There was some gloss on that. For the last couple of months Usman had kept at least one ear to the ground, listening for any mention of the raid on the bookies in Coatbridge. Barely a whisper, just some very loose gossip that didn’t mention a robbery at all. Overheard a conversation which mentioned that the guy who ran the bookies for Jamieson in Coatbridge, Donny Gregor, had been replaced. Maybe temporarily, maybe permanently, the guy didn’t know. Something wrong with his health, so the rumour went, so he was being sidelined. Usman figured that might have been an excuse. Hoped it was.
He listened out for any word of Nate Colgan as well. Expecting to hear that the thug was looking for him. That he was hunting him down and planning to rip him apart and feast on his innards. Didn’t hear anything. Colgan’s name got a couple of mentions, but never in connection with Usman or the bookies, just the sort of mentions one of Glasgow’s meanest bastards would always get. One was in connection to the fact that he seemed to be doing work with Gully Fitzgerald these days, which gave Usman the identity of the other person at the bookies.
Gully Fitzgerald, another sharp-toothed monster to be scared of. Maybe not as scary as Nate Colgan these days, but still a beast in his own right. There was no good news in finding out he was the second man, but at least Usman now knew who to run from should their paths cross. He’d shared the info with Martin during the phone call three weeks before this meeting.
‘You’ve heard nothing about them looking for us since?’ Martin asked.
‘Not a damn thing. I mean, they wouldn’t advertise it, would they? They don’t want people knowing that we ripped them off in the first place so they’re keeping it under their hats, right. But they must have been looking, the amount of money we swiped from them. Even people rolling in it go looking for thirty-two grand when they lose it. First couple of weeks they’d have been sweating blood to find us. After that, I don’t know, I figure maybe they eased off a bit. Those guys, they’re busy men, always got new trouble to chase. Not like you and me, growing fat on our cash reserves. Working for Jamieson, they’ll have all sorts of brilliant distractions to get them away from us. So, I don’t know, I figure they’ll have moved on.’
Martin was incredulous. ‘Moved on? You think they would ever just accept losing that much money?’
Usman raised a hand. ‘Nah, nah, not accept it. Don’t get me wrong, they’ll still have one eye on the prowl for you and me. If we do anything stupid, catch their attention, give ourselves away, then they’ll come right after us, don’t worry about that. Those two, Jesus, they’ll always be on the alert. But they’ll have a ton of other stuff that they need to get on with as well. An organization that size, those two are going to be busy with that other stuff, course they are. And, as well,’ he said, raising an arm and his voice in enthusiasm, ‘the fact that their boss is in the jail works for us as well. They’re stuck defending themselves from all sorts of attacks, other arseholes trying to pick away at their business while they’re weak, so they can’t just focus on a one-off hit like ours.’
Martin didn’t look enthusiastic, but then he didn’t ever look what you could call enthusiastic. Usman was just about getting used to that now. Wasn’t so long ago Martin had been sitting in this flat, saying that he wasn’t going to get involved in the hit on the bookies. Sat in the exact same chair, looking miserable and saying that it was a bad idea, that he wouldn’t do it. Changed his mind quick enough though, announcing that it could be done if they did it his way. Usman was happy to go along with him now too, convinced that he could win him round to another job.
‘We don’t need to do another job,’ Martin told him. ‘You shouldn’t be greedy.’
‘Greedy? Me? You’re calling me greedy? I’m not greedy, I’m just opportunistic. Ain’t the same thing. Some of the jobs I got all worked out, they aren’t jobs that we can just turn up and do whenever we feel like it. Some of them need to be done at certain times. Might be months before another one comes along, you know. That’s just taking your opportunities when they’re there. And you have to look at it this way as well, right: it’s not about doing two jobs in three months. Stop looking at it that way. This is about getting the jobs when we can, cos we might go a year without getting any money. You aren’t going to live on what we made from the bookies forever, are you now? I don’t know how stingy you are, wee man, but sixteen grand ain’t good living for long.’
Martin shrugged. Usman’s argument was a no-brainer and they both knew it, but two months was too soon. Two months after you piss off one of the biggest organizations in the city and you want to go back to work. Two months after you piss off two of the most dangerous men in Glasgow. Common sense, gathered from spending years being the man who chased others down, was screaming for him to lie low a little longer.
‘We cannot attack another business of Jamieson,’ Martin said. ‘And we should not be attacking anyone until we’re sure that we’re safe.’
Usman groaned. Getting through to this guy was like headbutting your way through a wall only to find some dick had built another wall behind it. There was a part of him that wanted to ditch Martin, find someone that was easier to work with, which was just about everyone. An easy life, who wouldn’t want that? But there was a smarter part of him that realized this was exactly what he needed, someone to hold him back when he was straining at the leash. Someone who took a totally different approach to him. Maybe it wasn’t so much fun, but Martin looked at the world from a miserable starting point and that had real value when you needed every angle covered.
‘We won’t be attacking another Jamieson target. Wouldn’t go near that bastard a second time, not for a long time, maybe not ever. But I got a target that’s safe. And, I think you’re wrong about keeping your head down this long. You keep keeping your head down and people start to wonder what you’re hiding from. I see a guy refusing work and I start to think he must have done a job recently, must be in that cooling-off period, you know. Then I start to try and work out what that job might be. Come on, I’m right, you know I am, don’t you?’
Martin just shrugged.
‘So you’ll hear me out?’
‘No,’ Martin said. ‘I do not think we should do another job together so soon. Maybe it is time for work, but not together. If you want to do a job with someone else, you should. If this job has to be done soon then do it. But I don’t want to be involved. I will work with you again, in the future, but not now.’
Usman looked crestfallen. He’d finally found himself a man he could work tough jobs with, found a bloody gunman, for fuck’s sake, and now the bastard was playing hard to get. He wouldn’t beg though, that would just make matters worse. Martin needed to be convinced that Usman was serious and it was hard to gain that respect when you were down on your knees.
Martin got up from his chair. ‘When more time has passed, and it’s safer, then I will work with you again.’
Usman watched him turn and walk out of the flat. Let him go. Growled at him a little for being a fucking robot, and went to the kitchen for a beer, because there was nothing much he could do about it. For now, anyway.
Martin walked out through the close and onto the street. He’d parked his car down the road, a suitable distance from Usman’s regular haunt. New car, bought a couple of weeks before, making them a two-car household. Only cost him a couple of grand, it was seven years old and it had 65,000 long miles on the clock, but it was in decent condition, and it was important to have it. Meant that Martin wasn’t dependent on buses any more, so he could learn individual streets that bus routes didn’t cover. Also meant that, if he needed to, he could work a job at any time without ever having to use Joanne’s car.
He was happy with his decision to refuse Usman when he got back to the house. Content that keeping the younger man at arm’s length for another few months was the sensible thing to do. He still had money in the bank, Joanne was bringing money in, there was no reason to roll the dice just because it suited Usman. Patience was the greatest safety net he had
. He parked the car on the street and walked round to the back of the house like he always did. It was a habit they both had, using the back door and just leaving the front door locked.
He heard the voices shouting from the corridor as he approached the back door. Joanne and Skye, reaching volumes their lungs were struggling to maintain. Joanne was loud, but in control, Skye was basically screaming. Martin hung back, knowing this wasn’t a fight he should wander into the middle of. Joanne was his girlfriend, but Skye was a bucket full of muddy water. Martin had been prepared to try and be some kind of father figure, a friend at least, but she had no interest. A handful of cringing conversations had been the extent of their relationship to that point.
‘You’d rather have him here than me, your own daughter.’ The ‘him’ was said with a degree of hatred that Martin didn’t deserve. This time, at least.
Joanne knew what her daughter was trying to do, trying to make her feel guilty about her relationship with Martin. Not going to work. ‘Yes, I would, because he treats this place properly. You need to get your head in order, Skye. You’re a grown woman.’
‘I just need a place to stay. I thought my own mother would give me that much. Some fucking mother, rather have your little toy-boy instead.’
Feet stamping up the stairs, not hanging around to face the reaction.
‘Come back here. You’re not a child, Skye; you can’t walk away from this.’
A door slamming. Skye in her bedroom, apparently back in the house for keeps. Joanne stood at the bottom of the stairs, hands on hips, trying to stop herself from shouting something regrettable. She wouldn’t go chasing Skye up the stairs, not her style. She walked through to the kitchen, saw Martin waiting, and sat across from him at the table.
‘You hear that?’
‘‘Enough of it,’ he said. ‘What happened?’
‘She’s been kicked out of her flat.’
‘Why?’
Joanne shook her head. ‘She didn’t say. Skye being Skye. Didn’t pay her rent or picked fights with people. That’s her.’
‘So she’s coming back here?’
Joanne sighed. It had been going so well, her and Martin finding a groove that made them both happy. Having the house to themselves was key to it. They had their own little world inside these walls that locked all the problems of reality out. Now reality had come storming back in, screamed its way up the stairs and slammed its bedroom door shut behind it.
‘If she needs money . . .’ Martin said, trailing off because he knew what the reaction was going to be.
‘No. She has to earn her own way. She has to learn that she can’t just come running back here every time she falls out with someone. She’s behaving like a child, and that has to stop.’
Martin nodded. He clearly didn’t agree, but he nodded. She wasn’t his daughter, she wasn’t his responsibility and he didn’t have the right to insist. Only Joanne had earned the right to make decisions about Skye.
‘There must be something we can do,’ he said.
‘To get rid of her?’ She smiled a little when she said it.
‘Not to get rid of her, but . . . well, getting rid of her would have to be part of it, yes.’
Joanne smiled. She wasn’t picking Martin over her own daughter; it wasn’t like that at all. Skye needed to find her own place in the world. It was doing her a favour to push her towards it, even if it would take years for Skye to understand that.
‘You have to decide,’ Martin said. ‘Is her learning to pay her own way the most important thing? Maybe, I don’t know, there are other things as well. Life is not just about what’s best for her. We have to think about ourselves sometimes. Maybe, if we gave her the money to pay a – what’s the word, you pay some money up front for a place to live?’
‘A deposit? Jesus, Martin, we don’t have the money for that. We’ve only just enough for us.’
‘But if we did, maybe we could spend it on that. I mean, we could own the place, and let her stay there. We own it so it’s worth money to us, she lives there. If we had money for a deposit, I mean.’
Joanne looked at him. ‘You really want rid of her.’
‘I really want us to have our space. It is not a fault of hers.’
‘Okay. In theory, if we had that sort of money, that would be an idea. A bloody expensive one, and one she doesn’t deserve at all. And it would leave us having to pay a mortgage, have you thought of that?’
He’d been thinking of it since he heard Skye screaming. That job at the bookies was to fund life with Joanne. Life was about her, about them, being together. He didn’t want to make sacrifices, take risks, but he wouldn’t always be able to avoid them. The most professional thing to do was accept a lack of finance, but that meant Skye in the house. Professionalism meant a damaged relationship, and he couldn’t let that happen.
‘We have two incomes, we could manage that. I will get the money to pay the deposit. In the next few weeks, I will get the money. And I will keep earning money after that so we will be able to pay for the mortgage. It will be an investment. Years from now we will be glad we made it when we could.’
The investment he meant wasn’t in the property, wasn’t in Skye’s future either. They both knew what it was. It was the investment in their relationship. The idea that this was the rest of their lives, and that was something they were willing to work for.
Her name was Alison Glenn. She worked in a bar on Hope Street, a legit place where she put in long hours and got short pay. Usman had been in the night before; chatting to her and then strolling slowly back to his place with her. They’d vaguely known each other for a couple of years through mutual friends, been to a lot of the same parties, had gone out a couple of times before. Always back to his, not hers. She lived with a bunch of other people, crushed into the only space they could afford.
They were in bed, in his proper flat, the one he actually called home. It was small but it was neat and it was filled with expensive things that he could afford. He wasn’t stupid with money, said he had been brought up to be smart about it, always made enough to cover his costs and leave a little left over after every job. She liked that about him, the sensible side that balanced out the party boy she had thought he was when they first met. He was slowly building up a nice little nest egg, ready for the deluge that rainy days brought in his business. Alison was comfortably smart enough to understand what his line of work was.
‘And they’re opening another bar right across the street from us,’ she was saying, halfway through a conversation Usman was only halfway listening to. She looked younger than twenty-one. Her youth was in her large, dark eyes and small, round mouth. ‘And JC says it doesn’t even matter if they make any money because it’s being run by a bunch of crooks.’
‘Who the hell’s JC?’
‘JC Carson,’ she said, like that meant something. ‘My boss, I already told you about him. Well, he’s not my boss I suppose, but he kind of is. He’s the manager at Derby’s.’
This wasn’t Usman’s idea of good pillow talk, but Alison was concerned about her job, so she wasn’t giving him any choice but to play along. ‘How does this JC Carson know that it’s being run by a bunch of crooks then? They advertise?’ He reached across to the bedside cabinet and grabbed his packet of cigarettes.
Alison waited, watching him light one for her and then for himself, then she spoke. ‘He said it’s being run by some guy called Marty Jones. This guy’s some big gangster type, doesn’t even need the place to be successful, can just keep running it and running it even if it’s losing money because they use it to launder their dirty cash. It’s the money-laundering they really want it for, shower of pricks. That means they can take business away from us and it doesn’t even matter if they lose money, they can stick around way longer than we can, run us out of business, take all our customers. So now everyone’s shitting it that we’re going to lose our jobs.’
‘Mm,’ Usman said, taking a drag. ‘Worst happens, you can always nip across t
he street and ask this Marty Jones for a job.’
‘I suppose,’ she said, taking the suggestion seriously.
‘Better still,’ he said, ‘you can take the opportunity to find a better job altogether, something more long-term, you know.’ That didn’t get a response, but he was serious. Nipping across the road to meet Marty Jones was a bad idea for any pretty young woman. Usman knew who Marty Jones was. Knew he wasn’t some big gangster type; he was a pimp and a fucking loan shark, exploiting as many people as he could get his claws into. But he was Peter Jamieson’s pimp and loan shark, and that meant he was well protected. Jones must have been fronting the purchase of this bar for the Jamieson organization; no way he’d be doing it on his own.
Usman smiled. Maybe Jamieson’s mob was only buying this place because of the job he and Martin had done on the bookies. Maybe he’d forced them into taking some serious action to make sure they had a better operation for cleaning money in a hurry. Then he stopped smiling. He didn’t want that job to still be affecting them. It meant it would still be on their mind, still be costing them noticeable sums of money. There was nothing that would make them more determined to catch and castrate him than having to spend even more money covering up for what happened that night.
‘Be nice to work somewhere where it doesn’t matter if it’s successful or not,’ Alison said. ‘No pressure. We’re constantly getting hassle to try and get more people in, like that’s our job. Up to the manager to get people through the door, but he’s loading it onto us, prick.’
Usman murmured agreement; working without pressure sure would be nice. Not worrying about your partner being a suicide-inducing sod that doesn’t want to work with you for months on end, no matter how good the job. Not worrying about your targets tracking you down and putting a bullet in the back of your devilishly handsome head.
‘It’s all right for you,’ Alison said. ‘You don’t seem to have a care in the world. Always got enough money and I’ve never seen you work a day in your life.’
For Those Who Know the Ending Page 11