For Those Who Know the Ending

by Mackay, Malcolm

  Usman nearly swallowed his cigarette. Not a care in the world? What a bloody cheek. He wasn’t going to lie there and give up the mountain of cares he had, but he wasn’t going to let this pass unchallenged either.

  ‘I think you’ll find that I got a lot of things to worry about. Got a lot of work to do as well. Tough work, right. Real tough work. Sort of thing you wouldn’t be able to do yourself, no offence. You wouldn’t fit into my shoes, nuh-uh. I got all kinds of stuff going on. Just because I don’t broadcast it don’t mean I’m not working, just means I’m subtle.’

  She burst out laughing. ‘Subtle? You? Come off it, you’re as subtle as a firework, you. I know what you do, Usman; I’ve always known what you and your brother do. It’s no big deal, not to me. But don’t pretend that selling knock-off booze and stuff like that is proper work. It’s not. Only reason you do it is so that you don’t have to do proper work like the rest of us. And what have you done for the last month? Nothing that I’ve noticed. And I mean proper work.’

  Usman started to huff and puff, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray he’d taken from the bedside cabinet and placed between them on the bed. He tried to think of something he’d done that could pass for gainful employment. Keeping your head down after a job wasn’t a good explanation, not to someone you didn’t intend to tell about it. You had to have an excuse handy, and he was starting to realize that the one he’d planned didn’t quite convince.

  ‘I’ve been doing stuff. Stuff for Akram, and, uh, setting some stuff up for myself. You know how it is. A lot of my work, it ain’t stuff that shows a result straight away. I’m setting stuff up. Putting stuff in place so that I can score off it later on. Playing the long game, so I am.’

  ‘Sure you are,’ Alison said with a smile that dismissed his answer as a joke.

  ‘I am,’ he said, starting to get worked up now. He didn’t like having to cover his tracks, because he didn’t like doing anything he was hopeless at. ‘I got something I’m working on right now. Not right now as in right this second. Right this second I been working on you,’ he said, trying for a cheeky grin.

  ‘A lot of effort, not much of a score,’ she said with a shrug and a smile. ‘But if you’re working on something, you’re keeping it well hidden.’

  ‘Of course I fucking am,’ he said, louder than he intended. ‘That’s the whole point. I keep everything I do well hidden. That’s the nature of the business, ain’t it? That doesn’t mean I don’t have anything to work on. I have something. Something pretty big as well. Full of concerns and worries, full of the bastards. It’s very complicated stuff, right, and I’m facing it alone because the guy who’s supposed to be doing it with me is backing off, scared of the heat. It’s a fucking nightmare, right, so don’t tell me I don’t have any worries. I got worries all the way up to my sweaty armpits. I might have to can a big job because of that prick. That’s a pretty big worry right there. A big score down the crapper, that is.’

  His tone had been getting more serious, even a little bit annoyed, as he went on. This was something that had gotten under his skin and killed the mood in the bedroom. Alison hadn’t intended to provoke such seriousness. She stubbed out her cigarette and ran a hand down his chest.

  ‘I wasn’t saying you didn’t have any worries,’ she said. ‘Forget it.’

  Usman started laughing. ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to get like that. Just me running off at the mouth. Forget I said it, okay? I ain’t got any problems, not real ones.’

  He put an arm round her, and eventually they both fell asleep.

  Usman woke first. It was early, or earlier than usual for him anyway. Half eight on the clock, and his mind and body protesting that this was no hour to be awake. Alison was sleeping with her back to him. He got out of bed and wandered through to the kitchen, standing at the sink and letting Martin’s contagious misery wash over him. He was going to have to try and do this job alone, there was no other choice.

  That fucking Martin Sivok. Polish or Czech or Russian or whatever bastard faraway country he had slinked in from. Leaving Usman hanging out to dry like this. A pro like Martin should have known that doing one job meant you were on the hook to do more. Should have known that he wasn’t always going to get to pick the timing either. If you team up with a guy who’s organizing something then you have to accept that he has more control of the timing than you do, should have made that clear. Usman frowned. Should have said Martin was working for him, not with him. Made him a partner instead of an employee, that was the mistake.

  Now he had this job with a tight time-limit on it. He was sure he had a week, maybe less, and then the chance would be gone, perhaps never to return. If it came along again in the future it wouldn’t be in its current form, not with the same certainty it had for Usman now. He didn’t have anyone else he could use, and it sure as hell didn’t feel like a solo gig. Go back to Martin, talk to him again, offer him a bigger cut. Something, anything, to get him on board.

  11

  He was in a pub in Anniesland, tucked away at the back in the dark. There was hardly anyone in there yet, and there wouldn’t be a lot as the evening went on. Slowly but surely this dump was running into the ground, where it belonged. That emptiness was why Aiden Comrie used the place as often as he dared. Use it before the bank and a health and safety officer get into a race to shut it down.

  He didn’t know much about the girl that was buying, apart from the fact that she was a she and her name was Sarah something-or-other. He had picked the meeting place, the time, everything about it. He felt comfortable, felt in total control, even if this was a big deal. Big deal for him, maybe not for her. She was just an employee; here to do someone else’s work for them.

  She worked for the Allen brothers. They had a good operation, selling mostly outside of the city but increasingly willing to move in. They had lurched in after the Jamieson arrests, looked like they were working with Don Park back then. That changed, they backed off, scared away to the safety of their usual haunts. Word was that Jamieson’s men hadn’t even chased them out; they just chickened out of trying their luck. But they were back again, like a bad penny, with an impressive drug network in tow. This meeting was a part of their moving in; part of striking up an agreement with Chris Argyle, the man Aiden was working this deal with.

  If he could get this right, work it clean, then he had a chance to get well in with Argyle. Aiden had set this deal up for Argyle; he had done some street work for the Allens back in the distant past. He knew they weren’t brothers, they were cousins, but nobody cared. A couple of drug dealers, a double dose of hard work and trouble, that’s what they were. Everyone called them brothers, it was just easier. Aiden knew them just well enough to pitch an idea to them on behalf of someone else.

  That someone was Argyle, an importer and another tough bastard. Smoother than the Allens, understood the need to make people like and respect him a little bit more than the gruesome twosome ever did. Argyle told him that he’d be happy to try and make a deal with the Allens, if Aiden was so sure he could set it up. Argyle importing, them selling, everyone making money. It made sense, they were a good fit, but there was other stuff going on in the background, Aiden was smart enough to know that. The politics of the business. There was talk of Argyle getting close to people that were moving against Jamieson while he was in prison, something like that. It was all kind of confusing, people getting into bed together and not bothering to tell the workforce. Didn’t matter to Aiden. What mattered was this deal and what it would do for him. Moving a lot of gear from Argyle to the Allens, Aiden as the middleman. A lot of gear meant a lot of money. A first step to big things.

  As soon as she came in through the front door he wished he’d made more of an effort. Aiden was short and stocky, receding brown hair and tattooed up both arms. A man in his early thirties who could pass for older, younger if he had a hat on. He was wearing jeans and a hoodie, scruffy trainers that had walked through a lot of puddles. He was dressed to do a deal in t
he arse-end of a crappy pub, not to make a good impression on an attractive young woman. He regretted that, and the fact that he didn’t have time to slip his wedding ring off.

  Sarah wasn’t looking to make a good impression either, the fact she did was accidental. They didn’t get a lot of blonde twenty-somethings in that pub; it really wasn’t a blonde twenty-something’s kind of place. Grey sixty-somethings, if anyone at all. She was wearing jeans and a plain top, but her jeans were tight and she was tall and pretty, so creeps like Aiden Comrie went slobbering after her anyway. She picked out Aiden in a heartbeat and walked confidently over.

  ‘Aiden,’ she said, sitting across from him. Said it like they’d known each other all their lives. You wouldn’t guess this was their first meeting after one phone call.

  He looked unsettled by that, a person so confident when she’d spoken to him. She didn’t know him, the familiarity was false and anything false was worth being wary of in his line of work. But it was only one word, and she was so casual with it.

  ‘Sarah, right?’ he said.

  ‘That’s right. So you have something interesting to tell me then?’

  She smiled when she said it, politeness that could, to a stupid person, look flirtatious. Someone as dumb as Comrie, on the other hand, might think it was her way of getting rough, tough criminal types to melt and tell her what she wanted to hear. It wasn’t. He was planning to tell her what she wanted to hear anyway.

  ‘I have a proper deal, a right proper deal,’ he said. This sounded better in his head, sounded more formal in there. Out in the open it sounded amateurish, like he wasn’t educated. ‘See, I have an importer who can provide every single thing your guys want. I got the full range at my fingertips, always at the best price.’

  ‘We know that,’ she said, cutting him off before he could say everything he’d so carefully planned out in his head before she came in. These were things he wanted to say, not things she needed to hear. ‘We don’t doubt the variety or the quantity. We know you have serious backing, don’t worry about that. The issue here is whether what you’re offering is of the quality we’re looking for, and whether us working together will be a suitably painless experience.’

  Okay, the conversation had skipped ahead, but it only took him a few seconds to work out where they were up to. Sarah was in a hurry, wanted to get out of this tip. Spend as little time as possible in the company of the middleman. She needed to do this deal as much as he did though, and that gave him a sense of power. Her superior attitude made him hate her a little.

  ‘You already know we got the quality. You want to do a deal then, a test period, see how it works?’

  ‘Exactly. Are you sure that you can cover a month’s supply for us?’

  Aiden laughed. ‘You don’t need to worry about that. Could cover that and then some. You got a list?’

  She took a slip of paper from the pocket of her skinny jeans and passed it to him. He didn’t even look at it, didn’t need to. Unless the Allens had suddenly gotten into some weird exotic shit, there wasn’t going to be anything on there that Chris Argyle couldn’t handle.

  ‘We’ll want it soon,’ she told him. ‘Within the week.’

  He shrugged. Should have looked at the list maybe, some stuff was harder to get, could take more than a week. He couldn’t tell her that though. Treat everything like it was no big deal, leave her thinking this was easy for him.

  ‘I look forward to seeing you at the handover, Sarah.’ Dropped her name in there all casual, the way she had with his when she came in.

  She gave him a look that a beautiful woman would give a pathetic thirteen-year-old boy and got up. ‘We’ll be in touch,’ was all she said, and she left the pub.

  Might not have been the most flawless performance of his roller-coaster career, but he had what he needed from her. The list had probably been written up ages ago, as soon as Argyle and the Allens first made contact. It would be a long list, and it would be a deliberately challenging list. If they could get through it all without any fuck-ups then it would be very profitable, too. That was the important bit.

  The meeting had turned out to be a best-case scenario. Worst case, she came into the pub and he had to try and persuade her to do any deal at all, which would have been tough. Snobby bitch like her wouldn’t have let herself be persuaded by a proper working-class guy like him. Instead it was the most they could have hoped for. Her coming in with a list prepared meant that it was always going to be a brief meeting of intermediaries, which meant Aiden got to go back to Argyle or one of his people with good news. That made him smile. This would be his success.

  He took the list out of his pocket and looked at it. Mostly bog-standard, with a couple of designer items near the bottom that seemed to be there as a test. Wouldn’t be a problem, Argyle had connections in Holland that could get him a lot of that synthetic stuff. Looked like a tap-in to Aiden, an open goal with the Allens getting an assist. They were making it as easy as they could for this deal to succeed. He put the list away and sipped at what was left of his drink.

  He left the pub ten minutes later. He had given Sarah a head start, just in case anyone was watching the place, just in case anyone was watching her. Nobody was watching him, he was sure of that. Aiden had been in the business long enough to know how important he wasn’t. He was a middleman, probably lower end of the middle ranks. Maybe, just maybe, the Argyle deal would give him the chance to step up to something better, be the senior figure he knew he was capable of being, but he wasn’t a man who had ever been important enough to be a target for others.

  Usman had watched him go into the pub. He waited at a safe distance, watching carefully. He wouldn’t go in; any customer would stand out in a nearly empty pub. Didn’t need to get that close anyway to work out what was happening here. He saw Sarah McFall arriving. She was the link, the one he knew to watch out for. Her ex had drunkenly spilled the beans about her working for the Allens, about her trying to make some sort of deal between them and Argyle. The guy was the kind of self-righteous, bitter loudmouth that was always fuelled by alcohol and inspired by being deservedly dumped. He told a friend of Usman everything and the friend passed the info on.

  So he watched her go in, admired her from a safe distance. She was smarter about looking for tails, checking the street before she went inside. Aiden Comrie had wandered into that dump without so much as a glance up the road. Complacent halfwit, thinking that because nobody had bothered to keep tabs on him before, they wouldn’t start now. People don’t start paying attention to you when you become senior, they start watching you when you’re on the way up. Sarah was smarter; she looked both ways before she leapt. Usman was playing it carefully; he was comfortably out of view when she looked.

  They didn’t take long in there. She was out first, moving quickly to her car and driving away. Didn’t look thrilled with the world, but you wouldn’t after spending a few minutes with Aiden Comrie in that hole. Her being unhappy didn’t mean the deal was dead, or even floundering. The one to watch was Comrie, he was the weak link here. If the chain is the Allens, Sarah McFall, Aiden Comrie and then Chris Argyle, then the weak link is pretty damn glaring. You follow him and you wait for that moron to give you an inevitable opening.

  Aiden Comrie left the pub about ten minutes after Sarah McFall. He didn’t bother looking around on the way out either, having not gotten any smarter in the twenty minutes he’d been inside. He walked with a sort of waddle, a short and broad guy with his arms out from his sides, taking up more of the pavement than he needed. He walked like he was fat, which he wasn’t. Could be tough, Usman reflected, to take down a brawler like Comrie. Following a dumbass is easy enough. Working a job against said dumbass is only easy if his body is as weak as his mind. There was no evidence of that; Comrie could probably fight his way out of being cornered by a lone attacker. Usman waited for the target to get into his car, watched him drive to the end of the street before he followed.

  12

  Her shift at th
e bar started at six, so she needed to make this quick. Alison knew the way; she’d been in the pub she was going to before, although she hadn’t worked there. One of her flatmates had told her who to call, given her the number and a few details about the person she was talking to. She knew a lot of people in the business, the flatmate. They didn’t talk about it, not a subject you casually raise, but Alison knew Heather was connected. So she asked, and Heather delivered.

  ‘I had a word with BB, and he told me this is the guy you want, if you’re sure.’

  Heather Cannero was tall, pushing six foot, and Alison always had the sense that she was tough, a fighter. No reason for that assumption, other than Heather being very tall and quite broad-shouldered. She was always tucking her curly brown hair behind her ears, which annoyed Alison for some reason, and because of small things like that they had never been especially close. But she knew people on the fringes of the criminal world, had done since childhood, and had gone out with a few of them.

  ‘Who’s BB?’ Alison had asked her.

  ‘Oh, he’s a sweetie. Works for Billy Patterson, I think.’

  ‘Who’s Billy Patterson?’

  Heather smiled. ‘Bad people, be glad you don’t know. Works for Peter Jamieson.’

  ‘Him I have heard of.’

  ‘Good. Well, BB says this is the man you want to go talk to. Nate Colgan. I don’t know what he does exactly, but I know he’s got a big reputation, a man to be scared of. BB says he’s the man. And he’s expecting you to call now, BB told him you would, so maybe you have to. They know you know something. I don’t think Nate Colgan is the sort of person you disappoint.’

  Which sounded ominous and unusually dramatic for Heather, so Alison called Nate Colgan. She got a very brief and rather grumbly set of instructions in which he informed her that they had to meet face to face and told her where and when, as well as how to get there without anyone seeing her. All seemed pretty over the top, but he insisted and he didn’t sound like someone who wanted to be argued with. So she found herself, a little after five o’clock, on a busy city-centre street, looking for the gate to an alleyway.