Snapshot

by Craig Robertson

  Danny growled again.

  ‘Jeezus, son. Phone me at Christmas like you usually do. It’s past your bedtime. Night.’

  The phone went silent in Winter’s hand and he couldn’t help looking at it and laughing, thinking that they broke the mould when they made Danny. He threw the mobile onto the bed and crawled after it, getting beneath the covers and lying back to seek answers on the ceiling. Caldwell and Quinn. Quinn and Caldwell. Bullets and blood. They swirled around in his head and he saw them behind his eyes as they closed over just for a second. Quinwell and Cald. Caldquinn and Well. Blood and more blood. He fell into one of those strangely drowsy, part-dreaming, thinking-too-much states that go on for ever and you’re never sure what is awake and what is dreamt. It ran for nearly two hours till it was shattered by cold flesh slapping him immediately awake.

  Rachel had crawled back into bed, freezing cold and wideawake tired, wrapping herself round him despite his half-hearted protests. How could a woman so hot be so cold? The shock of her chill had him fully conscious in a split second.

  ‘Thanks,’ she mumbled into his shoulder.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Being here and being warm.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Freezing but welcome. Want to talk about it?’

  ‘In a minute. Let me heat up first.’

  She hugged herself in tighter, the frost of a Glasgow night sneaking into his skin as she stole his warmth. Her long brown hair tickling his face, smelling of the chill that she had brought home with her. Winter knew she was thinking before she spoke to him, debating with herself just how much she was going to divulge. He was hoping it would be everything. He wanted to know every detail of Quinn’s killing. The who, what, where, when and why. The facts and the speculation. Danny had given him some but he wanted more. She wanted to tell him the lot, he was sure of that, but police protocol was always the problem. So what was she going to settle for?

  ‘It was mental out there,’ she said at last, burying her head even deeper into him before coming up for air. ‘People running round like headless chickens. Some of them are shit-scared of what’s coming next. Not a good night.’

  He knew from experience that the best thing was just to shut up and let her talk. Asking questions would either annoy her or cause barriers to come down. Winter was on the payroll but he wasn’t a cop. It wouldn’t pay for him to remind her of that by saying something stupid.

  ‘Shirley was already at the scene by the time I got there. You know it’s serious when he’s dragged out of his bed at that time of night.’

  Alex Shirley was the chief superintendent. Variously known as ‘Shirley Temple’ or ‘Don’t Call Me Shirley’ by the troops. The way Tony heard it from Rachel and Addison, he was liked and respected, which was no mean feat for a chief when the Indians were a bunch of cynical, moaning-faced Glaswegian smart arses.

  ‘He looked spooked, to be honest. Never seen him that way before. Hardly surprising, I suppose. Just one day after Cairns Caldwell gets shot and one of the city’s other main dealers goes down the same way. Enough to shake anyone, never mind if you are the one who has to clean the fucking mess up.

  ‘Not that he wasn’t in control of the situation. He was. Just that he looked rattled. He gave a uniform a hell of a bollocking for not keeping the locals back when they fell out of their pits to see what was going on. Poor guy looked like he was going to shit himself when the Temple gave him what for. Not like Shirley to do that.’

  She fell silent for a moment, her head falling back toward his shoulder, thinking again. He silently pleaded for her not to stop.

  ‘No sign of who had done it,’ she eventually continued. ‘No real idea of where the shot came from except that it was a mile away. Maybe literally. That was what was bugging the Super as much as what might happen next. I’m sure of it. It was the same scenario as Caldwell. Exactly the fucking same.’

  Trust Danny, Winter thought, bang on the money as per usual. Then, even though he knew he shouldn’t have, he asked the question.

  ‘So you’re thinking it wasn’t a revenge hit for Caldwell?’

  She rolled away from him, falling face down onto the bed.

  ‘I’m tired. Long, long night.’

  ‘Okay, come here and I’ll warm you up,’ he tried.

  After a bit she pulled herself back into him, legs round and over him. She lay with her head on his chest, her eyes fixed on some spot on the far wall, her head rising and falling with his breathing. Winter ran his hand through her hair and her eyes closed but he knew her mind was still racing.

  ‘He’d been coming home from some night out,’ she said at last. ‘A meeting was all his crew would say. He had walked halfway from the car to his front door when the bullet caught him bang in the middle of the back of his head. He was on his way down before anyone heard a sound. The guys with him threw themselves to the pavement but that was all there was. A single bullet. The Mighty Quinn died immediately. Dead before he hit the path.

  ‘Some woman across the street saw it and began screaming her lungs out. After that the hired help had no option but to call the cops whether they liked it or not. Weren’t exactly forthcoming at helping the polis with their inquiries, funnily enough. Some of them were shaken big time. If some bastard could take out Malky then they were all at risk, that’s what they were thinking.’

  Winter couldn’t help himself again.

  ‘If they could hit big Malky then all the wee Malkies were in deep shit?’ he suggested.

  Thankfully she laughed a bit.

  ‘Ha ha, very good. Big Malky was the hand that fed them, like I said. The one that was supposed to keep them all safe and put bread on the table and drug money in their pockets. If he’s fucked then they’re all fucked. Unless one of them steps up to the mark and takes over. And whoever has the balls for that better do it soon before some other fucker decides to help himself to Quinn’s business.’

  ‘That what’s happening? Someone after Quinn and Caldwell’s operations?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Her reply was curt.

  ‘Far too early to know. But someone will be after the business whether he was the one who pulled that trigger or not. It’s the way of the jungle and there’s far too much money not to have someone do it. Fun times ahead, that’s for sure.

  ‘The Temple took Bobby McGurk into London Road for questioning. Malky’s second-in-command. Not that he particularly thinks Bobby had anything to with killing Malky but maybe he fancies him for having done Caldwell. Maybe. Maybe he was just fishing. Hard fucker, McGurk, but he was knocked off his feet by Quinn getting shot. Not exactly shitting himself but his jaw dropped all the same. Couldn’t take his eyes off Malky’s head. He watched that blood spreading over the path like he was hypnotized.’

  Winter let her linger for a bit. Not pushing, waiting.

  ‘Press will have a field day too,’ she said eventually. ‘Newspapers and TV were there within half an hour of us getting there, crawling over the place like locusts. Shouting out pish like “turf wars” as if they were going to get an answer. I hate those turds.’

  Rachel had got a raw time from the media when she led the investigation into the Cutter murders and she still held it against them. Not that she’d ever been their biggest fan but since she was publicly slated when a serial killer randomly murdered six people in the city, she hated them with a passion. They hounded her from the minute she took over, questioning why a mere detective sergeant was in charge, why she couldn’t catch the guy, until they finally got her turfed off the case. She wouldn’t talk about it but Winter knew it still grated.

  ‘If those morons think I am spending my day fielding their idiot questions then they’ve got another think coming. They can talk to media services all day long if they like but they can get tae as far as I’m concerned. This shit is bad enough without them making it worse. Know that Lindsey Richardson from the Express? Addison told her to fuck off. No messing. She asked him about vendettas and who’s next. Got
to admire your pal’s attitude sometimes. He wasn’t a happy bunny out there tonight.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘How many reasons do you want? Got my own theory but you better ask him yourself.’ Winter raised his eyebrows by way of a question but she blanked him and he knew he was getting nothing. Their relationship had always been based on the concrete fact that she was police and he wasn’t. There was blue and white police tape between them and she’d have arrested him if he tried to cross it.

  ‘Anyway,’ she went on. ‘Dead gangsters, who needs it? At least I’m back in bed. Forensics will be picking pieces of skull and tissue off Kinnear Road for the rest of the night.’

  ‘Who was on camera duty?’

  She shook her head wearily.

  ‘Mulgrew and Burke.’

  ‘Fucking forensics,’ he spat out, more angrily than he knew he should have.

  ‘Fucksake, Tony. Leave it. They were doing their job and they do it well. It was a murder scene, not an art exhibition. A dead man. Bullet hole. Blood and brains on the path. That’s it. No one’s going to put it in a fucking frame and hang it on a wall.’

  ‘Aye, okay.’

  ‘Sorry, but it just gets on my nerves sometimes.’

  ‘Aye, I said okay. I get it.’

  Her face softened.

  ‘Sorry, long night. Very long night. And I’m back in at nine. I love that you can see all that stuff when I can only see scumbags but not tonight, okay?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘You’re right. It was out of order. Come here, you better get some sleep.’

  She kissed him and snuggled in. Within two minutes she was dead to the world.

  He knew that she was right about the photographs but she was so wrong about the rest.

  The picture of Quinn spilling all over that pavement flooded his mind. He imagined the pool being dark, warm and lustrous. Streetlamps glistening on the claret sea and causing highlights that his Canon EOS-1D could pick out beautifully, the pavement washed in the price of the drug king’s sin, painted from a palette of scarlet dues. Quinn laid out on a concrete canvas, glassy eyes not looking up to the glowering heavens but cast down to his maker.

  He envisaged heavy-set, scarred men with mouths open wide in shock, seeing their protector thrown to the ground. Movie-still flash, capturing guilt and fear. Inch by inch, the creeping realization dawns that retribution has stepped out of the shadows. Deep down they’d always known there would be a price to pay.

  Death’s sheen shimmered bright in his camera’s eye; Malky Quinn’s tainted juices seeping through Glasgow’s stone floor. A perfect picture of bloody comeuppance and inevitable consequence. A picture he didn’t have the chance to take but one that he could still frame in his memory.

  CHAPTER 9

  Wednesday 14 September

  Winter was due to be in Pitt Street till it was dark. Two Soups had moaned the previous day about his Central Station performance until Winter was effectively grounded like a teenager. Filing, answering phones and lobbing crumpled balls of paper into the bin was the order of the day.

  He’d hauled his arse in two hours after Rachel had left for the crime scene or the operations rooms. She hadn’t said which, just kissed him, saying she’d catch up later, and left him to the newspapers and the TV.

  The Record had splashed it all over the front and four pages inside. They had gone absolutely tonto over it. Massive, lurid pictures of dire quality. Grainy, badly lit shots of vague shapes on an indistinct canvas. Crap photographs that Winter would have killed to have taken. One of those occasions for the papers when content is worth much more than quality. The same could be said for the writing, he thought. Vast slabs of speculation, innuendo, background and bollocks. Screaming headlines and scaremongering text. And their coverage was the best on offer.

  At his desk in Pitt Street, Winter grabbed a copy of the Sun which had been left lying around and saw much the same in there. Three pages this time but less didn’t mean more. Where there was speculation they brought conjecture, where there was innuendo they brought insinuation, where there was bollocks they brought more bollocks. Killings of two underworld figures in as many days let the tabloids run wild, foaming at the mouth with alarmist indignation. It was a sensation, it was stunning, it was unprecedented. SLAIN, shrieked the Record. BLOODBATH, yelled the Sun.

  The Sun’s pictures made the Record’s look like something Enrique Metinides would have told his grandchildren about. They’d been there later and were further away. Quinn’s body might as well have been a sleeping dog for all you could tell. It didn’t stop them using them the size of the page and leaving readers to use their imagination the best they could.

  He stuck the radio on for a bit and Clyde offered a verbal version of much of what he’d read. Caldwell and Quinn were dead so contempt laws went out the window. They were called all the names that they couldn’t while they were alive – gangster, drug runner, criminal, crime lord – the euphemism ‘well-known businessman’ wasn’t heard once. At last the media could call them for what they were. Caldwell was said to be a prime suspect in the murder of Barney Reid while Quinn was said to be responsible for a ‘string of unsolved killings’.

  The reporter from the end of Kinnear Road spoke in hushed, almost reverential tones as he told how the residents of the quiet east end street were stunned, shocked and altogether clichéd about the shooting in their midst. He had to up the tone quite considerably when a local ned started shouting, ‘Hey wanker, ur you on the radio? Ur ye? Ur ye on the noo? Wanker, ah’m talking tae you!’

  They had to cut to one he’d done earlier, an interview with an unnamed concerned citizen whose name Winter was betting was Sadie or Magrit. She’d lived in the street for seventeen years and had never seen anything like it (as if gangster executions were a common occurrence elsewhere). She hadn’t exactly heard the shot and she didn’t exactly know Mr Quinn but she knew who he was and it was absolutely terrible. Her weans were off the school because they were so traumatised, so they were. Fucking bollocks, the lot of it. Not least the fact that he was stuck there while all the fun was on the other side of the city. The way it was, he’d have been as well still being in IT, asking halfwits if they’d tried switching it off and on again. He wanted to be out there on the streets where the blood was, where the dirt lay thick and the dark shadows were long, where the people were. Real people, bad people, good people, scared people. He wanted to be where they lived and died, particularly where they died. Winter couldn’t make out the hole in Quinn’s head from the newspaper photos but nor could he get it out of his mind. Bone fragments, blood spatter, open mouth, open hole, a clean kill by an expert, dead centre, dead shot. The pavement damp eating into his jacket, nibbling at the fabric, the earth reclaiming its own a millimetre at a time. The dampness clambering up his shoulder as the blood ran down, passing each other like strangers never destined to meet. Life and death on parallel tracks.

  Suddenly, his phone beeped with a text message, making him jump and slamming the shutter down on the photograph in his mind.

  It was Addison, asking if he was being a good boy today. Just what he needed. Less than a minute later he texted again, moaning about how he was having to deal with the hooker killing as well as the fallout from the Caldwell and Quinn shootings.

  The pecking order was clear to see. The going rate for a pound of drug baron flesh was a lot higher than for the living variety sold around Anderston. Just as the killing of the hooker was a step above the stabbed dealer Sammy Ross, so Malky Quinn was way above whatever had happened in Wellington Lane. Anything else had to take second place.

  Winter’s mobile rang and the display screen flashed up Addison’s name.

  ‘Alright, loser? How’s life in the cupboard?’

  ‘Fuck off. This is doing my head in as it is and I don’t need your shit as well.’

  ‘Ah, don’t wet yourself, wee man. Has Two Soups stolen your sense of humour as well? This city’s going crazy and I could do with
a pint before the day’s out. Up for it?’

  ‘Aye, of course. So what’s happening out in the real world?’

  ‘Real world? If this is reality then they can keep it. I take it you heard about Malky Quinn? I’ve had calls from all over the city and it’s kicking off big time. I’ve already heard of three cases of guys getting dragged off the street into cars and having the living shit kicked out of them, two separate drive-bys with clowns taking potshots at windows and umpteen stories about knuckle draggers holding meetings that nobody is supposed to know about. They’re running around booting and shooting at anyone and anything that they think might be responsible. It’s open season.’

  ‘Any of them have any idea what they’re doing?’

  ‘Do they ever? Best guess from me is that they are lashing out, knocking heads and capping knees in a panic to get any information they can. They don’t have the brains to work out what the fuck’s going on so they are resorting to what they do best. They will beat the crap out of anyone they can get their hands on in an effort to force some line out of them.’

  ‘Tell me to keep my nose out, Addy, but is it one guy that’s done them both or was Quinn in retaliation for Caldwell?”

  ‘Keep this to yourself but the early word from the lab is that it was the same gun that took out the pair of them. So it doesn’t look like some tit for tat hit. More like one tit with big ideas.’

  ‘Fuck. Oh well, I guess if he’s killing gangsters then it can’t be all bad.’

  ‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ Addison snapped. ‘No matter how many you kill, there’s always an even uglier one waiting to take over.’

  That wasn’t like Addison. Time to change the subject, Winter thought.

  ‘Awrite. Keep your hair on. So what’s the deal with the killing in Wellington Lane?’

  ‘Oh God knows. We’re getting nowhere. The timing couldn’t be worse either. I’m in danger of getting lumbered with this when I should be investigating Caldwell and Quinn. I’ve got to go. See you later.’