Craig Robertson - Snapshot

Winter knew he didn’t have too much room to complain on that front though because at least the previous Chief Constable had sense enough to value what he did, and didn’t kick him into touch with the rest of the snappers. Of course it hadn’t hurt that Sir Ed Walker was a camera buff and appreciated the finer points of agitation and hyperfocal distance. Nor did it do any harm when Winter made a first-class job of the Chief’s official photo for the Pitt Street reception wall and did a freebie family portrait of him with the wife and kids. Even when natural wastage and the ravages of Inhuman Resources took their toll on the force’s photographers, Walker ruled that someone should be kept on for specialist purposes. Winter was the cockroach that survived the nuclear holocaust.

Being the exception didn’t endear Winter to everyone but that was hardly his problem. Two Soups could moan all he liked about wanting to standardize the department but Winter’s work spoke for itself and there was nothing he could do about it. The new chief, Grant Gordon, was happy enough with the arrangement.

The only other proper snapper left in the west was an old-timer named Barrie Marshall who worked out of Argyll, Bute and West Dunbartonshire, covering everything from the edge of civilization to the islands and southern teuchterland. He’d been in with the bricks so long that HR seemed to have forgotten he was there so he’d also managed to escape the cull and spent his days happily photographing ransacked birds’ nests and break-ins at distilleries. Not that that would have worked for Winter; he needed more.

He needed more than Sammy Ross too. It had been dull fare spending forty-five minutes filing every available bit of information they had on him. Twenty-two photographs from twenty-two angles and distances, every curl of skin, every tear of tissue, every bruise, entry point, exit wound and expression. It was all pretty mundane stuff.

Only the disappointed look on Sammy’s face was of real interest on the basis that a glimpse into eternity is always worthwhile. Back in the day they believed you could see the reflection of the killer in the eyes of a murder victim. Of course it sounded bollocks but maybe no more ridiculous than Winter thinking he could see death through a lens. Look into the eyes of any of Glasgow’s victims and you’ll be staring into the same deep pool of murky darkness that Winter saw in the drug dealer’s pupils. All the very same shade of black.

The phone mercifully rang and he found himself wishing for a bit of murder, mayhem or carnage. Maybe a nice shooting. Whatever it was, he wasn’t for sharing it.

Two minutes later the phone was back on the hook and he was shutting down his PC. It wasn’t great but at least it was getting him out of there. A seventeen-year-old kid had been beaten up and one knee trashed with a baseball bat. The teenager was now holed up in the Royal where the cops were about to interview him.

The Infirmary was a mile away across the city centre so he had the choice of taking twenty minutes to walk there from Pitt Street or nineteen minutes to drive. He’d drive.

Glasgow Royal is like so many of the city’s hospitals. A two-hundred-year old maze that costs a fortune to heat and to repair. Next to no parking, under-staffed and under-funded, over-used and always in the crosshairs of the bean-counters’ sniper. It sits on the north-eastern edge of the city and has been on the same spot near Glasgow Cathedral and the Necropolis since George III was barking mad on the throne of the Empire and Glasgow was its second city. Which was about the last time the Royal had a lick of fresh paint.

Millions of Glaswegians had been born there, died there, broken and mended there. It had seen more blood and guts than World War One and bits of it looked like they had been patched up with a bicycle repair kit. Over the years they’d torn down blocks, tagged on new buildings and added to it when they could and where they had to. New building here, maternity division there and plastic surgery unit somewhere else. It was an amazing building, architecturally stunning in parts and ugly blocks in others, so much more than the sum of its parts.

It was the nature of the job and the city that Winter found himself in there much more than he’d like. Saturday night, Sunday morning in a city like Glasgow was odds on that someone got an injury that was going to end up in court and needed photographing. It wasn’t the same thing as getting them at the scene, nothing like it, but it paid the bills.

It meant Winter knew his way round the labyrinth well enough, particularly around A amp;E, and there were a few doctors and nurses that he was on nodding terms with. Truth be told, there were a couple of nurses that he’d done more than nod to in the past but that was another story.

He’d just turned into the corridor leading to A amp;E when he saw two cops coming the other way. Detective Sergeant Rachel Narey and a young uniformed constable. Well, well.

Narey was looking good. Her dark hair was tied back and shining, her trim figure filling the dark suit and white blouse rather nicely indeed. No matter how businesslike she aimed for, this girl couldn’t help but look sexy. Winter didn’t know the constable but he looked like he was straight out of the cop college at Tulliallan. He also looked like he might have a sex wee just looking at Narey.

‘You here for Rory McCabe?’ Narey asked by way of a hello.

‘Sure am,’ Winter replied with a smile. ‘What’s the script? I just got a few details on the phone and headed over.’

‘Seventeen-year-old from Dennistoun. Found by two of his mates, screaming his lungs out in the middle of Craigpark Drive with a busted knee. They couldn’t get a car to stop so they picked him up and carried him here. McCabe’s saying nothing other than he’s no idea who did it or why. Lying little shite. He’s scared out of his mind and he knows a lot more about who did it than he’s letting on.’

‘Didn’t think they would send a DS for this,’ he teased her.

She scowled at him but her brown eyes flashed.

‘Yeah, it’s not like I don’t have enough on my plate today but this falls under the Chief Constable’s pet project. Gordon wants us to come down heavy on gang stuff at the moment so here I am.’

‘That what it is, gang stuff?’

‘Looks that way but it’s usually knives with that lot. Baseball bats are more a big boy’s way of doing things. But like I said, the wee bastard isn’t saying. We’ve spoken to his parents and they swear blind he isn’t involved with any gangs. Was at college and had been looking to go on to uni. He’ll be hobbling there now.’

‘What’s the damage?’

‘Left knee smashed to bits. Taken a whack to the face as well and his arm’s nearly been twisted out the socket. They’ve got him on morphine for the pain.’

‘Nice.’

‘We’re going to let him stew and maybe talk to him tomorrow. Maybe. I’ve got some proper work to be getting on with. Your pal Addison has got me trying to put a name to a girl who doesn’t seem to have one, so that is going to take priority. Happy days.’

‘The girl that was found in Wellington Lane?’

Narey narrowed her eyes at him curiously but didn’t bite.

‘Happy photographing, Mr Winter.’

With that the DS and the young PC, who hadn’t said a word the whole time but just made puppy eyes at Narey, headed towards the exit and Winter headed into A amp;E. In the family waiting area outside, he locked eyes with a young muscular guy with close-cropped hair and got an angry glare for his trouble. He had no idea what the guy’s problem was but given that he was about six foot two and built like a brick shithouse, Winter wasn’t about to start arguing with him.