Craig Robertson - Random

Who’d have thought it? Hotshot reporter Keith Imrie a cold-blooded serial killer. They didn’t see that one coming down at the old Daily Record. Must have fair put the editors and executives at Central Quay on their padded arses. Shame.

Well, maybe they should have thought a bit more carefully about the kind of person they hired. Perhaps they shouldn’t have taken on the kind of evil cunt that would do a thing like that.

Most people think all journalists are low-life shit and fuck knows there’s a lot of truth in that. Pushing out their lies and half-truths, selling their souls to sell stories. Writing shit that might not be entirely untrue but untrue enough so that by the time it appears in print it is a mile away from what is really going on. They know it and they simply don’t give a fuck.

Not all of them. Only the ones that make it big. Wave a ticket for what used to be Fleet Street in front of their faces and some just can’t say no. Greed, ambition and low moral fibre make a bad combination.

But I knew it wasn’t like that for all of them. There were laws for a start. Ninety-nine per cent of what you read is completely true. Get them in court if it’s not. Most of it is just what happens. If the news is bad you can’t blame the messenger. I’d learned that.

The first time I saw Sarah’s name in print, I screamed. Not in anger, not in rage, just in shock. The noise just came out of me. Couldn’t stop it. I thought maybe it might be in the paper. Had prepared myself for that. But it was on page three. Didn’t expect that.

Took the breath out of me. It just escaped. A wheezing gulp exploded out of me. It turned into a strangled scream after half a thought. I felt her mother’s arms round me and that quelled the surprise a bit but it still hurt. Her name shouldn’t have been in the paper, not unless it was for winning a prize or getting to university or being married or in some kind of celebration. Fuck’s sake. That wasn’t the fucking way it should have been. Not right. Wrong. On page three. So fucking wrong.

Felt weak. Should have seen it coming. Didn’t.

Not all reporters though. A lot of them were genuinely decent. Or so they appeared anyway. Sure, some tried to pass themselves off as being on our side and then turned round and shat on us, but most were true to their kind words. There were people, reporters, who turned up at our place and talked to me and to her. They actually cared. Some cried. Genuinely cried and genuinely cared.

These people, the good guys, had kids of their own and were actually fucking angry, really enraged and infuriated, about what Ogilvie had done. I saw their eyes. They could have done what I was about to do. One guy, maybe mid-thirties, looked away as he talked to me. He looked out of our window and saw nothing, shook his head and said ‘If it was me…, if it was my sons…’ He shook his head again but he could have done it. I saw it in his eyes. One step, one fine line, one outrageous fucking horrible life-changing, mind-wrecking, drive-you-fucking-crazy happening and he was where I was. Didn’t wish anyone to be where I was. God forbid. Not God. Too late for that but forbid it anyway. Couldn’t wish it on anyone.

The good journalists, they were sort of reassuring. Nearly gave me some kind of comfort, nearly gave me belief in the decency of man. But not enough.

Because all it took to defeat the few good men was one arsehole.

Well fuck the arseholes. Well fuck Keith Imrie.

The Record ’s hotshot was a prince among arseholes. A king amongst cunts. He had been the worst of the worst. He had asked and he had received.

What sort of father wouldn’t do anything for his daughter?

Before I drove out to Milngavie to kill Jonathan Carr, I thought of Keith Imrie. I saw his face in my rear-view mirror and I smiled at him. I smirked at him.

Because I knew what he didn’t. Shit, I knew lots of things he didn’t. I knew that I hadn’t only changed the tyres on my car. I’d changed my shoes too. The car’s shoes, my shoes. If you are going to do something, then do it right.

When I walked up to Jonathan Carr, when I swung that car jack, when I cracked his head against the side of the Audi TT, when I taped his mouth and superglued his nostrils and when I snuffed out his life, I walked in Imrie’s footsteps. Walk a mile in another’s man’s moccasins before you criticize him says an old Native American saying. Fair enough. I certainly wanted to criticize Imrie and so much more. Wearing his shoes was the least that I could do.

So the prints that I left on the soft ground near the Audi were Keith Imrie’s size seven trainers, borrowed from his flat, rather than my own size eights. Tough tittie, Keith. I wore the same pair when I went into the woods at Inchinnan after Brian Sinclair. Trampled all over the ground there. Left plenty of prints. Left no doubt that the same guy that killed Carr killed Sinclair.

For the record, no pun intended, I didn’t like killing Sinclair. That was wrong. Had to be done but it was wrong. Wrong. Seemed a nice guy. Not a bad guy. Had to be done.

Imrie. Imrie’s feet ran all over Inchinnan woods.

His hairs were found on Brian Sinclair’s clothing too. Proper bastard. Proper puzzle. It had taken ages to pick the hairs off the collar of one of Imrie’s jackets. Took a bit less time to place them carefully on Sinclair. You don’t realize just how small hairs are. Imrie’s were fairish blonde as well so they were finer, thinner, harder to pick off. Bastard to get them all off that poncey cord jacket. Worth it though.

Every single strand of hair was worth it. They say there are about a hundred thousand hairs on a human head. It would have been worth picking off every one of them, one by one, to nail that bastard. One by fucking one.

The secateurs. Oh, aye, the secateurs.

I’d taped them under his bed after I was done with them. No longer any use to me. Not for cutting anyway.

I was almost tempted to kiss them, which would have been of no use whatsoever but I felt the urge to do it. The thought of kissing all the crap that had accumulated on the secateurs could have made me boak but I was stronger than that. Fuck, I’d killed six people. I was hardly squeamish. Still. Not exactly nice and, more to the point, certainly wouldn’t have been smart to transfer DNA on to them after all that care.

Of course there was a chance that Imrie would have found the secateurs there but it wasn’t very likely. He didn’t seem the type to go dusting under the bed.

Same reason he wouldn’t have found the photographs I left or the camera I took them with. They were well enough hidden to escape the attentions of a lazy reporter but would easily be found by cops looking for evidence of a serial killer. They were printouts of photographs but they did the job. Getting them printed from a chemist or on a digital machine would have been stupid.

Carr’s Audi, Billy Hutchison’s bookies and his flat, Ogilvie’s offices and his Mondeo, the Tesco where Raedale worked and Sinclair’s dental practice and his house. Each and every photograph taken carefully and surreptitiously. Each and every one of them dated before the killings.

I’d carried out a factory wipe of my computer after printing them. I’d wiped everything at regular intervals in the sure knowledge that the cops would come calling.

The secateurs, the photos, the trainers, the DNA, the odds and ends liberated from the dead. No one needed to worry about opportunity and motive when so much evidence was handed to them on a plate. Not every competent cop would accept the bleeding obvious but that didn’t matter now. It was done. It was true. The newspapers said so.

Imrie was easy. Too greedy, too ambitious, too eager for the next headline. He couldn’t wait to see his name on the front page again under another exclusive. When I contacted him to tell him the brown envelope was waiting for him in the lock-up he nearly wet himself with excitement. He tried to be super cool but he was desperate to get his hands on it.