Every Night I Dream of Hell

by Mackay, Malcolm

  We’d all been waiting for something big, expecting it to come. The fact that this much time had passed without a major attack was some credit to the people running the organization, shoring up the defences and repelling any of the small attacks that were made. Some people tried their luck, looking to pick a little bit of the business away while Jamieson sat in his cell, but none had succeeded. Maybe that had helped to put the big guys off, but it wasn’t going to stop them forever. Someone was going to roll the dice and take a shot at what he considered a weak opponent.

  ‘He have anything to back that fear up with?’

  Conn shook his head. He always did the majority of the talking for the two of them. ‘Just more fear. Don’t get me wrong, he’s done a hell of a job, wouldn’t have thought he was capable, but he’s been sitting there waiting for something like this to come along for a while now. He’s ready for the fight, just needs the fight to get ready for him.’

  ‘Not the worst way to be,’ I said quietly. ‘So what’s our part in the play?’

  I looked sideways at Ronnie, indicating that I meant him and me, but mostly I was just making sure he was still there. He hadn’t said a word since we arrived, which was fine if he had nothing to say, but he needed to impose himself a little more around established guys. It was way too easy to disappear into the background of a conversation when men with reputations were talking, but if he ever wanted to be taken seriously then he had to learn to speak up. Guys like Conn and Mikey meet new kids in the business every damn day, and they forget about most of them pretty quick. You have to make some sort of impression, and sitting next to me is no more than a good start. It’s easy to get lost in the deep shadows of other people.

  ‘We’re going to look at the more obvious stuff, the stuff that might have us bumping up against the cops,’ Conn said. ‘We’ll start with everyone around Christie and see where it takes us. You start with Adrian Barrett and try and work your way back to Christie from there. We’ll see if we meet in the middle.’

  ‘Adrian Barrett, huh? Anything to support that?’

  ‘He’s flavour of the month,’ Mikey said with a shrug. The work we did, the world we inhabited, was all just a little too easy for Mikey. He wasn’t as smart as Conn but, quiet as he was, there was nobody more comfortable with brutality than him. There was a danger that that made him sloppy, complacent, but there weren’t many better in a tight spot.

  ‘The bosses think he’s here with a crew,’ Conn said. ‘I’m sure someone’s mentioned him to you already.’

  I nodded.

  ‘He ain’t here alone anyway,’ Conn went on, ‘so he might just have the means to make a hit against Christie.’

  ‘Not much of a message though, is it?’ Ronnie asked. ‘I mean, the message is strong, but if we have to search around to work out who’s sending it then it doesn’t do him a lot of favours.’

  Conn nodded. ‘True, but there’s another side to it. There’s nothing worse than uncertainty. Uncertainty makes us all look weak, and that helps him make more attacks in the future. You get circumstances as well when you can only pull off a move at a certain time. He knows that once the first shot is fired, everyone’s going to be keeping their head down. So he pulls this now and only shows off that he did it later on when he can profit most.’

  ‘What do we have on Barrett anyway?’ I asked them.

  ‘A name,’ Mikey said with a smile. ‘Not much else, uh?’

  ‘Not much,’ Conn nodded. ‘The rumours say he’s been here for a month or two, but I don’t know. I think that might have been a bluff. I think he might have had people here for a month or two, spreading the word that he was with them, but I figure he only showed up more recently. We think he has a crew with him, some serious people maybe. Got a good supply behind him as well, judging from the moves he’s making. Comes from the Midlands, apparently; Birmingham or something.’

  ‘I heard not Birmingham, but somewhere close by,’ Mikey said.

  ‘Yeah, lot of different stuff going round; take it all with a pinch of salt.’

  ‘We’re sure he’s alone, not fronting for someone else?’

  ‘You thinking of Park?’ Mikey asked, smiling.

  A little bit more history for you now. Don Park is a senior man in Alex MacArthur’s organization, and everyone with the power of sight can see that he’s trying to edge MacArthur off a cliff so he can take control. MacArthur’s old and coughing up his lungs, so he might not need much of a shove. That means Park making big moves of his own, and getting an outsider to front up a network attacking Jamieson would be a good start. Park was the one we’d all been waiting for.

  ‘Makes some sense, doesn’t it?’ I asked.

  ‘It does, but nobody’s seen any link,’ Conn said with a despairing shrug. Somehow it would be better if it was the devil we knew. ‘Worth looking at though, when you’re trying to find Barrett. That’s all we’ve got,’ he said with a sense of finality, looking at his watch, ‘and we ain’t got any time left either. Come on.’

  He and Mikey got up, headed for the door. If they were in a hurry then we would give them a head start; just good form to not all rush away from the same location at the same time. Me and Ronnie edged our arses onto the units and did our best to look like we had a clue what was going on around us.

  ‘How do we find Barrett then?’ Ronnie asked me.

  I started laughing, because, come on, what else could I do? ‘That would be the question,’ I said. ‘He needs to stay somewhere I suppose, so we start looking round for places he might be staying. If he’s brought a crew with him then we should be able to track them down. Might take some time though. Needle in a haystack.’

  We were driving back into the city, listing hotels and other places they might be hiding out in while they tried to crack Glasgow.

  ‘Are those two going to be able to keep themselves out of a police station if they’re sniffing round the case?’ Ronnie asked with a hint of genuine concern.

  ‘They have about as much chance as we do, which is some. They’ll be careful, and we do still have some people inside the police who can help us out of a little trouble, just not a lot.’

  ‘Huh. So they’re good at all this then, are they?’ he asked me, fishing for something more than he was going to get. Ronnie wanted info on everyone he met. That was the right attitude to take. Best way of keeping yourself alive and free was knowing who the threats were. Threats from the bad intentions of enemies, threats from the incompetence of friends.

  ‘Very good, and you’d be wise not to say anything to the contrary.’

  I left it at that, because that was as much detail as a smart kid like Ronnie needed. Mikey and Conn were two of the best in the business, Conn smarter than Mikey, Mikey more brutal than Conn. They’d both been working for Billy Patterson for three or four years and had been his top men since Alan Bavidge died. That was the business side of them, and that was all anyone really needed to know.

  The personal side was straightforward. Mikey was married with a couple of young kids and I think I’m right in saying Conn was godfather to the youngest. What Ronnie was plucking up the courage to hint about was Conn’s private life, which was very private. In my opinion it didn’t really need to be. Nobody further down the food chain was ever going to dare question him to his face about it, and nobody further up the chain gave a damn about who a profitable employee slept with. Okay, if he stopped being good at his job then it would be open season, a stick to beat him with, but as long as he was brilliant at his work then his business was his own. He didn’t seem to see it that way. Spent too much effort hiding himself from the world, but that was up to him. It wasn’t Ronnie’s place to try and make it an issue.

  We stopped at a pub in Craigton that Jamieson owned, place that had unreachable pretensions about it. I introduced myself to the manager as the new security consultant and asked if there was a room me and my assistant could use for an hour. In a quiet back room we sat and wrote out a list of places we could check. A few
hotels in there, some houses we knew Park owned, a few other decent hiding places that might be good for a long-term option.

  We were about to make some phone calls when my mobile rang: Kevin Currie.

  ‘Nate, listen, there’s big things going on. Lafferty’s gone nuts about this hit on one of his guys and he’s calling a meeting.’

  ‘Meeting of who?’

  ‘Everyone whose name he can remember. He wants a big meeting tonight, everyone involved in running the organization these days. Marty tells me that you and Ronnie are helping his boys investigate, so the two of you might as well come along.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I muttered.

  ‘I know, it’s stupid, you don’t need to tell me. I tried to talk him out of it but that just pissed him off even more. It was his boy that got killed and he’s getting all emotional about it. He probably thinks it makes him look weak, has to be seen to do something big about it.’

  Yeah, they always think they have to be seen doing something big about it.

  7

  She was waiting for me when I got back to the house. I wasn’t in the mood for her, or for anyone else. Too much to think about, and my thinking is better done alone. But Kelly smiled at me even when she saw my scowl, and that forced me to soften a little. I unlocked the door and let us both in.

  Kelly was thirty-one but could have passed for a weary twenty-five if she’d made the effort. Pretty, girlish features, long dark hair and a look around her eyes that told you just a fraction of what she’d seen. I didn’t ask what she’d been through, because it was rude and because I knew some of it already. I knew her father and brothers were about the worst people I’d heard stories about in my many years of hearing stomach-turning stories. I knew she’d gotten into some sort of relationship with Tom Childs, a boy who worked for Kevin Currie. Childs got her a job with Currie too, and all was going well until Childs overreached. Tried to step up and become a gunman, got himself killed.

  So now Kelly was single, and probably feeling a little vulnerable. If any one of the stories about the kind of father Vincent Newbury was were true then he was a man worth running from, and I was the sort of guy who could protect her. That might be a cynical point of view. Maybe it wasn’t as negative as that. Maybe she liked me. I’m not an ugly man, a little weathered and starting to grey at the side of my dark hair, but not wholly unattractive and certainly well built. I’m smarter than most in this business, but not exactly a bundle of laughs. So I don’t know. A mixed bag.

  The first time I’d met her had been when her man Tom Childs had died. I was the one who took the body out of the hotel Ronnie worked in. She helped. That had to colour what she thought of me now. Negative association. I had been professional at the time, cold but trying to keep it polite. She had called me a few weeks later, saying she wanted to know how the disposal had gone and whether we were in the clear from any police investigation. We met up, we chatted. I didn’t tell her about the disposal, just that it had gone well. She didn’t need those details, not about someone she presumably loved. She was smart and she was strong and she was pretty. The sort of woman that leaves a mark on you. She had contacted me a couple of times since, one time coming round to the house and having a cup of tea. That’s how she knew where I lived. It was flattering. That’s why I had let her get this close.

  Thing is, I was in no mood to play nice that evening. The search for Barrett had started with me and Ronnie firing off blanks all across the city. Not only could we not find out where they were, we couldn’t find anyone who would now admit to knowing about them. People who had previously mentioned Barrett and his crew were now denying all knowledge. Defensive amnesia. Information lockdown, us on the outside.

  I went in ahead of her to the living room. The living room was ordinary and tidy. Laminate flooring, TV in the corner, three-piece suite, a picture of Rebecca on the mantelpiece above the fire. It was all part of my drive for ordinariness. It was designed to lull you in, make you think I was a normal guy.

  ‘You working?’ she asked me, standing in the doorway to the living room, practically inviting herself in.

  ‘Uh, sort of, yeah. Not with any success.’ That was my polite way of saying that I didn’t want to talk about my day’s work. Sure as shit didn’t want to talk about the work I would be doing that night, sitting in on this meeting that Lafferty had called.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, nodding and saying nothing more about it.

  And that, right there, was one of the reasons I really wished I could have made a move. She was smart enough to know how the business worked, already trusted by Currie to carry out decent mid-level work for him. But I couldn’t do anything, because why would I take a woman I liked into my life? A dangerous life. The burden of my work and my daughter and now my daughter’s mother. The best I could do for a woman I liked was to keep her away.

  ‘I won’t keep you long if you’re busy,’ she said. Watching her as she looked at me out of the corner of her eye. Smart, and playing up to me, trying to get me to see how lucky I was to have her in my living room. I didn’t necessarily disagree.

  ‘I do have to go out in another hour or so. More work,’ I said, not adding to that.

  ‘Oh, right, well, I’ll keep this brief. How worried should I be about my employment prospects?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘There’s talk going around that moves are being made against the whole organization. People are talking about the whole thing finally falling down. I’m thinking of getting out before I get trapped in the rubble.’

  I frowned a little because I didn’t like the sound of those rumours. Sort of thing someone who wanted to damage us would start, then sit back and watch panicky employees spread the word for you. It was a good tactic.

  ‘I don’t think you have anything to worry about,’ I lied. ‘There are people making moves against the drug side of the business, but there always are. Nature of the business. I haven’t heard anything about Kevin’s business being vulnerable.’

  ‘No, but if someone takes the drug side of the business, every other side is likely to fall down, isn’t it? That’s where a lot of the money and a lot of the toughest people are.’

  I sighed loudly. ‘Not necessarily, not if Kevin’s half as smart as I think he is. Most parts of the business are designed to survive without the help of the rest of it. That’s the point of having all the different parts. And anyway, we’ll deal with this new problem, just the same as we dealt with all the other ones.’

  She stood in my living room, nodding. ‘Word is that someone got killed.’

  ‘Someone did,’ I agreed. ‘That’s the nature of the business as well, unfortunately. You know that.’

  She winced a little when I said it, more for show than emotion, but she made me feel guilty.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that,’ I said to her. I moved towards her, wishing I had the good sense to stay where I was. I was about to reach out and put a hand on her shoulder when the phone started ringing.

  I went over and picked it up because Kelly had seen the gesture I was about to make, and seeing it was enough. I didn’t recognize the number, answered it and said hello.

  ‘Just making sure you haven’t forgotten about lunch tomorrow,’ came the female voice. Zara sounded exasperated, like she’d rather be speaking to anyone but me.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ I said, and left it at that. There was something in me repulsed by the idea of talking to Zara while Kelly was standing right there in the room with me. Zara was the hard lesson I’d already learned; Kelly was me trying to put that knowledge into practice.

  ‘So, uh, yeah, it’ll be nice to see you again,’ she said, speaking low and trying to sound personal. That wasn’t the way she spoke when we were together and I didn’t understand why she was trying it now.

  ‘Will it?’ was all I said. We were meeting for lunch the following day and there were only so many things I could say to Zara; this phone call was in danger of using most of them up. I can
indulge in a happy conversation with someone I like but there’s a lot of sense in cutting off people that are dangerous.

  ‘It will, yeah,’ she said. ‘You’re the father of my daughter, Nate; it’ll be good to see you. Been a while. Not since all that stuff with Lewis.’

  I had no idea what the hell this was any more. This wasn’t her just checking to make sure that I would turn up for lunch; this was her trying to establish some sort of connection. Mentioning Becky and throwing in a mention of how I helped her when Winter got killed for good measure. There was something sweet and sticky in her words, a trap I didn’t like the sound of.

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m busy right now, so I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay, sure, I’ll see you then.’ Cheerfully accepting my words and their dead tone as though it was the friendliest way in the world of saying goodbye. That wasn’t like her at all. No snarky comment to kill me off with at the end of the conversation, nothing to make sure she had the last word. I smelled a dead rat.

  I hung up and looked round at Kelly, and immediately found myself comparing her to Zara. It was a stupid thought that I stamped out before it could go anywhere it shouldn’t.

  ‘I guess I should get going then,’ she said with a nod. ‘Should I, uh, spread the word that all is well in the organization, that there’s nothing too much for the people I work with to be worried about?’

  That made me pause, because there wasn’t an obvious answer. As soon as an organization starts telling people there’s nothing to worry about, people immediately assume there’s something to be worried about. Nobody trusts what their employers tell them and it’s often smarter to say nothing at all than to screech reassurance.

  ‘Maybe don’t say anything at all unless people ask. If anyone says something then you can shoot it down, yeah, but otherwise let’s not make a fuss about it.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ she said, nodding. ‘Better not to give people an excuse to panic.’ She was looking at me, waiting for me to say something that would close the conversation.