McManus was about to close the front door behind him when he stopped, turned back and rifled through his music collection for a particular CD. He stuck a portable player in his rucksack beside the cut-throat razors, and that meant he had everything he needed for the moment.
When he climbed into the car with Abe Logan he was calm again and imagined what he’d do to Paterson when he got his hands on her.
33
It was just starting to spit and the clouds seemed to drop just above the land when Abe Logan and McManus arrived at the site. As the light dulled under the cloud cover it seemed to affect McManus’s mood and he struggled to straighten out the thoughts that lanced his mind like hot knives. He was having one of those headaches that could reduce him to tears with the mixture of confused emotions and physical pain. The headaches frightened him, and when they were at their worst he could spend days in bed curled up in a ball and wishing it was all over.
Logan had phoned ahead and told the boys who’d lifted Woods that they were almost there. They had a shooter inside and he didn’t want to end his days as a victim of friendly fire. He knew they’d be nervous, and he didn’t fancy being mistaken for the law coming through the door.
When he pushed back the rusted sliding doors he shivered – it was stone cold and stank of ammonia. The place had been overrun by vermin and pigeons over the years and the smell almost took his breath away. ‘Fuck’s sake, we need to clean this dump up when we get this done. You lot bring a hose first chance and wash the shit out of here before we all fuckin’ die.’
Inside, he saw a hooded figure strapped firmly to a chair, his head at an angle that said he was still under the effects of the dope they’d stuck in him. ‘How much gear did you shove in his arm, for Christ’s sake? He should be screaming for his mammy by now.’
His team looked nervous, shagged out and he guessed, rightly, that it had been a long night. Sammy Kerr was the first to speak; he was still trying to make an impression with the bosses. ‘He’s okay, Abe – comin’ round now.’
‘He fuckin’ better be, Sammy. This is a fucked-up day already because we have one man can’t set the alarm and you geniuses nearly OD the poor bastard.’ He stared them down and missed the look in McManus’s eyes that should have told him to tread gently. ‘I want to see you all in the shed through here.’ He pushed open the side door, which gave access to a small corrugated workshop that had been added on to the main building at some point.
Once inside he pulled the door closed behind them and looked around at the men. ‘Right, you three can go in a minute, but leave the shooter – it’s good for scaring the shit out of the boy next door, and if things go wrong then we can give him a quick exit. As it stands, Frankie is happy to hurt him as much as possible but that’ll do unless somethin’ changes. The boy’s probably just some fuckin’ wanker anyway, so no need to get a murder squad on our arse if it’s no’ required. Okay?’ They all nodded, but he noticed that McManus’s eyes seemed to be hooded, as if he was on some trip. ‘Anythin’ else?’
Kerr spoke again, and the other two were relieved because in most cases when Abe was having a bad day it was better to keep it shut. ‘That voicemail on Goggsy’s phone. I was there in the boozer when he took it. Like I said, there’s no doubt he was spooked an’ knew somethin’ was about to go tits up.’
Abe Logan smirked at the thought that the daft twat hadn’t had the sense to put a security code into his phone. ‘They never learn.’ He found the voicemail recall and played the messages again. Someone inside the team was a rat or a twat; the failed rip-off didn’t prove it beyond all reasonable doubt because there were other possibilities – like the Edinburgh buyers bringing in Brenda for a cut of the gear. These calls, though, proved they’d been grassed from the inside.
He listened to the voicemail again before putting it on loudspeaker, held it up and let them listen in, although McManus was the only one who hadn’t heard it up to that point.
‘Right, so this fuckin’ guy knew what was comin’. How the fuck is that then?’ He watched for any reaction, but apart from three frozen and very nervous expressions there was no answer.
McManus listened, still looking like he was having some out-of-body experience, and although it didn’t press the nuclear button, something tingled across the wiring in his brain. He knew there was something seriously wrong on his part, but he couldn’t join up the warning signals. What he could say was that Paterson had done a Dexy and now this. If there was a connection then he was fucked, because the other point he could prove with some certainty was that he’d said far too much to Paterson about the job, which was usual when he was on the bevvy, when he liked to shoot his mouth off.
‘Let’s get to work on the boy, Abe. We’ll get all the answers we need from him.’ McManus said it without looking at Logan, and the lids of his eyes still drooped as if they were trying to keep the light out of a dark room. He’d already decided that if things went wrong then he might need to do Logan as well as the boy they had trussed up like a pre-slaughter grunter. It would be as much pleasure as business getting rid of Logan, who loved to rub his face in it but wouldn’t have the balls to hand it out if it hadn’t been for his family name.
‘Okay, you lot can go. But keep your phones on, no bevvy and be ready to move again if we call. Right?’ Logan was wound up tight and something was gnawing at his gut. He didn’t like any of it and he just wanted to get this job done then get the fuck away from McManus. If he’d really faced up to it, Logan would have realised that what he was feeling was as much fear as concern about the job.
His team nodded and left McManus and Logan facing each other. Logan looked again at McManus’s dead eyes and wished he’d arranged for the rest of the team to arrive with him. It was a mistake, and he was regretting it already. He just wasn’t equipped to handle Psycho if he went off script.
34
The land around the old buildings was flat and open so it would be almost impossible for the CROP and surveillance teams to get close in during the hours of daylight. They had arrived only twenty minutes after Abe Logan and McManus, and the surveillance team couldn’t say whether there was anyone inside any of the cluster of buildings that included the disused workshop. What they did feed back was that there were three cars parked outside the largest of the three buildings, including a four-wheel drive. If their owners were there then they must all be inside. MacKay told them to hold their positions till they got a sighting or indication of who was there. McCartney had provided Woods’ number and the intel team were working to locate its position.
MacKay got his first break when his DCI came into his office wearing a grin and told him that Woods’ phone had been pinged and was smack-dab inside the buildings they had almost surrounded and contained.
‘Thank fuck.’ MacKay started to see mileage in the job; if he did what he was good at he could come out smelling of roses.
The CROPs officer was DC Pam Fitzgerald, who’d been doing the job for about two years and loved it. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life, and it wasn’t that long ago that the consensus had been that a female couldn’t lie in a hole in the ground for days on end, wet, stinking and without a make-up bag. She was one of the women who had broken that particular prejudice. Now she was accepted as one of the best.
Aware that this particular job lacked preparation and planning, she accepted that sometimes that was how it was. This was a big turn, and the briefing warned them that the team they were after were heavy duty, and one in particular was a nutjob. The surveillance boys had dropped her a few hundred yards from the site, and she’d managed a good creep into a ditch with a load of old rusting corrugated sheets covering part of it. The hide gave her superb cover plus a perfect eyeball on the front of the main building. Although she wasn’t in a position where she could see everything, she had a clear view of the road leading in, so if anyone moved in a vehicle she could call it. With her binoculars she could probably get the registered numbers with brief descri
ptions of any of the bandits. If anything happened in parts of the ground she couldn’t see, another CROP was deploying behind the site to cover unforeseen problems there. The mobile surveillance teams were arriving and finding positions where they could move when required. The men in the building were being locked inside a human and technical trap that was closing all the time.
The ditch stank, and she tried her best to avoid thinking about it, which was part of the discipline. The worst thing for a CROPs officer was seeing and doing nothing for hours on end – it played havoc with your powers of concentration. On this occasion, though, she was barely settled in when she saw three targets leave the main building and get into a 4x4. They sat for a couple of minutes, which gave her more than enough time to give physical descriptions, and when the car started to manoeuvre slowly towards the road she clocked the number and called it in to the operational commander who was in the control van no more than two miles away.
That’ll do nicely, Pam, she thought, moving her lips but not actually speaking it out loud, because part of the discipline was keeping it shut unless required. She just loved it – lying in that wet, stinking hole made her part of something that mattered, and she smiled as she imagined all the activity that was going on around the area, and those gangsters inside didn’t have a scooby.
There had to be a decision on whether to follow the men leaving or stay covering the building where they believed the hostage was being held. They hadn’t yet confirmed who was still in the building with the hostage; the intelligence had already found a phone number for Abe Logan but drawn a blank for McManus. They were close to getting permission to ping Logan’s number. The operational commander on the ground had already agreed with MacKay that they’d get a team to follow the three men, but until they were sure about the situation inside and who was there, they’d hold back from making any arrests in case they set off a chain of events they couldn’t control.
MacKay was in the Pitt Street centre with the intel team and had comms there that would keep him in touch with whoever he needed in a hurry. Despite the fact that it was going better than he could have expected, he knew these situations could turn into a calamity in a heartbeat. That, however, was what he was paid to do, and when it went right you were a star. Most men hated the risk; for MacKay that was the buzz, what did it for him. It was down to the gods now, and as soon as they had confirmation that Logan was in there with the hostage, he’d make the next move. The presumption was they wouldn’t kill the boy, so the priority was negotiation. This was not the moment to go sending in the ninjas – the firearms team were there only if they were required, or if some cowboy came out of the building blasting away like a baddy in a Martin Scorsese film.
35
‘You do what you need to do and I’ll take over if he won’t play.’ Abe Logan watched McManus’s face split into a gaping rictus grin under eyes that looked like they belonged to a three-day-old corpse. McManus’s capped teeth seemed to have doubled in size and Logan watched a line of dribble wind down over his chin. He wanted to say for the love of fuck but didn’t want to do anything to make the man even more unstable. He couldn’t work out what was going on and wondered if it was the drink or drugs. He knew the guy was coming apart but couldn’t understand why. If he had known then he would have had all the excuses he needed to pop the bastard and be done with it.
‘He’ll play alright.’ McManus said it in almost a hissed whisper as he retrieved the portable CD player and razors from his rucksack.
‘We havin’ a fuckin’ dance party here or what?’ Logan tried to hide the tremor in his voice, although it made no difference to McManus, who basically didn’t give a fuck anymore.
He turned his back on Logan and took the half dozen steps towards Woods, who’d come around and had earwigged most of the conversation. He was hyperventilating and sick to his stomach, sucking air in through the hood then blowing it back out, and McManus leered as he watched the mouth area of the black hood pulse with the boy’s heaving breath. That’s what he wanted to feel and smell – human fear – something he could play with and control. He needed to make someone pay for Paterson’s betrayal.
Putting his face close to the hood, he listened to the wheeze of Woods’ breathing for a moment before standing erect and pulling it off. ‘Well, I’ll be fucked.’ McManus took a step back and a spark seemed to return to his eyes. ‘Just gets better and better.’
‘What?’ Logan almost felt he was no longer either part of or in control of events. He was starting to feel on the edge of panic.
‘It’s one of the desperadoes, the one with the sawn-off. Ya fuckin’ beauty.’ McManus walked over to the old table about six feet from Woods and set up the portable CD player. He laid out the cut-throat razors on the table and fed a disc into the machine. Logan and Woods were both mesmerised, trying to figure out what was going on. McManus pulled off his jacket and shirt, leaving only a vest that showed off the sheer hard bulk of the man.
‘Would you mind telling me . . .?’
McManus held up a finger to his lips and shut Logan up halfway through his question. Logan’s eyes had become more round than oval, and he needed to call Frankie. What he watched unfolding proved he needed some guidance from his older and wiser brother.
McManus pushed the play button and Gerry Rafferty started to blast out those sweet sad tones that echoed Dylan and reflected his own brilliance and tragedy. ‘I just love Rafferty. Play him all the time. This is a wee compilation I made up. You like him, son?’ He towered over Woods, who stared up at huge pecs and arms that seemed to pulse and ripple with barely contained power. He glanced at Logan, wondering when and how the pain would come. McManus ripped the tape from his mouth. ‘Now, son, we’re here for a wee talk. So you’re Goggsy, right?’
Woods nodded and whispered, ‘Aye’. His throat felt like it had been treated with a blowtorch.
‘Ever watch gangster films, Goggsy? Tarantino – that kind of thing?’ McManus’s face seemed a bit more human; it was obvious that he was in his glory and acting out some fantasy.
‘Naw.’ It was squeezed out again and Woods would have cashed in his old lady for some cool water. Why the fuck is he asking me about gangster films? Woods thought, and it only added to the panic that was nearly bursting his heart open. The combination of booze, H and fear had dehydrated him to a dangerous level. The question about gangster films meant nothing to Woods, which was just as well, and at least gave him a few more seconds hoping that it might all turn out okay. Whatever they wanted he’d give them. Logan on the other hand watched and loved gangster films and had learned a few tricks from them himself. He felt his throat tighten because the Gerry Rafferty music threw up an image he hoped was just his imagination running wild. It was time to call Frankie; he really didn’t want to watch what was coming.
‘I’m going out for a smoke and to check in with Frankie. Okay?’
‘I’m fine, Abe, just fine.’ McManus pushed the button to select the right track, turned up the volume and picked one of the razors.
Logan heard the first two lines of ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’, and as he closed the door behind him he watched McManus start to dance around Woods. He pulled out a cigarette and tried to light it but his hands were shaking so much he struggled to get the thing going. At that precise moment the intelligence team confirmed that Logan’s phone had been pinged and was at the same site as Woods.
‘That’s a male matching the description of target one outside the main building. He’s on the phone. I have a picture and it’s on its way.’ Fitzgerald cursed because the rain was steady now and she felt the chill try to work its way under her thermal clothing. It was fine, though, just part of the job and no more than a nuisance.
‘That’s the bastard.’ MacKay knew all the Logans and had studied them top to bottom. Slaven was back in the room with him. ‘No point in fannying around – get me an update on those three they’re following and I’ll open up a line to Logan.’
Back inside the o
ld garage workshop Woods stared in horror at the cut-throat razor and the radge who was holding it as he bopped round him to the solid beat of the music. The rush of fear gave him just enough strength to plead hopelessly, and he began to sob as if his life depended on it, even though it made no difference to the madman who seemed lost in his own world.
‘That’s great, son.’ McManus smiled as he moved towards Woods, always keeping in time with the tune. The first assault happened so quickly that Woods hadn’t even realised that McManus had sliced off part of his left ear. Then he felt wetness and the pain kicked in. In case he needed confirmation, McManus dangled it in front of his face. All Woods’ instincts told him to scream, but he was so weak that the only sound he made was a barely audible groan.
‘See it’s only a wee bit of ear, pal. No’ the whole thing. I’ve done you a right favour, son. In fact I’ve cut it at an angle so it’s like a wee Vulcan lug now. No’ everyone that’s got one o’ them, son.’ McManus put the song on repeat because he was far from finished. ‘Now tell me about Edinburgh and how the fuck you knew so much.’
Logan heard the phone ring a few times before Frankie answered and his brother seemed as calm as ever. He realised that he lacked the minerals to deal with a crisis like this and it made him despise his older brother all the more. He told him what had happened so far and that Psycho thought he was the star in some fucking gangster movie. The information and image even threw Frankie Logan for a minute.
‘He’s doin’ what?’ He heard his brother the first time but just couldn’t get his head round the image. ‘It’s Bellshill for fuck’s sake. A wee bit away from California, know what I mean?’ It was a real problem, and he didn’t need his brother to tell him that they should never have brought McManus back from Liverpool. Being the main man meant that problems came up and it was his job to solve them. That’s what real leaders did, though this was off the bizarre scale . . . but then the world of criminals was never straightforward. He sighed, reached for a pen and started to doodle on his desk pad as he thought about their next move. ‘Right, three of the boys left here about half an hour ago so should be with you as soon as. I’ll ring them and tell them to put the foot down. We just need to hear it from this boy. Confirmation it’s Big Brenda for all these jobs. Get me that and don’t let him die. You hear me?’
Where No Shadows Fall Page 18