Craig Robertson - Snapshot

‘Drugs have killed this place. You walk five minutes in any direction from Buchanan Street and all those million-pound shops and you’ll find some poor bastard who barely has the strength to pick up their giro because their body is shot to pieces. You drive five minutes from George Square and you drive past shitholes full of people who never had a fucking chance. You drive fifteen minutes and you hit schemes where those who aren’t on drugs aren’t trusted by anyone else.

‘Do you really think these poor bastards want to spend their lives stealing a fiver from some prick that’s got a fiver more than they have? You really think that girls want to go on the game and blow some fat drunk for a tenner? Think they wanted to grow up and be skanky whores? It’s the fucking drugs and it’s the fucking bastards that push it at them. Of course he should have been proud. He did something when everyone else did fuck all.’

Monteith fell back against the wall, the exertion of his rant leaving him momentarily breathless. Maybe Winter should have known better but he recognized a soft spot when he saw one.

‘Is that why you took over where he left off?’

The cop lifted his head off his chest slowly, his eyes suddenly full of fire. His lip curled back and Winter wished he hadn’t said what he had but that thought was quickly overtaken by pain as Monteith rushed towards him, rifle butt high. He turned his head to the side to avoid the blow but Monteith had fooled him. The kick came to his balls and the pain seared through him like lightning. Winter doubled over as much as the bindings would let him, his balls throbbing and screaming. His eyes watered and he spat out the ache that soured his mouth.

Monteith stood over him, the rifle still clenched between his fists, raising it up and down threateningly but Winter doubted he could hurt him more with the gun than his boot had.

‘I’m telling the fucking story,’ he raged. ‘You just shut up and listen. Just keep your questions to yourself.’

‘Fuck you.’

Monteith giggled at that. An off-the-wall, manic giggle that worried Winter far more than the threat.

‘Listen to the big man. McKendrick did more for this city in a few days than you could do in a lifetime. He took action. He avenged his wee brother and he did so much for this place while he was at it. He had reason to be proud.’

Winter settled for just lifting his eyebrows by way of a question. Monteith was doing fine without prompting. Winter didn’t need any more hurt before the cop did whatever he was going to do.

‘He was more… angry, though. Just very angry,’ Monteith continued. ‘Like he had unfinished business. That bothered him more than the fact that I’d knocked him out and taken his rifle off him. He didn’t seem to give a fuck what happened to him except that it stopped him from doing what he’d planned. He just sat there fuming, ready to rip Monteith’s head off the first chance he got. Like a caged bear. I told him that I didn’t blame him for doing what he’d done but it didn’t wash with him. He just wanted to have a go.

‘He kept going on about his brother. How it was his job to look after Kieran and that he’d let him down. How he’d failed him and how he had to make up for that. The poor bastard had lost it. I think the post-traumatic stress disorder thing from the Navy was only half a lie. If you ask me, he was probably wired to the moon before his brother died and it just pushed him over the edge.

‘I asked him how he knew where to get at Caldwell and Quinn and he was happy to tell me. He roughed up some two-bit dealer, the cunt who sold the gear that killed his brother. Shook him down for every bit of info he had, which was plenty. The guy squealed like a stuck pig, told McKendrick everything he needed to know. Places, likely times, habits. Told him about couriers and their schedules. Told him the entire hierarchy of firms across the city. The lot.

‘Then when he had Strathie and Sturrock, he learned more. Beat the shit out of them until they coughed as well. He felt bad about the old boy Turnbull at the services. Shooting him had been a mistake. Still, it all helped lead him to Haddow and Adamson. Bang bang, another two scumbags down. He had a list, a long list. He had all the stuff that we should have had. But even then we couldn’t have taken these bastards down within the law. He didn’t need to bother about that though.’

Monteith stopped and looked at his watch.

‘So what happened to him?’ Winter asked.

‘It’s time for me to go.’

It wasn’t an answer, it was an aside. Winter decided he was going to push his luck.

‘So what happened to McKendrick’s list?’

Nothing.

‘Did someone decide to finish it for him?’

Monteith looked at Winter blankly before coming over behind him and taking his watch off his wrist. Monteith fished into Winter’s left pocket then his right where he found his mobile phone. Standing up again, he dropped both onto the ground in front of him. He looked Winter in the eye again briefly before stamping on first the watch and then the phone. Both lay in bits.

‘I’ve got work to do,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t miss me too much.’

He turned and closed the door behind him, leaving Winter trussed on the floor next to the rotting corpse of a killer, somewhere deep in the bowels of the city. A key turned in the lock from the outside. A bad day had just got a lot worse.

Winter listened to Monteith’s departing footsteps, trying to work out which way he’d headed so that he’d know if he used the same entrance or a different one. It was hopeless though. He’d no idea if the cop had gone straight out or had done something else first. He’d obviously taken the rifle out of the cupboard with him but if he was going on duty then surely he wouldn’t take it above ground with him. That might mean he had planked it somewhere and then headed in another direction. Although the ‘job’ he had to do might have been something else entirely from police work

Winter hung intently on to the ever-diminishing noise of Monteith’s shoes clacking against the foundations, catching the point where it merged with the sound of the dripping water then was subsumed by it, leaving him alone in the bowels of hell.

He put his head back and screamed silently, roaring nothing at no one. Monteith leaving should have made him feel safer but it did anything but. Bound hand and foot in the half-light from the hurricane lamps, he felt like Jonah in the belly of the whale with another misbegotten soul, the remnants of an earlier meal, lying by his side.

McKendrick was reeking. Winter had been trying to block it out but there was no getting away from it, the body seemed to be getting riper by the minute. It was like a piece of rotting steak meat had been left in the sun for days on end and had been sprinkled with a couple of drops of cheap perfume to make it sweet. Monteith’s speech had taken his mind off it while he was there but now there was nothing else to occupy his mind. It invaded every inch of the cupboard and attacked his nostrils like a snake.

His gag reflex was working overtime and he wasn’t sure how long he could go without chucking up. Once the horror of the smell lodged itself in his brain he could think of nothing else. His cheeks puffed out and he swallowed back down the bile that wanted to escape. He turned his head away from the body in a futile gesture because it was everywhere. The longer he sat there, the more it crept into his clothes, his hair, his skin. He edged away the little he could, shuffling on his arse so he was at least not touching him.

His stomach eventually let him down. He pulled his head to the side as it tightened its grip and he threw up. Fucking great. As if the stench of McKendrick wasn’t bad enough, now he had the smell of vomit to contend with as well. The only consolation was that at least it was his own sick. This didn’t seem much of a comfort as a second belch rose from his stomach and joined the rest. Emptied, he spat the last of it from his mouth.