‘Yes, boss,’ answered Addison as he got off his bar stool, taking the call outside and away from interested ears, including Winter, who was left admiring a full pint of Guinness, thinking not for the first time that it was a thing of beauty. Deeper than the darkest night and topped by a perfect full moon. If it was a sunset they would paint it.
The door swung open again and Addison burst through with a look of triumph on his face.
‘Put your money away, wee man. Drinks are on me.’
Winter could have told him that they already had full pints and that he’d paid for them but there was little point. He knew Addison in full flow and there would be no stopping him.
‘Whisky,’ he shouted to the barman who was in the middle of serving someone else. ‘Two large Highland Parks and one for yourself.’ The last comment removed some of the scowl from the barman’s features and completely washed over Winter’s protests that he didn’t want whisky.
‘Okay, wee man, do you want the good news or the bad news?’
Winter just shook his head wearily and took a gulp of his Guinness. The only thing worse than Addison in a bad mood was him in a good one.
‘What’s that you say? The bad news?’ chirruped Addison, regardless of his silence. ‘There is no bad news just some really fucking good news.’
‘Just tell me.’
‘Okay, that was Superintendent Shirley. I’m on the team for the Quinn and Caldwell shootings! The Temple had already said he’d wanted me on it but the hooker killing threatened to screw that up.’
‘Very inconsiderate of her,’ Winter interrupted.
‘Ach, you know what I mean. Anyway the point is that I was able to convince Shirley that such a sensitive case would benefit from the female touch and that anyway, DS Narey was overdue the opportunity to run an investigation on her own. So he’s agreed to let Rachel take it on from here.’
Winter winced at how well Rachel would take that.
‘Oh, she’ll love you for that,’ he managed sarcastically.
‘Ah, it’s all thanks to you,’ Addison responded with a wicked grin. ‘It was your idea that I ask to get a run on the sniper killings. Great idea, and I’ll make sure Rachel knows it.’
Great, thought Winter miserably. That was all he needed.
Addison was his best mate but he couldn’t help feel a kick of jealousy. He was in where Winter wanted to be. A slideshow played behind his eyes, his mental photographic album of Quinn and Caldwell with single bullet entries through their skulls, in crimson pools that ran city-wide and city-deep. He wanted it more than he could tell anyone, probably more than he could even admit to himself. Now Addison was on the inside and he was still on the outside, his chances of getting anywhere near it relying on Addison putting in a good word.
‘Brilliant,’ he told him. ‘Happy for you. Now remember that—’
‘It’s huge,’ Addison cut across him excitedly. ‘This is potentially the biggest case to hit Glasgow since the Cutter murders. Okay, there’s only two dead but fuck knows where it’s going to end. No way we’ve seen the last of it. Everything I’m hearing tells me it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. My money’s on another body before morning.’
Winter realized that Addison was beginning to get on his nerves.
‘So if you are at the heart of the biggest story in town since Jesus went to Dumbarton,’ he asked him, ‘should you not be out there knocking on doors rather than in here knocking back halves?’
‘Not at all, wee man. It’s been a long enough day and they will still be dead when the sun comes up. Tonight I deserve a drink and so do you.’
With that Addison pulled back his arm in an exaggerated gesture to pat Winter on the back but only succeeded in banging his elbow into the guy standing behind him. He was young and looking the worse for wear and Addison’s elbow caused him to spill a few drops of his pint.
‘For fucksake,’ he shouted. ‘Watch it, eh?’
Addison turned slowly and apologetically.
‘Sorry, mate. My fault. I’ll get you another one.’
‘Too fucking right you will. Get me another pint then you can get tae fuck.’
The guy was about twenty, just five foot four with a close cut of red hair and looking decidedly rat-arsed. He was bridling with some kind of indignant rage, the kind that is fuelled by drink, being ginger and from Glasgow.
Addison just looked at the kid, obviously biting his tongue.
‘Like I said, I’ll get you another one.’
‘Aye, and like I said, you can then get tae fuck, ya cunt.’
‘Hm,’ was all Addison said, nodding to the barman who was anxiously hovering nearby that he should get the guy another pint of lager. The drink was poured and sat in front of the still-seething twenty-year-old.
‘I should fucking think so an’ all,’ he snarled. ‘Fucking eejit.’
Addison shook his head, his patience wearing thin and the good mood he was in from the Temple’s phone call gone out the window.
‘I’ve bought you a pint even though you just spilled a mouthful,’ he told the boy. ‘I’ve said sorry. Now behave yourself, drink it and shut your fucking mouth.’
Addison turned away from the drunk and took a mouthful of his own pint. As he raised the glass, the boy pushed out an elbow and deliberately bumped Addison’s drinking arm causing the glass to chink into his teeth.
Enough was enough and Addison put his glass down slowly before stretching out an arm and shoving the drunken kid clean off his feet. He fell stupidly, trying and failing to grab at the bar counter on the way down but only catching thin air on his way to a hard landing on the pub’s tiled floor. All noise in the Griffin stopped like a needle being lifted off an old LP and there were sniggers and shouts from the speakeasy seats. Out the corner of his eye, Winter saw the barman reach under the bar and take hold of something that was undoubtedly as heavy as it was handy. Addison gave him a level stare to say he’d seen the movement as well and that to bring out whatever was under the bar would be as silly as it was unnecessary. The barman knew Addison was a cop and probably took Winter for one as well. He nodded but didn’t look best pleased.
The boy was flat on his back, embarrassment raging in his eyes, so angry he was almost in tears. He lashed out with his feet, succeeding in kicking the foot of Addison’s barstool.
‘Away home,’ sneered Addison. ‘Your mammy will be wondering where you are.’
Somebody else sniggered and there was a fair chance this didn’t do anything for the ginger guy’s mood. He jumped to his feet, furiously wiping beer puddles from his jeans. In a flash he’d reached inside his coat and whipped out a knife, its blade twirling and glinting under the lights of the pub.
Instinctively Winter stepped off his stool but Addison had beaten him to it and had already pushed an arm across in front of him to hold him back.
‘For fucksake,’ he growled at the kid. ‘More paperwork. I don’t need any more fucking paperwork. I hate fucking paperwork. Do you have any idea how much I hate paperwork? Do you?’
The boy roared and lunged at Addison’s face, slashing towards his cheek. Addison was more than ready for him though, stepping quickly to one side and catching the boy’s wrist as it came through and twisting it till the knife tumbled onto the floor, turning the kid’s arm tight behind his back, grabbing his head back by his hair with the other and making him squeal.
‘I’ll tell you how much,’ Addison continued into his ear. ‘I really, really hate paperwork. So much so that I’m prepared to kick your sorry little arse out into the street on the understanding that you get as far away from here as quickly as you can and that you never set foot in this place again. Everyone is entitled to a second chance and you’ve just had yours. There won’t be another. Understand?’
The bampot muttered an ‘Aye’ and tried to pull away from Addison’s grasp. The DI abruptly let him go and the boy staggered forward comically until he ran through the pub doors without a backward glance.
Seeing him go, Addison sat himself back down, throwing the Highland Park down his throat and soundlessly signalling to the barman for a replacement in one seamless movement.
Winter had barely begun to complain that he didn’t want one when Addison shrugged, picked up Winter’s glass as it arrived on the counter and sent it chasing down after his own. ‘Please yourself,’ he muttered.
He was staring past the barman into the mirror behind the bar and he didn’t look – how had Rachel put it? – like a happy bunny at all.
‘What is it with these wee dicks?’ Addison asked without looking at him. Maybe it wasn’t even Winter he was asking.
He sat for minutes, breathing hard and staring alternatively from the glass behind the bar to the one in front of him that held his whisky, pensive and angry. He finally gave up his thoughts to his drink, low enough so that only Winter could hear.
‘You ever watch wildlife documentaries?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘David Attenborough, Life on Earth, National Geographic Channel, that kind of stuff?’
‘Well, sometimes. If there’s nothing else on.’
‘Should watch them. Might learn something. There’s this animal, the honey badger. Just a wee thing, no more than a foot high, but it’s scared of nothing. Get them in Africa and western bits of Asia – Iraq and Pakistan and the like. They take on anything and back down from nothing. Reckoned to be the most fearless animal on the planet. They tackle scorpion, porcupine, meerkat, mongoose, gazelle, python, you name it. They even take on small crocodiles and water buffalo.
‘Hard wee bastards and dirty fighters. They say one of its favourite tactics when it’s up against something much bigger than itself, like a buffalo, is to go right for the balls. Bites them clean off and waits for the fucker to bleed to death before ripping it to bits. But for me, the most amazing thing is that when something does get a hold of it, the honey badger still has a trick up its sleeve. It’s got this ability to twist inside its own skin and bite whatever is holding it. Whatever you do, you don’t fuck with a honey badger. Fucking brilliant, isn’t it?’
‘Aye, wonderful. Addy, what’s your point?’
His face hardened.
‘My point is that if a honey badger could speak then you could bet your last fucking dollar that it would have a Glaswegian accent. Too small to be continually picking battles with the big boys but programmed not to know any better. Just too brave or too stupid to know when to back away from a fight.’
Winter laughed. It was the wrong answer apparently.
‘The thing is it’s not funny, Tony, not funny at all. Every fucking day in Glasgow some stupid wee dick dies because he was born in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong attitude. And, just to be clear, every single one of them, every single one of us, is born with the wrong attitude. If you don’t have it then you get the shit kicked out of you. Or get it kicked into you. Chicken or egg. Hit the fucker with the stick and if that doesn’t work then hit him with the carrot. Or stab him with the stick. Either way, you stand on your own two feet or you die on your arse. It’s the Glasgow way. Fuck them or they fuck you. Learn quick or be a victim.
‘That’s why this place is full of wee boys who are dying to be hard men. The cemeteries are full of them. Wee boys with what they think is courage instead of brains, all of them ignorant of the single piece of wisdom that might just keep them alive. The brave thing to do is run, the cowardly thing is to stand and fight just because you are scared of being labelled a coward. The ones that can find the guts to realize that it’s all right to be afraid are the ones that just might live to see their next giro rather than become another statistic. The rest end up the same place that stupid wee fucker out there is going. I give him five years tops till he’s pushing up daisies.’
Addison knocked back the last of his Highland Park, closing his eyes and savouring it as it slipped down. When he opened his eyes again, he turned to Winter with a grin replacing the grimace that had been stuck to his face.
‘Okay, lecture over. I’ve drunk enough for one day. Home time.’
With that he lurched off the bar stool and headed for the door without looking back.
‘Remember to talk to Alex Shirley for me?’ Winter shouted after him. ‘Get me doing photographs on the case?’
‘Och, no chance. You’ve burnt your bridges on that one.’
Winter jumped off his stool and caught the door before it hit the latch.
‘Come on, Addy, you said you’d speak to him. You know how important this is to me.’
The DI still didn’t look back but shouted to him over his shoulder as he headed towards Sauchiehall Street.
‘I’ve told you, wee man, you bite too easily. Takes all the fun out of it. Trust your Uncle Addy. Talk to you tomorrow.’
Winter could still hear him laughing as he disappeared down Elmbank Street in search of a taxi.
CHAPTER 12
Thursday 15 September
Alex Shirley’s office in divisional HQ in Stewart Street was more functional than decorative, a bit like the man himself. The carpet was plain but sturdy, fit to take the boots of a thousand coppers marching to his solid oak desk. It was sparsely decorated, with just one framed award on the wall and a photograph of his wife and two teenaged children propped up on the desk next to his computer.
DI Addison was sitting in front of the desk, examining the family group shot and thinking, not for the first time, that Mrs Shirley was a bit of a looker and would have been pretty hot about a stone and a half ago. Alex Shirley himself was a dapper man, five foot ten with a close crop of steel-grey hair and a wide, muscular build making up for any lack of height.
The Temple’s blonde daughter was in her late teens and Addison’s opinion of her was mercifully cut short by the door opening behind him and Superintendent Shirley striding in with DCI Iain Williamson following behind. Addison wrenched his eyes from the photograph and made a half-hearted attempt to get to his feet until the Temple shooed him back into the upholstery.
‘Thanks for coming in, Derek,’ the superintendent began. ‘We’re all up to our eyes in it today so I’ll keep this as quick as possible. The briefing is in half an hour and I’ve got other calls to make before then. The chief is going in front of the television cameras this afternoon and he’s not looking forward to it one bit.’
‘That makes a change, sir,’ chipped in Addison brightly.
‘Aye, very good, Inspector,’ drawled Iain Williamson. ‘Keep those thoughts to yourself. No point in making this week even worse than it’s already lined up to be, is there?’
The DCI was a dour Dundonian who had been working in civilization for the past ten years or so. He was a good, solid cop but permanently wore the expression of a man who had found out his dog had died.
‘No, sir,’ Addison agreed.
‘Correct answer,’ interrupted Shirley, who was far less bothered about Addison’s quip than his DCI was. ‘Okay, tell me that you have brought DS Narey up to speed on the Wellington Lane girl so that we can get on with this other shit. It’s to be Operation Nightjar, by the way.’
The codenames came from an approved list generated by a computer and one was picked at random from it. One month, all the names could be trees, the next it might be breeds of dog. It was meant to avoid using names that were connected to the case and might end up muddying the water.
‘Catchy,’ replied Addison. ‘Nightjar? Makes me think of last orders. Or is that just me?’
Addison was looking at the superintendent but was aware of Williamson on his right, shaking his head disapprovingly.
‘Just you, Derek,’ replied Shirley. ‘A nightjar is a medium-sized nocturnal bird. Or so Iain tells me. So, DS Narey?’
‘I’ll make sure she is fully briefed today and I’m going to assign DC Julia Corrieri to her so she won’t be short of support. They’ve both been involved with the case to date so that will help.’
‘Two female officers? Should work well with parents.
How does Narey feel about taking over the case?’
‘I haven’t spoken to her yet but I’m sure she’ll be delighted with it,’ Addison lied. ‘Narey’s good, sir. Very good. Allowing her to run the Wellington Lane case means we can put every other resource towards the sniper killings.’
The Temple raised an eyebrow.
‘Yes, you convinced me of that last night. And it also allows you to be free for the bigger case.’
‘Well yes, sir. I can’t deny that is something that appeals to me.’ Addison quickly tried to shift the conversation away from his motives. ‘But as I say, I feel these shootings are going to need every resource we can give. And on that front, I’d like to make a suggestion.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I think it might be a big help, particularly further down the line, if we use Tony Winter on this.’
‘The photographer?’
‘Yes, sir. If it does pan out to be the Gilmartins or Riddle or whatever bampot out there is responsible for these shootings, then the last thing we want is for it to slip loose in court because of some evidential problem. I’d want to make sure that everything is nailed on.’
‘You don’t think the SOCOs are up to the job?’
‘It’s not that, sir. We all know how huge this is going to be when it gets to trial and that added expertise is certainly not going to go amiss. At the end of the day, he is a specialist and this is what we pay him for, sir.’
Addison gave himself a metaphorical pat on the back for that one. Alex Shirley was a big fan of specialists and had been around long enough to remember the benefits before half the force was turned into Jacks and Jills of all trades.
The Temple nodded slowly.
‘Agreed. But this is assuming there is going to be something else to photograph. Which you think there will be?’
‘Which I’m certain there will be,’ Addison replied.
‘Yes. Me too, unfortunately. Iain, what do you think?’
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