park.
When they got there, the group split into two, Shirley leading one and Addison the other. Addison signalled for Winter to follow him to where his Audi A5 was parked and nodded towards the back. Winter had asked him in the past about why he needed such a flash motor but Addison would just look down at his expensive suit and give a self-satisfied wave of both hands as if to say, ‘Hey, I’m worth it.’
Two other CID officers joined them in the car, Colin Monteith in the front and a sombre-looking blonde woman in the back. Winter had barely closed the door when Addison accelerated away, throwing him back in his seat and scrambling for the safety belt.
‘Colin, you and Tony obviously know each other. DS Jan McConachie, this is Tony Winter. He photographs dead people.’
The blonde cop looked over disinterestedly for a moment before turning her gaze back to whatever she was finding so fascinating out of the window.
‘Okay, here’s what we know,’ Addison said as he pulled out of the gates in second gear, hammering onto Glenmavis Street and towards the motorway. ‘We have three dead at Harthill, two beaten up and shot in the back of the head from a distance, the other shot in the face. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to link them to Quinn and Caldwell. Witnesses told uniform that they saw two of the men running, almost staggering, through the car park on their way to the area with the petrol pumps and the shop.’
‘I take it we don’t have any idea who they are?’ asked McConachie.
‘Nope. Uniform won’t touch them till we get there and Tony photographs them. Once he’s done that we can go through their pockets. They’re looking through the CCTV now though and hopefully they’ll have something to show us by the time we get there.’
‘So what were they running from? Or to?’ asked Monteith. ‘Staggering means they could have been drunk or already hurt?’
‘Hurt,’ replied Addison. ‘One witness reckoned they came from the far end of the services where you come in from the motorway and they had blood on them. Thought they might even have been hit by a car.’
No one had reported an accident. There was no sign of a vehicle abandoned anywhere nearby. The description of the victims rang no bells. If they were drug dealers on the scale of Quinn or Caldwell then they’d have been recognized right away. Forensics was going to examine the bullets for a match to the L115A3 but that would obviously take time. Not that anyone doubted it would prove to be from the same gun. This wasn’t a time to start believing in coincidences.
The cops batted theories back and forth, Addison sure that the dead guys would also be dealers of some stature, Monteith saying he hoped that they were, McConachie saying little. Winter wasn’t involved in any of it though, he was just the hired help along for the ride. It didn’t bother him, he was there and that was all that mattered.
Addison belted along the M8 towards the Heart of Scotland services, his foot to the floor the whole way. He didn’t have a siren on his Audi but didn’t need one, simply overtaking everything in his path. The whole way, Winter’s sgriob was itching like crazy at the thought of the men with the holes in the back of their heads. He closed his eyes and tuned out the chat in the car, seeing the blood, smelling it, almost tasting it. How much of the heads would be left, how much blood, how much of their brains would be spilled over the car park? Focus, check the ambient light, adjust aperture, assess the depth of field, focus, focus, focus…
He didn’t open his eyes again till he felt Addison jump on the brakes and bring the car to a sudden halt. He saw the services were flooded with cops, Strathclyde blue everywhere, keeping back the open-mouthed masses. They’d parked up a fair bit away from the main event so as not to pollute the scene and walked to where a group of uniforms stood over what they had all come to see.
Shirley and three others were ahead of them obscuring the view but Winter could still make out a splayed body, blue jeans, a white shirt and a navy jacket, arms wide, cop tape and space marking out where he lay. About twenty yards further on a knot of blue was huddled round another two shapes on the ground. As they walked towards them, officers were being directed back across the car park to search every inch of the route the dead men had taken across the tarmac. Winter’s nostrils twitched and his throat was dry. Game on, he thought.
Shirley beckoned him past, the hired help invited to the party and first to get fed. The sooner he did what was needed then they could get on with the real work, was what they were thinking, but Winter knew what was real and it was just a few feet away. He licked his lips and hoped no one noticed, covering it with a wipe of his hand. As he went to the body, he saw Campbell Baxter glare at him and knew that if looks could kill then he’d be lying on the concrete beside the three stiffs. Baxter was loathing him more with every step. Too bad, thought Winter.
First, he pulled the spherical camera out of the bag to take the 360-degree shots for the Return to Scene programme. They’d been using R2S for a few years now since it was created by the forensic investigation people in Aberdeen. When he got back to the office it would help him set up a virtual crime scene that the officers could add to with audio clips of witness statements, CCTV footage and whatever else might prove useful. Then, once he’d taken in the whole world view, he got out his own camera.
On the first victim he saw brushed navy boots with good, thick soles made for walking and dark denims with knees bent strangely where he’d hit the ground. A white cotton shirt was a good look if you were going to be shot in the head and then photographed.
Blood isn’t red. At least, it isn’t simply red. It is cornelian or vermilion, it’s pillarbox or Venetian, Persian or scarlet. It can be anything from alizarin to carmine depending on the effects of oxygen or carbon dioxide. When you see fresh blood it will be crimson, signifying power and danger, glistening bright with vitality and pumped with oxygen. But let it simmer and watch it turn rosso corso, passing through lust by way of coquelicot.
Winter had never ceased to be amazed at the colour of blood because you never knew quite what you were going to get. See it vivid when the haemoglobin is oxygenated and you will be seeing amaranth, candy apple or American rose. See it dull, listless and dying and it will be sangria, rufous or burgundy. Smell hot firebrick or cool falu. Taste flame-grilled cardinal or coppery upsdell like the tang of two-pence pieces.
The flowing blood of a suicide where someone has cut their own wrists runs dark and gloomy because of the deoxygenated juice that runs through the veins whereas the blood of a victim of cyanide poisoning will be redder than red because the body cannot steal away its oxygen. When you know blood, when you love it, then you can tell lava from ruby, rose madder from coral. You can look at blood and know how long it has been exposed to the air where it cannot breathe, where it withers and dies like a fish out of water or a rose torn from the ground.
This guy was lying in a pool of sangria. Winter wasn’t sure if that was appropriate or ironic given that the word comes from the Spanish for blood. His was full-bodied Rioja, all smoke and spice and everything that’s nice.
He was in his early thirties with close-cropped hair intended to hide the fact that he was losing it. A scar maybe three inches in length and washed in muted, hour-old firebrick ran down the left-hand side of his face from ear to jawline. His mouth hung open like a rusty hinge, a flycatcher of a mouth, stuck before it could scream. You could almost make out the beginning of the final word that fell on his lips. This was Glasgow, whatever he was about to say it probably began with F.
Winter focused on his head and on the wound, the crater that had been driven through his skull by the sniper’s bullet. Death through a lens. The murky light offered by the September sun lent his photographs a muted hue, casting them drab and downbeat. He fastened on a daylight fill-in flash and lit it in its full glory. Colours flooded the aperture, filling his viewfinder with everything he wanted. He shot, shot and shot.
He couldn’t hear anyone talking. It was Central Station all over again, locked in his own little world of death. He heard blood, pounding in his ears and thumping at his heart. He saw blood, already drying on the man’s face and drenching his long sleeved white. It swam round him like a velvet pillow, soaking up his soul.
His clothes were designer-expensive, the kind of bad taste cool pumped out by Italian designers and worn by overpaid footballers. Mr Hole in his Head flaunted his money, wore it as a badge.
The guy’s face spoke to Winter of a life lived in the scumbag lane. The tanning studio glow and taut skin said nightclub poser. The scar shouted hard man in a hard town. Then there were the wide, cold fish eyes that had learned the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming truck and had screamed for help. His eyes roared fear.
His shirt was opened, ripped open maybe, almost to the waist. This guy had had the shit kicked out of him, with ugly red welts forming on his chest where he had been punched or kicked. He focused in on the marks one by one, all the time a bell going off in the back of his head. Something he’d seen before but couldn’t think what. He
