Every Night I Dream of Hell

by Mackay, Malcolm

  We could kill him quickly, but that, as I just mentioned, was not the same as killing him well. We needed him dead and then we needed to get the body out of the house and out of Glasgow. Bury, burn, sink, whatever: it needed to disappear. With enough time we could gather up everything Lafferty would take if he was doing a runner and destroy that with the body. Give every impression that leaving was his decision.

  Round the corner and up the street, not passing anyone, no cars passing us. It was a quiet area; that was one of the reasons people paid good money to live here. That didn’t mean we hadn’t been spotted, didn’t mean we weren’t on the clock. We reached the approach to Lafferty’s house, a big place with a manicured front garden and a brick driveway. There was a double garage attached to the house, which looked like a new build to me. Last ten years anyway – a splurge of new money.

  Whoever had designed the garden was fond of trees and bushes; tall trees were all round the edge of the garden and up to the side of the house. Five-foot bushes ran up either side of the driveway. That was an easy route to get us close to the house, but the information Original had given us didn’t look the same in person as it had in his speech. I’d been here, seen the place before, but didn’t remember it well. The bushes ran up the sides of the driveway but they stopped before they reached the side of the house. There would be about eight or ten feet where we had nothing to hide behind. We moved in a shuffle, ducking and running up the edge of the driveway, tucked behind those bushes. We were on the grass, running down the side of the house, looking for lights. There had been none visible at the front. I was tired that night, mentally drained, but I was at least alert enough to spot that. We reached the corner and I ducked my head round.

  The back garden was as dark as the front. No lights in the garden. The security was bad. Even for a man who thought he was safe and didn’t want to alert his neighbours, this was pretty fucking dreadful. I didn’t stop to think about it. Should have, but couldn’t. We were in a hurry. I glanced up at the back of the building and then pulled my head back.

  ‘Two lights on upstairs, none down,’ I whispered to the other two.

  ‘His office is up there,’ Conrad whispered to me.

  I was puffing a little, which Ronnie wasn’t. We’d only run from the car. It was the sort of run the boy could make on his hands, but me and Conrad were panting after it, stopping at the corner to get our breath as much as to take stock. I had never thought of being older than him as a disadvantage until that moment. Experience comes with downsides.

  ‘Right, we have the key and we have the code for the alarm. Let’s get this done fast and get out,’ I said in a growling whisper.

  Ronnie nodded, Conrad probably did too. I had said it for the boy’s sake. Conrad, a gunman after all, didn’t need to hear that sort of basic instruction. I would be lying to myself to pretend that there wasn’t a thrill in what we were doing. Standing in a traitor’s back garden with a balaclava on, ready to break into the mansion under cover of darkness. It was a thrill I knew I would hate afterwards, something else to add to the mountain of regret and recrimination, to rob me of my sleep. But for that moment the thrill was perfect. I led the way round the back, and the other two followed.

  34

  We were silent and slow. Rushing would make noise and we were still trying to be stealthy. The path round the back was narrow, up against the wall. I could see a path leading up to a raised patio, another leading down the side of the garden towards a shed. The whole place was pristine. However much Lafferty was paying his gardener, it wasn’t enough.

  I’ll tell you just how tired I was at that point. As we crouched and waddled along the back wall of the house, I was thinking about how nice a garden like this would be for Becky. Somewhere she could play, have her friends over to play in. She was getting to the age where playing in the garden with her friends was babyish and uncool, but still, that’s what I was thinking. I was jealous of Lafferty’s kids, that they had something Becky lacked. It was unprofessional.

  The two behind were still letting me lead the way. Ronnie must have thought I had experience at this sort of thing, which I didn’t. Sneaking around, setting up a hit. This was gunman’s business. This was where Conrad should have been in charge. We were seconds away from me taking a backward step and pushing him into the lead. Out in the city, setting things up, organizing, intimidating, I was the senior man. Conrad didn’t question that. He let me get on with doing what he knew I was good at. But this was his territory; this was his life. I needed to step back and let him do it. All I could do was try to seem convincing, make sure I did nothing that drew a snort of derision from the gunman.

  That’s the thing about the job I do: it gives me no practice at stepping back. Same for all muscle with authority. Our job depends on the respect and fear we get from others. We’re the sort of people who feel that taking a single step back is a sign of weakness that we must never show. That made working with a man like Conrad on a job like this more difficult, like it wasn’t difficult enough already. It was that sense of needing to show control that had me up the front now, approaching the door of the sun lounge. Ronnie didn’t know any better, but I should have handed over the reins to Conrad by now. The superiority was naturally his.

  This wasn’t how I usually went about my business, Conrad either I would guess. Sneaking around mansions in the suburbs is not how you kill a man in this business, not unless you’re in a movie. This was, by every reasonable measurement, a one-man job, but obviously I had to be there. I was the security consultant; I was Currie’s eyes on the job. Fine, a two-man job then, but there was no justification for a third wheel. Ronnie was there because I wanted him to learn, because I felt more comfortable having an ally in tow.

  My gun, at this point, was tucked inside my coat. It felt heavy and uncomfortable. I had handled a gun before, but only a couple of times. Never fired one. Not once. Hoped I wouldn’t have to that night either. A gun doesn’t make you tough. There’s a saying I heard a few old hands in the industry use: the man with the gun isn’t scary, the gun is. Anyone can point a lump of metal at anyone else and pull a trigger. Child’s play. I wanted no part of the bastard things, but this was different. We could be outnumbered; Conrad might need backup.

  No lights came on as I stopped beside the door. They should have; an automatic light should have been shining on us all at that point. A basic security feature even his neighbours couldn’t have objected to. I reached into my pocket and took the key out. Bloody gloves were too small for me; I could feel them tight on my hands. They were always too small when someone else picked them for me. I have large hands, and people don’t think of these things. I slipped the key silently into the lock.

  Anything could have happened at that point – the key jamming because it didn’t fit, the alarm going off instantly, someone opening fire on us. It was a good point for a set-up to bite us on the arse. But nothing happened. The key slid into the lock, I turned it and slowly pushed the door open, stepping inside. The sun lounge had a couple of unused couches and a door through to the house proper. If this was locked I was going to have to break it. Turned the handle and the door kindly opened for me. The alarm panel was on the left-hand side, just inside the door. Two three six five. I tapped the code and the enter button. A flashing red light turned to stable green before any noise started screeching round the house.

  The three of us were inside. This was the worst part of any job to me, and that might sound like a stupid thing to say given that every part of the job was noxious. Creeping around in close proximity to a target is lousy. Stepping silently through a house to try and get the jump on someone, knowing that a single noise out of place could blow the whole job. I hated that. It was out of step for muscle, rare and awkward. As a big man I much preferred any job that let me walk right in, batter a man and walk back out again.

  We went through a large utility room and into the kitchen, a long room with an island and large windows looking out into the garden. We were
banking on Lafferty being alone in the house. If he was upstairs in his office alone then we were fine. He wouldn’t hear us from up there; this house was full of large rooms and you probably had to shout to be heard from one end of them to the other. But that was dependent on there being no clever bastard skulking about in the darkness downstairs, waiting for us.

  I led us out of the kitchen and into the hallway, a wide and long space with a staircase down near the front door. There were doors along the corridor, the sort of places just about anyone could have jumped out from and attacked us. We were all treading slowly on the polished wooden floors. A carpet that cushioned our footsteps would have helped. We moved silently to the bottom of the stairs. It was time to shuffle the order. I stopped, looked behind me for the other two. The plan was for Conrad to go first, but Ronnie didn’t realize that. He moved in front of me and started to step carefully up the stairs. I waited and let Conrad get into the middle and I went last. I didn’t think about it at the time; I just went up the stairs behind the other two, all of us as silent as the grave.

  Ronnie was moving too slowly up the stairs, too worried about making a small noise as he went. Understandable and acceptable in a small house, but this was not a small enough house for a footstep on the stairs to reach Lafferty’s office. But Conrad wasn’t going to nudge him, push him along a little faster; it would only have scared the kid. The one thing you want the awkward third wheel to be is predictable. He reached the top of the stairs and we were in the upstairs corridor.

  The light was on in the corridor, and the door to the large office was ajar. We were walking slowly on carpets thick enough to lose a cat in, approaching the door and hoping that he was going to be where we assumed he would be. It had been, basically, textbook so far. We had used the key and the alarm code; we had made it upstairs without any sign of anyone other than Lafferty being in the house. This was exactly what I wanted, exactly what any gunman would want on a job like this. This was reassuringly perfect.

  I was thinking about Conrad at that point. Strange. Should have been thinking about Lafferty. We go in there and we kill him. Then we need to remove him. A lot of work to do to get that done properly. Go through the house and find his personal belongings. Find his security systems and switch everything off before we bring a car up to the house. It would need to be done inside thirty minutes. That’s where my mind should have been. This one time, with the tiredness and the awkwardness of the job, it wasn’t. I was thinking about Russell Conrad, and what a dangerous little man he was.

  You can call me whatever you like. You can call me a bad person, a sociopath, a stain on society. Fine, I wouldn’t bother my arse arguing with you on any of those points, because they might all be true. What I never was, not from day one in the business, was stupid. I knew that Conrad, the man with the gun in his hand, the man with all the experience of pulling triggers, was the most dangerous person in that house. I was not the man that anyone should fear most. Ignore my reputation. Ignore the fact that I was big, angry and had a gun of my own. The man who knew how to pull the trigger was the man to fear.

  I’d slipped my gun out of my pocket at the top of the stairs, and I was assuming that Conrad had done the same thing with his. Russell Conrad with a gun in his hand, creeping through the shadows of another man’s house. That was the stuff of many a person’s nightmares. Ronnie had the sense to stop before he reached the door, glancing back. He paused, letting the gunman move in front of him. That was how it should have been from the start. You go to a shooting and you let the gunman go in first. Conrad stepped past him up to the door and paused for just a second, listening. Ronnie was right behind him; me another foot or so back, feeling the weight of the gun in my hand. There was movement in the room, sounded like someone shuffling something, pushing something across a desk maybe. Conrad turned back and nodded to me and Ronnie, the kid standing in between us. He blocked some of my view, but I looked down long enough to catch a glimpse of Conrad’s gun held loose and confident in his right hand.

  The gunman turned back to the door, still hearing someone moving conspicuously inside. Sounded to my ears like a man who wanted to be heard. That set off an alarm. Lafferty wasn’t experienced at set-ups; he was trying too hard. I was too late to notice. Conrad took a quick step and pushed open the door, entering the room with the gun half raised. Lafferty was opposite the door, on the far side of the long room, standing at the side of his large oak desk. He had a piece of paper in his hand and dropped it as he looked at the door. He and Conrad made eye contact just for a split second before Lafferty looked over the gunman’s shoulder at the two figures behind him. Conrad spun round, faced Ronnie, raised the gun and shot him in the forehead.

  35

  Shouldn’t have run upstairs. Should have put their hands up and let the coppers take them in. Didn’t think Dyne would react the way he did. He should have seen what the best way out of this was, but he didn’t. Now Elliott was stuck in the room with his best friend and his best friend’s girl. The woman who had gotten them into this.

  Barrett and Elliott were pushing the bed up against the door, trying to block themselves in. Zara was standing back by the window, looking nervous. Dyne looked like he was panicking as he pushed the bed, wide-eyed and sweating. This was the one thing he couldn’t stand, the thought of a long stretch. Better to be killed than this. The gun was lying on the bed in front of them. The gun Henson had brought back from the house Nasty had died in. The gun Nasty had died for. Elliott did as he was told, blocking the door, doing a poor job of hiding his reluctance.

  Barrett shouted out at the cops when they reached the door. ‘I’m armed; I have a girl in here.’ That, Zara and Elliott both knew, was a stupid thing to shout. He was making things worse when they needed to engage in some damage limitation.

  They had the bed against the door but that didn’t matter – that was only going to slow the police down if they chose to push their way in. The whole idea of resisting, of trying to get away, seemed stupid to Elliott. You don’t fight your way out of a corner this tight; you try and talk your way out. He backed away towards the window, towards Cope.

  Elliott Parker hated that girl. He had hated her from the first day because he knew Zara Cope was bad news, but now . . . Now he knew that she was the reason for all this. She had gotten the crew to come up here. She had told them there was a deal here where they could make good money and get out quick. Set up some third-rate loser, kill an easy target and then whatever thug the first guy’s boss sends to chase them, and get out. She had been full of shit from the start.

  Zara set up the deal and they had all gone along with it. His old mate Dyne had led them up there and Elliott had followed because their friendship ran far deeper than his hatred of Zara. Now Nasty was dead because of it. She wasn’t mourning. Wouldn’t get any tears out of her for the death of their friend. Nasty had been like a brother to Elliott and Barrett and he was dead because of Zara and her stupid fucking deal.

  If only he had been able to make Barrett see how stupid this was. Going up to Glasgow like a bunch of mercenaries, doing a job in a city they didn’t know for people they couldn’t possibly trust. It was always going to be a disaster, always. Common sense was blinded by money. Blinded by her reassuring words.

  Elliott was trying to piece things together. Trying to work out how much the police knew. Must have been when Jess got out that the cops found out about them. He had liked Jess. She looked about fourteen without her make-up. He could have kept her for ages, had a lot of fun with her. Would have been good for her too, he was convinced of that. She just didn’t understand. She didn’t know that Elliott was the one who stopped her from being killed by Nasty. She didn’t understand, so she ran. Ungrateful and stupid. Didn’t think she had it in her to go to the police. If she told them all she knew then the police knew a lot.

  That idiot Henson shouldn’t have let her get away. Neither should Cope. She was in the house with them when it happened; she should have been able to do something
about it. Maybe she did do something about it. Maybe she was the one who let the girl out. That thought had been floating through Elliott’s mind for a while now. Wouldn’t have surprised him if he was correct. He was never surprised to be right.

  Didn’t matter a damn at that point. This was over. Elliott knew it as soon as the cops came crashing through the front door. Knew it before then. Knew it when Nasty got killed. They should have been out of there then, but she persuaded him to stay. Her, again. Little Zara Cope, whispering bad ideas that sounded oh-so-good.

  ‘We need to hand ourselves over,’ Elliott whispered to Barrett. He figured the cops would still be outside the door in large numbers, trying to listen in.

  ‘No, we can get out of this,’ Barrett said. He knew that wasn’t true; you could see in his eyes that he knew. He just wanted to believe it so much.

  He blamed himself, that was why. Himself was a good place to start, Elliott thought, but she was as much to blame as he was. And, fuck it, they all went along with it, didn’t they? He didn’t put a gun to their heads to make them go up there with him. Elliott and Nasty could have stayed in Birmingham if they’d really wanted to. The money lured them north. The need to be a part of the group. The need to protect each other.

  ‘We can’t get out of this,’ Elliott said to him. ‘They got us surrounded. They ain’t going to let us out. Either they take us by force or we hand ourselves over. Looks worse if they have to use force. Come on, man, we have to give this up.’