He strode straight towards the corpse, his camera in hand, pausing only to get a grab of the figure crouching over the body. He moved on quickly, reaching the cop, and was about to look over his shoulder to see the victim for the first time, ready to let it fill his vision and his viewfinder. He wasn’t going to allow himself his usual luxury of revelling in the moment before he saw his subject — the moment that always filled him with equal measures of excitement and fear — but as he saw the body through his lens, he stopped and let it swing away from his view.
‘Fucking hell,’ he exclaimed.
‘Don’t see that every day, do you?’ said the cop below him, his voice deadpan.
‘No. You certainly don’t.’
Splayed out before him and neatly cut in two was the body of a dog. It was some sort of bullmastiff breed, the kind that the tabloids liked to call devil dogs. This one was already on its way to doggy heaven or doggy hell, depending on just how much of a devil it had been when it was alive.
The dog’s mouth hung open and a thick pink tongue hung pathetically between razor sharp teeth. A broad, bejewelled collar was round its chunky neck, a piece of bling that looked even more stupid on the dog when it was dead than it must have done when it was alive.
Towards its middle, the animal’s short white fur was streaked in crimson, flecks of red spreading out from its gory core. The sight of the dog’s division was nothing short of spectacular. Winter’s camera was a blur of clicks and motors as he flashed shot after shot of the beast’s deliverance from evil.
The dog’s inner organs were spilled unceremoniously onto the frozen concrete of Swanston Street: heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, large intestine, small intestine, gall bladder, spleen. All sitting piled one on top of the other in a stew of the remains of its last meal, making a smorgasbord of dubious delight for all to see.
As if that wasn’t unpleasant enough, the dog had inevitably shit itself as it went to meet its maker. The resultant smell was horrific — not a treat for anyone’s nostrils.
The cut through the animal was remarkable. It couldn’t have been neater if it had been carried out on a vet’s surgery table and performed by a laser. Winter wondered if that had been the case and the animal had been moved after a dissection elsewhere. There were already signs of partial lividity though and Winter knew enough about forensics to realise that the tell-tale purple marks meant the dog hadn’t been moved.
The blood had rushed through the cut like water through the opening in a dam, making a dark, sticky blanket that would never be enough to keep the dog warm. Winter knew it was the sight of the dog, split asunder and swimming in its own juice, that was startling the watching throng of local neds and making their own blood boil. Winter dropped low to shoot across the body, knowing full well it would let him get the snarling, gawping, roaring, fearful faces in the same frame. Neither element made a pretty sight but together it made the peculiar beauty he sought.
There was still more. He was directed twenty yards away, where he was treated to the sight of a lower arm, cut just below the elbow, the job done as neatly as it had been with the dog, sheared off as if by some precision-mastered machine. The arm was skinny and white, pale even before it had been emptied of the blood that had flowed through it and now lay pooled all around. There was the blotchy stain of a homemade tattoo on the forearm, a declaration of love to Mary, which had been scrubbed over in an afterthought. The nails were dark and chipped and painted with nicotine.
Winter stalked his new prey, photographing from every angle, dropping yellow number markers as he went. On his periphery, he sensed cops and forensics closing in on him, anxious to get to work but having to wait till he had finished his. They circled him like hyenas waiting for a lion to have his fill and silently devising a strategy to drag him away from the kill. With a reluctance that growled deep in the pit of his stomach, he knew he’d have to give it up and let them in.
He dropped his arm to his side, camera in hand, signalling the end of his feasting and immediately bodies rushed past him. They all had their game faces on, suitably serious and intent on getting out of there as soon as possible. It was a routine they had danced far too often, the inevitable consequences of letting bored kids run around with recreational drugs and deadly weapons.
Winter backed off to the edge of the circus, casually firing off shots at the crowd and the cops but knowing he was sated by his photographic feed. A detective sergeant he knew from London Road, Aaron Sutton, was standing nearby, hands rooted in his pockets but his eyes scanning the crowd for likely suspects. Winter sidled over and Sutton greeted him with a despairing nod.
‘Never ends, does it?’
‘Never,’ Winter agreed, failing to mention that a dark corner of his heart hoped it never did. ‘So who do the dog and the hand belong to?’
‘Ah, the Great British pet-loving public. I expected better of you though, Tony. Mention the dog before the severed arm because it seems the worse of the two?’
Winter laughed, conceding there might be some truth in it.
‘Maybe. More likely just that the dog is the more unusual of the two.’
‘Aye, maybe. The dog is called Klitschko after the boxers. The forearm belongs to a local ned cum drug dealer who apparently goes by the name of Casper. Named, ironically enough, after the friendly ghost. Real name Jason Hewitt and he’s on the way to hospital. After he was separated from his arm, he was running round like a headless chicken screaming for his mammy, spurting blood everywhere, making it a friggin’ nightmare for your forensic pals. It was his screaming that drew the crowd but it was the dog that got them angry. If Hewitt doesn’t bleed to death, then he won’t be scratching his arse with his right hand for the rest of his crappy life.’
‘What the fuck cut them in half like that?’
‘My guess is a sword — samurai maybe. I’m tempted to say “who cares”. But I won’t. As much as these stupid little fucks are a waste of space, I’ll keep on caring because someone keeps on paying me to care.’
‘That’s so touching, Suttie. I could almost cry.’
‘You do that and while you do I’ll smack your face, you cheeky git. How’s your pal Addison getting on?’
Winter’s best friend, Detective Inspector Derek Addison, had been confined to desk duties for the previous six months after being seriously injured while on duty. Pushing pens had done nothing to improve his infamously volatile temper.
‘He’s helping old ladies across the road, sending birthday cards to Rangers supporters and generally being indistinguishable from a ray of sunshine.’
‘A crabbit bastard as usual then?’
‘Oh, aye.’
‘Well, tell him I’m asking for him. And while you’re at it, ask him if he knows of any toerags that are handy with samurais. I’d just as rather catch the bastard that did this before he fancies trying it on anyone else. He still like a Guinness?’
‘Of course. He was shot in the head not the throat.’
‘Tell him I’ll see him in The Station Bar some time soon then. Anyway, nice as it is to chat, I have some rampaging hordes to put in line. Watch yourself, Tony.’
Winter saw the DS sigh and move back into the fray, wondering how they all managed to keep doing it time after time after bloody time. Then he peered into the Canon’s digital display and saw the butchered halves of Klitschko and the bit of Jason Hewitt that had been left behind. Okay, maybe he didn’t know how or why the rest of them managed to keep doing it, but he knew why he did.