Craig Robertson - Snapshot

‘The next thing I was flying through the air away from it. I didn’t know what had happened but I heard the crunch, this terrible, terrible noise… Then she landed on top of me.’

‘Your mother?’

‘Yes. She’d seen me playing outside and had come out to call me back in. When she saw the car about to hit me, she threw herself into its path and pushed me out of the way. She was hit full on the head. I was lying there, her blood dripping onto my face. She died on top of me. I could see the guy get out of the car with his mouth hanging open and neighbours running out, screaming their heads off but I couldn’t hear a thing. All I could feel was her blood hot on my face.’

‘You were in shock,’ Rachel soothed. ‘Tony…’

‘The neighbours eased her off me to see if I was alright. Of course I was. Barely a scratch. I had nothing more than a grazed knee. She… she…’

‘Tony, that wasn’t your-’

‘Oh it was. It was my fault. She’d told me a thousand times but I still did it. If I’d just done what she’d said then she’d have been alive. She didn’t deserve that. I didn’t deserve her.’

A single tear was running down his cheek.

Rachel hugged him fiercely.

‘What about your dad?’ she asked eventually, almost fearful of the answer.

‘He managed to drink himself to death in under four years. Good going, even by Glasgow standards. Can’t blame him. Bad enough that he had lost his wife but he also had to put up with the miserable wee bastard that had killed her. I was greetin’ my eyes out every moment I was awake, which was most of the day and the night. He just couldn’t bear to look at me. Must have driven him crazy. Certainly drove him to drink.

‘He got sacked two years after she went. My uncle Danny says the school was sympathetic but just couldn’t put up with it. He started turning up drunk in class and took a swing at some kid who was winding him up. That was it finished. All it meant was that he had more time to drink.’

‘And who was looking after you?’

‘Him, until it got too bad. Till the whisky and the sight of me had him in the boozer full-time. My auntie and uncle, Janette and Danny, took me off him. Think he was glad. All I ever did was remind him of what he’d lost. His liver packed in. Alcohol hepatitis leading to chronic liver failure. Dead at twenty-nine.’

‘Jesus Christ, Tony. I’m so sorry. Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’

‘Not the easiest thing to tell. Not when it’s your fault.’

‘It wasn’t!’ she insisted, tears soaking his shoulder.

‘Don’t think I haven’t tried telling myself that. Don’t think psychiatrists and psychologists haven’t told me. But it doesn’t change a thing. It was my fault. Killed my mum. Drove my old man to death. Only memories I have of him, he’s unshaven and rough as fuck, shouting at me to shut up. Just made me cry all the more.’

‘So you stayed with your aunt and uncle?’

Winter nodded.

‘Until I was seventeen and got out of there as soon as I could. Went straight to university from fifth year. Janette and Danny were great but I probably drove them daft too. I wasn’t the easiest kid to bring up.’

‘That’s not really surprising, Tony.’

‘Maybe not. But I must have been a pain in the arse. I remember I was in primary three or four and a big black crow was found lying dead in the playground. I think some wee bastard had hit it with a stone. Everyone had gone to look at it, poking it with a stick and turning it over. Everyone else got bored soon enough but I couldn’t stop staring at it. Looking at those empty black eyes and wondering what they could see. Wondering about its soul and its ghost. Wondering where the life inside it had gone to.

‘Guess it made me a weird wee boy. It was just that though, nothing else. Every other way I was the same as the rest of them but I had this wonder about death and it sorted of infected other stuff, made me miserable and lonely.’

‘But that’s not the guy I met,’ she said.

‘University cured me.’ He laughed a bit. ‘I discovered beer and girls and snooker and that life could still be fun. I drank and shagged my way through uni and things looked brighter. I didn’t learn as much about algorithms as I should have done but I learned how to put a face on things. How to stop being the morbid kid.’

‘But it’s still there?’ she asked. It was as much a statement as a question. ‘It’s why you got into this job and why you want to photograph death?’

‘Yep. Still poking the crow with a stick in the playground. Still looking for answers. Trying to make sense of it. Like with Addy. Makes no sense at all.’

She couldn’t help herself.

‘Okay, I’m going to tell you something I probably shouldn’t. And I’m telling you because this isn’t down to you. Not what happened to your mum and dad and not what’s happened to Addison. When we were at Harthill Services, Addy said he didn’t know or recognize Mark Sturrock.’

Winter didn’t want to hear this.

‘And he got phoned by him. So what?’

‘Tony, we know he got phoned by him because the name showed up on his phone. Sturrock’s name and number are in Addison’s phone.’

It hit him like a hammer.

‘Okay, so what does that prove and what are you going to do?’

The blue-and-white police tape went up between them again.

‘Just leave it to us. Let us do our job.’

Winter nodded and let her hold him but he didn’t mean it. He didn’t mean it at all. For a start, she’d been wrong. What happened to Addison was down to him. Unlike with his mother though, it wasn’t what he did but what he didn’t do. Now it was down to him to put it right.

Rachel was thinking hard, trying to decide if one more thing was better out in the open. She resolved that it was.

‘Tony, there’s something else.’

He heard the waver in her voice.

‘What is it?’

‘I wasn’t going to… but I can’t… I have to tell you. Those phones that the shooter took off Strathie and Sturrock…’

‘Go on.’

She was struggling.

‘As I said, Addy and Jan McConachie, it seems certain their names were listed as phone contacts.’

‘Means nothing.’

‘Tony, it means everything. Listen to me. It was why they got shot. It’s obvious. And…’

She left a chasm of silence as she tried to force out the words that were stuck in her throat. She finally managed it.

‘Tony, I’m scared.’

‘You’re scaring me too,’ he told her. ‘What is it? Tell me.’

Rachel put the palms of her hands to her forehead and clamped her eyes shut.

‘A couple of years back I caught Mark Sturrock with gear in his car. It was small beer stuff compared with what we knew he usually ran. It wouldn’t have been enough to put him away for serious time but it would have blotted his copybook big time with Malky Quinn. It gave me leverage with him.’

Winter said nothing but could feel the fear growing inside him as he watched her speak behind hands that trembled ever so slightly.

‘So I suggested to him that I could make the possession go away if he was prepared to co-operate. He was. He gave me enough information that I was able to bust a bigger deal. Terry Gilmartin had a lorry-load of skunk coming up from Manchester and thanks to Sturrock we intercepted it. So much for honour among thieves.’

Winter’s heart was thumping in his chest and his mouth was dry. He didn’t want to hear any more of this.

‘Jesus Christ, Rach. Why didn’t you tell me this after Harthill?’ he asked. ‘Have you told Shirley about it?’

She shook her head and continued.

‘So after that, Sturrock and I had a quiet little arrangement. He knew that if I could nail him for something major then I would. No question. But if it was small stuff then I’d let it slide as long as he would help the police with their enquiries.’