Snapshot (2 page)

Winter had just seen it too many times.

You were more likely to be murdered in Glasgow than any other city in Western Europe. And when it came to stabbings, the ‘no mean city’ was a match for anywhere in the world. It kept you in work if your job was to photograph the leftovers.

He’d been doing just that for six years and this moment, the point where he was about to look at the body for the first time, was always the same. From day one to this, it hadn’t changed. Excited and scared, fifty-fifty. What he was scared of was also exactly what he wanted to see. And part of the reason he was scared was because he knew just how much he wanted to see it.

Tony could kid himself all he wanted about how dull another stabbing was but he was still interested in the business end. It was what got him out of bed whether he liked it or not.

Being there, in the moment before the flowers and the football tops mourn another victim, when blood still runs hot in a body that has given up its ghost, is a strange privilege. You can see much of what the person had been and some of what they might have been if the city hadn’t cut them down. It was a moment that messed with his head every time.

You saw them caught in the very moment that they were claimed. He was already feeling the ache to see and to photograph the expression on Sammy Ross’s face as much as the wound in his belly. He knew that made him a sick fucker but it was his itch.

There’s a Gaelic word that he loved. Winter only knew a handful of words and phrases, the obvious ones like
uisge beatha
and
sláinte
: whisky and cheers.

In fact when he thought about it, the words that he knew in Gaelic either said a lot about his drinking or about Scotland. Apart from words about boozing, he could count to five –
aon
,
dà
,
trì
,
ceithir
,
còig
– and trot out
ceud mìle fàilte
, a hundred thousand welcomes.

His favourite, though, was
sgriob
. An old boy from Skye named Lachie, who used to drink in the Lismore, taught him it. It means the itchiness, the tingle of anticipation that comes upon the upper lip just before taking a sip of whisky. Brilliant. The Eskimos may have a hundred different words for snow but trust the Gaels to have a word for that.

Another old teuchter later told him that you had to say
sgriob drama
or
sgriob dibhe
for it to refer specifically to whisky or else it just meant a scratch or scrape. He preferred Lachie’s version, though.

Everyone had an itch and this was Tony’s.
Sgriob
death. The hot, smooth, soft woman that was lying curled up in his warm bed once called it necrophotographilia. It wasn’t sexual though. Not that. Every bit as much as he was tired of death, sick of it, he couldn’t help looking. He knew he was making himself wait. Prolonging the
sgriob
. Savouring the final seconds before he looked, wondering if Sammy boy would be scared or shocked, outraged or questioning. Would that stab wound be angry or clinical, lunatic or clean? How much blood and where?

The first dead body he ever saw was the first one he photographed. Day one on photo cop duty and called out to a car smash on the M80 just north of Muirhead. A woman no more than twenty-five had gone head first through the windscreen. No seat belt, no chance.

He’d been told what had happened on his way to the crash and his stomach was already doing somersaults. He nearly threw up when he saw her lying in a shroud of broken glass in front of her Renault Clio. A smart silver car with a pair of pink hanging dice that she had vaulted past on her hurry through the glass.

The cop on the scene said she must have managed to duck her head forward because there was barely a scratch on her face. The top of her skull was smashed and the steering wheel had wrecked her chest but her face was all but unmarked. She had this clear look of determination, had been doing all she could to stay alive and protect herself. Everything that is apart from putting her seat belt on in the first place.

Tony took one photo. He had knelt a few feet away from her, snapped one then was backing away towards the barrier when the uniform came over and hissed in his ear. Asked him what the fuck he thought he was doing. Told him he had to photograph the woman from every possible angle, make sure there was no doubt whatsoever as to position, trauma, depth, scale, everything, and then when he had done that he had to photograph tyre depths, skid distances, glass shatter and all approaching junctions. Winter had known all that of course but every bit of his training disappeared from his head when he saw the woman lying on the road.

Finally, he did what he was supposed to but he didn’t stop there. Beyond the caved skull and the battered torso, the glass pattern and the skid signature, he photographed the look of business on the face of the uniformed polis that covered her up and the frightened stare of the witness who couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.

Looking back, he wondered at the nerve of tucking his own Canon SLR away in his bag beside the digital Nikon that the department provided but was glad that he did. Something about the grain of the black and white film gave it a feel that he liked. More importantly, the shots weren’t on the official memory card.

Avril Duncanson, exhibit one. He didn’t suppose he would ever forget her name if he did a million jobs. Anyway, her photographs were in his collection so there was always something there to remind him. As if it was needed. Some things you never forget. Close your eyes and they are hiding there behind your lids.

Winter snapped backed to the dreich reality of Blochairn and realized that Two Soups was huffing about him getting on with it, pushing for him to get his photographs done so that the examiners could get in about the body. He was a miserable old sod, easily Winter’s least favourite of those that could have been on scene. If the lovely Cat Fitzpatrick was at one end of the scale then Two Soups was definitely at the other. He was a pain in the arse. An old-school type who had a hatred of amateur forensics, particularly cops, who had learned all they knew from the rush of telly programmes on the subject.

But sadly for Baxter, photography always comes first at a crime scene, recording everything as is before the SOCOs get in to touch anything. It meant his time was dictated to and that wasn’t the way he thought it should be. Monkeys with cameras ought not to take precedence over highly trained scientists. This morning he was clearly pissed off that Winter hadn’t been on site earlier as well as being annoyed that he was on site at all. He didn’t say anything, just glowered. Well, he could get to fuck. Winter only had one chance to record this scene and he wasn’t going to rush it even if it was just yet another stabbing.

He lined up a full-length shot of the body and focused. Two Soups was shut out and so was the rest of the world. It was just him and Sammy Ross.

He took in the look on the face below him for the first time. Resignation. Total defeat. Not shock though. Sammy Ross had seen this coming. Now he had this thousand-yard stare and it didn’t look as if he liked what he saw.

Winter did, though. For all its ugliness, it was a thing of beauty.

Rigor mortis had begun to kick in so he must have been dead for a few hours. The knees that had given way as he buckled and fell were already locked. One arm bent under him, clutching at the hole in his chest, the other twisted at his side where he had tried to break his fall. No chance of breaking a fall like that though – it descended straight into hell.

The burgundy bloodspill soaked his jeans and drenched his light-blue T-shirt but was already drying on both. His skin was alabaster pale, his lips kissed with blue.

It was a deep incision. Through the torn, bloodied scraps of cotton, Winter could see the ripped skin where the knife had been stuck. An initial entry wound then it rose sharply up the chest tearing skin as it went. The killer had stuck it in then twisted the knife before pushing it up deeper and deadlier, seeking out vital organs to destroy. Whoever did it had used a knife before. In Glasgow, that narrowed it down to maybe a quarter of the male population between twelve and twenty-five.

Winter focused on the wound. It was almost big enough to reach inside and grab those punctured organs, enough room to get in and search for the spirit that was no longer there. The skin was split and smiling up at him, the treasures behind already starting to fester without the beat of life to sustain them.

Focus. Shoot. Every detail, from every angle. So tempting to lift the T-shirt and see the full extent of the damage but that was strictly forbidden. Look but don’t touch. Record but don’t interfere. Observe but don’t violate. Chronicle but don’t contaminate.

Designer trainers, at least £120 the pair. Hideous, flash shoes in black and gold. The Burberry cap that had tumbled off his lank, unkempt hair and lay by the side of his sleeping head. The navy-blue Ben Sherman jacket sprayed with his own blood and the Tag Heuer that was smashed on his wrist but still ticked even though his heart had stopped. It all said money. It all said bad taste. It all said trash with cash.

His blue-purple lips said no. His eyes said please. A rabbit caught in the headlights of his own destiny. Bastard child of greed and poverty.

All that was laid out in the broken body before him, writ large in the wound in his middle and on his freeze-frame face. Sammy was a picture all right.

This was why Winter took photographs. To show it how it was, every wart, every insult, every injury, because every city is defined just as much by its ugly wounds as its architecture. He’d always imagined that if you cut Glasgow’s gutterbelly, you’d see it run blue and green with bitterness but with as much hope as there was bile. It was a great city where terrible things happened, things that should never be ignored but should be captured for ever.

His job had taken him to dark places that most civilians never go, seeing bloody puddles where life used to be, recording the moment before the mourners descended. All life was there, sitting cosy right next to death.

That was the bit that always got to him, just how close they sit next to each other. A split second, a nanosecond, an angstrom from one to the next. And he was there to ensure that that precise moment, where life turns to death and hope turns to shit, is always recorded right there on their face. Recorded for ever by a Nikon FM2 and a Canon EOS-1D.

A thing of beauty really.

‘If I remember right then Sammy boy is from Royston, east end somewhere for sure.’ The voice came from behind Winter and dragged him out of his dwam. It was Addison. ‘He’s thirty-two, thirty-three. Old to be still knocking it out on the street. Sure-fire sign he was going nowhere fast. Kind of bam that pushes out coke, heroin, jellies, ecstasy, dope, uppers, downers, steroids; whatever the junkies want, this cunt would stuff it down their throat, in their arm or up their nose. ’

Addison was angry and it was obvious in his voice. He’d seen way too much of this shit.

‘Just a foot soldier in Malky Quinn’s army,’ he went on. ‘Funny how Malky and his like never end up lying stabbed in the rain. It’s always the Sammy Ross’s that get it. One of Malky’s boys . . . brilliant. Means trouble for someone. Probably means trouble for everyone. Fuck’s sake, it’s not even eight o’clock and the day’s already turned to shit. I want a bacon roll.’

Winter had finished his photographs but hadn’t stopped looking. He was irritated at Addison for shaking him out of it but when he caught the look on Two Soups’s face he thought maybe it was just as well. The old sod looked fit to burst. Winter ignored his glare.

‘You ever stop thinking about your stomach, Addy,’ he said as he stood up. ‘No wonder you are such a fat bastard.’

The DI was six foot four and skinny as a rake, his height just making him look even thinner. He was just about to come back with a smart-arse remark of his own when his DS, a haunted-looking guy with dirty fair hair, name of Colin Monteith, wandered up towing a human skelf wearing trackies, a heavy white jacket and the obligatory baseball cap. Junkie ned. Monteith must have had the uniformed boys talking to the walking dead that were anywhere near the market at that time of the morning. Though if any of them had ever known anything, chances were they had already forgotten. Addison rolled his eyes as if to say, jeez, this better be good.

Monteith told the skelf to stay put and came up to where the pair were standing.

‘Might have a live one, Addy. This guy was dossing in the market but he actually knows what day it is, so I’d say he’s worth a wee word. Says he heard noises that sounded like it was our man meeting his maker.’

‘Knows what day it is?’ Winter butted in. ‘Does that qualify him for some award scheme? Junkie of the Month maybe.’

Monteith fired him a dark look.

‘I’ll have a word,’ said Addison with a sigh. ‘He might be as near to compos mentis as we are going to get from the zoomers round here. Bring him over.’

The inspector’s lanky frame towered over the undernourished user, leaving him in no doubt who was in charge. The skelf looked up at Addison uncomfortably, shifting from foot to foot.

‘So, you heard noises?’ It was as much a statement as a question. ‘Tell me about them.’

‘It’s like ah telt the other polis. Ah’d been sleeping. It was still dark o’clock. Know what I mean, man?’

Addison looked like he was resisting the temptation to tell him to get on with it but settled for a nod instead.

‘Aye well, it wis still pure dark an ah heard voices. Arguing, man. But no that loud. It went on for a bit then there wis this bit eh a mad scream that stopped quick an ah heard the guy hit the deck.’

‘What did you hear after that?’

‘Nothing, man.’

‘Nothing? Anyone walking away, anyone running? Anyone crying for help? A car starting, maybe a motorbike? Something hitting the ground after being thrown away?’

‘No. Well, aye. Someone walking away. I’d say he wisnae running, kinda slow like he was maybe dragging something. Naebody crying for help though. Would say he was well deid.’