For Those Who Know the Ending

by Mackay, Malcolm

  That was the punishment. Work every job as though you’re an employee of Peter Jamieson without having any of the benefits of actually working for the man. That was the high cost of stealing thirty-two grand from him. Colgan hadn’t mentioned paying the money back. He would have, if it had just been about the beating. Every penny would have gone back, maybe with a little interest tacked on to act as compensation to the bookie. Now they were letting Usman and Martin keep the cash, but Usman was going to have to earn it.

  There had been a knock on his door a few minutes ago. Usman didn’t think a lot of it. People were always coming to see him, his brother, friends, Alison, Martin. Could have been someone looking to set up a job and hoping he would work it with them, that still happened even while he was lying low. He pulled the door open to find Gully Fitzgerald filling up his doorstep.

  ‘Come in,’ Usman said quickly.

  Gully smiled and stepped inside. He was on his own, dressed like a middle-aged man out for a stroll in the sunshine. He looked so innocuous, if you didn’t know him. But there were stories about Gully as well; he had a reputation of his own to scare the children with. And it didn’t matter how far removed he was from the worst of those stories; he was still a big unit. Broad, tough, ready to knock you around if you happened to annoy him. The smile was designed to make you think that nothing could annoy him, that you were always safe. But it was a trap Usman had seen others use before.

  ‘Something the matter?’ Usman asked.

  ‘Nothing the matter with me,’ Gully said in his usual cheerful tone. ‘Just that me and Nate think now would be a good time to go over some of the details about this job of yours. See if there’s anything we can provide that gives you a better chance, you know. Make sure you have a proper chance of making it happen.’

  ‘I do,’ Usman said, trying to get a little cheerful confidence into his own voice. It would be good to have matching tones, he figured. Cheerful attitudes walking forward hand in hand in the spirit of newfound friendship.

  ‘Aye, well, you might. I’m not saying you don’t, but we can help to make sure that this job happens, and happens properly. That’s a help to you, wee man, and you shouldn’t be turning help away.’

  They had gone through to the kitchen because that’s where Gully had wandered unchallenged without knowing where he was going. He was sitting now at the small breakfast bar, looking back at Usman who was still standing in the doorway.

  ‘So,’ Gully said, ‘details.’

  Usman sighed to illustrate his reluctance, and then gave every detail he could think of. ‘We’re tailing Comrie right now. He’s at Argyle’s office as we speak, I figure that’s them either giving him the stuff or telling him to set up the meeting before they give him the stuff. So we’re a couple of days away from it happening, tops. They won’t want this dragging on, not when they’ve got a dipshit like Comrie handling the handover. Longer he’s involved, better chance of the whole thing going tits up. Once we know he has the stuff, the two of us will track him constantly. They’re going to do the handover somewhere private. So we’ll go and watch. We’ll try and make sure that we don’t go anywhere near the Allens’ employee, keep them out of it. Safer that way, you know. Pick up Comrie and the cash after the handover and take him away, out of sight.’

  ‘Take him away and . . . ?’

  ‘Kill him, I suppose. Would be better if we didn’t have to, but I don’t see a way around it. We want to get him out of there, give ourselves enough time for them to think he’s done a runner, go looking for him. No way of taking him quietly without him seeing us. That means there’s only one ending for him if we want to stay anonymous. Can’t take him and then let him go, that doesn’t help us, so we kill him. That’s what Martin used to do, back in the old country. He was a gunman, and a bunch of other stuff, so we can handle that.’

  Gully nodded. ‘You think you have a chance of persuading them that he’s run?’

  ‘If he does the handover alone, then disappears with the cash, yeah.’

  ‘He might do the handover alone,’ Gully said with authority, ‘but he’ll be watched. A man like Argyle isn’t going to let some random dealer go off-radar with his gear or his cash. He’ll be watched all the time. That’s why you’re going to need some backup for this.’

  Usman began to look doubtful, then doubted himself instead. ‘You think?’

  ‘Aye, I do, son. So you’ll need someone to watch the watchers, make sure they don’t nip in and block you off. We can take care of that. You and your man focus on what you’ve got to do. Track him; find out exactly where it’s going to happen. The second you know, you call us. I don’t care if that blows your cover with your mate; you’re not getting this done safely without us. Then you go and pick him up as cleanly as possible. Get the cash, keep it. Kill him. That has to be done, there’s no way out of this job otherwise.’

  Usman nodded. ‘Sure, yeah.’

  Gully got up and smiled at him. ‘We’ll be waiting for your call then.’

  He let himself out, strolled back to his car. Gully wasn’t in any rush, never was these days. Nothing to run for. Back when he was young, man, he never slowed down. Life was lived fast enough to blur at the edges. Attacking targets and intimidating everyone. Never kept track of days because they buzzed past at such a speed. Living fast was the only kind of life that mattered. But life found a way of slowing him down eventually. Meeting and marrying Lisa, trying for a kid for years. Then Sally came along, and Gully started thinking about surviving, rather than living. The priority was making sure he was around to see her grow up; protect her from mean people like him. Then she was stolen away from him anyway. He hadn’t been motivated to live fast since. Life blurred only because he drank so much.

  He would go and see Nate, tell him about the meeting with Usman. Let him worry about the details; let him worry about the dangers. There would be dangers to the job as well, Usman was gambling on this one and even the best-case scenario involved some kind of trouble. If he didn’t have Nate and Gully breathing down his neck, he would probably have a contingency plan to pull out of the gig. Let the deal happen without interference. Couldn’t do that now, no way Nate would let him. Usman was going to have to go through with it, whatever danger turned up to join him, and Gully and Nate were going to make sure that he could. They would have to work security for this job, and keeping a gunman and a thief safe from some established dealers was going to be risky. Riskiest job Gully had worked in years.

  He wasn’t nervous. It was the politics of it that always got under his skin. Taking risks with your own life for the sake of some employer you hardly knew. Shit, Gully had never even met Peter Jamieson, wouldn’t get the chance until he got out of prison. You weren’t even taking risks to protect that employer, just to shore up the profitability of his business. That’s all this was, taking lives so someone else could make money. It was always that way. Used to be that Gully could accept it when he was making some money for himself, when he was earning for someone he knew and cared about. Old Danny Knight had been a likeable boss, treated him well. Money didn’t seem like enough any more. Still, he would do it, because he had told Nate he would.

  Nate had known for a while that Chris Argyle was cosying up to Don Park. Holding Don Park back was a priority. If he had Argyle supplying him, at a time when the Jamieson organization was struggling to replace its former supplier, that would put them in a position of weakness. Then you pile the Allens on top of that. Argyle supplying Park, the Allens distributing for him. That was the sort of flow that turned drugs into cash quickly and effectively, a much better set-up than the one the Jamieson organization was limping along with. Simple solution. Botch their deal and strangle it at birth. Argyle loses money, big money. The Allens find out that they won’t be safe working with Argyle and Park, but they don’t suffer from the lesson. Might want to use them in the future, so don’t burn that bridge. Argyle, and by extension Park, is the enemy. The enemy suffers. You look stronger by comparison.


  Would have been exciting, once upon a time. Let’s hunt down our enemies. Let’s scupper their deals, cost them a lot of money and weaken their ties. We’ll risk our lives and we’ll piss off some very tough people at the same time. Young men would be excited by it. The drama of the fight, the money and drugs involved, the people whose futures you were changing. That’s why young men were the absolute worst ones to do it. They got excited and they revelled in it. Jobs like this should be done by people who recognized their real value. People like Gully, who understood there was nothing to get excited about.

  17

  Aiden hadn’t even seen the gear; Duffy had it in the car in a big holdall that would be handed over at the last moment. There were three of them in the car with Aiden: Duffy and two big guys who hadn’t felt the need to share their names. They were sitting in the back, looking ready for a fight. Eager for one, it seemed like, all twitchy movements and beady eyes. That worried Aiden. They might not have thought he was very bright, but he was smart enough to know that they shouldn’t go into this looking for trouble. This situation needed to be kept calm. Aiden, in the passenger seat, kept glancing back over his shoulder at them, and it was annoying Duffy.

  ‘Forget them,’ Duffy said quietly. ‘They’re here for the worst-case scenario, nothing else. They know it. You just focus on your job.’

  They were parked at the bottom of the street. Down in Govan, watching a large building that used to belong to an engineering firm and was now being converted into something else. The place was empty while the work went on. The inside of the building was gutted; plenty of builders there through the week but none on a Sunday. The street was basically empty.

  ‘You’re sure about this place?’ Duffy asked him. Wasn’t the first time he had asked him either and it was starting to grate. It was also feeding the sense of looming trouble for the two jackals in the back.

  Aiden had picked it and Sarah McFall had been happy to use it. It was a perfect spot for this gig. A big building, lying empty. It was on a corner, so Aiden could get in one side and Sarah the other without their chaperones bumping into each other, because she would have people along for protection too. Meant Duffy could watch the place without anyone seeing them.

  ‘It’s a good spot,’ Aiden told him. ‘You don’t need to worry about that. Trust me, yeah?’ Trying to sound calm, but his heart was racing already.

  They were both watching the clock on the dashboard. The plan was simple, like the best ones always were. Sarah goes in first, bang on five o’clock. At ten past, Aiden goes in by a different entrance. They make the exchange once they are both inside. Each of them will be alone, a third person appears and they walk away, no deal. They check each other’s bag, and, if everything is satisfactory, Sarah leaves. Aiden waits ten minutes and then leaves. Basic, simple, sort of thing that leaves little opportunity for error. Makes it a little harder for any random passer-by to spot something untoward. Gives both sides the chance to get in and get away without ever crossing paths. That, Aiden thought as he looked back over his shoulder again, was a particular relief.

  Eight minutes past five on the clock on the dashboard. Aiden glanced at his watch, it said nine minutes past. That was late enough. By the time he got the bag out of the boot of the car and got inside the building it would be ten past.

  ‘Right,’ he said loudly, trying to project confidence, ‘I’m away in. Give me ten or fifteen minutes before you panic.’

  Duffy looked at him with scorn, didn’t say anything. Aiden got out of the car and walked quickly round to the boot. His nerves dictated that he move fast, too much energy to look casual. He opened it and found a large blue holdall. First time he’d seen it. He had to assume that the contents matched everything the Allens had put on their carefully considered list. He lifted it out, a little surprised at how heavy it was, but it was the good kind of surprise. It felt substantial, felt like the sort of weight a big deal could be built upon. He slung it over his shoulder and closed the boot.

  Aiden could almost feel Liam Duffy watching him as he walked up the pavement towards the building. Duffy wanted him to fail, he knew it. That’s why he had those two brainless thugs in the back of the car with him. He wanted to see Aiden stumble so that him and his two mates could go running in and rescue things, like they were the heroes of all this. He was threatened, that was why. Duffy was threatened by the good work Aiden was doing setting all this up, handling the handover. Aiden knew it was fear that made Duffy hate him.

  One of Argyle’s lads had been at the building earlier in the day, making sure the entrance Aiden was planning to use was unlocked. The door had two large pieces of metal propped in front of it, the builders presumably thinking it acted as an extra layer of security. They were worried about people vandalising the site over the weekend, using the place for improper purposes. No fear of theft, anything valuable would have been moved to the security of their own yard on Friday afternoon. One of the sheets of metal had been moved just far enough for Aiden to slip in behind it. Meant that he could pull the open padlock from the door without being seen from the street.

  The place was cavernous inside. A tall and empty building, individual floors removed and dividing walls cleared before new and suitably modern units were built for new businesses to occupy. There were holes in the remaining walls, the signs of an old building being upgraded for a new purpose. There was plenty of light coming in, easy to see anyone waiting inside as soon as you entered. The ground- and first-floor windows had been boarded up, but there were plenty on what had once been the third floor that hadn’t. Sarah was standing over by a much larger door near the corner on Aiden’s left. She had a bag at her feet, smaller than his.

  Aiden smiled and walked across to her, working to keep the smile on his face. He knew it looked as nervous as he felt.

  ‘Hi, Sarah. I take it that bag’s for me.’ He’d been thinking about what to say for a few hours, how he wanted every part of the conversation to go. He had run through it so many times in his head that any deviation would throw him off.

  Sarah, wrapped up in a dark coat, gave the bag at her feet a little kick. ‘Check it,’ she said. ‘I don’t want your lot complaining about anything afterwards. Make sure it’s all there.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Aiden said, stopping in front of her. He pulled the holdall round and passed it to her. ‘Same for you. You know, check it.’ It was going as planned, although he had sounded a lot more assured in his head.

  Sarah didn’t respond to being told something she already knew. Aiden placed the holdall on the floor and unzipped it, looking inside. She was being thorough, taking out bags, checking everything against the list she had memorized. Aiden tried to copy her work ethic, but there was less for him to do. He opened the small rucksack she was using and saw three light brown paper bags inside. They should contain £71,000, he knew that. He wasn’t going to kneel there on the dirty floor, the knees of his trousers getting manky, counting every fucking note. He opened all three of the bags carefully, making sure not to rip them. They were all stuffed with cash, he could see that. Plenty of it as well, all looking legit. If he was smart he could have counted the amount in each stack and multiplied it to work out what was in each bag, but his brain couldn’t possibly move that fast when he was calm, let alone under pressure.

  Sarah took three or four minutes going through the bag, checking everything with a due care that seemed to come easy to her. Aiden stayed down on his knees with the rucksack for as long as she did, thinking it made him seem as professional as her, and long past the point where he had anything to count. She zipped the bag, grabbed the handles, stood up and pulled it round over her shoulder.

  ‘Right, I’m happy. You happy?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Aiden said, ‘totally happy.’

  She nodded, giving him another superior look. Sarah turned and pushed open the large door, slipping out into the street, leaving Aiden alone.

  Usman had provided the van. Turned up to collect Martin and took him str
aight down to Govan. They had watched Aiden pick the location, waited until he was gone before they went in and scouted it themselves. A quick look around and then planning their next move. They had agreed they would watch the building instead of Aiden from now on, Martin bringing a gun and Usman the van. Now they sat across the road, down towards the corner, watching the entrance as Sarah McFall went inside.

  ‘We wait for her to leave,’ Martin said. Couldn’t do the job with her there, so if he left first then it was just too bad, they would have to call the thing off.

  ‘Aye,’ Usman said, ‘sure.’ Didn’t sound certain, but he was playing along.

  They sat and watched the large door Sarah had entered through. It looked like a fire exit at the moment, leading out onto the side street. Chances were it would become a gleaming glass entrance for some of the companies that would work out of the site when the units were sold. Small hi-tech firms, start-ups replacing the old industry.

  ‘Be ready to run in as soon as she comes out,’ Usman said. Leaning forward in the van, his hand on the handle of the driver’s door.

  ‘Let her get away first,’ Martin said.

  The car she’d arrived in was parked up the street, two other people in it, waiting for her to return. They had to let that car get out of sight, and Martin knew they would have time. If she left first, Comrie would give her at least a five-minute head start.

  ‘When she has left in that car, you drive up and park right beside the door. Even if we are not supposed to park there, you park there. Make it as close to the door as we can get.’

  Usman nodded. That made a lot of sense, making sure the distance they had to move Comrie and the money was as short as possible.

  McFall came back out the door and walked quickly down to the car, a different bag slung over her shoulder from the one she had taken in. The deal was done, and the money was now in Comrie’s possession. The car started before she reached it, pulled away as soon as she had yanked the passenger door shut. Usman drove the van quickly towards the side door, doing a sharp U-turn in the street and then stopping.