Snapshot (8 page)

Rachel’s eyes narrowed and it was obvious she didn’t want to go there, which suited him just fine.

‘You’re right,’ she conceded. ‘I didn’t tell you about it.’

‘Well?’

‘There’s not a lot happening,’ she admitted. ‘Our enquiries are continuing, as they say.’

Her tone was changing, warning him off, but it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d taken a kicking to veer her away from places he didn’t want her to go.

‘What is this? The ten o’clock news? That’s all I get?’

‘We’re getting nowhere with it, okay? The poor girl was left dead with her knickers round her ankles. It’s been the shittiest part of an already shitty week and I don’t want to go over it all again.’

She paused and Winter sensed a counter-punch coming.

‘I bet your creepy Mexican guy would have loved to have photographed her though . . .’

‘He wasn’t cree—’

Damn her. She was grinning at him and he was annoyed at himself for falling for it.

‘Come on,’ she continued. ‘Photographing dead bodies? What else would you call it?’

‘Ha bloody ha. Fuck off.’

She giggled.

‘Come on, tell me about him, then. What was his thing? And why is his thing your thing?’

No, he thought, enough was enough.

‘Forget it. Talking time is over. Playtime again.’

He made a grab at her but she easily ducked away from him, twisting her body out of reach and asking again. ‘And why have you got it so bad?’

He grabbed her, placing a hand over her mouth but she playfully bit it. He pulled her on top of him, happy to wrestle rather than talk any more. Just as he was thinking that they were heading for round two, her mobile rang and she rolled off him to answer it, laughing as she picked up the receiver.

‘Hello? Oh, hi. What’s . . .’

The smile froze on her face.

‘Shit . . . No way . . . Fuck. What happened? Uh huh . . . Right, okay. Soon as I can.’

The look on her face as she hung up left Winter in no doubt that there wouldn’t be a second round. She sat looking vaguely at the wardrobe but he knew she was looking much farther away.

‘Well?’

‘That was Addison. Malky Quinn has been shot. Through the head. By a sniper.’

‘Shit.’

‘That’s pretty much what I said,’ Narey intoned, her eyes briefly closed. ‘Right, I’ve got to go in. Happened half an hour ago. Quinn stepped out of his car to go into his converted ranch thing in Kinnear Road and bang. Place is going fucking mental.’

‘Retaliation for Caldwell?’

‘Maybe. Seems the obvious thing. Need to go see what they are saying. Love you and leave you.’

The L word hung awkwardly between them for a second until she pulled her top over her head and poked her tongue out at him.

‘Figure of speech. You be here when I get back?’

‘I was thinking I could come with you.’

‘Aye right. How are we going to explain that one, Einstein? You show up without Addy giving you a call. What you been doing, listening in to police scanners? That’s an offence, you know.’

‘Well . . .’ The thought that she could actually tell people that they had a relationship clearly wasn’t obvious to her at that moment. And maybe it wasn’t the time to discuss it.

‘Well, let me know what’s going on. Maybe see you when you get back, depends how long you will be.’

Rachel planted a quick kiss on his lips, at the same time grabbing at his cock under the covers. With a fleeting grin she stood up and left, closing the door behind her.

Cairns Caldwell. Malky Quinn. Either somebody had it in for the bad boys or they had it in for each other.

The man they called the Mighty Quinn was an old school thug. Not renowned for his brains but well known for his ruthlessness, he and his family ruled the east end the hard way, breaking heads and legs as he saw fit. They had the bulk of the city’s heroin trade locked up through links to Turkish gangs, a dirty business that didn’t bother them for a second. What did it matter to them if anyone was stupid enough to inject that shit into their veins?

Now Malky was lying somewhere in Kinnear Road in the east end, a hole in his head and blood on the pavement. Some lucky bastard would be photographing it, Winter thought. Probably some scene examiner who wouldn’t value it, wouldn’t see it for what it was. Would just be thinking evidence and court, dispassion and objectivity.

He wanted to follow Rachel. Sneak out of the window like a teenager and head for Kinnear Road. No point though. He knew he’d already shat on his copybook enough for one day and, anyway, it was pitch black outside. The only way he’d get any worthwhile picture was to be standing right over the body. And Two Soups or whoever was on duty was never going to allow that.

Pitch black. If a sniper took out Quinn in the dark then it was one serious motherfucker. If he took him out from the same kind of distance as they reckoned the shooter took Caldwell from then it was a professional motherfucker.

Winter turned on both the television and the radio in search of news. Nothing.

Cairns Caldwell and Malky Quinn. Even if this stopped right now it was enough to have the gutterbelly shitting golf balls for months. So much about it said it wouldn’t stop. Two of the biggest, hardest, most untouchable villains had been nailed in the most vengeful, macho-ridden city on the planet. It never stops there. There is always another one who wants his name above the door. An eye for an eye, a life for a life, somebody must die for the death of my strife. Someone else was going to be killed, he’d lay money on it.

Never mind golf balls, there would be people all over Glasgow who would be shitting bowling balls at the thought of what might happen next.

For an hour and a half he flipped between TV and radio, trying to find any mention of the shooting. It came in a trickle: police incident, reports of a shot being fired, man seriously injured. The media was way behind. His itch had subsided a bit, knowing that he’d missed the photograph and that there was nothing he could do about it, but he was still keen to know what had happened and why. Winter knew he’d get his balls in his hands if he phoned Rachel. Addison and the other cops whose names were in his phone were out too because he couldn’t explain or justify calling them. There was someone else who might know and could certainly find out though. He reached for his mobile and waited till a gravelly voice growled hello.

‘Hi, Uncle Danny? It’s Tony.’

‘Jeezus, is it Christmas already?’

‘Aye, I know. Sorry it’s been so long since I called.’

‘Aye, that’s what you always say. Don’t worry about it, son. How you doing anyway? Still photographing the ones that can’t run away?’

‘It’s the only way I can get them to sit still, Dan.’

‘Very good. Okay, enough of the small talk. What do you want?’

Winter laughed quietly.

‘That obvious, huh?’

‘Christ, son. It’s after two in the morning, you haven’t called for weeks and you sound like you’ve seen the ghost of Jinky Johnstone wearing a Rangers top. Aye, it’s that obvious.’

Danny Neilson was ex-police. He was in the job for thirty years, man and boy, and could never quite stop being a cop. He never rose higher than a detective sergeant even though he had twice the brains of most of the men above him. Most of his career he was happy just catching crooks even though Auntie Janette was always on at him to go for a promotion. By the time she had finally convinced him of the idea, he was too old. Suited him fine though, he always said he was born a sergeant and would die one.

These days he worked even though he didn’t have to. His police pension was better than a decent wage and Danny was kicking on to sixty-five but he couldn’t or wouldn’t sit on his arse and collect the money. He worked as a superintendent on the taxi rank at Central Station, keeping drunken wasters from jumping queues and battering lumps out of each other. Winter had given up asking Danny why he wanted to stand outside in the rain dealing with the arseholes of the morning hours. Too young to watch
Coronation Street
and drink milk was the only answer Uncle Danny ever gave him but they both knew it wasn’t the truth.

‘You’re right, Dan. There is something. I wanted to know if you’d heard about the shooting in the east end. Malky Quinn.’

There was a slight pause and then a deadpan answer.

‘I heard.’

‘It’s not on the news. Not his name, anyway, so how did you . . .’

‘Fucksake, Tony. If you wanted to know what was on the news then you’d have put the fucking telly on rather than phoned me.’

‘Aye. True.’

‘So ask me what you want to ask for and stop dancing with me. I’m tired and you know I’ve no time for that shite.’

Big Danny Neilson wasn’t much for small talk or ceremony and always made a point of calling a spade a shovel.

‘What have you heard, Dan? Has one of Caldwell’s boys shot Malky Quinn in retaliation for shooting their gaffer?’

There was a long sigh on the other end of the phone before Neilson’s gruff tones responded.

‘Not from what I’m hearing, no. It could be. You couldn’t rule anything out with these cunts but it’s not looking that way right now.’

‘How come? It’s surely the most obvious thing?’

‘That’s right, Anthony. And how many times have I told you not to jump to the obvious conclusion?’

‘More than once. What are they saying, then?’

‘Mate of mine says that they are spooked by how similar it is to the Caldwell shooting. If Caldwell’s guys wanted to take out Quinn then there’s a hundred, a thousand ways they could have done it but this was near as dammit the same.’

‘Same guy, same gun?’

‘Fucksake, Tony. Did we not just have the jumping to conclusions conversation?’

Winter ignored him and ploughed on regardless.

‘So what have we got then, Uncle Danny? Claim jumpers? Someone wanting to huckle these guys and move in on their operations?’

‘Christ. Do you know how long I was out in the pishing rain tonight, son? Do you know how tired my bones are? I finally get in and think I can get on the outside of a glass of Jura and listen to a bit of Dean Martin but instead I get one half of the Hardy Boys on the phone asking me all kinds of shite. How the fuck do I know, Tony? Eh? How the fuck do I know?’

Because you always know more than you are letting on, Uncle Danny, Winter thought but didn’t say. Instead he pushed his luck a bit further.

‘Alex Kirkwood? Think he might be behind it? I know he’s banged up but these guys can pull any strings they want from the nick. Maybe he just wants a bigger cake to cut from when he gets out.’

Danny growled again.

‘Jeezus, son. Phone me at Christmas like you usually do. It’s past your bedtime. Night.’

The phone went silent in Winter’s hand and he couldn’t help looking at it and laughing, thinking that they broke the mould when they made Danny. He threw the mobile onto the bed and crawled after it, getting beneath the covers and lying back to seek answers on the ceiling. Caldwell and Quinn. Quinn and Caldwell. Bullets and blood. They swirled around in his head and he saw them behind his eyes as they closed over just for a second. Quinwell and Cald. Caldquinn and Well. Blood and more blood. He fell into one of those strangely drowsy, part-dreaming, thinking-too-much states that go on for ever and you’re never sure what is awake and what is dreamt. It ran for nearly two hours till it was shattered by cold flesh slapping him immediately awake.

Rachel had crawled back into bed, freezing cold and wideawake tired, wrapping herself round him despite his half-hearted protests. How could a woman so hot be so cold? The shock of her chill had him fully conscious in a split second.

‘Thanks,’ she mumbled into his shoulder.

‘For what?’

‘Being here and being warm.’

‘You’re welcome. Freezing but welcome. Want to talk about it?’

‘In a minute. Let me heat up first.’

She hugged herself in tighter, the frost of a Glasgow night sneaking into his skin as she stole his warmth. Her long brown hair tickling his face, smelling of the chill that she had brought home with her. Winter knew she was thinking before she spoke to him, debating with herself just how much she was going to divulge. He was hoping it would be everything. He wanted to know every detail of Quinn’s killing. The who, what, where, when and why. The facts and the speculation. Danny had given him some but he wanted more. She wanted to tell him the lot, he was sure of that, but police protocol was always the problem. So what was she going to settle for?

‘It was mental out there,’ she said at last, burying her head even deeper into him before coming up for air. ‘People running round like headless chickens. Some of them are shit-scared of what’s coming next. Not a good night.’

He knew from experience that the best thing was just to shut up and let her talk. Asking questions would either annoy her or cause barriers to come down. Winter was on the payroll but he wasn’t a cop. It wouldn’t pay for him to remind her of that by saying something stupid.

‘Shirley was already at the scene by the time I got there. You know it’s serious when he’s dragged out of his bed at that time of night.’

Alex Shirley was the chief superintendent. Variously known as ‘Shirley Temple’ or ‘Don’t Call Me Shirley’ by the troops. The way Tony heard it from Rachel and Addison, he was liked and respected, which was no mean feat for a chief when the Indians were a bunch of cynical, moaning-faced Glaswegian smart arses.

‘He looked spooked, to be honest. Never seen him that way before. Hardly surprising, I suppose. Just one day after Cairns Caldwell gets shot and one of the city’s other main dealers goes down the same way. Enough to shake anyone, never mind if you are the one who has to clean the fucking mess up.

‘Not that he wasn’t in control of the situation. He was. Just that he looked rattled. He gave a uniform a hell of a bollocking for not keeping the locals back when they fell out of their pits to see what was going on. Poor guy looked like he was going to shit himself when the Temple gave him what for. Not like Shirley to do that.’

She fell silent for a moment, her head falling back toward his shoulder, thinking again. He silently pleaded for her not to stop.