Witness the Dead by Craig Robertson Page A

bang out of order.’
    It was now Shirley’s turn to go face to face with Kelbie, Addison grinning infuriatingly as he stepped away and wandered towards the girl’s body.
    ‘The decision has been made, Chief Inspector.’ Shirley’s voice hardened, expecting no further argument. He got one, anyway.
    ‘I’m not having this. I’m not having him take my fucking case.’
    ‘Sorry, Kelbie, but this is ours. And watch your language. I don’t know how much you know about the Necropolis killing but it’s too pat for it not to be linked. If it’s unrelated you can have it back.’
    ‘Sloppy Stewart Street seconds? Cheers. And it’s way too early to say this girl was killed by whoever did yours. Other part of the city, no necklace used to strangle her. No forensics in yet. Sir, I have to insist that we wait until—’
    ‘DCI Kelbie,’ Addison interrupted, his voice heavily spiced with something that Winter couldn’t identify, ‘you were saying?’
    Addison was crouched by the side of the girl’s body, his gloved hand holding the bottom of her black cotton top with its distinctive cowl. He was signalling Kelbie and the others closer, beckoning them with a single cocked finger. When they were within a few feet, Addison paused. Stony-faced, he eased the top up to expose the girl’s pale midriff.
    To his credit, if he took any satisfaction from seeing Kelbie’s jaw drop, Addison never showed it. Instead he carefully smoothed the girl’s top back into place and stood up to move aside to let Winter and his camera in instead.
    If there had been any merit to Kelbie’s argument that her murder was not related to the body found in another cemetery just two miles away, just twenty-four hours earlier, then that argument had been lost. The scrawled lipstick lettering on her torso made certain of it.

Chapter 8
    SIN
    The same heavy, bludgeoned lettering in violent, waxy red. The wording identical.
    The only sounds in the cemetery were now coming from Winter’s camera. The clicks, whirrs and fizzes of buttons, motors and flashes punctuated a morbid silence that consumed the handful of people who stood behind him. He had a front-row view on the three letters that they were all staring at, so close that the word filled his vision and not just his viewfinder.
    So close that he saw the contours of the lipstick as it smeared her soft, pallid skin, tainting it in daubs of pigments, waxes and oils. So close that he could see the fury that it had been written in. So close that he could see the jagged edges where it met her flesh. So close that he could smell it.
    The girl had been branded by her killer. With just three letters, he had labelled her, disparaged her and declared her as one of his. With one word he had laid claim over her. She was his second victim and no one could doubt it.
    The picture he had taken barely a day before, the image on the girl’s stomach high on the hill above Glasgow Cathedral, filled Winter’s mind. Addison’s words at seeing the first one came back to him too, about how it was ‘psycho stuff’. Winter knew that this didn’t just make it doubly bad: this was much more than the sum of two parts.
    He stood up and away from the body, his movement the signal for the remaining cast to stir and sound to erupt. Alex Shirley swore under his breath before barking orders at the Stewart Street squad who had arrived in the cemetery: the crime-scene manager, Brem Dawson, steering his own team more quietly but no less feverishly; uniforms, detectives and forensics going where they were told and doing what they knew best.
    Narey stood to the side of the stage, her expression set and her eyes fixed on the girl. Winter tried to catch her eye but she was lost. In a rookie cop or someone more faint-hearted than Rachel, he might have taken it for weakness or sentimentality but he knew her better than that. She was angry.
    The Temple summoned Kelbie and his DS, Jim Ferry, plus Addison, Narey, Winter and Brem Dawson to