The Photographer

by Craig Robertson

  He had leads and half leads and sometimes nothing but hope. He had faces without names, victims without a crime and a criminal but no complainants. He had needles but that didn’t make the haystack any smaller.

  Above all, he had faces. So many faces.

  He was staring now at one that had bothered him from the start. He thought he’d seen her somewhere before all this started but had been seeing all of them in his sleep so couldn’t be certain of anything.

  The rather sad looking brunette under his finger had only been photographed three times and didn’t make the most-wanted list. However, he’d move anyone up who he thought offered a chance of a breakthrough.

  She was walking towards the camera in one photo, head slightly down, her expression thoughtful. The composition was bang on, the woman front and centre, suggesting there had been time and privacy to frame it. It also meant Winter couldn’t tell where it had been taken because it had closed in on her, just half bodies of other shoppers around her. In another, she was feeding a parking meter with Hope Street sloping away beneath her. In the third, she was just a few feet away from the camera and the photographer, sitting at one of the ad hoc pavement restaurants set up on Sauchiehall Street in the summer months.

  Had he seen her before all this kicked off? She might just be someone he’d met in a bar or passed in the street but he didn’t think so. She had mileage in her, he was sure of that. Either way, he needed to know who she was before it drove him crazy.

  He picked up the print and found a space on the board. So, what was her name?

  Mystery Maggie. No. Maggie May. She may be someone he’d seen. She may be a complete red herring. But she wasn’t. He felt it.

  He stared hard, forehead creased. Oh Maggie. He wished he’d never seen her face.

  CHAPTER 30

  Lainey left Winter’s temporary office on Dumbarton Road and made her way towards where she’d parked on Partick Bridge Street. She’d gone just a few yards when a car pulled up alongside her and the passenger door popped open.

  The action made Lainey stop in her tracks and she started to edge away from the kerb, ready to flee. A voice emerged from the car, just familiar enough to stop her from running.

  ‘Lainey, get in.’

  A head ducked down and towards her. Lainey was both relieved and startled to see Narey looking out at her.

  ‘I said, get in.’

  She reluctantly slid into the passenger seat and closed the door behind her, resisting the instinctive move to pull her seatbelt on.

  ‘What is this? I’ve got my car round the corner. I don’t need a lift.’

  ‘I know where your car is, Lainey. I’ve been waiting for you to finish your meeting so we can have a little chat.’

  Lainey’s eyes widened. ‘You want me to tell you about what we found out. Me and your husband? Because—’

  ‘No!’ Narey interrupted her firmly. ‘That’s precisely what I don’t want to hear. You deal with him. I can’t have anything to do with it.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Narey turned to look at her, held her gaze just long enough to make her uncomfortable, then drove off. ‘I think you know, Lainey.’

  That provoked an awkward silence that Narey enjoyed as she negotiated the car back onto Dumbarton Road, heading east. A young ned with platinum hair dashed out in front of the car and across the road, causing her to brake and jangling Lainey’s nerves even further.

  ‘What do you mean, you think I know. Know what?’

  Narey drove on, saying nothing until she ran into a queue of traffic.

  ‘About you and Leah.’

  She heard Lainey swallow hard.

  ‘What do you mean, me and Leah?’

  Narey laughed. ‘I’ve got a tankful of petrol and a tankful of time. You can keep saying “what do you mean” but I’ll still be driving. Why don’t you just tell me?’

  ‘Is this a kidnapping?’ Lainey was more defiant now. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you’re getting at?’

  Narey took a glance in her rear-view mirror. ‘Okay, let’s do that.’

  She stood on her brakes, throwing Lainey back in her seat, and switched off the engine, switching on her hazard lights and letting them throb. There was an immediate angry blare from the car behind and then others as the traffic ground to a halt.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Lainey, I’m telling you what I’m getting at. And we’re staying right here till I’ve done it.’

  The car horns were an orchestra, blasting their fury. Narey ignored them.

  ‘You and Leah. You haven’t been honest with me, have you?’

  ‘I don’t know what—’

  ‘Don’t bother.’ Narey was looking straight ahead, confident enough not to need to look at the expression on Lainey’s face. ‘You do know what. You know exactly what. I get why you kept it secret and I’ve got a fair idea of what your excuses will be for not telling me but the game’s changed, Lainey. You’ve got to know that.’

  A couple of cars had managed to manoeuvre their way around them, fingers gesturing and faces screaming. Two guys on the pavement outside the Lismore were shouting at them and one had come over to stick his head to the windscreen to see what eejits had decided to just stop in the middle of the road.

  Narey turned and looked straight at Lainey, seeing her discomfort as she reeled from the anger around them.

  ‘You’re Leah’s counsellor, aren’t you?’

  Lainey’s mouth opened and got stuck.

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  A man was slapping his hand against the windscreen, suggesting that maybe they should move.

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes!’ Lainey snapped. ‘Yes! Can we move now? Drive, please!’

  Narey didn’t budge. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘It’s none of your business. It’s no one’s business. This kind of counselling is extremely personal. It’s private.’

  She nodded. ‘I thought you might say that. But it’s not the whole truth, is it Lainey? You made out you didn’t even know Leah. You pretended in court you were strangers. Why?’

  Another car slid past them, just avoiding a bus coming the other way.

  ‘I didn’t want you to know. What Leah tells me is confidential. I didn’t want you pressurising me to tell you anything. How did you know, anyway? For Christsake can we drive? Please.’

  Narey calmly switched off her hazards and started the engine, driving off slowly and oblivious to the jeers and shouts.

  ‘How did you know? No one is supposed to know.’

  ‘I’m a bit suspicious about coincidences. That’s my job. I think I’d suspected for a while but when I put Tony in touch with you, I realised I didn’t know where you lived. It took me five minutes to find you lived in Broomhill. Near Kothel. It took me another few seconds to put that together with the victim in your file, Hayley, that you clearly knew well but had so few notes about. Same story as Leah’s just with some details missing. Enough to bolster your case, not enough to make it obvious. Leah, Hayley, almost an anagram.’

  Lainey breathed hard and angry, resenting the conclusion.

  ‘So what? She needed a counsellor, I’m a counsellor. That relationship is private and sacrosanct.’

  Narey let that simmer for a few seconds, easing to a stop at the next set of lights.

  ‘Like I said, I’m suspicious about coincidences. You just happen to be the counsellor of someone who was the victim of the same rapist as you? I buy that with Jennifer Buchanan, but twice? So, I talked to the Rape Crisis Centre and your story doesn’t quite stack up. Does it?’

  ‘Yes. No. I am her counsellor. It wasn’t a coincidence though, I sought her out. And I’m not apologising for that. I’d learned about her case, was sure she was a victim of the man I was tracking and knew she needed me. I went looking for her.’

  Narey’s eyes closed at confirmation of what she’d suspected. She let her head swing side to side at the senselessness of
it all.

  ‘Does Leah know this?’

  ‘No. And she doesn’t need to. I’m her counsellor and her friend. That’s all she needs to know.’

  Narey took a look in her mirror and slammed on her brakes, bringing the cars behind her to a sudden, angry halt.

  ‘Are we going to have to do this again? That was then but it’s all changed, Lainey. I need to know anything and everything that will help me find Leah. I don’t have time to waste.’

  The look on Lainey’s face was different this time. No panic, just determination. The other cars could blast their horns all day.

  ‘Client confidentiality. Trust. That’s an unbreakable bond no matter how the counsellor–client relationship starts. I’m telling you nothing and there’s nothing I can tell you. You broke Leah’s trust by telling her everything would be okay when you couldn’t promise that, you told her you’d see her through court and a trial. You let her down, I’m not doing the same. Now it’s you that has to find her.’

  CHAPTER 31

  Winter had taken photographs his entire adult life. First as a hobby, then for a living. He found a freedom, a way of expression behind the camera that he’d never experienced elsewhere.

  He found some kind of clarity through the lens that he couldn’t with the naked eye. He became an observer of the world, a one-click philosopher. The camera allowed you to take one step back from it all and see it for what it was. In his days on scenes of crime, he saw life and death and the transition from one to the other and he was changed by it.

  His camera was an extension of himself, his window on society. He didn’t always like what he saw but that was part of the contract, taking the good with the bad with the worse.

  This though, this was different.

  He was on Buchanan Street and on a mission. He wanted to get into Broome’s head, however dark a place that was. He wanted to know what the man thought as he trawled the streets in search of prey. How he went about his task without getting caught. He knew it was whacked but Winter believed if he could work out the practicalities of it, somehow understand his mindset, then he’d stand a better chance of getting him.

  There was a price to be paid, of course, and he was already shelling out. He didn’t like it at all.

  It felt grubby from the outset. His camera hot in his hands, a compact Canon EOS 70D with a near-silent, powerful zoom. His eyes looking only for the attractive ones, those in their twenties and thirties whom Broome targeted. He found himself scoring and dismissing, swiping left and right, his thinking muddled, his conscience trampled on.

  This wasn’t how he behaved. Sure, he knew an attractive woman when he saw one. He was married, he was in love with his wife, but he wasn’t blind. He didn’t do this though, eyes actively searching, hunting. He didn’t think like this. Like a wolf. Like a predator.

  It felt alien and yet somehow primal in a way he was completely uneasy with.

  There was a petite brunette who’d just come down the steps from Buchanan Galleries. She was really pretty, with startling eyes, a toned body and great legs. The description came too easily to be comfortable. Like there was something in his DNA that was waiting to go there.

  She wore heels and tight jeans, her top clung to her body. She was prime Broome prey. All he had to do was point the camera and click. All he had to do. And he couldn’t.

  She wandered off, oblivious to his attention, into a crowd and out of sight. He hadn’t even managed to lift the camera, never mind aim it in her direction.

  He’d been similarly conflicted when he’d gone looking for one of the women in Broome’s collection. He’d christened her Maureen because her flaming red hair reminded him of Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man. The woman had been photographed going into Kelvingrove, the city’s massive and magnificent art gallery and museum. There was also another shot, taken on a different day, of her emerging from the Pelican bar and bistro on the other side of Argyle Street, directly opposite the museum.

  It hadn’t been much of a stretch to think that Kelvingrove was where to start looking. He’d stood across the street, admiring the wide frontage of the red sandstone palace with its towers, turrets and arches. It had reminded him that local legend had it that the building was accidentally built back to front and that the architect threw himself to his death from one of the towers when he realised the mistake. Like all the best stories, it was a load of bollocks.

  Winter had wandered in like a tourist, one eye on the museum and one out for Maureen. The foyer had stopped him in his tracks, looking up to see over fifty white, floating heads suspended from the ceiling. All male, each had emotion frozen on their face, most twisted into macabre expressions. Some bore the savage twist of evil, reminding him why he was there.

  He passed through the towering central hall with its golden arched ceiling and immense concert pipe organ on high. On, past a glowering elephant and a question mark of an ostrich, both ducking under the wheels of a World War Two Spitfire.

  On the south balcony on the first floor, he’d paused at the museum’s signature piece, Salvador Dalí’s Christ of St John of the Cross and drank it in as best he could. He remembered seeing it as a boy and it scaring him.

  There was no fear on his return visit. Instead, as an adult and an atheist, he’d looked at the Christ hung from his cross at a dizzying angle, his flesh golden against a darkened sky, crucified without nails, without blood or a crown of thorns, and felt sorry for him.

  His eyes had drifted down from the painting, a fleeting flash of red grabbing his attention. Maureen O’Hara. Mary Kate Danaher from The Quiet Man. It was her. It was the Maureen of the collection, he was sure of it, striding past the Dalí. He’d made a respectful nod to the messiah on the cross and made after her.

  The height was right, about five feet seven, and the slim figure as it was in Broome’s photos. She stopped to talk to a member of staff, allowing him to walk past her and turn as casually as he could to see her face. He’d felt a familiar sense of shock, as if realising for the first time that it was real people, real women, that had been violated in this way.

  Something heavy had lurched in his stomach at the prospect of what he had to tell her and he’d backed off, trying not to be any weirder than was necessary. She said goodbye to her colleague and walked past Moses along a narrow corridor and took up residence at a desk.

  As he’d stood in front of her, nervously waiting for her to look up and make backing out impossible, he read her nametag. Suzie O’Brien.

  He started off down the hill on Buchanan Street, eyes alert, heart heavy, knowing this had been a bad idea.

  After twenty yards, he saw a woman standing outside Gap. She was tall and elegant with long blonde hair. Classy was the word that came to mind. She was perhaps in her early thirties but with a more mature, refined look. She was very attractive and he could see other men turning to look at her. Prey for the masses.

  He took up a spot across the pedestrianised street, outside H&M. This time he’d do it. He’d photograph her. She was waiting for someone, which meant he had time to both work out just how to do it and work up the guts. Except it wasn’t courage he needed, it was something more. And something less.

  She kept disappearing between fleeting figures, the flower hidden by the moving forest, then emerging again into his viewfinder. She was there now though, the long blonde standing still among the public turmoil.

  He had his camera at waist level, the lens pointed at her as best he could. He fired off a volley of shots, adjusting the angle as he did so, trying to improve his chances of framing her as he wanted.

  He caught a couple of people looking at him oddly but no one went so far as to challenge him. When he brought the camera up to look at what he’d hit, the results were very patchy. Some had caught just her head or a shoulder, or half her body, two had missed completely. Three shots had hit the target though. Bullseyes.

  With some practice and enough frames, it would be easy enough to get it right even holding the camera som
ewhere so far from the eyes. But eventually, you’d get caught, surely?

  She was on the move. Winter saw the blonde check her watch and sigh before turning to walk down the hill. He didn’t know if he’d made a decision or went on impulse but he was following her. It was instinctive. He was thinking like Broome, acting like Broome. Doing what he’d do.

  He’d had to follow others, to be sure they were who he thought and so he could, reluctantly, approach them and explain his mission. None of Caitlin Murray, Carolina Zaleski, Hannah Thomson or Meena Chabra had known of Broome other than what they’d read in the newspapers or seen on TV.

  Two of them had cried. Carolina had sent him packing with threats to call the police. Caitlin Murray’s boyfriend was with her and wanted to hit someone, not particularly caring whom.

  It had been a recurring pattern with those he’d managed to identify and find. Anger, resentment, fear and incredulity, a feeling of being violated. And that was from those whom Broome had ‘only’ photographed but never approached.

  He’d gone to an insurance broker’s on Bath Street, walking the length of the street to look for a partial office sign after recognising the trademark steps down from its buildings. All in the hope that the slim, fair-haired woman in her late twenties actually worked there rather than just visiting. When he’d found the red and blue sign that he knew to have begun ‘Bre’, his heart had pounded and he forced himself to go in before his courage deserted him.

  It hadn’t been easy to get to speak to someone in management, not when his story was so vague and suspicious. Not when the receptionist had reacted to the photograph the way she did. It had been enough though, to know that he’d been right. The office manager looked for answers before finally confirming that yes, the lady in question had been a former member of staff. Her name was Helen Scanlon but she’d left the company. In fact, she’d left the country, emigrating to New Zealand.

  Winter had, of course, asked why. The manager hadn’t wanted to say, hadn’t really known himself. All he knew was that something distressing had happened and Helen had wanted a new start.