‘Open up,’ Fisher shouted, trying the handle. There was no lock on the door but it didn’t budge even a fraction; they must have had someone with their boot against it.
‘I’m armed,’ someone shouted. ‘I’m armed and I have a girl in here.’
That was the moment Fisher’s heart just dropped. He had rolled the dice and bounced them right off the fucking table. Maybe it was the high of the Jamieson score, the last wash of adrenalin that success had given him, that had persuaded him to take the risk. It was unforgivable, taking officers into that house with a man who could have been armed. ‘Could have’ was enough to play cautious, but he hadn’t. Michael Fisher had rushed in, and now he was going to pay the price. Whether the bastard in the room was serious about using the gun or not, Fisher knew his argument that there was little reason to believe he would be armed wouldn’t wash. And if he shot Cope, what the hell would Colgan’s reaction be?
He pointed the officers back down the corridor, told them to go. But Fisher stayed. He was already in the shit; there was no point trying to wipe it off now. He stood outside the door, leaning against the wall in the corridor, listening to them. The people in the room were trying to move something heavy across the floor to further block the door. He listened to urgent whispers, mostly male and occasionally female. He picked out a few words, just a few. The female whispers were the ones that mattered. They were reassuring, calm, smart and the ones in command.
32
It said a lot about Lafferty that he insisted on hiring complete wankers. You can judge a person by the people he employs. We were driving to Mark Garvey’s house, a place I already knew too well.
‘You want to take the lead on this, being the customer?’ I asked Conrad. He was in the back seat, Ronnie in the passenger seat beside me.
‘Uh, maybe you should. If things are fragmenting, we might need you to persuade him,’ Conrad said. Sounded like an excuse to me. Wanted to make sure that I took the lead in everything so that anything that went wrong was my fault. Fair enough.
We weren’t looking for one gun. Not when we were walking into the unknown. The least we needed was one for our gunman, but I wanted a second. You walk into a house belonging to someone like Lafferty, with only the words of someone like Original to guide you, and you better bloody have cover. Conrad would take one gun, I would take the other. I wasn’t going to put one in Ronnie’s hand; he had too little experience to handle it. I hadn’t shot a man either, but that’s not the sort of experience I mean. The more pressure you’ve been under, the more you understand how to handle it. It’s not the ability to shoot someone that you learn; it’s the ability to stop yourself.
I led the way up to Garvey’s front door. Three of us, standing out on this little suburban street where people cloaked themselves in respectability. Rang the doorbell and waited. Hoping that no neighbours would spot us. A man like Garvey would have all sorts of visitors. The kind of people that the rest of the street would notice. Seemed like common sense to me that he should be moving house more often than he did. Maybe the fact that he didn’t was down to Mel and her ample charms. Wanting to keep her happy, give her stability. Or maybe not. Easy to blame the wife for your own mistakes, a luxury some of us didn’t have.
It was taking too long. I rang the doorbell a second time. That hurried him up, Garvey pulling open the door and looking at the three of us. He recognized me all right; I could see the hint of disgust that ran across his face before the trademark smile found its home. He recognized Conrad as well. A client. Looked a little puzzled when he saw Ronnie, but didn’t say anything about it.
‘Come in, lads, come in,’ he said, holding the door open for us.
I led the way, Conrad and Ronnie dropping in behind me. My turn to take the lead, remember.
‘Come through to the living room. No point in us all standing in the corridor.’ He dutifully led us into the living room, trying to keep it as casual as possible.
Mel was nowhere to be seen. Didn’t take long to find out where Garvey’s delightful wife had gone. Noise burst from upstairs, a TV with the volume a long way up. She wasn’t hard of hearing, so that was just petulant. Part of an argument, I figured. Mel trying to make Mark Garvey feel a bit stupid in front of us. He glanced up towards the ceiling, the smile falling off his face for just a second before he looked back at the rest of us.
The noise was still booming away upstairs. The TV only needed to be that loud if she was trying to listen to it from somewhere down the other end of the street. Told me something about the state of their marriage. When it got to the point that she was trying to embarrass him in front of people like us then you knew it was perched on the cliff edge. They were standing on the brink of divorce, looking down into the darkness and screaming loud. Maybe she hadn’t been playing games on his behalf the last time I was there. Maybe I was harsh. Still didn’t want to have sex with the woman, but I could have been more polite about it.
‘What can I do for you gentlemen?’ Garvey asked. Speaking with a little more volume than he would normally have needed.
The question pulled our attention away from the noise upstairs. Conrad hadn’t batted an eyelid, a man who had trained himself to ignore everything. Ronnie wasn’t that subtle. He had spent a good ten seconds staring at the ceiling, his gaze only broken by Garvey’s question.
‘Handguns, two,’ I said.
I shouldn’t have been the one who answered the question. This was Conrad’s territory, and no matter who was in charge of the job overall, the gunman should have been handling this. Garvey knew it too. He gave me a little look. The mouth was still smiling, but the truth was in the eyes. This meeting was uncomfortable. Garvey didn’t know that things were falling apart in the organization, and me taking the lead didn’t reassure him at all.
‘Two small pieces, of course. Anything else?’ he asked, looking at Conrad to make it clear that he thought the gunman was the one that should be answering the questions.
‘Nothing else, just the two,’ Conrad said quietly with a shrug.
Garvey nodded at that. The sort of jolly, smiling nod that was supposed to make everything seem just fine. But he’d asked Conrad because he didn’t trust my word.
‘Why don’t you guys take a seat and I’ll go have a look at what I’ve got for you. Can I get you anything?’ he asked, meaning tea or coffee.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Two handguns, quickly.’
He nodded, still smiling but managing to look miserable at the same time. He hated me. Whether it was because I was taking the lead on something I shouldn’t have been or because of the thing with his wife, I don’t know. But Mark Garvey hated me. He left the living room, went out into the corridor and upstairs to get us our guns.
Normally, the three of us would have been chatting to kill the time while we waited. This wasn’t normal. If it had just been me and Ronnie alone, we would have talked. There was something about Conrad that just sucked the life out of us. You couldn’t talk in front of him because it felt like he didn’t want to be part of a conversation. If me and Ronnie talked around him then it would be insulting. You couldn’t fucking win. But that wasn’t just Conrad, that was a lot of gunmen. You meet a few, Frank MacLeod was one, who are easy to talk to. Comfortable in their own skin. But most of them are guys who don’t like talking to you. Don’t want to get anywhere near people like me because they think people like me will end up getting them arrested. I can understand that. They have more to be nervous of than most.
The noise from upstairs lowered, someone turning down the volume on the TV. Ronnie raised an eyebrow. Seemed like Garvey was taking his time because he was having a loving conversation with dear wife Mel first. Telling her to stop embarrassing him, probably. Making her turn down the volume. We all stood where we were and listened, trying to pick out their voices. Couldn’t. Garvey was smart enough to keep his voice down, although I thought I heard Mel’s at one point.
Another minute passed and the volume went back up on the TV, louder
than it had been before. Ronnie scoffed. Conrad didn’t react. That would have been her reaction to Garvey leaving the room. Getting us our guns, I hoped, because he was taking more time than necessary. It was another minute and a half before Garvey came bounding down the stairs and back into the living room, padded envelope in each hand.
‘Right, lads, sorry about that. Had to make sure I picked out the best stuff for you,’ he said with his sad grin.
He passed one envelope to me and the other to Conrad. The gunman didn’t look in his, just held it at his side. I wasn’t interested in sticking to protocol so I opened the flap and looked inside. A small handgun.
‘Both loaded, full clip,’ Garvey said to us. ‘Both as clean as a whistle, never been used. You won’t get better than that, lads. Not a chance.’
I didn’t like the man. Didn’t like the fact that we were tying the organization to him either. But I would never sit here and pretend that he wasn’t good at what he did. There were very few places better to source a piece than Mark Garvey.
‘Right, let’s go,’ I said. I didn’t make any effort to thank him; didn’t seem like he deserved or wanted it.
I stood back and let the other two go out first. Ronnie led the way. Conrad gave a little nod of thanks to Garvey. He was the gunman; he was going to have to deal with Garvey again. Maybe he had dealt with him before. That was a thought that hadn’t occurred to me before that night. I had assumed Lafferty hiring Garvey was a way of placating Marty, bringing on board his mate. Perhaps he was Conrad’s mate as well.
That was the second time in a week that I’d left that house with a sense of relief. There was something deeply unpleasant about standing in the wreckage of other people’s lives. I was beginning to feel a little bit sorry for both of the Garveys and that was an ugly feeling too. We got down to the car and left.
I noticed Conrad checking his envelope now that we were out of Garvey’s view. Apparently a gunman didn’t check in front of his dealer. Might make the dealer think he wasn’t trusted. I don’t know, there are quirks to every part of the business. Always have been. If you don’t live in it, you’re not likely to understand them all.
Conrad, sitting in the back with the envelope in his lap, wasn’t going to say anything. Nor was Ronnie. He was sitting in the passenger seat, looking out of the window. I glanced at him. Was he ready for this? He’d been involved in violence before, but this was something different. You never knew how a person would react to it. Never. My old mentor Gully Fitzgerald used to say that some of the toughest people in the city weren’t tough enough for death. They could fight. They could put people in hospital. They couldn’t cross the line into killing.
‘You know Lafferty’s house, Russell?’ I asked over my shoulder.
‘Yeah, I been there once,’ he said.
‘We ready for this then?’ I said, hoping for some reassuring answers.
I got two mumbles of agreement. It would have to do. It was time to go and kill Angus Lafferty.
33
We were so close to death, it was no wonder they were nervous. Conrad I couldn’t tell you about with certainty; I didn’t know him well enough to judge whether he was truly nervous or not. Actually, he’d seemed a little nervous since the moment he saw me in his house. A gunman in this situation had a lot to be nervous about. Pick the wrong side and you’re dead. Pick the right side and screw up the job and you’re dead. I can’t claim I knew him well enough to judge him though. Outwardly he might have looked a little nervy; inside he was ready to do whatever it took to get the job done.
I’d met him before this but neither of us mentioned it. You don’t. You kill and dispose of a man like Potty Cruickshank and you keep that information to yourself. Our meeting back then was brief. Spent a few minutes together beforehand, both working on Marty Jones’s orders. We went into a derelict pub, Potty in there waiting for us. Pushed him through to a back room and Conrad shot him. Big fat fellow, was Potty, so removing him wasn’t easy, but you could get a van to the back of the pub without anyone seeing what it was doing. Good location, easy job. I tried to remember if Conrad had seemed nervous back then. Not that I had noticed.
Ronnie was obviously nervous. Little jerky movements and darting looks. He was wandering into uncharted territory. He would either lose his nerve completely on the job or the pressure would settle him down. I was banking on the latter. He had been under pressure before and handled it well. On at least one occasion he had been too relaxed, went and put himself into a hell of a lot of danger because of it. People got jumpy before a job. That didn’t mean they couldn’t handle it. Pressure’s a strange thing. Brings out the best in far more people than you might expect.
We had left Garvey’s house and gone to pick up another car. A safe, clean car. The number plate didn’t mean anything to the police. The car would be made safe after the job at a garage somewhere. We were going to switch drivers at my insistence. Give Ronnie something to do, something to focus all that energy on. One thing I learned early in my career was that there was nothing worse than being the third man in a two-man job. You’re there for insurance, there to give the impression of strength of numbers. That’s fine, but it’s no fucking fun. There’s nothing to do. You spend the whole time waiting for something to go wrong so that you’ll have a part to play. Ronnie needed to be kept involved.
‘The car we’ll use is in here,’ I told them, pulling into the forecourt of a large garage.
The guy who ran the garage was an acquaintance. There are some people in the business that I know only through my reputation. They do favours for me because they’re scared of what’ll happen to them if they don’t. Ross French was one of the few who didn’t fall into that category. It was just money with Ross. You couldn’t frighten him; he was one of those people stupid enough to think that not being a career criminal somehow protected him. But he always took the money, and he never asked questions. I wasn’t the only one who used his services. He had a few cars that were passed around criminals, repeatedly resprayed and retagged and sent out to do more dirty work.
We parked the car we’d been using so far and got into the new one, a car we would use only for this job on Lafferty. French had, at my request over the phone that morning, left three sets of thin surgical gloves and three balaclavas in the glovebox. We were going to wear them, no matter how safe we felt, in the knowledge that Lafferty had security cameras in and around his house. If Original was lying about security, underplaying it, or if we took a wrong step, we would be caught on camera, and we couldn’t guarantee that we would be able to wipe out all the footage afterwards. We thought we could, but thinking something and knowing it are two different things, and on a job like that we had to know.
It was silent in that car as Ronnie drove us up to Lafferty’s house. He seemed focused on that. Grateful, I think, to have something in the present to think about. Took his mind off the near future. There was so much about that boy that reminded me of myself when I was starting out. He didn’t have my instinctive toughness, sure, but he was a fast learner and a good judge.
Lafferty was a legit businessman, most of the time. He had a lot of businesses that did a damn good job of covering up his criminality. That meant that he didn’t have to hide his money. Everything had a ready explanation, including the mansion. It was in Milngavie of course, on a street we knew wasn’t going to be easy to get in and out of unseen. For a start there was nowhere nearby that we could park, because the road up to the house was single-track. All the houses on the street had their own driveways; there wasn’t one car parked out on the street itself. These weren’t people who usually needed to park on the street when they had double garages and wide driveways for their fleet.
‘We can’t risk bumming an empty driveway,’ I said. ‘If the owners come back with the car there they’ll report it. Get round the corner; see what’s there.’
Nothing much better. Another street with money and more driveways. There were at least a couple of cars parked up at the side
of this road, leaving just enough room to pass. Must have been grubby visitors. I was keeping my eyes open, looking for somewhere suitable. I wasn’t complaining though because this wasn’t a surprise to me, wouldn’t have been to Conrad either if he’d been here before. I’d visited Lafferty’s house once before and I knew what the approach was like. There was never a great chance that we’d get to park close.
‘We’re getting too far away,’ I said quietly. ‘Just park over there.’ There was a passing place we could risk stopping in. If we were quick, we would get away with it. ‘We’ll have to risk walking back up.’
‘Better have our balaclavas on from the start,’ Conrad said from the back seat. ‘Good chance a lot of these houses have cameras pointing out to the street.’
Ronnie parked the car carefully, making sure there was enough room for any car or van to pass us. Last thing we needed was someone getting our car towed while we were in there. Come out and find it gone. Everything had to be careful from this point on. Precise, that’s a better word for it. Timing was vitally important, communication, all the little things that would add up to make a job well done. And it had to be well done. It wasn’t enough to go in there and kill Lafferty. Anyone could do that. Killing a man is a challenge that any old halfwit could meet. Doing it well was the difficulty. Doing it well meant walking away without anyone ever knowing that we’d done it.
We pulled our balaclavas over our faces and stepped out of the car. Three men walking along a wealthy street looking like the guiltiest people you ever saw. We must have been quite a sight. You wouldn’t have been able to identify us, but it was a better world for everyone if you didn’t see us at all. There was urgency now. If anyone did see us they would report us and as soon as we were reported the police would be swarming the area. This now had to be a very quick job, and that wasn’t really what I had in mind.
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