The Quiet Ones Page 13

  ‘Fuck.’ Sometimes there was no other word for it. Graham Petrie, the unfortunate chap who died with the taste of ear wax in his mouth, was a fifty-two year old accountant. Recently divorced with two children and, until he was found swinging in Bath Lane, hadn’t been known to the police. Andrew Cruickshank had a rather more picturesque setting to his demise. His body had been found hanging just off Kelvin Walkway with a lovely view of the river, which had been wasted on him as Toria had pointed out at the time: ‘Shame he couldn’t see it… what with his eyes being gouged out and stuffed down his throat.’

  The mutilation, as Rosemary had confirmed, had been carried out whilst he was still alive. On the face of it he’d been an ordinary guy, twice married, former taxi driver and, apart from a drink-driving conviction over twenty years ago, was pretty much under the police radar with no obvious connection to either Nugent or Petrie.

  The atmosphere had been tense that morning. Davies had already gone over the bare facts, which were scant to say the least, not that that stopped press speculation. Hardly surprising really.

  This wasn’t going to be easy and the Chief Constable would have his balls on a plate if he didn’t shut this one down quick-style. This killer was targeting certain individuals for a reason and was unlikely to be a danger to the public at large. But anyone who could orchestrate the hanging of three middle-aged men and mutilate their faces had a core of steel running through them. They were waiting for the full post-mortem reports, but the initial findings were that the two latest victims had died within twelve hours of each other. This was vague to say the least. Davies knew that could mean anything up to twenty-four hours apart, or they might well have died simultaneously, meaning they were looking for not one, but two killers working together. That would be some fucking collective grudge. Perhaps Nugent’s murder really had been a gangland execution and had nothing to do with his depravity.

  ‘Right, guys, we need to establish what the two victims were doing in the twenty-four hours before they died. Was there anything that linked them? Were they known to each other? Did they drink at the same bars?’ Davies knew there could be dozens of tenuous links, some might be significant, others meaningless. But they’d have no choice but to check every single one.

  ‘Sir…’ no matter how many times he’d told her otherwise, Toria fell back into the habit of raising her hand before speaking ‘… has there been a warrant to seize any laptops, computers, tablets…?’

  She was one step ahead of him. ‘As DC Law has alluded to, we need to investigate the possibility of a paedophile ring. But nothing to the families, right?’ She looked desperate to get going but he needed to have a quick word at the end of the briefing and asked her to hang back for a few minutes.

  ‘CCTV?’ Davies gave Jim the nod to jump in. ‘There’re no cameras near the Kelvinbridge site,’ he said. ‘Nearest ones are Queen Margaret Drive. But we’re checking every car that was in the vicinity in the previous twelve hours and cross referencing number plate recognition with those in and around Hope Street.’

  Davies felt his heart sink further into his gut. Few criminals with the nouse to carry out these executions would be cruising around in the family hatchback. Beat-up vans, dodgy number plates, stolen cars. They knew how to cover their tracks. Once again, the press would be their best bet and it was more vital than ever to keep them all on-side.

  ‘I’m assuming the cameras on Bath Street came up with something better?’

  Jim stood up, passing him the stills from the CCTV, which he pinned on the wall behind him. He’d already picked out the ones he thought relevant: three drunks staggering up Douglas Street, arms round each other, holding each other steady. It was impossible to make out their faces but the one in the middle looked by far the worse for wear; he wasn’t being helped along, he was being dragged, his feet trailing on the ground, head hanging. Alec checked the time on the picture: 23:43.

  ‘Get me the tape for this.’

  Jim was already on the case, knowing this might well be their victim, half dead, being dragged into the lane, too far gone to put up any sort of a fight. Crimes committed in plain sight were often the easiest to stage.

  Closing up on the faces didn’t make for easy identification – grainy pictures on a damp night, heads down, hoods up – but it gave them a probable time of death and at least something to go on. And Alec knew that, despite no clear facial recognition, it was often possible to make a rough guess as to the ages of those in the frame, and it was always surprising how many people were recognised by the way they walked, their mannerisms, their body language.

  He looked at the picture again. It could be Petrie; there was no way of telling. ‘Can we get our tech guys onto this?’ Davies knew that software was becoming increasingly sophisticated and they might well be able to say if the guy being dragged along was the same height and build as their victim. ‘Get this tape to every news outlet we know.’ He addressed the uniforms at the back of the room. ‘Check for any similar scenario with drunks being dragged down Byres Road.’

  Davies cornered Toria before she left the briefing room. He’d sent her and McVeigh home just after 3 a.m. the previous night; not because he was getting soft, but he’d needed them fresh for the morning and, being the old fashioned type, he’d much rather his officers weren’t wearing blue tights and covered in glitter.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’ve assigned someone else to look through Petrie and Cruikshank’s computers.’

  She squared up to him. ‘Is this because I’m a female officer, sir? I’m as capable as the next man of this investigation.’

  He placed his hands on her shoulders; he wasn’t the touchy feely type, but needed her to know he was on her side. ‘Listen, Toria, there’s not one person on this team capable of looking at such images without being affected. I’m handing it over to Vice.’ She looked as though she was about to interrupt, but he held his hand up. ‘They’re specially trained in child abuse sites. You know as well as I do, they’ve got a hellish job. But they get the right training, and they get the right support. You’re no use to me traumatised. I need you on your feet and part of this team.’

  She nodded. ‘Sir.’ And walked away.

  ‘They must have been up to their necks in some shit.’ McVeigh handed him a coffee as they walked back to his office. ‘Neither of them are on the sex offenders’ register either.’

  *

  Davies was exhausted. He’d not been home in over two days, once again deciding to grab a few hours’ shut-eye at the station last night. He was spending so little time at his flat now he wondered if he’d be better selling it and making his locker here a bit more homely.

  He sipped his coffee, scalding his tongue slightly. He couldn’t settle and had to get out of the station, needed to get back to the crime scene. He handed the mug back to McVeigh. ‘Any chance you’ll ever make a decent cup of coffee?’

  The Scene of Crime Officers were still at the scene when they arrived at Bath Lane. Sometimes these things just took as long as they took, and that was that. A few reporters were still hanging about, drinking coffee from disposable cups, chatting together, enjoying the skive knowing full well they’d get little more out of the scene. A small crowd of almost uninterested bystanders remained huddled around the edges of the cordoned off area and Davies wondered how bad Sunday afternoon telly really was that some people preferred to stand on the periphery of a crime scene trying to catch a glimpse of gore. What they hoped to see was anyone’s guess. Petrie’s body had already been removed; Forensics now believed he’d been attacked and mutilated in a disused storeroom on the first floor, then pushed out of the window. Davies knew every piece of information he needed would be relayed back to him in the office. But old habits died hard and he just needed to get a feel for the crime scene.

  ‘Choking someone with their own ears,’ Jim said as they got back into the car. ‘Now that’s some seriously sick bastard at work.’

  Davies shot him a look. He wasn’t helping
here.

  26

  ‘Whatever it is,’ said McVeigh, ‘they’ve pissed someone off big style.’ Either he was getting soft or going daft in his old age or both, but McVeigh didn’t irritate him quite as much as he used to. And on a good day he could be a bit of a laugh. Although that sort of thing was always subjective.

  Nothing incriminating was found on any of the devices seized from either Petrie or Cruickshank’s homes. Although that didn’t rule them out of being part of a paedophile ring there was no evidence of that being the case. Usually that would have been good news for Davies but as it stood it just gave him a bigger headache than usual to deal with.

  ‘I mean, slicing off someone’s tongue and ears and…’ McVeigh was on a roll now, clearly taking Davies’s lack of response as permission to carry on. They stood on the doorstep, McVeigh stamping his feet as usual against the cold, his flimsy jacket flapping in the wind as Davies tugged the collar of his padded anorak tight around his neck. One of the best things he’d discovered about having McVeigh as a partner was his remarkable ability to hold an entire conversation single-handedly without expecting a reply. ‘And Nugent.’ He made that face usually reserved for alcohol-free beer. ‘Must have been a nightmare for his wife.’

  Davies pressed the doorbell again, gave it a few seconds before knocking loudly.

  There was a car with a personalised number plate in the driveway; that and the fact every light in the house appeared to be on suggested that Frank Fitzgerald was at home. He owned the taxi company that Andrew Cruickshank had worked for and Graham Petrie had handled his accounts at one stage. It wasn’t much of a link, but the only one the cops had so far to connect at least two of the victims. He’d already given a statement, had no real motive and boiler-plate alibi, not that that meant much. Fitzgerald wasn’t the kind of man who did his own dirty work. A small-time gangster, he was well known to most of the low-level businessmen in Glasgow, and, of course, the cops.

  ‘Can you imagine seeing that, him swinging there?’ McVeigh was in full flow, describing Nugent’s corpse in detail. ‘I mean for fu… Oh, hello.’

  The door was opened by a young girl pulling headphones from her ears. She looked barely out of her teens and thoroughly pissed off by the intrusion. She looked them up and down, clearly expecting them to make the first move.

  ‘Is your dad in?’ Davies couldn’t be arsed being politic; he’d seen it too many times. Craggy old guys who’d made a few bob, snaring young girls and thinking that was some sort of status symbol.

  She shrugged. ‘No idea. Haven’t seen him since I was six.’ Davies suppressed a smile; this one was good.

  ‘You his boyfriend, then?’ she asked, clocking his smile.

  ‘No, I don’t like guys that shit on their families. Can we come in, then?’ He pushed his foot against the door, expecting some resistance, but it opened wide.

  ‘Be my guest – what’s one more sad old pervert among friends?’ She walked slowly through the hall towards the back of the house. It was all oak beams and white walls. The kitchen had a vaulted ceiling, a wood-burning stove on at full pelt and a wall of glass that opened up to a view that would have made Monet weep. How the hell did people afford to live like this?

  ‘Wow.’ McVeigh was turning around, his neck bent at almost a ninety degree angle, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘I don’t suppose you get to see the inside of civilisation very often on a copper’s salary?’

  Touché. This particular double-edged sword let them know she was smart and had recognised they were cops. But the fact she neither asked their names nor for ID suggested she had little loyalty to her benefactor.

  ‘Nah, just wondering why the beams are using traditional pitch and rise fixings on a contemporary fold and slant construction.’ McVeigh’s frown looked seriously concerned. ‘D’you get a problem with leaks at all?’

  Davies disguised his snort as a sneeze, laughing into his hanky.

  ‘What the fuck d’you want?’ She was clearly more than a little pissed off now. Didn’t seem to like being on the back foot.

  ‘D’you want to tell Daddy Warbucks that he has a visitor?’ Davies had stopped smiling and meant business.

  ‘Some time today, preferably,’ McVeigh added, making a pantomime of looking at his wrist, then tugging his sleeve down sharply when it was obvious he’d forgotten to put a watch on.

  ‘Gentlemen, to what do I owe the pleasure?’ Fitzgerald wandered into the kitchen, larger than life and twice as ugly. His dressing gown was tied low around his waist, under his gut. It had some sort of designer logo on the pocket and sleeve that Davies could neither read nor recognise. He stretched his arms out, yawning in a ridiculously theatrical manner to let them know he’d just woken up, before winking at his girlfriend, then cocking his head to one side and making a kind of clicking noise normally associated with guiding horses. It seemed to do the trick and the girlfriend trotted off, closing the door softly behind her. It was the modern day equivalent of, ‘Oi, get yer knickers on and make us a cup of tea.’ Davies shot his partner a look. He felt as though they’d stumbled onto the set of The Sweeney. Why did these pricks do that? He’d heard that the junior league mafia in New Jersey spoke like every other kid on the block until The Sopranos was aired. After that they developed accents and characteristics that lived up to their on-screen stereotypes. Davies had noticed it here too. Small-time crooks acting like extras from The Sweeney, or swaggering about as though they were in Taggart. It was a fucking joke, or would be had it not been so sad.

  ‘You’re looking well, Fitzgerald.’ Davies always preferred to be gracious to the host, who twitched his eyebrows in return.

  ‘Not bad, eh?’ He cocked his head towards the door, in apparent reference to the poor girl he was shagging. Obviously thought it gave him a bit of kudos. Thought Davies envied his lifestyle.

  ‘Oh, I prefer mine when they’re old enough to shave.’ They both shot a look at McVeigh, who had somehow managed to drop a bombshell without even a flicker of emotion showing on his face.

  ‘What?’ Fitzgerald’s nostrils flared as he stared at McVeigh for a response, but instead he leaned back against the worktop, looked around the kitchen and decided he had finished speaking.

  Davies quickly picked up, couldn’t afford to lose any ground. ‘What was your involvement with Harry Nugent?’

  ‘Harry who?’

  Davies was getting tired of holding it all in. Tired of the modern ways, the anger management courses, the gender neutral toilets, the sharing, caring attitude that cops were now supposed to display; they were all getting on his tits. ‘Listen.’ He managed to button his lip and not call him a fat fucking slug; instead he sighed and folded his arms. ‘Nugent? You know. The guy who was found hanging from the rafters, the guy who’s been plastered all over the news this past week, the guy who’s more well known in Glasgow than a Provvie Cheque?’

  Fitzgerald licked his tongue over his bottom lip like a lizard. ‘What about him?’ he asked, gallus as fuck.

  ‘He’s dead and I want answers.’ There was a very slight flicker of something – he couldn’t quite tell what – in Fitzgerald’s eyes. ‘We know you have connections to Andrew Cruickshank and Graham Petrie—’

  Fitzgerald let out a laugh. ‘What, some bloke that taxied for me and an accountant that filled out my tax returns ten years ago get themselves killed and you think that puts me in the frame?’ He stood up, opened the fridge and started slugging milk straight from the carton. ‘Is that honestly the best you have just now? Fuck’s sake, no wonder Glasgow’s such a cesspit if we’re relying on yous lot to keep us safe.’

  Davies let out an exaggerated sigh. ‘I’m not even going to ask you to play nice.’ He stood up to leave. ‘I’ll come back, with a warrant.’ Davies had to box clever with this one. He didn’t actually have a reason to arrest or even hold Fitzgerald at this time. He just wanted to piss him off a bit.

  They made their way to the door as Fitzgerald’s whistle pierced thr
ough the house. As if by magic the girlfriend appeared and opened the hall door.

  ‘You know, you don’t need to stay with a creep like him.’ McVeigh was better with people than Davies.

  ‘Really?’ She glanced back through to the kitchen. ‘Being with that “creep” is paying for my PhD.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I can either work in Wetherspoon’s for a year, or spend a few hours with him. He’s a dead loss and can’t get it up, so as far as I’m concerned it’s easy money.’

  McVeigh’s mouth dropped a few centimetres before he checked himself. ‘PhD? In what?’

  ‘Consumerism and Eco Biodiversity.’

  ‘Shit. Really?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘No, I’m a fucking hooker, ya twat. Now piss off.’

  She slammed the door, leaving both of them pondering that one as they got back into the car.

  *

  Oonagh stood on the doorstep and rattled the letter box. She’d managed to track down Hannah Gray’s mum to an address in Milngavie, just north of Glasgow. By all accounts she was no longer with Hannah’s dad but had kept her married name which had made her easier to trace. Oonagh’s earlier attempts to speak to Vivienne Gray had been less than successful; she’d refused to speak to Oonagh and slammed the door in her face at the first mention of her daughter’s name. But this time Oonagh had a greater sense of urgency.

  She waited a few moments more. There was no car in the driveway but it might have been in the garage, which had been locked when Oonagh had tried the handle. There was a light on in the hall too, so she worked on the assumption that someone was home. She crouched down, peering through the letter box. ‘Mrs Gray, please, I just want to have a few words with you…’ Nothing. ‘Mrs Gray? Five minutes is all I’m asking.’ Oonagh dropped her card with her contact details through the door and felt like a total shit as she made her way back down the path to her car. What she had to say to Vivienne Gray couldn’t be done over the phone.