How a Gunman Says Goodbye

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How a Gunman Says Goodbye Page 24

by Malcolm Mackay


  He’s stepping out and closing the door behind him. Through the snooker room, not looking at Young or Kenny or any of the others. Down the stairs, out into the street. Into his car. Still the hard look on his face. Always the hard look as long as there’s a danger of being seen. Driving away, and softening. Cursing himself. Cursing Jamieson. Wanting to cry, if he only knew how. There’s one last option. The chance to run.

  Where to go? People would go looking for him. Jamieson wouldn’t let him settle anywhere. If he disappears now, Jamieson will be convinced it’s because someone’s rehoused him. London? No, not safe. Nowhere in the UK would be safe. Couldn’t even go abroad. Jamieson would follow. He’d have Frank hit, no matter where in the world. A high priority is worth the extra risk. Wherever he went, Frank wouldn’t find work. Glasgow is his city. Always has been. He has no name anywhere else. He would just be an old man with a bundle of old glories. Plenty of old men like that around. Nobody would hire him. A life of poverty on the run. No. Maybe twenty years ago, but not now. Now, he has to stay. This is how it ends.

  46

  Taking a drink of whiskey. Switching on the TV behind him. Switching it off again. Hearing an everyday sound outside and going to the window to investigate. All distractions welcome. Anything to avoid having to make the decision. Anything to avoid deciding to kill Frank. Young’s been in and out. He knew better than to stay. This is something Jamieson has to do for himself. Something new. It’s never been like this. Never been so hard. Never been so real. How many times has he done this before? Jesus, too many. Ordering that someone be killed for the good of the business. Gets to a point where you don’t even think about what you’re saying. It’s the right strategy for the business, so you do it. You tell someone to make it happen. Give him a target; let him get on with it. Nothing more than that. So easy. People you’ve never met. All he knew of them was their name and what they’d done to piss him off. Killing was easy.

  He’s thinking about the first one. Must be sixteen years ago now. That’ll make him feel old. They didn’t have Frank back then; they had to hire a freelancer. Some big, lanky bastard with a long face. Can’t even remember his name. It seemed like such a big deal at the time, and now he can’t remember the name. Remembers the name of the victim, though. Derek Conner. Fat little guy, who thought Jamieson was getting too big for his boots. Jamieson’s network was small back then. No legit business to hide behind–living on the edge. It was exciting. Conner had his own network, no more impressive than Jamieson’s. He started making trouble. There was a chance he could run them off the cliff. Young found a freelancer, hired him, the job was done. Messy, as Jamieson remembers. There was an investigation; it went nowhere. He and Young were terrified while it lasted. It seemed such a big deal. Then, with each hit that followed, it became less of an issue. The victims became forgettable, the investigations ignorable. It was so easy. Until now.

  He’s playing games with himself, and he knows it. Pretending that he has a decision to make. There is no choice. No alternative option. There’s only one, and he’s going to select it. It’s Frank’s own choice. That’s what he keeps telling himself. The more he thinks it, the angrier he gets, and the more determined he is to make the call. Frank chose this for himself. He went to the police; he said nothing about it when given the chance. How could he not have guessed that Jamieson knew? He could so easily have been honest with him. Frank might be the only person that Jamieson would have let off the hook. He doesn’t deserve leniency. Nobody who puts so many at risk deserves it. Frank’s selling them all out to save his own skin. He shouldn’t get away with that. He can’t be seen to get away with it. The humiliation alone would ruin the business. The police would just sweep the remains away.

  He’s called Young into the office. They’re in their usual seats. There’s a little comfort in that familiarity. In knowing that he’s doing the right thing.

  ‘It needs doing,’ Jamieson’s saying quietly. ‘Tonight, I think. We can’t let them have a second meeting. Can you make that happen this soon?’

  Young’s nodding. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll call Calum.’

  Jamieson’s taking an abnormally long time to respond to an obvious point. ‘Yeah,’ he’s saying, ‘you call him. Let’s keep this as normal as possible.’ That’s a laugh. Normal. When did making this decision ever feel like this before? When was the person on the receiving end someone worth caring about? This might just be a once-in-a-lifetime job. Yet you still have to present it as normal. Make sure nobody else involved knows how much it matters to you.

  Young’s left the office. He doesn’t usually do that, but it feels right. Doesn’t want Jamieson sitting there, hearing orders being given and regretting it. He’s made the right call. Young wants to tell him that, but it won’t help matters. Not right now. In the future, when emotions have calmed, maybe. Right now Jamieson will want to be alone, to soak himself in whiskey and sulk. That’s fine by Young; he doesn’t need anyone else interfering now. This is the bit he enjoys. Organizing, ordering and watching the result. He’s found an office downstairs, towards the back of the club. Locked the door, checked to make sure nothing’s out of place. Now he’s calling Calum. Three rings and it answers. Little threat of the little girlfriend picking up. George called to let him know that he’d done the deed. Reckons they’ll be splitting up, if they haven’t already. Another successful piece of work.

  ‘Hi, Calum, it’s John Young. How’s the hand?’ Calum will already know what the call is really about. He’s a smart one. You get some gunmen who are pretty dumb, if we’re being honest. They go and do the job, but they don’t have the brains to understand detail. To piece together the little things. Calum seems smarter.

  ‘The hand’s okay,’ he’s saying. Always sounds so bloody miserable. ‘Fit for whatever.’

  ‘Good, pleased to hear it. Listen, that thing Peter mentioned to you yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Calum’s saying. He remembers exactly what that thing is.

  ‘Any chance you could do it for him–say, tonight?’

  He’s put it so politely. Calum understands, though. It’s not a request, it’s an order. It has to be done tonight. ‘Sure,’ he’s saying, ‘I could do that.’

  ‘Make it tidy,’ Young’s saying.

  ‘Okay. Might need a little help on that. I can call George.’

  ‘Do,’ Young’s saying. His way of telling Calum not to leave a body behind.

  He is slow at his work. That’s Calum’s one big flaw. Good, but slow. That’s what Young’s thinking. He needs to do all he can to buy Calum time. Then he’s thinking about Davidson and Scott. Wasn’t slow then. Was lightning fast because he had no other choice, yet he did a fine job. Needn’t worry about putting him on the spot.

  ‘Try not to make too much noise,’ Young’s saying. ‘Don’t want to upset the neighbours in the early hours of the morning. I’ll have an envelope put through your door with something useful in it.’

  ‘Sure, no bother,’ Calum’s saying. He doesn’t sound impressed. He’s not a man who needs to be told to keep the noise down. Common-sense advice is no advice at all to the sensible. He’ll cheer up when the envelope with a copy of Frank’s back-door key arrives.

  Young’s making his way back upstairs. All his work is done. He’ll be the point of contact if something should go wrong. He’ll be ready by his phone, waiting. It’s incredibly rare. Frank called once, to let him know that the target’s house was crawling with cops. That was a scare. Turned out the police were raiding the address at the same time. Young still has his suspicions about that one. Maybe someone leaked the identity of their next target. Maybe Paul Greig decided to stick his nose in and score brownie points by pointing the finger at a dealer. Didn’t matter much. Took their target off the street for three years. By the time he came out he had no network left to run. Still, you never know what might happen. Especially with a target like Frank. He has to trust Calum to be the better man. And trust’s a horrible thing to have to rely o
n.

  He’s stepping back into the office. Walking quietly across to his couch. He’s not saying anything. Jamieson knows what he was doing. Knows that if anything had gone wrong he would tell him. The silence means that everything’s set up and ready. It means that Frank is going to die tonight.

  ‘You making any progress on finding a replacement?’ Jamieson’s asking. You can hear a little misery in his voice, but he’s making an effort now. Down to business. Keeping it friendly, trying to sound interested.

  ‘My first thought was George Daly, but he’s still not playing ball. No point in forcing him. The next obvious candidate is Shaun Hutton. When we squash Shug, he’ll need a new employer. Contacting us about Scott shows that he’s interested in us.’ Careful not to mention Frank.

  Jamieson’s nodding. ‘Leave him where he is for now. We can use him there until Shug’s done. That won’t be long.’ Sounding like he’s forgotten all about the man called Frank MacLeod.

  47

  Sometimes it feels like they don’t want him to be successful. They want a result–not the right result. You can either chase statistics or you can be a proper copper. Only rarely and coincidentally do those two styles of policing overlap. That’s Fisher’s belief, anyway. There’s a uniformed cop downstairs who got a commendation for the high number of arrests he made. Fisher loathes the boy. Not his fault that he got the pat on the head from the bosses, but look at the arrests. Most were very minor, some the sorts of things he shouldn’t have been wasting his time on. Sure, people like it when you arrest a vandal or a drunk-and-disorderly, but it makes little difference to the big scheme. The big scheme means taking dealers off the street. They can’t supply the junkies, who then don’t go breaking into houses and mugging people to pay for the habit. You go for the big fish so that they can’t corrupt further down the chain. That’s what he’s always tried to do. But they keep stopping him.

  He’s going to explode soon, you wait and see. Someone’s going to say something that sets him off. It’ll be a brief flash of anger, it always is with Fisher. Nobody in the office cares much for that; it’s the couple of days of silent rage that follow that bothers them. There’s a bit of bustle around the place, people in and out. A woman’s been found dead in her house. Wasn’t raped or burgled, and her on-off boyfriend is nowhere to be seen. Looks like the on-off boyfriend is going to be answering a lot of awkward questions when they catch up with him. That’s why there’s a bunch of cops buzzing all over that case. Of course they want to catch a dangerous man, but there’s ambition there, too. It should be an open-and-shut case. They want their name on it. They know this will resolve itself quickly, and they want to be associated with that. Nobody wants long-standing open cases with their name attached. Nobody wants a case that runs away from them and is taken out of their hands. Nobody wants to be where Fisher is right now. No new evidence to suggest that McClure didn’t kill Scott and then himself.

  He was called into DCI Reid’s office. He was told that the Scott McClure investigation was being wound down. Not officially closed, but essentially abandoned. Too many men wasting valuable time on a dead investigation. Their skills, such as they are, required elsewhere. This is murder-suicide. Put it to a coroner, present the evidence and he’s going to record murder-suicide. Let him. End the active investigation; let the families put it behind them. Fisher didn’t point out that they seemed to have already done that. The lack of family interest in both dead men was horrible. Unusual, although not unheard of. You pick up bodies that have no family to care about them. You find the next of kin and you inform them. Their greatest concern is the expense of a funeral. It can be unpleasant. The families won’t care about this investigation shutting down. They’ll accept the murder-suicide, and they’ll get on with life. They won’t put pressure on for further investigation. Neither will the media. No headlines for a couple of street dealers. It would take outside pressures to get a case like this energized again.

  It won’t get pressure from Fisher, either. Other priorities. Priorities like Frank MacLeod. The lying, cheating bastard Frank MacLeod. Fisher followed him. Followed him all the way to Peter Jamieson. A set-up, to either humiliate or endanger him. Or maybe old Frank is trying to keep all his options open. Play every string on the fiddle at once. That wouldn’t be a surprise, either. Not with a guy like Frank. There could still be a chance. He just has to make sure Frank knows that he only has one option. It helps if Frank likes him, but it’s not necessary. It helps if your contact wants to give you info, but forcing him is better than losing him. How do you play hard with a man like Frank? A man who’s seen every hard tactic in the book. Anyone can be scared. That’s the key. All those old guys are obsessed with holding on to life. The fear of losing it is the key. Make him believe that the only person who can keep him breathing is Fisher. Make yourself his only option.

  He’s in his car, driving round to Frank’s house. No more sitting outside the house watching the hours rush away. He has to take action or see this all fall through his fingers. He’s not going to let another chance go. You spend years getting good results, doing your job the right way. You have a couple of failures, and people start to point the finger. They think you don’t have it any more. He’s been guilty of that himself in the past. He knows how it works. A cop getting older–you start to question their ability to close a case. Are they still in touch with modern crime and policing techniques? Do they still have the hunger? Some do lose it. They’ve done their bit, now they’re looking towards the end. He’s not that kind of cop. His ending will be forced on him, he knows it. The hunger’s still there, but nothing is falling his way.

  Sitting outside Frank’s house. His car’s there, which suggests the old man’s still at home. Fisher’s looking up and down the street as he gets out of his car. Doesn’t seem to be anyone about. Nobody sitting in a car watching. Up to the front door, knocking. Takes about twenty seconds for Frank to open. His eyes have betrayed his shock.

  ‘Hello, Frank.’

  ‘Come in,’ Frank’s saying. There’s a roughness in his voice. That betrays him, too. He doesn’t want anyone seeing him meet the copper. Doesn’t want Jamieson knowing that they’ve met. This suggests that it isn’t a set-up, that Frank really is on the outside. He’s meeting people to check his options. Now there’s a real chance of landing him.

  Frank’s led him through to the living room. Fisher’s taking a seat without waiting for an invite to do so. Frank’s watching him, obviously trying to pick his words.

  ‘Can I ask why you’re here?’ he’s asking, sitting opposite Fisher. Always so polite. That’s rather old-school, a charming generational difference. These days, most people would curse Fisher for turning up unannounced.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ Fisher’s saying.

  ‘I thought I made it clear that I wasn’t going to talk to you.’ A slightly harsher tone this time. Making it clear that he doesn’t appreciate the visit. He doesn’t need to come out and say it, though. Fisher’s not dumb; he knows the risk for Frank. Frank understands what this is. Lives at risk; pressure being piled upon pressure.

  ‘I want to make it clear that you need to talk to me. I think you’re out of options. You may not realize it, but you are. I’m the last show in town. I may not be much, but I’m it. You can go running to other people if you want. Try and ingratiate yourself with a new bunch of crooks. Maybe try and cling on to Jamieson, like some pathetic love-struck teenager. How do you think any of them would react if they knew about our meetings?’

  Frank’s laughing. Sitting there and laughing in Fisher’s face. Not the response the detective was expecting.

  ‘I didn’t realize I was quite so funny,’ Fisher’s saying, looking for an explanation.

  ‘Oh, you are. Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on here. This is your last roll of the dice. You’re desperate, so you’re putting the pressure on. Coming here to lean on me. You’re the police equivalent of muscle. You really think I can’t see how desperate you are?�
�� The laughter has gone from his voice now. More serious, more challenging.

  Fisher’s frowning back at him. Nobody wants to be told how desperate they are, even if it’s true. A cop like him can’t afford to have it be so obvious to others. ‘This isn’t a question of me. This is a question of you. I’m beginning to wonder if you realize the situation you’re in.’

  Frank’s laughing at him again. ‘You think I don’t know where I am? I know. Trust me, I know. It doesn’t look good for me. I understand that. You want me to think that you’re the only person who can save me.’

  This is becoming pointless. Fisher’s standing up. ‘Listen,’ he’s saying. ‘I want you to understand what I’m going to do. I’m not letting you off the hook, no way. Not after everything you’ve done with your life. You have two days to call me and tell me that you want to get on board. You do that, and I protect you. I find you somewhere safe to live; I make sure you don’t get prosecuted. You don’t do that, and I make a few phone calls. I know I can’t get you for myself. I’d love to put you in the dock, but that’s not going to happen. Thing is, people like Peter Jamieson don’t need the same weight of evidence I do. He can find you guilty on a whim. One call from me, and I’m pretty sure he will.’

  Fisher’s walking to the door, letting himself out. He feels like shit. He feels like a criminal. Threatening a man with murder. Doesn’t matter what the man’s done, who he is. You start lowering yourself to this level and you’ve lost. Maybe he’s already lost. The Scott McClure case has withered and died in quick time. Frank’s going to escape him, he knows it. He’s going to lose again.

  Frank’s standing at the living-room window, watching Fisher drive away. Didn’t think the little bastard had it in him. Ballsy thing for any cop to do. Desperate, though. Pathetically desperate. Fisher looks less and less like a man to be afraid of. The man to be afraid of is Jamieson. Maybe Fisher will call him, but Frank doubts it. Not that kind of cop. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

 

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