Bred in the Bone

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘And what would that question be?’

  ‘What makes you think Glen Fallan didn’t kill your husband?’

  Seduced and Abandoned

  In keeping with the complexity of the overtures, the buy was no straightforward handover.

  ‘I told you they were jumpy bastards,’ Stevie told Tony. ‘They’ll accept the payment from me, but they’ll only hand the merchandise to you. I hand over the cash, and once it’s verified they make a call and authorise their man to release the goods to you. Separate locations, that’s the way they like it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Means if anybody’s picked up a tail there’s no transaction for the polis to witness. Plus it means no mad rocket gets tempted to try blowing everybody away and walking off with the gear and the cash.’

  ‘So how does that work? You just hand over a case full of money at point A and hope they’re nice enough to return the favour to me at point B? What if they just take a gun to you and piss off with two hundred and forty large while I stand there like a fanny waiting for a bus?’

  Tony seemed to think he was the wise old head outlining a legitimate concern. He didn’t realise that even his fears were based on his limited perspective and obsolete thinking.

  ‘Do you think pulling something like that would be worth the grief to these guys?’ Stevie asked him. ‘For the sake of less than a quarter mill? They’ve got half a dozen buyers giving them that kind of money four and five times a year. This is big-time, Tony.’

  ‘Well, if you’re happy enough, fine. It’s you that’s taking the risk, and just so we’re clear, it’s you that’s liable for the money if anything goes wrong.’

  Stevie assured Tony that nothing would, but nonetheless requested that Glen accompany him to his end of the handover rather than Tony’s. It was a request to which Tony was more than content to accede. Indeed, before the two vehicles set off on their respective runs, Tony took Glen aside and made sure he understood his job.

  ‘Protect my money,’ he told him. ‘That chancer’s expendable – my money isnae. If this goes bad, the debt is his, but if he doesnae make it, the debt is yours. Get me?’

  Glen thumbed his lapels, letting Tony see the Steyr nine-mill he had recently added to his arsenal.

  ‘Got you.’

  Stevie seemed very nervous throughout the drive. He kept checking his watch and was equally attentive towards the rear-view mirror of his MR2 to make sure Tony and Arthur were still following in the Jag. It was an utterly uncomfortable ride for Glen all round, as he felt like a deckchair folded up inside the cramped little Toyota.

  Both cars stopped at a service area outside St Helens for a final check by payphone that everything was still on. The call lasted mere seconds, just a formality. Stevie simply said ‘Yeah, it’s me, we’re set,’ then paused a moment before responding: ‘Okay.’

  They had an hour to kill, so the four of them grabbed a coffee and a fry-up, then got in their cars and went their separate ways, to their very different fates.

  Tony and Arthur returned to the warehouse at Waterloo Dock for the pick-up, while Stevie’s drop was supposed to be at Lime Street station: public but anonymous, and close to payphones for the authorisation.

  Stevie barely uttered a word after leaving the services, which struck Glen as all the more uncharacteristic for a guy with his gab. It wasn’t every day you drove around with that kind of cash in your motor, right enough, to say nothing of what the goods would be worth in the long run. Still Stevie kept glancing at the time – all the more, in fact, now that he couldn’t alternate it with checking Tony and Arthur were still around.

  Stevie pulled his MR2 into a multi-storey and switched off the engine. He sat restlessly, fingers fidgeting, then eventually turned the engine back on so that he could listen to his Simple Minds cassette. His face seemed a little pale, but more noticeable was the fact that the tips of his ears were glowing red, like he’d been outdoors in freezing wind and just come inside to the warm. He stared out of the windscreen at nothing in particular, his fingers now occupied by tapping a rhythm, and seemed to drift away in his thoughts.

  Glen checked the clock himself after a while, and noticed that the appointed drop time was only two minutes away.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be getting a shift on?’ he asked.

  Stevie came out of his reverie with a start, then looked again at the clock.

  He nodded, almost reluctantly, where Glen would have expected him to spring out of the vehicle.

  They walked around to the station, Glen keeping a vigilant watch fore and aft for anything amiss, not least some chancer of a bag-snatcher who might score the spawniest grab of his life.

  ‘I don’t see Sammy,’ Glen observed, scanning the concourse.

  Stevie said nothing, just checked the time yet again and led Glen towards a bank of payphones, where they stood in wait.

  They waited two minutes, which became five, which became seven, ten.

  Glen kept scanning the entrances, but Stevie only had eyes for the clock. That was when Glen realised that Stevie wasn’t really expecting to meet anybody.

  He was about to ask what was going on when one of the payphones began to ring. Stevie dived across to answer it, giving fright to some old dear who had been approaching the thing when it went off.

  ‘It’s me,’ was all he said.

  He stood there gripping the handset, listening intently, his eyes focused on some indeterminate point, a relegated sense.

  Stevie listened for only a few seconds, then replaced the handset gently, as though it or the cradle might shatter. He placed a hand on the silver trunk of the payphone, steadying himself, then let out a slow sigh before straightening up.

  ‘Are we okay?’ Glen asked.

  Stevie just nodded, the tiniest tremor of his head, then began to walk away.

  ‘What’s up? I thought you said we were okay?’

  ‘Not here. I’ll tell you in the motor.’

  Stevie was sweating by the time they were both back inside the MR2, and not from the exertion of a brief walk. His breathing was weird too: he kept letting out these protracted exhales. His hands were gripping the steering wheel even though the engine was off, and Glen could see his pulse ripple the skin on the inside of his right wrist. The guy’s heart was thumping.

  ‘What’s the script?’ he asked. ‘Why did the drop not happen? Is it still on?’

  Stevie swallowed, then turned to face Glen.

  ‘Tony and Arthur have been lifted,’ he told him.

  Glen felt something tighten inside him, a sense of danger, a fear of being trapped. He always felt a twinge of this when he heard someone he knew had been arrested, but this was pure-strain.

  ‘On their way to the warehouse? What for?’

  ‘Naw. Inside the warehouse. There was a raid.’

  ‘A raid? So the filth were on to these other guys? Nae wonder they said they were getting a polis vibe. Tony and Arthur will be fine, though,’ Glen reasoned. ‘They never made a purchase. Wrong place, wrong time, that’s all.’

  Stevie shook his head.

  ‘They were lifted in possession. Enough H to send them down for all day.’

  Glen couldn’t work it out.

  ‘But you never made the drop.’

  Stevie let out another huge sigh, throwing his head back.

  Then he saw it: the nervousness, the heart rate, the sweating, checking the time, checking the rear-view.

  Glen pulled out the Steyr and levelled it at Stevie’s ribs, out of sight below the dashboard.

  ‘You set him up, didn’t you? You grassed him.’

  Glen cocked the hammer, his thumb unlatching the safety.

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  Stevie turned and looked Glen in the eye.

  ‘They say it’s not polite to answer a question with a question, big man, but you should indulge me, because this one’s a stoater. Tell me: who puts on a mask to give somebody a doing?’

  Glen didn’t follow. H
e was still reeling from the news, and he couldn’t begin to see where Stevie was going with this.

  ‘I ask you again, Dram: who in Gallowhaugh, or anywhere else in Glasgow, puts a stocking over their heid, or a balaclava over their face, to give some poor dick the message?’

  ‘Somebody who doesnae want caught?’ Glen ventured.

  ‘Naw, Dram. The answer is: nobody.’

  Glen was about to counter, which was when he saw it, the mirror he was preparing to hold up turning back into sand.

  They had come for him: nylon stockings pulled over faces, reversed balaclavas with eye-holes torn out.

  ‘Heard my boys just got there in the nick of time. I’m Tony, by the way. Tony McGill . . .’

  Glen felt the little MR2 come loose from the world and drift, unanchored in time and space.

  ‘They’ll come after you again – unless you’ve got friends too.’

  He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to stop his head from spinning, the images and memories from crowding him, all glimpsed in new light, altered meaning. When he opened them, he was back in that Liverpool car park, back in reality, but it would be a new reality.

  ‘Were you there?’ he asked.

  Stevie said nothing, which was a yes.

  Glen uncocked the gun and let it rest in his lap.

  ‘What happened today, Stevie?’

  Stevie stared ahead again, across the concrete, where a woman was folding up a toddler’s buggy to fit it into her boot.

  ‘I beat him at his own game, that’s what happened. Did what he’s been doing for years: fed him to the polis. Scaled it up, though. I wasnae dealing with CID no-marks and chucking them wee tiddlers. I removed him from the picture and I took him for a hundred and sixty grand in the process.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was in the way. He’s a fuckin’ dinosaur. All this “keeping drugs out of Gallowhaugh” pish. He should have retired gracefully and left us all to it, but he still wanted to be the big man. He sealed his fate when he sent Arthur round to Donny Lawson. That’s when I knew he needed tell’t.’

  Glen thought about everything that had happened since the re-opening party. Stevie being the man with a contact, dangling the bait, making it look like it might all fall apart so that Tony would be all the more eager to grasp it. He thought of the first trip to Liverpool, the warehouse, Sammy, the guys with semi-autos. Heckler & Kochs. Serious hardware.

  Preferred police hardware.

  ‘This has been a set-up all along, hasn’t it?’

  ‘There’s somebody far bigger than me that Tony’s pissed off,’ Stevie replied. ‘He’s been shagging somebody he shouldn’t. The wife of somebody very connected.’

  ‘There was never a source, was there?’

  ‘Naw. Tony won’t know that, though. The plan was that there would be a bit of a mêlée: the kiddy-on suppliers get away, but Tony doesnae and he’s left holding all the H. A lot more H than two hundred and forty grand would buy. And in order for them to have handed it over, as far as Tony knows, I had to have made the payment. The suppliers took the cash, handed over the merch, then the roof fell in. Jolly bad luck, old chap.’

  ‘He’ll know. He’s not daft.’

  ‘He’s finished. He’ll get thirty years.’

  ‘He’ll still have reach. Friends on the outside. Tony junior, for one thing.’

  ‘They’ll be too busy fighting over their share of the carcass.’

  ‘Even so, Teej will have to come after you if he wants to take over the reins. He’ll look like a nobody if he doesn’t.’

  ‘Aye, well, that’s why I’m sitting here talking to you, big yin. I want you on side. I was never meeting anybody at the station today, remember? I didnae need you for protection, Dram. I was keeping you away from the jaws of the trap.’

  But Glen knew Stevie too well to accept the purity of this motive.

  ‘Naw, you were tying me into your side of it. Nobody would believe I walked out of this clean without being in on it.’

  ‘Aye, you’re tootin’ there,’ Stevie conceded. ‘But it’s a done deal noo, so what are you gaunny dae? You could shoot me here in this motor and prove your loyalty to that two-faced auld prick, or you can come in with me and make some real money. Starting with forty grand right out of that briefcase.’

  Glen flipped the Steyr’s safety back on.

  ‘Eighty,’ he said.

  Believe in What You Want

  Sheila stood with her back against the wall, one foot tucked up flat to the brickwork, blowing smoke into the cool, dark air. She looked like a schoolgirl having a fly fag behind the bikesheds, rather than the proprietor of a thriving restaurant taking a break to enjoy a cigarette around the back of the kitchen.

  She had told Jasmine to wait there, and as time drew on Jasmine had begun to wonder whether it was just a subtle way of getting rid of her. After about a quarter of an hour, however, she had appeared where she said she’d be.

  She was aware that it was fifteen minutes in which Sheila could coach herself to get her story straight, or even decide she didn’t owe her an answer. The sooner she spoke, the less reliable Jasmine estimated her testimony would be.

  In the event, she just stood there and smoked, like she was waiting for Jasmine to make the first move.

  Jasmine remained silent and waited her out.

  ‘What makes you think I’ve got my doubts?’ Sheila eventually asked.

  ‘Beware the vengeance of a patient man,’ Jasmine replied. ‘Stevie wasn’t talking about Fallan, was he? That’s not who he was worried about. When he showed up again, back from the dead, despite everything he had done Stevie wasn’t scared of reprisals from Fallan, and neither were you. I think we both know why.’

  Sheila allowed herself a strange smile, at once seemingly wistful and yet bitter, and took another drag.

  ‘I was scared,’ she said. ‘I’ve spent thirty-odd years being scared for folk I know, folk I care about. But Fallan was the reason I stopped being scared for myself. I married young, too young. Married the bastard that ran this place once upon a time. He was eleven years older than me. Donny, his name was. I was naïve, but he was . . .’

  She took a draw on the cigarette, looking blankly away into the darkness of the unlit Shawburn Boulevard.

  ‘He’d have killed me,’ she stated evenly, but Jasmine could see her bottom lip tremble.

  It suddenly struck her how small Sheila was, shorter and slighter than Jasmine. The image of a grown man hitting this tiny woman flashed into her head before she could stop it, and she felt queasy.

  ‘In the end, he’d have killed me. I still wake up nights and get shaky thinking about what could have happened.’

  ‘Did Fallan . . .’ Jasmine considered how to phrase this, what she might reasonably allude to. ‘. . . make him go away?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. He wasnae in much of a state to dispute the terms of the divorce, let’s just put it that way.’

  ‘And was that when you and Stevie got together?’

  ‘Christ, no. This was before you were born, hen. Stevie and me never got together until a lot later. Properly, I mean: seriously. We got up to all sorts under Donny’s nose. Too close under his nose, as it turned out. He leathered me because he knew he couldnae try anything with Stevie. He was good at hiding it, and good at keeping me feart so I wouldnae tell anybody. He couldnae hide it from Fallan, though. He knew the signs too well.’

  Sheila took one final puff then ground the butt under her heel. She blew the last of the smoke out in a long, sustained exhale then turned to look at Jasmine.

  ‘I was like your mother with Jazz: I wouldn’t have let myself get involved in a real relationship with Stevie when he was younger. He was too fast, too wild, and he wouldnae have been very interested in me either. I mean, Christ, you should have seen his first wife.’

  Jasmine had. The papers and websites had run the Nineties modelling pics, but even in the more up-to-date shots she exuded poise, if not exactly taste or
understatement. She was married to a millionaire nightclub owner now.

  ‘We were pals down the years, and you could say we had a professional relationship, with him owning the Vaults and me ending up landlady. But it was only when he was in his late thirties that we got close; or that I let myself get close. I saw him different from how I used to: he was mature, he had this air of control about him. It was like he’d moved on from all that.’

  ‘All what?’

  Sheila gave a dry, joyless laugh.

  ‘Exactly. I never put a name on it, what it was before, so it was easy to kid myself about Stevie later. I’m no’ sayin’ I was in denial about what he was involved in, just that I could kid myself about what it might one day bring to the door.’

  She lit another, folding her left arm across her chest as her right hand held the cigarette to her mouth.

  ‘When I looked at him I didn’t see violence. He was a businessman. He wasn’t interested in violence, he was interested in money. Stevie said all the violence he’d ever been involved in was about young men with something to prove, and if it hadnae been over drugs they’d have been fighting about something else.

  ‘Nobody in Stevie’s game thinks they’re being bad. Doesnae matter whether the polis are onto you: after a while the polis just becomes like the weather. Some days it’s sunny and clear, other days it’s pissing down. We’d often talk about drugs, about how daft it is that the government are telling you what is legal to put into your body. Stevie always said there was only violence in the drugs game because the drugs were illegal. I lapped it up. You believe what you need to, don’t you?’

  Jasmine didn’t reply, and worried for a moment whether her silence itself sounded judgmental.

  ‘When you’re scared, though, that’s when you cannae kid yourself any more. That’s when you’re forced to face up to reality. When Fallan reappeared I was climbing the walls. I’d heard all about what Stevie had done, and I knew what Fallan was capable of too.’

  She took a long drag, like she couldn’t get through what was to come without it. It reminded Jasmine of a labouring mother on Entonox.

  ‘At first Stevie just told me he had protection, and said if Fallan was gaunny do anything he’d have done it by now. None of it made me sleep any easier, but Stevie didnae seem worried. I thought he was acting the big man, kidding himself, being like the guy I wanted nothing to do with twenty year ago. We had a huge fight aboot it, and eventually he told me the truth. That’s how much Stevie loved me. That’s how much he trusted me. He wouldn’t have told another soul on earth.’