by Jay Stringer
Gary Fraser, I knew him.
‘That’s fantastic, thank you.’
Gary used a bar as his office. Lebowskis on Argyle Street. If I was going to find Cal, his money man would be a great place to start. Lebowskis wouldn’t be open until eleven, so that gave me time for breakfast with Phil.
My phone buzzed.
FergusSingsTheBlues – Can we do that again tonight?
FIFTY-FIVE
ALEX
08:30
Alex caught the bus a couple of miles away from the house. After hearing the explosion, he had walked on farther, putting more distance between him and the inevitable cops. He hadn’t caught a bus since they moved to Glasgow. Almost didn’t remember how it worked. Were they the same up here?
It pulled to a stop in front of him, and the door opened. He stepped on and stared at the driver in his plastic enclosure. Then he noticed the metal coin machine.
He dropped money into the slot. ‘Uh, a pound please.’
The driver looked from the machine to Alex. ‘Where you wanting, pal?’
‘Into town.’
‘Glesga?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Two pound, pal.’
Alex dug the extra coin out of his pocket and dropped it into the slot. The driver pressed a couple of buttons, and a ticket printed out. Alex tore it loose with some effort, then started to shuffle down the aisle of the busy bus as it pulled away into traffic.
It was peak travelling time. Commuters were packed in tight, already sweating in the morning heat. All of the seats were taken and most of the standing spots were claimed, too. Alex managed to find a place in the section that was reserved for pushchairs and the disabled, and clung onto a metal rail that hung from the ceiling.
Alex knew rationally that nobody was paying him any attention. Half the passengers were deep into Girl Meets Boy on a Crime Spree. That didn’t stop the creeping feeling that he was being stared at. Fergus had given him advice on how to blend in for his maiden voyage on public transport.
‘Wear a hat.’
‘But that’ll mean everyone will look at me,’ Alex had protested.
‘No. It means everyone will look at your hat. Then they’ll look away, not wanting to seem like they’re staring. Later on, they won’t even remember you. If they do, it’ll only be the hat. They won’t be able to describe you.’
So Alex was wearing a fedora.
And feeling like a prick.
But on the plus side, he was a prick who was on his way to a brand new flat, in which he had five million in cash.
So he could put up with feeling like an idiot for a wee while.
He got off the bus in Glasgow city centre. It felt odd. Nobody around him was acting like the world had changed. Nobody seemed to care that he was dead, or about all the money he had.
It was just rude, frankly.
The apartment was on the third floor of a renovated building on Albion Street. It overlooked Merchant Square, and was the only part of the city Alex could really stand. It would have made a great bachelor pad. In fact, for the next week or so, it was going to be just that. He had Netflix set up. He’d got a few books to read, and there was some exercise equipment in there. He could hide away for a week and think of it as a holiday. A break from everything, even Kara.
He would need to stay locked up in there until the heat died down. There was a chance his face might be on local news, or on the front of the newspapers. If he ventured out of the flat, or ordered a takeaway to be delivered, he would create chances to be seen by people, and any of them might recognise him. The kitchen was stocked with meat, bread, pasta, and all kinds of sauces and spices he didn’t understand. The real question had been, how much booze would he need?
He’d gone with lots.
The apartment had two levels, with the main living area and kitchen sitting below a small mezzanine that held the bed. There were large windows across the front wall, which threw the sun onto both levels.
The redevelopment had replaced the entire inside of the old structure, with the outer walls and the roof being the only thing left. Alex had paid for his in cash. It was an off-the-books arrangement that had suited both him and the seller, Mike Gibson.
Mike had no love for Joe Pepper. He’d refused to take his business to MHW because of Joe’s links to the company, so Alex had known this deal would stay secret. He got to the main entrance, a secured glass door off Albion Street, and made to get his keys out of the bag.
Shit.
The bag.
In all the rush of oversleeping and getting out the house, he’d left the bag by the door. It held his keys. More than that, his laptop. Loaded with data of criminal activity, and Joe’s big plan.
He couldn’t just leave it there and hope for the best. The house was going to be crawling with cops. All it would take is one of them to open the bag, to get even a wee bit curious, and this whole thing was over.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
He needed to go back to the house.
FIFTY-SIX
FERGUS
08:56
Tracking Alex down is simple.
He’s wearing the hat I told him to. That makes him pretty easy to follow. He doesn’t know, of course. It would blow the whole point of secretly tailing him if I told Alex I was going to keep tabs on him this morning.
I just don’t trust him to get it right.
Alex’s weird job was supposed to be my big goodbye. The stylish full stop to my career. But, as I watch Alex get off the bus looking like an idiot, I realise this is just one more thing I need to keep from going off the rails. Another in my career-ending line of fuck-ups.
I wasn’t thinking straight when I said yes. He had me rattled, bringing my family into it at the same time as challenging my ego, giving me something interesting to take on.
But Alex is a big liability. He thinks he’s getting away with something huge, but he’s going to want to brag. He’ll do stupid things, take risks. Act the big criminal billybaws. I tested him yesterday, seeing how tight-lipped he would be, and he basically spilled everything. He told me about his secret apartment, and the bags of cash.
I’m retired now.
I don’t want to kill anymore.
No, wait, that sounds wrong.
I never sat around wanting to kill. What I mean is, this is the first time I’m not wondering when my next job will come in. I’m no longer reserving a place in my thoughts for all the ways to end someone’s life.
I think I’ve decided, deep down, that killing people just isn’t really a fun job.
High five?
Problem is, Joe’s got some big deal going through, and the last thing I need is to give him a reason to turn on me. I’ve got plenty of money tied up in investments and saving schemes, but it’s going to take a while to divest them. Until then, I’m vulnerable, and so is my family.
If Joe, or the people behind him, got any wind of this little job, I’d be in shite so deep that I’d be washing the smell out of my nose hairs for a month. I want to make sure Alex gets to the flat, and then I’m going to impress upon him, in the nicest and most semi-threatening way I can manage, that he is going to play this one absolutely by the rules.
My rules.
Stay in that flat.
Don’t call anyone.
Don’t email anyone.
No takeaways.
For the next two weeks, he’s going to call me anytime he needs anything. Food? Fine, I’ll get it. Drugs? Sure, I can do that. Sex? Well, I’ll remind him he’s married, and that the internet is a magical thing.
I’ll be his delivery boy, keeping him safe, and my own ass covered. And he can pay me for the service, from his small amount of savings. Not much, I won’t be greedy. My rates as a guardian angel will be competitive.
A thousand a day?
Seems fair to me.
Alex has told me he’s getting the bus, and I checked to see there’s only one that goes near his place.
I’m waiting by the bus stop when he gets off, and I follow him down through the town. He never even pauses to check if he’s being tailed.
Sometimes I have to remind myself that not everybody has lived the same life as me. Other people haven’t been trained to be suspicious. Still, you’d think that a guy who is about to steal from the mob, and is walking through town dressed like Indiana Fucking Jones, would know to check if someone was following him.
I almost get too complacent because of how easy he’s making it. A couple of times, I drift off into thinking about the date last night. The kiss. Sam.
Oh shit, you bloody schoolboy.
Man up and send her a message.
FergusSingsTheBlues – Can we do that again tonight?
Straight away her image starts to flash, telling me she’s responding.
TheSamIreland – Yes. Yes we can.
While I’m off in dreamland, I lose sight of Alex.
I step faster, pushing past people. This is a total no-no when tailing someone, because it’s nothing but noise and attention, but I’ve fucked up. Again. It’s becoming my leitmotif.
Yes, I know a clever word, don’t fall over in shock.
Just as I’m starting to worry that I’ve lost him, I spot the hat. He’s walking through Royal Exchange Square.
Thank fuck for that.
He walks straight to the Merchant City.
Of course.
That’s exactly the kind of guy he is.
Alex leads me straight to his front door, but then it looks like he’s forgot his keys. He goes reaching to his side like a bag should be there. Then he makes a big comedy show of patting down his pockets and turning around in a circle.
I get a sense of what he’s about to do, and duck out of sight just as he turns back this way.
The wee bam is going back to the house. You believe that? See, when I talked about him doing something to mess it all up, that’s exactly what I was talking about. I start to go after him, but my phone buzzes an incoming call.
What now?
I have a call from Joe Pepper.
‘I need to see you,’ he says. ‘Now.’
FIFTY-SEVEN
SAM
10:00
Hanya joined us for breakfast.
She’d come straight from the scene of the explosion, and carried the smell of petrol and fumes. She’d asked if she smelled bad when she sat down with us. I’d said, No, of course not. Phil had said, Yeah, totally.
See that?
Teamwork.
‘Gartcosh is taking the case,’ she’d said as she sat down.
‘Different team?’
‘Nope.’ She stretched away the morning’s work. ‘Same guys. Starting to wonder if they’re cloned. Maybe everyone there is a duplicate of Dasho and Robinson, and they just send out a new one for each case.’
‘But you’re still on the arson?’
She took a sip of coffee. ‘Yup. Though that’s more my case in name only, it seems. I’m getting pressure to close it. The insurance company is ready to sign off and pay, and the water fairies want to call it, too.’ I sensed a but, and left her to keep going. ‘There’s a couple things that don’t stack up. An old lady who lived up on the top floor said some guy saved her cats, she described him.’
‘So? Maybe a visitor?’
‘Where she says she met him was right by the apartment that the fire started in. And guess who leased that one?’
Phil said, ‘Michael Keaton?’
Hanya laughed. She looked tired, and the laughter came out wrapped in a sigh. ‘No, Martin Mitchell.’
‘Marxist Martin?’ I said.
Phil said, ‘I liked mine better.’
‘The voices on the second tape,’ Hanya said. ‘I listened back to them on the drive over. One of them sounds a lot like Martin.’
‘The recording is in that room?’ My mouth flapped a little. That made enough sense as to feel blindingly obvious. ‘Whatever Paula got, thought she got, was in the building that got torched.’
‘Right.’ Hanya added one more thing before tucking into a bacon sandwich. ‘And one of our uniformed guys outside took possession of the cats. He was teased for it at the time, because he put the lady and the cats in his car and drove them out to one of her relatives. The guys said he was on the pull. But he caught a look at the guy who carried them down, and it sounds nothing like Cal Gibson.’
Who was it?
Each time I thought I could see how the jigsaw fitted together, someone threw in another piece.
‘I’ve got a lead on Cal,’ I said. ‘I know who his banker is. I’ll let you know if I find something.’
With Hanya munching through her food and thinking over what I’d said, Phil took the chance to fill the silence. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘About Superman.’
Oh god.
‘So, here’s the thing, right? Krypton is going to explode.’
‘Do planets really explode?’ I said, hoping to sidetrack him.
‘What?’
‘Well, they heat up and cool down. They die. They get wiped out by expanding suns. But do planets actually explode, or is that just in the films?’
Phil gave me look. Picking plot holes with comic book characters was his shtick, not mine. I was treading on his toes. I smiled. ‘Sorry.’
‘Anyway. So, the possible inaccuracies of explodey science aside, Kal-El’s home planet goes boom, right?’
‘No idea,’ Hanya said through a mouthful of bacon.
I doubted she’d ever touched a comic book in her life, and superhero movies weren’t really her style. I once found out she didn’t even know who Obi-Wan Kenobi was.
‘Yeah, it does. Now, Kal-El’s dad is this super genius scientist. Cleverest man on the planet. He’s like Super Boffin. He’s been trying to tell people that the planet was going to explode, but everyone ignored him.’
‘Like climate change,’ Hanya said.
‘Exactly, grasshopper.’ Phil turned in his seat to face Hanya. ‘Are you sure you don’t have a cute brother?’ Hanya laughed and shook her head. Phil continued. ‘But because he’s Super Boffin Man, he builds a spaceship, to escape from the planet before it all pops. But,’ he held up his forefinger, emphasising the point, ‘he’s got a wife and a baby, and he only builds a ship big enough for the baby.’
‘Yeah, I’ve seen the films,’ I said. ‘That’s how he gets here.’
‘Well, yeah. But my point is, this guy is a super genius. He’s clever enough to build a rocket, all on his own. And he knows they’re going to need it, to escape. And yet, still, he just makes one big enough for the wean?’
I decided to play along. It was easier that way. ‘I get you. It’s pretty mean. He could at least have made it big enough that his wife could fit in, too.’
‘Exactly. See what I mean? How would that conversation go? “Honey, good news, I’ve built a rocket ship to escape.” “Great, I’ll go pack a bag.” “Ah, well, there won’t be room for a bag.” “How no?” “Well, actually, there won’t be room for both of us, either.” “You expect me to leave you behind?” “Well, no. What I’m meaning is—” ’
Hanya joined in. That surprised me. ‘“What I’m meaning is, we’re going to take this wee boy here, and throw him out into space, in a tube, on his own.” I hope she gave him a good kicking.’
‘That bit seems to be missing from the literature,’ Phil said.
‘Men,’ I said.
I sat and waited. I was sure Phil was going to follow up his speech, like he usually did, but he stayed quiet.
‘And?’ I said.
He looked at me. ‘What?’
‘No deeper meaning for me to take from this? No big moral lesson?’
He pretended not to know what I was talking about, but I could see from the slight smile in his eyes that he understood. ‘Just that Superman’s ol’ da was a bit of a fud,’ he said.
‘You’re not trying to say that I need to build a bigger rocket? That I need to let more peo
ple in on my journey and start to trust a wee bit more again?’
Phil blinked. He turned to Hanya and made a show of being confused, sticking out his bottom lip and shaking his head.
‘I don’t know, Sam,’ he said. ‘I was just talking shite about comic books. You got something you want to say?’
‘Men,’ I said, pushing back hard into my seat with a sigh.
Hanya chuckled beside me.
‘But really, though,’ Phil said. ‘He had all that technology. I mean, how come nobody else on Krypton had a rocket? Nobody else had a way to get off the planet? He had the knowledge, and chose not to share it with anybody.’
‘What a dick,’ Hanya said.
‘Maybe the planet didn’t actually explode,’ I said. ‘Has he ever checked? Maybe he was just a whiny brat who wouldn’t shut up about stupid things, so they fired him off into space, and they just told him the planet was doomed to get rid of him.’
Phil thought about that. ‘No, we see it explode, too, in the stories, aye? It happens.’
I checked the time.
Lebowskis would be open by the time I cycled there. Time to trigger the ejector seat on this geeky conversation. I needed to go see Gary Fraser.
FIFTY-EIGHT
ALEX
10:52
Alex walked home.
It was five miles, and he covered it in just over an hour and a half. He’d decided that one bus journey was a calculated risk. Two was pushing it. He could tell from checking the internet on his burner that the news of the explosion was already the main feature of the Scottish section of the BBC site.
He hadn’t been named yet. His own image wasn’t splashed across the news. But it wouldn’t be long before that changed. Walking allowed him to take shortcuts and alleys, to change directions if there was a crowd and to stay off the beaten path. He took the long way round to his house. He circled the base of the hill at Westerton, and then walked up through the woods, coming to the back wall of the property.
He could hear chatter and radio squawk. The police were at the front of the house, and he could tell people were also moving around in the small lane beside the property, the one he’d used earlier. He crouched behind the bushes and moved a few inches to his right, to take a look.