Craig Robertson - Snapshot

‘Well you’ve got to laugh sometimes, Col. Otherwise it will eat you up.’

‘Thanks for the advice.’

‘No problem, sergeant. Oh aye, what have we got here then?’

A burly PC in high-vis yellow was leading a terrified-looking young guy towards them by his arm.

‘DI Addison. This is Douglas Charlton. He says he drove the car onto the square.’

Dressed in faded denims and a blue waxed jacket, Charlton was in his mid-twenties and looked like he was near to shitting himself and was shaking like a leaf. Surely this guy didn’t have the nerve to pull the trigger or hold it steady long enough to hit a barn door. He was attempting to blurt something out and Addison was trying to calm him down so he could get some sense out of him.

‘I didn’t have any choice,’ he was stammering. ‘No choice.’

His eyes were nervously darting left and right, he was moving from one foot to the other and it was a safe bet that his arse was going like a threepenny sponge.

‘I didn’t have a choice,’ he said again.

‘Aye, we get that,’ said Addison with his usual diplomacy. ‘What didn’t you have any choice about?’

‘He made me drive that van to George Square. Said he would shoot me. Made me drive it the wrong way down the one-way street. Said he would kill me if I didn’t.’

‘Okay, calm down and talk us through it from the top. Where was he? Tell us everything that happened.’

‘I was in Livingstone Tower. You know, the Strathclyde Uni building?’ The student pointed back up George Street where the corner of a high-rise structure could just be seen in the distance.

‘Okay, hang on a second. Was that the last place you saw him?’

‘Yes. He said he’d be watching me from there. Said he’d see.’

‘Inspector Begley!’ Addison roared above the chaos. ‘Livingstone Tower. Get everyone you’ve got there now! Rachel, go with them and make sure they don’t fuck things up.’

The remark got him a sharp look from both Narey – who doubly made up her mind not to tell him about her conversation in the Criterion – and Begley, but their reaction clearly didn’t bother Addison in the slightest.

‘Okay, Mr Charlton, as quickly as you like, tell me the rest of it,’ he said hurriedly.

‘He said he’d see all the way down the street and would know if I stopped,’ the young man continued, almost babbling. ‘Said he could hit anything between there and George Square. I’d been going up to the fifth floor and someone stepped out from the stairwell behind me. I didn’t see him at all. First I knew, what felt awfy like a gun was pushed into my neck and he asked me if I could drive. I said yes and the barrel of this rifle slipped past my ear so I could see it. He dropped keys in front of me, told me there was a white transit parked out front and that I was to get in and drive it to George Square. The one thing I wasn’t to do was look round.

‘I didn’t have any choice, man. He said if I tried to turn off the road or get out then he’d put a bullet through the fuel tank. He was making me go the wrong way on the one-way, said I was to go at full speed with my horn to clear cars out of the way. I was shitting myself. Had to do it.’

‘Aye, okay. Whatever,’ interrupted Addison, turning to the cop that had brought Charlton over. ‘Take him somewhere quiet and get every detail you can. What height did the voice come from, what angle was the rifle barrel at, did he have an accent? Everything. Tony, come with me. We start on the fifth floor and work our way up. That fucker must have left something behind that we can use.’

It turned out that he hadn’t. By the time they got to the tower, Narey had already ordered a floor by floor search and found that a door to an office on the seventh floor had had its lock picked. A window had been left open with a clear line of sight to the smouldering remains of the white van but forensics didn’t fancy their chances of lifting anything worthwhile. There were a hundred and one fingerprints and various hair samples snagged on the back of chairs but they were sure they belonged to anyone but the shooter. The area around the open window was meticulously wiped clean and it looked like he had covered whatever tracks he’d brought into the room. They’d file and test anything and everything but whoever did this knew exactly what he was doing.

So Winter photographed a near-empty office knowing that the scene examiners were right. He also slipped on his biggest zoom and shot the car on the edge of George Square, just as the sniper had done. Easy peasy. One click.

He heard footsteps behind him and looked at the window to see Rachel’s terse reflection looking back at him.

‘What is this guy up to?’ he asked her without looking round, seeing just a shrug of the shoulders in return.

‘He’s taken a van full of coke off those mules,’ he continued. ‘Beaten the shit out of them then shot them as they ran at Harthill. He’s done all that to get hold of that cocaine. And it’s worth how much?’

‘A million is what the drug squad is guessing,’ she answered. ‘Twenty-four kilos, about?40 a gram.’

‘A million quid’s worth of cocaine. He’s driven it into town, forced that poor sap to park the van in the square then blown the whole fucking lot up. He couldn’t have made it more public if he had burned it in the centre circle at Celtic Park on a Champions League night. What’s he up to?’

Narey shrugged again but this time offered up an answer.

‘Whoever he is and whatever he’s doing, he wants to make sure everyone in Glasgow knows about it. Us, the bad guys, the media, Joe Public, the lot.’

‘No such thing as bad publicity?’ Winter suggested lamely.

‘Not buying that,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘He’s not trying to take over the Glasgow trade. If that was his game then he could have flooded the market with this, given it away free to every junkie in the city and put the opposition out of business. This headcase is not trying to become number one. And he is certainly not trying to make money because he’s just smoked a million pounds of it in public.’

‘Well, there’s one thing you can be sure of,’ said a voice from the doorway. It was Addison. ‘The press are going to have a field day with this. Bad enough that he kills gangsters, now he burns seven figures worth of drugs. They are going to make this guy a poster boy for vigilantes.’

Winter couldn’t help thinking that maybe wasn’t such a bad thing but he knew it wasn’t what his pal wanted to hear.

‘So what do you think, Addy?’

‘I think I’m going back over to Harthill to see the Temple and then grab some food before the game tonight. I take it you’re still going?’

‘Well, aye, but are you not going to be a bit busy with that lot out there?’

‘Wee man, you know the score. There’s murders, there’s shootings and there’s the Celtic. Glasgow can manage fine on its own for a couple of hours. This shit isn’t going to get any shittier tonight. Get you in the Oak sometime the back of seven?’

‘No, I’ll see you in the ground. C’mon though, what do you think is going on?’

Addison looked beyond them and through the window to the last flurry of the snow scene on George Square.

‘An hour ago, I didn’t have a clue but now, now I think I might at least know what this fucker is up to.’

‘Care to share?’ Narey asked him.

‘DS Narey!’ Addison replied with a wide grin, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Is my mind playing tricks on me or did we not speak about you working full-time on the Wellington Lane case?’

‘We did, sir. You were very clear on the matter.’

‘Ah, I thought so. So why…’

‘I was in the area, sir. Just passing.’