As people gathered round the bodies, hardly any of them noticed a white transit van driving along the roadway that led to the slip-road onto the M8 towards Glasgow.
CHAPTER 14
As soon as Shirley had given the order, eight officers got to their feet, kicking back chairs and pulling on jackets in their haste to get out. Winter was aware of resentful looks from the cops, Rachel included, that were stuck there while he was on his way to the scene. She fired him a glare that didn’t seem to be in jest and he returned it with a shrug that hopefully said that it wasn’t his fault and she shouldn’t hold it against him. She simply glared at him harder for interacting with her in public and he knew it would be a shag-free zone for him for a while. So be it, he thought, the truth was if it was a straight choice then he’d opt for the chance to photograph whatever it was lay at Harthill. Crazy maybe.
Instead he picked up his camera bag, comforted by the weight that told him everything he was going to need was in there. He hefted it onto one shoulder and his photo documentation kit – with its collection of photo markers; gray, white, black and transparent scales; photomacrographic scales; ruler tape and steel tape measure – onto the other and tagged on to the back of the small scrum that was filing through Stewart Street en route to the car park.
When they got there, the group split into two, Shirley leading one and Addison the other. Addison signalled for Winter to follow him to where his Audi A5 was parked and nodded towards the back. Winter had asked him in the past about why he needed such a flash motor but Addison would just look down at his expensive suit and give a self-satisfied wave of both hands as if to say, ‘Hey, I’m worth it.’
Two other CID officers joined them in the car, Colin Monteith in the front and a sombre-looking blonde woman in the back. Winter had barely closed the door when Addison accelerated away, throwing him back in his seat and scrambling for the safety belt.
‘Colin, you and Tony obviously know each other. DS Jan McConachie, this is Tony Winter. He photographs dead people.’
The blonde cop looked over disinterestedly for a moment before turning her gaze back to whatever she was finding so fascinating out of the window.
‘Okay, here’s what we know,’ Addison said as he pulled out of the gates in second gear, hammering onto Glenmavis Street and towards the motorway. ‘We have three dead at Harthill, two beaten up and shot in the back of the head from a distance, the other shot in the face. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to link them to Quinn and Caldwell. Witnesses told uniform that they saw two of the men running, almost staggering, through the car park on their way to the area with the petrol pumps and the shop.’
‘I take it we don’t have any idea who they are?’ asked McConachie.
‘Nope. Uniform won’t touch them till we get there and Tony photographs them. Once he’s done that we can go through their pockets. They’re looking through the CCTV now though and hopefully they’ll have something to show us by the time we get there.’
‘So what were they running from? Or to?’ asked Monteith. ‘Staggering means they could have been drunk or already hurt?’
‘Hurt,’ replied Addison. ‘One witness reckoned they came from the far end of the services where you come in from the motorway and they had blood on them. Thought they might even have been hit by a car.’
No one had reported an accident. There was no sign of a vehicle abandoned anywhere nearby. The description of the victims rang no bells. If they were drug dealers on the scale of Quinn or Caldwell then they’d have been recognized right away. Forensics was going to examine the bullets for a match to the L115A3 but that would obviously take time. Not that anyone doubted it would prove to be from the same gun. This wasn’t a time to start believing in coincidences.
The cops batted theories back and forth, Addison sure that the dead guys would also be dealers of some stature, Monteith saying he hoped that they were, McConachie saying little. Winter wasn’t involved in any of it though, he was just the hired help along for the ride. It didn’t bother him, he was there and that was all that mattered.
Addison belted along the M8 towards the Heart of Scotland services, his foot to the floor the whole way. He didn’t have a siren on his Audi but didn’t need one, simply overtaking everything in his path. The whole way, Winter’s sgriob was itching like crazy at the thought of the men with the holes in the back of their heads. He closed his eyes and tuned out the chat in the car, seeing the blood, smelling it, almost tasting it. How much of the heads would be left, how much blood, how much of their brains would be spilled over the car park? Focus, check the ambient light, adjust aperture, assess the depth of field, focus, focus, focus . . .
He didn’t open his eyes again till he felt Addison jump on the brakes and bring the car to a sudden halt. He saw the services were flooded with cops, Strathclyde blue everywhere, keeping back the open-mouthed masses. They’d parked up a fair bit away from the main event so as not to pollute the scene and walked to where a group of uniforms stood over what they had all come to see.
Shirley and three others were ahead of them obscuring the view but Winter could still make out a splayed body, blue jeans, a white shirt and a navy jacket, arms wide, cop tape and space marking out where he lay. About twenty yards further on a knot of blue was huddled round another two shapes on the ground. As they walked towards them, officers were being directed back across the car park to search every inch of the route the dead men had taken across the tarmac. Winter’s nostrils twitched and his throat was dry. Game on, he thought.
Shirley beckoned him past, the hired help invited to the party and first to get fed. The sooner he did what was needed then they could get on with the real work, was what they were thinking, but Winter knew what was real and it was just a few feet away. He licked his lips and hoped no one noticed, covering it with a wipe of his hand. As he went to the body, he saw Campbell Baxter glare at him and knew that if looks could kill then he’d be lying on the concrete beside the three stiffs. Baxter was loathing him more with every step. Too bad, thought Winter.
First, he pulled the spherical camera out of the bag to take the 360-degree shots for the Return to Scene programme. They’d been using R2S for a few years now since it was created by the forensic investigation people in Aberdeen. When he got back to the office it would help him set up a virtual crime scene that the officers could add to with audio clips of witness statements, CCTV footage and whatever else might prove useful. Then, once he’d taken in the whole world view, he got out his own camera.
On the first victim he saw brushed navy boots with good, thick soles made for walking and dark denims with knees bent strangely where he’d hit the ground. A white cotton shirt was a good look if you were going to be shot in the head and then photographed.
Blood isn’t red. At least, it isn’t simply red. It is cornelian or vermilion, it’s pillarbox or Venetian, Persian or scarlet. It can be anything from alizarin to carmine depending on the effects of oxygen or carbon dioxide. When you see fresh blood it will be crimson, signifying power and danger, glistening bright with vitality and pumped with oxygen. But let it simmer and watch it turn rosso corso, passing through lust by way of coquelicot.
Winter had never ceased to be amazed at the colour of blood because you never knew quite what you were going to get. See it vivid when the haemoglobin is oxygenated and you will be seeing amaranth, candy apple or American rose. See it dull, listless and dying and it will be sangria, rufous or burgundy. Smell hot firebrick or cool falu. Taste flame-grilled cardinal or coppery upsdell like the tang of two-pence pieces.
The flowing blood of a suicide where someone has cut their own wrists runs dark and gloomy because of the deoxygenated juice that runs through the veins whereas the blood of a victim of cyanide poisoning will be redder than red because the body cannot steal away its oxygen. When you know blood, when you love it, then you can tell lava from ruby, rose madder from coral. You can look at blood and know how long it has been exposed to the air where it cannot breathe,
where it withers and dies like a fish out of water or a rose torn from the ground.
This guy was lying in a pool of sangria. Winter wasn’t sure if that was appropriate or ironic given that the word comes from the Spanish for blood. His was full-bodied Rioja, all smoke and spice and everything that’s nice.
He was in his early thirties with close-cropped hair intended to hide the fact that he was losing it. A scar maybe three inches in length and washed in muted, hour-old firebrick ran down the left-hand side of his face from ear to jawline. His mouth hung open like a rusty hinge, a flycatcher of a mouth, stuck before it could scream. You could almost make out the beginning of the final word that fell on his lips. This was Glasgow, whatever he was about to say it probably began with F.
Winter focused on his head and on the wound, the crater that had been driven through his skull by the sniper’s bullet. Death through a lens. The murky light offered by the September sun lent his photographs a muted hue, casting them drab and downbeat. He fastened on a daylight fill-in flash and lit it in its full glory. Colours flooded the aperture, filling his viewfinder with everything he wanted. He shot, shot and shot.
He couldn’t hear anyone talking. It was Central Station all over again, locked in his own little world of death. He heard blood, pounding in his ears and thumping at his heart. He saw blood, already drying on the man’s face and drenching his long sleeved white. It swam round him like a velvet pillow, soaking up his soul.
His clothes were designer-expensive, the kind of bad taste cool pumped out by Italian designers and worn by overpaid footballers. Mr Hole in his Head flaunted his money, wore it as a badge.
The guy’s face spoke to Winter of a life lived in the scumbag lane. The tanning studio glow and taut skin said nightclub poser. The scar shouted hard man in a hard town. Then there were the wide, cold fish eyes that had learned the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming truck and had screamed for help. His eyes roared fear.
His shirt was opened, ripped open maybe, almost to the waist. This guy had had the shit kicked out of him, with ugly red welts forming on his chest where he had been punched or kicked. He focused in on the marks one by one, all the time a bell going off in the back of his head. Something he’d seen before but couldn’t think what. He also photographed his wrists which were telltale red and scored as if they had been bound tight.
A voice behind him burst his bubble.
‘Done with this one?’
No, he thought. No, I’m fucking well not done. I want to stand here for ever, toe to toe with the eternity that this guy has slipped into, stand here and see if he blinks first. I want to see his soul slip away and his flesh peel.
‘Winter, are you done?’
This time he recognized the voice as being Alex Shirley’s. The detective superintendent sounded testy and impatient. He had to drag his eyes away from the entry wound and remove the scowl from his face before he turned to look at him.
‘Two minutes, sir.’
‘Make it one. I need to find out who these arseholes are.’
He stood back to take a final full-length shot in situ, framing the victim amidst stern-faced polis. He raised his lens slightly and pushed it left, catching a cop looking down at the body with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. Something about the whirr of the motor made the officer turn his head and look at Winter suspiciously but he’d already turned the camera away and blanked his stare. Job done.
Just a few feet away yet a world apart going by his clothes and the Ford Focus was the older man who was sleeping unhappily in a bath of burgundy. Winter guessed he might be in his mid-fifties even though the only clue apart from his clothing was that the man’s hair was flecked in creeping grey. The area formerly occupied by his face was a gory hole of violent carmine, the soft flesh, bone and gristle having been blown away by the sniper’s bullet.
Winter saw sensible, casual brown shoes with soles that would stand up to wet autumn leaves or a rain-soaked garden. He saw dark brown corduroy trousers and a dark-green jumper that emphasised a middle-aged paunch. He saw a father and a grandfather, a hard-working family man, an ordinary man.
That night, someone was going to have to sit down with a wee girl and boy and explain why they wouldn’t see grandpa again. They’d have to try to make a seven-year-old understand how their papa could die when all he was doing was going for petrol.
Still, it was doubtful that they could be more shocked than the ordinary man was. Even without a face, there was no disguising his astonishment. He had fallen back flat with his arms wide, confused, questioning, pleading and utterly lost.
Winter got in close on the faceless face, picking out every detail where the bullet had done such horrendous damage. It was hard to see what had happened to this man as a thing of beauty, by all accounts the wrong man in the wrong place with the wrong people. And with no eyes to reflect his crossing, neither he nor Winter could see where he was going or where he’d been.
Winter stepped back and got both men in the one shot, something that even the sniper had failed to do. Two men whose paths should never have crossed and if there was such thing as a heaven or a hell then surely they’d be going in separate directions.
As he stepped away from the older man’s stricken body and headed towards the third, a slim figure moved past him in the opposite direction. Even in a white scene suit, overshoes, a hood and a mask, Cat Fitzpatrick looked great. He couldn’t see her hair but there was no disguising her green eyes or the curve of her rear. He briefly watched her begin to reach inside the victim’s jacket as requested by Shirley but he had to stop staring, he had another body to look at.
The third victim was twenty paces away, face down in a rufous puddle and clinging onto the concrete for dear death. His white trainers were blood-sticky, as were his faded denims, brown leather jacket and reddish hair. The little brains he once had were sitting in an untidy pile next to him. The guy’s face was squashed to the ground where he lay, making his nose snubbed like a boxer. His eyes were slumped and his jaw slack, giving in to the inevitable and paying no more than passing interest to the dirt beneath him. He wasn’t much more than twenty years old and looked ready to cry for his mammy but for the fact that it was all too late.
He knew what was coming, he must have. He might have heard the shot that killed his mate, heard the scream or the cry and the body hitting the deck. He’d have run faster but there are some things you just can’t outrun. Then bang, his lights would have gone out in an instant and he crossed the line into nothingness. Or somethingness, who knew.
Winter focused on his dull green eyes and tried to capture what he’d last seen. He had the look of someone who had decided none of it had been worth it. He’d made a bad decision the day he’d started getting into cars with the man in the white shirt with the scar on his cheek. His mammy had probably told him that and now he knew she was right. Mammies are always right. Too late to learn that lesson now.
Above him, three cops were chatting, paying little attention to the dead kid at their feet. Seen one body, seen them all. One of the three had obviously cracked a joke and they were barely suppressing grins and one was sniggering. Winter caught a beautiful wide shot with his Canon, the three of them looking one to the other, everywhere except at the body that threatened to dirty their boots. Above them, glowering Scottish clouds, fit to burst, were deciding just when to unleash their load and wash away the blood of the sinner. Drama above and below and couldn’t-give-a-fuck in between. The picture was a winner.
‘Hey. You miss your shot there?’
The accusing voice was from the tallest of the three cops, glaring at Winter, obviously realizing he was in the frame and not best pleased about it. You should show a bit more respect for the dead and you wouldn’t be caught out, Winter thought.
‘Just getting a scale,’ he told him. ‘Need to put everything into perspective.’
‘Aye? Well, get your fucking scale somewhere else or I’ll shove it up your arse. You’re here to photograph
the stiff, stick to that.’
‘Don’t wet yourself. I’m just doing my job and don’t need you to tell me how to do it.’
‘I know what you need, ya cunt, and if there weren’t brass about then you’d be getting it.’
‘Fuck you, Officer. If you . . .’
He wasn’t sure what the rest of that sentence was going to be but he knew it was going to contain a threat he couldn’t back up. So maybe it was just as well that it was cut short by a soft voice just to his right.
‘Behave yourself, Tony. You can’t win that one.’
It had been his turn not to notice what was at his feet. Cat Fitzpatrick had her hands in the pockets of the dead guy’s leather jacket and had found a wallet from which she produced a driving licence. Those eyes, the colour of wet Irish grass, were laughing at him.
‘I took it you were finished since you had the time to play wee boy’s games with the nice constable,’ she said. ‘Okay, I’ve got names for all of them. Come on.’
She stood up and walked a few yards before holding out the licence for Shirley and Addison to see.
‘The old man is called Alasdair Turnbull. And as for these two . . . the brown leather jacket is Mark Sturrock and the first guy, the white shirt, is Stephen Strathie.’
‘Strathie?’ said Addison. ‘Name’s familiar.’
‘Strathie’s a courier, I’m fairly sure of it,’ piped up Jan McConachie. ‘Stevie Strathie. If I’m thinking of the right guy then he runs drugs for Malky Quinn. Or did. Don’t know the other one.’
‘Fucking great,’ replied Addison ironically. ‘Phone it in and have the names run through the computer. Get me everything there is on both of them. Probably a waste of time but get me the licence of any car or van that’s registered in either name too.’
McConachie nodded and pulled out her mobile to contact Divisional HQ.
Snapshot Page 11
