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The stereotypical image of a serial killer is one of some deranged loner sharpening his knives in front of a homemade altar in a blood-splattered basement surrounded by press clippings. But to be a successful serial killer requires a degree of social skills. He needs to blend in. How often when a mass murderer is caught do you hear a neighbour say on TV, ‘He was such a quiet, normal chap, too.’
No one who saw Osiris having a pint in the Lab bar in Glasgow city centre that lunchtime would have suspected that a deranged psychopath lurked within.
‘Another pint, Vinnie?’ said the tubby regional manager Chick McAulay.
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he replied cheerfully.
‘What d’you make of this rich bitch, Vinnie?’ MacAulay waved the front page of the Daily Herald at him and continued. ‘Came from fuck all but suddenly thought her shite smelled better than the rest of us because she was friend to the stars.’ He flicked to April’s spread and pointed at the pictures of Martin Seth at his lowest ebb, having just been dragged from the bottom of a swimming pool. ‘There’s your murderer. That’s why he tried to top himself. Guilty. Guilty as hell. Case closed.’ Having wrapped up the Seth mystery, MacAulay moved effortlessly onto the football.
If only life were that easy for DCI Crosbie. He had read Martin Seth’s statement four times since arriving at his desk at 7 a.m. He then turned his attention to April’s interview with Seth in the Daily Herald. He liked newspapers, particularly the Herald, and had once nurtured ambitions to be a reporter, but try as he might he couldn’t make the breakthrough. A young family soon demanded a steady income rather than the bits and bobs of freelance work he brought in. And so he joined the Strathclyde Police where he rose steadily through the ranks from flat foot to Detective Chief Inspector. He knew colleagues who had attained higher ranks and wished they hadn’t. Their career choice meant a full-time desk job and constant computer work. They no longer got to chase the bad guys or even use their powers of arrest. What’s the point in being a cop if you never nick some cunting lowlife fuck?
Crosbie remained quiet for a moment, scanning the room for reaction to his outburst. Thankfully, it appeared to have gone unspoken. That reminded him. He had an appointment with a shrink at three. He’d gone private because even though the force offered free counselling and psychological services he didn’t trust the claims they were confidential. Somewhere they’d have to log his problem, and if the top brass wanted to get their hands on it they could. And that would mean anything said could be taken down and used against you.
Crosbie reckoned he’d have enough time to bring Martin Seth in for questioning and make his three o’clock session with the psychiatrist. It was an appointment he didn’t have a hope in hell of making.
Martin was also flicking through the newspapers Selina had insisted were delivered each morning so she could scour for the next celebrity to front a new product range. Of course, she could only really afford the stars who were on the slide, and not the ones who were hot to trot and would make ridiculous financial demands. He thought how ironic it was that his wife would have loved the publicity her sudden and violent death had caused. Not only was she the main splash story on every Scottish daily newspaper, she had also earned front-page coverage on the bigger-selling, London-based papers.
It helped that Selina had been, technically speaking, a star in her own right, thanks to countless daytime TV appearances and her recent film debut in a low-budget British film The Only Way Is Up. The film’s makers claimed it was chock-a-block with the country’s ‘most exciting new stars’ – code for a cast of nobodies and minor Z-listers, the famous-for-being-famous type.
Selina played a ‘sexy ice queen from Antarctica’ in a fantasy dream sequence, which turned out to be as awful as it sounds. It was shot inside a giant freezer in an abattoir in London’s east end, so the producers wouldn’t need to spend any of their dwindling funds on ‘South Pole’ special effects.
Selina had been included at the eleventh hour after a silicone-enhanced starlet from a reality show, the original choice for the role, had mistakenly feared her breast implants would freeze solid, telling the stunned producer, ‘I ain’t freezing my tits off after paying ten grand for these beauties.’
But Selina had excelled on screen. As far as she was concerned she had been acting for all of her life, pretending to be something she was not. She could also see the endless publicity opportunities as businesswoman turned actress. Selina gave countless interviews before the film was even released, ramping up her role and the drama, claiming she had at one point ‘gone hypothermic’ in the giant freezer and even boldly stating that she had suffered frostbite, despite the lack of evidence.
What she had omitted was the fact that she had paid £15,000 for her role, after answering a plea for funds from the film’s producer, who claimed they would not be able to release their production without a final five-figure cash injection. Fearing her debut movie part was about to be canned and the humiliation that would ensue after bragging so publicly about her ‘starring role’, she once again begged her husband to loosen the company purse strings. He eventually agreed in the hope of a quiet life.
As a reward for helping to save his appalling film, the producer even shared his supply of dope with a grateful Selina. She spent the three-day shoot getting high, hot and horny with the producer in his trailer. Then at the wrap party in London, Selina was captured by the paparazzi stumbling out of a nightclub hanging on to the arm of one of her hunky fellow co-stars, much to the annoyance of her producer-lover. She’d been so wasted she barely remembered having sex with the young actor, and the following day their ‘affair’ had hit all the tabloids. It helped that Selina was married and had therefore been unfaithful, but the fact that the young hunk’s semi-permanent girlfriend was the surgically enhanced reality star Selina had replaced in the film gave the story extra spice.
A few days later Selina had taken great delight instructing the company’s law firm Mallicks & Co. to issue a statement to the media: ‘It is with great regret that after eighteen years of marriage Selina and Martin Seth are to separate. The split is amicable … there is no one else involved … they will continue as active directors in Seth International, the company they co-founded and now the country’s largest online jewellery firm, endorsed by celebrities including Dannii Minogue.’
Martin had laughed at the absurdity of the ‘amicable split’ reference. ‘How can any split be amicable? Do you just casually mention over dinner one night, ‘Oh, that was a lovely lasagne, dear, and by the way I’m off, and I want half of everything,’ he had bitched to a friend. He had actually welcomed the split, as it was a break from the mental turmoil. Selina had in fact manufactured the whole separation to put their flagging jewellery business back in the news. Well, that’s what she claimed, but Martin knew her motives were far more self-serving than that. How he had loathed her as she sat in the study of the house they could ill afford, which Martin believed perfectly summed up their marriage as ‘all facade’, and waited for the texts and emails of condolences to flood in. He remembered thinking Selina had had some sort of seizure when she screamed and leapt from her chair, brandishing her BlackBerry at head height and shouting, ‘Dannii’s texted! Dannii Minogue texted!’ Even though they had paid the antipodean talent show judge half a million quid, she rarely texted Selina.
‘Oh, this split is the best thing ever,’ Selina had beamed. ‘We should have separated years ago,’ she added, embracing her weary husband. Martin remembered how he had held her tightly and for a brief moment saw a look of genuine warmth and affection in his wife’s eyes that he hadn’t seen in years. Sadly, the moment had been fleeting and Selina quickly wriggled free before heading to their bedroom. For one glorious moment Martin had thought his wife was going to offer to make love to him, something she hadn’t done either sober, or without being in the arms of another man hours earlier, for
as long as he could remember.Instead she had grabbed a suitcase from the top shelf of their walk-in wardrobe and barked, ‘Pack. There will be photographers arriving outside soon and we need to give them what they want.’ Then with her habitual change of mind, she added, ‘No, wait a minute. I’ll get more sympathy if I leave.’
She hastily set about stuffing clothes and underwear into her case, not forgetting the wraps of her favourite drug of choice, crysta meth, which she had become so reliant on. Towards the end of her life Selina had made little attempt to cover up her drug use. She’d once been stopped for speeding in her car with flecks of white powder caked around her nostrils. The police officers had inexplicably turned a blind eye after Selina had worked her charm on them, giving them free jewellery from a bag of new stock samples in her boot and promising the officers they would get lucky with their wives that night. One of the cops had cheekily replied, ‘I’d rather get lucky with you,’ which he did, two nights later in the back of her Jaguar in a deserted Lidl car park. Sure, Martin had tried drugs a few times himself, but he’d been in his early twenties. Why Selina, who was now forty, felt she needed to snort the stuf daily was beyond him. She was a middle-aged mum of two, but in her head she was a rising celebrity who craved the limelight. Selina had picked up her case in one hand and slipped the other around Martin’s waist, pulling him close to peck his cheek. She’d smiled. ‘Don’t worry, we won’t be separated for long. We’ll announce we’re getting back together in a few months’ time – think of all the magazine interviews I can do on the back of it.’
Martin remembered her checking her make-up before she left, ready for the press photographers who were waiting outside her front gate. She’d planned to drive slowly past them with her window down to make sure they got their shot. He’d watched as his wife suddenly turned and began waving at him. He waved back before he realised it was her BlackBerry she was excitedly flapping around.
‘Amanda Holden!’ she’d shrieked, ‘Amanda Holden has just texted to say how sad she is to hear we’ve separated. She must have got my number from Dannii. I can’t believe it, Amanda fucking Holden.’
He’d laughed wryly at the expletive Selina had accidentally let slip, which she had tried so hard to eradicate from her vocabulary, and thought, ‘You can take Selina Seth out of Glasgow, but you’ll never take Glasgow out of Selina Seth.’
April trudged down the same gravel path Martin was currently staring at, lost in his reminiscences. She was alone this time. Having been stung the day before when the Daily Herald photographer captured his attempt at a watery grave, Martin had told April via the video intercom at the main gates to leave the snapper behind this time.
He was waiting for her outside the main door. He looked in a terrible state with his tousled bed hair, dishevelled clothes, which he’d clearly slept in, and a stubble so dark it looked blue. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, sat down on the front step and turned his face up to the warmth of the early morning sunshine. Before April could speak he said, ‘I better appreciate the daylight while I still can – they think I killed her.’
‘Did you kill her, Martin?’ April asked gently.
‘No,’ he spluttered, ‘I did not.’ He paused for a moment as if he wanted to add something else, but then thought better of it.
April’s Dictaphone, which she’d placed at the top of her handbag between them, had recorded every word while Jack Kennedy’s telescopic lens snapped frame after frame of the would-be murder suspect and April together. The pictures would have been actionable as Martin was on his private property, however, Kennedy had made a point of taking them from the public road, albeit he’d had to hack some undergrowth to get a clear shot. His job was done and that was the main thing. Scribblers, as the snappers called the reporters, could always pick up a phone to ask questions they’d forgotten. Photographers didn’t have that luxury.
Kennedy heard vehicles approaching and quickly returned to his car, his face a perfect picture of innocence. ‘Rozzers,’ thought Kennedy, ‘they’ve come to take him away – this will make a perfect shot.’
The electronic gates swung open to let the two unmarked CID cars through, and Kennedy quickly took up his position again by the edge of the road. It’d be the second day in a row the snapper would capture Martin Seth at the worst points in his life. As the handcuffs were snapped around Martin’s wrists Kennedy muttered, ‘Poor sod,’ as his shutter repeatedly clicked.