The Photographer

by Craig Robertson

‘Inspector, can you confirm that the householder is Elspeth Broome and that you’re treating this as attempted murder?’

  It was her turn to pause, but only to let him sweat.

  ‘I can tell you that the assault on a seventy-two-year-old woman is being treated as suspicious, yes. As to whether it will be murder or attempted murder, that’s in the hands of her doctors.’

  Other questions were called, urgent voices pleading to be heard. She pointed at him again. Heads swivelled, faces twisted. No one was happy at this but some sensed a show about to start.

  ‘Can you confirm that the householder is the victim?’

  Her eyes burned into his. ‘I said I wasn’t going to identify the victim, so you’ll have to draw your own conclusions. Next question.’

  She knew the look on his face. Hurt. Guilt. Wanting to be told it wasn’t his fault. She wasn’t going to let him off that hook, not today. He was going to have to ask.

  ‘Inspector, do you have any evidence as to the motive for this attack?’

  She let it hang there, twisting in the wind.

  ‘No I don’t, Mr Winter. Do you?’

  CHAPTER 50

  The three of them ate a silent dinner. Winter, Narey and Danny. Appetites and conversation suppressed by what had happened or what was about to. They pushed food around their plates and stared at it, worry being multiplied by worry.

  Narey hadn’t forgiven him but had already moved on in her mind to how to deal with it. In the meantime, she was continuing to let him suffer.

  When dinner was done, Danny fed the plates into the dishwasher and announced he was going out. He didn’t say why.

  ‘Where are you off to, Dan?’

  ‘I’m going out for a beer. Don’t wait up.’

  His evasiveness stirred Narey’s curiosity. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘A place called the Rum Shack.’

  ‘On Pollokshaws Road?’

  ‘Yes. You know it?’

  ‘Oh, I know where it is. It’s right next door to the hairdressers where Leah Watt worked when she was attacked. So why would you be going to the south side for a beer in a bar that really doesn’t sound like your kind of place?’

  Danny looked from her to Winter, his surprise obvious. ‘I didn’t know Leah worked next to it. That’s not why I’m going.’

  ‘So why? Seems a hell of a coincidence.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not. I’ll know more once I’ve been.’

  ‘You still haven’t said why.’

  Danny huffed, knowing she wouldn’t let it go until he told them. ‘I’m troll hunting. I’ve got a lead on one of the dicks that have been hassling you through Twitter. I’m going to check it out, see if I can get to him.’

  ‘The guy is there?’ Winter was suddenly very interested. ‘I’m going with you.’

  ‘No, you’re not, son. You’ll go steaming in there and risk blowing everything. You stay here.’

  ‘Danny . . .’

  ‘Let me handle it.’

  ‘Danny’s right,’ Narey stepped in. ‘Leave him to it. He’s been working this and you’re likely to go in with all guns blazing. It’s not what’s needed. And neither’s sending in cops, before you suggest it. The guy would just walk out and we’d never know who he was.’

  ‘How about I stay outside? As back up. I come in if you need me.’

  Danny laughed. ‘Tony, I’m not looking to battle anyone. Chances are this is a spotty teenager weighing about ten stone. I think I can look after myself.’

  Narey had been right. The Rum Shack wouldn’t have been Danny’s normal choice of pub. It had a theme, it had a cocktails board, it served curried goat. All he wanted was a few taps with beer, a good gantry of whisky and a barman who knew when to leave you alone.

  This would never be his kind of place. It was trying too hard.

  One wall was papered in a blue map of the Caribbean, a palm tree propping up one corner. Assuming the tree wasn’t made of plastic, it would have lasted two minutes if some bam opened a window. The laminated floor was light-coloured and shiny, the stools at the bar in worn shades of yellow or red.

  There were odd groups of singles and couples, most of them less than half Danny’s age. He was too old for the joint but no one seemed to notice or care. That was probably the rum.

  He glanced around, seeing what everyone else was drinking, keen not to stand out any more than he had to. When a barman approached, he ordered a bottle of beer even though he was pretty sure he’d hate it. A sip confirmed his fears but he held it to him as cover.

  A few lone wolves stalked the bar, some drunk, some getting there at a rate. There were couples and groups, loud ones and quiet ones, filled with rum and mischief. All of them were dressed normally, a nasty little shit of a troll hiding in plain sight somewhere among them.

  Danny tried to tune in to conversations, an old trick from his days on the job, being able to separate one or two voices from the bedlam while looking the other way. He caught words in passing but nothing that worked for him.

  Bottle in hand, he wandered into another room, the floor darker and worn, the tables all wearing an empty rum bottle with a candle wedged in it. On the wall, framed posters announced reggae musicians he hadn’t heard of, while a stage area at the back was dominated by a large, wooden pulpit.

  There were ten people in the second room. Three young women, who’d presumably flown straight in from Havana given how much their clothing was at war with the Glasgow weather, giggled over blue drinks at one table. Four young guys were knocking back rum and beer, their eyes flirting back and forth with the sunbed Cubans. Three middle-aged men in suits, office types who’d forgotten where home was, were arguing over something none of them could remember.

  He stood long enough to weigh each of the men up but not so long as to invite the question as to what the fuck he was doing. None of them ticked many boxes for Tormentor. His money was still on his target being on his own. He went back to the front bar where the singles lingered, where people wandered in and out.

  He sipped his beer at the bar, seeking out faces in reflections, listening to what he could. He knew Tormentor was in here. All he had to do was find him and all he could do was wait.

  It was twenty minutes later when he became aware of another body next to him, another thirsty soul pressing against the bar.

  ‘Red Stripe, my man. Thank you kindly.’

  Danny didn’t look round. God, he wanted to, but he didn’t. He wanted to turn and grab and swing. Instead he sucked on the bottle, breathed deep and waited as long as he could. At length, he moved round on the stool and looked beyond the tall guy next to him in the suit and open-necked shirt, gulping on a beer. Looked beyond him till the guy stopped noticing.

  He was in his late thirties, hair receding, indents at his nose and ears where spectacles normally rested. There was a beer buzz in his eyes and a glow to his cheeks.

  Danny turned to the bar again, paying no obvious attention. He waited. And waited some more. When he finally saw the movement out the corner of his left eye, he made his move, turning at the same time the guy did, his elbow smashing into the glass, causing some of it to leap and spill.

  ‘Fuck. Sorry, mate. Sorry. My fault.’

  ‘S’awrite. Don’t worry about it. Accident, my man. Accident.’

  ‘No, no. My fault. Let me get you another one.’

  ‘Well, I’m no going to say no. You’re a gentleman.’

  Danny shouted up another pint of Red Stripe for his man and a rum for himself. He had another look at the guy and took a chance.

  ‘Shame about the beer on the floor. Still, bound to be a woman round here who can clean it up.’

  The man snorted and raised his new glass. ‘Too right, my man. Get the wench in here and get the floor cleaned. I’ll drink to that.’

  The barman caught their sexism and shook his head at the pair of them. As he wandered to the other end of the bar, Danny gestured towards him for his new fr
iend’s benefit.

  ‘Fucking snowflake. I bet his bird carries his balls around in her handbag.’

  More snorts and another pint glass salute. The man leaned in confidentially. ‘Guys like him are the problem. Let women walk all over them. The bitches take advantage and it’s guys like us have to pay the price. I’m Davie, by the way.’

  ‘How are you doing, Davie Bytheway. I’m Danny Neilson.’

  ‘Davie Meiklejohn. Good to meet a fellow soldier.’

  ‘In the war against women?’

  Meiklejohn took a swig of beer and nodded furiously. ‘Aye, and we’re losing. Guys your age, no offence, they had it right. It worked for us and it worked for them. Everyone knew what their place was, everyone knew what they had to do. One went out to work, the other stayed at home, brought up the kids and had dinner on the table. Them? They had it easy but didn’t know it. Now they’re all whining about how hard it is in the workplace and kids are running riot cos they’re not being brought up right. Fucking ridiculous, my man. World’s gone to pot.’

  Danny leaned his head in towards the fucker. ‘You are right, pal. You are totally right. But no one’s doing anything about it. They’re just letting the women away with it all. Nobody’s even as much as telling them they’re wrong.’

  Meiklejohn gave a sly grin and tapped the side of his nose. ‘Some of us are doing something about it. Can’t say too much but we’re not all sitting on our arses letting them do what they like. The war’s being fought, my man. The war’s being fought.’

  ‘Well, I’ll drink to that. Fight the good fight.’

  Danny worked the guy, drained him of information without Meiklejohn being aware he was giving it up. He was thirty-nine, a financial advisor, divorced for five years after being married for eight, paying through the nose for it after the bitch took him to the cleaners, two kids that he never saw. He lived in a flat on Allison Street, would have been somewhere much better if it hadn’t been for the bitch, of course. He didn’t hate women, not most of them anyway, he just wanted men to get treated equally. Wasn’t too much to ask.

  He was an odious prick.

  It was rolling towards midnight and Meiklejohn drained a glass of rum, wiping the last of it from his lips. He put an arm on Danny’s shoulder and patted it, solidifying their status as part of a band of brothers.

  ‘I’m off,’ he announced.

  Danny swallowed the last of his beer and bounced the glass off the counter. ‘Me too. Hang on, I’ll follow you out.’

  The pair of them staggered onto Pollokshaws Road, shifting right towards Allison Street just fifty yards away on the corner. Before then, though, they had to pass Barbreck Road, which was little more than a lane. As they swayed past its entrance, Danny lurched right, his shoulder barging into Meiklejohn’s and knocking the other man towards the lane while making a muttered apology. Meiklejohn was carried on the wind, laughing for a bit then confused. He was alarmed but all too late.

  They were further from the lights of the main road as Danny grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted his arm behind his back, making him yelp as he nudged it towards breaking point. He raced him towards the wall and forced his face hard against it, his shoulder socket screaming in pain.

  ‘What the fuck’re you doing?’

  Danny shoved a big hand against the guy’s mouth, forcing it against the wall and forcing it quiet. ‘Anything I want to. How does it feel to be helpless?’

  All he got in reply was a submissive grunt.

  ‘I know who you are,’ Danny told him. ‘I know who you are and what you’ve been doing. And I’m going to make you pay for it.’

  Meiklejohn shook his head in protest but Danny simply twisted his arm another couple of degrees. ‘Don’t argue. Be a good boy and just answer whatever I ask. Okay?’

  This time there was no argument.

  ‘You’re Tormentor, right?’

  His eyes opened wide but he nodded. Danny couldn’t help but pull the guy from the wall and slam him against it again.

  ‘First thing is, did you deliver that rat to Rachel Narey’s doorstep?’

  ‘No. I swear I didn’t.’

  ‘But you know who did?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘Okay, good. Now, the police are going to want to talk to you. It could go very bad for you or it could be easier. If you tell me all that I want to know then I can make it go easy. Tell me why you made those tweets and for your own fucking good, tell me without using the word bitch.’

  ‘I thought you understood. It’s the fight—’

  ‘You might believe that pish but I don’t. You’re just a nasty little shit and so are your impotent pals. I want their names and I want to know where they are. Don’t bother telling me you don’t know.’

  Meiklejohn hesitated just long enough to encourage Danny to apply more pressure to his arm.

  ‘Okay! Who do you want?’

  ‘BigWeegie. ItsaMansWorld. BlueSnake.’

  ‘Weegie is Ryan Cochrane. Lives in Dennistoun. Jason Burns is BlueSnake. Comes from Bishopbriggs.’

  ‘I’ll need full addresses.’

  ‘I can get them.’

  ‘You will. And who is ItsaMansWorld?’

  Meiklejohn hesitated then screamed when the twist came. ‘I can’t . . .’ Danny convinced him that he could.

  ‘Broome!’ he shouted. ‘MansWorld is William Broome.’

  Meiklejohn made hard contact with the wall again, just to take the edge off Danny’s anger.

  ‘Tell me. Everything.’

  ‘We thought MansWorld was just one of us. Me and Jason and Ryan. And he was, he is, but he’s also Broome. We didn’t know at first. It came out later. We were tweeting Broome all the time, he had a voice, could speak to the mainstream media for us. When we found out he was Mansworld, we just . . . just wanted to follow him all the more. He’s a soldier. One of us.’

  ‘He’s a fucking rapist.’

  ‘No, no. That woman lied. The court said so.’

  Danny sighed and fought the urge to hit him. ‘No, it didn’t. Who put her name on Twitter? Who made Leah Watt’s name public?’

  ‘Broome told us it. Only seemed fair. He’d been named so why not her? We just made sure everyone knew it. It spread like wildfire.’

  Danny crashed a fist into the man’s stomach, causing him to double up and breath to rush out of him.

  ‘Because there’s laws, that’s why not. And you’ve broken them. Who put the rat on Narey’s doorstep?’

  ‘Ryan. It was Broome’s idea.’

  ‘And you followed her, photographed her?’

  Meiklejohn nodded, at least having the grace to look ashamed.

  ‘Broome’s idea?’ He nodded again. ‘What about the fake Twitter account in her name?

  The man tried to look away but Danny grabbed his jaw and pulled his head back round. ‘Who set it up?’

  ‘Me.’

  Danny drew his fist back but stopped it just short of Meiklejohn’s face. Instead he grabbed his arm and hauled him nearly off his feet.

  ‘Where are we going now?’ the man whined.

  ‘We’re going to your flat. Some nice policemen are going to turn up and you’re going to let them look in your computer.’

  CHAPTER 51

  There was a constable posted outside Elspeth Broome’s room at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. There had been someone on guard duty since she’d been admitted, in case her son tried to come back to finish the job.

  Inside, Narey was greeted by a wall of white, the sterile functionality of an intensive care unit. Tubes and wires connected the woman to the world, breathing for her and feeding her. The word was she was no longer in immediate danger, but far from out of the woods. Critical but stable, the surgeon said.

  Elspeth’s face was a riot of colours and lumps. Dark purples and blues, a mess of distortion. Yet the real damage was out of sight. Punctured lung, broken ribs, huge blood loss and intestinal damage. All vital signs were terribly weak.

&n
bsp; She was skin and bone. Liver spots and knotted veins. Her wrists were thin, her fingers bony. Her thin peel hung loose from her carcass, discoloured through time and too big for the body that had shrunk within its patinated casing. Narey thought if she waited ten minutes longer, there would be visibly even less of the woman. Or there would be none of her at all.

  When Elspeth Broome’s eyes slid open, Narey had to stop herself from taking a step back in surprise.

  There was a wet focus, a blurry awakening. She could see the woman’s eyes contract in confusion, trying to work out where she was and who was standing in front of her. The light was dim but she was still in there, still hanging on.

  Narey stepped closer and put a hand gently on the woman’s arm, feeling it limp and sticky to the touch.

  ‘Mrs Broome. Do you know where you are?’

  The woman looked back at her, eyes rimmed red and sunken, skin creased by the feet of a hundred crows. The stare back was blank but there was little chance of telling if that was through choice or circumstance.

  ‘Mrs Broome, I’m Detective Inspector Rachel Narey of Police Scotland. When you’re well enough, I’d like to ask you some questions.’

  She turned her head away as best she could. No more than an inch or two to her right, a flop toward the pillow, but the message was clear enough.

  Narey moved till she was in her eye line again.

  ‘Do you understand, Mrs Broome? Do you know who did this to you?’

  The old woman stared back, her eyes wet and sad. The nod was so faint it was almost missed.

  ‘And will you tell us who it was?’

  The shake of her head was firmer, more certain.

  ‘Okay, Mrs Broome. I’d like you to think about it. Because I’ll be back and I will want to talk to you.’

  The woman’s eyes slid shut and the room slipped into silence but for the beep of the machine keeping her alive.

  CHAPTER 52

  The address the woman calling herself Jennifer Buchanan had given was on a corner of Paisley Road West near Lorne Street. Two floors of red stone flats propped up by an ice cream parlour, a hair salon and a halal food store. Winter waited until after six in the evening, when lights were on behind the lace curtains and vertical blinds.