Shores of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  ‘There was no sign of them on Tyneside or Amble, but I guess you already know what happened in Eyemouth. What you don’t know is that I’d worked out the problem as soon as the cavalry arrived there. The cargo was dumped at sea . . . and I mean all of it. My men on the boat were detained but did their job and kept quiet. They were released this afternoon. I’ve spoken to them and they’ve reassured me that everything that might have been evidence is now at the bottom of the North Sea. What all this means, my friends, if you hadn’t worked it out already, is that the problem is in Edinburgh.’

  All eyes locked onto the Flemings, and Brenda McMartin snorted something like a laugh. ‘Fuckin’ Edinburgh wankers. What did I say, Bobby?’

  Her brother wasn’t impressed. ‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll slap that ugly puss.’

  His sister was equally unimpressed. ‘You an’ whose fuckin’ army?’

  For a moment there was a rare flash of impatience on Handyside’s face. He put his hand up and two of his men stepped forward in case the Glasgow headcases kicked off. The McMartins shut it for another time.

  Eddie hadn’t moved a muscle and he wondered when one of Handyside’s team was going to pull out a big fat fucking shooter and empty it into him and his brother. He couldn’t contain the nervous tension and needed a release, as the pulse in his neck felt like it was about to erupt. What Handyside had just told them was that young women had been tossed into the sea along with the cocaine. If anyone needed further evidence about Handyside’s metal, he’d just given them all a perfect demonstration.

  ‘Look, Pete. There’s obviously something far fuckin’ wrong, but it’s not Pat or me, I can tell you that. It looks bad and that the problem’s our end, but we’ll find the bastard – that’s a promise.’

  Handyside didn’t answer and shifted his gaze to Pat, who didn’t need words to get the question. Eddie winced, knowing his brother lacked any form of diplomatic skill, and if ever it was needed, it was in this room and at this moment.

  ‘Don’t look at me, pal.’ Pat was close to losing it. He could never walk away from a confrontation even when he had no chance of a result. ‘I’ll ignore that ugly bitch and let her keep her other eye, but we have fuck all to do with grassing to the law. Fuck that. Anyone says different better be able to back it up!’

  Pat was threatening the wolf in his den and Eddie put his hand on his brother’s arm, squeezed gently and took control before it was all too late. ‘Where are we going with this, Pete? Let’s stop fucking around and cards on the table.’

  Handyside was completely unruffled and carried on as if there had been no insult. ‘In a way this is simple. We all agreed that we’d keep the information about these shipments tight, and it was need-to-know only. If you didn’t speak to the police, someone else did. So who else knew?’ He sat back, sipped his water and waited.

  Eddie’s mind was racing; he knew their lives might depend on the answers he came up with. There was no way they could fight their way out of the room, but something stank in their team and he had to come up with a body to hang.

  ‘It was tight; it was Pat, me and Tommy Walker, the guy who drove us here, that went down to pick up the gear. We were late and the place was swarming with uniforms when we got to Eyemouth so we fucked off.’

  He knew as soon as he said it where the problem lay, and so did his brother. They had told no one about the Eyemouth shipment or anything else. Rip-offs and rats were common, and they ran a tight ship, but they talked in front of Tommy Walker. They always talked in front of him. He was their Baldrick and they tended to forget he was there when they discussed business. He’d always come across as a sound guy. They looked at each other and then to Handyside.

  ‘Tommy is the only other person who knew apart from us.’

  Handyside closed his eyes for a moment. He ran the moves through his head before he spoke again. ‘So at least we know it’s one of three people and you say it’s not you. Let’s bring Tommy in and see what he has to say. How long have you known him?’

  Eddie knew what he was about to say showed they’d fucked up, but there was no way out. ‘He’s been with us for about a year and was introduced by Ricky Swan, the sauna owner in Edinburgh. I’ve told you about him – he takes a lot of the girls off our hands.’ He lowered his eyes to the table. They’d taken their eye off the ball and he knew it. How many times had his old man told him to trust no one unless he knew everything about them – and particularly their weaknesses?

  ‘You’ve only known him a year and he came in through an introduction? Poor judgement, my young friend. There isn’t a man on my team I haven’t known for years, and I know everything about them.’ Handyside blinked twice. ‘We are where we are, but, depending on what this man is going to tell us, you might need to look closely at this sauna owner.’ He nodded towards two of his gorillas standing at the back of the room. ‘Bring Tommy in.’

  Brenda was loving it – the scent of blood quickened her pulse. Walker was pushed into the room, his eyes wide with fear of the unknown. He looked to the Flemings for support, but both of them were eyes down on the table, which made him realise he was in serious trouble – and had good reason to be.

  The name Tommy Walker was part of his ‘legend’, as it was known in the undercover trade. His real name was Rob ‘Dixie’ Deans and he was a Police Service of Northern Ireland officer with nearly fifteen years in the job. He’d worked undercover for years and was regarded as one of the best in the business. There had been doubts about deploying him into an organisation made up of some of the most violent men and women in the country, but he did it without complaint. The analysts believed that the only part of the criminal association that could be infiltrated was Edinburgh, and they had a CHIS who was willing to make the introduction: a fully qualified slimeball who had taken human form as a sauna manager and knew everyone and their dirty little secrets from the service he provided. He’d worked with the Flemings for years and at one time partnered their old man in running a Leith knocking shop.

  Dixie Deans was made to strip then pushed into a wooden seat at the back of the room. Handyside took a long drink of water before rising from his seat. His boys secured Deans to the chair and the audience could see that it was fixed securely to the floor. They could also see in the dim shadows at the back of the room that the floor had been carefully covered with plastic sheeting and then fixed down securely below the chair. The terrified man had already realised what it meant. He could try to survive the pain that was coming his way, but he’d heard stories about the people in this room and what they were capable of. All he could do was try to convince them he was kosher; and if his strength failed just get it over as quickly as possible.

  Deans had been worried for weeks that the police team working on Handyside’s organisation weren’t moving fast enough to take them out. They’d already seized two consignments carried by numpty couriers and he’d seen it all before: they were gathering a nice set of figures in recovered drugs and prevaricating on making a move on the organisation itself. It was the old bullshit story that they still didn’t have enough evidence to get the men at the top, while his arse was at risk every minute of every day. He squeezed his eyes shut as his mouth was taped and he struggled to breathe through his nose, which was congested with the after-effects of a bug.

  Handyside looked long and hard at the man tied to the chair and saw something in his eyes that told him they had their man. He was the rat, no question about it, but there was something else. He’d gone almost unnoticed by his employers, and Handyside himself had seen him several times, but it was as if he was camouflaged – present but almost invisible. That reeked in his nose, and the fact that he’d been introduced by a third party might mean the worst of all worlds: an undercover cop. If that was the case, there were all sorts of possibilities he had to weigh up. The first priority was to find out if there was any surveillance outside.

  Hunter and Dillon came into the room. They looked at the man strapped to the chair and didn’t reac
t, apart from Dillon smiling when he realised what was going to happen. They’d both seen other men suffer in this room, it was part of the job, but today was a bit special and they knew Handyside would handle this one himself. They spoke quietly to him, telling him that they’d checked the area and there was no sign of a surveillance team. Dillon knew exactly how it worked and they had enough bent law in the local stations to let them know if there was something going on.

  Handyside pulled up a chair in front of Deans and looked at him as if he was concerned about his health. What the enthralled audience never understood was that Handyside got no pleasure from hurting another human being. There was only the cold reality that if action had to be taken then it needed to be decisive, clear and place a gnawing doubt in the minds of anyone who might want to take him on or betray him.

  ‘Try and relax, Tommy. This is going to be hard but we need to do this together.’ His words were almost gentle and Deans was mesmerised by the man sitting opposite him. There wasn’t the least hint of anger or crude bloodlust in Handyside’s expression, and in another situation his eyes might have been described as sad.

  ‘You’re going to tell me who you talked to and why. You might think you can hold out, but the man that can keep his mouth shut at the same time he’s suffering intense pain is rare. And I confess I haven’t met one.’

  Deans was a drowning man as he tried to drag air through his choked nasal passages, his lungs heaving with the effort of staying alive. His nose bubbled, spurting snot like a child, and fat tears mixed with the sweat covering his face.

  Handyside got to his feet and took up a position behind Deans, who almost broke his neck trying to keep him in view as fear squeezed his heart in the blind panic of what was coming next. If he could have kept his eyes on him, he would have lost control of his bladder two minutes earlier than when it actually happened. His inquisitor had removed his silk tie carefully, folded it, then slowly unbuttoned his shirt as if he was alone in front of his bedroom mirror and lost in mundane thoughts. Handyside always looked as if he was verging on underweight, but revealing his upper torso showed a man whose physique had all the definition of a body builder with none of the uninhibited vanity. He might not have had the bulk normally characterised in his profession, but his musculature looked like something carved from white marble.

  He moved round to face Deans, who made a low moaning sound in his throat just before Handyside ripped the tape from his mouth. Deans gagged noisily; his mouth had stopped producing saliva, and his eyes pleaded hopelessly with Handyside, who ignored the tortured policeman whispering the word ‘Please God’ over and over again.

  ‘God isn’t in this room, my friend.’ Handyside said it quietly and watched Deans’ eyes drop down to the mash hammer hanging from his right hand.

  Eddie Fleming felt like some rancid voyeur at a grubby peep show. It seemed unreal, almost theatrical, but the expression on Deans’ face was reality itself. For a moment he pitied the man who’d made him look like some fuckin’ amateur in front of these men and the Paisley Bitch. But it passed quickly as the horror show moved on. He felt soiled by the whole thing, and although he wanted to drag his eyes away from it, he knew that would register with the other predators in the room; he couldn’t show them another sign of weakness and survive.

  What he also realised in that moment was that he wasn’t fully equipped to operate in this league. Ever since his old man had been taken out by the psychos from Belfast he’d been forced into dealing with the top men, and well before he was ready. Mistakes were written off as inexperience, but he’d always been sure he could learn on the job. He was as hard as they came, much smarter than the average villain and from good criminal stock. What had just slammed him in the ribs was the understanding that hard wasn’t enough on its own. He’d seen it in the late Magic McGinty, his father’s main supplier, who’d paid the ultimate price as a gangster, and he saw it now in Handyside, and it was a quality that Eddie knew he lacked. Handyside had one overwhelming drive, which was an absolute determination to enforce his will on other people. There was no management by committee or democracy in his world. Eddie remembered Handyside’s words the first time they’d been introduced: ‘The only laws in our world, my friend, are the ones we break every day.’

  Killing was just another tool to be used when and where it was needed. They did what had to be done then tramped over the bodies towards the next challenger for the title. The thought that jumped into Eddie’s brain then was that if he and Pat were going to survive, they needed to bring in someone who had the appropriate minerals, and there weren’t many about. But one name did come to mind and that was Billy Drew: ex-soldier, armed robber and all-round murdering bastard. He had the X factor, and if they survived the night Eddie was going to make him a gold-plated offer.

  His attention snapped back to the actors in front of him as Handyside suddenly stared ahead, and every person in the room apart from Deans thought he was looking directly at them. Then he turned back to gaze down at the man strapped to the seat.

  ‘I’m going to start with your feet. There’s endless ways to cause a man pain and sometimes it seems like a contest in depravity in our game. I find the old ways are best. If you can bear it then I’ll move to your hands. This will happen and the only person who can stop it is you.’ He dropped down on one knee and looked back at Deans, who couldn’t drag his eyes from the hammer and the ropes of tight muscle running the length of Handyside’s arm.

  ‘I haven’t talked to anyone. Please believe me.’

  The audience could barely hear what he said, but they didn’t need to as Handyside nodded to Hunter, who taped up Deans’ mouth again. He didn’t hesitate for a moment, swinging the hammer through a wide arc and making an anatomically perfect strike against the metatarsophalangeal joint connecting Deans’ big toe to the main part of his right foot. The policeman looked like an electric charge had surged the length of his body as he strained at the leather straps that bound him to the chair. The pain was liquid white heat driving up through his nerves to his brain as bone and flesh were pulped. The veins in his neck ballooned up like they would explode. Handyside didn’t wait for effect, and if anything applied even more force, shattering the big toe on Deans’ left foot. He stood up calmly and signalled for his iced water. He sipped it slowly as he watched Deans suffer.

  Eddie wanted to be somewhere else. He couldn’t stop imagining himself strapped to the chair like some Elizabethan heretic who would suffer whether he told the truth or not. He prayed silently that Handyside got his confession from the man in the chair, because he and his brother were fucked if that didn’t happen. He pulled out a cigarette and wondered if the tremor in his hand would show when he lit it. He stuck it between his lips and was startled when a flame appeared from the margin of his view. Brenda was holding the light to his cigarette and grinning like Jack Nicholson in the door scene from The Shining. He nodded his thanks, wondering if any man had ever been attracted to her then deciding that they would have to have been both blind and insane.

  Brenda settled back in her chair and opened a second packet of cheese and onion crisps as if she was just watching the latest edition of EastEnders.

  Handyside asked the same question again and was impressed when Deans managed to gasp out the same answer. As if with great reluctance, he raised the hammer again . . . and Deans’ resistance broke. He told Handyside everything, though it came out slowly as he tried to speak and manage his agony at the same time.

  Eddie cursed and blessed the bastard at the same time. He’d been made to look like a total fuckwit, but he was off the hook as a grass and he knew the sauna owner had to be working for the law. The fact that Fleming did the same thing when it suited him made no difference, and he swore he’d top the bastard when he got his hands on him.

  Handyside dipped a cloth in a basin of water and wiped himself down once he had all the answers he needed. Deans was quiet, his head hanging at an angle; Hunter had just squirted a good shot of smack into his
arm.

  As Handyside pulled on his shirt and knotted his Italian tie he broke into one of his rare smiles and said, ‘I forgot to ask you your real name.’

  The cop managed to lift his head and looked at Handyside through half-closed eyes. ‘It’s Rob Deans. People call me Dixie.’ He was deathly pale and looked like he was struggling to keep his head up.

  ‘Dixie, I like that. Where are you from originally? I know the accent’s Northern Ireland, but where?’

  ‘Downpatrick, near the border.’ Then, in no more than a whisper before his head slumped again he added, ‘My mother still lives there.’ Then he drifted into unconsciousness.

  Handyside walked back to the table and sat down. He looked round the faces and tried to read the effects of his actions over the last few minutes. ‘This is a mess, but I don’t want panic,’ he told them. ‘We need to clean this thing up, and I want some time to think about a few things along the way.’

  ‘What about him?’ Eddie interrupted, nodding towards Deans.

  ‘He’ll be removed shortly and no trace of him will ever be found. We can’t leave a dead undercover cop at the side of the road like we’re sending a warning to the law. If he disappears it’s almost impossible for them to build a case.’

  He lit up a cigarette, which he normally wouldn’t have done at a meeting, but he thought he deserved the break. ‘When they realise he’s missing you and your brother are bound to be pulled at some stage. They must know we’re having a meeting here so admit that it was just business; your story is that when you got home you dropped him off and that’s it. I hope the wheels are hired as I instructed.’ Eddie nodded and Handyside continued, ‘Then there should be no problem with bugs in the car.’

  The Fleming brothers weren’t about to argue with the man they’d just watched in action, and Eddie knew that they weren’t out of the mire yet. Apart from anything else, their credibility was now so low it wouldn’t even register as shite and he needed to get back to Edinburgh to work it all out.