Every Night I Dream of Hell

by Mackay, Malcolm

  ‘You don’t understand what they’ve done to you,’ he said to me. Said it quietly, and I was surprised at how calm and steady his voice was.

  I kept my dead face. No expression in my eyes that would give away what I was thinking. I raised the gun. His expression didn’t change either; he seemed determined to take his exit with the same carefully constructed dignity with which he had lived his life. Always saw himself as a step above the rest of us. Always saw himself as legitimate. When he had tried to move away from that, this is where he ended up. Trying to conjure what little grace was left to a man on the wrong end of a gun. He was well dressed; in the mansion his efforts had bought him; his family were as safe as they could be and would inherit well from his legitimate businesses.

  I shot him in the head. He fell back beside the desk. The first man I’d ever murdered. This one I couldn’t explain away as self-defence; this one was murder. I had walked up to a man posing me no further threat, raised a gun and shot him in the head. I was a murderer. A cold-blooded killer. I had crossed the line. They say that once you cross it, you can never go back. Once you become a gunman, you stay a gunman. Not because you want to, but because your employers make you. A good gunman is hard to come by and they don’t let people walk away. Wasn’t going to work out that way for me; I had the power to make sure it didn’t. I would find another gunman for the organization, and I would go back to hating myself for the one time I murdered a man.

  There was a lot I would have to do. A clean-up that would be far bigger than expected. Should have been Conrad doing the killing and me and Ronnie doing the clean-up. Now I was alone in the house, looking at three bodies, thinking about getting Lafferty’s belongings. We had considered a burial, but that would have to change now. Three bodies meant burning them: find a furnace somewhere, properly get rid. Couldn’t do it alone. This was a four- or five-man job now.

  I would have to use Lafferty’s house phone to call Conn. Him and Mikey could come round, bring some help with them. It would take too long, there was a good chance of being spotted and the aftermath was going to be near impossible to explain. There would have to be repercussions for Mark Garvey and Original Carlisle. People who had backed Lafferty, like Stuart Crockley, would be out of the business. More changes coming and I would be at the centre of it. I needed to move fast, but I didn’t. I stood in that office and I breathed out slowly. I was Nate Colgan, murderer.

  37

  The clean-up, in the end, was easy. Conn and Mikey brought along a kid called BB and the four of us moved fast. Got the three bodies into a van they’d brought, got a good bundle of Lafferty’s belongings to go with them. Two bags of clothes, financial documents, credit cards, driver’s licence, passport. We managed to find his security room, deleted footage going back a few days to try and make it seem as though the security had failed long before we got to it. It was by no means perfect, but it was a good start.

  ‘What about Original?’ I asked Conn as we locked up the house.

  ‘Let him go. It’s finished, isn’t it? Figured it was fine to let him go.’

  The uncomfortable shrug he gave me said as much as the words. I sat in their van, went with them to the industrial park to get rid of everything. They dropped me a few streets from my house and continued on their way to clean out the van. I walked back to the house, went inside and took off every item of clothing I was wearing. Should have been incinerated, but nobody had brought spares for me. I would do it myself.

  A change of clothes did nothing for my mood. There was so much wrong with it all. I could sense the errors as they floated around my mind, the little clues that told me I had been part of a very different act to the one advertised. People were performing parts, and I hadn’t quite worked out who was playing who. Too tired.

  Not too tired to think about Ronnie though. That likeable, harmless young man that I had seen at the hotel. Pushed him to come work for me, because I got it into my head that I needed someone to work with me. Convinced myself that I would be a mentor, he would be my little protégé and I would transform him into the person I wanted him to be. It was arrogant and childish. It got him killed.

  Every time I thought of Ronnie, I thought of his girlfriend. Esther Mayberry, her name was. A young woman I had met only very briefly, but had heard an endless amount about. Ronnie had loved to talk about her. Loved to brag about her as subtly as he possibly could. How pretty she was, how smart she was, how funny she was. She would be sitting in their flat right now, waiting for him to come home. She wouldn’t be nervous yet. He would have told her he was going to be late so she would still be confident that he’d come home. I couldn’t get the picture of her out of my mind. I could hardly remember what she looked like, but in my mind there was a pretty young woman sitting in a flat, watching the clock tick and beginning to wonder.

  She was innocent. One of the genuinely innocent people whose life had been scarred by me. There were plenty who called themselves innocent but weren’t. Plenty who knew the risks they were taking. But this girl . . . she started dating Ronnie when they were practically kids, and they were going to spend their lives together. Now she was sitting in their flat, the fear starting to creep up on her.

  I pulled on a coat and got into my car. Drove straight round to their flat and parked down the street. My professionalism was screaming at me, telling me to turn around and go home. Just because she deserved to know, didn’t mean she needed to. She would find out eventually, or work it out. Someone could tell her, someone from the organization. Make sure she didn’t make a noise going to the police about it. But it didn’t need to be now and it didn’t need to be me.

  None of that mattered. I couldn’t stop myself. I owed this much to Ronnie, if not to the girl. Esther I didn’t know. I’d nodded to her once when I was round at their flat after Ronnie got beaten up on a job. Ronnie was my responsibility. I pulled him into the business; he was learning from me. Whatever decomposing shred of decency I had left told me that I had to go up to that flat and tell that girl that Ronnie wasn’t coming home. It was one of those very rare occasions where that shred won.

  Don’t know how long I stood outside the front door of the flat. A few minutes, probably, long enough to look very suspicious if anyone saw me. A big guy, standing outside the door, arm resting on the wall while I tried to pluck up the courage to knock. Courage. That’s a laugh. I never feared a job. Every scumbag I beat up, everyone I pushed toward destruction, not one of them scared me. That was work and work was what I did. This? I don’t know what this was. Guilt, I suppose, and that scared me. Hadn’t felt it before.

  I knocked on the door and waited. It was dark out there, after eleven o’clock I think. Maybe she was getting ready for bed, just starting to worry about Ronnie. Took her a while to get to the door. When she did, she opened it an inch and peeked out at me. She gave me the look most people do when they see me on their doorstep. The look of a person intimidated by my size and my expression. She was smaller than I remembered, a short, thin little thing with dark eyes and dark hair tied back. She looked younger than Ronnie, and he was just a kid to me. She had a decent office job somewhere, according to Ronnie. A smart girl.

  ‘Esther?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I come in? I have to talk to you about Ronnie.’

  Esther was already trying not to cry. I didn’t need to talk to her about Ronnie; she had instantly guessed correctly about Ronnie. She opened the door wider and stepped back. I walked in and closed the door. We stood in the corridor. She hadn’t moved an inch, standing there with her arms folded, looking up at me. She didn’t want me any further inside the flat and I didn’t much want to go any further. Didn’t want to see the reminders of Ronnie’s happy life before I got involved in it.

  ‘I work with Ronnie. I don’t know if you remember me, I was here before.’

  She nodded slightly. ‘I remember you.’ Said in the sort of tone that made it clear she’d like to forget.

  I nodded to that, accepting
that she had every right to speak that way. Ronnie was weak and I had pulled him into the industry. She hated me for it, for exploiting him. Something we could agree on. I tried to keep my expression as steady as possible, but I knew my guilt was horribly visible.

  ‘Ronnie isn’t coming home,’ I said to her. My tone was sad; there was no way she wouldn’t know what I meant.

  Esther started to shake, trying to wrap her arms more tightly around her to stop the shaking. When I spoke again I don’t think she heard me, don’t think she paid any attention to it. She was off in a world of her own in which there was only room for her and her grief.

  ‘Obviously I’ll do all that I can to help you at this time,’ I said, speaking low, my voice turning into a growl. ‘Ronnie was very important to us, and we’ll do anything we can to help you.’ I was rambling. I didn’t know what to say to her, and I don’t think it mattered. She didn’t hear any of what was said. She was just staring straight ahead.

  ‘Please leave,’ she said. It was a whisper with a sob in the middle of it, but I understood her.

  I turned and left the moment she told me to. I wasn’t going to hang around, traumatizing her further. I made my way back downstairs and to the car. Drove home, feeling things I didn’t often feel. I had lost people before. I had seen people that I could describe as friends being cut down by the industry. Sad as it was, it left little mark on me. That might be callous, but the business relies on men as grim and unpleasant as me. Ronnie was not a grim or unpleasant man.

  This wasn’t over. God, that sounds clichéd. Sounds like I was sitting there, hell-bent on getting revenge for my fallen friend. I wasn’t. Revenge isn’t something you go after in this business. You’d never get anything else done. Wouldn’t live very long either. But there were a few more things that needed to be sorted out before I could move along with my life.

  There was something I could do for Ronnie. Or for Esther, which amounted to the same thing now. He would want her to be safe and financially secure; he would want his friends to be looked after at a time when they were under pressure. I would have one last meeting with Zara. Make sure she was leaving for good; make sure she understood not to come back.

  When all of that was sorted in the back of my mind, I was able to push forward my other doubts. Looking back at the whole situation, from my employment by Kevin Currie onwards, was like looking at a picture slightly out of focus. I could see the people, I could see the places, but the details were all smudged. It felt deliberate. It felt like the things that didn’t make sense were supposed to be confusing to me. It felt like I’d been lied to. Follow the money. That’s what they always say. You want to work out who’s behind something, you sit down at the end of it all and you follow the money. Whoever’s benefited most is the person you’re looking for.

  38

  I slept that night. It was broken, sure, but it was more sleep than I’d gotten for days. Maybe I’d foolishly persuaded myself that I’d hit rock bottom, that I couldn’t possibly do anything worse. Maybe I had just reached the point where I was so tired that sleep couldn’t be avoided. Whatever the reason, I woke up the following morning feeling as refreshed as I had in days. It cleared my mind.

  I got a phone call a little before eight o’clock. I had only just gotten out of the shower at that point, much later than usual.

  ‘She’ll be out at nine o’clock.’ That was all Fisher could bring himself to say before he hung up.

  So Zara would be my start to the day. Better to get her out of the way early. Have whatever information she could give me before I confronted the bigger beast. Fisher would go easy on her. Whatever he was, he was trustworthy. About the only person in my life at that point that I could say that about. The poor bastard probably wouldn’t even interview her, let someone softer do that. If he was following her around as she suspected then he had to hate her. Hate was about the only thing that would motivate a man like Fisher to traipse around the city after a girl like Zara. Now he had to let her walk away.

  Because the call was so short, I had no idea who else he had arrested. Word hadn’t reached me yet, but people in the business would know. If he got Zara then he must have gotten Barrett. That part of the plan had worked then. Barrett would be looking at years, the rest of his crew as well if Fisher had gotten them.

  I managed to get parked just along the street from the sterile-looking police station, and waited. It was bang on nine o’clock when the front door opened and she emerged. She was a little dishevelled after her night in the cells, but she always looked good dishevelled. A man was holding the door open for her, talking to her. Fisher. Neither of them looked impressed with the conversation; neither of them saw me.

  Zara moved away from Fisher onto the street and started walking. She had the look of a woman with somewhere to go. Looking for a taxi, eager to put some distance between her and the police station. Eager to get somewhere valuable, I figured. Even then I thought about leaving, letting her get on with whatever she was doing. But she was the one I had to confront, for the sake of my own peace of mind. Fuck’s sake, even then I could hardly face her.

  She walked past the sandwich shop on the corner and disappeared out of view. I started the car and drove after her. She was walking briskly along the street, scrolling through her phone. I pulled up on the road beside her, lowering the passenger-side window.

  ‘Get in,’ I said, because I couldn’t think of anything smarter or friendlier.

  Zara stopped and looked at the car. Looked like she was thinking of refusing and then thought better of it. Refusal was an option, but it was a hell of a long way down the list. She opened the door and dropped in. I pulled away so that I wouldn’t block the traffic, but I had no idea where I was going. I started with the chit-chat.

  ‘Fisher play soft with you?’

  She shrugged. ‘Fisher didn’t play with me at all. He arrested me, but it was another cop that interviewed me. Got a night in the cells, then a gentle pawing from DC Davies. You heard of DC Davies? Chubby little guy.’

  I hadn’t.

  ‘Soft as a good pillow,’ she went on. ‘Asked me some questions I could have asked myself, they were that obvious. Asked me about Dyne, about his crew.’

  ‘Dyne?’

  ‘Adrian’s nickname. I told him I didn’t know anything about why they were up here. Told him I was scared of what they were doing. He believed me. Sympathized with me by the time I was done with him.’ There was a smile in her voice by the end that I didn’t like. Her plan had been a stupid one, and if it hadn’t been for my deal with Fisher she would be looking at years inside.

  ‘What did he ask you, exactly?’

  ‘Nothing about your lot. Didn’t mention them. Asked about Adrian’s crew and I gave them names and basic information. Asked about what I knew, I told them nothing. Asked about the stand-off at the house.’

  ‘Stand-off?’

  ‘Adrian, Elliott and me blocked ourselves in a room. Adrian’s idea. We had to go along with it. He had a gun. I tried to play it down, make it seem like a misunderstanding. Police kicking in the front door and screaming at us, we didn’t know who they were, Nasty had been murdered. Told him we panicked, that Adrian was trying to protect me, that sort of thing. Help Adrian out a little; least I can do.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Fisher was talking to you at the door.’

  ‘He was. Walked me out, gave me a little lecture about bad things happening to the men in my life. Do you think bad things happen to all the men in my life, Nate?’

  She was getting playful. ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘I had prepared myself for some tough questions, but nope, nothing. Told me that it would be in my best interests to leave the city,’ she said with a sigh. Didn’t like that I wasn’t playing along. ‘Made it clear that if I stuck around he’d be watching out for me, waiting for an excuse to arrest me.’

  That sounded about right. Also sounded like nothing she’d be concerned about. She had no intention of sticking around; even Fisher ha
d to realize that. There were so many more dangerous people that he could have gone chasing after, people doing far more damage. What was his obsession with Zara? There was something about her that he couldn’t get out of his head and I don’t think it was the fact that she was a pretty, though deteriorating, young woman. Zara represented something that he couldn’t stop hating, couldn’t stop thinking about. She was the kind of person that turned others into the criminals he hated so much. He saw her as the creator of the kind of evil he spent his life chasing down. Which led me on to the next awkward moment of conversation.

  ‘Where’s the money?’ I asked her.

  She paused, trying to think of a clever answer. Maybe some reference to the money she’d taken out of the bank account I had created for her.

  ‘What money?’ was the best she could come up with after a six-second pause, which was disappointing. Expected better of Zara.

  ‘That crew came up here working a job. They didn’t do it on a promise. They were paid half up front, right? Half up, half after. I’ll take a guess that they were offered a good amount as well to come all the way up here and provoke a war, start something that would bring down a whole organization. What was it, six figures?’

  The glance she gave me said I was close enough to the truth for her to assume that I already knew everything. I was guessing, but we’ll call it an educated guess because a man of my experience knows how these things work.

  ‘So?’ she asked. Going down the petulant route, another disappointment.

  ‘So Barrett and his mates are looking at a long time inside. Double-digit years, I’d guess, depending how much of the Christie killing they can pin on them. They were paid half up front. That’s where you’re going right now, isn’t it? Going to get the money so you can disappear out of the city.’