Snapshot (21 page)

Addison must have bored of messing with him because he’d turned his fire on McConachie instead. She was still scowling at the two bodies and shaking her head.

‘DS McConachie, any chance you could get your finger out your arse and join in this investigation. There’s a hundred witnesses in those flats need interviewing.’

She nodded slowly, her eyes never off Adamson and Haddow.

‘I’ll talk to them, sir. I’m just wondering if it will be a terrible thing if they haven’t seen anything.’

Addison spat on the ground.

‘What, you buying into this “Dark Angel anti-hero” shite? I thought you had more sense.’

‘No, course I’m not. But . . .’

‘But what?’

‘But maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world that these two scumbags have been taken out. That’s all I’m saying.’

‘Is that right? Well what I’m saying is that I need a fucking breakthrough on this or the Temple is going to burst my baws. This fucker is taking the piss big time and he’s not getting away with that on my watch so I want everything you’ve got whether you like it or not. We’re the law round here, not some nutter with a rifle. Remember that, DS McConachie.’

The sergeant was stung and desperate to come back with something but she gnawed on her tongue and let her eyes blaze instead, settling for a stone-cold, ‘Yes, sir’ as an answer.

He was glaring at her and daring her to disrespect him. Addison would take plenty of banter at the right time and place but clearly this wasn’t it. He wanted answers, not arguments.

Part of Winter was still bursting to tell him about the link, but he knew he wasn’t going to. He was going home to look at photographs again instead.

‘Who is fucking doing this?’ he raged. ‘Who is fucking doing this to me?’

McConachie thought she could hear self-pity in the voice on the other end of the phone. It was beneath the fury and hidden behind the thunder but it was there. Self-pity wrapped up in fear. The Dark Angel, whoever he was, was getting closer and Terry Gilmartin was bricking himself.

That was bad news for Jan and she knew it. If Gilmartin was scared then he’d also be desperate and that put Amy at risk. There wasn’t a single day that she didn’t regret taking his money but few times that she’d regretted it more than right then. It had seemed so simple at first that she’d ignored just how wrong it was.

Amy had needed that tutor, she’d convinced herself of that and her class teacher had agreed. It wasn’t that she wasn’t bright, that was the thing – it was that she wasn’t fulfilling her potential. It had been Jan’s fault that her daughter had been badly affected by the break-up with Amy’s dad. Her school work suffered as a result and she needed the tutor to catch up and be all that she could be.

She’d always told herself that if she hadn’t needed that money right then she’d have told Gilmartin where to go. But he’d somehow sensed her desperation or her weakness. All he wanted was some information, an advance warning of impending trouble. Once the tutor was paid for then she’d get back on the straight path, he could look out for himself and no one would be any the wiser. How could she have been so stupid to think it could ever be that simple?

He had his claws into her and he’d never let go. When she’d sent one of his heavies back to him with the cash still in his pocket then Gilmartin turned the screw. Jan picked up Amy after school to find her beaming all over her face, happily showing off a new pair of trainers that her mum had never seen before. It turned out that a friend of Mummy’s had got there before she did and given her the present, trainers that fitted perfectly. He’d told Amy that he could bring her presents any time because he knew where she lived. Amy was much happier at that prospect than her mummy was.

From that day, Terry Gilmartin still paid her for information but there was never any doubt that he no longer had to. She would do what he wanted and Amy wouldn’t get any more visits from her new uncle George. Instead George Faichney initiated regular meetings with her, sometimes in person but usually by phone, to get whatever it was that Gilmartin wanted that week. Jan’s co-operation kept Amy safe. Until now. Now Gilmartin wanted more than she was able to give and that made everything dangerous.

‘Who is fucking doing this to me?’ he repeated.

‘It isn’t just to you,’ Jan told him. ‘This guy is targeting every senior drugs figure in the city.’

‘Don’t tell me it isn’t me,’ he screamed down the phone. ‘My son is in intensive care. Jimmy Adamson and Andrew Haddow are dead. This bastard is knocking on my front door. You tell me what the fuck is going on.’

So she did the only thing she could do. She told him everything that the police knew and everything that they didn’t. It didn’t please Gilmartin that there was much more of the second than the first.

Thursday 15 September

Winter had Rory McCabe’s address in his records from his visit to see the teenager in A&E at the Royal. The boy lived with his parents in a close in Whitehill Street, just a couple of hundred yards from where his mates found him lying in Craigpark Drive with a busted knee.

Dennistoun was tenement land, built by the Victorians to house the middle class but instead taking in respectable working-class families when they couldn’t attract enough white collars. Whitehill Street was in the heart of it, a long line of four-storey terracotta-and-blonde stone buildings behind neatly hedged gardens. Mostly there were eight families to a close, hiding secrets behind lace curtains.

Winter hadn’t exactly worked out what he was going to say or how he’d explain being there. But he figured that saying little was the way to go. In this case, less was more. He parked up outside, climbed the stairs of the tenement to the second floor, knocked sharply on the door and prepared to wing it.

A blonde woman in her late-forties answered almost immediately, well dressed and polite.

‘Yes? Can I help you?’

Winter held his SPSA identification up in front of him, hoping she wouldn’t look too closely at it.

‘Mrs McCabe? I’m Tony Winter, I was part of the investigation into the attack on your son and spoke to him while he was in hospital. I was hoping to speak to him today as part of a follow-up enquiry.’

‘Oh. Has there been a development?’ the woman piped up excitedly. ‘Do you know who did it?’

‘Not yet, but we are still investigating. Today’s visit is partly to reassure you that we haven’t given up on finding who did this.’

This seemed to please the boy’s mother because she smiled at him and pulled the door wide, standing back to let him in. The house was tidily kept and looked as if it had been recently decorated. Mrs McCabe ushered Winter into the living room from where he could hear the noise of a movie or maybe a computer game.

It turned out it was both. Rory was sitting on a couch with a PlayStation 3 in front of him while a crappy afternoon movie was thundering away on the television. A pair of crutches rested on the wall behind the settee. The boy didn’t bother looking up till his mother told him for a second time that he had a visitor.

He knew Winter right away which explained why he got a glare. Either that or else he simply wasn’t best pleased at having to interrupt his game.

‘Rory, this is Mr Winter from the police. Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Winter, I forgot what rank you were.’

‘It’s fine, Mrs McCabe,’ he said with as much authority as he could muster. ‘Thank you. I’ll just talk to Rory now if that’s okay.’

The woman flustered a bit and backed away.

‘Oh yes, yes. Of course. Can I get you a cup of tea?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Coffee?’

‘No, I’m fine. Thanks.’

She gave up her mission of hospitality and closed the door behind her, leaving Winter alone with her stroppy teenage son.

‘Hi, Rory. How you doing? That knee of yours getting better?’

The kid sighed.

‘It’s okay.’

‘You able to get around on those things?’ he asked, nodding at the crutches behind him.

‘I can manage okay. Listen, I’m no’ as daft as my mum. I remember you. You’re not a detective, you’re a photographer. So what you doing here?’

Winter gave him a smile intended to tell him that he recognized that the kid was smart. And it wasn’t completely a lie. He wasn’t going to get anywhere by treating him like an idiot.

‘I didn’t say I was a cop, your mum just assumed that. But obviously I do work with them. I wanted to ask you some questions about the person that did this to you.’

‘I told you already and I told the cops. I don’t know who it was.’

‘Yeah, I remember. But I still think you know more than you’re telling.’

Rory frowned and looked out of the window.

‘The guy that beat you up, he had a ring on his finger, right? Must have hurt like fuck when he punched you in the chest.’

His head spun towards Winter, his mouth dropping. He quickly clammed it shut again but it was enough to let Winter know he was rattled.

‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ McCabe mumbled. As he did so, his mobile beeped, signalling a text, and he picked it up, punching in a reply.

‘My mate across the road,’ he said, without looking up. ‘Wanting to know if that was a cop going into my house. He’s looking out for me.’

‘So what did you tell him?’

‘Said you weren’t a cop. But that you were hassling me for information.’

‘Ach, it’s hardly hassle, Rory. More like trying to help you.’

‘Aye, right.’

Time to push his luck, Winter thought.

‘Your mum seems really nice.’

He was wary. ‘Yes, she is.’

‘Looks after you pretty well I’d say,’ he continued. ‘Thinks the world of you.’

‘Aye . ’

Winter lowered his voice.

‘It would be terrible if she found out about the drugs.’

He was reaching, guessing. It could have been game over before it had barely begun but he knew the link was there.

‘Fuck off,’ Rory hissed at him. ‘That’s not cool. You can’t do that. It would kill her. She thinks I’m the only teenager around here that’s clean. And I
am
clean. It was only a bit of weed.’

‘Just a bit?’ he guessed again.

‘Okay, more than a bit but it’s no big deal. But I don’t want her to know.’

‘No problem,’ Winter smiled. ‘You help me and I help you. And everything you tell me stays between us.’

The teenager stared straight through him, gnawing his lip and thinking hard. Tears began to run down his cheeks.

‘Fucking bastard,’ he choked. ‘This isn’t fair. If he finds out I’ve talked . . . he’ll kill me. I’m scared.’

‘I know you are but he won’t find out from me. I promise.’

He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, his cheeks scarlet with embarrassment and worry.

‘You promise?’

‘Yes,’ Winter nodded.

‘You better. You saw what he did to me last time.’

Rory nodded as if he’d come to a decision, dried his eyes again and began.

‘Okay. First off, I don’t know who he was. Just one guy. Six footish. With a ski mask on. I really don’t know who he was. Okay?’

Winter believed him.

‘Okay.’

Rory swallowed hard.

‘He just wanted information from me. That’s all.’

‘Tell me what he wanted, Rory.’

The boy swore, blowing bubbles through his tears, his eyes red.

‘There was a mate of mine that died a wee while back. Keiran McKendrick. Died of an overdose.’

The words stuck in the boy’s throat as if he hoped that if he hadn’t spoken them then they wouldn’t be true.

‘What happened?’

He glared again. Winter was wanting more information than he was prepared to give. He was intruding on the boy’s grief.

‘Don’t really know. He didn’t do much more than I did. A wee bit of miaow-miaow, that was all. Hardly ever though. Then he overdosed.’

‘Sorry to hear it. So what did that have to do with you being attacked?’

Rory swallowed hard again.

‘The guy wanted to know who supplied Kieran with the gear. He beat the shit out of me till I told him.’

‘That’s all he wanted?’

‘Aye . ’

‘And who did give your pal the drugs?’

‘Never mind. The other guy had to knock the fuck out of me to get it. All you need to know is that was what he wanted.’

‘Come on, Rory. Finish the job. Give me the name.’

‘No, I’ve told you enough. Why don’t you just leave me alone?’

‘Look, Rory . . .’

The living-room door opened and Mrs McCabe pushed through with a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits. She immediately saw that her boy had been crying and looked at Winter sternly, the tigress coming out in the quiet housewife.

‘Trauma,’ Winter assured her. ‘People underestimate the effects of re-living an attack like that. It’s a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. Just leave him with his PlayStation for a bit and he’ll be okay. Maybe a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits.’

The woman looked unsure but Rory nodded at her.

‘It’s fine, Mum. I’ll be fine. He’s just going, we’re finished.’

The words were to his mum but they were said with a look at Winter. He wasn’t saying any more. Not that day, anyway.

‘You’ll have a cup of tea though before you go, Sergeant Winter?’

‘No, sorry, Mrs McCabe, but I have to go. Thanks, anyway. Take care of yourself, Rory, and I’ll pop back and see you.’

‘No need,
Sergeant
,’ Rory said, emphasizing the last word.

He let Mrs McCabe show him to the door and back into the close. He started down the stairs, wondering why the fuck somebody was so determined to find out the name of a dealer that they would take a bat to the kid’s knee. It had to be linked to the shootings though, it just had to be.

He heard footsteps behind him just a second or two before he felt a kick to the back of his legs. A second boot swiftly followed and he found himself tumbling down the stairs. As he fell, he could hear more feet approaching, from down the stairs this time, and a hard blow came at his shoulder.

‘Keep away from Rory, ya cunt. What’s your problem?’

‘He’s no done nothing, right. Leave him alane.’