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&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&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&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.
Inside, a nurse directed him to a curtained-off bed and he pulled back the screens to get a reproachful look from a bald surgeon in green scrubs who, along with a plump blonde nurse, was standing over the teenager in the bed. Winter just gave him a shrug in return and the surgeon shook his head before slipping through the curtain and letting him get on with it. The nurse, Karen according to her name tag, stayed.
Rory McCabe was a big lad for his age but soft with it. A tousled mop of reddish hair fringed his eyes and he’d barely begun shaving. Most local kids his age were seventeen going on thirty-seven but this one didn’t have the hard-edged look that they wore. He looked a stranger to Buckfast and baseball bats. Well, except the one that had wrecked his knee.
Narey said his mum and dad had sworn blind that Rory had never been in any bother but then lots of parents don’t have the first clue what their kids get up to. Winter was inclined to think the McCabes might be right though. No scars, no tattoos, no ned hair cut, no missing teeth, no needle marks. Just a busted knee, a big purple bruise on his jaw and a rash of skin torn off his face, presumably where he fell.
It seemed standard practice. Teenager gets the shit kicked out of him and he remembers nothing. No names, no pack drill. Cops take notes then close the book and the case. Next.
Rory was wearing a gown open to the waist and pulled off one shoulder, which was already bandaged and strapped to his side, his left leg hoisted up in a pulley. He looked at Winter but seemed far more interested in the pain that was coming from his knee. Aye, that knee, it was quite a sight. His amateur physiology said displaced patella and a severe haematoma. In new money, that’s a broken kneecap and badly swollen knee. Winter knew there were three bones that made up the knee joint – the patella and two others that he couldn’t remember. The odd, awkward angles pushing angrily at the skin around the knee suggested that all three of them were fucked. Someone had made a very good job of this.
There was already violent bruising colouring the sides of the knee; it was now blood-red and would turn purple then black before long. It had ballooned up to nearly the size of a football and looked ready to pop. The docs would be draining that soon to ease the pain but he had to do his stuff first. It was the same old routine. On the outside chance that anyone was nicked for it then the extent of the boy’s injuries would need to be shown in court so that the sheriff could decide between a smack on the wrist or a really stern telling-off.
Winter snapped off a photo without asking, catching the boy off guard. McCabe turned and just looked at him. Sullen. Glowering. Dour. Unsure. Resentful. Lost.
‘Awrite, Rory? My name’s Tony. I’ve got to take your photie.’
‘So I see,’ he muttered.
‘What happened to you anyway?’ he chanced. No harm in keeping in Narey’s good books if he did let something slip.
McCabe spat out the words. ‘Don’t know. No idea. Leave me alone.’
His mouth said no but his eyes said no way. The boy was scared shitless.
‘Fair enough,’ Winter said. ‘I’ll just do my job and leave you in peace. Couple of those nurses look pretty hot, eh?’
That gained him a sheepish smile from Nurse Karen but no reaction from the boy beyond a grimace. He guessed that was down to the pain in his patella rather than a lack of interest in the nursing staff. No problem, wee man. I’ll stick to the photographs and you stick to your story, he thought. See where that gets either of us.
This wouldn’t be a pic for Winter’s collection, too run of the mill. Something didn’t quite fit either because the scared rabbit look on McCabe’s face wasn’t right either. He’d seen more than enough of these kids and he would have expected angry and vengeful. The full-on, rebel-without-a-cause, going-to-get-my-mates-to-break-some-legs kind of angry. Not this; it was all a bit pitiful.
Winter shot the knee from every angle, seeing the bones that threatened to poke through the skin, closing in on the bruises and the distortions of the joint.
Next he pulled the Fuji IS Pro from the bag, a dedicated ultraviolet infrared camera that can pick up bruising that’s invisible to the eye. It wasn’t needed to see the mess round his knee but you never knew what else was hidden away. Winter took a shot of Rory’s face and chest too and sure enough there was a contusion on the right-hand side of the teenager’s chest that couldn’t have been seen without the filters.
Enough was enough. He was in no hurry to get back to the lab but what more could he do?
‘You take it easy, Rory,’ he told him. ‘Don’t go running after those nurses mind, let them chase you.’
The boy glared at him.
‘Fuck off.’
Winter got the feeling it was maybe the first time Rory had ever told anyone that. The blonde nurse scowled at him as well; it looked like he’d overstayed his welcome. As Tony pushed his way through the door out of the ward, he saw the close-cropped brick shithouse guy get to his feet and make for a water dispenser on the other side of the room. It took him within a couple of feet of Winter and the photographer had no doubt that it was deliberate. The guy was aged about twenty and looked like he could handle himself – and wanted Winter to know it.
‘You alright?’ Winter asked him when the man was almost in his face.
‘What’s it got to do with you?’ he growled back. ‘What’s your problem?’
‘No problem, none at all,’ Winter replied, without breaking his stride.
‘Keep it that way,’ said the voice at his back.
Fucking Glasgow, Winter thought. Every conversation is a confrontation. He sighed, realizing that he was on his way back to Pitt Street with as much admin to do as he had started the day with; a fresh bunch of photographs to file and precisely none that were worthy of a place in his collection. A pint of Guinness was sounding like a better idea with every passing step.
He didn’t know if it was intuition or some sense of being watched but Winter turned at the end of the corridor and looked back towards the door to the ward to see the tall, muscle-bound guy glaring at him from the other side of the glass.
CHAPTER 5
Monday 12 September
A day after being in the red-light district, Rachel was back there again. She had ditched the rookie constable and instead had DC Julia Corrieri in tow again, heading for the Wish drop-in centre in York Street. Narey had explained that that was where her contact worked and was currently their best chance of finding out the name of the murdered prostitute.
Corrieri was a tall, angular woman in her early twenties with a mop of dark hair and an uncoordinated air about her. Narey knew that she was smart enough but wasn’t convinced that she always knew what day it was. The DS had been allocated the job of big sister and it was already proving a tiresome task.
Corrieri had spent the previous day going through the PNC as Addison had directed in the hope of finding a record of something similar to the killer’s act of trying to wipe away the hooker’s make-up but had come up empty-handed. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. In her determination to be thorough and her fear of missing something, she had produced a long list of weird offender fetishes including ear biting, house cleaning and tampon theft. All of which she handed over with an endearing solemnity that made Narey want to both hug her and slap her.
York Street was in the south-west area of the city centre, connecting Argyle Street to the Broomielaw, and only a few hundred yards from where the hooker was killed in Wellington Lane. Wish occupied the street level of a formerly imposing row of Georgian buildings but now the upper floors were largely deserted and the drop-in centre was squeezed between a Cantonese restaurant and a boarded-up shop. The place provided support and health care to the sex workers and had done for nearly twenty years. Cops weren’t exactly welcomed in with open arms but the people that ran Wish knew that they were basically on their side.
A few yards away from it, Narey stopped and explained a few dos and donts to Corrieri before they went in.
‘Let me do the talking, particularly at first, but feel free to chip in later. If any of the working girls are in then don’t stare at them, for God’s sake. They are bound to have heard about the girl on Wellington Lane and will probably be shaken up as it is without us blundering in. We don’t talk to them without the centre’s say-so. Just treat them with a bit of respect. They are all on the game but they are still women, remember that.’
Corrieri nodded earnestly and followed the DS inside.
A couple of young women who were drinking steaming cups of tea immediately turned their backs when the officers came through the door. Their movement caused a weary laugh from a middle-aged woman sitting behind a desk facing the door.
‘Jeezus, we aren’t getting many clients as it is without Cagney and Lacey coming in to scare them away. How are you, Rachel?’
Joanne Samuels was originally from Newcastle and had worked at Wish since it opened in 1992, working her way up from shoulder to cry on and chief tea maker to running the place. The centre itself had moved a good few times as leases ran out and rents rose when the red-light district became the international financial district. Samuels was a plump, pleasant woman in her mid-fifties who always had a kindly smile and a waspish sense of humour no matter what tales of horror were heard behind the door.
‘I’m doing okay, Joanne, how are you? Cagney and Lacey? Christ, you are showing your age.’
‘Hard to hide it, pet,’ the woman laughed, pulling a hand across the greying locks that were pulled back into a fat bun behind her head.
‘Away with you,’ Narey said. ‘Joanne, this is Julia Corrieri.’
Narey had instinctively not used Corrieri’s rank but there was no way that anyone would have taken them for anything other than police.
‘Nice to meet you, Julia. I take it you’re here about Melanie.’
Narey’s heart skipped a beat at the fact that Joanne knew the girl’s name.
‘You knew her then?’
Joanne shook her head sadly, a stray strand of hair flicking across her face.
‘No, I didn’t. But she is obviously the talk of the steamie around here. She didn’t come into Wish but a couple of the girls that do have put a name to her. It’ll be her working name, mind, I don’t have a real one for you.’
Narey’s heart sank again, even though she knew she ought to have expected it.
‘I was hoping you’d have something,’ she admitted.
‘Very little,’ the woman conceded. ‘She was a local girl but she didn’t appear to want any help from us. She seemed to think she was getting all the help she needed from somewhere else, if you get my drift.’
Narey thought that she did.
‘Okay, so have you heard the women talking about anyone particularly violent recently? Someone that might be capable of this?’
‘No, just the usual collection of bastards that want to use them as punch-bags and the ones who don’t think twice about giving them a kicking to get a refund. Not that they’re all like that. Some of them treat it the same way as going into a shop and buying a new pair of shoes. The thing is, Rachel, we don’t have the same handle on it as we used to simply because there are less of them working down here now. Between mobile phones and websites, sex isn’t bought the way it was before. More and more of it is taking place indoors after a quick finger shuffle through the internet.’
‘That’s a good thing though, surely?’ Narey asked. ‘If the girls aren’t on the streets.’
Joanne’s mouth became very small as she lowered her head and shook it.
‘Nope. I can see why you’d think so but no. When they all worked the old red-light district down here then we knew where they were and they knew where we were. Now they are all over the shop and we might only see a handful of girls in a night. These women are vulnerable. We want them out of sex work altogether, not just off the street.
‘The ones who are still working round here are usually the ones who don’t have whatever it takes to organize themselves with a phone or a bloody website. The addicts. Their lives are in complete disarray and arming themselves with a sim card or hitching up their skirts to Google is beyond them.’
‘That what Melanie was then? An addict?’ Narey asked the question, already sure of the answer.
Joanne gave a brisk nod.
‘From what I’m told, yes. Big time. I’d have been sure of it anyway but the few girls that knew her said she had a very heavy crack habit. It’s par for the course, whatever any woman’s reason for getting into
prostitution – whether it’s to feed a habit or feed their child – drug use spirals once they are involved. That’s simply a fact.’
Narey looked towards Corrieri, encouraging her to get involved in the conversation. Willing as ever, Corrieri nervously took up the invitation.
‘Yes,’ she butted in. ‘I read a survey saying that there were a thousand women on the game in Glasgow and that 950 of them were drug users.’
Corrieri immediately saw Joanne’s eyebrows shoot up and a look of disapproval cross her face.
‘But,’ Corrieri continued hastily, ‘even if they are on the game, they are still women. We must remember that.’
‘Jeezus Christ, where do you get them, Rachel? Listen, young lady,’ she shouted at Corrieri. ‘That is a phrase that’s always got on my tits. The Game. It’s not a fucking game. Tiddlywinks is a game, croquet is a game, hide-and-seek is a game. These women face violent attacks, rapes and robberies at the hands of punters every day of their working lives. That’s why our efforts are all put into getting them the fuck out of this “game”.’
Julia turned a despairing glance towards Narey who gave her a supportive look to suggest that it was okay and that she would sort it.
‘We know that they face these dangers, Joanne. That’s why we’re here. The women that knew Melanie, can you give me their names?’ she asked.
‘What? Sorry, no. You know how it is, Rachel. They talk to me in confidence and they’re not going to keep doing that if I run off to the cops with whatever they tell me.’
The anger was clear in Samuels’s voice, years of hard work taking their toll on her good humour.
‘All I know is that the women who knew her were in here in tears,’ she continued testily. ‘From what I could make out they weren’t particularly friendly with Melanie but when there’s an attack then it scares the shit out of the lot of them. All I can tell you is that they say she was a proper looker before the crack got to her and that she had a room in a flat in Maryhill, although my guess is she is the kind who would be moving around on a regular basis. Oh, and there was talk of a heavy-handed boyfriend. That’s it.’
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