Waging War To Shake The Cold

by Wild Wolf Publishing

  “Just a wee bit of info from a pal, doll. That arsehole Crossan has been freelancin’ it seems, but his wee bit of fluff has been freelancin’ as well, so I think we’ve mibbe got somethin’ tae slow him down a bit.”

  “Ah thought it might have been Kats. D’ye think he’ll phone the night?”

  “He’s a hard yin tae figure out is that one, but whit’s he gonnae do? He’s got nowhere tae go so he’ll do a deal.”

  “Whit kinda deal will he do then?”

  “Ach ye know that the Geary’s have’ been shaftin’ us for ages Mary. They get their stuff direct from out there, some guy in the UN has them hooked up, and we just cannae compete. We need tae get our own direct supplier and these soldier-boys are definitely the way in.”

  “Bit how are ye gonnae get it back?”

  “Ach ye remember that Johnny Depp DVD ye made me watch with ye?”

  “Whit one was that?” Mary was a big Johnny Depp fan.

  “The one wi’ the cocaine, whit was it called, Blow? That the one?”

  “Whit about it?”

  “Well that was whit gave me the idea hen. He was bringin’ back the drugs usin’ the American Army when they were in Vietnam. It just seemed so obvious. They soldier-boys are the guys on the ground and they’re the guys with the equipment tae get it back.”

  “But yer’ surely no’ gonnae bring it back in the coffins Davie?” Mary’s voice had risen in alarm and it was all she could do to stop herself from making the sign of the cross.

  “A course I’m no’ Mary! Whit do ye think I am? Tae be honest, I’ve nae idea how they’ll get it back, none at all. That can be Kats’ problem even though he disnae know it yet.”

  “Ah thought you’d told him that all ye wanted was a phone number?”

  “Oh ah did, but then he’s into me for a lot more than a phone number. He’s got nae way of payin’ me back so we’ll just have tae give him a few options.”

  Mary chuckled, “Always thinkin’ Davie, yer always thinkin’. I’ll put the tea on.” She got up and waddled off to the kitchen, singing tunelessly as she went.

  Chapter 24

  Lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling, tired from the overnight drive up, but the adrenaline of the situation keeping sleep at bay, he shook his head and smiled ruefully.

  Badger might come across as if he hasn't seen the ball since kick-off at times, but just as often he had the capacity to make just a little too much sense. It hadn’t occurred to him that once Big Davie had his claws in him he would simply dig them in deeper, not until Badger had stated the bleeding obvious that was.

  “Shit.”

  He ran through Badger’s options again. The nuclear one really wasn’t viable; he couldn’t just ride into Dodge and start blasting, much as the vigilante soldier in him wanted to. Up until now the police were being kept at bay, probably because Big Davie had been sprinkling cash liberally over them in the hope he’d be collecting it all back in due course.

  If he started leaving dead bodies all round the place, then things would tend to escalate a tad, and no amount of sweetners would help. He’d rather take another tour of duty in Iraq than spend the rest of his life in the Big Hoose.

  Mind you, he’d have plenty of company with anything up to a quarter of the inmates at Her Majesty’s pleasure being ex forces guys. But no, that was not at all appealing. So that little reality check effectively killed off both Badger’s option one and his option three.

  So that left option two: give Big Davie what he wanted. He had the contact number for this Saleem guy now and Badger had made it totally clear that it was his call; whatever he wanted to do was fine by him.

  Mind you, he wasn’t entirely sure Badger would even remember any of the conversation, because once it was all laid out he’d drifted off and spent the rest of the evening tinkering with an ex SAS C8 Carbine.

  He’d headed out on poacher patrol with it and Kats was genuinely fearful he might even be tempted to crack off a few rounds at the poachers just to make sure the sights were true.

  There was maybe another option: he could just disappear. If he could get completely away, out of the country, out of Europe, he would be out of Big Davie’s reach. The Costa Del Crime would never be far enough, South or Central America was a better option – flimsy extradition treaties, a lot of country to vanish in and easy to get to from Spain or the USA.

  Probably better to go through Spain as the US Immigration guys could get a little nosey post-911 and guys travelling on single tickets were a dead cert to be pulled over and questioned. South American women were a lot better looking than the slappers on the Costas. Bonus.

  He’d done some basic training in Belize and that would be a great initial jump off point for sure. Trouble was, he’d need money, a lot of money to do it properly, and money was the one thing he didn’t have.

  And what about Isa? He couldn’t just leave her there. Apart from her failing health, there was now the very real risk of a spite attack, hadn’t it been spelled out to him in as many words?

  So far Big Davie hadn’t sanctioned any attacks on close family, apart from having Frank smacked about good style. That was no bad thing mind; he was a wanker was that Frank and he needed a good skelp to wake him up, but Isa was different and Kats was under no illusions that she would be targeted if he skipped off leaving this hanging. It would be done as a very public lesson to others who thought they could get one over on the boss. Just business, nothing personal.

  “Think Kats! Think. There has to be some way.”

  If he could get enough cash to pay off Davie he knew that would get the heat off Isa, but it wouldn’t protect him. He’d still need to be away from here, if only because DJ and Boots would be after him as soon as the Big Man let them loose. That upped the ante even more. He could try to pull off a major robbery, but that would take a lot of planning and it could so easily go wrong. Plus, even if he did get away with it he risked being hunted by Interpol forever. He could always win the lottery… it was getting silly now.

  He remembered the woman’s diary. Hadn’t there been something in it about figures and money? He got off the bed and went to the corner where his pack was laying on the floor to retrieve the book, then laid back on the bed and switched on the reading light. He turned the pages to the back where he had seen the ledger entries and examined them more closely.

  Each page was meticulously lined and ruled and the entries were neat and tidy, but there was no hard information in them to connect anything with anyone. The pages all had totals at the bottom with a running total carried forward to each new page, all of which accumulated to a very large number on the last page. And if that number was in pounds sterling then it was well over £5 million. That could be enough to gain a bit of leverage on the guy, especially if it was ill-gotten.

  The problem was, though, he couldn’t make head nor tale of any of it. He flicked through the rest of the book looking for anything that might help him decode it, but there was nothing obvious.

  He found a separate section laid out as an address book but again the names and contact details meant nothing to him. This was hopeless, but it was all he had. There was nothing else for it; he would have to read through each of the pages to see if he could find clues to help him make sense of it.

  It took him all night; most of it was the height of tedium and although he never cracked the code of the initials, he did find at least a starting point. The name Crossan came up over and over in her ramblings and he surmised this was who the woman had worked for. She certainly had had no love for him.

  The guy was apparently having marriage problems and having an affair with someone in the office. He was also keeping a double set of books. That was not the actions of a man who was dealing from a straight deck. Helpfully enough, his address and phone number were in the diary.

  Kats turned the information over in his head. Maybe, if this guy did have his hand in the cookie jar, he could be persuaded to part with some crumbs. He needed time though; a
n operation like this couldn’t be run on the drop. First he’d have to put Big Davie to sleep.

  He would go along with his request and pass along Saleem’s number. It would take them a few days to establish contact and start setting things up. That could give him enough time to at least check out this Crossan guy. It had possibilities at least. A man in his position needed possibilities.

  He picked up the phone.

  Chapter 25

  The mobile rang again, for the fifth time in ten minutes. He looked at the caller display with resignation and pulled over to answer it.

  Bugger, what the hell does she want?

  “Yes? What is it now Sophie?”

  “I see you’re in a good mood.” Her acid thin response irked him even more.

  “All the better for hearing your sweet voice, my love,” he muttered, the sarcasm coming easily and habitually now. “I am busy, get to the point please.”

  “I want this month’s money, that’s the point. You know the rules and you know the deal.”

  “I’ve already told you, and your brief, you’ll get it as soon as I have it.” He answered in a tight staccato, through clenched teeth.

  “You’re late with it and you know you are,” she spat. “I want that money in my account by the end of the day or I will invoke that court order and arrest your bank account. Don’t push me on this Nick, we had a deal and you know it.”

  “Look Sophie, I have told you and told you and told you, things are tough. Business is down. I don’t have the money right now and just as soon as I have it you will get it.”

  “I bet your little schoolgirl isn’t going short,” she said. “I am entitled to that money you fat bastard and I will have what I am entitled to…”

  “Go to hell,” he interrupted, and hung up. Snapping the phone closed and throwing it into the back seat of the car. He glared at the road ahead in sudden fury. What had he ever seen in that bloody woman?

  They’d met when they were both too young of course. He’d just finished catering college and was working as a junior chef in a cheap diner, she was the head waitress. Love at first bite. Like most everyone they knew at the time, they’d gotten married in their early twenties and started on their journey of life with no money, no home, and only dreams of eternal happiness to keep them warm.

  It hadn’t been half bad either for a long while, and as Nick progressed through a variety of career options, doing an Open University course and finally ending up in banking and earning serious money, they’d had what most of their friends considered an enviable lifestyle.

  It all started to go off the rails when they’d hit forty, as so many marriages seem to. Perhaps it was the lack of the binding ingredient of children that caused it, but there are plenty of marriages where there are kids that also run out of steam so he hadn’t completely bought that angle. Perhaps things had just gone the distance. He’d long since given up trying to figure it out anyway.

  She’d told her friends they’d drifted apart emotionally; he’d told his pals she had just “gone funny” on him. Ultimately neither could explain it to the other, but it didn’t seem to matter, they both knew it was over.

  They’d kept it together for quite a while, basically going through the motions, but eventually it came to a head and four years ago they’d formally separated.

  Initially it was amicable and they’d sorted out their personal effects without too much acrimony or hurt, but when Sophie heard he was seeing a younger woman she seemed to go crazy.

  Maybe she’d harboured notions of a reunion. Maybe it was just sheer jealousy that someone else was enjoying the life she used to enjoy. Maybe she was incensed that she was replaced so quickly with a younger model. Whatever it was, she’d responded by sending in her lawyers hard, and Nick had found himself in a maelstrom of writs and accusations.

  The situation had degenerated rapidly until eventually they had both forgotten why or how they had ever been in love in the first place. He’d agreed an interim settlement prior to a full divorce which involved monthly payments to her to cover “essential expenses”, as it was put by her lawyers, and since that had been agreed in front of a Sheriff it wasn’t something he could legally just stop doing.

  He hadn’t paid her last month, even though he’d borrowed the money from Big Davie fully intending to do so. The casino and the card tables had sucked the money from his pockets, leaving him even more indebted to Davie, and under even more pressure from The Witch.

  Fingers drumming the steering wheel, he rolled up to the red light at Moodiesburn. The panic was mounting again and his chest and head felt tight. Breathing deeply and rhythmically, like he’d been shown by the doctor, he slowly started to calm down.

  God, life was turning into a right a mess, but now he was so far in he didn’t know how to get out or go back. Plan A was his only option, despite the huge risks he was now taking.

  The idea had started as a way of building a tidy little nest-egg, nothing too outrageous and only at a level where no-one would notice. The golden rule was: nothing that couldn’t be covered up if he was challenged.

  He would just stash away enough to let him retire early and get him the hell out of the country to someplace where there was no extradition, just in case. Somewhere the weather was warm and where the girls were young and free. He had originally hoped to take Georgina with him, but after Davie dropped those photos in his lap that wasn’t going to happen.

  His stomach tightened again when he thought of what he had done to her. He wasn’t a violent man normally, but things were just piling up, and when Davie handed the photos to him something snapped inside.

  He’d never hit a woman before, but when he’d started on her he just couldn’t stop, finishing the whole sorry affair by threatening to cut her face if she went to the police. At the time he was emotionally shuttling between panic and fury, but now all he felt was shame.

  How could he have been so stupid? And how could he have let himself get sucked even further into Davie’s web.

  The man was poison. Davie had out that he had done him a big favour by catching her at it for him, but he could see the glee in his eyes and he knew he’d been set up, and that the other guys in Davie’s ‘business’ were all openly laughing at him.

  He remembered with clarity the first time they had met. It was in Davie’s club, not the one he had now but the first one. The one that burned down. Davie had bought insurance cover from him and had played his best pal for about six months, just long enough for him to run up a substantial slate in the hush-hush back-room poker game.

  Then Davie had come to him and asked him to clear the tab one night, just like that. That was impossible, obviously, and at first he’d thought it was a joke. However, all of a sudden his new best friend came over all heavy and he’d been nervous and out of his depth, even more than a little afraid.

  Davie then suggested something to him, a way to “balance the books” as he’d put it, only it wasn’t a suggestion at all. It was the offer he couldn’t refuse and it was backed up with a very direct threat to his kneecaps and testicles. What choice did he have?

  The police and fire services had never found the cause of the blaze, the underwriters had paid out, Davie bought his new club with the proceeds and Nick had gotten a clean slate. Easy as pie. Every insurer does this at some point or other, he’d justified it to himself at the time, whether it was a wee claim for a relative who’d “lost” a camera on holiday or had a carpet “ruined” in an accident. This was just on a slightly bigger scale.

  Not on as big as scale as Plan A was however.

  A cacophonous racket interrupted his thoughts and he looked sideways to see a small blacked out Japanese hatch-back shaking in rhythm to the sound of the ned-beats the occupants were playing at crushing volume. The lights changed to amber and the wee car roared forward, its wide-bore exhausts bellowing a futile excuse for speed.

  Nick smiled. “The kiddies want to play.”

  He floored the accelerator and the e
ngine behind him howled as his Porsche 911 responded instantly. Speed always made him feel better. Within seconds he was in line with the hatch-back and he slowed to level with it, the hoodie’d driver was staring stoically ahead affecting nonchalance but his passenger was giving him the V sign enthusiastically. He blew them a kiss and blasted off into the distance.

  Yes, Plan A was big, he smiled, but then if you’re going to be doing something risky anyway, it pays more to take a big risk.

  Chapter 26

  It went almost exactly as Badger had predicted it would. As soon as he’d told Big Davie he had a contact number for him, the Big Man simply said, “Well? Whit ye waitin’ for? Call it and set up a meeting for yourself.”

  “Are ye daft man? The guy is in fuckin’ Afghanistan, mibbe even Pakistan. How the fuck am a gonnae set up a meeting?”

  “Son, son, son,” said Big Davie. “And I thought ye were the one wi’ the imagination. Just get it done Kats, you owe me and up tae now I have been really patient with you. I’ve put up wi’ yer shite, I’ve let you away with gettin’ ma boy banged up and smackin’ about one of my best Captains, I’ve left yer family out of it, apart from that prick Frank who’s had it comin’ fur a while, and even after all of that, I would rather we kept this just between ourselves. But you need to smarten up a wee bit and keep you’re end of the bargain. How is yer gran by the way? She keepin’ well? Ye must worry about her on her own like that so much.”

  Kats’ blood chilled. It wouldn’t take much: a lit newspaper dropped through Isa’s letterbox in the dead of night. That method had proved more than effective in the past for Big Davie after all.

  “But boss, how am I supposed tae get into Afghanistan?”

  “Och you’re a smart boy Kats, you’ll work that out nae bother. An’ who says it needs to be you that goes? You must know some folk over there who can go see this guy for you. I’m sure you can make it worth their while, out of your own pocket of course. I want a direct supplier Kats, direct from over there to over here. You’re the man with the contacts so you figure it out. Your pals must get leave or whatever; they can bring the stuff back with them. Or they can figure out how to send it back for you. I don’t give a fuck to be honest son, I just want the supply put in place, I don’t want it connected with me in any way and I want it done pronto. Right?”