For Those Who Know the Ending

by Mackay, Malcolm

  ‘So he will have the drugs?’ Martin said with a frown. He didn’t want drugs. Stealing drugs meant selling drugs, and selling drugs meant multiplying the risk many times over. He wanted money, and nothing else.

  ‘He’ll be handing those drugs over to the lovely Sarah. As soon as she fucks off out of our way, we pick up Comrie and the money.’

  Martin paused. ‘The man and the money?’

  ‘Yeah, see, I been thinking about that. We need to buy ourselves a little bit of time, right. I been thinking about it every which way and I reckon we need to take him too. Maybe, I don’t know, we need to kill him. Maybe not. Depends on how we work it. You would be more of an expert on that than I am so you can probably make your own mind up there. But there’s going to be a shitload of money and some serious people waiting for it. If we nick it and run, he only has to make a phone call and we have a hundred mad bastards chasing after us. Everyone Argyle has working for him, for a start. Maybe a bunch of Don Park’s men as well. That’s more shit than I want on my fingers, you know.’

  ‘So we take him,’ Martin said slowly. ‘They don’t know where he is. Don’t know where their money is. They wait a little. Then they think maybe he has run with their money.’

  ‘Exactly. That he’s run off with it, or that he’s crossed over to someone else with it. Even if they think it’s been nicked, it ain’t going to be us they blame, not if Comrie can’t point the finger at us.’

  ‘And you know that he will do this handover alone? If he has people with him . . .’ Martin said, and shrugged. More people meant changing the approach completely, or abandoning it.

  ‘Nah, they’re working this alone. Just him and McFall so far. I don’t see that changing. One on each side. Makes sense to keep it that way. Safer, stops anyone getting spooked by numbers. They might have other people nearby, wouldn’t be surprised by that. People to drop them off and take them away. That’s why we have to be fast and careful about this.’

  Too many mights and maybes. Martin was shaking his head. ‘You know where this will happen?’

  ‘No,’ Usman said. Didn’t like admitting that. ‘But Comrie’s an easy tail. We follow him to wherever and we strike. It means being ready. Tailing him all the time, the both of us. It’ll be soon though. A few days, at the most. They’ve already had one meeting. Next step is the handover, surely, so we got to be on top of this right now.’

  Martin groaned a little. There were so many holes for them to fall through, so many assumptions that couldn’t be shaped into fact. This was a job that invited failure. The odds of him being on his own, out of view, long enough for them to take him and the cash were not great. The odds of them getting him and the money out of view long enough to make this clean were worse.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Usman told him, holding up both hands. ‘I know. It ain’t a perfect job. We might have to ditch the fucking thing before it even starts. He turns up at that meeting and there’s three other guys there, we might have to walk away. That’s the way the business goes though, right? This one’s a bit of a gamble, but there’s value there. I’m talking big money on this one, way bigger than the bookies. Think about what sort of money they’ll be handing over for a big deal like this. Fifty grand, minimum. I ain’t going to get myself killed over my half of that, but I’m going to have a look and see if it’s gettable, you know.’

  There was a slightly pleading tone in his voice by the time he finished. Trying to be reasonable, make it sound like there was nothing they disagreed on about this job. Martin didn’t say anything, not for a long time. He was piecing it together, working out all the terribly sensible reasons that he shouldn’t do it. Even if Comrie was alone, there was a chance the handover could be somewhere public. Not very public, not busy, but somewhere Comrie’s probable backup could keep watch. If they were seen taking him there would be a chase on, which was the last thing they wanted.

  But there was one reason to do it. Twenty-five grand, minimum. Put that together with the savings he already had and that would push them up over thirty grand for a deposit. A chance to have the house to themselves. An investment in the relationship. Putting roots down.

  ‘We will start this job,’ Martin said. ‘Maybe we will not finish it. Maybe it will become as silly as it sounds right now. We watch this man, and if the chance is there then we do it. We don’t force it, not if it’s not going to be easy. Not if it’s going to turn into the wreck it sounds like. But if it doesn’t, if there is a chance that we can do it and do it well, then we will do it.’

  Usman grinned. He had him. A risk this big and Martin was still on board. That meant he was determined, or desperate, to make the job happen. That was as much as Usman could hope for.

  14

  Gully had the unenviable task of watching the flat first. That was the problem with being the part-time, lower-ranking guy now, he had to take the shit jobs Nate gave him. No longer dishing out tasks like he had in the old days, working for the Knights. Back when Gully was the man.

  He was there watching when Martin Sivok arrived and when he left. Gully didn’t recognize him. No reason why he would, they had never met without Martin being in a balaclava and the short man didn’t have a profile in the city. He was just some random guy going into the building that Usman Kassar lived in. But everyone going into that building was getting their picture taken, no matter how unlikely they seemed. Nate was very firm about that.

  Nate was still mightily pissed off about the job at the bookies. It didn’t worry Gully so much, these things happened in the business and time taught you to roll with them. His reputation didn’t matter much to him any more either, and he wasn’t going to lose sleep over Peter Jamieson losing himself some money. The man was rich enough to dry his tears with a fifty-pound note.

  At times of failure Gully was more than happy to consider himself part-time, semi-retired. Lisa, his wife, knew that he was doing some work again. She objected, as he’d expected. The silent sort of disgust she was good at. He understood it, understood her hatred of his old life, but they needed money, and he was good enough at this that he could make a living without even making an effort. Working with Nate, an experienced guy that he liked and trusted. It was easy.

  Not for Nate. Wasn’t easy for the security consultant when a place he was supposed to be protecting was knocked over by two persons unknown. Worse still when he happened to be there at the time and didn’t do anything smarter than get hit on the head with a hammer. That sort of thing could put a dent in any reputation, even one as ironclad as Nate’s. Nobody knew, yet, which was a relief. They could find out though, and Nate wanted this sorted before they did. If the world knew that two people had robbed the place while he lay on the floor and let them, it would be shocked. If it found out the two people responsible had already been punished with stomach-churning severity, it would not be surprised at all. Image protected, and image was vital for Nate.

  Gully thought about the poor sod of a bookie, Donny Gregor. Took him to the doctor’s on the night, the man struggling to stay awake and mumbling all sorts of rubbish. He had pretty bad concussion, apparently. Suffered from blackouts for a couple of weeks afterwards as well. Should probably have gone to a hospital and gotten proper medical attention, but he was too scared. Terrified of Nate’s reaction if people found out about the job at the bookies because of his medical treatment. That’s why he only got the half-arsed treatment the organization doc gave him, which didn’t seem like enough to Gully, but you couldn’t persuade the bookie of that. The business ran on people like Gregor living in fear of people like Nate.

  After a day spent watching, Gully went round to Nate’s house with the photographs. They sat and looked at them. It was strange, being at Nate’s, seeing the few little items that reminded you of his daughter, Rebecca. She was eight or nine now, about the same age Sally was when she died. It was a strange feeling, not unpleasant, but not one he wanted to linger on. There were occasional signs of the woman in Nate’s life as well, K
elly. Those were more amusing to Gully.

  ‘About time you got yourself a woman to shave the sharp edges off you. Hell, you’ll be cuddling those bastards from the bookies when you catch them, all happy like you are.’

  Nate gave Gully a cold look.

  ‘And all that bedroom business you’ll be enjoying, that’ll knock a man of your age flat. You sure you can handle this?’

  Nate muttered something, pressing the buttons on the small digital camera Gully had used to make sure he wasn’t spotted. Gully just chuckled.

  ‘This guy,’ Nate said, pointing at the picture of Martin. ‘We know who this guy is?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Looks quite wee, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He was, yeah.’

  ‘Looks about the right size to be our man in the mask. If Kassar’s working a job then this guy might be his partner.’

  ‘Might be,’ Gully said, ‘or he might be some random wee guy who’s having it away with the woman on the ground floor. Or maybe he’s the brother of the guy on the second floor.’

  Nate sighed. Gully was right; you didn’t make flimsy assumptions on the basis of one photo.

  ‘We need to sort this out, good and fast.’ Nate spoke quietly, serious now.

  ‘Need to decide what we want from chasing this Kassar boy first,’ Gully told him.

  Years gone by he would have agreed with Nate. You know one of the people responsible, you go round and you flash your brutality at him. In the process, you make sure he tells you who his partner was. It’s quick and easy, little room for mistakes. It achieves your priority of punishing the people that made you look weak, but that’s it, that’s all you get out of it. Nothing more than damage limitation.

  ‘So what do we want to get out of it?’ Nate asked him. His tone suggested that he already knew exactly what he wanted, and that there wasn’t going to be much room for argument.

  Gully smiled. ‘It’s your call. The boy cracked your head, not mine. Mine’s in the same glorious condition it’s always been in. But you might want to think about what those two pulled off. They did a good job, you can’t argue with that. They knew what they were after when they went in there, knew what would be there, knew who would be there. They pulled off a neat job. If we hadn’t got there so quickly it would have been textbook. As it was, they still got out with the money when two old troopers like us were there to block them. I think that’s something to consider.’

  Nate looked at him with a slight frown. ‘I’m not sure what exactly I’m supposed to be considering.’

  ‘One of them managed to set that up. One of them was armed, which suggests a pro gunman to me, or at least someone who could become one. A kid with a gun in that situation and he had the sense not to fire it. The two of them know their business. All I’m saying is that it’s worth keeping that in mind when you go and talk to them. And there’s another thing.’

  ‘Oh is there now?’ Nate smiled.

  ‘There is, yeah. If their next job is against us, then we stamp on it. That’s our job. But if their next job is against someone else, well, maybe we have an interest in letting them go ahead. Maybe we have an interest in helping them work jobs against other people. Weaken our enemies, that sort of thing.’

  Nate didn’t seem to like it but Gully didn’t care, it made sense to him. You want to harm your enemies, that’s great, but find someone else to do it for you. Don’t put the full load on your own shoulders when there are donkeys nearby willing to take some of the strain.

  Nate let Gully leave the house without committing to any sort of an answer on that score. The first thing he needed to do was get hold of Usman Kassar, sit him down and talk to him. Somewhere quiet, somewhere Nate could do the work he was so good at. He knew just the place, a disused garage he’d made use of once before.

  That’s what had the two of them sitting outside Kassar’s flat the following day, watching the door. Nate was directing everything, asserting himself as the man in charge. It felt weird, being the senior man when he had Gully Fitzgerald next to him. Back in the day it had always been the other way round, the older man using his practised judgement in tough situations. Gully didn’t make it difficult now, that wasn’t his way, but Nate couldn’t get the thought that Gully knew best out of his head.

  ‘I don’t think he’ll run,’ Nate said quietly.

  ‘I’ll not put my hard-earned money on it, if you don’t mind,’ Gully said with a smile. People were daft to begin with, so you make a daft person scared and you have no idea what reaction you’ll get. The most sedate people in the world turned into runners. Lovers became fighters. Nate knew that too by now, all the people he’d encountered.

  It was a little after nine o’clock in the morning when Usman emerged through the front door and walked down towards his car. Nate was in the driver’s seat. He opened the door, stepped out onto the street and started to move towards the target. Gully watched him from the passenger seat. Settling in to play the role of appreciative audience, ready to participate should the cast go off-script and need help. Nate was quick for a big man, moved softly along the row of cars parked at the side of the street.

  Usman had a bounce in his step as he made his way down the stairs and out the front door. This close to having the short-arsed gunman work the job with him. Still might fall through, but he was starting to think he was a little too lucky for that to happen. The job on the bookies worked. This job would work. Just needed a good pickup point for the dealer and it would be note-perfect.

  He pulled open the front door and skipped out of the building.

  He had a habit of walking with his head down, shuffling along the pavement and looking at his feet as he went. He’d moved through the gate and onto the pavement by the time he bothered to glance up and see what was around him. Cars parked along the side of the street as usual. Someone walking on the road, a big man. Usman assumed he was crossing. Took a split second to realize the man was walking along the far side of the cars to keep himself out of Usman’s view. A big man hiding, getting closer, Nate Colgan. Nate fucking Colgan.

  Colgan moved between two cars and onto the pavement. Usman stood and looked at him. He could feel a stupid look of horror spread across his features, but he couldn’t seem to persuade his face to smarten up. Colgan stopped a few feet in front of him.

  ‘Usman, I want you to relax. I want you to come along and talk to me about something. You don’t need to worry about it, nothing bad is going to happen to you. It’s just me and I just want to talk to you about a friend of yours, that’s all.’

  Usman nodded. The most dangerous man in the city had a damn good reason to hate him and he was standing in front of him, telling him to do something. Of course he was going to nod.

  ‘I’m parked down this way,’ Colgan said, gesturing towards the bottom of the street. He stepped back to let Usman move past him, Colgan tucking in behind.

  Usman walked ahead, looking down the street and not seeing anything threatening. He could hear Colgan behind him, keeping close. They were about the same height, well over six feet, but Colgan was much heavier, more muscular. Usman was thinking about Colgan as he walked. Older than Usman by at least a decade, maybe a decade and a half. Wouldn’t have a gun on him, wasn’t that sort of madman. With a few seconds of a head-start, Usman figured he could sprint away from this guy. If he picked the right moment to run, there was a chance. Any chance was more attractive than the thought of being tortured by Colgan.

  Usman looked at the pavement, listened to the footsteps behind him, and then bolted. Took long, leaping strides as he sprinted down the street, hearing the growl from behind him as Colgan started to run. The footsteps sounded like they were falling behind, Usman finding a turn of pace he’d never known he had. No way Colgan would have caught him, but Usman hadn’t seen the extra man sitting in the car. He should have gone onto the road and across the street, moved away from the place Colgan had told him to go. He wasn’t thinking clearly enough for that. He ran alongside the cars
parked beside the pavement. Ran alongside the one Colgan had wanted him to get into. The passenger-side door of that car opened just in time for Usman to crash right into it.

  Gully opened the passenger door a second time, just as Nate reached Usman and grabbed him by the collar. Then he opened the back door of the car for Nate to shove the boy in, Gully dropping in beside him. A panting Nate got into the driver’s seat, fumbling the switch as he got the car started. Usman sat silently, looking sideways at Gully.

  ‘Good to see you again, young man. Been a while,’ Gully said with a smile, and Usman grimaced.

  They drove in silence. Usman had nothing to say, the situation was bad enough without his mouth making it worse, something one wrong word could do. Nate was concentrating on driving and cooling his temper, annoyed with the boy for running and with himself for not keeping up.

  The place they were going to use had been empty for a long time. Years, probably. Nate had said there was a garage and a workshop, and that the workshop would be ideal for this. It was out back, away from the street, away from where anyone would hear a scream. If the boy tried to break loose, run for it, he would have to get out of that room and through the garage to make it to the street. The place was shut up when they arrived, the garage door locked, but Nate had a key.

  Gully watched from the back of the car, Nate unlocking the door and pushing it up and over. Gully kept half an eye planted on Usman, waiting for him to do something else stupid. If he was going to, now was his last chance. Once they were inside the decisions were all Nate’s to make. But the kid didn’t look like he was going to do anything, sitting there, looking more impatient than anything. Looking like someone with something to say and wanting his moment to come soon. Gully hoped that when he did open his mouth, something smart fell out. Nate was looking for punishment, but a smart person could protect themselves from that with the right speech. Last thing Nate was going to do was cost his employer money by putting punishment first.