Craig Robertson - Snapshot

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.

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.