When her hands teased and taunted and worked their magic. When he rose to meet her and she smiled with satisfaction.
It was only when she fell off him again, laughing and panting, her hair sticking to the side of her glistening face in a way that reminded him of the woman who stared at Caldwell’s dead body, that it started again. He knew it would because she couldn’t leave it at that. She could never leave it.
‘So just what were you doing at Central Station?’
‘Christ, Rachel. You know what I was doing.’
‘Okay. I know what you were doing. Let me rephrase. Why the fuck were you doing it?’
‘Is this where you get the rubber hoses out?’
‘Only if it turns you on. Come on, why?’
‘Again, you know why. We’ve been through it before.’
‘Fucksake, Tony. What the hell are you worried about? It’s me. I know most of it. Spill the rest.’
He sighed. He really didn’t want to get into this. He didn’t want to get into it because he didn’t really understand it himself, so how could he expect her to.
‘It’s my thing. I like photographing accidents and the people. You know that.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t know you had it as bad as that.’
The bitch was as persistent as she was sexy, he thought.
‘How did you get into this anyway?’
Rachel had an annoying habit of asking questions she already knew the answer to. It was the price he paid for sleeping with a detective, even if one look at her was enough to know it was a price worth paying.
She knew all about Enrique Metinides and the exhibition that Tony had attended in London back in 2003 at the Photographers’ Gallery, just two minutes from Oxford Circus. He’d gone with a blonde named Jodi, a London girl. He didn’t really have much interest in going to a gallery or an exhibition but she was keen and he was keen on her. As soon as he was in the gallery, though, Metinides’s photographs blew him away. They were like nothing he’d seen before and tapped right into something deep inside him.
The images messed with his head, being truly brutal and yet truly beautiful at the same time. Car crashes. Floods. Suicides. Train crashes. Plane crashes. Fires. Murders. Accidents. Anything bad that resulted in death or destruction in Mexico City for over fifty years, Metinides was there and had photographed it for their red-top tabloids. Metinides started out taking photographs when he was just eleven. Chasing ambulances, running to fires and hanging out in front of the local cop shop waiting for criminals to be dragged in or out. The reporters and the other photo graphers called him El Nino, the kid, and the nickname stuck.
His photographs were intimate and unsettling, poetic and haunting. The critics said that he found humanity in catastrophe.
It was the faces that got to Winter, not the flames or the tangled wreckage. Nor was it just the faces of the dead but also those that had turned up to gawp at them. Metinides was the rubberneckers’ rubbernecker.
It was Mexico City and much of it was decades ago but to Winter it could have as easily been Maryhill or Mount Vernon right here, right now. The photographs reached the dark places inside him and Narey knew that too, although neither of them had ever said it. She knew how Metinides had inspired him, she just didn’t quite know why. That was why she teased and tormented him to try and get to the bottom of it.
‘Don’t be shy about it,’ she mocked now. ‘It’s cool that you are so into something. The passion is a turn-on. Tell me more.’
Part of him wanted to tell her to fuck off. Not in a bad way, just in a leave-it-alone kind of way. He reached an arm around, pulling her close and feeling her body yield to his touch.
‘A turn-on, is it? Come here then.’
‘I want to hear more first,’ she continued. ‘You’ve never really told me why you are so into it.’
Yeah well, there’s a reason for that, he thought. Guilty secrets. They’d played this game too often though, and he wasn’t ready to offer up any more of himself just yet.
‘There’s something you haven’t told me about either,’ he tried, to change the subject.
‘Oh yes?’ She looked doubtful. ‘What’s that then?’
‘The hooker that was found murdered in Wellington Lane. What’s happening with her?’
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.’
CHAPTER 8
‘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
