Craig Robertson - Snapshot

‘You don’t know? She’s your girlfriend, right?’

‘None of your fucking business. I’m saying nothing.’

‘And she’s the mother of your daughter, right?’

Anger flashed across his features.

‘Leave my daughter out of this. Out of this!’

‘When did you last see Una?’ Narey persisted.

‘I don’t know. A week ago. Just piss off.’

‘When would that be then? Last Friday? Last Saturday?’

‘Saturday maybe. I don’t remember.’

‘Long time to go without seeing your girlfriend, isn’t it?’

‘She’s a crackhead. She doesn’t know where she is half the time so how am I expected to know?’

‘Long time for your daughter to go without seeing her mother.’

Breslin’s anger flared again and Narey could see his weak spot.

‘Seems to me you don’t care much about that wee girl if you don’t even care where her mother is.’

‘Don’t talk to me about my daughter. I love her, right? You know nothing.’

‘So where is she then? We know she’s not with her mother and we know she’s not in your flat.’

‘She’s with my mother, okay? Fuck all to do with you but she’s with my maw. Leave her out of this. Nothing to do with that skank and fuck all to do with you.’

A vein was pumping furiously on Breslin’s forehead and his anger was ready to boil over. There were one or two more buttons to be pressed though and Narey had her finger poised.

‘See, that’s interesting. That poor girl. An addict for a mother and a violent dealer for a father. I am sure Social Services would be very interested to hear that. What would you say are the chances of them being allowed to keep that child, DC Corrieri?’

‘Roughly zero,’ Corrieri answered impassively.

‘Fuck off,’ Beslin roared.

‘We have a duty to report it,’ Narey continued. ‘Then it’s out of our hands.’

‘You fucking bitch! What do you want?’

‘I want to know when you last saw Una. And I want to know where you were on Saturday night.’

Breslin screwed his eyes tightly shut and let rip a silent scream of frustration.

‘I told you. Saw her last Saturday. She was going out to work.’

‘To work?’ Narey mocked. ‘Okay. So what did you do when she went to work? Did you follow her, make sure she wasn’t pocketing some of the cash that you wanted for yourself?’

‘No.’

‘And you didn’t wonder where she was all that time?’

Breslin shrugged.

‘Did you wonder?’ Narey repeated.

‘She wandered off sometimes,’ he replied. ‘Got off her face in some shithole with some dirty crackhead or other but she always came crawling back for the T-Bone.’

Narey shook her head at him.

‘But she didn’t come crawling back this time, did she?’

With that, she lifted a photograph off the table and turned it over, shoving it in Breslin’s face.

It showed Melanie lying half-naked on the ground with the life choked out of her.

Breslin flinched. Narey couldn’t quite be sure if it was shock at the realization that the girl was dead or at seeing what he’d done. Maybe it was both, the possibility that he had left her there thinking she was alive and would come ‘crawling back’ in her own good time. Either way, shock was all over Breslin’s face until he reined it back into its customary snarl.

‘Where were you last Saturday night around midnight?’ Narey asked him.

‘That’s nothing to do with me,’ he answered, pointing to the photo.

‘Where were you? Last Saturday at midnight?’

‘I didn’t do that. No way you can pin that on me. That slag worked the streets. Any fucker could have done that to her.’

‘I’m sorry for your loss, Breslin. Your anguish is so touching. Once again, where were you on Saturday night?’

‘I was with someone. She can prove that.’

‘Who?’

‘A friend,’ he sneered with a grin that Narey itched to smash off his face.

‘Name?’

‘Suzanne Wright. I was with her all night.’

‘All night?’

He grinned again.

‘All night. They don’t call me T-Bone for nothing. You should try some, bitch.’

‘No thanks. I’d rather stay disease-free if it’s all the same to you. Give us an address for this young “lady”. And you are going nowhere till we check it out.’

‘Oh it’ll check out okay. Suzy’s not going to forget a night with the T-Bone. I’ll be out of here by lunchtime.’

The fear ran through Narey that he would be. If the girl that he had lined up as an alibi said she was with him then he’d be walking free unless they could prove she was lying.

‘Take this piece of shit out of my sight and put him in a cell,’ she muttered to the uniforms waiting at the door. ‘We’ll be seeing him again soon enough. Oh, and Tommy?’

‘Yeah?’ he grinned.

‘I’m just off to make that call to Social Services. Your “maw” isn’t going to be looking after your kid for much longer.’

‘You fucking bitch,’ he screamed, getting to his feet and viciously kicking over the table. ‘I told you what you wanted to know! You can’t do that!’

‘Watch me. Get him the fuck out of here.’

Suzanne Wright, the girl that Tommy Breslin was using as an alibi, also lived in Summerston, just a few streets away from the man that called himself T-Bone. Narey had made sure that Breslin’s one phone call wasn’t to her and was now standing impatiently on Wright’s doorstep in a block of flats in Torrin Road near John Paul Academy. She’d left Julia Corrieri behind in Stewart Street to search the PNC for Una and so had Constable Sandy Murray in tow.

On the third knock, Wright finally wrestled herself away from daytime TV and pulled the door open just enough on the chain to see who her unwelcome visitor was. One look was all she needed to make Narey for a cop and the chain stayed in place.

‘Whit?’

‘Suzanne Wright?’ Narey asked of the pale face below the tousled mop of dyed blonde hair.

‘Naw.’

‘Funny, it’s your name on the door.’

‘Aye, okay. What do you want?’

Narey held up her warrant card.

‘Police. Can we come in?’

The girl exhaled heavily and slid back the chain, huffily edging the door open for the DS and the constable to enter the flat. A television blared in one corner of the poky living room showing one of the mid-morning confrontation programmes that Narey hated but occasionally watched in guilty secret. Narey picked up the remote control and lowered the volume before placing it back next to Wright.

She was in her mid-twenties and wore a short denim skirt over bare legs and a halterneck top that showed off her cleavage. Dumping herself in an armchair without bothering to offer a seat to the police, she seemed utterly unfazed by their presence and Narey guessed it wasn’t the first time that cops had knocked at her door. The girl picked up the cigarette that had been smouldering in an ashtray on the chair’s arm and began drawing on it.

‘You live here alone, Suzanne?’ Narey asked, looking around the room.

‘Yeah. Just me,’ she replied with as much defiance as suspicion.

‘You ever have friends staying over?’

‘What is this? You’re a detective sergeant, right? You’re not here about whether I’m entitled to my single person’s discount on the council tax.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Narey conceded. ‘Do you know Thomas Breslin?’

A frown flickered over Wright’s face but she quickly covered it with a heavy drag on her cigarette. By the time she exhaled, there was nothing to read on her face.

‘Yeah, I know him. Why?’

‘Stay the night sometimes, does he?’

‘What’s that got to do with you?’ Wright challenged her. ‘Not getting enough of your own that you have to stick your nose into other people’s sex lives?’