Watcher (24 page)

St Leonards Police Station, Edinburgh
Friday 28 December, 11.55 p.m.

‘Brodie, stop!’

Bancho was shouting at me, but I didn’t have time to stand around and comfort him; he’d made a mistake that he would have to learn to live with. Maybe when I had Connie back home I’d take him out for a drink and let him cry on my shoulder. It was a big maybe.

‘Brodie, you need to listen to me.’

Bancho shouted again, he wasn’t giving up. Taking the stairs two at a time I was heading for the front door; nothing and no one was getting in my way. Surely Joe would be ready by now. Sonia was out there somewhere. She knew what the Ripper looked like; perhaps she had an address. I allowed myself to get carried away and I even imagined she knew his name. When Sonia was found, everything would be all right; Connie would be found and we’d have a good New Year. I tried to convince myself … and I was succeeding until Bancho grabbed my arm.

‘Didn’t you hear me?’ Bancho asked. He was breathless and, taking my arm, he tried to pull me back downstairs. I dug my heels in.

‘Please, there’s something you need to see.’ His voice was horribly gentle and immediately I felt numb. I supposed I was going into shock. Bancho continued to pull me along the corridor and into his room.

‘I got a phone call.’

‘From the usual source?’

Bancho nodded, ‘Yeah … the one who sent Joe the photograph of Thomas Foster and Katya.’

‘Why should we believe anything that bastard has to say? It’s partly his fault; he was the one spending time on Foster when the real killer was out there.’

‘No, what he sent was an accurate picture … I assumed Thomas Foster was the Ripper; I was wrong … it’s my fault.’

He pulled out his chair and refreshed the computer screen. He didn’t warn me about what I was about to see, but I suppose no warning would have prepared me. A picture of a Roxy hoody. Taking a deep breath, I pulled out my mobile and called up the image Lavender had downloaded from The Hobbyist site after Connie was kidnapped. My sister smiled out at me as she played Xbox live.

Holding the phone up to the screen, and viewing the images side by side, I still didn’t want to commit myself. It was too dark to say for sure. I switched on Bancho’s desk light, dithering back and forth until I could stand the uncertainty no more. Bancho scurried about at my side.

‘It’s hers, isn’t it?’ Bancho asked. He didn’t want to hear my answer. I breathed in deeply through my nose; holding my breath, I nodded. The sweatshirts were one and the same, but on the PC screen, the quantity of blood on the ripped hoody – the one that Joe had given her for Christmas – left little room for hope.

Bancho held me; my pain was beyond tears.

Time seemed to stop; the realization of Connie’s death went in like a bullet. After the initial jolt, it was as if someone had injected novocaine into my brain. Numbly, I pushed Bancho away, but he wouldn’t let me go.

‘Wait, Brodie. There was a message with the picture. It said we’d find “something of interest” in Niddry Street.’

I felt the breath being sucked out of me.

‘No, it’s not what you think. We didn’t find … Connie. DI Smith went straight there. She’s still there but all she found was the hoody.’

‘Who is he? Who is this fucking secret informant who knows so much? He’s been in my flat, for God’s sake! He chose clothes for me, he got things all laid out as if he was my fucking maid! Now, what does that say to you? It shouts pretty clearly to me that he’s obsessed. What’s he got to do with anything and why is he pulling our strings? What
else
does he know? Why doesn’t he just come out into the open?’ These were my questions but I did not expect any answers. I knew I was wailing, my reasoning lost in a mire of confusion and pain.

Bancho paused, looked me straight in the eye and said: ‘I think he’s the Ripper and he’s been laying a false trail of evidence against Thomas Foster.’

‘We have to find her – we have to bring her home,’ I said. I did not add that I could not stomach the thought of Connie lying cold, alone and naked.

I didn’t need to.

The Shore, Leith, Edinburgh
Saturday 29 December, 1.35 a.m.

Somehow, the fact that she was dead made it even more urgent to find her. My mind wouldn’t accept it until I touched her, stroked her face, and held her in my arms. How strange – I could understand those old men who refused to admit their wife was dead because they couldn’t bear to be parted from the body. Of course, in my mind’s eye, I saw Connie sleeping peacefully, not battered and bruised on Patch’s table.

Since the first moment I saw the dead girls in Bancho’s room, they walked before me, silently begging for their day in court, for justice; but mostly they wanted retribution. Before Bancho had shown me the image of the sweatshirt, I’d taken this as a good sign. In my imagination at least, Connie had not joined them. Was it false hope, or did part of me really know she might still be alive?

Actually, I was disgusted with myself. It wasn’t long since I’d been bitching about not being kept informed. Now I understood – ignorance is bliss. I dragged my feet along the icy cobbles of the Shore. How much easier it would have been to search for Sonia if I’d still had faith she could help me find Connie. Anger raged in my gut; if Sonia had spoken up, the police would have arrested the killer by now and Connie would be safe.

There was a little voice in my head – not so little actually – that was saying words I didn’t want to hear. She wouldn’t have been any safer if the killer had asked for me to represent him, it whispered – I’d have made sure he walked. Uncorroborated evidence from a known prostitute was a defence counsel’s dream.

The girl we were searching for was easily spooked; to find her we had to employ subterfuge. Joe had left the trike in Constitution Street as part of the deception – no man goes kerb crawling on a motorbike; where would he do the business? If he was to be the presumed pimp or client, I was to be the prostitute. I plastered makeup on my face and borrowed some clothes a lap dancer had left at the Rag Doll. I teetered in ridiculously high heels and a crotch-covering mini. It was freezing, and each step I took hurt, but I found the physical pain comforting. It meant that I was doing something.

A gaggle of street girls huddled in a close, smoking and leaning into one another, trying to keep warm. If anything, they were even more scantily clad than me; at least I had a jacket on. The train tracks on their undernourished arms told me nothing I didn’t already know. These girls were addicts doing anything and anyone to fund their habit. As they shivered it seemed more likely they would die of hypothermia than anything else.

They preened themselves as they saw Joe approach; one even went as far as to throw her fag away. She crushed it out with the ball of her foot, taking care to display a thin thigh and an emaciated calf. A gold chain encircled her ankle; it had caught on the ten-denier black tights and there was a run in them that reached her knee. Her face fell when I tottered up the rear.

‘Oh, it’s you.’ She took another fag out of her pocket and stepped back into the close. Holding her hands around it, she got a light from a friend’s cigarette end. ‘What brings you down here?’ she asked me. ‘Business must be bad if lawyers are turning to this game.’

I stared into her face, a face much older than I had first thought, but the harder I tried the more her name escaped me; my amnesia was obvious. She tapped my shoulder as if the shove would help me remember. ‘It’s Senga – Senga Palmer.’ Her voice was high and nasally. ‘You act for my boy – wee Billy Palmer? He was lifted on Christmas Eve – silly wee bastard was on bail, so now he’s in the poky till his trial.’ Turning to the other girls, she explained, ‘He’s as guilty as fuckin’ sin – still, it’s best he does as many days as he can on remand and hope the judge will backdate it.’ She smiled at me and said quite kindly, ‘Penny dropped has it?’

I nodded like an automaton. ‘I saw him a couple of days ago,’ I smiled because it seemed more like a century ago. ‘He asked me for a kiss.’

‘Well, I hope you didnae gie him one – dirty wee bugger!’ She smiled at her colleagues. She stopped smiling when my tears fell. I couldn’t get the words out. It was hard enough to breathe. I was relieved that Joe ignored me and started asking for their help. He took the photograph of Sonia from his inside pocket. Senga Palmer responded by taking her mobile phone out and using it as a light. Then she bent down and rummaged in her handbag. I was ready to move if I saw smack – she needed a clear head to be of any use. I needn’t have worried. She pulled her reading specs out and peered; Senga was every bit as old as she looked.

Her head was nodding like a little dog on the back shelf of a car. ‘Aye. I know who she is. I even know where she stands.’ She started to scratch the inside of her arms dramatically. ‘Sorry though. I’d love to help but I cannae leave here until I’ve turned a trick.’

‘How much?’ Joe asked.

‘Fiver for a hand job, six for a blow, tenner for the full Monty with a johnny, fifteen without.’ Glasgow Joe took a wad of cash from his back pocket and handed her a twenty. She put her arm through his. ‘I cannae really work the maths, son,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

‘Just tell me where Sonia is, that’s all.’ Joe’s nerves were shredded, he was in no mood to be polite. Senga looked at the money and gave us what we needed.

It took us less than five minutes to get there, but it was a different world. The Shore, like most dockside areas throughout the world, has been redeveloped and is now home to trendy bars and Michelin-starred restaurants – but not everything has been pulled up to the same level. I had always called where we were heading ‘the banana flats’. You can imagine their shape, a testimony to bad architecture, and as soon as Joe said where we were going, I felt sick. Suffice to say there was no way Gordon Ramsay would be opening his next restaurant on the ground floor of this development. Sonia had fallen far if she wasn’t fit to stand with Senga Palmer and her crew. Joe ran into the dark recesses. He stopped and waited. Taking out his wallet he counted cash and I could hear the rustle of crisp, clean fifty-pound notes.

The million-dollar question, was it enough to tempt Sonia out of the shadows?

The Shore, Banana Flats
Saturday 29 December, 2 a.m.

‘Where is she, Joe?’ I hissed at him from the shadows. We thought it was unlikely Sonia would appear if another ‘prostitute’ was there; Senga Palmer and her gang defended their territory like a pack of wild dogs and to survive Sonia had learned, early on, to stay away from them.

‘She’s here.’ He was standing under a light patiently counting his money. ‘I can’t push her. We just have to wait until she’s ready.’

‘But we don’t have time to wait,’ I hissed again.

‘What option do we have: everything rests on this damaged wee lassie?’

He was right about having no other cards to play; I pushed myself back into the darkness, leant against a huge concrete post and waited. It was a good thing I had work to do, and I could not afford to lose myself in grief. I thought of Sonia, how had she survived not only the horrific attack but this hostile environment as well? Her business must be bad if she left her punters waiting this long.

By the time Sonia stepped out, I had given up hope; the sight of her raised a twisted smile on my face that faded when I saw her face. I barely recognized her from the photograph. Her scars were as deep on the outside as I imagined they were inside. Her hair was dyed raven black but her milk-white complexion gave away the fact that she was naturally a redhead. The light showed telltale puckering around her eyelids: the bastard had sewn her eyes open, just as he had the others. Joe gently pulled her out into the open. She was trembling, desperately clutching a small golden crucifix that hung around her neck as if her life depended on it.

I smiled, and nodded at her as Joe placed a fifty-pound note in her quivering hands. He held up the photograph of the priest taken at Connie’s football match.

‘Is this the man who attacked you?’ Sonia took the photograph, and her trembling stopped.

‘He’s not the man.’

Joe breathed in deeply, unwilling to take no for an answer – we were so sure we’d found him.

‘Look again, doll … Come over here where the light’s better.’ He led her five feet away to an equally dim spot and handed her another fifty-pound note. Sonia refused to take the money, shaking her head. ‘No, I already tell you it’s not him.’ Her voice had a conviction and strength that was at odds with her frail damaged body, and I knew she would keep this denial up for hours.

Hours that we just didn’t have.

The phone rang; it was Lavender. She spoke in a monotone. The only way she could deal with this was to work.

‘Another photograph has been posted on The Hobbyist website. I’m sending it to you now. Brodie, it appears to be a picture of the guy who was looking for you.’

‘Send it direct to Joe’s phone.’ I was trying to save every second I could. ‘Have you found out any more about Thomas Foster?’ My client’s DNA results proved his innocence, but he was connected to the Ripper whether he knew it or not.

‘Remember the list of towns and cities where The Hobbyists had chapters?’

It was only a matter of hours ago that Lavender’s friend Demonika had unearthed the places where The Hobbyists pursued their depraved pastime, but it seemed like months.

‘Well, they have a chapter in New Haven, Connecticut.’

‘New Haven … that’s the town where the University of Yale is based.’

‘Mmmh … that’s right. I was wondering if the Ripper was setting up Thomas Foster as a fall guy for his murders,’ Lavender said.

‘The same thought’s crossed my mind – and even Bancho’s!’ I told her. ‘Who the hell is this guy who keeps posting photographs and messages on The Hobbyist?’

‘Brodie, he
must
be the Ripper … he’s committing these murders.’

‘Could it be a vendetta?’ I asked. I didn’t hear Lavender’s reply; I was too busy listening to Sonia describe her attacker. Joe had shown her both photographs – the one just in from Lavender and the screen grab of the ‘priest’. She was right – neither of them fitted her description.