His mouth said no but his eyes said no way. The boy was scared shitless.
‘Fair enough,’ Winter said. ‘I’ll just do my job and leave you in peace. Couple of those nurses look pretty hot, eh?’
That gained him a sheepish smile from Nurse Karen but no reaction from the boy beyond a grimace. He guessed that was down to the pain in his patella rather than a lack of interest in the nursing staff. No problem, wee man. I’ll stick to the photographs and you stick to your story, he thought. See where that gets either of us.
This wouldn’t be a pic for Winter’s collection, too run of the mill. Something didn’t quite fit either because the scared rabbit look on McCabe’s face wasn’t right either. He’d seen more than enough of these kids and he would have expected angry and vengeful. The full-on, rebel-without-a-cause, going-to-get-my-mates-to-break-some-legs kind of angry. Not this; it was all a bit pitiful.
Winter shot the knee from every angle, seeing the bones that threatened to poke through the skin, closing in on the bruises and the distortions of the joint.
Next he pulled the Fuji IS Pro from the bag, a dedicated ultraviolet infrared camera that can pick up bruising that’s invisible to the eye. It wasn’t needed to see the mess round his knee but you never knew what else was hidden away. Winter took a shot of Rory’s face and chest too and sure enough there was a contusion on the right- hand side of the teenager’s chest that couldn’t have been seen without the filters.
Enough was enough. He was in no hurry to get back to the lab but what more could he do?
‘You take it easy, Rory,’ he told him. ‘Don’t go running after those nurses mind, let them chase you.’
The boy glared at him.
‘Fuck off.’
Winter got the feeling it was maybe the first time Rory had ever told anyone that. The blonde nurse scowled at him as well; it looked like he’d overstayed his welcome. As Tony pushed his way through the door out of the ward, he saw the close-cropped brick shithouse guy get to his feet and make for a water dispenser on the other side of the room. It took him within a couple of feet of Winter and the photographer had no doubt that it was deliberate. The guy was aged about twenty and looked like he could handle himself – and wanted Winter to know it.
‘You alright?’ Winter asked him when the man was almost in his face.
‘What’s it got to do with you?’ he growled back. ‘What’s your problem?’
‘No problem, none at all,’ Winter replied, without breaking his stride.
‘Keep it that way,’ said the voice at his back.
Fucking Glasgow, Winter thought. Every conversation is a confrontation. He sighed, realizing that he was on his way back to Pitt Street with as much admin to do as he had started the day with; a fresh bunch of photographs to file and precisely none that were worthy of a place in his collection. A pint of Guinness was sounding like a better idea with every passing step.
He didn’t know if it was intuition or some sense of being watched but Winter turned at the end of the corridor and looked back towards the door to the ward to see the tall, muscle-bound guy glaring at him from the other side of the glass.
CHAPTER 5
Monday 12 September
A day after being in the red-light district, Rachel was back there again. She had ditched the rookie constable and instead had DC Julia Corrieri in tow again, heading for the Wish drop-in centre in York Street. Narey had explained that that was where her contact worked and was currently their best chance of finding out the name of the murdered prostitute.
Corrieri was a tall, angular woman in her early twenties with a mop of dark hair and an uncoordinated air about her. Narey knew that she was smart enough but wasn’t convinced that she always knew what day it was. The DS had been allocated the job of big sister and it was already proving a tiresome task.
Corrieri had spent the previous day going through the PNC as Addison had directed in the hope of finding a record of something similar to the killer’s act of trying to wipe away the hooker’s make-up but had come up empty- handed. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. In her determination to be thorough and her fear of missing something, she had produced a long list of weird offender fetishes including ear biting, house cleaning and tampon theft. All of which she handed over with an endearing solemnity that made Narey want to both hug her and slap her.
York Street was in the south-west area of the city centre, connecting Argyle Street to the Broomielaw, and only a few hundred yards from where the hooker was killed in Wellington Lane. Wish occupied the street level of a formerly imposing row of Georgian buildings but now the upper floors were largely deserted and the drop-in centre was squeezed between a Cantonese restaurant and a boarded-up shop. The place provided support and health care to the sex workers and had done for nearly twenty years. Cops weren’t exactly welcomed in with open arms but the people that ran Wish knew that they were basically on their side.
A few yards away from it, Narey stopped and explained a few dos and donts to Corrieri before they went in.
‘Let me do the talking, particularly at first, but feel free to chip in later. If any of the working girls are in then don’t stare at them, for God’s sake. They are bound to have heard about the girl on Wellington Lane and will probably be shaken up as it is without us blundering in. We don’t talk to them without the centre’s say-so. Just treat them with a bit of respect. They are all on the game but they are still women, remember that.’
Corrieri nodded earnestly and followed the DS inside.
A couple of young women who were drinking steaming cups of tea immediately turned their backs when the officers came through the door. Their movement caused a weary laugh from a middle-aged woman sitting behind a desk facing the door.
‘Jeezus, we aren’t getting many clients as it is without Cagney and Lacey coming in to scare them away. How are you, Rachel?’
Joanne Samuels was originally from Newcastle and had worked at Wish since it opened in 1992, working her way up from shoulder to cry on and chief tea maker to running the place. The centre itself had moved a good few times as leases ran out and rents rose when the red-light district became the international financial district. Samuels was a plump, pleasant woman in her mid-fifties who always had a kindly smile and a waspish sense of humour no matter what tales of horror were heard behind the door.
‘I’m doing okay, Joanne, how are you? Cagney and Lacey? Christ, you are showing your age.’
‘Hard to hide it, pet,’ the woman laughed, pulling a hand across the greying locks that were pulled back into a fat bun behind her head.
‘Away with you,’ Narey said. ‘Joanne, this is Julia Corrieri.’
Narey had instinctively not used Corrieri’s rank but there was no way that anyone would have taken them for anything other than police.
‘Nice to meet you, Julia. I take it you’re here about Melanie.’
Narey’s heart skipped a beat at the fact that Joanne knew the girl’s name.
‘You knew her then?’
Joanne shook her head sadly, a stray strand of hair flicking across her face.
‘No, I didn’t. But she is obviously the talk of the steamie around here. She didn’t come into Wish but a couple of the girls that do have put a name to her. It’ll be her working name, mind, I don’t have a real one for you.’
Narey’s heart sank again, even though she knew she ought to have expected it.
‘I was hoping you’d have something,’ she admitted.
‘Very little,’ the woman conceded. ‘She was a local girl but she didn’t appear to want any help from us. She seemed to think she was getting all the help she needed from somewhere else, if you get my drift.’
Narey thought that she did.
‘Okay, so have you heard the women talking about anyone particularly violent recently? Someone that might be capable of this?’
‘No, just the usual collection of bastards that want to use them as punch-bags and the ones who don’t think twice about giving them a kicking to get a refund. Not that they’re all like that. Some of them treat it the same way
