Five ways to kill a man lab-7 Read online

  ‘Was she in the habit of going out of doors at night?’ the policeman was asking Malcolm.

  ‘No, she wouldn’t have gone out in the dark. I can’t imagine why she was out at all,’ Malcolm gritted his teeth, sudden anger at his mother flaming inside him. ‘Why would she?’ he asked, as much to himself as to the young man sitting in his mother’s armchair.

  ‘Needed a breath of air, perhaps?’ the officer suggested.

  Malcolm shook his head. ‘Well, we’ll never know now, will we?’ he added bitterly.

  I decided not to go to her funeral. Seeing the death notice was enough. Mary MacKintyre her name was. I’d seen the tartan nameplate on the front door, knew it was the same old lady I’d decided to kill.

  In some ways it was a disappointment, being so dark, but then perhaps I’d needed the cover of night to commit this first one. Plus it was all over far too quickly. Still, I did have to begin with something easy, didn’t I? Seeing her fall through the air had been fun though and there was that extra tingle of anticipation when I could have mucked up, not done her in at all but merely injured her.

  Feeling that little piece of skin had been the best bit. No pulse. No life. I’d snuffed it out in seconds. And afterwards I could congratulate myself on a job well done. It had been my apprenticeship, after all.

  Now that I knew I could kill, the next one would give me much more satisfaction than this helpless old lady.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Second Way

  You could depend on him to be there.

  The flattened earth made a shallow pit for his curled form, the unfolded newspapers coloured yellow as if something putrid had leached out of his body through layers of stained and tattered rags. Regular as clockwork, the tramp could be found near the banks of the Clyde, his makeshift den consisting of one strut of the concrete bridge that soared skywards into an uncertain blue and three sides of not-so-fresh air. Only after the cold light of dawn glittered against the water did he make his shambling way from this untidy nest, picking up anything that might keep body and soul together for another twenty-four hours.

  The metal mesh bin at the top of the narrow path was his first stop of the morning. Stooping low so that his arm could reach right down into the base, he would forage among the bits of rubbish left from the night before, ever hopeful of a discarded bit of food that the urban foxes had failed to recover. Sometimes he had to stand aside as early morning cyclists or joggers dodged past and he would utter an oath, shaking one gnarled fist at their retreating backs, swaying like a demented scarecrow.

  This morning was no different, except for one thing. As the tramp lifted his eyes from the bin he saw the figure speed towards him, one arm flung out as if to push him out of the way, and just in time he leapt back, a cry issuing from his cracked lips. In seconds his fury had dissolved into anticipation. Forgetting his sudden panic, he came back to the mesh basket, eager to see whatever it was the cyclist had dropped. He was salivating as he fished it out, recognising the Subway wrapper.

  ‘Miracles!’ he murmured to himself, fingers trembling in excitement, hardly daring to believe that so much of the baguette was still intact. Turning around his mouth curled into a sneer. ‘Nae idea, nae idea at all. A couple o’ bites and ye think ye’re finished. Eh? Eh?’

  But there was nobody there to upbraid; there was no swish of cycle tyres to be heard along the path, only the comforting rumble of traffic overhead. Left alone to enjoy his unexpected breakfast in peace, the man shuffled back to his place by the bridge, easing his aching bones on to the patch of hollow ground. Greedily he bit into the sandwich, feeling the shreds of salad escape from his mouth, tasting the tuna fish as he slavered and swallowed, the hard crusts biting into his bleeding gums.

  The unexpected fire of chilli made the tramp shrug and for one second he took this as the reason why his benefactor had chucked the food away. His shoulders were still raised in an indifferent shrug when his whole body tensed. Before he knew what was happening, the fire inside his belly roared up.

  He tried to scream. But all that issued from his lips was a faint bloodied line of froth. Eyes bulged in their sockets as he glared at the empty path and the bank of withered grass. Then the first convulsion whipped him in two and the fire engulfed him in such pain as only the damned would ever know.

  It was not over quickly. Tears streamed down his filthy cheeks, his gaunt face a parody of some ancient gargoyle, jaws strained in an effort to spew up the monster within. Torn by the convulsions, his head cracked against the concrete behind him and then the spasms ceased as oblivion claimed him. Slipping sideways, the weight of his body took him towards the steep side of the river where it lay like some discarded heap of rags.

  Up above him, the cyclist leaned against the handlebars, watching and waiting. At last, satisfied that it was all over, one foot pushed against the pedal, making the wheels turn and swish along the empty street.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Third Way

  ‘ His name’s Connor Duffy,’ Jenny said, looking up from her screen. ‘Mum’s got twin girls of eighteen months,’ she added, raising her eyes to heaven.

  ‘Poor bitch!’ Jackie replied. ‘Is Charlie away to take their photo, then?’

  ‘Aye,’ Jenny replied shortly. ‘Boss wants the copy in by close of today, so I best get cracking.’

  The young journalist pursed her lips as she glanced at the scraps of notes lying next to her computer. Connor Duffy, aged five, had wandered away from his home in Upper Port Glasgow and been discovered drowned in the waters of the local quarry before his mother had even known he was missing. It was tempting to put that little snippet in, but Jenny found she simply hadn’t the heart. The poor woman was beside herself with anguish; why rub it in? With twin toddlers to run after it was hardly surprising that she’d taken her eyes off the wee boy for a while. No, she’d milk the grieving mother bit instead; readers loved that.

  Jenny shifted her shoulders as though something inside was itching, but in truth it was nothing more than an overburdened conscience.

  Connor Duffy, aged five, she began to type, immediately deleting the words as she sought a better beginning. Jenny shook her head at the waste of such a young life, refusing to let her thoughts dwell on how awful it must be for the parents.

  Angela Duffy stared at the ceiling, her head throbbing. Was she ill? Was that why she was in this room with the blinds drawn against the daylight outside? She tried to swallow, feeling her throat thick with mucus. There was a metallic taste in her mouth that was unfamiliar. Had she been given drugs of some sort?

  Gradually the reason for her presence in this hospital bed came back to her and with it the awful realisation that she would never see Connor again.

  The mewing sound that came from her throat rose to a crescendo like an animal being tortured.

  Angela was oblivious to the door being pushed open, the nurses scuttling to her bedside or the needle being inserted into her arm. All she could feel was the searing pain of guilt and rage and loss.

  NEWS: In Brief

  A young boy who died on Wednesday after falling into water at Whitemoss Quarry in Inverclyde has been named as Connor Duffy. Emergency services were called out after a passing cyclist found the body. A report has been sent to the Procurator Fiscal.

  So now he had a name. I shrugged. It wasn’t as if I was keeping a diary of my exploits, but it was reassuring to see it written there in inky newsprint: Connor Duffy. I even had a modest walk-on part in the drama: the passing cyclist who calls out the police to tell them what has happened. Except I didn’t, of course. I would never tell them how I had swung the child’s hand up and down as we’d sung songs strolling over the rough stones. Swinging his hands had given me the idea. He’d giggled then chuckled as I’d picked him up, grasping one hand and one foot, swinging his arms and legs round and round. It was a good game, that, I could tell. Someone else had swung him like that before, up and down as if he were a small flying bat, his shirt tails billowing in
the breeze.

  The look of surprise on his face when I let him go was almost comical. It was as if he didn’t know how to change that stupid grin into something more appropriate. Perhaps when he hit the water his mouth had contorted into an expression of fear. I don’t know, because he was turned away from me. But I did see his wee face bobbing up and down, gasping fish-like for air, his eyes goggled with terror. And that did reward me with some satisfaction. I could stand there watching his final moments, seeing him slip under the surface until the bubbles finally ceased and I knew for certain that he was dead.

  The first two had been easy, though I’d had to plan meticulously, of course. Leaving things to chance was never my forte. The old woman hadn’t understood what was happening and the itinerant was so greedy he was gagging for breath almost as soon as he’d taken that first bite.

  Deciding to kill a child had been something of a challenge. It would test my powers of resolve, diminish any residual sentimentality and provide me with an opportunity to be at the scene when the police arrived; the innocent bystander doing the right thing. But I’d wanted to see the kid’s face when they pulled him from the water, make sure that he was as dead as I’d supposed. Those huge blue eyes gazing into mine, the trustful little hand letting me lead him over the hill and down to the quarry; he’d never look into anyone’s eyes again. If he even reached the pathologist’s table, all that would remain would be twin orbs of viscous jelly.

  I’d passed my own test then, I decided. I was capable of killing anyone I wanted. And that little thought led me to ask the question: of all the people in my world, whom exactly did I want to kill?

  CHAPTER 6

  Mike Reynolds gave a deep sigh. It had been a long day. The flight up from Heathrow had been delayed and the interminable wait for another aircraft had made the jet lag kick in worse than usual. He was accustomed to the transatlantic crossing and normally managed to be home by early evening, but occasionally something like this happened and he ended up in the back of a taxi, limp with fatigue. It was the deep darkness of midwinter, only the headlights from the Skoda showing the ribbon of road as it snaked through the countryside above Port Glasgow. Another few minutes and they’d be around the last bend and seeing the lights of Kilmacolm. God, how he longed to be home and into his own bed!

  Suddenly the car swerved then came to a bone-juddering stop as Mike felt his shoulder hit the hard glass of the window.

  He had an impression of a dark figure speeding into the night, two wheels disappearing behind them.

  ‘Jeez! What a wally! Idiot could have got himself killed. No bloody lights! What does he think he’s playing at?’ The taxi driver added more imprecations under his breath as he drove the Skoda back on to the road.

  Mike nodded his agreement, too shocked to speak. What if…? No, that didn’t bear thinking of. The cyclist hadn’t come to any grief or the chap wouldn’t have been so quick off the mark. He found his hand grasping the handle above his head, steadying himself as if there could be another hazard round the next corner.

  But Mike Reynolds was driven safely home to Lochwinnoch Road at the other end of the village, the incident quickly forgotten.

  It would be weeks before it came to his mind again, the tragic events of that same night overshadowing their near miss with the crazy cyclist who been riding along without any lights.

  ‘I’m glad your name’s not on this one,’ Maggie told Lorimer as she glanced up from the early evening news. ‘What a horrible thing to happen!’

  Detective Superintendent Lorimer nodded his head. He’d already heard about the case from a colleague in K Division. There was some speculation that the house fire out in Kilmacolm had been deliberately started. And the two charred bodies within might well have been the victims of someone with a warped sense of retribution. That was the current internal gossip, anyhow. Lorimer watched as the camera panned around the scene, sitting up suddenly as he recognised a familiar white-suited figure. So, Rosie Fergusson was involved, was she? Rosie Brightman, he corrected himself, though in truth he knew that the pathologist was retaining her maiden name for work. It must be her first major case since arriving back from honeymoon in New Zealand, Lorimer thought, stroking his chin. And the first since she’d been off on sick leave last year. Well, what a baptism of fire, he told himself, then groaned slightly as he realised the irony of his own unspoken thought.

  ‘You okay?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Look, it’s Rosie… oh, you missed her,’ Lorimer said as the news reporter came into the full frame of the TV screen.

  ‘Rosie? Oh!’ Maggie seemed deflated as she realised that she had failed to see their friend.

  They listened as the TV presenter turned to a woman at his side. Lorimer made a face: what had he said? Was she a neighbour? A friend? The clipped English accent made him wonder. Kilmacolm was so like a small English village that it attracted lots of affluent incomers from South of the Border, but the victims had certainly been Scottish. Sir Ian, the woman was saying, in the hushed deferential tones reserved for the newly dead. But it was rather more than that, Lorimer thought: she was speaking about him now as if he had been someone rather special. And certainly Sir Ian Jackson had made a considerable name for himself during his lifetime. The financier was numbered among Scotland’s top ten in the Rich List after many successful years as a merchant banker. The woman’s voice tailed off as the newscaster addressed the viewers once more, one hand waving behind him at the scene of the tragedy.

  Lorimer gave a little shudder as the camera panned across the ruins of the once stately house, the outlines of twin turrets still visible above the skeleton of roof beams, smoke still issuing from somewhere inside. What a hellish way to die! Then Lorimer found himself echoing Maggie’s opinion.

  ‘You’re right, I don’t fancy this one. It’ll probably be Colin Ray who’ll be SIO.’

  ‘Is he still in charge at Greenock?’ Maggie enquired. ‘I thought his wife was in a hospice now?’

  Lorimer nodded. ‘Someone told me she’d been admitted to St Vincent’s. Must be only a matter of time, poor woman.’ He thought of Colin Ray, a man more than ten years his senior who had a reputation as one of the old school of hard-nosed cops. Juggling time with his terminally ill wife and being in charge of serious crimes: what kind of a strain must that put on a man? Lorimer found himself hoping that the arsonist would be caught quickly.

  But in the meantime he might have a word with Rosie Fergusson, just to see how the pathologist was coping. Lorimer grinned. That was what his excuse would be, anyway, though he recognised his policeman’s natural inquisitiveness asserting itself in this high profile case.

  Rosie hummed to herself as she flicked through the glossy brochures. She’d driven BMWs for years now but maybe it was time for a change and after the accident perhaps a different car was a good idea. Audis had always appealed to her and this model with its soft top looked just the ticket. She could imagine herself driving Solly out into the countryside for a picnic in one of these. The pathologist smiled at her whimsy as she heard the rain battering down against the mortuary windows; it would be a good few weeks before they could think about picnics never mind open-topped cars. Her husband had never learned to drive and was quite oblivious to the allure of classic marques, but Dr Rosie Fergusson delighted in cars, despite the horrendous accident that had almost proved fatal. She was a huge fan of TV’s Top Gear but Solly simply couldn’t understand the pleasure it gave her to watch all these beautiful, sleek motor cars being road tested. Her own BMW had been a total write-off; now it was time to stop taking black cabs all over the city and find something she really wanted to drive.

  With a sigh that was not wholly unsatisfied, Rosie put the brochures to one side of her desk and picked up her mug of coffee, draining what was left of it.

  ‘Time to get on with the job,’ she muttered to herself, pushing back her chair and giving one final wistful glance at the picture of a low-slung Jaguar that she knew was way above her budget. There
were cases waiting for her examination, two corpses blackened by fire. A short while ago these had been living, breathing human beings, a middle-aged man and his wife; any evidence she could find that helped the Crown Office to find how and why they had died would also render some kind of service to the deceased.

  The woman had been alive during the fire, most probably conscious and aware of the full horror of her fate. Her arms had been raised in a familiar pugilistic stance, now fixed rigidly in death, and it seemed to Rosie that she had been trying to ward off the poisonous smoke and flames. Some people thought of death as an instantaneous event, like a light being extinguished; but death wasn’t really like that. It was a process: more like the sun slipping behind the horizon than the flick of a switch. But this hadn’t been a pleasant death at all. Rosie looked at the remains of the woman’s face, now a charred skull whose gaping mouth told of one final desperate scream. It would have given the scene of crime photographer an easier shot for the forensic odontologist, Rosie told herself, trying shake off an unfamiliar feeling of queasiness that had grabbed her stomach.

  ‘Too long away from the job,’ she muttered into her mask. But it wasn’t that: Rosie had never enjoyed the post-mortem examinations of fire victims. Often there was so little left by a giant conflagration that one person’s remains could fit into a shoebox. Other times the yellow, leathery skin gave such an unnatural appearance to a cadaver that it was like examining some alien species.

  Pauline Jackson’s corpse was better than some she had seen but it was still just a skeleton when all was said and done. What identifying marks she might have had in life such as hair, eyes and skin were reduced to the formation of her bones; especially the teeth, still comparatively white in that soot-stained jaw. Rosie was taking pains to scrape out all the deposits from the tips of the finger bones, just in case anything other than carbon was there. The spine had been shattered in two places and much care had been required to set the entire skeleton carefully into place on the examination table. There was still masses of forensic detail to come in but the scene of crime manager’s preliminary report had given her enough to go on for now.