Every Night I Dream of Hell

by Mackay, Malcolm

  I knew how it had started. How it had to be. He had Barrett and his crew on hold, waiting for the chance to use them. Working in the city to make a name for themselves, but not pulling the trigger on a takeover until he had the excuse he needed. Waiting for something to come along that Jamieson would have no choice but to back. One of Lafferty’s men killed so Lafferty gets to lead the investigation. Didn’t matter that Lafferty was the one who had him killed.

  ‘So Lafferty’s using Barrett and his crew to try and take control.’ I said it as a statement, not a question.

  ‘Yeah,’ Original said, nodding his head. ‘Got them in quick. Had them here already, I guess. I don’t know. Like I says, I wasn’t involved at that point. Had to use someone from outside. Someone from the city, that would have been too obvious; people would have known them. There would have been leaks. Had to use outsiders. They killed Christie and then he called the meeting so that he could start leaning on people, get them to back him. Force them to, I suppose. The meeting, that was all a set-up. Some of us had been told what to say beforehand.’

  Didn’t bowl me over with shock. He was talking fast, spurting out the words as he tried to ingratiate, show what a good little helper he was being. He had stopped now, breathing heavily and looking up at me. Scared. He knew that one wrong word was going to cost him.

  ‘Tell me about his crew.’

  ‘Lafferty’s?’

  ‘Yeah, Lafferty’s.’

  Original snorted, and then almost choked on the blood that was in the back of his throat. He spat a blob of it out onto the floor.

  ‘Lafferty doesn’t have a crew,’ he said. The attempt at cool derision had been wiped out by the blob of thick blood and spit in front of his chair. ‘The guy doesn’t have a clue. Okay, all right, that’s not fair. He has a clue. He knows how other people run things, with people around them, but he thinks he can do it different. Like he can keep doing things the way he always has. He’s got all these legit businesses and he plays at being this legit businessman and he thinks he can keep that up.’ His voice was getting more Glaswegian as he talked.

  ‘So who’s around him?’

  ‘Like, permanently around him?’ He exhaled loudly. ‘There’s a bunch of people who’re around him a bit, for business I mean. Around him all the time? Only the boy Jake, really. He’s not there now; he’s fucked off somewhere. Work, is what I heard, getting support for something. I don’t know. Maybe he’s pissed off back to Bratislava or whatever shithole his people came from. Lafferty doesn’t trust most people, doesn’t like having anyone near him.’

  ‘His family?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re not there. I don’t know where they are. He sent them away some place, keeping them safe I suppose. I heard it was just a marriage of convenience these days anyway, but I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about them much. They ain’t at the house though, I know that. I spent a bit of time at the place last week so I know all about it.’

  ‘You do, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, I do.’

  Almost begging me to ask him about it. So proud of the fact that he had something useful to tell me and desperate for the chance to share it. Wanting to be the most helpful little bunny in the world.

  ‘Go on then.’

  He paused, realizing from my tone that he’d exposed his gratuitous enthusiasm. Time to pull back a little.

  ‘Go on then what?’

  ‘Tell me about his house. Let’s say I wanted to go there tonight and I wanted to get in without him knowing.’

  Original nodded. ‘Yeah, sure, yeah, you could do that. Lafferty, he doesn’t have a great security system. Just the same sort of thing his neighbours have, so that it doesn’t stand out, you know? He’s got cameras, but you can get up to the house without being seen by them. And it ain’t like he checks them much anyway, because he doesn’t have staff, right? Doesn’t have someone watching them for him. His driveway, right, has these trees and bushes up either side of it. Looks good, but the cameras don’t pick up what’s behind them because he doesn’t have a camera on each side of the garden. His neighbours would see them. That gets you up to the house. Go round the right-hand side and you can get to the back door without being picked up.’

  I was frowning, shaking my head. This was contemptible. A man like Lafferty, making a play to take over the organization but keeping the same security he had before. That was unacceptable. Original must have thought I was shaking my head at him, rather than his words. He started babbling.

  ‘It’s true, Nate, it’s true. I’m telling you, on my life it’s true. I said it to him already. I said, Angus, man, you got to get some better security now. Fuck what the neighbours think. He said he would, but he still hasn’t. All about appearances, you know? He got this new alarm put in, but he had Jake put in the password for it and I saw it. It’s two three six five. That’s it. And I got a key. Jesus, Nate, yeah, I got a key.’ There was relief in his voice, joy, like he’d just found the golden ticket. ‘In my wallet. There’s a few keys in there. You take it out; I’ll show you what key is the right key. His back door, Nate. His back fucking door.’

  Smiling with bloodied teeth. Leaning forwards for me to reach into his coat pocket and take out his wallet. There were four keys; he told me which got him into Lafferty’s house.

  ‘That gets you into the sun lounge at the back. There’s another door with a lock into the dining room, but he never locks it. Or it’s never been locked when I went there. Maybe late at night, but I don’t know. The alarm box is just inside the dining room. Little white box on the wall beside the light switch. Just type in two three six five and enter. That’s it.’

  Grinning now. Convinced that he must have done enough to win me over. I didn’t like that, however true it might have been. A guy like Original, he just wanted to be on the winning team. There was no loyalty there. He was loyal to John Young and Jamieson when they were on the outside. Became loyal to Lafferty because it looked like Lafferty might take charge. As soon as power changed sides, so did Original.

  ‘Tell me about his routine, late at night.’

  Original started shaking his head. ‘I don’t know. I only been there a couple of times at night, bunch of times through the day. I don’t figure he has much of a routine at a time like this. I know he’s got a meeting with Stuart Crockley at six tonight. Stuart told me. Stuart’s well on side with all this. His money-cleaning: man, Lafferty needs it and Stuart’s well up for a change of leadership. Thinks he’ll be sitting pretty. After that meeting, I ain’t got a clue.’

  I nodded along. He was being honest about not knowing, and that was something to treat as a positive. Exaggerating what he knew could be as dangerous as lying to me.

  ‘He expect to hear from you today?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ he said. ‘Works me like a dog. All of us. Always has things for us to do, always wants to know what’s going on. He’s properly serious, you know.’

  ‘So if you don’t get in touch?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘Maybe he wouldn’t be too bothered; I’m not working on anything, like, urgent, right now. But, you know, he’s a bit paranoid, so I think he’d be worried about it.’ Nodding his head and inflating his punctured ego with the thought that he was important to Lafferty. ‘I could, uh, call him up, spin him some yarn about an emergency coming up or something. Tell him I wouldn’t be available for anything tonight.’

  At least he was trying. God bless him, he was giving it a shot. Trying to get a phone call so that he could drop some code word or something, help the boss out. I hated him a little less for confirming my assumption that he was a lying little shit.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘But I could help you,’ he told me. ‘And I wouldn’t say anything to him about you, Nate, I wouldn’t. Come on, I just gave you the key to his fucking house. Once you give away the key to a man’s house, you ain’t getting back in that house. I’m dead to Lafferty. You got to trust that I wouldn’t shaft you now.’

/>   ‘No,’ I said again. Same low tone, firm enough to make it clear that the talking stopped now.

  I looked away from that dickhead and round at Ronnie, still leaning on the sink. He looked relieved that only one punch had been thrown. There was still a softness there, and I would have to work it out of him. Time would do that for me, I figured. He’d learn.

  ‘Go call Conn. Tell them to come round here right away,’ I said.

  Couldn’t have Original out on the streets until we were done with Lafferty. That meant I needed good people to babysit him. Conn and Mikey were overqualified, and that was the sort of reassurance I wanted. There was nothing to gain from killing Original. Okay, it would make the world a slightly better place. Might even make me a little happier. But those weren’t good enough reasons.

  The kind of awkward silence you get when you’re hanging around with people you hate fell in the room while we waited for them to come. We couldn’t talk work in front of Original. Ronnie didn’t have the confidence to say anything. Conrad seemed determined to hang around in the shadows like fucking Batman.

  Conrad heard them first, opening the garage door and bringing their car in. Ronnie and Conrad stayed where they were; I went out to talk to them.

  ‘What’s the gig?’ Conn asked.

  ‘Staring at Original Carlisle for a few hours.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Mikey asked.

  ‘Seriously. Enjoy.’

  Original had been useful, but that usefulness had run out. We had one more visit to make before we went for Lafferty. Another useful but awful link to Lafferty.

  31

  He drove past the address a few times and didn’t see any sign of life there. It bugged him, nagged at him, that maybe Nate Colgan was playing him for a fool. Giving Fisher a fake address while Colgan went to the right place. The detective could have a squad of men surround this house while Colgan and his fellow thugs were at the actual safe house, killing off Barrett and his crew. Fisher had to be sure before he committed himself to it, to this act of corruption and hypocrisy.

  There had to be a way of identifying that this was the right place, but there was no outward sign. For hours he agonized about it, killed the morning that way. The address was, as Colgan had warned, in a spot where they could see along their own street and down an adjacent one. He parked at the top of the adjacent street for ten minutes. Just sat there and looked down at the front of the house, a white semidetached in the middle of a well-populated residential area. There were steps up to the front garden, raised up from the street. It wasn’t the sort of place he had seen professionals use as a safe house. Not nearly safe enough, he would have said. Too many people to see them coming and going.

  Unless the address was bullshit. Fisher was tearing himself apart thinking about it when the side door of the place opened and out walked a woman. He wasn’t close enough to pick out exact features but he didn’t need to be that close to know it was Zara Cope. She went out with a bag of rubbish and put it in the green bin that was pushed against the front of the house beside the path. She turned and went back into the house, closed the door. Just that one glimpse, those few seconds, told him that Nate Colgan had given the right address.

  ‘Right, I have a lead and I want a squad on top of it before it slips away,’ Fisher said loudly to anyone who was listening, when he got into the station.

  It was only after he said it that he stopped and looked around to see who was there, see who might be part of the squad he was assembling. DS Louise Forbes wasn’t there, which was a disappointment. She was the brightest of this bunch but she must not have been working. It was Sunday, well into late afternoon. It would be damn close to nine o’clock before they had everything set up and ready to go. That was enough to keep his promise to Colgan. A promise he didn’t feel deserved a lot of effort on his part.

  DC Davies was sitting at his desk, looking like the arse had just fallen out of his world. Fisher was enthusiastic and determined to drag people along on a big job and that scared Davies. Always did. The saddest part of his laziness and fear of the job was that he wasn’t a terrible cop. Not great, sure, but not terrible either. DC McGowan there as well. Another one as soft as jelly, easily pushed around but not often pushed into doing something useful. Didn’t matter – Fisher intended to provide the steel and leadership for this. What he needed more than anything was numbers, and he could get that with suspicion of Adrian Barrett’s location.

  The one question that was running rings around his mind was weapons. If people started to suspect that there might be guns there then they might suggest that there was a need for armed officers. Fisher didn’t want that. Didn’t think firearms officers would do anything other than escalate the situation with a man like Barrett, and didn’t want them taking away control. This was a score that owed its existence to the work of Nate Colgan, and Fisher did not want to have to explain that to anyone. He needed complete control. Actually, he needed people like Davies and McGowan who wouldn’t dare question him.

  It took as long as he had assumed it would to get everything he needed to sweep the front and back of the house. It was such a bloody awkward location. Had to be an accident; no way they had picked it because of how tricky it was for the police to get to. Those bastards must have run there in a hurry after their gunman was taken down. Once he was gone they would have moved. Fisher still believed it was Barrett who had had the gunman, Nasif, killed. He didn’t know why, but it was a fair guess that only his own side could set him up as cleanly as that. They killed him and then moved quickly before anyone could trace the killer back to them. It wasn’t a nice thing to admit, but he was a little bit glad that they had gotten rid of their own gunman: it made Fisher and the rest of the team he had assembled much less nervous about what they were walking into.

  He said nothing about guns to anyone and none of them had the guts to say it to him. But there was a chance Barrett and his crew were in there, armed to the teeth, ready to fire on any intruder. Fisher didn’t think so. Not with Nasif dead. He convinced himself there wouldn’t be a gun there. He had everyone lined up where he wanted them. One van at the bottom of the adjacent street, round the corner and just out of view. Another group were going to go in through the back of the house, but they had to get through the garden of the house that backed onto the safe house. Fortunately there were trees between the two gardens and they thought they could get close without being spotted. Fisher and his group were waiting until the ones going in the back were in position before they moved up to the front of the house.

  He looked at his watch; it was just after half past eight. They would be in before nine, but that was just too fucking bad. He could have done this in the morning, when it might have been safer. He could have done this any time he liked, but he had left it until damn close to the time Colgan wanted. That thug didn’t have the right to expect anything more than damn close.

  ‘There are lights visible at the back of the house,’ someone said over the radio. ‘Downstairs and up.’ There were no lights visible at the front of the house; they’d sent someone round the corner to check.

  ‘How close are you?’ Fisher asked them.

  ‘Nearly ready, sir.’

  It took another thirty seconds that felt like thirty minutes before they messaged through again to say that they were prepared to jump the fence and ready to go on his orders.

  ‘All right, everyone move, now,’ Fisher said.

  The van they were in screeched into life and round the corner, down the street to face the house. The doors slid open and the cops jumped out, running up the steps to the garden and up to the front door. They weren’t going to waste time knocking; these people were too dangerous for that. They had their own little can opener: the battering ram that just about took the door clean off its hinges with one swing from a bulky PC. Another example of how this wasn’t a good safe house. A good safe house has a sturdy door that takes a few bangs to knock down and buys you a few more seconds. Seconds can be a lifetime.

/>   They went in through the front. As they moved along the corridor Fisher saw someone disappearing upstairs. A male, thirties, jumping two steps at a time. He disappeared round the corner at the top of the stairs while uniformed officers poured into the downstairs rooms. There was shouting and bawling, two men pinned down on the floor in the living room. Officers shouting that rooms were clear, the downstairs secured in a twenty-second flurry of confusing sound and movement. They got to the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘There’s at least one up there,’ Fisher said to the officers, who started to go up ahead of him. ‘Who have we got?’ he shouted over his shoulder into the living room.

  ‘Two male, neither Barrett.’

  Shite, he was the one Fisher wanted, the head of the snake. Get Barrett and they could talk the rest of them down out of their tree. As long as Barrett was ensconced upstairs, whoever was with him would follow his lead. Cope, she had to be up there. She was in the house, he knew that, and she wasn’t one of the ones they’d secured downstairs.

  The officers went up the stairs; Fisher pushed up behind them, wanting to take the lead. He wanted to be seen to take the lead – that was most important to him. If there was danger up there then he wanted to be the one who faced it. And, yes, if there was glory up there then he wanted to be the one enveloped by that too. For better or worse, this was his investigation, his score, and he wanted the consequences to belong entirely to him, either way. One of the officers had a door open, a light on, shouting clear. There was still noise downstairs, someone shouting abuse at whoever was bundling him out the door and down to the police van. There was movement upstairs, and it took just a second for Fisher to isolate the sound coming from the bedroom along the short corridor. He pointed at it, led the officers toward it.

  A couple of steps and he could hear that they were moving furniture, loading it up against the door to stop the police getting in. A pathetic last-ditch attempt, he thought, but it was only penultimate ditch. They had the two downstairs, there had to be another four up here if his info was correct, and that meant anything they did now was temporary. Four people had no hope of getting out of there, but desperation could hide any inevitability when it was big enough.