Snapshot (26 page)

What the fuck? Winter hesitated a fraction too long.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Addy. You’re pished. Away and get yourself home.’

‘You know what I’m talking about alright, wee man. That bang on the cheek you had on Friday night? Slipped in the bathroom, my arse. How do you explain the big bruise at the back of your head?’

‘Fuck off, Addy. I don’t need this.’

‘Can’t answer, huh? You’re up to something and first thing in the morning I’m gonnae find out what it is. I know you and it’s something to do with your photographs. You know something you’re not telling.’

‘You’re mental. Get yourself some chips or something.’

‘Good idea, wee man. I’m starving. Might nip over to the Philadelphia. Hey, you know Graeme Forrest, the inspector that works out of Anderston? Never showed up for his shift today and no sign of him anywhere. I reckon he’s done a bunk with that wee blonde WPC, whatsername, Sandra something? You know her?’

‘Nope. No idea who she is.’

‘Tidy wee bit of stuff, can’t say I blame him. Anyway, don’t change the subject, wee guy. I’m gonnae find out what you’re up to, whatever it is. And what about the shooter? What’s his game now? He’s been far too quiet for my liking.’

‘Maybe he takes the weekend off?’ Winter suggested.

‘Yeah, very fucking funny. Now fuck off. I’m starving.’

And with that Addison hung up and disappeared somewhere into the night leaving Winter wide awake and wondering what was to come.

Monday 19 September

The Nightjar operation room lay dark and empty, the last person having called it a day just before midnight, six hours earlier. All that could be heard was the impatient hum of technology: fax machines, telephones and computers on stand-by, all left to guard the shop and await any news of the man who rendered the same office full of noisy, nervous energy during the day. If an empty room could ever be described as a coiled spring then this was it.

At 6.04 a.m. the quiet was disturbed by the angry ringing of a telephone in the middle of the office. It was the hotline set up for members of the public to call if they had any information on the sniper killings. On the eighth ring it stopped and the answering machine kicked in, a flashing red light the only indication that a message had been left. For a further hour, the red signal throbbed in the gloom of the locked-down office like a lighthouse sending out a danger signal that no one could see.

Nancy Anderson was first through the door at seven, the civilian admin assistant in before any of the CID. She had worked on farms all her days, first in Glasgow then in the Borders at Lauder, before her MS had forced her to finally take an office job. She could never get out of the habit of rising early though and was almost always first into work. Her husband Colin was forever telling her to take it easy but she knew he was already up too, doubtless ready to fuss over their grandchildren.

She threw on the lights and pulled her hand through her greying hair as she tutted at the mess the cops had left the place in the night before. There were coffee cups everywhere and newspapers lying on the floor. She guessed she would have to be the one to tidy the room up as per usual. So much for swapping the farm for an easier job, this one brought its own problems.

She picked up a tray and began piling paper cups inside each other, going from desk to desk and making a mental note of the worst offenders, fully intending to pull them up about it when they came in. It was only when she got to the desk in the middle of the room did the flashing light register. There were unlikely to be any officers in for another hour so she would have to deal with that as well. Oh, it could wait another few minutes, she had to open the blinds and let a bit of light into the room. That done, Nancy grabbed a notepad and turned almost reluctantly to the phone, trying to guess whether it would be a message from a nutter, a timewaster or both. She punched the message button and listened.

The first few seconds was nothing more than crackling on the line. Then a man’s voice spoke, slow, deliberate and heavily muffled.

‘More bodies.

‘End of Lawmoor Road.

‘Dixon Blazes Industrial Estate.

‘Courtesy of the Dark Angel.’

Nancy stood stock-still for seconds that seemed like minutes. She looked down at her notepad and tried to make sense of what she had just heard and written down. She began to edge away from the phone but took a deep breath and returned to press the play button again with a shaky hand. The same muffled voice delivered the same measured words. With a final glance at her pad, she spun on her heels, nearly slipping to the floor as she ran across the room as fast as she could to her own desk where she knew her phone was programmed with the speed-dial numbers she needed. Seconds later, the tired and testy voice of Superintendent Alex Shirley came on the line.

‘Nancy? What the . . . this better be good!’

‘It isn’t, sir.’

Within minutes, unshaven cops dived into cars across the city. Addison had given Winter two minutes to be ready and said that if he wasn’t on the pavement when he turned up then he was going without him. Winter was ready and waiting before he arrived.

He jumped into the passenger seat, the Audi lurching away long before he’d closed the door. They’d burst through the red light at the slip road to the motorway by the time Winter managed to fasten his seat belt. By the look on Addison’s face and the drift of beer and whisky that was coming Winter’s way, the DI probably shouldn’t have been driving. Just as well there was no cop likely to be asking him to blow into a breathalyser.

He looked rough, eyes strained and red as if he’d knocked back his last half just five minutes before. There was a fierce anger around his eyes. Winter knew the look. Addison was trying and failing to hold it back, he wanted to burst, ready to boot someone’s head in. Instead he kicked his foot to the floor, battering the car towards Rutherglen.

He only spoke once all the way there. He didn’t take his eyes off the road, just spat the words at the windscreen.

‘I’m fed up with this cunt. I’m going to bring him to his fucking knees. He’s finished. Last job.’

He didn’t utter another word until they hammered into Dixon Blazes and roared down to the far end of Lawmoor Road, passing warehouses, offices and industrial units, heading for the last plot before the railway line.

Two blue and yellows and a couple of unmarked cars were the X’s that marked where the spot was. Addison didn’t bother locking the Audi and was out and onto the tarmac before Winter had even opened the door. He was still fishing his camera gear out of the back when he heard him utter:

‘What the fu . . .’

It was only then that Winter took in the look on the faces of the handful of cops that had beaten them there. All looking at them with something approaching pity on their faces. Addison couldn’t have noticed them either because he had blundered round the corner and straight into the face of whatever it was. Now he was standing stock-still with his mouth open.

Winter sprinted to the corner, aware that his head was slowing it down like it was some nightmare version of
Baywatch
. He caught his feet in time to follow the gaze of Alex Shirley, Jan McConachie, – fuck, Rachel was there too – Julia Corrieri, two other CIDs and four uniform, including Jim Boyle and Sandy Murray.

Thirty yards away was the door to what looked like a half-finished warehouse. There was no sign on it and an unpainted roof sat on top of unpainted walls. Standing hard against the door was a man, arms wide as if he was being held at gunpoint. His head was slumped against his chest like he had fallen asleep but his arms said that couldn’t be the case. It filtered through to Winter’s brain slowly, the only way it could because what he was really seeing was just so terrible.

The guy wasn’t standing or leaning against the door, he was being held up by it. He was somehow pinned against it and his arms were out straight as if . . . as if he were crucified against it. That’s exactly what it is, Winter thought. The itch on his lip was competing with a thud in his heart and the potential collapse of his bowels.

He was aware of Shirley beckoning him forward, waving him towards the door, everyone else standing back to let him by, almost reverentially. He was aware of grim faces and quizzical looks, someone was saying something but he didn’t hear it. He was zeroing in on the door, focusing on it as if he’d fall unless he concentrated on it. His camera came out of his bag on auto-pilot and he looked down, surprised that it was in his hand.

As he approached, he saw dress shoes and suit trousers, a pale-blue shirt open at the collar, no tie. He saw tousled dark hair that had been wet or sweaty and had dried that way. Blood. He saw falu red at the man’s open palms and daubs of it at his feet. He got closer and saw nails driven through his hands, and his gut tightened and his breathing became harder. There were nails through his feet, too, driven through the black leather of his shoes and causing the unholy puddle beneath him. There wasn’t just blood in that spill though, it ran with the fear that had soiled the front of his navy-blue trousers. He’d been alive when some of this had happened.

Closer. Winter’s nose picked up sweat, blood, urine and fear. And death. His nose wrinkled at the smell of it just as his lip itched. He stopped, focused and shot, stepped a few yards to the side and repeated the process. He circled right, snapping as he went. Every detail from every angle. This was a new one even for him, no amount of Glasgow could prepare you for this. His mind flew back to Father Mulroney at St Simon’s in Partick Bridge Street. Mark Chapter 15. ‘And they crucified two bandits with him, one on his right and one on his left.’

He was no more than six feet away and the man filled his viewfinder. Switch, zoom, focus. His hands punctured and still bleeding, slowly, ever so slowly, dripping away what was left of him. The nails that pinned him were bog-standard B&Q specials, intended to be driven through planks of wood, not flesh and bone. Right hand, left hand, neither knowing what the other had done. Closer.

Winter knew before he finally saw it for sure. Every angle, every detail. He’d seen it in his camera’s eye but had shut it out, willing it not to be so but there was no getting away from it. He kneeled before the man, careful to avoid the pool of blood and piss at their feet. His lens turned to the man’s face in a final act of supplication and saw Inspector Graeme Forrest look despairingly back down at him, his last hope long since dripped onto the concrete.

Forrest’s mouth was stuffed with twenty-pound notes, his cheeks bulging with them, and a hundred, maybe two hundred quid’s worth hanging from his lips. Used notes stuffed between his teeth, either ensuring his silence or choking him to death.

Graeme was staring at the pavement as if it offered some kind of answer, fear in his empty blue eyes. Winter closed in on one of them, a photo that would never appear in any evidence submission. He saw alarm and guilt and pain.

Forrest had always been a bit of a devil yet here he was crucified like Our Lord. Father Mulroney wouldn’t have approved of this. Who the fuck did he think he was?

Forrest’s mouth looked sad, loose and wide with the bank notes and turned down at the corners. All that, whatever it was, for this. Police college, being nice to his mum, catching criminals, always brushing his teeth. All that just for some bastard to nail him to a door. He looked fat, his head slumped down like that and his cheeks bulging – whatever blood he had left had been rushing there too and left him looking like a chipmunk. Poor bastard.

Winter could hear Forrest telling him not to photograph him like that. Always was a vain bastard. Forrest would have wanted a better angle but there weren’t any more of them. There was only one shot. Anyway, God help him, but he’d never looked better. Frozen for time immoral in the biggest case in town.

Winter stepped down and back, easing himself out from under the dead cop, vaguely aware of more voices behind him. He could pick out Rachel – what the hell was she doing there? – and Addison among them but hadn’t a clue what they were saying. More pish, no doubt. It was all pish. Pictures painted a thousand words so why talk? He turned away from Forrest to let the vultures in to pick over his bones. He’d recorded him for posterity and for the high court, now they were going to rip him to bits. If he was thinking it then so were they – the crucifixion and the cash, shades of Jesus and Judas, saint and sinner. They’d crowded in on Winter, watching him work. Rubberneckers. Gawpers. They weren’t rushing forward to get to Forrest though and for a moment Winter thought their reluctance was down to it being one of their own until he realized there wasn’t a forensic among them. Baxter, Cat or whoever was on duty hadn’t got to the site and the cops would have to wait. Graeme’s dignity was spared for a few minutes longer.

He was in a world of his own again and it was the first ring of the mobile phone, no, phones, that made him jump. Two ringtones cut through whatever talk was going on among the cops, the sounds jumbled together, but Winter recognized one of them, his brain trying to unscramble it from the other. CID and uniform were looking at each other and hands started to reach into pockets to pull out the phones, some stopping when they realized it wasn’t theirs.

It was Jan McConachie, standing maybe ten feet to Winter’s right, who emerged with a phone first, looking at the screen display with puzzlement and discomfort. She was still looking at it when a shot rang out and a bullet took her clean off her feet. She fell straight back, a circle of pure candy-apple red bursting her forehead.

Winter spun instinctively to the left where the other ringtone, the familiar one, was coming from. He turned just in time to see Addison holding his mobile and trying to move, to dive, to duck. He was too late and another gunshot exploded from somewhere over Winter’s shoulder and sent Addison spinning. Winter saw the gush of blood like an oil well being struck, a burst of scarlet showering him before he hit the deck.