Craig Robertson - Snapshot

He loved what Metinides did and what a photograph could do. A picture painting a thousands words and all that. Recording history, exposing lies, showing life in the raw, witnessing reality, framing the shit and the shitters. But a photograph can do more than that, it can also give up hidden truths.

He didn’t claim that he could do what Metinides could but he was a witness to his bit of the world. There were rules though. Roughly speaking they ran along the lines of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. He was there to observe and to document. Sometimes, though, whether you sought it or not, when you bent down to photograph the gutter, reality crept up and bit you on the arse. Something had nagged away at him from the moment he photographed Stevie Strathie but this was the first chance he’d had to do anything about it.

The A5-sized print that he’d run off showed Strathie lying in his own life spill. And he couldn’t help but be pleased at the way he’d flash-filled it, making his bloodless face contrast with the sangria puddle that lent him an unholy halo. Those shit-scared eyes locked fast in the very moment that he crossed over – seeing his past, his future and nothing at all. He was bloodless and blood, empty and full, life and death. The bastard had made a career out of selling it and now he’d met it face to face.

The mark on the right of his chest was a little more than half an inch wide, maybe two centimetres in new money. It curved as if it would make a complete circle although it only punched a crescent into his chest. There were other distinct marks within it and they looked like they formed some sort of pattern. Winter realized that he’d probably known as soon as he’d seen it, maybe in the back of his mind, but he knew.

He sat the print next to the photograph he’d taken of Rory McCabe, the teenager who’d been battered around the knees with a baseball bat, the photo that hadn’t been worthy of a place on his gallery wall but was now lying on the desk on the other side of the room.

There it was on McCabe’s chest, shown up by the infrared on his IS Pro, a circular bruise the size of a five-pence piece. It also had marks within the circle that Winter hadn’t noticed before. A darker, horizontal indentation that he guessed could have been vertical depending on the angle that it had hit the kid’s chest at. The raised marks caused by the vertical/horizontal feature were maybe three millimetres wide. Same as the mark within Strathie’s crescent.

As per procedure, he’d placed a photo scale at the side of both shots when he’d taken them so that sizes could be accurately measured. He was already sure of the answer he’d get but a quick calculation showed that the two circular marks were identical in size.

Winter breathed hard and thought harder. He wasn’t much for believing in coincidences and Addison had always told him that they were to be trusted as much as a chimpanzee with a tin opener.

Rory McCabe. Stevie Strathie. A victim of neds with a baseball bat. A victim of the Dark Angel.

No doubt about it, he thought to himself. They had got absolutely nothing to do with each other. Move on here, nothing to see. Nothing to tell.

Look but don’t touch. Record but don’t interfere. Observe but don’t violate. Chronicle but don’t contaminate. He focused, he shot, he looked but he wouldn’t tell. Not just yet anyway.

Friday 16 September

The road to hell is also paved with bad intentions. Winter’s mobile rang a few minutes before eight, bringing him crashing out of a deep sleep peppered with dreams of flashbulbs and bodies.

It was Addison. He sounded as rough as a badger’s arse.

‘Drop your cock, pick up your sock and meet me at Glasgow Harbour five minutes ago.’

‘What the hell?’

‘He’s done it again. Two more dead. Glasgow Harbour. Now.’

‘Christ. By the way, that old joke doesn’t work in the singular. It would need to be…’

Addison had already hung up.

Glasgow Harbour is a relatively new residential development on the side of the Clyde, opposite the Govan shipyards. It’s all upmarket, funky and modern, part of the urban waterfront regeneration and sitting in the shadow of the Finnieston Crane, the iconic symbol of the city’s engineering heritage. It maybe wasn’t quite the same as having an apartment on the edge of the Seine but it was nice enough.

You couldn’t argue with the views, remnants of hundreds of years of shipbuilding wherever you looked along with silvery glimpses of new Glasgow in the shape of the Science Tower, the Clyde Auditorium and the Squinty Bridge. And the river itself, wide enough to turn a 150-metre Type 45 destroyer but not as wide as most Glaswegians, stretching away as far as the eye could see.

When Winter arrived at half-past eight, there was a quite different view, the kind that money wouldn’t want to buy. He was looking at two men lying dead either side of a gleaming black BMW, its paintwork daubed in splashes of vermilion. There was a lot more of the stuff on the ground and over the clothes of the two guys that wore it.

Addison, Colin Monteith, Campbell Baxter and his forensics plus a whole bunch of uniforms were already there when he arrived. Tenting was getting assembled and by the look of the skies it was going to be needed. It was going to chuck it down any second.

‘I know this one,’ Addison was muttering, nodding at the man on the left of the car, a heavy-set gorilla, well over six feet tall. ‘Jimmy Adamson. They called him Gee Gee because he was a big punter on the horses. He’s an enforcer for Terry Gilmartin, broke legs for a living.’

The DI was shaking his head and chewing on his lip, obviously not best pleased.

‘He was shot first then the other one,’ he murmured, looking from one body to the other. ‘The second cunt is familiar too.’

‘It’s Andrew Haddow, Gilmartin’s accountant.’

Winter turned to see who belonged to the female voice behind him and saw Jan McConachie glowering out from her white bunny suit and blue overshoes.

‘He kept the books and put Gilmartin’s money in piggy banks from here to the Cayman Islands,’ she added. ‘He also ramped up interest payments on loans owed to Gilmartin and put people in the poorhouse. He was a piece of shit and I hope he burns in hell.’

‘And a good morning to you too, DS McConachie.’

‘Piss off, Inspector.’

‘Someone didn’t get any last night then,’ sneered Addison.

‘With respect, sir, fuck off. For your information, I’ve been taking a statement about one of Caldwell’s dealers, Jake Arnold, they call him Beavis. His people weren’t for saying but I heard he’d disappeared off the face of the earth. Some think he’s done a runner with some of Caldwell’s money but others say he wouldn’t have the bottle. Either way no one knows where he is. Sir.’

The tone was full-on mock sincere, guaranteed to get right up the DI’s nose and it was a dangerous game. Winter recognized that Addison looked like he was suffering a raging hangover but McConachie had gone for it, delivering her information with an exaggerated smile before turning away from him.

‘Right, if you two could just play nice,’ he said, trying to break the tension before anyone else got hurt, ‘I’ve got some photographs to take.’

‘Just get on with it then, camera monkey,’ snarled Addison. ‘Leave the talking to the big boys. And girls,’ he added with a condescending nod to McConachie. ‘Jan, get a best guess out of Two Soups. Don’t take any of his shit, just get an answer on where he thinks the shot came from, and flood the area. I’ve had enough of this cunt. Tony, hurry the fuck up.’

Winter ignored him and turned the lens of his Nikon onto Adamson, lying half on his side and half on his back where the impact of the bullet had sent him spiralling. The man they called Gee Gee had a purplish tinge to his cheeks, a drinker by the look of it as well as a gambler. His fingers also had the telltale orange glow of a smoker. A true Scotsman, not judged by what he wore under his kilt but by how he abused his vital organs. Winter imagined that if he looked in the car there would be half a dozen Scotch pies, some square sausage and a litre of Irn Bru. Breakfast of champions.