He sat in their bedroom. Their bedroom. Not hers that he happened to spend a lot of time in, theirs. They had been talking about converting Skye’s room into an office, a chance to draw a line under the scary prospect of her returning. They were planning a long way ahead, holidays and other things. They were planning for a life together.
It was different before Joanne, when life meant being as close to death as possible. A third-rate cliché, but true. It was the most fun he ever had, putting his life on the line for the hell of it. He walked into those jobs, not overly concerned if he came out the other end of them or not. There was nothing to lose. Life was the job and if the job killed you then so be it, that was the risk you enjoyed taking. Perhaps too strong to say he had nothing to live for but his work. He had life to live for. But he never had anything outside of the job that mattered more than the job itself.
Should have had something to eat before he left, but he didn’t. Should have done all sorts of things to prepare, but he didn’t. Not this time. This time he sat and let time tick away, watching the clock through the afternoon and wondering what was taking so long, watching it in the evening and trying to work out why it was going so fast.
Which left him with another struggle. It was after eight o’clock and Joanne hadn’t come back home yet. She was staying away, probably to avoid him, make sure that they didn’t have to go through the torture of another awful goodbye. He wanted to see her again; he was desperate to spend more time with her, but not now, not in these circumstances. Later, when he got back. He would wake her up and they would talk the night away. But he didn’t want to see her right now. He was too close to the job, in need of separation. If he saw her he would get more nervous, put his ability to do the job at risk. He called Usman.
‘Come and get me, we will scout a little before we go in. You have everything?’
‘Yeah,’ Usman said, ‘I have everything. Haven’t picked up the van yet though, didn’t think we’d be going this early. I’ll need time.’
‘Get the van now; pick me up from the same street as last night. We’ll kill some time.’
Usman sounded nervous, didn’t like the idea of getting the vehicle this early. He was right not to like it. If he had any sense he would have refused, told Martin to sit tight and wait another hour and a half so that they’d have the van for as little time as possible, but he didn’t. He went along with Martin’s lack of professionalism because he didn’t have the strength to argue.
Cut the cord and cut it fast. The only way you can do it. Don’t stand around in the house, moping about the future you might have had and the person you love. Don’t risk her coming back and finding you still there, all nervous and miserable. He went and grabbed a coat and pulled the back door closed behind him. Walking quickly for a few streets until he reached the one he’d been collected from the night before. He had to sit on a wall and wait for Usman to turn up, waiting twenty minutes on a street where he didn’t belong.
22
Nate sat at the table, watched Kelly loading up the dishwasher. It had been hard, at the start, to form a proper relationship with her. Would have been hard with anyone for a man like Nate, it wasn’t Kelly’s fault. But they’d met because Kelly’s boyfriend had been killed, and Nate had always been convinced that this would cast a long shadow. For many months he resisted any attempt on her part to get close to him, too many reasons to keep her away.
Bad experiences in the past, bad experiences inevitable in the future. Nate’s life was a succession of brutal moments strung together by periods of waiting for the next dark event to arrive. Plenty of reasons not to let a woman you liked anywhere near you. But he did like her, and she liked him, and Kelly Newbury knew the business well enough to know what Nate was. There wasn’t a hint of naivety in that woman, no danger that she didn’t know the threats. It had been tentative at first, two people who’d sustained a lot of damage, who had a lot to hide from each other. But it was working. Slowly and surely, it was working, mostly because she understood his work and his life, and he understood hers. She was in the industry, organizing the storage of a lot of Kevin Currie’s illicit goods.
‘I’ll be out late tonight,’ he said from the table. ‘Got a little job on.’
Kelly nodded, turning round to face him. They had gone out for dinner to celebrate her thirty-second birthday a few weeks previously, but if she was a better liar she could convince you she was ten years younger. She ran a hand through her long dark hair, a giveaway that she was a little nervous. Kelly was tough enough now to rarely get a lot nervous.
‘Risk?’
‘Not for me,’ Nate said.
There was a time she had asked the same question of the previous man in her life, and he had given the same answer and then ended up dead. He had told her that only the person he was meeting faced any risk, and she hadn’t believed him. She believed Nate Colgan though, because if risk saw Nate coming it was likely to turn on its heel and sprint away.
‘Good,’ she said, ‘be careful.’
He smiled. If he was a careful man, he wouldn’t be working in this business in the first place, but it was nice to have someone who cared. So many nights he had wandered off into the darkness, knowing that the only person who would be concerned about his survival was his daughter, Rebecca.
That was the next challenge, introducing Kelly to Becky. That worried Nate more than anything he did in his work. He wanted them, needed them, to get along or he would never have peace of mind. If Becky reacted badly then he would have to reconsider his relationship with Kelly. He thought they would like each other though, saw no reason why not. Kelly stayed over a lot through the week, Becky stayed with him every weekend. That was when Kelly went back to her own flat, out of the way. In the next few weeks, they were going to have to think about changing that. Spending a Sunday afternoon together, something like that, just to make the introductions. Becky lived with her mother’s parents, but hadn’t seen her mother for a long time. Surely she would want to like Kelly.
‘Probably won’t be back until after one,’ he told her with a smile. Letting her know that he’d be waking her up, and if she wanted to sleep at her own place tonight, he would understand.
‘That’s okay,’ she said.
He kissed her before he left. Nate had never been tactile, had never known how to be romantic or to show his true feelings to another person, but he was trying. The effort was clumsy and sometimes made him uncomfortable, but the fact that he was trying so hard was enough.
By the time he reached his car, Nate’s mood had changed. No more happiness, no more optimism that life was going to be good and everyone was going to get along famously. He was thinking only about the next few hours, and the next few hours were work. Bad things were going to happen, necessary things. He had been pulling strings to set these puppets up for months and he needed to deliver. He still didn’t like his own place within the Jamieson organization, still didn’t trust many of the people he was working with, but he could solve a part of that problem in the next few hours.
The first thing he needed was a van. Would need to move a body in it, and all the gear required for burying its recently deceased passenger. Nate used Ross French for things like this. French had a car dealership, moved all sorts of vehicles and let Nate use one or two, now and again, for the right price. Nate had called him in the afternoon.
‘No problem, big man, you can park round the back of the building, I’ll have a van left there for you. Everything out of sight. You need anything in it?’ Ross was getting friendlier than ever now that rumours had started flying about someone in the Jamieson organization setting up a car ring. There was a gap in the market, created when the orchestrators of the previous ring got locked up, and French wanted a slice of whatever filled the vacuum. The rumour was, Nate suspected, just a rumour, but it was a helpful one.
‘Nothing else,’ Nate told him.
There were other things he needed, but he wasn’t going to get them from French, not this t
ime. He had been planning this long enough that he didn’t need to take risks with it. Get the van and nothing else from French. Maybe French could take a guess at what it had been used for, maybe, but he couldn’t be certain. Ask him to load a body bag, a couple of shovels and two pairs of gloves into the back of the van and it wouldn’t half kill the mystery. He parked alongside the silver van behind the showroom and switched vehicles. The van was spotlessly clean and empty inside, the keys under the visor as usual.
The second point of collection. If Grant Connelly had ever been anything in the business, Nate wasn’t aware of it. He was nothing more than a man with a grubby-looking garden shed and a willingness to destroy absolutely anything he found in it. The organization paid him, probably not very well, and in return if you needed something destroyed and didn’t know how to do it, you dropped it in his shed. Whatever new arrivals he found, he got rid of. He also kept things of his own in there, things that didn’t look out of place in a suburban garden shed but came in very handy for men like Nate. Shovels and large plastic sheeting. The sort of things anyone would have in their shed. The sort of things a man like Nate couldn’t keep buying on a regular basis, so borrowed from Connelly.
Connelly, a man Nate had never even seen, lived alone, in a house with a driveway right up the side. His shed was beside the end of the driveway, almost hidden under the tall trees that ringed the garden. The only person who could see you going in and out of the shed was Connelly, and he was always careful to make sure he didn’t look.
The shed was, as always, unlocked and Nate took out two pairs of thin gloves and a square of plastic sheeting. He filled a plastic bag with cleaning materials and left.
Now he drove out to the warehouse. He was driving a van whose owner would say he had permission and the only things in it could be explained away as gardening tools. Out to Clydebank and into the warehouse yard. There were a few vehicles still there, a few people still working. Only one in the warehouse they would use. Nate went in through the door beside the loading bay and nodded to the thin young man inside.
‘Ryan Deek,’ the thin young man said to him.
Must have been in his early twenties, a scrawny-looking kid hoping to make his way up the ladder. Nate had seen him working at Kevin Currie’s main warehouse, the same one Kelly worked at. This was another of Kevin’s, less used and its ownership more carefully hidden. If you told a person it belonged to James Kealing, they’d have a hard time proving otherwise.
‘Everything ready?’ Nate asked, scanning around. It looked right.
‘Yeah, everything where you asked,’ he nodded, eager to please.
The warehouse looked ready for the job, the metal shelving pushed back against the far wall to create space in the middle of the floor. Large plastic boxes were stacked against the near and side walls, giving the place a look of being busy, and some boxes were left separate in a corner on the right-hand side. Temptingly placed, and ready for a collection that would never happen.
‘Good,’ Nate said, ‘give it twenty minutes and then leave. Lock up like you normally would, nothing out of place.’
The last meeting. Nate went to the pub in the city centre where they were going to meet Usman later. Parked a street away, walked down the hill and went in through the back door and up the stairs. Hated this place, hated it. Couldn’t go in there without seeing the shadow of Kelly’s ex, the bloody splatter his brain had become on the carpet and skirting board. First time he ever met Kelly was in here, standing over the bloodstain, going to collect the body.
Nate went upstairs and into an ugly little room. Glanced at his watch; his last meeting would be in eight minutes’ time. This one would be bang on time.
Dale Duggan knocked on the door and stepped slowly inside. A fat little man, looked like he belonged behind the wheel of a delivery vehicle, which was ironic as that was his cover story. He looked nervous about meeting Nate Colgan. A lot of people did, and it was always reassuring to see. Duggan walked over to the small table where Nate was sitting and took a bag from inside his coat pocket. He was fat and unshapely enough that he could carry the bag under his coat without the package being noticeable.
Nate pulled an envelope from his pocket and passed it to Duggan, not a word spoken between them. The fat man stuffed it into his pocket, crumpling it as he did. Wasn’t like him to be nervous, he was an experienced man who worked for a good, longstanding supplier, a family business. There had been some serious changes in that family business lately, but it all seemed to have calmed down and Nate was sufficiently reassured to keep using them. Make the Bowens their regular suppliers.
Duggan nodded, turned and walked out of the room, probably glad to be away from the beast of a man he had just dealt with. A beast with a reputation that made even Duggan, a man who sold guns to killers, nervous.
Neither man had looked at what they’d been given when they were in each other’s sight. Duggan would be pulling the envelope from his pocket now and checking the money as he went down the stairs, knowing the right amount would be in there. A man like Nate Colgan, working for an organization like Jamieson’s, doesn’t screw you on cash when they have so much of it. They pay well to protect their reputation. Colgan carefully unwrapped the bag, knowing that it would have to be destroyed now that he’d touched it with gloveless hands. He didn’t touch the gun, but it was there and it looked as deadly as a gun should look.
Nate leaned back in the creaking chair and waited. When you work a job like his, you quickly learn to sit in empty rooms and stare at nothing. Patience is a much underrated skill in the world of organized crime. The things that do happen tend to be dramatic enough to distract people from the fact that much of the time nothing is happening at all. Took another twenty-five minutes before Gully walked into the room, not feeling the need to knock. He went across to the round table and sat.
‘We just playing the waiting game now then?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Afraid so.’
They sat and talked about the job, where they would take the body, how they would work it. When they had exhausted that, they talked about the holiday Gully and Lisa had gone on. It had turned out better than Gully expected, the mood relaxed and happy. He was warily beginning to think it might be a turning point for him and Lisa. She had gotten through a holiday without guilt and come back home to familiarity without settling into the usual patterns. Had her mind set on renovating the spare room, on doing ordinary things together. They talked about Becky too, because Gully liked to hear Nate talk about his daughter. He didn’t ask much, didn’t say much in response to Nate’s stories about the girl, but he loved to listen. Gully found a deck of cards in the room across the hall and they played badly for a while. They kept glancing at their watches, wondering what the hell was taking so long. And they waited.
23
Usman pulled up in a VW Caddy, stopping at the side of the road for the few seconds it took Martin to drop in. They drove in silence for the first few minutes, neither man comfortable with the other.
‘It’s too early to head out there,’ Usman said eventually. ‘I mean, I’ve got everything we need, but I don’t want to turn up there and find the lights on and some bastard working overtime to put more pennies in his pocket. We linger while he works and he’s going to spot us.’
‘Fine,’ Martin said. His tone always seemed flat to Usman, so this was no different.
They both accepted that they couldn’t go to the warehouse this early, and Usman didn’t want to stop anywhere else they might be spotted together. He had to find somewhere secluded and peaceful, somewhere they could watch the clock.
They parked on a side road, little more than a track, that had a gate at the end of it. Seemed to lead to some footpaths and had signs for cyclists and dog walkers. At this time of night there was nobody around.
‘We’ll give it another forty-five minutes, then head back to the warehouse,’ Usman said, glancing across at Martin.
Martin said nothing, looking out the window
in silence. He didn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular, didn’t seem to want to talk. Some people were like that, clamming up in advance of something scary. It was nerves; it was a pro getting into the mood for the job. It was nothing Usman needed to worry about, even if he was the opposite. His nerves loosened his already flappy tongue.
‘I got what we need,’ Usman said. ‘Balaclavas, gloves. Got a crowbar as well, big heavy thing. We crack the door to the warehouse fast, get in, grab the boxes and we get out. I’m going to time it, right, five minutes. No longer than that, even if we don’t have time to check every box. Five minutes dead.’
‘Mm-hm.’
Martin didn’t seem to care. It was starting to get to Usman, the way he was behaving. A man miraculously cured of his obsession with correct detail. He was more fun when he was asking questions and doubting Usman’s answers. Annoying, yes, but more fun than the silent lump sitting in the passenger seat, radiating a sense of impending doom.
‘Is there something wrong?’ Usman asked. If Martin suspected anything then there was no way Usman would go ahead with this. Going into that building with a gunman when the gunman knew you intended to harm him? No fucking way. That was a death sentence for the wrong man. He’d just drive him home and they’d forget about the whole fucking thing.
For Those Who Know the Ending Page 22