The Sudden Arrival of Violence

by Malcolm Mackay

  ‘No, get in the hole.’

  ‘What for?’ Kenny’s asking.

  They’ve been through this before. Calum explained the whole thing to him last night, but Kenny’s ignored a lot of it. You have to dig the grave carefully at the top, to remove obvious traces. You have to dig the rest quickly, to reduce the amount of time spent at the barn. Reduce the time between the victim realizing what’s happening and the kill. You have to make sure that you leave no mark away from the hole. And you have to bury carefully.

  ‘We have to position him in a way that takes up as little space as possible. You know this,’ Calum’s saying, exasperated. He told Kenny last night. You make the body as small as possible. You pack the soil around it as tight as possible. That way, when you roll the turf back on top, it should look just like it did before you got there. It won’t, because the turf will be a mess. Hopefully it’ll knit together before the soil pushes up. A small mound will form, but you hope that by then the turf will heal and it’ll look natural. It’s why you always try to bury on bumpy ground. Calum explained all this last night, and he doesn’t like having to say it again. Not now. A good sidekick doesn’t need a second set of instructions.

  ‘Fine,’ Kenny’s saying. He’s dropping carefully back into the hole. Ready for Calum to pass the body down.

  Getting a grip of a dead weight wrapped in slippery material is a nightmare. This isn’t going to be dignified. Lifting Hardy, and taking a little baby-step to the edge of the grave. Ready to pass him down to Kenny, who has the easy part here anyway. He can just drop Richard and shove him into a corner.

  ‘I’m going to get mud on my clothes,’ Kenny’s saying now.

  Bloody hell! They’ve been through this, too. ‘You’re going to get rid of every stitch you’re wearing,’ Calum’s saying, with a wheeze.

  Kenny has a loose grip of the body, but it’s firmer than Calum’s. Calum’s let go, Kenny’s holding the body for all of half a second, pulling it backwards and letting it drop with a thump onto the soil. There’s a moment of relief for both of them. Familiar for Calum; a new experience for Kenny. It always comes when the body is in the grave. It’s that sense that you’ve broken the back of the challenge you faced. The hardest part done.

  Kenny’s making a meal of moving the body. All he has to do is shove it over to the corner. The grave’s four feet deep at most. It’s almost circular, and not a fine example of Scottish engineering. There’s already a dent where part of one wall has fallen in. Calum’s shaking his head, preparing himself for the next part. Kenny’s oblivious to this. Trying to shove the lump inside the tarpaulin with his boot. Shoulders and arms burning from the effort of digging. Sliding the body across to the closest resemblance to a corner that this grave has. It’s the deepest point. He thinks he’s done.

  ‘No,’ Calum’s saying. ‘On his side. Push him right up against the wall. Flat as possible.’

  Kenny’s sighing, but not complaining. He’s the junior man. The junior man doesn’t complain. He gets on with the job, no matter how bad. Get this done, go home and forget about it. That’s what he keeps telling himself. It’s a one-off. Doesn’t matter if you hate it. You’ll never have to do it again.

  He’s right–he’ll never have to do it again. As Kenny’s bending over, shoving the body against the wall, Calum is taking his gun again from his inside coat pocket. He’s standing at the edge of the grave, just above Kenny. Calum’s dropping down to his haunches. Watching. Waiting for the right moment. Kenny is ducking slightly again, pressing the tarpaulin as tight to the body as possible. Now. Calum’s extending an arm. Kenny’s head is almost at knee height. An easy shot into the temple. Louder this time. Much more likely to be blood-spray. That’s the risk. Watching Kenny slump forward, face into the wall of mud. Calum dropping down beside him, pulling Kenny’s body from the wall. Laying him out and rolling him onto his side. Checking every pocket, making sure they’re as empty as Kenny was instructed to keep them. Pushing the body up against Hardy’s. Pulling the edge of Hardy’s tarp around Kenny. It needed a deeper grave for two bodies. Kenny should have seen this coming. Should have realized. This is what happens to a grass.

  5

  He’s out of the grave, filling it in. Not as quickly as he’d like. Always so cautious, always trying to do the perfect job. Patting the soil down with the spade every chance he gets. All the time worrying that someone could be on the way. You have to work fast, and Calum’s working as fast as he reasonably can. Stopping to look at his watch. Twenty minutes to nine. Pausing. He doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. The job’s taking longer than he’d like, but he guessed that would be the case. He’ll be back in the city in less than an hour, he hopes. Going about the cleaning-up process with people still out on the streets–that can’t be good.

  Throwing in another spade full of mud. Reaching down and patting it. He’s started by filling in around Kenny and Hardy, making sure they’re kept firmly in place. Now he’s filling up the rest of the empty space in the too-wide, too-shallow grave. And now, with the sweat starting to trickle down his back in an annoying manner, he’s dropping the mud on top of the bodies. He’s immune to the effects now. Once upon a time he might have been moved by the thought of burying a man he knows. Didn’t know Kenny well, but saw him around the club a lot, always said hello. Kenny was a grass. He created this ending for himself when he started talking to the police. There’s no sympathy. You do the job, and you keep your focus.

  Calum’s not used to this intensity of work. He’s done burials, of course, but usually with a second pair of hands. He does the killing, and they’re happy to do the spadework. Most people will do anything to avoid being the one who pulls the trigger. The lackey of choice to accompany him on this job turned out to be Kenny, for reasons that were never explained to the driver himself. Jamieson called Calum into his office. Went through the job proposal in all its unfortunate glory. Killing the moneyman was no big deal. Usually Calum would have asked for George Daly, a Jamieson employee, to come along with him on the job. He’s forgiven George for ruining his relationship with Emma. It wouldn’t have been George’s idea to interfere. Would have been Jamieson’s. Or, more likely, Young’s. Protecting their investment in their number-one gunman. Get rid of the girl who’s become a part of his life. A good gunman needs to be isolated. He doesn’t hate George for scaring her away. He just hates the life he has to live.

  Stop thinking about it. For God’s sake, keep your focus. There’s so much to do. Tonight will be busy; the next few days will be busy. Concentrate on getting the soil into the awkward little gaps between the bodies and the wall of the grave. Use every available inch of space. Filling in fast, arms starting to burn. The sweat’s running off him now. Forcing him to accept that the donkeywork that’s so often done by others isn’t as easy as it looks. This is going to take longer than anticipated. How the hell does George fill these things in so fast? He’s been working at this for more than ten minutes and Calum’s only just covered the bodies. Another five minutes to fill it up completely. It looks okay, though. Not much of a mound, if any at all. Certainly nothing that’ll be out of place in this bumpy area.

  Now the turf at the top. What a bloody mess Kenny made of it. Jesus, look at it! His last job, and Kenny fucked it up. In a typical burial you have four or five strips of turf, usually three or four feet long. Done well, you can be left with only a couple of strips, carefully rolled up and then rolled back out again when you’re re-laying them. Depends on the turf. Kenny, in his infinite wonder, has managed to hack it into at least twenty pieces. No time to stop and count. Calum could almost believe that Kenny had done it on purpose. Pick out the pieces; push them in hard against the undisturbed turf at the edge. Work your way across from one side to the other. Pushing them in as tight as possible, sometimes tucking a piece under the edge of its neighbour. Make sure every piece is returned, and that the final picture is as close to its original state as possible. Calum’s stepping back and looking at his work. Not good.
Thank you very much, the late Kenny McBride. It’s an obvious patchwork. It will knit together in time. Maybe quite quickly. The hope is that nobody stumbles across it before it does. It’s not perfect, and that’s going to nag at Calum.

  Too much work to do to stand and worry. It’s done. He’s throwing his own and Kenny’s shovels into the tarpaulin that was used to collect the dug-up mud. Rolling it up, shovels inside. Lifting it carefully and checking the ground underneath. Well, they got that bit right at least. There’s no telltale thin film of mud on the ground beside the grave. Without the tarpaulin they would never have got every speck back into the grave. It would be all too obvious that someone had been digging here. Calum’s now carrying the tarpaulin sheet back to the car. Opening the boot and throwing the tarp in. Ready to leave. Always a good feeling to leave the scene of a burial. Tonight’s different, for all sorts of reasons. Tonight Calum’s stopping beside the driver’s door and looking across to the trees. The headlights illuminating the scene. Taking it all in.

  Pulling slowly away. Don’t go screeching and skidding and creating tyre marks. Driving slowly and carefully along the narrow lane, back to the road. Wouldn’t it be just his luck to drive the bloody thing into a ditch and get stuck there? What a story that would be to tell his fellow inmates when he’s serving life. Got caught on the way out. Didn’t see the edge of the road. Oh, how they’d laugh. Looking at the clock on the dashboard. One minute past nine. Still no idea if that’s good or bad. He knows it’s bad that he’s working at this hour. Knows that a job shouldn’t be carried out when the world around you is still awake and alert. No choice. Needed to pick Hardy up at an hour that would convince him to get into the car. You turn up at his house at two in the morning and he might refuse. They would have had to put together a fake warrant. First rule: keep everything as simple as possible.

  Driving back into the city. Taking a different route, but still trying to keep away from the main roads. His first target is the only one he scouted yesterday. It was all at such short notice. Not for the job itself, but for Calum’s own plans. If he can just get this right, it could change everything. The first job is getting rid of the tarp, shovels and Hardy’s identifiable belongings. Then the car. He scouted a location for ditching the tarp. Supposed to go back to a garden shed that Jamieson uses–a random house in a random street that happens to be owned by a Jamieson man. A trusted man. The man would wait a couple of days and safely ditch whatever little surprises he happens to find in his shed. He’s not warned in advance, so he’ll be expecting nothing. That’s a good thing; Calum can’t have someone wondering if the job’s been done. Can’t have anyone asking questions. Not yet. Not for a while. So he’s parking up on a building site he found yesterday afternoon. Harder than it used to be to find a good building site. Nobody around. Opening the boot, placing the wallet and car keys with the shovels inside the rolled-up tarp. Taking out the tarp. Another look round, and he’s hurling it into a half-filled skip. More building-material detritus will be thrown on top of it, and it will all be carted away.

  Now the car. This is easier. This is the old routine. Driving east to his brother’s garage. His older brother William has a majority share in a garage from which Calum borrows cars for jobs. People bring a car in to be fixed; William lets Calum borrow it for a few hours. Rarely more than that. William asks no questions. He knows enough to realize that knowing more would be dangerous. Calum’s own car is parked on the street outside the garage. There’s a parking space three cars down from it. Calum’s driving slowly, taking a careful look up and down the street. Nobody in view. Calum once asked his brother if there were CCTV cameras on the street. William laughed. There aren’t many businesses on this street any more. Nobody is going to pay for that. Nobody wants it. William’s is not the only business with little things to hide.

  Stepping out of the car and onto the street. The keys are in the visor, he’s closing the door. He doesn’t want to be seen with the car. The car might become the key to any police investigation. They might work out that it was used in the disappearance of two men. They might appeal for anyone who saw it this night. Dropping into his own car. Familiarity. Wonderful, comforting familiarity. Pulling down the visor, the keys dropping into his lap. You take nothing with you on a job, not even your car keys. Starting up and pulling away. Driving back to his flat and parking two streets away. A flat that’s never felt like home. That never will. If he could, he would never go back. Doesn’t have that luxury. One last visit.

  He’s touching the front of his coat, feeling the shape of the gun. Should have got rid of it. On any other night, any other job, he would. But this isn’t any other job. This, he intends, will be his last.

  6

  Peter Jamieson’s been sitting in his office for the last couple of hours. The one point in a big job when there’s nothing he can do. You plan it. You deal with the aftermath. The job itself is for others. Calum and Kenny were sent to do a job that will never be spoken of. That shameless little bastard Kenny. Still makes Jamieson’s blood boil to think of it. Talking to the police and still turning up here every day, pretending to be a loyal employee. Telling tales to the enemy. Shit! Jamieson trusted Kenny. Thought he was a solid guy. Not too bright, not too impressive, but solid. You just don’t know. First Frank MacLeod, now this. As soon as John Young came to him with the revelation, Jamieson knew what he was going to do. Two birds with one stone. Kenny would pay the price; but he needs to put Kenny out of his mind for now. There are other things to deal with.

  Jamieson’s behind his desk, as he always is. Young’s sitting on the couch to Jamieson’s left, where he always is. Just the two of them. The office is above Jamieson’s nightclub. Soundproofed, but imperfectly. You can still feel the little thumps of the music below. Usually ignorable, but annoying on a night like tonight. A night of action. A night when you need to be switched on. Things can, and do, go wrong. Have gone wrong recently. Tonight should change that. Tonight, and the next few days, should change it all.

  ‘We should have done this months ago,’ Jamieson’s saying to his right-hand man. ‘No matter the bullshit that was going on.’

  Young’s nodding. ‘Maybe. Less risk now, though. Doing it now means doing it right. Doing it perfect. Couldn’t guarantee that before.’

  Jamieson’s nodding, and tapping the desk with his forefinger. Glancing across at Young and suddenly laughing. This is it! This is what it’s all about. The action, the thrill, the risk. This is what they’re in it for.

  ‘I’ve set up a meeting with that goofy prick, Kirk,’ Young’s saying.

  Jamieson’s frowning. There are plenty of goofy pricks to choose from, and this particular name doesn’t ring a bell. ‘Who?’

  ‘Fellow works for the phone company. I’ll get him to set up a few fake calls. Put them in the records. Shug to a gunman, gunman to Shug. I’ll use Des Collins as the gunman. He’s technically freelance. It’ll look legit.’

  They’ve discussed this already. The phone calls are just a little extra. Jamieson doesn’t think they’re necessary, but Young likes this sort of thing. His chance to be nice and busy.

  ‘I still don’t think you should be meeting him. It’s a risk. He’ll blab. You should send someone else to do it.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Young’s saying with a shrug. ‘The kid doesn’t know shit from chocolate. He can grass all he wants–I have deniability.’

  Fine, the calls are a bonus. But the job is important. People will notice that Kenny’s gone. Not least the cop he was grassing to. Someone has to take the blame. For that and for Hardy. Shug is linked to Hardy. The police will check Shug’s phone records. They’ll find he made calls to a known gunman, Des Collins. Suddenly the police aren’t even considering Peter Jamieson for the crime any more. Shug’s link to Hardy would have set the police on that trail anyway. Still, you can never have too much evidence against your enemies. Collins does most of his work for Alex MacArthur. So the police start sniffing around old MacArthur. They won’t do any
thing, but sniffing around weakens him. Then things get interesting. Jamieson puts the Shug battle behind him. Victory achieved. A risk, but one every organization has to take if it wants to grow.

  This is where John Young’s speciality really comes into play. The planning and scheming. Playing people along. Reading the movements of others before they make them. He loves it. Always has. Always where his strength lay. Young was the planner. Jamieson the man of action. Action gets you to the very top. Planning gets you second in command. They’re both comfortable with that.

  ‘Marty’s been sniffing around a lot as well,’ Young’s saying. An amused glance across the room to Jamieson. He knows what reaction this is going to get.

  ‘Tell him to fuck off. Tell him to make sure he pays me what I’m owed from him, the bastard.’

  Young’s smiling. ‘I’ve told him that often enough. He’s trying to ingratiate himself. Get back in the good books. There’s nothing he won’t do to win you round.’

  Jamieson shudders. ‘Tell him he’d be wise to keep his distance for now. He tried to rob me of my cut. If he didn’t make so much damn money, I would have dealt with him before now.’

  Young’s smiling again. Marty Jones is a lot of things. He’s a pimp, for one thing. A loan-shark, too. Has his fingers in all sorts of pies, as it happens. Has a knack for making good money, fast. It’s the one thing that keeps him popular.

  Jamieson’s sneaking a glance at his watch. The main job of the night should be done by now. He’s waiting for a phone call. Not from Calum. That won’t come. This is something else. Something separate. So much going on.