Easy Kill Page 19

  ‘If that bastard comes near you again, I’ll kill him.’

  Rhona waited until she was sure Sean was asleep, then slipped out of bed and headed for the kitchen. Tom, curled up in his basket, didn’t open an eye. Rhona left him in peace and took her seat in the moonlit room. She thought of Nora, who’d sensed her daughter was still alive. She remembered how Magnus had taken the woman’s hand and told her he believed her. What would Bill do now? Tell Nora she was right, her daughter was alive? At least she was twenty-four hours before, because he had a photograph to prove it. The thought of Nora viewing that image of Magnus with her daughter was almost too much to bear.

  51

  THE ROOM REMINDED him of the alleyway; the hot stink of damp, piss and stale sex. Only the movement of air over water made it bearable. Magnus had paced the perimeter twice, but the only way out seemed to be the way he’d come in.

  He’d decided at that point that the stream must provide an exit and had waded in, bent over, walking with the current, the swift flow of water reaching his knees. Darkness had quickly swallowed him and his pace had slowed as he’d tried to avoid cracking his head on the low roof. After what he’d estimated as sixty feet, the perfectly formed round brick tunnel had lost its shape to stalactites and thick reddish deposits of what looked like iron oxide, leeching in from above. Eventually it had become impossible to go on, the jagged ceiling brushing the surface of the water.

  Magnus had returned to the cellar to find Terri still unconscious, her face pale. She wasn’t losing any blood and her pulse was steady, but her skin felt cold and clammy despite the humid heat. Magnus took off his shirt and covered her as best he could.

  His venture upstream ended in the same way as his earlier jaunt. This time his hopes were raised by the length of time it took to reach the encrustation. More like a hundred feet than sixty. But the result was the same. Water could filter through, but a human being would have to lie flat and wriggle their way out.

  Disappointed, Magnus returned to Terri and checked her pulse again, grateful to find it still steady. He sat close to her for a bit, hoping his body heat would help raise hers, and turned his mind to working out where the killer had shot from. He replayed the scenario, trying to place himself in the same position, careful not to disturb Terri in case she woke and thought he was moving in on her again.

  Magnus examined the wall above the girl and saw the track of the bullet he’d dived to avoid. He turned his gaze to where he thought it originated and met the arc light full on. The killer had to be positioned up there, where the dazzling beam made it impossible to see him.

  The wall under the arc light was brick built, supported by a cast-iron frame, rising to a vaulted roof. The lamp was mounted high on an arch, with no visible means of reaching it from there, suggesting it’d been lowered through from above. The gunman must have shot from there.

  Magnus went to glance at his watch, forgetting again that it and his mobile had been taken from him or lost somewhere between the waste ground and the cellar. It troubled him greatly that he had no idea how long it had been since the gunman left, nor how soon he would return.

  If he was right about the lunar effect, Terri’s death was imminent. If he stayed there, Magnus had no doubt he would be made complicit in it. The thought horrified him, as did the alternative, which was to leave her to face her fate alone.

  He had to find a way through the vaults, and quickly.

  He checked Terri one more time before he left. He knew she was seventeen, but lying curled in a ball she looked little more than a child. Nora had been right, her little girl was still alive. It was his job to make sure she stayed that way.

  After the harsh light, the darkness of the neighbouring room blinded him. Magnus waited for his eyes to adjust, trying to imagine the layout. He’d crossed three spaces before finding Terri. If the killer was operating alone, he’d managed to transport Magnus down there somehow. Which suggested the stairs weren’t too far from where he’d first regained consciousness.

  The further he moved from Terri’s prison the thicker the darkness became, and Magnus began to rely on his sense of smell. The overriding scent was damp and disuse, but there were subtle differences from room to room. Access upwards would involve the movement of air, and moving air smelt noticeably different.

  Magnus was beginning to believe he was going around in circles, when he finally caught a whiff of fresher air. He stood perfectly still and breathed in, praying he was right. The touch of it on his cheek nearly made him whoop for joy.

  He followed the scent until his right foot hit concrete, then knelt to feel with his hands. Definitely stairs. Magnus raised his eyes, searching for some subtle change in light that might indicate a door, but could distinguish none.

  He dropped to his knees, conscious that the stairway might not be complete, and began to crawl upwards. He’d counted six steps before he reached for the next and found emptiness. Magnus felt left, then right, trying to interpret what lay under his hand, eventually establishing the concrete had crumbled, leaving behind the metal reinforcing rods. The following step, as far as he could tell, was more or less intact.

  Magnus resumed his crawl, keeping as close to the right-hand wall as possible. He knew he’d reached the top when he found an open stretch of concrete. He dragged himself up and sat for a moment to regain his composure, then ran his hand along until he found the outline of a door.

  52

  MAGNUS WAS TRYING to prise the door open with one of the steel rods when he heard Terri scream. The shock sent him reeling backwards, and he momentarily lost his balance, almost slipping over the edge of the staircase. The deathly silence that followed horrified him even more, propelling him downwards. At the bottom, he broke into a blind run.

  He found himself trusting instinct, as he had on the islands as a child during the long dark northern winters. Then it had been field and dyke, river and road. Here, intuition swerved him from walls towards openings, as he mentally counted the spaces he’d crossed. In all the time he ran, there was no sound, bar the crashing of his heart. He prayed for a distant moan or whimper.

  As Magnus ducked under the archway into the full glare of the lamp, the metallic scent of fresh blood hit his nostrils, and he understood why Terri had made no further sound. Magnus ran to the spot he’d left her, as though by his presence Terri would miraculously reappear. The shackles hung empty, his dirt-streaked and bloody shirt discarded. When he had left Terri, he would have said things couldn’t get any worse. How wrong could he have been? Magnus raged at himself, impotent in his fury. He’d deserted Terri when he should have tried to protect her.

  Eventually he stopped his useless pacing. Castigating himself would achieve nothing. It was self-indulgent and despicable. His job now was to find Terri. Magnus examined the ground below the shackles. There was fresh blood, but not much. He tried to read its pattern, wishing he had Rhona beside him. Blood, she’d told him, was a storybook. Every drop a word, the resulting pattern a complete narrative of what had happened to make it spill. His natural optimism won. Terri had been alive when she was taken away. But for how long?

  Magnus made for the wall below the arc light. The cement between the bricks was crumbling in places, offering the chance of a foot or handhold, much like the red sandstone cliffs and stacks of Orkney.

  He felt for the first available grip and began to pull himself up. His fingertips were already bloodied and bruised from his earlier attempts to open the door, but they sought the space between the bricks and clung there like limpets. The action of climbing brought vivid memories of scrabbling up the cliffs of Yesnaby. Gulls screaming, angry waters surging below, the scent and taste of salt and sandstone.

  The heat from the lamp streamed sweat down his neck and chest. It ran freely now that he’d given up his shirt for Terri. The memory of draping it over her cold body drove him on. Eventually he came level with the metal arm of the arc light and hung there, trying to make out what was above him.

  He mad
e a grab with his right hand and swung forward on the metal support. Above was the opening he sought. A perfect viewing platform and ideal location to take pot shots at the room below, and more importantly, big enough to climb through. The muscles in his upper arms screamed as Magnus made the final thrust upwards, to roll panting and groaning into the upper level.

  When he could breathe freely again, he manoeuvred the arc light so part of its glare now illuminated the upper room. He was fed up rooting around in the dark. He wanted to see where he was, and what he was dealing with.

  The room was small and low-ceilinged, with a table and chair against the wall. Lying next to a laptop was his watch and mobile. Magnus couldn’t believe his luck. He grabbed for the mobile and turned it on. It fired up for a few moments, raising his hopes, then died, the battery flat.

  Magnus tried to console himself, as he strapped the watch to his wrist. It was an old psychological trick to deprive people of time. With no sense of it passing, of when it was day and when night, people lost their grip on reality. Magnus checked the time and date. Now he knew how long it’d been since he’d walked the waste ground in Calton.

  Magnus focused next on the laptop. A selection of pictures filled the screen. Grotesque images of Terri and her injuries. The killer needed broken skin and blood to turn him on. Magnus scrolled through a dozen, his stomach contracting with each new image. He’d been right about one thing. Their ritualistic nature suggested the killer saw Terri as an object, not a person.

  The final picture confirmed Magnus’s worst fears. Now he saw what had happened after the drug entered his bloodstream. Now he knew what he’d done. He was no better than the killer, who’d manipulated and outmatched him at every turn.

  53

  ‘OKAY, WHAT HAVE we got?’

  Bill looked as though he’d had the minimum of sleep, much like herself. Rhona had grabbed a couple of hours before dawn and then headed back to the lab. There had been no further messages from Magnus’s mobile.

  ‘The registration number of the car parked on the foreshore at Cardross has been identified as stolen, last seen by its owner in the car park under his flat three days ago.’ McNab read out the address. It wasn’t far from Magnus’s apartment on the banks of the Clyde. ‘The car has turned up on waste ground in Calton. It was reported on fire in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The fire brigade were there promptly and the damage is superficial. The flake of paint found in Geordie’s clothes matches damage to the front of the car.’

  ‘So we’ve got the vehicle that killed Geordie but not the driver?’

  Rhona interrupted. ‘Chrissy also reports the fingerprint on Terri’s bag matched fingerprints lifted from the car.’

  ‘And the partial on the gag?’

  She shook her head. ‘Inconclusive.’

  ‘If the car only went missing three days ago, it can’t have been the one that picked up Terri,’ said Bill.

  McNab brought up the CCTV footage on the screen.

  ‘This is the car we think took Terri just after midnight. It’s a black Mondeo, registration number unclear, obscured, we think, by mud. However it does have a towbar attached.’ He flicked forward. ‘This looks like the same car crossing the Kingstown Bridge going west, close to where we picked up Terri’s handbag.’ He changed images. ‘The same car leaving the M8 at Junction 21. Next sighting twenty minutes later, back at Glasgow Cross, and the final one is Duke Street.’

  All roads led to Duke Street and the nearby Necropolis.

  ‘Okay. We assume he’s got her and Magnus somewhere in that triangle,’ Bill said. ‘So we concentrate all our efforts there. Anything from the Cardross connection?’

  ‘We’re awaiting the database of members of the sailing club. I’ve called the commodore to remind him. Should arrive soon.’

  Collecting and sifting through material took time. Time they didn’t have.

  ‘And the forensics?’ Bill asked Rhona.

  ‘None of the DNA profiles of Terri’s regulars match the skin flakes on Lucie’s bra. However two of the men – Beattie and Brendan Paterson – had unprotected sex with Lucie in the days before her murder.’

  ‘But not Gary Forbes?’

  Rhona shook her head. That would fit with Gary’s story about watching rather than doing.

  They kept coming back to the same three men. But that was always the case in prostitute murders. The same cars, the same drivers, the same punters.

  ‘And we have nothing to link any of these men directly to Lucie that night?’

  McNab shook his head. ‘Alibis check out and none of them drive a car like the one caught on camera.’

  ‘Nothing more from Terri’s phone?’

  ‘We’ve been through the entire history and every number. She spent more time calling Leanne than anyone else.’ McNab fell silent at that. Leanne was a source of worry. No one had seen her since she’d visited Cathy’s flat. The press had got hold of that story, too. Bill had begun to suspect they had a mole at the station feeding newspaper and online speculation. As far as the press and the general public were concerned, Terri and Leanne were already victims of the killer, their bodies still to be discovered. The fact the two young women had also been lovers hadn’t gone unreported either. How the Dochertys were surviving the licentious coverage of Terri’s life, Rhona couldn’t imagine.

  McNab moved on to a discussion of the possible American connection.

  ‘So this Ryan Williams began life as Peter Henderson?’ Bill said.

  ‘He changed his name by UK deed poll to Ryan Williams four years ago.’

  ‘How did he get an American passport?’

  McNab shook his head. ‘No idea. But Lieutenant Blum said he’d no reason to suspect it wasn’t genuine. According to their records a Ryan Williams was born in Atlantic City in 1962.’

  ‘He could have stolen an identity,’ Rhona suggested.

  ‘So where is our Ryan Williams now?’

  ‘He dropped off the radar in the States after his release. Then his British namesake popped up here to change his name to Mark Gordon and applied for a new UK passport and driving licence in January this year.’

  ‘It’s that easy?’ Bill looked incredulous.

  ‘You can apply online and have a certificate emailed to you in ten minutes. You use that for the passport application. The Home Office says the Criminal Records bureau keep track of those who change names if they are under suspicion of anything,’ McNab didn’t look convinced. ‘It also says on the form that those who have a criminal record are required to let the police know.’

  ‘But our guy, as far as we know, hasn’t been convicted of anything.’

  ‘That about sums it up.’

  Rhona spoke again. ‘We have a record of Ryan Williams’s DNA profile taken in Atlantic City. We’re checking it against what we have. I also traced the varnish flake to a specialist manufacturer based down south called Realpaints. They’re sending up a customer list.’

  So many threads in the complicated web. What they needed now was luck to connect them. Bill hadn’t mentioned the mobile image in the meeting. He’d told them earlier that he wanted it to stay strictly between Rhona, himself and McNab, at least until he showed it to the Super. The existence of the photograph probably spelt the end of Magnus’s career.

  ‘The last time I spoke to Magnus he said the gravestone had a carved symbol made up of a moon and a fish. He said the moon has an affinity with water. It rules the domain of the night, the unconscious mind, the world of dreams and fantasies. The killer’s fantasies. If we think Cathy’s death is linked to the killer, isn’t the fact she was found in the Molendinar significant?’

  McNab looked at Rhona askance. This was way too fanciful for him. But Bill didn’t dismiss her so readily. Talking about Cathy had reminded him of something.

  ‘Fairlie thought it was an old punter of Cathy’s told her Terri was alive. Someone from way back.’

  They exchanged looks.

  ‘Maybe Cathy recognised someone fro
m her past. Someone who didn’t want to be recognised?’ Rhona suggested.

  ‘Right, we need to check records again. Cathy’s on file. Have we anyone linked to her? Anything significant at all? Check for any further connection between Henderson and the World’s End case. Talk to Lothian and Borders. And find out exactly when Henderson, or Williams, left these shores.’

  DC Clark caught Bill on the way out.

  ‘There’s a Father Duffy in reception. He wants to talk to you about Leanne Quinn.’

  54

  BILL COULD SMELL the drink before he saw Father Duffy. The priest looked wrecked, his face a highball of colour. He was in a worse state than Bill. Maybe there were more stressful jobs than being in charge of a murder enquiry.

  The priest stood up, a little shakily.

  ‘Father Duffy, I’m Detective Inspector Wilson. I believe you wanted to speak to me about Leanne Quinn?’

  ‘I saw her face on the screen in the Central Station.’ His voice was a soft burr, a perfect mixture of Irish and west coast Scottish. ‘They said she was missing.’ He looked distressed.

  ‘You have some information about Leanne?’

  Father Duffy nodded.

  Bill took him through to his office, avoiding the incident room. The man looked bad enough without subjecting him to what was on display in there. He ushered the priest to a seat and offered him a mug of tea. Father Duffy shook his head. Bill suspected nothing but whisky had passed his lips for some time. Bill waited for the priest to begin.

  ‘I know Leanne. She comes to the chapel sometimes. I open the doors for those who have nowhere to sleep. Leanne slept there on Saturday night.’ He shifted in his seat.

  It didn’t take a knowledge of kinesics for Bill to tell Father Duffy had just delivered a partial truth. He decided to stay silent and see what emerged next.

  Eventually Duffy went on. ‘Leanne was worried about some debt she had to pay.’ He ran his tongue nervously over his lips. ‘I gave her money for it.’

  Bill wanted to ask what he’d got in return, seeing the guilt on Duffy’s face. Instead, he asked how much.