billy had died in the mid-eighties of a heart attack and Geordie had emigrated to New Zealand in 1990. Faces of witnesses came back as other names appeared on the yellowing pages, chattering ghouls that hadn’t visited him in years. Addresses immediately had him back standing outside closes in the East End or chapping on doors from Partick to Possil. They were times he wanted to go back to and also the last place he’d rather be. He was walking with ghosts, including his own.