by Jay Stringer
At the end of the lane he could see a large flatbed truck, with the burned-out shell of his car strapped down on the back.
Between the truck and Alex were three people he assumed to be cops. They were wearing the white overalls that covered their whole bodies, with blue mouth guards pulled down around their necks. They were smoking and chatting.
‘Too soon?’ One of them said, holding her cigarette in the air.
One of the others turned to look toward Alex’s car. ‘I don’t think he’ll mind,’ the guy said.
All three of them laughed. Then the third one, shorter and rounder than the others, said, ‘Now that is too soon.’
As Alex watched, the three of them reacted to something he couldn’t see, maybe a signal from the front. They dropped their smokes to the dirt and rubbed them out. A man in a jumpsuit, maybe a fireman, walked past them and climbed up into the cab of the truck. The engine rumbled into life and the large vehicle started to pull away.
‘Now would be the wrong time to start a bush fire,’ the woman said.
‘Eh,’ the taller guy said. ‘What damage can it do at this point? The vic already has a tan.’
They walked around to the front of the house laughing. Alex listened as the doors to another vehicle opened and closed a few times, then another engine started. They were leaving.
Alex climbed to take a look over the wall. He could see Kara through the back patio window. She was talking to two cops. Or rather, they were trying to talk to her. Following Kara around the room as she pushed away, and shouted.
One of them reached out and put a hand on Kara’s shoulder, but she turned and lashed out. Even at this distance, Alex could hear her screaming for them to leave her alone.
Both cops nodded. They looked at each other for a few seconds, and walked out of sight toward the front door. Kara turned to stare out the patio window, and Alex dropped down out of sight. There was a click as the glass door was opened, and then a few soft footfalls as Kara stepped into the yard.
Alex heard her sniff a few times, but couldn’t tell if she was working through full-blown tears. Then the sounds receded. She was gone when he looked again.
He eased over the wall and lowered himself onto the large mound of dirt that the builder had left there. Finally, there was some use to the idiot’s laziness. The patio door was still open. Alex stepped into the living room quietly. He heard the sound of Kara going up the stairs.
Singing?
She was singing?
Grief did strange things to people.
He took a look out the front window. There was a car parked across the street. It was unmarked, but the two people sitting in front were clearly police. Alex pulled away from the window to avoid being noticed.
He walked to the front door quietly, conscious that he was the only other person there, and eased the bag up slowly off the floor. He slipped it over his shoulder and headed back to the rear of the house.
The doorbell rang.
Alex froze.
He crouched down below the kitchen counter and waited. The doorbell chimed a second time. Kara called from upstairs, Just a minute. After the bell went a third time, Kara ran down the stairs and answered.
‘Hey, babe,’ a male voice said. Young. Alex half recognised it. ‘Permission to come aboard?’
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Kara said.
‘It’s cool,’ the guy said. ‘I told the polis out there that I’m here to see if you’re okay.’
‘Hang on. I’ll get them to go farther down the street, put on my crying face and ask for some privacy.’
The door closed. The stranger was still inside, Alex could hear him breathing a little heavily. The door opened again, and Kara stepped back in. She shut the door, and there was a loud thud, as if she’d been pushed into it.
Was she being attacked?
Alex stood up, ready to charge. Then he heard something else.
A kiss.
Soon they were fumbling about on the stairs.
‘Not down here,’ Kara said, squealing a little at whatever the kid was doing. ‘Someone might see.’
Alex heard a second kiss.
FIFTY-NINE
FERGUS
10:00
Joe tells me to meet him at the Carlton Place suspension bridge. It’s a thin, pedestrian-only job, stretching across the Clyde. It’s a great spot for controlled meetings. You have a view of who is coming at you at all times, and it’s public enough that nobody ever wants to try anything funny.
It’s never a good sign to be asked to a meeting on that bridge. It means the other person wants to be able to see you coming. They can spring a trap at any point by closing off the ends. If the call had been from anyone else, I would have ignored it. But as long as I’m in town, I play by Joe’s rules.
He’s already on the bridge by the time I get there. Walking onto it from the Clyde Street side, I see a big bearded guy in a suit. Looks like a bouncer or barman, but smells like a cop. He’s trying not to look like he’s eying me, but I’m too experienced to fall for it. On the far side I can see another guard. A slender blond guy, also trying not to be obvious.
Joe is in the middle, leaning against the railings and looking out west toward the tall buildings and the old shipyard crane. I join him, leaning with my back to the same railing and looking in the other direction, toward Glasgow Green.
‘The city pretty much raised me,’ Joe says. ‘Never knew my parents. Mike Gibson was the closest thing I had. And Cal, I spent half my life keeping him out of trouble.’
Well, at least he wasn’t going to have that problem anymore . . .
‘I’m taking over,’ Joe continues. ‘Glasgow is the family business, and it’s my turn. And if I’m willing to kill the closest thing I ever had to a brother, you can imagine how I’ll feel about anyone else.’ He looks at me. ‘Did you do the Pennan job?’
I’ve been expecting this question.
‘The thing on the news? Car explosion? I didn’t kill that guy.’
See what I did there?
Didn’t even need to lie. No way can he tell that I’m bluffing, because I’m not.
‘Any ideas who it might be?’
I make a show of thinking about it. Breathe in deep. Sigh. Total Academy Award stuff. ‘To be honest, the only person I know who can pull of a job like that is me. So if it’s not me who killed him, I really don’t know.’
He rubs his face. I watch in profile. He’s not looking good. Tired. Worn down. Joe makes a job out of always looking in control and on top, but right now he’s looking like his battery needs recharging.
‘Are you okay, Joe? I mean, no offence, but you look, well, you know.’
‘Aye.’ His voice changes a little. Exhaustion creeps in at the edges. ‘It’s this thing I’ve got tomorrow. I’m not going to get much sleep until it’s finished.’
He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a small plastic bottle. He pops the child-proof lid and dry swallows two small pills.
‘Got a fucking ulcer,’ he says. ‘Doctor says it’s stress, like that’s a new thing. He says I need to do more to relax, lighten my workload. I didn’t know my GP was a comedian. Anyway. This thing with the explosion. Could you ask around? See if any of your, uh, colleagues did it?’
‘I gotta be honest with you, Joe. This isn’t a really social job. We don’t talk to each other much. We tried it once. A bunch of us all got together to have a party, maybe get to know each other better.’
‘What happened?’
I pause. Think how best to put it. ‘We accidentally triggered a civil war in Cambodia.’
That kills the conversation for a second.
‘I might need you for something else,’ he says.
I push off from the railing, ready to walk away. I don’t want to raise suspicions. If I tell Joe I’m retired, he’ll start asking questions about the timing. It’ll look like I’m up to something. So instead, I go with, ‘I’m not taking any jobs right now. I need a break.’<
br />
‘You fucked this up,’ he says. ‘And you lied to me. I had eyes on Martin’s building. Backup. I knew you’d let the lass go, and I knew you lied about it. The only reason you’re up here, and not down there,’ he nods at the water, ‘is I managed to clean it all up. I got my boys to kill her.’
‘The two trying not to look like cops at the ends of this bridge?’
He smiles. ‘That’s them.’
Okay. So now he has cops killing people. What does he need me for?
He looks back down at the water. ‘Cal came looking for her. I think they’d caught wind of what we were up to, wanted to try and get proof. I’m not sure what he thought he was going to do with it – I’ve got the papers onside, nobody would take the details.’
For all Joe’s big thinking, he suffers from the same blind spot as most of the top names in Glasgow. He forgets this city isn’t the world. My years away, especially living in New York, had given me a perspective that these guys lack. Joe has the local media on a leash, and that means he’s got control over what slips out in Scotland. But down south? He has no power. If someone has proof of what he’s up to, all they’d need to do is take it down to one of the editors in England.
Or put it on the internet, and let it grow from there.
But Joe, like everyone else around here, forgets that Glasgow is in a bubble, and the rest of the world isn’t in it with us.
‘Seems to me, you’ve got a leak problem,’ I say. ‘If this lass knew, and Cal knew. And clearly, Martin or Dominic Porter knew, otherwise why would the whole thing be happening. You’ve got a leaky pipe somewhere.’
He hands me a piece of paper. A list of names.
‘Those are Cal’s friends,’ he says. There’s a sadness in his voice. If they were tight with Cal, that means this is a list of his old friends, too. ‘Cal’s never had a thought in his life without someone giving it to him. One of these guys will know where the information came from. Find out who.’ He leans in close. ‘Find it, and then you can take as much time off as you need.’
I point to the big guy at the end of the bridge. ‘Joe, you’ve got actual detectives on your payroll. Can’t you get them to do it?’
‘They’ve got other problems to deal with.’ He smirks. ‘And so have you.’
Now what does that mean?
He pulls out his phone and swipes through to a photo. A CCTV still of me handing the cat baskets over to the old lady.
Shit.
‘There’s a cop on the lookout for these,’ he says, showing a second picture. ‘If she places you at the scene, you’ll end up in cuffs. By 1 p.m. tomorrow I’ll be calling all the shots. It’ll be me that decides what happens to you.’
A rock and a hard place. Like one of those old cartoons, where Daffy Duck has an angel on one shoulder, and a devil on the other. Except I have a devil on both sides. Joe on my right, threatening to turn me over to the cops, and Alex on the left, ready to mess up his whole plan at any moment.
Okay, Fergie.
You’ve been in worse scrapes.
I just need to do this thing for Joe. Find Alex.
Keep everything from exploding.
Simple, aye?
SIXTY
SAM
11:04
Criminals in Glasgow tend not to trust banks, or bankers. Polis could gain access to bank accounts, and, even worse, so could HMRC. The bigger fish use companies to manage their assets and massage the figures.
People on Cal’s level use money men. They’re walking savings accounts, and a place to go when people like Cal need some cash to walk around with.
If you need to find someone who has gone to ground, always start with the money.
When I’d first met Gary Fraser, he’d been a dealer. He could get you pot, weed, coke. Maybe at a push he could get guns. But dealers were also a good source for cash, so people had started hitting him up for loans.
The city’s most established money man, Gilbert Neil, had been killed and Gary had switched careers. He was now a walking bank, with the added bonus that he could get his customers high if they needed to relax.
I locked my bike up outside Lebowskis and walked in. Even at 11 a.m., the lighting inside kept the room at a permanent dusk. It was the right level of illumination to make all the spirits behind the bar look perfect.
Gary was sat at the bar.
I wondered if the staff kept that seat for him when he was away, because I’d never seen anybody else sat there. Gary was about the same height as me, and the kind of skinny that pisses most men off. He’d gone through a few looks in the time I’d known him, but now he was trying to look respectable and made of money. He’d grown a beard that he kept well groomed, and he was wearing a shirt and tie.
He nodded his chin upwards in greeting as I walked toward him. ‘’Right?’
‘Hiya.’
I pulled up a stool and asked the barman for a glass of water. Gary frowned at me. When your office is a bar, there’s no such thing as ‘too early to drink’. If the doors are open, it’s the right time.
‘Listen, Sam, you know my heart will always be yours, but I cannae talk about any kinky stuff. I’m a married man now.’
‘I heard.’
‘But seriously.’ He leaned in close. ‘Maybe if we’re quiet about it. You free tonight?’
‘Cal Gibson.’
‘Aww shite.’ He leaned back with a heavy sigh. ‘That fud’s always ruining the mood. What’s he done this time?’
‘You bank for him, aye?’
‘You know I can’t—’
‘Gaz, let’s skip the data protection stuff. You’re not a real bank. I’m not a polis. Let’s just be real and talk about what I need to know.’
Gary looked impressed. He pursed his lips together and nodded. His expression said, Way to go. ‘You’ve toughened up,’ he said. ‘So, about tonight. Are you a fan of toys?’
‘Has Cal contacted you in the last day or so?’
‘Okay, we’re really doing this? Nah. I haven’t seen Cal in a couple days. He came by the day before yesterday, Monday? He was needing some money in his pocket. He had some big deal lined up, and had that Paula with him.’
They were here together?
I tried something. ‘I didn’t think Paula liked Cal.’
Total stab in the dark. I didn’t know either of them, and had no idea what kind of relationship they’d had. But if Cal was blackmailing her, then it seemed a good guess that they weren’t exactly friends.
‘Nobody really likes Cal,’ Gary said. ‘But she was in on whatever scam it was he was working on.’
‘Did he say what it was?’
‘Nope. See, when it’s Cal? I don’t bother asking. That only goes two ways. He tells me, and then I get in trouble later for knowing it, or tells me, and it’s so stupid that I have to laugh in his face. You know he keeps talking about how he’s going to pull a Babycham.’
‘A what?’
Gary shrugged with his hands. ‘It’s what he calls a big crime. A masterwork.’
‘That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.’
‘Oh, talk to Cal more, there’s plenty where that came from.’
I waved at the barman then asked him to pour whatever Gary was drinking. It wasn’t a drink that needed pouring. He placed a bottled drink on the counter in front of us, one of those flavoured cider things.
‘So he was planning something big, and he hasn’t been in touch since?’
‘Nope. You’re thinking he burned down his old man’s place, aren’t you?’
When I didn’t answer he just smiled, like, I hear everything. Then he picked up the bottled cider off the counter and raised it in a toast to me. ‘Cheers.’
Hang on.
Wait.
Back up.
If Gary knew Paula, maybe there was a chance here to get something the cops hadn’t been able to find. ‘Did Paula bank with you?’ I said.
‘I gave her a couple loans.’
My heart picked up speed
. ‘Do you know her address?’
SIXTY-ONE
ALEX
11:00
Alex had been given a set of high-quality golf clubs once, by a footballer client.
He didn’t play golf. Didn’t care about golf. Didn’t even know how to tell the top of the range clubs from the cheap ones.
Weren’t they all just bits of metal, really? With round bits on the end, and flat bits, and hooked bits. Just tools for hitting things. Like expensive hammers that came in a big leather bag.
But Alex was terrible at throwing stuff away. And he was obsessed with his own status. When a rich client gave him something, he would treasure it like an Academy Award. In the case of the golf clubs, they had travelled with him on the move to Scotland, before being abandoned in the garage, never to be seen or touched.
Until now.
This seemed like the perfect time to practise his swing.
Alex lifted a club out of the bag. One with a big round end. He climbed the stairs and pressed his ear to the bedroom door. There was some serious kissing going on.
He lifted the club and kicked open the door.
Kara was lying on top of the kid on the bed. Her tongue was down his throat and she held his dick in her right hand like a joystick. All things considered, Alex had to admit, it was a pretty impressive piece of equipment. When he finally got a look at the guy’s face, he recognised him.
Milo something-or-other.
The cocky kid from Kara’s football team.
Of all the—
—Wait, was that a Yoda tattoo?
Milo reacted first. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. He started to crawl backward across the bed, and let out a comical high-pitched yelping sound. Kara turned to look up at Alex. Her face ran through a range of emotions in the span of just a few seconds. Alex saw surprise, then shock, and maybe a little fear.
The final expression was one he’d seen every time he’d said something she didn’t like.
‘Seriously?’ she said.
That wasn’t what Alex would have expected.
He stepped forward and swung the club at Milo. He connected with the footballer’s shin, and felt the solid thud vibrate back up his arm. Milo screamed and pulled his leg up toward his chest, and rolled backward off the bed in the process. He landed with a thud.