Craig Robertson - Snapshot

‘And who’s her dad?’ Narey pushed.

Pamela just shook her head, still staring at the floor. Her anxiety levels had just rocketed.

‘Please, Pamela,’ Joanne Samuels broke in. ‘It could be important, pet. I think if you know then you should tell her.’

The girl’s hands went unconsciously to her face, wiping under her nose.

‘He’s trouble. A real bad bastard,’ she hissed. ‘He’d kill me if he knew.’

All Narey’s senses were telling her that this was a name she had to know.

‘He won’t know, Pamela,’ she assured the girl. ‘No one will know except the three of us round this table. Melanie was your friend and I think she deserves for the person that killed her to be caught.’

Pamela was tilting her head to one side and repeating the gesture: anxious, thinking, afraid. ‘Tommy Breslin,’ she whispered.

‘Okay. Tell me about Tommy,’ Narey pursued.

The girl repeated her head-tilting routine and nibbled on the inside of her cheek.

‘They call him T-Bone. Or he calls himself it, anyway. He was Melanie’s boyfriend. Sort of. Thinks he’s some kind of gangsta but all he is is an arsehole dealer.’

She looked up suddenly, remembering who she was talking to. ‘It’s okay, Pamela. He’ll never know we’ve spoken to you. This is between us. How did this T-Bone treat Melanie?’

She shook her head bitterly.

‘Like shit. Like a piece of shit. He was always laying into her for nothing. He broke her arm once and was always leaving marks on her. Kicks and punches. And he was the bastard that got her onto the shit in the first place.’

She looked up at them fearfully again but the thought of what Breslin had done to her friend gave her some steel.

‘He was her dealer too. And mine.’

Narey nodded, grateful for the girl’s information.

‘Do you think he could have done this to Melanie?’

Pamela said nothing but looked Narey straight in the eyes and nodded.

Narey mentally crossed her fingers and asked the question she hoped for an answer to more than any other.

‘Did Melanie ever tell you her real name?’

‘Yeah. She told me once when she was out of it and after that it didn’t matter. Her name was Una. Said she’d always hated it.’

‘Did she tell you her surname?’

‘No sure. She told people her name was Melanie McCulloch. Don’t know if that was real or not. Look, I’ve had enough. I need to go. Told you enough.’

Narey still had a head full of questions but could see that Pamela was right on the edge and had made her mind up to go. Anyway, she thought, she had a hell of a lot more to work with than she had when she sat down.

Joanne said that she would take Pamela home, noticeably refusing to say where that was, and Narey left them after picking up the bill for the coffees. She saw Joanne’s hand comfortingly placed over the girl’s but by the agitated look on her face it was going to take more than that to put her mind at ease.

The door of the Criterion swung closed behind her and she was immediately hit by the cool afternoon breeze that had picked up. Her first thought was to telephone Addison with what she’d learned until she remembered that the bastard had dumped her with this and she was the one in charge. Well, sod him and whatever he was attending at Harthill, she was the one with the breakthrough.

When she got to the Tolbooth she found a parking ticket stuck to the windscreen and swore at the paperwork that was going to be involved getting it overturned. Fuck it, it had been worth it. She turned her car round and threw it headlong back into the traffic heading for George Square and from there would go on to Stewart Street. Christ, it seemed even busier than it had been earlier. The traffic was at a complete standstill and there was nothing at all coming the other way. What the hell was going on?

Up ahead, she could see flashing lights, blue as well as red. For the second time that afternoon, she abandoned her car in the nearest available space, this one with double yellow lines, and continued on foot. The closer she got to George Square, the more she realized some serious shit was going down.

She pulled out her phone and got onto Stewart Street, demanding to know what was happening. As the answer came through, so the old red square came into view. Narey couldn’t believe her eyes.

Narey arrived at George Square no more than fifteen minutes after the white van was parked up and about ten minutes before it began snowing. When the response came from the desk at Stewart Street, she raced the last couple of hundred yards until she reached the politburo splendour of the City Chambers itself.

A large crowd of shoppers and office workers had already gathered round the square and Narey pushed her way through them, alternately shoving, shouting and waving her ID card. She could see a ring of yellow-jacketed uniforms and two fire engines and headed for them as quickly as she could.

A uniformed inspector was standing at the nearest corner of the square, speaking into a walkie-talkie and looking like he was ready to punch someone or shit himself. Narey made a line straight towards him, trying to remember what his name was. Benson, Bett, something like that.

The guy saw her coming, looking her up and down in a way that made her want to puke. Prick, she thought. What the hell was the sleazeball’s name?

‘Inspector?’ she started. ‘I’m DS Narey, I-’

‘Yes, I know who you are. I’m a bit busy, Sergeant. What is it?’

‘We have reason to believe this is connected to an ongoing CID case and I need to ask you what you know about what’s happened here.’

‘Oh, do you now? What case is that then?’

‘The shootings of Cairns Caldwell and Malcolm Quinn. I’m sure you are aware of them.’

To Narey’s satisfaction, the inspector blanched, his eyes widening as he took in the consequences of what she said.

‘From what we’re told, the van came along the Queen Street side,’ he began. ‘It drove off the street and onto the square where it is now. No one’s got a clue where the driver is but we’re told he ran off as soon as he’d laid things out. You see the petrol canisters?’

Narey nodded.

The two green canisters sat close together about twenty feet away from where the van had been abandoned with its doors wide open. It sat on the red concrete, shunned by the statues that ringed the square, all with their backs turned to it.

Beside the canisters were a couple of dozen bricks, quite obviously kilos of cocaine, wrapped in white paper and stacked in four hurriedly constructed piles. She knew if it hadn’t been for the presence of the cops, the bricks would have been nicked in two seconds flat.

‘So did any one of your guys try to approach the van, sir?’ she asked the inspector.

‘Twice,’ he answered with a curt nod. ‘Both times they got shot at. Nothing too close the first time, maybe a few feet away but enough to scare them off. After the first try we got someone togged up and had another go but the second time the shot missed him by inches. We haven’t tried again.’

‘Okay. Where are the shots coming from?’

He shook his head.

‘We think it might have been from the north of the square, the City Chambers end, but to be honest, the place is in such chaos that no one’s sure. Everything was so quick that I don’t think anyone could have told you where their arse was. The only way to find out would have been to send someone in a third time but I couldn’t sanction that.’

‘Fair enough,’ she agreed, having to shout now above the growing clamour around them. ‘But what’s been done to find out where he might be? He’s got to be somewhere high up, right?’