2.00 p.m., Saturday 13 February 2010
‘Why the hell did nobody think to ask where Harry Castiglia actually lived?’ Quinn demanded.
‘He didn’t mention it and we didn’t ask. He was just a guy we worked with,’ said Batten. ‘I don’t even know where you live.’
‘But the close next to where Stephen Whyte was left hanging? Did the search team and the door to door never follow it up?’
‘It’s listed as a rented flat. They called twice and never got in,’ said Lambie.
‘I suppose they were too interested in that flat on the other side, the one with the party wall, the flat that might have heard something.’
Lambie opened the living-room door and all three went in. Quinn walked over to the window and looked out. ‘Four flights up. And high on the hill.’
‘Just where a narcissist would like to be. Lord of all he surveyed. Or so he imagined. I bet he used to sit up here in his own wee world, headphones on, lights off, watching what was going on. Creepy.’
‘What’s even more creepy is that he seemed such a genuine guy, really likeable,’ said Quinn.
‘The mark of the narcissist,’ Batten reminded her, and his stomach lurched. He had really fouled up this time. The ‘other man’ had been walking about right under his nose, and another death could be laid at his door. He just couldn’t do this job any more.
‘Well, if the only people we can really trust are those who appear to be out and out psychopaths, then I’m glad I’m retiring. I can’t wait to be out of it,’ Quinn sighed.
Batten opened another door. ‘You might want to come and see this,’ he called.
‘Nobody ever says that when it’s good news,’ said Quinn, pulling herself away from the window.
Castiglia’s bed was a wrought-iron affair in the middle of the room, the duvet and pillowcases pristine white, as smooth as snow. It looked as though it had never been slept in. There was no other furniture in the room – no wardrobe, no clothes, no shoes, no bedside cabinet, no books.
The walls were painted dark brown, the carpet was brown, and the curtains hanging over the small window matched. It was a dark, dark room, the only bright spot the huge white bed.
On the wall facing the bed were four huge canvases, each three feet square. Each one with a blown-up black and white photograph. Quinn recognized Castiglia’s own publicity photograph; with his black turtleneck and a shy smile for the camera, he looked like a French film star. She recognized Tony Abbott, standing outside Hazbeanz, arms folded, leaning against the wall, a half-smoked cigarette hanging from his mouth, waiting for his little Prudenza to walk past and never ever acknowledge his presence. The face showed the lines of a lifetime of worry, and Quinn now knew what he had spent his entire life worrying about.
The third photograph was of a female. The image was less defined, but she could tell the picture was older than the other three; the hairstyle, the jewellery said 1970s. Was it the mother? The background was not clear but there were trees, a stretch of water. The fourth she knew without looking twice; the blonde spiky hair and pointed face were those of a hobgoblin, a changeling sitting caged in a concrete stairwell with her knees up to her chin, a cup of tea in her hand.
Quinn sighed. ‘Poor Costello’s going to have a lot to come to terms with. I’d prefer to let her head mend before she tries to get it round any of this. Christ knows what else is going to come out.’
‘She’ll have to know it all sooner or later. She’s a tough one.’
‘Even so,’ said Quinn. ‘Harry had a long history of killing for pleasure, of grooming his accomplices. We’re slowly piecing it together, but it goes back years. You can imagine him staying in the same hotel every time he went to Edinburgh for a job, and chatting to Wood the night porter – “I’m a stranger here, fancy a drink?” – charming and grooming him. And before that in Dundee, with the taxi driver, Pfeffer. Every time he came up to Dundee … “Just give me a hand with my equipment at this location; I could do with an assistant at that swanky function.” Think how impressed those two no-hopers would be by an alpha male like Castiglia. He’d have them hypnotized like rabbits. And others like them, all over Scotland. But all the time working his way back to his wee sister. And the last few killings were done to – in some perverted way – impress Costello. Not easy for anyone to understand.’
‘He was a killer; she’s a cop,’ said Batten. ‘And the best praise he could get from Costello, his sister who had achieved so much, was for her to admit that he’d beaten her at her own game, that he was too clever for her to catch.’
‘Well, he wasn’t, was he?’
‘Oh, I think he was,’ said Batten, and shut the bedroom door as they went through to Harry Castiglia’s living room. Almost a whole wall was taken up with shelving, and row upon row of immaculately matching grey box files, all neatly labelled. Only one black box file was unlabelled. Batten prised it from the shelf, and opened it. It was full of large glossy black and white photographs, which Batten wordlessly laid out on the desk. Quinn raised her hands to her mouth as if she was going to be sick.
‘Oh – my – God,’ she whispered.
There was a tentative knock at the door of the examination room. Colin Anderson stood up cautiously to open it. A brand-new pair of jeans, a sweatshirt and a jacket had already appeared from somewhere. All he needed was a pair of shoes and he was good to go. His right hand felt totally numb as he tried to grip the door handle. The doctor had told him to be glad it was numb – when he got the feeling back it would hurt like hell.
It was Brenda, holding a carrier bag with his shoes.
‘How are you?’ she asked nervously.
‘I’m warming up, getting some feeling back.’ He rippled his fingers, beckoning her in. ‘All working. How are you?’
She didn’t answer, just stood there helplessly, as though she might cry.
‘How are the kids?’ he tried.
‘Are you coming home?’
‘Is that an invite?’
‘You could have died, Colin!’
‘Oh, it wasn’t that bad.’ He patted her awkwardly with his good hand. ‘I’m still here.’
‘But you do need looking after, and the kids miss you. When they phoned to say you were in here, I thought the worst.’
He noticed a faint tear in her eye.
‘It doesn’t make things any different but you do need somebody to look after you. Might as well be me! So just come back for now.’
‘Just for now,’ he said. Might as well, he thought; and they couldn’t afford that shithole of a bedsit anyway. ‘But I’m fine, really. Nothing wrong with me that won’t be cured by a chip buttie and curry sauce.’
‘Ever the gourmet.’
For the first time in months, Colin Anderson kissed his wife. Only on the cheek, but it was a start.
‘Twenty of them,’ Quinn said, appalled. ‘Twenty young women whose lives have been ruined.’
‘Well, maybe some good’ll come of it,’ said Batten. ‘The urgent standardization of databases, for cold cases as well as ongoing investigations. Can’t come too soon.’
‘And this is the ultimate humiliation,’ said Quinn, not listening to him. ‘Look at these!’ Each beautifully composed shot showed the face of a young woman, blindfolded and unsparingly lit.
‘He caught them all at that moment of extreme terror,’ Batten said. ‘The moment when they really believed they were going to die. Look at their fear, their helplessness, the last emotion they thought they’d ever feel. Whatever Harry wanted, he got from those pictures. That was his fix. But what I still don’t get is the brutality to the mouth. My first thought was pseudo-sex, but now I’m convinced it was something else. Question is – what?’
‘What have they got over their eyes?’ asked Lambie. ‘It makes them look like bloody blinkered bluebottles.’
‘It’s what they use in sensory deprivation interrogation techniques,’ explained Batten. ‘It blocks out everything.’
‘So they wouldn’t see the flash,’ said Quinn. ‘Not one of them ever mentioned a flash. Because they never saw it.’
Some shots showed a hand, one or two a knee, holding the victim down. Each woman had something held against her head.
‘That’s not a gun,’ said Lambie.
‘No, it’s a wheel brace for an E-type Jag,’ Quinn said. ‘Undoubtedly the one that we found skidded across the ice at Strathearn. There are traces of blood and DNA in the tool bag in the E-type, so if there’s anything on the wheel brace that’s not Costello’s we have an evidential chain. They also recovered an old Nikon camera on the bank. I don’t know if I want to see that film when it’s developed.’
‘Look – every one of these is dated.’ Lambie pointed to the small white figures in the lower corner of each photograph, and flipped one over cautiously with a gloved finger. ‘And there’s a location noted on the back. He’s done our job for us.’
‘You realize what else that means, don’t you? Cross-referencing these attacks will keep the cold case teams occupied for a good long while. However, before we do anything else with these, I want a list of dates and locations, matched with any photos we have back at the station, sent to all relevant jurisdictions. These women have the right to know before anyone else that Harry Castiglia is dead. Lambie, you can be the one to tell the Corbetts. But …’ she paused, frowning, ‘… why is there no photograph of Emily here?’
‘Castiglia would have taken one, but he thought he’d killed her, so he didn’t bother keeping it,’ Batten explained. ‘The attack on her was a botched job, less than perfect. He wouldn’t want to be reminded.’
‘I expect we’ll find he’d already taken a photo of her – the one we have up on the board. I daresay Chamberlain’s will still have a record of which photographer they used for Young Scot of the Year in 1999,’ Lambie explained to Batten. ‘We should be able to cross-reference those dates with Harry’s jobs. We know he was based down south but his job allowed him to be all over the place. He could always find a reason to be wherever he needed to be.’
Quinn sighed wearily. ‘Let’s bag up this … vileness.’
Lambie held a plastic evidence sack open and she dropped in the box file full of photographs, with an expression of disgust.
‘I wish we could spare all those poor women knowing about these. In fact, if they weren’t the most heaven-sent evidence, I’d happily put a match to the whole lot.’
Diane Woodhall looked shaken. She had aged ten years in the last few hours, as if she had suddenly realized that her life was crumbling around her. The uniformed female constable handed her a mug of tea which Diane accepted distractedly.
‘So before we charge you with perverting the course of justice, what do you have to say?’ Mulholland asked.
Diane shook her head, saying nothing.
‘Take me through the events of the evening. What time did Marita phone you?’
‘About six.’
‘And then?’
‘I phoned the boys. I told Marita a bit later – maybe quarter or twenty past – that Itsy was not with Wee Tony and Bobby.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I don’t know.’ She held her hand up to her running nose.
Mulholland winced with distaste and handed her a handkerchief. ‘I think you do. Just take your time and tell us what you can,’ he said.
‘Well, I phoned back to say that she wasn’t there now but had left about half an hour earlier. I didn’t see Marita again until the back of eight maybe.’ Diane sipped her tea.
‘And?’ asked Mulholland.
‘She’d been out to speak to Bobby, and they went out to look for Itsy.’
‘Do you actually know that? Did you see them together? Or did she just tell you she was out with Bobby?’
Diane bit her lip, her loyalty torn.
Mulholland spoke gently. ‘You’ll feel better if you tell the truth, you know.’
Diane started talking again, her voice stronger now. ‘Bobby and Marita met up later, once Marita came back. I don’t know where she had been.’
‘Maybe not then but you know now. Where had she been, Diane?’
‘Out at the Moss,’ she whimpered.
‘OK, we’ll come back to that. There’s still a fair amount of time unaccounted for between Marita coming back at eight and DCI Quinn and DI Anderson getting there at one in the morning. What was going on then?’
‘She was upset. We were … together.’
‘Together?’
‘In her bedroom. That’s when she told me.’
‘Told you what?’
‘That she’d met Itsy outside, earlier … before seven, just after. I don’t know. Itsy had been wandering about in the cold, looking for some bird with a broken wing. Marita said Itsy wouldn’t stop going on and on about that bloody albatross. God knows, she didn’t know when to stop.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, she told Itsy to wait out at the van, and she came back for the set of keys we have in the kitchen. Then she drove Itsy out to the Moss.’
‘Why did she take her out there? If Itsy was being so annoying?’ Mulholland asked, searching for any indication of premeditation.
‘I suppose Marita’s patience snapped. Also, she said she wanted to talk some sense into Itsy, somewhere away from the house where she couldn’t run straight to Iain. That was Itsy’s way … it was almost as though she thought Iain had provided the house for her, not for Marita.’
‘Did Marita know at that stage that Itsy was pregnant?’
Diane shook her head. ‘No, she’d no idea. I’d had my suspicions, with her being sick, but I didn’t like to say anything. I mean, you can’t, can you?’
Mulholland just nodded.
‘Marita said Itsy simply told her, as though it was all some great joke, or some kind of treat. Then she started laughing, prancing around, teasing Marita, acting like a stupid wee girl. Itsy ran dancing off towards some trees, and Marita went after her. The ground was all rough there, she said. There was a bit of a struggle, and Itsy tripped and fell. She hit her head.’ Diane shrugged her shoulders slightly.
‘Her head?’
‘Well, I mean, she fell sort of sideways and hurt her face. There was something …’ Diane’s hand flapped in an effort to explain.
‘And …’
‘She was just lying there.’
‘There has to be something to explain all her injuries, Diane,’ said Mulholland gently.
‘Marita said she didn’t know what came over her. She picked up the stone and …’ Diane’s hand demonstrated a slapping motion.
Mulholland said aloud so the tape could hear it. ‘You mean Marita hit her sister with the stone?’
‘Yes, on the head.’
‘While she was on the ground?’
‘Yes.’
Mulholland made a few notes, trying not to think how often Marita must have struck Itsy – and how hard? Hard enough to rattle her brain against her skull. He recalled the photographs – Itsy’s boot half off – she had no chance to get away. Marita had brought her down like a lioness bringing down a gazelle. Suddenly he felt Diane’s hand clamped on his forearm.
‘But it wasn’t Marita’s fault. Really it wasn’t. It was Itsy, she was fooling around, laughing, saying she was going to have a baby, and Marita couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t have kids, so it really upset her. She’d have had it terminated. Couldn’t have children running around, not Marita.’ Diane made it sound like the plague.
‘And where does Bobby come into it?’
‘We tried to give her some kind of alibi. Bobby is easy to confuse, and he does as he’s told as long as you tell him with enough authority.’ She sniffed. ‘I was to say about Bobby and Itsy being close. Marita said the police would come and that’s what I had to say, but it wouldn’t be a lie. She wanted it to sound as if Bobby might be …’
‘Dangerous?’
Diane gave him a shadow of her smile. ‘She knew Bobby wouldn’t be able to stand up to questioning. Tony had no sense of time anyway so we knew that wasn’t going to be a problem, as long as you believed Bobby loved Itsy.’
‘Well, you were half right. Bobby did love Itsy. So much that he hit Marita with a rock when he found out she’d killed her, the same way she hit Itsy.’ Mulholland felt his stomach tighten. He was facing a disciplinary over that. But he had been so sure.
‘Diane, how long have you and Marita known each other?’
Diane sat up, on surer ground now. The old smile was back in place. ‘We were on the same beauty circuit in the nineties, and we chummed up. You know how it is. She had a forceful personality. Irresistible, really.’ She pulled her cardigan around her, and looked down at the toe of her boot. ‘I’ll admit I hated Itsy. All that nonsense about making Marita feel guilty for making her the way she was.’
‘What do you know about that? Marita was little more than a kid herself at the time.’
‘Doesn’t make it any easier to live with,’ said Diane. ‘It was a daft childhood thing. They were having a bath together. Marita pulled on Itsy’s heels. Itsy’s head went under and she … got damaged.’ There was a dismissive gesture of the hands. ‘That’s all it was.’
Mulholland did a quick calculation. ‘Yes, we knew about that. A five-year-old and a three-year-old, alone in a bath – we could accept that as a tragic accident. But Marita has lied about her age for years. We’ve seen her birth certificate. In fact, she was eight when it happened. Do you still think it was an accident?’
A shrug. ‘Of course.’
‘And Iain?’
‘Iain was nothing to Marita, just a bank balance and the chance of respectability. She didn’t get it, of course. She didn’t become Mrs Kennedy; he became Marita’s husband.’ She looked at Mulholland. ‘I was there through it all, you know. I was always there, through all those men; I was the most important person to her, always there for her.’
‘And you never got jealous of her?’
‘Oh no. She loved me, you see. She didn’t love any of those men.’ Diane smiled. ‘It was always me.’
Anderson heard another knock on the examination-room door and Gillian Browne came in, dressed in civvies. Her face looked worse than ever; the bruising had spread and was now chrysanthemum purple, and black under her eyes. But her hair had been washed, and there was something fresh-faced and youthful about her.
Anderson suddenly felt old. ‘Have they let you out your room?’ he asked. ‘I’m still incarcerated.’
She grinned. ‘I escaped.’
‘Be careful you don’t frighten your kids when you get home.’
‘I know it looks awful, but it hurts a lot less. How are you?’
‘I’m getting better, getting some feeling back.’ He rippled his fingers again. ‘All working.’
‘Good, good. I’ve been signed off my work for a month. I really hurt the ligaments in my back when I broke the ice.’ She rubbed her back to illustrate the point.
‘What did you do exactly?’
‘I just ran, jumped and landed on it as hard as I could. It meant I could get Costello by the collar and hold her up.’ She looked at her feet, and fiddled with a button on her jacket. ‘But I owe you, because then I started to go under …’
‘Well, I read somewhere that you should spread your body weight over the ice as much as possible. That didn’t work either. It was all a bit scary.’ He shook his head and smiled. ‘I still haven’t worked out who got who.’
‘Well, Lambie and Mulholland heard the radio alarm, and they ran to the pond. At least they had the sense to get us out without them getting in. But at the end of the day, what does it matter? We got out. We’re fine. And now you’re going home.’ Browne sounded quite resigned, and not bitter.
‘Yes. We …’
‘I know. Brenda’s your wife.’ Gillian opened the door to leave. ‘Oh, there’s one other thing …’ She nodded to Nesbitt, who was tied to a chair leg in the corridor, snoozing, doing his usual trick of being quietly somewhere he was not allowed. ‘I’d really like to take him home with me, but my daughter’s allergic. I don’t want him to be put down. He’s such a nice wee dog. Could you not take him home to your kids?’
Anderson knew when he was outgunned and outmanoeuvred. One pair of pleading dark brown eyes he might have hardened his heart to, but not both.
‘OK,’ he agreed, with misgivings. God alone knew what Brenda would say. ‘How are you getting home, Gillian?’
‘Oh, I’m being taken home in a nice posh Audi.’
‘That’s right. I may not do much for his image, but he’ll do wonders for mine. Not many Audis in my part of Jordanhill,’ she giggled. ‘I might even invite him in for tea.’