Snapshot by Craig Robertson Page A

Sanchez were his best guess under the bunny suits, were firing off cameras. There were anxious faces everywhere. Winter was pushing his way past two guys in leather jackets and getting a hard kick on his ankle when the high-vis screen suddenly parted and he saw a body lying in a pool of crimson blood, the head angled violently to one side. Just as suddenly the view disappeared again and his frustration began to boil over.
    ‘Gaz!’ he roared at a cop he recognized and was rewarded with a glance. ‘What the fuck’s happened?’ Winter asked him.
    Gaz McKean looked round to make sure none of his bosses were watching and stepped a few feet away from his position just long enough to talk to Winter without the entire crowd hearing.
    ‘It’s Cairns Caldwell. Shot through the head. Looks like it was a sniper. No one saw a thing. Could have come from anywhere. The impact turned him round so they’re struggling to work out an angle. Look, I’ve got to get back.’
    ‘Christ’s sake. Can you have a word with your sergeant and get me past the line?’
    ‘Are you serious? We’re a wee bit busy, Tony, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
    Cairns Caldwell. Major gangster. Responsible for bringing in most of the heroin that came into Glasgow. Ex-public schoolboy now worth multi-millions. Well he was until some fucker put a bullet through his napper. The shit had officially hit the fan.
    Winter had to get in and photograph this. Damn, why was his gear back in the boot of his car?
    Then suddenly he saw Two Soups. Baxter had stood up, shaking his head and firing off an order. Winter managed to catch his eye and gestured that he wanted to get across the cordon. Baxter laughed, swiftly followed by a curt shake of the head. Damn him, thought Winter, he’s loving this. He tried to shout but his voice was taken away by the noise of the sirens and the crowd. There was no way that Two Soups was for listening anyway.
    Winter pushed his way along the crowd till he was between two cops he knew, Rob Harkins and Sandy Murray. He put on his most confident face and strode between them.
    ‘Cheers, guys. Fucking crowds are mental. You’d think they’d never seen anyone shot in the head before.’
    Murray didn’t even blink while Harkins only counted to five before he nodded Winter past him. Winter knew he was never getting past the inner ring, it was protecting the good stuff not just holding back the natives, but this was a start. He found the best gap he could in the cordon and slid onto his arse, then pulled his mobile out of his pocket to see what six megapixels could do from ten yards away.
    Winter was aware that some of the cops were looking down at him in bemusement but was hopeful that enough of them would know him by sight that they wouldn’t ask why he was armed with a mobile phone rather than couple of grand’s worth of kit. He didn’t care anyway. He only had eyes for Caldwell.
    The gangster’s eyes were wide open, forever shocked and horrified, his flop of fair hair soaking in an ocean of pillar-box red, his arms spread wide in an unheard plea for mercy. You’d think that someone who does what Cairns Caldwell did for a living might think there was a bullet out there with his name on it. Comes with the territory. The look on his face, though, gave the lie to that. Sheer surprise. Caldwell was so far up the ladder that he thought he was untouchable. But he’d been touched big time.
    Winter bumped the focus on his iPhone up to the max and saw right away that he’d get nothing, scaling it back down a bit and hoping that technology in the lab or his own PC would sharpen it up. He saw a nice suit, easily £800 a throw, blood spray over a crisp blue open-necked shirt, a mouth wide open in a silent scream. Other legs and feet were walking by, alternatively blocking his view and framing Caldwell in a uniformed letterbox.
    A big space opened up and he zeroed in as best he could on the hole in the drug lord’s head. A beautiful round