Easy Kill Read online

  LIN ANDERSON

  Easy Kill

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Also by Lin Anderson

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  About the Author

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Lin Anderson 2008

  The right of Lin Anderson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All character in this publicaiton are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Epub ISBN: 9781848945395

  Book ISBN: 9780340922439

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  To Detective Inspector Bill Mitchell

  Easy Kill

  Eventually an object distinguishable as a finger began to emerge from the damp soil, swiftly followed by another. From nowhere, the first fly appeared and made an attempt to land. Rhona swatted it away.

  Gradually the full hand lay exposed. It was badly decomposed but recognisable as female, a small gold ring biting into the rotting flesh of the middle finger.

  Also by Lin Anderson:

  Driftnet

  Torch

  Deadly Code

  Dark Flight

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to Dr Jennifer Miller of GUARD and Derek Scott (Training Manager, Scottish Ambulance College), and to David Robertson (Development and Regeneration Services, Glasgow City Council) for sharing his expertise on the Molendinar Burn.

  1

  THE CAR WAS flash, and looked brand new. As it pulled up, the nearside window whirred down.

  ‘Hey you!’

  The vehicle had drawn up in the darkest part of the street, avoiding the improved visibility of the safe zone. Better lighting and multiple cameras made the punters nervous.

  A hand appeared, waving money at her. Still Terri hesitated.

  ‘Are you fucking working or not?’

  Terri took her time approaching, trying to get a look at the man before she committed. She preferred regulars. She knew what they wanted. She knew they would pay.

  She was near the car now. Terri stumbled, her ankle going over on one high heel.

  ‘Careful,’ he called, suddenly solicitous.

  Terri bent to look in. The guy’s face was in shadow but he looked harmless enough. Three twenty-pound notes sat on the passenger seat. When she opened the door he scooped up the money, freeing the seat for her.

  ‘There’s an alley further along,’ said Terri, indicating an opening a few yards ahead.

  The man pulled away from the kerb, swiftly and purposefully, throwing a quick glance at a nearby camera.

  ‘Not around here. I like my privacy.’

  He dropped the money in her lap.

  ‘What does that buy?’

  Terri told him, keeping to the normal rates, not telling any lies in case he was testing her. If he was a regular punter, he would know anyway.

  He nodded, seemingly satisfied.

  The city lights flowed past in a blood-streaked blur. They were heading out of the centre. Despite her misgivings at leaving the zone Terri felt her body relax, soothed by the combination of Valium she’d taken before coming out and the stuffy heat inside the car.

  ‘You’ll have to take me back afterwards,’ she said.

  He didn’t react, his profile impassive.

  ‘I have to get back,’ Terri insisted, imagining being thrown out miles away.

  ‘One fuck a night not enough for you?’ He smiled, but not at her. ‘You need how many? Six? Ten fucks a night?

  Terri tensed. Talking dirty was sometimes the fore-play. For those who could not perform it was often the whole play.

  ‘How many?’ he insisted.

  ‘I have six regulars on a Wednesday night.’

  ‘Six fucks,’ he nodded to himself. ‘Not a problem.’

  They were approaching traffic lights. Terri decided if they changed to red, she would get out of the car.

  He zoomed through on amber.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘We don’t have to go any further. There’s plenty of places around here.’

  The punch, when it came, knocked the air out of her. He put his hand back on the wheel as though nothing had happened.

  Terri tried to draw breath into her lungs, gasping and wheezing. ‘Please.’ She whimpered, retreating as far as she could.

  He glanced in his rear-view mirror. ‘Say, “I need six fucks a night”.’

  Now his left hand was gripping her exposed thigh. She yelped.

  ‘Say, “I need six fucks a night”.’

  She said it quietly.

  ‘Louder.’

  Terri repeated it, louder this time.

  They were on the Kingston Bridge crossing the River Clyde, going west. A sudden thought struck her, she was heading towards home. She’d told her mum she would visit this weekend, and she wanted to keep her word.

  He had fallen silent, inte
nt on the road. Terri slid her hand into her bag and felt for her phone. A spasm of fury crossed his face as a sudden drilling noise indicated an incoming text. Reaching across her, he tore the bag from her hand, lowered the window and threw it out.

  He took the next exit without indicating, doubling back towards the city centre. Terri kept thinking that as long as he was driving he couldn’t hurt her. She tried to compose herself and plan how to get away. She had been in difficult situations before and survived.

  2

  THE HOTTEST AND wettest July so far on record had turned Glasgow into a warm bath. Had the skies been blue and the sun shining down on the sandstone city, its citizens would have relished this evidence of global warming. After all, it would save a trip to Spain to top up their tans. For the last week, the skies had been perpetually dark and grey, rain a semi-permanent feature, in all its west coast forms; smirr, Scotch mist (an understated steady drizzle) and full-blown tropical downpour, known locally as stair rods.

  This morning it was Scotch mist that clothed the eastern side of the city, its magnificent cathedral and neighbouring graveyard – the Necropolis, affectionately known in Glasgow as the City of the Dead.

  Two mounted arc lights brought occasional glimpses of a forensic team moving among the mausoleums and ornate graves of Glasgow’s rich departed. In their white suits they could have been spectres, or some alien species looking for evidence of human habitation among the tombstones.

  The corpse that had brought them there was once a young woman. Sniffed at by a fox on its night-time forage, nosed by one of the roe deer that grazed the luscious grass, it had finally been found by a shocked jogger, who made a point of running to the top of the Necropolis every morning before breakfast. That was something he wouldn’t be doing again in a hurry. The flies had got there before him, lifting in a black cloud on his approach. Flesh flies and bluebottles had arrived minutes after death, to deposit their maggots or eggs in all the natural orifices. A little later, standard houseflies had joined the party.

  Dr Rhona MacLeod, chief forensic for the Strathclyde Force, crouched next to the body, her white-suited figure indistinguishable from the other members of the forensic team. Above her, a pinnacle-shaped gravestone declared this to be the last resting place of one Edwin Aitken, a merchant of the city, respected father and citizen, whose family sorely missed him.

  The young woman usurping Edwin’s grave had no name as yet, and apparently no means of identification. Her clothes suggested prostitution, but there were plenty of girls out clubbing in Glasgow wearing even less.

  A skirt of flimsy plastic masquerading as leather was drawn up around her waist, a striped top pulled up to expose her breasts. A black nylon bra, knotted around her neck as a ligature, was the probable cause of death, but there were also six bloody puncture wounds clustered in the shaved genital area. The violence hadn’t ended there. The stiletto heel of the red sandal, missing from her right foot, had been inserted in her vagina.

  The body had lain in this spot since the early hours of the morning. It had been discovered at eight-thirty and by then patches of lividity, caused as the blood sank to the lower parts, had fused together into larger purplish areas that still blanched under pressure. There was no exact science that could establish the time of death, as there were too many parameters affecting the state of the body. Lividity offered some indication, as did infestation. True flies were holome-tabolous, metamorphosing through four distinct stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Left in the open like this for a couple of weeks, infestation would have reduced the corpse to skin, bone and cartilage.

  The area was already cordoned off, the incident tent in the process of being raised, which would stop the inevitable rain from washing away the evidence and hopefully keep any more flies at bay.

  DS Michael McNab was Scene of Crime Manager, his dark auburn head visible now alongside that of DI Bill Wilson, Rhona’s friend and mentor. Bill’s face looked as grey as the neighbouring granite headstones. Michael, in contrast, looked like a man who had just been for an invigorating run.

  Rhona glanced up as the nearby bushes parted to reveal another forensic suit, filled out a little more than her own. Chrissy McInsh, Rhona’s assistant, looked down at the violated corpse. Compassion clouded her eyes.

  ‘Poor cow.’

  ‘Did you find her pants?’

  Chrissy shook her head. ‘Probably not wearing any.’

  ‘Or he took them as a trophy.’

  There had been eight murders of Glasgow prostitutes in the last ten years, with only one conviction. None had occurred since the safe area had been established. Until now. Three of the previous victims had been found without underwear. One had been dumped naked. Extensive police enquiries had led nowhere, except to establish that the unsolved murders were not likely to have been committed by the same man. Which meant there were eight uncaught murderers walking the streets of Glasgow.

  ‘They are shite, killed by shite; who gives a shite?’

  ‘Chrissy!’ said Rhona, shocked by her assistant’s bluntness.

  ‘Not my opinion. A quote from one of our police colleagues a few years back.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Press didn’t say, but I have my suspicions.’

  If the victim turned out to be a prostitute, which looked likely, they would have a hard job finding her killer. When a prostitute was murdered, it was nearly always by someone she didn’t know. No relationship between the murderer and victim meant the circle of potential suspects was limitless. Men using the services of prostitutes didn’t volunteer information, since many had girlfriends, wives and families who didn’t know about their little hobby. The public weren’t interested, unless the death involved an ‘innocent’ young woman out jogging or walking her dog.

  ‘Is she a user?’

  ‘Probably,’ Rhona replied. ‘There are marks on her inner thigh.’

  ‘The press will go for “junkie prostitute found dead in graveyard” and the punters will go to ground.’

  There were an estimated 1,200 street prostitutes in Glasgow, compared with 100 in nearby Edinburgh. The high number reflected the poverty, deprivation and drug problems of the west-coast city. Most decent Glasgow citizens wished the problem would disappear. It gave the city a bad name.

  ‘We can’t be sure she was a prostitute,’ protested Rhona.

  ‘Odds against it don’t look good.’

  ‘Morning ladies.’ As he approached, DS McNab gave them a big smile, aimed predominantly in Rhona’s direction. Chrissy raised one eyebrow at her boss, but Rhona ignored her.

  ‘If you can step aside for a moment, we’ll get the tent up.’

  ‘You’re a bit late. We’ve been here twenty minutes,’ Chrissy said.

  The DS looked Chrissy up and down appreciatively. ‘Have you put on some weight? It suits you.’

  It was a remark Chrissy would normally have furnished with a cutting reply. Not this time. Rhona saw a flush creep over Chrissy’s cheek, and stepped in to defend her.

  ‘Can I have a word?’

  McNab was happy enough to speak to Rhona alone, although that wasn’t her intention. She merely walked him to where DI Wilson stood with the Procurator Fiscal, whose job under Scots Law was to determine whether a crime had taken place.

  Chrissy looked relieved to be let off the hook. So far only Rhona and Chrissy’s mother knew about Chrissy’s pregnancy. According to Chrissy her mother had taken it pretty well, but hadn’t built up the courage to tell the family priest yet, let alone Chrissy’s father and brothers. All hell would be let loose when the news broke, especially when the men found out who the child’s father was.

  At close quarters, Bill Wilson’s colour was an even more pronounced grey, a tone more in keeping with a strung-out heroin abuser than a healthy man in his fifties with a loving wife and family. Rhona gave him a worried look, which he chose not to acknowledge. She knew what was eating at Bill, but she wasn’t sure who else did. Bill didn’t allow worries over his p
ersonal life to be discussed on the job.

  The Fiscal acknowledged Rhona with a nod, then said his swift goodbyes. Not many Fiscals appeared at murder scenes, particularly when there was little doubt that a serious crime had indeed taken place. Rhona imagined Cameron heading back to his nice air-conditioned office and wished she could return to the peace and tranquillity of her forensic lab. But that wouldn’t happen for some time yet.

  ‘A bad business,’ said Bill. ‘I thought creating a safe zone had made a difference.’

  ‘It had,’ replied Rhona.

  ‘Not for this one.’

  ‘What do we want the press to know?’ McNab asked.

  Bill thought for a moment. ‘I’ve a mind to say nothing about prostitution until we’re sure. Let’s give them Young woman found brutally murdered after night out.’

  That way they might get forty-eight hours of public interest in the case, before the truth was revealed. Bill was taking a gamble. He could just as easily get on the wrong side of the press. Alienating them meant no high profile for the case and less likelihood of finding the killer. Female street prostitutes, especially junkies, were the most threatened and abused members of society. No one cared when or how they died.