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