How To Kill Friends And Implicate People

by Jay Stringer

  Why was she giving me the leeway on this one?

  I pushed that away. I had more pressing mysteries to deal with. One, Paula Lucas was dead after handing me some cassettes. The other, Kara Pennan was playing some kind of game.

  But she was paying me for it, so this was a game I was willing to play.

  TWENTY

  FERGUS

  19:00

  The actual clean-up is pretty easy. Always is. The trick, as with anything else, is to get the professionals in.

  Undertakers deal with death every day. Nobody bats an eyelid to them having corpses in their vans, and cops almost never stop them. They’re allowed to go anywhere and everywhere, and they’re experts at making dead people vanish. In every city in the world, if you need to get rid of a stiff, there will be an undertaker that will deal with it. For the right price.

  I have a regular subcontractor in central Scotland. They have branches in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, and several towns in between. A couple of quick calls to my contact there, and a half hour wait, and then two guys are in the flat with me cleaning up the mess and carrying the bodies away discreetly in bags, down to a waiting van. They may as well be invisible. If passers-by see paramedics, cops or firemen, they’re going to rubberneck. If they see an undertaker, they look the hell away.

  Once the cleaners are gone, I head out into the hallway and set off one of the main smoke alarms. It’s loud and insistent, an electronic beep that pulses around my brain and makes my ears try and shut down for a while.

  Back inside the flat, I listen as people in the building start to make their way down the stairs, grumbling that this better not be a drill. Fire crews can take around four minutes to arrive in the city, and a few well-placed flames will take this place up in roughly the same time. Factor in that they’ll need to get up the stairs, identify which flat the alarm originates from, and evacuate the remainder of the building.

  I have time.

  I don’t start the fire in the bedroom or bathroom, though. That would be amateur hour. The fire investigators will focus on the room where the problems started, and I can’t have that be the same place where they might find forensic traces of death.

  I start in the living room. There are two bookcases stuffed with an odd mix: Marxist tomes and spy novels. Everyone thinks that books are a fire hazard. They’re not. They burn, sure, but most things burn. What you want is something that will spread the fire. Something like, say, a wooden bookcase. I take my Zippo to the nearest shelf and pull out a couple of books, lighting them, then dropping them back onto the shelf.

  Then I look around at the furniture. An expensive-looking leather couch isn’t going to help me much. But the cheaper-looking fabric chairs on either side? Bingo. I take a few seconds to get each one burning. They go up straight away, spilling chemical fumes and smoke into the air around them.

  The building is old, but the inside looks to have been renovated more recently, and the flat has fire doors, with small chains that are meant to pull them closed. Fortunately, Mitchell has each one propped open with a small plastic door stop, so the flames will spread.

  I watch from the hallway as the walls start to go. Mitchell’s cheap and bland landscape photographs start to curl and blacken. The smoke is climbing out of the living room now and crawling along the ceiling toward me. I need to get out, but I want to make sure the flames are spreading. At the first sign of their red and amber edges eating into the doorframe, I turn and head out the front door.

  I pull it shut behind me and feel the Yale locks click into place. This floor is deserted now, but I can still hear people moving about elsewhere in the building. The fire alarm drills into my skull as I stand beneath it, but it doesn’t stop me hearing fire engines out in the city, trying to make their way here through the one-way system.

  A different sound makes its way through the electronic pulse in my ears. Someone breathing heavily, struggling to move. I turn to look down the stairs behind me, but can’t see anything. There is another flight of stairs at the end of the small hallway, this one leading up to the next floor. I run to the bottom step and look up. There’s an old lady struggling at the top, making it down one slow step at a time with frail-looking legs. I can see a walking stick on the floor at the top, abandoned. She has a cat carrier in each hand, and is fighting for control of them as the animals inside run around, terrified of all the noise.

  What the hell is a woman so frail doing living up so high?

  I head up to her, taking the steps two at a time. I start to talk, but she looks at me with a firm squint and shakes her head. ‘Deaf as a post,’ she shouts. ‘Need my kids.’

  It takes me a second to realise she’s meaning the cats.

  Right.

  Okay.

  I smile at her and take both carriers, one in each hand. The animals are heavy, and not at all happy about any single part of the current situation. They’re threatening to pull my hands clean off at my wrists, so I don’t know how she was managing. I stick out my elbow, and she takes the hint, looping her arm through mine. I guide her down to the ground floor, taking each step slowly, but quicker than she was managing on her own.

  As we hit the lobby, the firemen are coming in. They step aside to let us out, then run up the stairs, shouting out commands and calling for anyone left in the building. There are cops outside. I hand the two carriers back to the woman with a smile, then slip away into the crowd.

  Okay.

  I’ve killed two people, disposed of three bodies, and torched an apartment.

  I think it’s time to go visit my parents.

  TWENTY-ONE

  ALEX

  19:00

  Alex drove home. The Pennans lived in a decent-sized house in Westerton, north-west of the city. It looked like a single-storey building from the front, but from the back the upstairs was visible, looking out onto a large garden, and to a small wooded area behind the property that crested the hill.

  There was a note pushed through the front door. A clumsy scrawl written on the back of an old betting slip. Alex had hired a builder named Keith to do some renovation work in the back garden. They were installing decking at the back door, where a big gas barbecue could be kept for summer nights like this, and a water feature in the far corner, a fountain that ran down to a small brook.

  They’d given Keith a key to the garage, for full access to water and tools, but Alex hadn’t been dumb enough to let him get into the house while they were out, and he communicated in a series of notes written on ever more random slips of paper. The note asked for Alex to give him a call as soon as he got in.

  Keith had an odd accent. He’d been living in Glasgow for a couple of decades, but he grew up in Fife. It was as if someone had purposely designed a dialect just to confuse Alex. Keith ended every other sentence with, ‘Ken?’ Alex had only just learned that meant, ‘Understand?’

  It seemed a pretty flawed approach. If you want to ask whether someone gets what you’re saying, you should probably phrase the question itself in a way that people can understand.

  Talking to Keith was going to be a struggle. Alex would need a little more in the tank first, to take the edge off the meeting with that prick of a hit man. The guy had called him on it. He’d figured out Alex’s plan, and now he’d feel like he could hold it over him.

  Alex knew that meant he should find someone else, but he didn’t know how. He’d only found Fergus by accident, following a trail of numbers on a few of his clients’ accounts. He could ask Joe Pepper. Joe was working with him on a big project for Asma Khan. MHW was buying out the old guard across the city, everything from gang leaders and drug dealers to law firms and money launderers. The cartel behind MHW wanted to own the city, and they were close to getting it.

  Which was precisely why he couldn’t talk to Joe about it. He was one of the very people he needed to keep out of this.

  He’d need to figure out a way to convince Fergus to reconsider. And a way to keep him from talking about it.

&nb
sp; Bollocks. Well, first things first. He crossed the living room, a large white space decorated to Kara’s tastes with sparse furniture and a few weird pieces of art on the wall. Conversation starters, that’s what Kara called them. Well, anytime Alex had invited people around, they’d consciously avoided talking about the art, so how did that work?

  Between the living room and the large open-plan kitchen was a wooden bar, the kind that millionaires had in movies. It was stocked with whisky, gin, vodka and a few bottles of flavoured stuff that Alex had never been desperate enough to try. The bar had been part of the deal he’d made with Kara about the decorations. She could have everything else just the way she wanted, as long as he could have this.

  Alex downed a generous finger of Talisker, and prepared a second, this time with ice. He liked a fast first hit to take the edge off the day, but afterwards he’d slow it down, take his time and sip at the drink. Maintain a gentle buzz.

  He read through Keith’s note a second time. Something about needing a special kind of hosepipe to install the water feature. Bollocks to that. Alex picked up the phone and dialled Keith’s number, just about legible in the note.

  ‘Howya,’ Keith said, in a slightly drunken Irish lilt. Apparently adding a second accent to his collection. ‘Thanks for calling, neebor.’

  ‘How are we getting on?’ Alex took a look out through the French doors at the back, which opened out onto where the decking was supposed to be. ‘I don’t see decking. Or a water feature.’

  ‘Aye, well, here’s the ’hing.’ Keith’s voice dropped, making this sound like he was letting Alex in on some secret. ‘It’s gonnae need a different kind of hosepipe.’

  Alex knew for a fact there were five different hoses in the garage. Each of them thick enough, and long enough, for what Keith needed. Alex had looked the specifications up on the internet before they hired the guy.

  ‘We have hoses,’ Alex said. ‘You said they’d be fine.’

  ‘Aye. I know. Well, I wis wrang. See, it needs to be a special kind of rubber, aye? One that’ll hold out through the winters without cracking, like. Ye ken? And one that moles can’t chew through.’

  Alex looked out again at the back garden. The lawn was perfect. The only marks were patches of mud trailed across by Keith himself. ‘We don’t have any moles.’

  ‘Well no’ the noo, no. But if they find out you’ve got a hosepipe in there . . .’

  Was Alex hearing this right? Was Keith trying on some kind of protection racket, with moles as his mafia backup? Jesus cocking Christ. Half of Alex really wanted to lay into this guy, tear him apart, verbally. The other half wanted to go and get Kara, ask her to do it. Alex preferred to leave confrontation to her, because she handled people so well. Kara could speak to an idiot in such a calm and controlled way that she would get things done without a fuss.

  But Kara wasn’t here, so it was going to have to be option A.

  ‘Fine.’ Alex said. ‘You go and search for this special hosepipe. I’ll drive down to B&Q and buy a normal one, then pay someone half what we’re paying you to fit the cocking thing. Or, better yet, I’ll type it into Google, find the instructions, and do it myself. How’s that?’

  Keith clearly hadn’t expected this. There was a pause on the line.

  ‘Look, I’m no trying to scam you.’

  ‘No. You’re just trying to trick me out of money, which is a whole different thing. Now, are you going to finish the job tomorrow or am I finding one of the thousands of people round here who can do it?’

  Keith grunted something. Alex couldn’t tell sometimes whether the noises were words or simply sounds. He could hear Keith moving around, away from the phone, and guessed that he might have been asking Alex to hold.

  Alex smiled. Dammit, he was enjoying this. Maybe he should thank the builder for the entertainment.

  ‘Sorry about that.’ Keith came back on the line. ‘I was just looking for the ’hingmy, you ken?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The hose. Aye. I’ve just found one on my shelf here that’ll do the trick just fine. I’d just forgot I had it, aye?’

  ‘Funny that.’

  ‘Ach, one of they ’hings. Just bein’ daft, you ken? But I’ve got one the noo, so it’s all sorted.’

  ‘Excellent. Those magic hosepipes must be very popular. It’s so good that you had one spare.’

  ‘Aye, and it’ll no’ cost you anything extra, don’t you worry neebor.’ Keith waited for a moment, as if he thought Alex would acknowledge his generosity. Then he said, ‘Aye, well. That’s us sorted, then. I should get back to this thing, I’ll be back round the morra.’

  Alex disconnected the call and drained the glass. He stood up and poured himself another drink, then set the glass down and laughed. That call had been perfect. It had let him feel in control again.

  And now he knew how to get Fergus onside.

  TWENTY-TWO

  SAM

  19:35

  ‘Hello. Hey. Where are you?’

  What? Oh right.

  I’d met Hanya at her favourite bar. Taking her up on the offer of a drink. But my mind kept drifting back to both Paula and Kara.

  ‘Sorry, Han. It’s been a strange day.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  I’d tried to follow Kara, but lost her. Surveillance on a bike is a tricky thing. You can’t do a stakeout, because people in the street will notice a cyclist standing around for hours. On the other hand, it’s a good way to tail a driver. Once someone is behind the wheel of a car, they pretty much forget that cyclists exist. I can get right up close behind a driver, and they won’t notice me. There is one obvious downside to this, though, and it was exposed when Kara pulled out into the road in her car. She turned the other way, and drove uphill at speed.

  Crap.

  I’d texted Phil to let me know when Kara turned up at the Pennan house, then headed into town to meet Hanya.

  Hanya looked great. She’d changed out of her work clothes and into a sleek silk-looking blouse under a cream jacket. Hanya could be a bit of a clothes-horse at times.

  We met outside The FuBar, a small bar down from street level on Bath Street. It was in a good spot, but had never really taken off. They played low jazzy music during the day, then switched up to a mix of nineties’ indie and pop in the evening. It had a steady flow of customers, usually cops, lawyers and hangers on, and it was a good place for someone like Hanya to meet guys who understood the score: Nothing serious, we all have work in the morning.

  We sat outside on a small metal table that had one leg shorter than the other. It wobbled every time we set our drinks down, so we’d agreed the only sensible thing to do was to keep holding them. And drink quicker, just to avoid the temptation to put them down.

  ‘It’s a joke,’ said Hanya.

  Crap. I’d drifted off into my head again, and had no idea what she’d been saying. I judged from the tone that this wasn’t a joke. She was annoyed. I bluffed a response. ‘You’re kidding on.’

  ‘I wish I was. Anyway.’ Hanya sipped from her drink then leaned forward. Her shoulders squared, and she gave me a look that said, Listen, I’m getting serious now. ‘So, listen, I logged into your vLove account today. After we talked.’

  Wait, she wasn’t talking about the case? No. She meant the dating site. Great. Hanya had the log in details because she’d been the one to set up the account and download the app to my phone. It had been here in FuBar that we’d recorded the video, and I’d had just enough drink in me to go along with it.

  ‘After we talked? Before or after you started a murder investigation, Han?’

  Hanya stiffened. ‘I’m not on that case. It’s weird.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I ran her name into the system. Came back with nothing. No national insurance, no address, absolutely nothing. But it must have flagged something because the feds came in and took it off us. I’ve been moved over to some arson job.’

  The feds was new cop slang. An in
-joke aimed at the people working up in Gartcosh. The Scottish government had reorganised the police force in Scotland, merging all the regional forces into one organisation, Police Scotland. Gartcosh was the site of the new organisation’s big white bull, the Crime Campus. They would send detectives out to major cases, parachuting in to take over the investigations. Local cops around Scotland had come to see these visiting officers like the FBI in America.

  ‘So her name was on some list?’ I said. ‘Must’ve been.’

  There’s a look cops sometimes give me. Hanya’s old partner, John Cummings, had been a master of it. It was a signal to do the opposite of whatever they were saying. If his mouth was telling me to Stay out of the case, his eyes might be saying, Keep in the loop.

  Hanya gave me that look as she said, ‘Don’t get involved, Sam. And whatever you’ve got, hand it straight over to them.’

  She was as interested as me. Hanya was a professional, and policing was simply her job. She didn’t take work home the way I did. But territoriality was different, and the feds had made it personal by taking it off her.

  ‘Anyway,’ Hanya continued. Moving us both on. ‘Sam, you’ve got loads of guys liking your page. Have you looked?’

  I rolled my eyes hard enough for people to see them two streets away. ‘No, I told you, I’m not interested in any of that. Han, I’m fine. I don’t need help.’

  ‘When was the last time you had anything between your legs that was old enough to remember Euro ’96?’ The problem with Hanya being English was that all of her football references were English, too. I swear she mentioned 1966 every other time we spoke. She also kept forgetting the age difference between us.

  ‘Han, I only just remember Euro ’96.’

  ‘Okay, wean, take a look at the site.’

  She wasn’t going to give up unless I humoured her. I could make a show of it, at least. Look at a few of the pages, pretend I was thinking about contacting any of the guys. I picked my phone up off the table and loaded the app. A number glowed red at the bottom of the page, showing how many people had liked my profile. It was now down to me to decide whether I was going to return the gesture to any of them, which would then put us in contact.