Every Night I Dream of Hell

by Mackay, Malcolm

  ‘No interest in me then,’ she said, raising her voice and sticking a little quiver into the middle of it.

  I was on my feet now, looking down at her, looking around at the busy little place and the busy little conversations happening at the other tables. You can always sense with Zara when she’s planning to make a little scene, and I could feel it at that point. I’m allergic to scenes, so I sat back down and put an enjoyably sarcastic look on my face.

  ‘Go on then. Tell me all about yourself.’

  She looked me right in the eye, and then started talking about herself. At last she had a subject she liked. ‘I was going to come for this money much sooner but when I got out I was paranoid that Michael Fisher was on my tail. I think he was, you know. Following me around, having me watched, making sure that I didn’t go and pick up any money. So I couldn’t come and get it.’

  I frowned, trying to work out if Fisher was enough of a dick to waste his time trailing around after Zara. Probably was, but he was supposed to be a good cop and God knows he was busy at the time she got out. He did well to find the time to stalk anyone.

  ‘Good of you to show patience,’ I said, only semi-sarcastically. If she’d come running to me for the money as soon as she got out she could have brought a determined cop straight to my door, so there was that much to appreciate.

  ‘I went down south,’ she carried on, ignoring me.

  Maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have had alarms going off at this point if it wasn’t Zara Cope sitting opposite me, and if I hadn’t sat through a similarly rehearsed conversation the night before. This sounded like something she’d decided she wanted to say before I even turned up.

  ‘Kicked around down there for a while, trying to make a living, doing regular jobs. Wasn’t a lot of fun, wasn’t much of a life. So I decided to come back, try and start again up here.’

  ‘Turning over a new leaf, huh?’

  ‘If you want to look at it that way. Maybe just make the most of my old leaf.’

  I was sitting there doing my basic maths and I was convinced that the answer was four. It could easily have been a coincidence: man comes north with a crew of his own to try and muscle in on our market, no previous experience of the city, at the same time Zara comes back. A man who looks like he’s being guided by someone who knows the scene. Could so easily have been a coincidence. I didn’t believe in coincidence.

  ‘Where were you down there?’ I asked her. Kept my tone mildly disinterested so that she might just believe that I already knew the answer.

  ‘Birmingham, for a while.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you could have gone anywhere else.’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe I always figured I’d be coming back here. I kicked around there for a few months, got bored, came back. Now I need to try and find some work, get a life set up that I can live. I’m not asking for help,’ she said, the opening shot in her asking for help. She said it with such a determined tone, like the truth could hide behind that.

  But I knew that her asking for help was false as well, because everything that was coming out of her mouth was wrapped neatly in a lie. She was the link between Barrett and Glasgow. She had to be; it made such obvious sense. She talks to him about the city, about the organizations up here and how one of them is unstable. She points out that he’s a man who ran a drug network already, so he could do it again up here, make some real money. I could already picture her, whispering in his ear, telling him everything he needed to do to impress her, excite her. I remembered those whispers.

  ‘So you’re back up on your own?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, a little too quick and defensive. ‘This is all the money I have now, so I’ll need to find something.’

  She could have been fishing for a job, or she could have been fishing for information about the state of the organization, whether it was hiring or not.

  ‘There’s work around if you’re willing to do it,’ I said. ‘Same as it ever was.’

  Which wasn’t entirely true: there were fewer jobs around for a couple of reasons. One was the mess of Jamieson’s arrest; that had thrown everything into the air. Every organization shied away from new employees in a time of uncertainty, especially one with Zara’s backstory. The other was the fact that there was less money in the world right now. A poor economy serves some parts of the industry well, others badly, so it sort of balances out. In the end you’re usually left with fewer new jobs being created. She nodded and looked suitably unconvinced, waiting for me to offer to help find her something.

  ‘You think Fisher’s still sniffing around you?’ I asked.

  She looked at me a little shocked, like this was something she hadn’t thought she’d need to worry about now. ‘I don’t think so. Do you think he might be?’

  ‘I didn’t think he would have followed you around before, so what do I know?’

  There was silence for a few seconds that I should have filled with a second attempt at leaving.

  ‘You heard anything else about Lewis?’ she asked.

  ‘Winter? Still dead as far as I know.’

  She frowned at me and for a second there I thought she was actually hurt. Zara was always a complicated little bundle of lies and emotions; she might have actually cared about that pathetic man of hers.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, quietly enough to be able to deny I’d ever said such a word. She knew as much about Winter’s killing as I did. Killed by Calum MacLean on the orders of Peter Jamieson; everyone knew that now. MacLean was long gone, and there wasn’t going to be any new information leaking out.

  ‘How’s business in the city?’ she asked, using my newfound discomfort to roll in the riskiest question she had to ask.

  If she was connected to Barrett then she would want to know what I knew about the organization, about the city as a whole. I knew a hell of a lot more than her or Barrett or most other people. Anything she could get from me would be gold. Just a hint, something in my tone that said things were good, bad or indifferent. Something that would give them hope for their little plan.

  ‘Business is business,’ was all I said. She looked at me like she was about to say something clever, but I’d heard enough clever things in my life already so I cut her off. I leaned forwards, getting closer to her than I had in years, a few inches from her face. Close enough to notice that she didn’t smell of anything sweet, which was unlike her. ‘And you’re telling me that you came back up the road on your lonesome.’

  ‘I did,’ she said, frowning at my knowing smile, which didn’t know as much as it was pretending it did.

  ‘That right? And you’re staying on your own now, huh?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ she said, because she was smart enough to remember that I’d heard someone in the background of one of her phone calls. A hard woman to trip up.

  ‘You come waltzing back into town with your wee man and his pals in tow and you think I’m not going to even notice that,’ I said to her, watching her eyes for a reaction.

  It was there, I saw a flash of it, but she killed it quickly because there’s nothing she wouldn’t kill quickly to profit herself. A little bit of shock, a little bit of fear and a little bit of anger. Most people wouldn’t have spotted it, but it was a look she’d worn often in our relationship and it was the familiarity that hit me hard.

  Nearly hit me too hard. Knocked me backwards into the past, remembering being on the couch next to her and looking into her eyes. Remembering being in bed with her when she was pregnant. The feelings I’d had back then that I didn’t recognize and still can’t readily identify, but might have been fear. I was scared of being a father, being committed to Zara. And I looked at her now and saw the bags under her eyes and the too heavy make-up, neither of which had been there before, and I realized that for once her fear and anger might not be directed at me.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said with a scoff that was too late and feeble an arrival to ma
ke an impact on this conversation.

  ‘Him and his crew are heading for a spot in a forest somewhere, or up a chimney stack,’ I told her. ‘I won’t give you a second warning.’

  ‘Warning? What warning? I have no idea what you’re talking about. You must be paranoid about something, or punch-drunk at last. Probably paranoid. You were always paranoid. You remember how bad you used to get? Standing at the bedroom window, naked as the day you were born, looking out into the night for some bogeyman you thought was after you. I was eight months pregnant at the time and all you cared about were your little power fantasies, the chance to beat someone up. You haven’t changed.’

  She was red in the face by now, but it all sounded like aimless lashing out, trying to pull the conversation away from the subject she feared. She was scared that I knew what little game she was playing. There was some truth in what she said about me being paranoid. That little story about her and me when she was heavily pregnant was partly true, only I wasn’t paranoid; we were both in real danger. I had pissed off a man I shouldn’t have, but I dealt with it without her understanding how bad things were. If she knew she would have been upset and she was emotional enough already. I was trying to protect her from me.

  ‘Nice little diversion you’re throwing me,’ I said, ‘but don’t think my memory’s that bad; I remember what I said a few seconds ago. You and him are here to push your luck, and it’s going to end badly.’

  She got up from the table, looking a little tearful and angry. ‘Why don’t you go to hell, Nate? It’s probably the only place you’ll ever feel at home.’ And she careered off through the restaurant, standing on the same black leather handbag I had stood on coming in.

  Zara stormed out of the door and out of view. I never considered going after her. Nobody in my line of work was in the habit of chasing after people on busy streets; it would draw too much attention. I let her get suitably far ahead of me and left the place, thinking about what she’d said. She wanted me to go to hell, and I figured that would be a short journey.

  12

  I could put every other mistake I made that day down to Zara getting inside my head, but that would be cheap. The mistakes I made were mine; trying to put them on someone else is a damn good way of making sure you repeat them.

  First job was to call up Kevin and tell him that I’d learned a little something about our friend Adrian Barrett.

  ‘So he basically knows a lot about the place then. I mean, she has connections here, right, so she could put him in touch with useful people?’ he asked me.

  ‘Hard to say what her connections are these days. Little above mid-level when Winter was alive, and she’s been away a while now.’

  ‘But still, it might explain his reason for coming here, might explain where he got the idea to try and muscle in on Glasgow business.’

  That sounded to me like Kevin was trying to look on the bright side of this. If Zara coaxed Barrett north then there was a better chance that nobody else had, namely Don Park. If we could take Park out of the equation then the puzzle began to look a lot smaller.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t take it for granted though.’

  I left him chewing on that new info, knowing that the first thing he would try to do was get a tail on Zara. Find her and there was a chance of finding Barrett and ending this thing quickly. Quickly made everyone look good. There was nothing reassuring about Zara being involved, not to me. She didn’t have direct connections to people like Park, that was true, but she didn’t need them. Zara was a woman capable of making connections wherever she pleased.

  Next person on the call list was Ronnie. I wanted him to come along with me on the next job I had to do that day, a pointless little thing that he might as well watch and learn from.

  ‘Can’t, I’m heading out to some farmhouse with Mikey, Conn and some guy called Bee, or BB. They don’t think Barrett’s crew are there now, but they might have been. Sounds like a wild goose chase, but Marty Jones called me up himself and told me to go along.’

  He sounded impressed by the fact that Marty had called him up. Tells you how far Marty had come that even smart people were impressed by a call from him these days. BB was Brian Bradley, young muscle that worked for Marty’s debt collection business, now run by Billy. Going in heavy with those four, heavier than he needed to for a possible past location. Sounded like a paranoia crew to me, two to do the work and two to check up on the two doing the work. Didn’t blame Marty for taking those kinds of precautions. It was going to be that way until we got all this sorted out.

  Ronnie being in on that search meant I had to go visit Mark Garvey alone. I wasn’t in the mood for people I liked so I sure as hell wasn’t in the mood for Mark Garvey. A middle-aged, smarmy gun dealer that we shouldn’t have been bringing into the organization in the first place. This would have gone much better if I’d had Ronnie with me, or if I’d managed to slip my brain out of neutral at any point.

  He lived in a semi-detached house out towards Cider Hill, an area I only knew because I knew who was buried out there. I parked down the road from his boring little house on the kind of tight residential street that forces you to say hello to your neighbours, and went in through his front garden. Knocked on the door, ignoring the subtlety of the bell, and waited. The door was opened by a woman in her mid to late thirties, blonde hair scraped back and a scowl on her face. Wrapped in a bathrobe and looking like a visitor was the last thing she wanted. This, I knew, was Melanie Garvey, wife of Mark.

  ‘I’m looking for your husband.’

  ‘Are you now? Well, he’s not in.’

  She didn’t know who I was. ‘My name’s Nate Colgan. I’m here to talk shop. You sure he’s not in?’

  She got a little combative at the sound of my name. ‘He’s not, actually. He went out; I don’t know when he’ll be back. Shouldn’t be long. I think he was making a delivery. You can come in, wait if you want.’

  If he wasn’t going to be long then there was no reason not to go in and wait. She led me through to the kitchen, a spotless, white place that looked like nobody had ever stepped into it before. I wandered to the far end of the room where a dining table was pushed against the back wall and took a seat there. She filled the kettle, put it on, and walked out of the room.

  The world would be a much better place if people had the good sense to leave me alone. Let me get on with my work; let me get on with my life. But they can’t do that, they just can’t. Everyone has to play their own little game and make me a part of it. On another day I would have had the good sense not to get involved.

  She came back into the kitchen, still wrapped in the same bathrobe she had been wearing before. Her hair was loose now. Walked right up to me, stood with one of her bare toes pressed against the toe of my boot. She was short; didn’t have to look that far down at me sitting there. She pulled open the robe, reached out her hands to either side of my face. For reasons only she would ever understand, she gripped the sides of my head tightly, digging in with her nails, holding my head to look at her naked body. The reasonable sight of a woman in her late thirties who’d never had a kid and worked out a lot.

  She reached down and picked my hands from my lap, slipping them round the back of the open robe onto her backside. Seemed like she wanted me to return her pinch, so being a gentleman I obliged. I grabbed, turned her around and shoved her away from me. Not much force, but she was small and her stumble across the kitchen floor wasn’t graceful. She stopped in the middle of the floor and looked at me, dressing gown gaping, mouth slightly open, trying to work out what my game was. Was I really not interested, playing hard to get or wanting something rough?

  ‘You go call your man and tell him I’m not looking for gifts or bribes. Tell him to get in here now.’

  That ended any thought she had of going through with whatever little game her and Garvey had been playing. She should have been grateful. I wasn’t a man to dabble with, even when I was in a good mood. She shut her mouth, pulled her robe s
hut and walked out of the kitchen, indignant. Maybe she just wanted a fling, but I never thought of myself as handsome enough to invite that. This was her and Garvey trying to get me into their debt, the only thing they could use to hook me. If I owe him, then he doesn’t have to play by the rules I was about to lay down. I’d seen people like Garvey using tricks as dirty as that before; I figured it had to be what this was and it pissed me off.

  I’d only given that a couple of minutes’ thought when the front door opened and I heard a man cheerily shouting hello. Mark Garvey, back just when it was slightly too late to catch anyone out. I’ve already said I don’t believe in coincidences, right? She leaves the room, has just enough time to text the husband and tell him he can come in now. Tell him the big lump that he’s scared of hasn’t bitten the hook and they’re going to have to play me straight.

  Didn’t take a genius to work out that Lafferty had already told him he was getting the job before he suggested him at his meeting, and that Marty would have called him up the night of the meeting to hunt for info. Garvey was playing at being ignorant; all part of the game him and Melanie were enthusiastic amateurs at, with dreams of professionalism. If Garvey had the ‘security consultant’ in his back pocket then he had a chance to break the rules with impunity. Breaking the rules is a profitable business, and I mean double-or-treble-your-money profitable by selling to multiple buyers instead of just us.

  He came into the kitchen, made a show of looking surprised to see me, and walked across the room with a smile on his face and his hand outstretched.

  ‘Nate, God, been a good long time since you and me had a chat, huh?’

  ‘I don’t remember us ever having a chat.’

  ‘Well, no, maybe not.’ He sat across the table, looking expectantly at me. He wasn’t bothered by my attitude.

  ‘The organization’s looking for a dealer that’ll supply us consistently and exclusively. Do you think you’re capable of living up to our standards?’ I posed the question as though I doubted his ability, but he ignored that. He was ready to ignore anything to get this deal done.