didn’t bother locking the Audi and was out and onto the tarmac before Winter had even opened the door. He was still fishing his camera gear out of the back when he heard him utter:
‘What the fu…’
It was only then that Winter took in the look on the faces of the handful of cops that had beaten them there. All looking at them with something approaching pity on their faces. Addison couldn’t have noticed them either because he had blundered round the corner and straight into the face of whatever it was. Now he was standing stock-still with his mouth open.
Winter sprinted to the corner, aware that his head was slowing it down like it was some nightmare version of Baywatch. He caught his feet in time to follow the gaze of Alex Shirley, Jan McConachie, – fuck, Rachel was there too – Julia Corrieri, two other CIDs and four uniform, including Jim Boyle and Sandy Murray.
Thirty yards away was the door to what looked like a half-finished warehouse. There was no sign on it and an unpainted roof sat on top of unpainted walls. Standing hard against the door was a man, arms wide as if he was being held at gunpoint. His head was slumped against his chest like he had fallen asleep but his arms said that couldn’t be the case. It filtered through to Winter’s brain slowly, the only way it could because what he was really seeing was just so terrible.
The guy wasn’t standing or leaning against the door, he was being held up by it. He was somehow pinned against it and his arms were out straight as if… as if he were crucified against it. That’s exactly what it is, Winter thought. The itch on his lip was competing with a thud in his heart and the potential collapse of his bowels.
He was aware of Shirley beckoning him forward, waving him towards the door, everyone else standing back to let him by, almost reverentially. He was aware of grim faces and quizzical looks, someone was saying something but he didn’t hear it. He was zeroing in on the door, focusing on it as if he’d fall unless he concentrated on it. His camera came out of his bag on auto-pilot and he looked down, surprised that it was in his hand.
As he approached, he saw dress shoes and suit trousers, a pale-blue shirt open at the collar, no tie. He saw tousled dark hair that had been wet or sweaty and had dried that way. Blood. He saw falu red at the man’s open palms and daubs of it at his feet. He got closer and saw nails driven through his hands, and his gut tightened and his breathing became harder. There were nails through his feet, too, driven through the black leather of his shoes and causing the unholy puddle beneath him. There wasn’t just blood in that spill though, it ran with the fear that had soiled the front of his navy-blue trousers. He’d been alive when some of this had happened.
Closer. Winter’s nose picked up sweat, blood, urine and fear. And death. His nose wrinkled at the smell of it just as his lip itched. He stopped, focused and shot, stepped a few yards to the side and repeated the process. He circled right, snapping as he went. Every detail from every angle. This was a new one even for him, no amount of Glasgow could prepare you for this. His mind flew back to Father Mulroney at St Simon’s in Partick Bridge Street. Mark Chapter 15. ‘And they crucified two bandits with him, one on his right and one on his left.’
He was no more than six feet away and the man filled his viewfinder. Switch, zoom, focus. His hands punctured and still bleeding, slowly, ever so slowly, dripping away what was left of him. The nails that pinned him were bog-standard B amp;Q specials, intended to be driven through planks of wood, not flesh and bone. Right hand, left hand, neither knowing what the other had done. Closer.
Winter knew before he finally saw it for sure. Every angle, every detail. He’d seen it in his camera’s eye but had shut it out, willing it not to be so but there was no getting away from it. He kneeled before the man, careful to avoid the pool of blood and piss at their feet. His lens turned to the man’s face in a final act of supplication and saw Inspector Graeme Forrest look despairingly back down at him, his last hope long since dripped onto the concrete.
Forrest’s mouth was stuffed with twenty-pound notes, his cheeks bulging with them, and a hundred, maybe two hundred quid’s worth hanging from his lips. Used notes stuffed between his teeth, either ensuring his silence or choking him to death.
Graeme was staring at the pavement as if it offered some kind of answer, fear in his empty blue eyes. Winter closed in on one of them, a photo that would never appear in any evidence submission. He saw alarm and guilt and pain.
Forrest had always been a bit of a devil yet here he was crucified like Our Lord. Father Mulroney wouldn’t have approved of this. Who the fuck did he think he was?
Forrest’s mouth looked sad, loose and wide with the bank notes and turned down at the corners. All that, whatever it was, for this. Police college, being nice to his mum, catching criminals, always brushing his teeth. All that just for some bastard to nail him to a door. He looked fat, his head slumped down like that and his cheeks bulging – whatever blood he had left had been rushing there too and left him looking like a chipmunk. Poor bastard.
Winter could hear Forrest telling him not to photograph him like that. Always was a vain bastard. Forrest would have wanted a better angle but there weren’t any more of them. There was only one shot. Anyway, God help him, but he’d never looked better. Frozen for time immoral in the biggest case in town.
Winter stepped down and back, easing himself out from under the dead cop, vaguely aware of more voices behind him. He could pick out Rachel – what the hell was she doing there? – and Addison among them but hadn’t a clue what they were saying. More pish, no doubt. It was all pish. Pictures painted a thousand words so why talk? He turned away from Forrest to let the vultures in to pick over his bones. He’d recorded him for posterity and for the high court, now they were going to rip him to bits. If he was thinking it then so were they – the crucifixion and the cash, shades of Jesus and Judas, saint and sinner. They’d crowded in on Winter, watching him work. Rubberneckers. Gawpers. They weren’t rushing forward to get to Forrest though and for a moment Winter thought their reluctance was down to it being one of their own until he realized there wasn’t a forensic among them. Baxter, Cat or whoever was on duty hadn’t got to the site and the cops would have to wait. Graeme’s dignity was spared for a few minutes longer.
He was in a world of his own again and it was the first ring of the mobile phone, no, phones, that made him jump. Two ringtones cut through whatever talk was going on among the cops, the sounds jumbled together, but Winter recognized one of them, his brain trying to unscramble it from the other. CID and uniform were looking at each other and hands started to reach into pockets to pull out the phones, some stopping when they realized it wasn’t theirs.
It was Jan McConachie, standing maybe ten feet to Winter’s right, who emerged with a phone first, looking at the screen display with puzzlement and discomfort. She was still looking at it when a shot rang out and a bullet took her clean off her feet. She fell straight back, a circle of pure candy-apple red bursting her forehead.
Winter spun instinctively to the left where the other ringtone, the familiar one, was coming from. He turned just in time to see Addison holding his mobile and trying to move, to dive, to duck. He was too late and another gunshot exploded from somewhere over Winter’s shoulder and sent Addison spinning. Winter saw the gush of blood like an oil well being struck, a burst of scarlet showering him before he hit the deck.
CHAPTER 31
Winter heard the thud of Addison hitting the tarmac then nothing. His ears were full of gunshot, ringing with horror. The cops who were still standing, some having thrown themselves to the ground, were frozen to the spot. He looked over Addison’s stricken body and saw Rachel looking back at him, her eyes locked on his. He held his breath for another shot and in the hour that seemed to flash by in a split second, or the split second that lasted an hour, he had time to hope the next bullet would hit him and not her.
Shirley found his voice, piercing the hush and roaring at everyone to get down. Lying flat, Winter saw the spurt of blood pooling round Addison, gathering quickly round him like a shroud. He thought his heart was going to burst. Death didn’t seem so beautiful after all.
What was he doing lying there, he thought? He got back to his feet, shakily, turning to face away from the warehouse door where Forrest was hanging. Turning to face where the shots were coming from.
‘Get fucking down, Winter,’ Shirley bellowed. Winter ignored him, staring out to wherever the bastard with the gun was, his heart hammering at his ribs and his throat dry. He stared the shooter down even though he couldn’t see him. He gave him ten long seconds and then made his move, turning towards Addison with his camera in his hand. The sniper with the rifle wasn’t going to shoot him, he’d have done it by then.
