She let the pain of his comment show on her face.
‘Hey, don’t worry,’ he laughed lightly. ‘I was never that good with names anyway.’
She knew that was anything but true. She used to badger her dad to tell her about his old cases and he would sit her on his knee and reel off incidents, dates and names without ever having to pause to remember details. He’d had a mind like a vice.
‘You shouldn’t be in here, Dad. It’s not right.’
‘I’m afraid it is, love,’ he replied with a sad smile. ‘I’m just a burden to your mum and it’s not fair on her.’
‘Mum? Dad… Mum wouldn’t want you in here.’
Her mum had died five years earlier from breast cancer. Dad had been heartbroken but he’d taken the burden for both of them, as brave and strong as always. It had been the single most devastating event in his life and yet, for now, he seemed to have forgotten it.
‘I know she never complained,’ he continued. ‘But that’s your mum for you: she’s not the complaining type. But that doesn’t mean she deserves to have to wet nurse someone who can’t remember if he’s eaten or when he last changed his… um… his socks. See? I can’t even finish a bloody sentence sometimes.’
She knew better than to challenge him; getting upset only made him worse.
‘I can pop over more often and see how you’re doing. I should be doing that anyway.’
‘Rachel, you’ve got your own life to lead. Anyway, this bloody thing means I can go haywire at any time. I wandered out for a walk last week and didn’t even tell your mum I was going out.’
‘Lots of people do that, Dad.’
‘It was raining. Raining and cold and I didn’t even think to take a jacket. I was soaked to the skin by the time your mum found me. It’s not fair on her.’
Narey could feel a tear rising to her eyes but fought it, the same way she choked back the lump in her throat. It was the last thing he’d want to see and she wasn’t going to make him endure it.
‘It’s not fair on you either, Dad.’
‘Ach, well, you get what you deserve in life.’
‘Not that again. You’ve got to stop feeling guilty, Dad. It was nearly twenty years ago. You can’t keep beating yourself up about it.’
‘Can’t I? Well, why do I keep waking up and thinking about it then? Ironic, isn’t it? I can’t remember a bloody thing half the time but the one thing I’d rather forget…’
‘Let it go, Dad. It’s for the best.’
‘I can’t. I just can’t. I keep dreaming about that island. That poor girl.’
A single tear ran down his cheek and dropped with a soft splash onto the collar of his shirt. Another followed. Rachel realised she’d never in her life seen her dad cry — not at a movie, a funeral or a wedding. He’d been the strong one, always there and always tough enough to look after everyone else — until now.
‘I’ll sort it, Dad. Don’t worry. I’ll make it right. I promise.’
‘Thanks, love. But some things can’t be sorted.’
‘Of course they can.’
‘Hm? Yes, okay. Okay. Anyway, Helen, you take care and I’ll see you next week.’
‘You count on it. Love you.’
Rachel turned to leave, the tears finally falling. Helen was her mum’s name.
CHAPTER 12
Winter was safely back in his office in the bowels of Strathclyde Police HQ in Pitt Street, down in one of the dark places where daylight is a memory and a moment of cheerfulness is a prisoner. It suited him perfectly.
He was thumbing through photographs of near nothingness that he’d taken under the midnight moon on Inchmahome, looking for the soul of a girl long departed amidst the frozen ground and ancient priory. She wasn’t there but that didn’t mean he couldn’t see her. He’d been seeing her, truth be told, almost every night when sleep finally came.
The sound of the office phone disturbed his reverie and he was grateful for it. Not only did it bring the promise of work, it also took him away from the unfulfilled promise of Rachel’s cold case. He knew they were both obsessing on it and something about their mutual fascination with it bothered him. Maybe, as an only child, he’d just never learned how to share.
He picked up the receiver, recognising the call as an internal ring, and tried to stifle a sigh when he heard the voice on the other end of the phone belonged to Campbell ‘Two Soups’ Baxter, the senior crime scene manager and Winter’s nemesis. Two Soups had never had much time for Winter as part of the team, believing that his scenes of crime officers did a perfectly acceptable job of recording evidence without the need for a specialist photographer. Naturally, Winter disagreed.
‘Ah, Mr Winter. So good of you actually to be in the building for a change. If you could make yourself available for transportation to the east end, then we would be most grateful. Immediately.’
Even when Baxter was in what seemed to be a good mood, he remained a most irritating bastard.
‘Yes, of course, What’s the…’ But Baxter was already gone.
Winter grabbed his camera bag, confident that it was, as always, fully loaded and ready to go. He hustled his way to the car park and saw immediately that whatever it was, it was going to be fun. There were more than enough uniforms, detectives and forensics jumping into cars to put Winter’s antennae on full alert. This was no break-in at a newsagent. He found himself in a car with two of the forensics, Caro Sanchez in the back with him and Paul Burke at the wheel.
The details were scant but Sanchez and Burke at least knew more than Baxter had bothered to tell him. There were two casualties, probably as the result of some gang-related incident near Dalmarnock Road. One was dead at the scene and the other was being rushed to the Victoria. A crowd of local neds was already in attendance, witnesses supposedly among them, and the uniforms who were first there were having a hard time keeping them back from the scene. Blood and crowds, Winter thought, his favourite.
They picked up the sound of sirens as they approached Swanston Street, the noise fuelling his adrenalin and triggering the familiar itch that signalled the imminent chance to photograph something juicy. As they pulled into Swanston Street, it was chaos. There were kids running everywhere, some laughing, some shouting, all moving at the speed of blur and shouting at the top of their voices. As Winter got out of the car and made to get his gear from the boot, a bottle smashed a few feet away, sending glass flying in all directions. Cops were roaring at the kids. The situation was very close to becoming completely out of control.
‘More o’ the bastards,’ yelled one voice to his left, seeing the SOCOs get out of the car. It didn’t matter that they weren’t in police uniform, these kids could spot cops at two hundred yards. As soon as they were all togged out in coveralls, they made their way towards a scrum of neds, who were jumping about with their backs to them, with the intention of pushing their way through. Winter slowed his step long enough to fire off a scene-setting photograph of the crowd, seeing that hoodies, low baseballs caps and football scarves over their mouths were the order of the day. He quickly caught the other two up, getting there just as Burke took a punch on the back as they made their way through the throng. The forensic half-turned, angrily intent on giving as good as he got before Sanchez grabbed his arm and dragged him on.
‘The wild beasts in their natural habitat,’ scowled Burke, in his best David Attenborough voice. ‘Completely feral and exceedingly dangerous to approach.’
Winter was first through the throng and the first to glimpse the scene where the body was being attended to, his heart pounding at the sight of it. A tent was still being hurriedly erected to shield the corpse from the view of the baying mob. The sooner that was managed the better. The smell of blood was in the air and clearly powering the pack mentality. Given how much of it Winter could see trickling towards the gutter, it was hardly surprising. There were two separate pools of it but they were forming a single pond of crimson round the half-hidden body.