Where No Shadows Fall

by Peter Ritchie

  ‘It’s in the past, Danny, and I’m positive the phone work was all done. It’s usually the first priority nowadays, as I’m sure you know. We’ll look through the file in confidence and you’ll get it back when we finish.’

  Goldstein’s wife came in with fresh coffee and cake, refusing to let them leave till they’d sampled it. Goldstein shrugged and patted her back. ‘What can you do with such a woman?’

  When Macallan’s phone rang, saving her from the last piece of cake, she discovered it was Jacquie Bell, whose voice was crackling with energy as usual, and even though it had been months since they’d last spoken, it was as if they’d just parted company that morning.

  ‘How’s business, honey? My impeccable sources tell me you’re sniffing around Bar-L and Tommy McMartin’s death. I’m on the case with overcrowding and associated shit in the prison service so I think we should meet. Thought you weren’t a grim-faced detective anymore?’

  There was no way Macallan was going to resist the invitation from her friend, who was a force of nature and capable of making even the strongest men nervous in her presence. She’d pulled down a few big careers in her time, and the legend was that she had Mick Harkins’ knack of knowing where all the dark secrets and bodies were buried in public life in Scotland.

  ‘Tomorrow morning for breakfast. I’m going over to Northern Ireland to be with my man and bairns for the weekend. How’s that?’

  ‘Done. Usual place in George Street?’

  ‘Sure.’

  When she was done, Macallan slipped the phone back in her pocket, made her excuses to Goldstein and picked up the file. When they stepped outside they turned to say goodbye, but he spoke before they had time.

  ‘I failed Tommy. I really did. He was the first innocent man I ever represented and I couldn’t do it for him.’

  His wife bit her lip and put her hand on his shoulder before closing the door.

  They got in the car. McGovern turned on the ignition and looked at his friend, who was deep in her own thoughts. ‘If it makes any difference, my gut tells me the same thing – but who’s going to give one about it?’

  Macallan stared straight ahead and nodded but didn’t speak till they were on the M8 heading for Edinburgh.

  24

  Woods sucked the foam off his fifth pint. The first four had hit the spot and Christ did he need that calming effect. Since the disaster in Edinburgh he’d hardly slept, apart from having the odd half hour when he’d dozed off through sheer exhaustion. Even that gave him no respite, though, because no sooner had he dropped into deep snooze mode than McManus and Big Brenda would stride side by side into his unconscious mind and scare the living shit out of him. It was always the same dream: McManus would grin, and it was as if his face opened up in two halves with a gaping mouth that exposed several rows of huge white teeth. Nightmare McManus was always dressed in a white boiler suit splattered with wet bloodstains, and slung over his shoulder were the chewed-up remains of Bobo McCartney. Just before Woods woke up screaming, Brenda would piss herself laughing, stand over him and raise the biggest fuck-off mash hammer imaginable. He would watch, unable to move a muscle, his mouth screaming without sound, as the hammer was lifted and then swung towards his face in a huge arc.

  He gulped the top quarter of the pint and closed his eyes as he savoured the drink. It had been three days since they’d fucked up the robbery and if he could just get through this night, then he was away on the 10 a.m. to London the next day. After making it back to his old lady’s he’d stuffed what cash and possessions he had into a case to get somewhere Big Brenda or McManus couldn’t find him. His mother was pissed as usual, so he’d gone into her bedroom and found the old leather bag she kept her cash in. She’d done next to nothing for him, which meant he didn’t feel he owed her anything back. Feeling generous, he took most of her stash but left a tenner so she could get fags and a drink in the morning.

  Woods bunked up with a close mate, told him he needed to keep the head down for a bit and made the excuse that he’d had a falling-out with his old lady; it seemed wiser not to mention the fact that the Logans were looking for his scalp. He needed more money than he had at that moment and his plan was to borrow whatever he could from whoever he could without actually mentioning that the minute he’d mustered what he needed, he was out of the city and they’d never see a penny back. He didn’t like doing it, but needs must and this was definitely life or death. If he’d had enough dosh available he would have pissed off to London without waiting, but he needed a stake. He was fucked if he was going to live in a cardboard box at the side of the Thames. There were a couple of old mates down there working for London teams and they’d get him involved. All he had to do was survive one more night in Glasgow then he could stop dreaming about McManus or Brenda visiting him in the night, but unfortunately neither McManus nor Brenda had read that particular script. Sometimes people are in the right place at the right time; for Woods the opposite was true that night and just sheer bad luck. Shit happens.

  The pub he was in was a decent boozer, out of the way and as far as anyone knew it didn’t attract any of the city’s gangsters. That was almost true until fate played its hand and dealt Woods a bummer in the form of one of the Logans’ team, Sammy Kerr, who was playing away from home. It just so happened that Kerr’s bit on the side stayed in a nice part of town and about two hundred yards from the pub. He’d had an afternoon session with the part-time stripper, who was giving him what his wife didn’t and definitely putting the fizz back into his sex life. He was grinning from ear to ear as he left her flat, and the thought that his exertions deserved a beer had only just entered his head when the warm boozy smell leaking out of the pub doorway acted as a direct invitation. He sauntered in, ordered up and took a seat in one of the booths, still glowing from his success with the stripper. An abandoned copy of the Record lay on the table so he checked it out, although he knew there would be nothing in it apart from bad news front to back. Politics meant almost nothing to him, so he turned to the sports pages while sipping the top of his beer and intermittently looking around the bar. Luck played its shit hand to Woods by having stuck Kerr in Bar-L’s A Hall for a couple of months when he was inside. They’d only spoken a couple of times but Kerr had picked up that Woods had worked for the McMartins before he was dubbed up. So when he spotted him at the far end of the bar the lights started flashing in his head that the Logans were looking for anyone with the McMartin stamp on them; in other words, he might be about to turn a good day into a great one. Kerr had only worked for the Logans since he’d been released and was barely above the cleaner in rank, which meant there was almost no chance Woods would have known that.

  ‘How’s it goin’, Goggsy?’

  Woods was half-pissed but still nearly fell off the stool at the sound of his name, a reaction that told Kerr he might be on to something. After a few moments, when Woods realised there wasn’t a knife going in his back, he struggled to remember Kerr’s first name. It came to him and he smiled nervously, taking it as just a chance meet. ‘Hey, Sammy! How long you been out?’ He stuck out his hand. Some company would take his mind off things. Kerr had always seemed like a sound guy inside, and he had a good reputation as a thief.

  They got up a round and Kerr told Woods in graphic detail what he’d been up to with the stripper so they both fed on their favourite subject. Woods had been so wrapped up and stressed working for Big Brenda that he’d hardly been near a woman in the weeks since his release. To make things worse, he’d paid a hooker to revitalise his fantasies and failed miserably. Chewing the fat with Kerr, combined with pint number six, made him feel like his old self again; he’d reached that point on the alcohol scale where it was pish-up time and fuck the consequences. After all, he thought, it was his last night in the city, he was out of the road and he’d met Kerr, who seemed like his best mate. If Woods had kept his head on he’d have remembered rule number one – the most basic lesson of being a professional criminal – trust no one, and esp
ecially not the guy who turns up like your long-lost brother.

  ‘What you up to then, Goggsy?’

  Woods’s vision was beginning to blur, like his defence mechanisms, and he knew, just absolutely knew, that he could trust Kerr. He leaned in close like a co-conspirator, instantly confirming Kerr’s rat instincts that he was on to something, and gave away some gold nuggets to his new best pal.

  ‘Tell you the truth, Sammy boy: I’m fuckin’ off in the mornin’ and ta-ta to this dump. Headin’ down to the smoke, my friend. Bit of a fuck-up involved. Know what I mean?’ He winked at Kerr, who smiled back as if he was watching someone standing on the scaffold and tying the rope round their own neck.

  ‘How’s that, pal?’

  Kerr was playing with someone asking to be caught. ‘Went back and did some work wi’ Big Brenda. Fuckin’ disaster, Sammy, so it’s time to go south. That fuckin’ woman’ll get us all malkied. Know what I mean?’

  Kerr ordered another drink plus goldies and headed for the toilet, where he dialled Frankie Logan’s younger brother Abe, because pond life like him wouldn’t dare go straight to the man at the top.

  Abe Logan had matured over the years but still had hot-headed tendencies at times, and it pissed him off that he always had to defer to Frankie on the big occasions. As far as he was concerned he wasn’t getting the respect he deserved, was often treated like the office junior and it was a fucking scandal. And he thought Frankie had turned into a pussy. He’d made up his mind that if Frankie kept acting like royalty then he’d take a fall eventually. In the meantime, he pretended to give him all the respect he needed, and occasionally his older brother would reward him by allowing him to get his knuckles skint on some poor bastard’s face. Apart from telling Alan, who heard his gripes over and over again, he kept his thoughts to himself. Although Abe loved his younger brother, in his opinion Alan was all brawn and no brain and would never be a threat in the way he planned to be to Frankie. Alan was known as the Quiet Man, and when he was pointed in the right direction he could do the business – as long as someone else was doing the thinking for him.

  What Kerr told him set Abe’s engine going and his first instinct was to grab his younger brother and do the necessary. The problem was that he knew a lot rested on what happened with the McMartins’ collapse, so he resisted his first impulse, called Frankie and told him the story.

  ‘Listen, get a hold of Psycho first – that’s what we pay the bastard for – and the two of you can get your hands dirty on this boy. You call the mad bastard and let me know he’s on the case, okay, brother?’ Frankie was easy with it and lifting someone then screwing the truth out of them was usually straightforward enough. They were criminals – it was what they did for a living.

  ‘I’ll do it now, Frankie, but get a couple of the boys to cover the door of that boozer in case Sammy loses this character.’

  ‘Good call; go for it. This punter: what’s his name again?’

  ‘Goggsy, or some fuckin’ thing like that. Might know hee-haw but could take us to the boys we want.’

  25

  Abe Logan called McManus’s number and fate played another card into the situation. According to the team’s rules it should never have happened and only McManus should have answered, but Paterson picked up his phone. This threw Logan for a moment.

  ‘Where’s Stuart?’ He ground the words out through clenched teeth and unlike his older, wiser brother he thought McManus was good at what he did but that his relationship with the sauce made him a giant fucking liability.

  ‘He’s . . .’ Paterson hesitated because she knew it had to be one of the Logans and she tried to think of how to explain to McManus’s employers that he was shit-faced again. ‘He’s sleepin’, been a bit ill – must be this bug that’s on the go.’ It was the best she could do, but Abe Logan’s impulsive streak took over, concerned that they might miss the chance to clear up what had happened in Edinburgh and elsewhere. He wasn’t taking it in the neck for getting this one wrong.

  ‘What’s the fuckin’ score here? Is he pished? An’ who the fuck are you?’

  ‘I’m his partner. Who the fuck was it supposed to be?’ Paterson’s temper flared – she was pissed off that some guy who’d never even met her was treating her like a fucking idiot.

  Abe Logan told her to get McManus, pished or not, and put him on the end of the phone.

  ‘No arguments, sweetheart, this is his fuckin’ employer – you hear me?’

  It was said with enough venom to make sure she got the message. She told Logan to hang on and padded through to the bedroom where McManus was snoring for Scotland. Although she’d laid the phone on the hall table, Abe Logan could hear the snoring as soon as she opened the bedroom door. He cursed, shook his head and promised himself to argue it out with Frankie that this mad bastard was more bother than he was worth.

  Paterson grabbed McManus by the shoulders and tried to shake him, although their size difference meant she could hardly move the dead weight of a drunk man. She said his name over and over again, but there was no reaction. She padded back to the phone and had given up trying to pretend to someone who obviously knew what the problem was. ‘Can’t wake him. Sorry.’ She lit a smoke and saw the tremor had returned to her hand.

  ‘Right, listen to me, hen. Go through there and throw some water on him if you have to, but get him to the phone. Do it now or I’ll come round there and open your puss.’ Abe Logan was acting the brave bastard because he was Frankie’s brother, and McManus was some distance away and pissed. The truth was that he couldn’t do McManus in a square go – or any other type of battle come to that. He knew it, but on this occasion he would take whatever it needed in men and weapons to get the bastard’s attention.

  ‘Hang on.’ She was on the edge of panic when somehow or other McManus’s brain lit up again and he woke. He lifted his head painfully, trying to focus and make sense of where he was and what all the fucking racket was. It wasn’t really a racket but felt like it in his fevered brain, and he knew someone was on the phone. He was suspicious of all phone calls, especially when Paterson was involved.

  ‘Who the fuck is that?’ He sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his eyes, trying to clear the mess that was going on in his head.

  Paterson breathed a sigh of relief and walked back through to the bedroom. ‘It’s for you.’ She struggled to hide what she felt for him now; every time she looked at his face she wanted him dead.

  ‘Get me a drink,’ he snarled at her and took the phone from her outstretched hand. ‘What?’ McManus snapped down the phone. He’d never understood the concept of manners, especially when he was at the wrong end of a binge. He felt like shit and would share that with whoever crossed his path for the next few hours.

  ‘What?’ Abe Logan fired the question back. No one should have been able to talk to a Logan like that, and certainly not the paid staff. He knew that McManus was unfit for duty, and if he’d been anyone else he would have been on for a severe tanking from the management team. Logan had lost control of his anger and was at a safe-enough distance from the man on the other end of the blower to hand down some shit. ‘I’ll tell you what: we’ve got one of Brenda’s team available for lifting . . . Your job unless I’m mistaken. And maybe I’m gettin’ this all wrong, Stuart, but you’re fucked up wi’ the bevvy. Tell me I’m wrong.’

  McManus was always unpredictable and this time was no different. Logan expected the bastard to give him earache back because he was an arrogant shite, but McManus knew he depended on Frankie Logan big time. His claim to fame was that he was ready for any job anytime and now his drink problem had exposed him as just another fuckhead, great when he was sober but useless when he was pissed. Though nobody who knew him would ever have guessed it was possible, McManus was embarrassed. It was always the same: he’d done a great job in Edinburgh then believed he could do exactly as he liked, and the bevvy had made him forget he was an employee in a game where you were only as good as the last fuck-up.

&nbs
p; ‘Sorry, Abe, just a couple too many. Let me get my head together an’ I’ll be okay.’ He ran his hand through his hair and was sobering up with every throbbing beat of pain in his head.

  Logan told him to wait by the phone and he’d be back to him in a couple of minutes. He sent a text to Kerr and the two boys he’d dispatched to cover the pub door. They were five minutes away and Kerr texted back that Woods was shit-faced and close to lights out. Logan told them to wait and called his older brother to fill him in on the story so far.

  ‘Fair enough.’ Frankie Logan was easy; he was annoyed at McManus but relaxed as always. ‘Might work out for the best. We lift this Woods, bed him down in the old garage for the night and when he wakes up in the mornin’ he’ll have the hangover from hell to deal with, which’ll be the least of his problems once Psycho gets to work. You can take it from there and back him up in case there are any problems.’

  Frankie knew that his younger brother was like a hunting dog who’d been restrained too much and needed to bite something, so he would let him back up McManus, who was unsurpassed at torture. ‘Get back to him and tell him early doors at the garage and that if he’s not there he can fuck off back to Scouseland.’

  The chance to get involved in tormenting Woods brought a smile to Abe Logan’s face and he felt better for being included. He was calmer when he called McManus back, who by this time was drinking black coffee with a whisky chaser. The hard man’s thumping headache was bad, but his mind had cleared up enough to know he was close to a red line with the Logans. Paterson was in the next room and sat up when she heard his phone ring again. She heard enough to know that they’d come across some guy called Woods and McManus would have a job to do on him in the morning. She was under no illusions what McManus was capable of and he delighted in describing to her some of his successful ‘interviews’, as he liked to call them.