Witness the Dead (9 page)

‘Different lipsticks?’

‘Completely. Even lipsticks that are the same colour can be made up of a different combination of colouring agents and have different chemical structures. The TLC can screen them quickly and separate one from the other. That’s what we’ve done. I might need GC–MS to confirm things further down the line but the TLC has been enough to reach one basic conclusion.’

‘Which is?’

‘That it’s none of these.’ Guthrie stepped back and swept her arm wide to show a huge range of lipsticks of similar hues that were lined up on a desktop to her right.

Addison blew hard. ‘How many have you got there?’

‘Seventy-four.’

‘Jesus, Accounts are going to love you.’

Guthrie smiled. ‘A girl can’t have too many lipsticks. As proven by the fact that I’m going to have to get some more. There’s no match in this lot and they are the most popular on the high street. I’ll need to widen the search.’

‘Fuck’s sake! How many shades are there?’

Guthrie rolled her eyes theatrically. ‘Okay, let’s see. I like Bobbi Brown. It has—’

‘Was he not married to Whitney Houston?’

‘No. It’s a she. And, no, Bobbi Brown has fifty-two different shades of lipstick.’

‘What?’

‘Max Factor currently do about fifty. Rimmel do more.’

‘How many manufacturers are there?’

‘Revlon, Elizabeth Arden, L’Oréal, Esprit, Color Riche, Maybelline, Clinique, Beautify . . .’ She paused for breath and thought. ‘Mac, Calvin Klein, Dior, Cover Girl, Lancôme—’

‘Aye, okay. I get the point.’

‘I went into Debenhams’ online site and they stock eighty-eight different lipsticks. That’s
before
you add in shades. The good news is that far fewer of them are red these days. It’s a bit old-hat. Pinks are much more popular. Plus browns, purples, you name it. What colour of lipstick do you like on a woman, Detective Inspector?’

Addison’s obvious reticence in answering allowed Winter to steal into the breach. ‘He’s not too fussed about colours really, Sam. He’s happy as long as they’re breathing.’

If Guthrie took any pleasure in Winter’s dig at the DI, then she failed to show it. Instead, she furrowed her brow and again regarded Winter as if he were just a bit odd.

‘Unlike you, then, Tony. The word is that you’re much happier photographing them if they’re dead. I’d say the detective inspector’s preference for women to be breathing is far healthier.’

Jesus, Winter thought. If this is how she acts after Cat Fitzpatrick told her to play nice, how is she when she wants to get nasty? By the look on Addison’s face, he was deliberating as to whether he wanted to find out.

‘So, going back to the lipstick. We’re no closer to knowing what the hell it is?’

Guthrie sighed and shook her head at Addison, as if he were a schoolboy who had asked a particularly stupid question.

‘On the contrary, Detective Inspector. We’re a
lot
further forward. We know what it isn’t. And that is the good news. If it were one of the popular lipsticks that I’ve tested then it could have been bought by any one of tens of thousands of women in hundreds of different retail outlets or online. As it’s not one of these, then the odds of identifying a purchaser and a place of purchase will have improved significantly. I would say that’s good news, wouldn’t you?’

‘Um, yes. Of course. Well, you’ll let us know when you’ve performed a bit more TLC and have a definitive result.’

Guthrie looked at Addison as if he’d just questioned whether the sun would come up in the morning.

‘Of course I will. It’s my job. Now run along, boys. I’ve got work to do.’

As the door closed behind them and they began a chastened walk away from the chemist’s lab, a broad grin spread across Winter’s face. Addison caught the look and scowled.

‘Aye, and you can fucking shut it as well, wee man.’

Winter’s grin grew even wider.

Chapter 11

July 1972

It was getting to him how the world, or at least the part of it through which the Clyde swam darkly, was continuing as if nothing had happened. On Sauchiehall Street or Partick Cross, on buses into town or the subway out west, life went on just as it had before. Men and women drawing on cigarettes or munching fish and chips, talking twenty to the dozen and saying nothing.

He wanted to scream at them, grab them and shake them. Rattle them around in their clothes until they got the message. Life wasn’t the same. Couldn’t be the same. Life was different because lives had been lost. Lives had been taken.

It should matter.

In his head, there was little else. Every waking moment and most of the sleeping ones, too. He could think of nothing else, yet they seemed to have forgotten already. In and out of shops, punching in for work, listening to music, pushing babies around in prams. They just went on and on.

Oh, they talked about it, of course they did. How could they not? It was the talk of the steamie, gossiped about in every pub and every parish. Everyone knew somebody that fitted the description. Everyone had a suspect in mind. It was him. Or him. They had as many theories as they had fillings in their teeth.

But they talked just as much about this new Common Market thing that was going to happen next year and how we’d all end up speaking German or French. They were still trying to get their heads round the new decimal currency and asking how much things cost in real money. They shouldn’t change it until all the old folk are deid, that’s what his gran had said.

Everything was changing. The shipyards on the Clyde had been saved after the work-in and now they were changing their names and thousands of men were keeping their jobs. People were bothered about the cost of milk and Ted Heath’s Tory government. They worried about their jobs and whether they’d get a ticket to see David Bowie at the Apollo. They made sure they had enough cash to get a skinful at the weekend and any other night they could afford it. They wondered whether they’d get into Klass on Friday night. And then, maybe, they’d talk again about what happened there.

He wanted it in every paper, every day. In front of their eyes as they sat down at breakfast or supped a pint in their local. He wanted the headlines to be bigger, louder, bolder. He didn’t want them to be reading about Bloody Sunday or the upcoming Munich Olympics or Rangers fans still making their way home after winning the Cup Winners’ Cup in Barcelona. It should all be about what happened.

It should matter.

It was the first thing he thought about when he woke and the last thing on his mind before he fell asleep. What happened. And what was going to happen next.

He hated their ability to get on with things, shove it all aside and function normally. Even people who were closer to it than they knew just did what they’d always done. Her at home, she was more worried about how many Kensitas Club coupons she’d need for that new table lamp she had her eye on in the catalogue. As soon as she’d smoked her way to enough coupons, he’d be dispatched to the gift centre on Cambridge Street. In their house, items were commonly referred to as the Kensitas toaster or the Kensitas food mixer. Everyday stuff. Everyday matters.

They all busied themselves with things to stop thinking about it. Buying things, selling things, smoking things, drinking things. All designed to stop themselves from getting scared. It wasn’t like that for him of course. It
was
his thing. And he was the one who had nothing to be scared of.

Two young women. Dead. And it wasn’t finished. He was sure of that.

Chapter 12

Sunday evening

‘That wee shite Kelbie knows full well that the reason we hadn’t asked the lab for the toxicology report is that they weren’t finished,’ said Addison. ‘He may be a halfwit – in fact he’s
definitely
a halfwit – but he knows that to get back samples of blood, urine and tissue takes bloody time. He deliberately jumped the gun to look like a smartarse.’

‘I’d say it worked,’ Winter offered.

‘Don’t wind me up, I’m fizzing as it is.’ Addison took an angry gulp of Guinness, choked it past his throat in one draining and resumed his rant.

‘Playing Sherlock fucking Holmes with his Rohypnol shit. He asked a question that he wasn’t yet entitled to ask and got an answer that any clown walking in off the street could have got. The little rat is a glory-hunting wee—’

‘Another pint, Addy?’

‘Aye, obviously. Standard Scottish round-buying convention. I’m nearly finished, you’re not, but it’s your round,
ergo
you should be getting off your arse and up to the bar before I get near to the bottom of this glass.’

‘Most people would just have said, “Yes, thanks.”’

Sunday night in the Station Bar was quiz night and so was normally avoided by Winter and Addison on the basis that they had enough unanswered questions without listening to any more. This time, though, Addison had said that they would just ignore the anoraks and get a drink inside them. Between Kelbie and Sam Guthrie, the DI’s cage had been well and truly rattled.

Winter returned with two perfectly poured pints of the black stuff, a midnight sky topped with orbits of ivory cream. He sat them down on the table and a large, contemplative mouthful disappeared from Addison’s tumbler long before Winter was able to park himself in his seat. Addison’s gaze was on the stout but his mind was elsewhere. In case it was still on Denny Kelbie, Winter tried to move the conversation away.

‘So do you think there’s a link between the two girls like Shirley says?’

Addison stared deeper into his pint in the vain hope that the answer might be found at the bottom of it. The frown that formed suggested he didn’t find it.

‘Nope.’

‘That’s it? Just nope.’

‘Look, the Temple is desperate for there to be a link. He’ll have us jumping through hoops to find one. The reason for that? He wants there to be one. If there is a link then there’s some sort of pattern, some sort of reason. The alternative is that we have a complete psycho on our hands and that these girls were killed at random. My gut says it’s a random, whether Shirley likes it or not. The two girls were young, pretty and on a night out. That’s it. That and dead. You’ll be happy, though: plenty of sick pictures for you to take.’

The truth, as is often the case, causes the most offence. ‘Piss off. Seriously. That’s bang out of order.’

‘Yeah? Boo hoo.’

Winter slammed his pint down on the table and glared hard into Addison’s face.

‘Fuck off, you prick. I know you’re pissed off about Kelbie, and that chemist was winding you right up, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to take it out on me. Being my friend doesn’t give you that right.’

Addison glowered back, nostrils flaring and eyes wide until he made a soft noise like the air coming out of a balloon. He rubbed wearily at his eyes. ‘Aye, fair enough. Whisky?’

‘Is that code for sorry?’

‘No, it’s code for whisky. Don’t be such a girl. You want a half with that or not?’

‘Aye, why not? I’ll need another one if I’m going to listen to you.’

‘Wise words, wee man. Wise words.’

Addison spent longer than necessary getting the two whiskies on account of being distracted by Nadia the barmaid. Or, rather, of trying to distract her from her job. She wasn’t for playing, but it didn’t stop the DI from trying.

When the drinks finally arrived, Winter did something he knew he shouldn’t, but he still stung from Addison’s jibe about sick pictures.

‘So what is it with you and Kelbie? What’s the bad blood all about?’

Addison grinned sourly. ‘Apart from the fact that he shouldn’t be a DCI because he’s got no more time on the job than me and only got fake-promoted because of the restructuring when we went to a single force? And that he’s an irritating, useless little arse? Forget it, Tony. There’s not enough Guinness in the tap there for you to hear it all.’

Winter raised his eyebrows, running his finger round the rim of his pint glass and making it sing softly. ‘That bad, huh? Must have been a girl.’

He saw Addison’s teeth clench for just long enough to know that he had hit a nerve. As a good friend, he had no option but to hit it again until it rang.

‘So who was she?’

‘You’re talking rubbish. As usual. You going to the game on Wednesday night?’

‘Deviation and deflection. Must be bad. Not like you to get so uptight about a woman. What was it? Were you in love with her or was it your mother?’

For a split second, Winter was sure Addison was going to punch him. And, for a split second, he was. Addison burned with a fury that Winter had seen often but rarely turned in his direction. When he spoke, it was low and cold.

‘Earlier, when I said you’d be happy that you’d have plenty of sick pictures to take?’

‘Aye.’

‘Well, I apologise. You’re right. It was bang out of order.’

Winter read between the lines. ‘And I’m bang out of order too?’

Addison nodded. ‘Aye, you are. It wasn’t my mother, you cheeky little prick. It was my sister. That little shite Kelbie shagged my sister.’

The malt, which Winter quickly realised was actually a double, had already disappeared down Addison’s throat and he was clearly contemplating a replacement for the Guinness. He was absently moving the glass from hand to hand, his anger barely under the surface.

‘As if that wasn’t bad enough . . .’ Addison sank another fierce gulp of his stout before urgently fingering the froth away from his lips, the vein on his temple throbbing in time to the memories that made him halt. He nibbled at the inside of his cheek but when he was ready to speak, he had to choke his words back for a different reason. The table next to them began shouting at the quizmaster to repeat the question, drowning out Addison’s words. ‘Kelbie was married to someone else but—’

The quiz team erupted into another outpouring of trivia fury. Three guys in their late forties were waving their arms about in protest at something or other and clearly pissing off Addison in the process.

‘So,
anyway
. . . the wee shite finally fessed up to Marie and she told him where to go. Me, I wanted to—’