Evidence of Death

by Peter Ritchie

  ‘I don’t know what happened to the old lady. Something – but her head’s mince at the moment, so who knows? As for Danny and the old man, there’s a Belfast crew moved into Wester Hailes that seem to be taking over some of the business. Hard bunch apparently, and old Joe had some problem with them. That’s all I can tell you at the moment.’

  Baxter shifted in his seat as he realised the Flemings might just be trying to fuck an opponent for their own purposes. He leaned forward and stabbed his finger at Eddie. ‘You’d better not be fucking me around, boy. If this is a stroke then I’ll make it my business to turn your life into a shitload of misery.’

  Fleming smiled again and felt relaxed at the threat, knowing that he was holding the cards. He leaned forward and locked stares with the detective. ‘My old man and brother might be in a fuckin’ hole in the ground. God knows where, so we can’t even give them a proper Catholic send-off. My old lady gets lifted in the night, and she thinks some fucker dug them up to show her the result. If you think I’m fuckin’ around then you need to get that big, thick pig head examined.’ He sat back and let Baxter digest that for a minute. ‘The other thing is that if you play this right then I’ll come on board with you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Baxter looked confused, and Fleming started to play him. The detective wasn’t used to being played, and he didn’t like it one little bit.

  ‘I mean you do things for me and I’ll throw you the occasional skull. You make the arrests, and I feel like a good citizen doing his duty.’

  ‘A Fleming informing.’ Baxter shook his head; he’d never thought he’d see the day. He paused for a moment, but he knew a good deal when he saw it.

  What Baxter couldn’t know was that Eddie knew his old man had been an informer for years. When he was in his teens he’d come back to the house early one day and heard Joe speaking on the phone – basically sending a competitor straight into the welcoming arms of the law. He’d never told anyone and had never mentioned it to his dad, which was probably just as well. He’d thought about it a lot though and realised that to get to the top you either had to have a bent one in your pocket or a friendly one who you could do business with when it was required. As far as Eddie saw it, the police were just like them – trying to be successful in a difficult world. He didn’t know which pig had handled his old man and didn’t really care. If he could work with DS Baxter that would do for the time being. He was an out-and-out bastard, so seemed to tick all the right boxes, and he would have no problem with an attack of the old scruples.

  ‘Okay, son. I’m up for that.’ Baxter smiled across the table, knowing he was facing someone who was just as much of a bastard as he was himself, despite his youth. That took some doing in his book. He shook Eddie’s hand and the arrangement was sealed.

  Shortly afterward, Eddie left the station and walked across the road to the pub where he’d arranged to meet his brother. The place was nearly deserted, and his twin was chatting up an old barmaid who looked like she was enjoying the attention. He nodded to a table as far from the bar as he could get and sat down while Pat ordered a half of lager for him and a date with the pensioner for himself.

  Eddie shook his head when his brother sat down and pushed the drink over to his side of the table. ‘You have to be fuckin’ jokin’? That barmaid is older than our mother and looks in worse condition when it comes to it. Perv!’

  ‘Variety, my brother, is what the doctor orders every time.’ Pat waved to the barmaid, who was staring over at him as if he was her first love.

  Eddie told his brother what had been said in the station but left out the part where he’d signed up as an informant with ‘Bastard’ Baxter, as the policeman was known by most of the criminal fraternity in Leith. Pat had been pulling Joe’s team back together; most of them were on board again and had just been waiting for Joe to make a miraculous reappearance. Joe had always been the boss and hadn’t delegated to his sons, perhaps because he’d realised that handing things over to Danny would have been the end of them.

  ‘There’s something else, and I definitely think you’ll be interested,’ Pat said with a broad grin.

  Eddie looked up from his drink. ‘What?’

  Pat explained to him that he’d been stamping the card of one of the escort girls who worked for Joe. She was a Lithuanian and the best-looking of the bunch by a mile. Apparently she’d been old Joe’s favourite when he was in the mood and was game for anything, so Pat had been filling his boots with the girl and they’d formed a kind of relationship.

  ‘Think I’ve got feelings for the lassie. She’s a pro but . . .’

  Eddie put the palm of his hand six inches from his brother’s face. He just couldn’t be arsed to listen to the romantic delusions of his twin – and certainly not after he’d pulled the granny at the bar. Given that she was still beaming an enormous set of false gnashers across the room at them, Eddie could only wonder at what Pat had suggested to her.

  ‘Get to the fuckin’ point and spare me the details,’ he snapped before slugging back the beer and holding the glass up to the barmaid, who gave him the thumbs-up. He gave her a weak and insincere smile in return.

  ‘The thing is that one of the Belfast team pays her as an escort and it looks like he’s eating out of her hand. Phones her all the time, wants to go out every night and all that shite.’

  Eddie had to ask, and interrupted Pat in full flow. ‘Wait a minute. This is the woman you’re in love with?’

  ‘It’s different with me – the others are for money. Okay, I’m still paying, but she says she likes me and wants us to have a regular thing. The point is this – Belfast boy Andy Clark hasn’t done the business with her yet. He just wants to talk to her and he’s all loved-up. He’s got to be some kind of fuckin’ pervert if you ask me.’

  Eddie dragged his hand over his face and then caught the funny side of it. He broke into a smile and slapped his brother’s arm. ‘I’m fuckin’ delighted for you and think you’ll be really happy. Now give me the details before I burst into tears.’

  Pat seemed encouraged. ‘Thing is this: Clark is there for the asking if we need to take action on him. The girl is giving us the wire anytime he phones, and he normally goes round to her flat. There’s plenty of cover there if we need it.’

  Eddie nodded and saw the possibilities. He’d already considered some kind of an attack, but his plan was to make a move but stay quiet about it – confuse them and not lay down a direct challenge. The twins weren’t strong enough to take them on directly, but they could nip away at Nelson, and hopefully Baxter and the CID would stick the boot in at the same time. There was one more move he needed to put into place though, so he tossed a twenty down on the table and stood up.

  ‘I need to make a call to that mad cunt in Glasgow. Stay here and I’ll get in touch once that’s done. Get yourself a drink and you can chat up the creature from the black lagoon till I get back to you.’

  He headed for the door and his brother headed for the bar and the barmaid.

  21

  Eddie Fleming put the call in to the man who’d supplied his old man with dope for years. It had always worked well because Joe paid on time and never took the piss. There was a very good reason for that, and his name was Magic McGinty.

  Magic’s first name was actually Dominic, though few people knew his first name. Even his mother used his sobriquet rather than the good Christian name he’d inherited from his grandfather. He was called Magic simply because he used the word all the time. Everything was magic to Dominic McGinty. Sometimes it would be shortened to plain M and he quite liked that, imagining it made him sound like the head of a spy organisation.

  He was no giant – even stretching to his full height and with two pairs of socks on he barely touched five foot nine – but he was built like a pit bull, and every inch was nail hard. Brought up in the east end of Glasgow, he’d fought his way through the gang system and, like so many from the city, had used violence as a way to the top of his trade. Heavy scar
tissue bulged above both his eyes, and his nose had been flattened to a state where his greatest frustration was the ever-present problem with his nasal passages.

  His eyes were almost black and looked like two bullet holes; they never wavered, and he had a way of stressing friends and enemies alike just by staring at them. What made him different from so many other Glasgow hard men was that he always seemed to be in a good mood, smiling his way through the craziest situations, even when his own life had been at risk. The legend went that even when he was torturing someone who’d crossed him, he’d crack jokes with the condemned man or woman. One story was that as the victim passed into eternity the last thing he witnessed this side of heaven was McGinty running round the room, punching the air in front of him and shouting, ‘Fuckin’ magic!’ He’d even resigned himself to a violent end, and that was okay by him. He hated the thought of growing old, and as a lover of old gangster movies, he really quite liked the idea of going down in a hail of bullets. There was no doubt about it – Dominic ‘Magic’ McGinty was clinically insane.

  He’d sold dope to Joe Fleming for years. The Edinburgh man had put a lot of money his way, and there had never been a problem. Magic didn’t like problems; he thought the world was a bad place and if people just played by the rules he wouldn’t need to maim or kill them.

  ‘Life’s far too fuckin’ short for aggravation’ was one of his favourite mantras, and all part of the paradoxical image he’d built up around himself. Even some of the most violent men in Glasgow would break into a sweat if they thought McGinty was on their case, but Magic had met Eddie a couple of times when he’d come through with his old man and had quickly come to the view that the boy had the eye and in time would be a mover on the Edinburgh side. He had no reason to worry about dealing with Magic.

  ‘Eddie. Good to speak to you, son,’ Magic said when he picked up the phone. ‘Hearing stories that there’s a problem with Joe. What’s up?’

  ‘Hi there, Magic, need to talk offline. Would it be okay if I came through to see you?’

  Magic rarely left his home anyway and was fed up trying to make conversation with the brainless bastards who worked for him. ‘Can you come now?’ It wasn’t really a question – what he really meant was ‘you’re coming now whether you like it or not’.

  This suited Eddie, and after he’d called Pat (who, much to his disgust, was becoming even more involved with the elderly barmaid in a back room of the pub) he jumped in a taxi and told the driver to head for Glasgow. He also promised him a nice bonus if he could wait for the return journey. The driver knew the Flemings, and even though this was the younger version, he wasn’t about to argue.

  Magic had told Eddie to come to his home and that made the Edinburgh boy just a bit nervous. When he’d met him before with his old man it had always been in neutral venues or one of McGinty’s pubs. Eddie was about to deliver some news that was going to piss off his host big time, and he worried that Magic might make an executive decision to take it out on him. He tried to put it to the back of his mind; he’d elected to play a dangerous game and he had to live with it or go under. ‘What the fuck.’

  The taxi driver’s head jerked up. ‘What’s that, chief?’

  Eddie looked at the driver’s eyes in the mirror. ‘Just thinking aloud, pal, just thinking aloud.’

  When the taxi drew up in front of Magic’s home address an hour later, both driver and passenger were impressed. ‘Who’s the friend, chief?’ the driver asked.

  ‘You really don’t want to know, pal.’ That was enough of a warning for the driver to shut it, and he got the message.

  Anyone looking at the front of the house would have taken it for the home of a banker or city lawyer – definitely someone with class. How wrong they would be. Magic had been born in the worst kind of slum and had made it to a six-bedroom Victorian pile with a security system that would have done justice to the Pentagon. The first giveaway was the sign on the gates telling visitors (or the interfering detectives with a warrant) that there were several large, savage dogs waiting for them – and he wasn’t talking Standard Poodles.

  Eddie pressed the bell next to the six-foot wrought-iron gates and watched one of the CCTV units swing round and clock him. He could hear the dogs snarling somewhere at the side of the building but thankfully kept back from him.

  The gates opened and something resembling a human being answered the door. The guy must have been six five, but God had forgotten to issue him with a neck, and there was hardly a clue that he had eyes under two tight slits beneath his brow. The strange thing was that he smiled, and it was a good one for such a fearsome-looking man. ‘How you doin’, son?’ he asked. ‘Come on in. The boss is in his office.’ He had a high-pitched voice, which in a different specimen might have drawn a bit of piss-taking, but Eddie thought the man probably didn’t have many problems in that area of his life.

  Eddie walked inside and took it all in. The place had that smell of money – everything was the best and the carpets felt lush. He guessed that Magic had brought in an interior designer. He couldn’t imagine that he’d acquired this level of taste in the Easterhouse gangs.

  ‘Would you mind taking off the shoes? Magic gets a wee bit annoyed if people drag crap in off the streets.’

  Eddie wasn’t about to argue and felt his heart rate jump as he was drawn deeper into the man’s lair. He tried to imagine Magic McGinty getting ‘a wee bit annoyed’. It didn’t sound right somehow. He was in a strange environment and had no idea how it would pan out. It was a house full of contradictions: owned by an Easterhouse boy but decked out like something from Homes & Gardens, the door answered by an ogre with a squeaky voice. He thanked God that his brother wasn’t with him. He would definitely have said the wrong thing, which would probably have resulted in a series of unpleasant injuries.

  Eddie walked into the office . . . and there he was. He wanted to say ‘Fuck me’ at the bizarre scene he was confronted with but kept his mouth closed. Wee Magic McGinty was sitting behind a Victorian mahogany desk that seemed to dwarf him, but that was the least of it. Behind him was a six-foot painting of Celtic’s greatest player, Billy McNeill, in full flow in the famous green hoops. The captain of the Lisbon Lions, the first British team to win the European Cup. It was a shrine, and a Celtic scarf and jersey had been hung each side of the picture.

  Magic caught Eddie’s look and seemed pleased. ‘That’s the man, son: King Billy, the Big Man, Caesar and just fuckin’ magic. Like it, Eddie?’

  He knew that it would probably be the right side of politeness not to offend. ‘It’s lovely. Did you ever see him play?’

  Magic got up from the seat, walked round to stand beside Eddie and stared up at the picture of the great man. He was about a head shorter than Eddie but radiated energy, and Magic had no hang-ups about being slightly short-arsed – in fact it had made him what he was. He’d realised at an early age that all he had to do to compensate for being two inches shorter than the average man was to fight harder and dirtier. He put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder and said, ‘I never saw him play, but my old man talked about it all the time, and of course he became the manager so I saw him from that point of view. I expect you’ll be like your old man and support that fuckin’ pile o’ dross at Easter Road?’ He walked back round to his seat and told Eddie to sit down.

  Eddie, relieved, did as he was told. He’d felt as if a venomous creature had touched him and was uncertain as to whether it would bite or leave him alone. He relaxed back into the chair. As far as he could, he’d run through what he wanted to say in his head on the way over; every word had to count and, more importantly, not turn Magic into the screaming psychopath of legend.

  ‘What’s up then, Eddie? Tell me all about it.’ Magic pinned those black bullet-hole eyes on him and Eddie realised the stories about him had not been exaggerated. His natural instinct was to turn away, but it was clear that the man opposite would sense a lie before it had passed his lips – would see it in his eyes.

  He f
elt sweat bubble out of the pores on his back, and he shivered with cold even though the room was overheated. His body was taking instinctive action – his blood moved to his core and his skin turned pale in the ‘flight’ response. He fought it and had to sit tight, tell the truth as far as he could and spin it his way.

  ‘Relax, Eddie – we’re all pals here, and if I can help then it’ll be done.’

  ‘The thing is, Magic . . . I think the old man and Danny have been taken out, but we don’t know where they’ve been dumped. I know you made a big delivery just before they went missing, but I don’t know where they stashed it, and worse still . . .’ he hesitated before the real bad news, ‘I don’t know where the old man hides his money and I guess you haven’t been paid.’

  The sweat poured down the small of his back. He felt the Glasgow man’s eyes sear through his pupils and there was no defence. He looked towards Squeaky Voice, who stood about six feet to the side of Magic, and wondered what they talked about in their quieter moments.

  Time seemed to hang still. It was as if they’d been freeze-framed as Magic digested the words, then analysed it according to all his experience dealing with the horrible creatures that inhabited his underworld. He was a great believer in not rushing to judgement; the wrong move in his world could bring down hard-won empires.

  He walked round the desk again without speaking and put the palms of his hands on each side of Eddie’s face. His mug was no more than a foot away, and Eddie wanted to retch. In that moment he felt like a frightened child.

  He tried to close his eyes, but he couldn’t. All he could see were those black holes, and he thought about all the stories that said they were the last thing Magic’s enemies saw before he dispatched them.

  ‘You’re freezing, son; you know what that is? Fear. You’re right to feel it, and it’s a healthy sign. Controlling that fear – that shows me you’ve got balls, coming here to tell me that I’m down a hundred grand. Not many people would have dared, so you’re either very stupid, which I know isn’t the case, or you’re trying a scam – and as I said already you’re not stupid. So I’ll discount that. Let’s just put it down to the fact that you’re young, ambitious and hard, but with a bit to learn. I like you and don’t think I can say that about many people – but most importantly you weren’t lying. If I thought that, you’d already be with Joe and Danny.’ Magic looked satisfied with this assessment, patted the right-hand side of Eddie’s face and walked back to his chair, winking at Squeaky Voice on the way.