Craig Robertson - Snapshot

‘Very good. Okay, enough of the small talk. What do you want?’

Winter laughed quietly.

‘That obvious, huh?’

‘Christ, son. It’s after two in the morning, you haven’t called for weeks and you sound like you’ve seen the ghost of Jinky Johnstone wearing a Rangers top. Aye, it’s that obvious.’

Danny Neilson was ex-police. He was in the job for thirty years, man and boy, and could never quite stop being a cop. He never rose higher than a detective sergeant even though he had twice the brains of most of the men above him. Most of his career he was happy just catching crooks even though Auntie Janette was always on at him to go for a promotion. By the time she had finally convinced him of the idea, he was too old. Suited him fine though, he always said he was born a sergeant and would die one.

These days he worked even though he didn’t have to. His police pension was better than a decent wage and Danny was kicking on to sixty-five but he couldn’t or wouldn’t sit on his arse and collect the money. He worked as a superintendent on the taxi rank at Central Station, keeping drunken wasters from jumping queues and battering lumps out of each other. Winter had given up asking Danny why he wanted to stand outside in the rain dealing with the arseholes of the morning hours. Too young to watch Coronation Street and drink milk was the only answer Uncle Danny ever gave him but they both knew it wasn’t the truth.

‘You’re right, Dan. There is something. I wanted to know if you’d heard about the shooting in the east end. Malky Quinn.’

There was a slight pause and then a deadpan answer.

‘I heard.’

‘It’s not on the news. Not his name, anyway, so how did you…’

‘Fucksake, Tony. If you wanted to know what was on the news then you’d have put the fucking telly on rather than phoned me.’

‘Aye. True.’

‘So ask me what you want to ask for and stop dancing with me. I’m tired and you know I’ve no time for that shite.’

Big Danny Neilson wasn’t much for small talk or ceremony and always made a point of calling a spade a shovel.

‘What have you heard, Dan? Has one of Caldwell’s boys shot Malky Quinn in retaliation for shooting their gaffer?’

There was a long sigh on the other end of the phone before Neilson’s gruff tones responded.

‘Not from what I’m hearing, no. It could be. You couldn’t rule anything out with these cunts but it’s not looking that way right now.’

‘How come? It’s surely the most obvious thing?’

‘That’s right, Anthony. And how many times have I told you not to jump to the obvious conclusion?’

‘More than once. What are they saying, then?’

‘Mate of mine says that they are spooked by how similar it is to the Caldwell shooting. If Caldwell’s guys wanted to take out Quinn then there’s a hundred, a thousand ways they could have done it but this was near as dammit the same.’

‘Same guy, same gun?’

‘Fucksake, Tony. Did we not just have the jumping to conclusions conversation?’

Winter ignored him and ploughed on regardless.

‘So what have we got then, Uncle Danny? Claim jumpers? Someone wanting to huckle these guys and move in on their operations?’

‘Christ. Do you know how long I was out in the pishing rain tonight, son? Do you know how tired my bones are? I finally get in and think I can get on the outside of a glass of Jura and listen to a bit of Dean Martin but instead I get one half of the Hardy Boys on the phone asking me all kinds of shite. How the fuck do I know, Tony? Eh? How the fuck do I know?’

Because you always know more than you are letting on, Uncle Danny, Winter thought but didn’t say. Instead he pushed his luck a bit further.

‘Alex Kirkwood? Think he might be behind it? I know he’s banged up but these guys can pull any strings they want from the nick. Maybe he just wants a bigger cake to cut from when he gets out.’

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.’