For Those Who Know the Ending

by Mackay, Malcolm

  She found it, looked up and down the street in a cartoonish way that would have been suspicious to anyone who was watching her, and went inside. She was on a narrow path, high fences from the backs of the buildings on either side of her. She counted her way down to the third gate and pushed it open, recoiling at the clatter it made on the cobblestones of the little courtyard. She moved quickly across the courtyard and in through the unlocked back door of the pub.

  There was plenty of noise coming from the front of the building. People shouting orders, the general murmur of badly constructed conversation and too-enthusiastic laughing. The stairs were on her left, as he’d said they would be. She went up, knocked on the door at the top, heard a shout for her to enter.

  Nate was sitting at the little round table, looking miserable. Glancing at Alison Glenn didn’t help his mood, a pretty young girl who made him feel instantly like an old man. It was the place that depressed him though. This pub, which was becoming a regular haunt for meeting people he didn’t much want to meet, was one of the last places he wanted to be. This was where Kelly’s ex-boyfriend had been killed, and Nate had been part of the clean-up. You don’t go back to the scene of a bad event, especially when it becomes personal. Recently he’d cracked, asked Kelly out, begun the process of turning it into a proper relationship. She’d stayed at his place a couple of times, he’d been to hers, they’d been out to dinner and the cinema, doing all the things normal couples do. It was uncomfortable, because these things always were for Nate, but it was nice too. He was part of something enjoyable and exciting, and he liked that. Falling hard for Kelly and feeling the sort of things that other, weaker, people felt. Bringing her into his life and knowing that she could be used against him. And here he was, back in a place of bad memories, because he didn’t have anywhere better. Not for meeting this girl, anyway.

  Information. She said she had some, suggested it would be valuable to him. Everyone thinks the information they have is the most valuable thing in the world and they can’t all be right. She looked like a kid, and he knew she wasn’t an insider, so the chances of her knowing anything worthwhile were slim, but you still had to meet her, hear her out. One of Billy Patterson’s debt collectors had put her in touch with Nate, vouched for her as useful. That meant nothing.

  ‘Sit down,’ he said to her as she closed the door.

  She walked quickly across to the table and sat, nervous already, perched on the edge of her chair. She was here to ask for a favour, and Nate wasn’t the sort of guy who handed them out freely.

  ‘I’m told there’s something you wanted to tell me,’ he said. The usual opening gambit, make it seem as though she has to tell him everything first and only then can she ask for a reward. It was all part of the haggling process.

  ‘Um, yeah, there is,’ she said with a mumble. ‘The thing is, there’s something I wanted to ask you first. I work in a bar, Derby’s, do you know it?’

  Nate nodded. She was very pretty, which was distracting. That was what made her dangerous. If she ever learned how to use that distractive power in Nate’s industry she could be quite a weapon, and quite a target, too. Jesus, when did he start looking at young women as nothing more than weapons to use against others?

  ‘Well, the rumour is that it’s struggling. I’m worried about losing my job, and I know that your boss is opening a place across the street. I figured, maybe, if I could get a job there, that would really help me.’

  Nate shrugged. ‘It’s not up to me to hire staff for a bar. That would be up to the bar manager. You would need to talk to whoever that is. How do I know you’re any good at your job?’

  She was flustered. She might have met people in the business before, but she had never met Nate Colgan. This was a step into a world where every conversation was a battle, people trying to hold back as much as possible.

  ‘I am good at my job. Really good, I would say. I know the business and I know how to do a good job. All I’m looking for is, like, a recommendation. If you recommended me then that would be worth something, right?’

  Nate very nearly smiled at that. Smart girl. He either had to agree with her or pretend that his recommendation meant nothing. He couldn’t very well do the latter, even a novice like Alison could find out that his word carried weight in Glasgow. It was why BB had passed her along to him.

  ‘If I recommend you then you will get the job,’ he said to her. Not bragging, his tone was flat throughout. ‘But I will not recommend you for no good reason. You want a recommendation, you have to earn it. You tell me what you came here to.’

  ‘You know Usman Kassar?’ she asked him.

  It took him a few seconds. He knew a Kassar, but it wasn’t Usman. A lad who had done some work with the organization, mostly with Kevin Currie and his counterfeit-goods business. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Oh. Well, it’s him I have information about. Do you know Akram Kassar?’

  That was the one. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, Usman’s his little brother. He’s a nice guy, kind of harmless. Bit flashy, you know, but decent enough with it. People think because he’s all flash he isn’t smart, but he is. I know that he works in your business. I don’t know exactly what he does. I can’t give you that sort of detail. But I know that he did something a couple of months ago that made him a lot of money. Enough that he hasn’t had to do anything since. And I know that he’s working on something right now and I think it must be pretty big. I know that he works with another person, and that this other person doesn’t want to work on this new job with Usman. He’s annoyed about it, so . . .’ she said, trailing off. It didn’t sound like much, when she said it out loud. Not quite enough to fill the empty little room, take the cold out of the air around Colgan. She felt like she had overreached herself.

  Nate was looking down at the little table. Didn’t say anything for about twenty seconds, seemed to be considering issues far bigger than anything she’d said.

  ‘I’ll find out who’s running the bar, make sure that your name is top of their list,’ he said eventually. ‘They’ll contact you, so don’t go chasing after them. They’ll set up a way of making it look like they headhunted you. I expect you to do a good job for them. Don’t make me look stupid. And when you have any more information that might be useful to me, I expect you to get in touch.’

  ‘I will,’ she said, nodding her head. That line about not making him look stupid had been said with a hint of venom so slight that she had to stop and think about it, make sure she’d heard it right. As soon as she realized she had, it scared her.

  She didn’t want to leave until she was sure that he was finished. ‘Can I go?’

  He looked at her with a rather sad expression. She didn’t know he was thinking about Kelly and the fragility of any relationship you thought you could trust. She was about to start explaining that she needed to get to work when he spoke.

  ‘Yes, you can go. The same way you came in.’

  She got up and left quickly. There was something about this man that was hard to explain. He was intimidating, but not threatening, like it was just natural for him, a man who couldn’t help but scare people. Never mind that, she had gotten what she came for. She would get a job at whatever they called the swanky new place across the street, and the people who hired her would know that she had gotten the job through the one and only Nate Colgan. That was the clincher, the thing she hadn’t mentioned. It wouldn’t just get her the job, it would make the job secure. Whoever was bar manager wasn’t going to sack an employee who had been recommended by someone so senior.

  Nate knew all that without her pointing it out, but it didn’t matter. The girl had given him information that made her valuable, she was worth putting into a position where she would have to pass along any other information she gathered. They were only buying the place and using it because they needed somewhere else they could clean money through. They had taken their eye off that particular ball when Jamieson went inside. Used to be his right-hand man, John Young,
who handled that sort of thing, and Young was inside as well. The guy who took over from him, Stuart Crockley, picked the wrong fighter in the internal squabble that got Nate’s former protégé Ronnie Malone killed, and was now outside the organization. Money laundering, always a challenge, had become a fucking great chore.

  As soon as she began to talk about Kassar, the pieces started falling into place. He knew of Akram, the older brother, knew he wasn’t going to work a job against Jamieson. But the little brother, that one had flown right under the radar. Worked a job a couple of months ago that paid well. Worked with another person. That ticked a couple of key boxes. Nate needed to find out who the other person was and needed to find out more about Usman Kassar. Most important thing was finding out what this new job was. He wasn’t going to find out on his own. He picked up the phone and called Gully.

  13

  There was a definite hint of smugness in his voice, a little relief as well. Usman was doing his best to hide that, but he wasn’t an actor, or not a good one anyway. He knew he was radiating relief, even on a slightly iffy phone line.

  ‘I want to hear every detail about this job first though,’ Martin told him. ‘Every single thing.’

  ‘Of course you do, sure, and I want to tell you every wee detail. I wanted to tell you a couple of days ago but you buggered off back to miserable-land. You want to come round the flat and talk about it?’

  ‘The same flat?’

  ‘Yeah, the same flat.’

  ‘Is it safe to always be using the same place?’

  Usman, walking along the street outside his brother’s house as he talked, sighed right into the phone. He hadn’t actually thought about that, but it wasn’t a bad point. He didn’t use the flat often, but when he did it was either to meet Martin or set up some other kind of criminal work. A pattern was developing and patterns were treacherous, they gave the game away.

  ‘Yeah, you might be right, I suppose. We can use it again in the future, but maybe not this time, eh? What about your place?’ Usman knew Martin was living with a woman, he knew they had a place of their own. It made sense.

  ‘No,’ Martin said. A little word with a lot of force behind it.

  ‘All right, okay, never mind then. We can meet up at my own flat then. Breaks the routine, and we can talk properly, in peace.’

  So Martin was going round to Usman’s flat. They sure as hell weren’t going to use Joanne’s house, it was bad enough to have his criminality in her life without bringing it all the way into her living room. And it was still her house, not theirs. He hadn’t earned the right to call it his yet, although his sense of home was growing within it. But they couldn’t use it for a meeting when Joanne might come back and catch them. Worse still, Skye might be lounging around the place now. Then the explanations would really have to begin.

  But he didn’t want to meet Usman at Usman’s own flat either, that felt like it was escalating the relationship. The place in Mosspark had been a good meeting place. A flat that didn’t belong to either of them, where they could meet without being seen and without seeing much of each other. It was business, and nothing else, there was no danger of getting any little glimpses of personal life. Martin didn’t want any personal element to worm its way into this. He didn’t want a friendship. This was business.

  Usman’s flat was up in Maryhill. That meant a drive with the satnav on, taking instructions from a detached voice with a lot more confidence and a little more knowledge than he had. With a couple of wrong turnings it took a lot longer getting there than he had expected. He was half an hour late.

  The flat was in a small block, new and well-kept. Not private though, in terms of getting in and out, a front door the whole street could see. If someone was keeping an eye on Usman’s flat then they were bound to notice Martin showing up looking shifty. As a matter of routine he looked around, but he couldn’t see anything out of place. Wasn’t sure he would recognize if there was, given that he had never been here before. He rang the bell at the front door and Usman buzzed him in. Usman was waiting in the corridor up the stairs for him, front door of his flat open.

  ‘Come on in, man,’ he said. He was dressed in a T-shirt that looked like a manic child had scrawled all over it and a pair of baggy jeans with a long silver chain hanging off the pocket. Martin said nothing, went inside.

  Inside was the flat of a man who earned. Every little thing looked new, shiny and expensive. Even the artwork on the walls looked like it would cost enough money to make the seller laugh behind your back on your way out of the shop. It was a young man’s flat, full of gadgets and bad taste. When he had a partner, had kids and responsibilities, things would change. He would learn to save; he would learn that there was no shame in having the second most expensive version of something.

  ‘You want a beer or something?’ Usman asked him, leading him into the living room.

  Martin sat in the leather recliner Usman had intended to use. ‘Nothing. Just information about this job and a lot of it. What it is, when it’s happening. I want to know everything.’

  ‘Right,’ Usman said, sacrificing his own beer and sitting on the couch. He had Martin on the hook and he wasn’t going to give him any chances to get away. ‘You can take your jacket off, man,’ he said, ‘unless you’re planning on doing a runner.’ Try and get the little bastard comfortable.

  So much for giving the impression that he wouldn’t stay long. Martin took his jacket off, put it over the arm of the chair. He was impatient, his instinct told him he shouldn’t be here. Not just because it was Usman’s home, but because it was only a couple of months after a major job with him. Martin didn’t know Glasgow and its industry well enough to take any sort of risks, and here he was taking a sizeable one. Maybe back home he would work a couple of jobs in quick succession but that was different. He knew the business there, knew how people would react and what toes he could afford to dance on when. The politics here played a different tune. Here he still had to learn.

  ‘Right,’ Usman said, clapping his hands together. ‘This one’s a tiny wee bit complicated, so if there’s anything you don’t get, you just butt right in and ask me, okay?’

  Martin smiled. This wasn’t going to be nuclear physics; it was going to be a job. There was no way it wasn’t going to be some variation on a job he had done before. There were only so many ways to make money ripping people off, very few deviations from the norm, and none that he hadn’t at least tried before.

  ‘Okay, here’s the thing. There’s this guy called Chris Argyle. You heard of Chris Argyle yet?’

  Martin nodded and shrugged at a name he remembered only vaguely. Moments like this, he realized how little he did know. He heard names occasionally, but they weren’t repeated often enough in his company for the memory to stick. That was becoming a problem.

  ‘Well, Argyle runs a pretty major importing business. The guy’s growing fast, a real player these days. Not young, I don’t think, but he got into it late. People want him on their side, right, cos everyone wants the growing power on their side, you know. Now, I think – and I just think, right, I don’t know for sure – that he’s moving towards working full-time with a guy called Don Park. You heard of Don Park? Doesn’t matter, he ain’t a big deal in this job. We need to be more worried about Argyle, he’s the one we’re screwing here. So this Don Park, he’s a sort of rival of Peter Jamieson’s. It’s complicated, because Park doesn’t run his own organization, but he kind of does. The guy who controls the organization is old, on his way out. Guy called Alex MacArthur, you might have heard of him. Dying, is what I heard, but that might be bullshit. People always gossip about old folk, saying they’re half-dead and all that. Park’s going to replace him one day anyway and everyone knows it. So Argyle’s helping Park by setting up a deal with the Allen brothers. You heard of them?’

  Too many names. ‘No,’ Martin said.

  ‘Okay. They run a dealing operation, street-level stuff. Quite a good operation though. But they’ve always been ca
reful; made sure they didn’t get into any battles they couldn’t handle. They stayed outside of the city, most of the time. Worked their own patches. Thing is, I know they’re brewing up a deal with Argyle. He supplies, they distribute. Simple enough, but if Argyle is working with Park then it means the Allens are taking sides.’

  ‘Against Jamieson,’ Martin said, getting the hang of it.

  ‘Exactly. Exactly. So there’s a lot of people with an interest in seeing that little venture fail. Big people.’

  ‘So if we do something against Argyle, there are many others to take the blame.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve got it, wee man, got it in one go. No one’s gonna finger us; they’ll be too busy chasing after Jamieson’s men, or some other organized mob. Whole list of better candidates to get through before they’d even think of little old you and me.’

  ‘Which means nothing if there is no job,’ Martin said. He was here for detail that hadn’t yet been forthcoming.

  ‘Well of course there’s a job. I wouldn’t have called you up if there wasn’t a fucking job. You’ll no get me crying wolf, I’ll tell you that. I have a job. All planned out. See, this is a big step for them, the Allens especially, and they’re not working face to face. They’re using other people to set up the first deal for them. What do you call them, intermediaries, right? Third parties. Keeping a layer of someone else’s flesh between them this first time. Cash handover for a large supply.’

  Martin leaned forward in the deep chair.

  ‘Thought you might like the sound of that,’ Usman said with a smile. ‘I know who’s doing the handover on each side. The Allens have got a woman called Sarah McFall working their end of it, but she’s no good. Too sharp. She knows what she’s doing. We won’t get it easy off her. The guy Argyle has working his end for him, that’s our target. Aiden Comrie. Been a street dealer for years. Must have lucked out and made some sort of connection with Argyle to be able to work a deal this size. This is way over his head. Guy’s a bit of a moron; he should be easy to pick up. He’s the man we go for.’