Death Trap: Rosie Gilmour 8

by Anna Smith

  She turned to him and smiled, then looked back out to the wheat field.

  ‘Just thinking, Matt. Sometimes, when we look back on a great day as a kid, I wonder was it really as perfect as that, or have I just made it that way in my head . . .’

  Matt said nothing for a moment, then sighed.

  ‘I think it was that perfect, Rosie. Some days as kids were just like that. And it’s good if you can go there sometimes and remember that. It’s what I do, when I see something that pricks my memory.’

  Rosie smiled. ‘Yeah. Like the Swedish girl.’

  Matt smiled, but said nothing.

  Rosie’s mobile rang, crashing in on the moment. It was Don.

  ‘Don. Have you caught Boag yet, so I can rest easy in my bed?’ Rosie’s bravado was just that, and Don probably knew it, but it was important to keep up a front.

  ‘Not yet, pal, but we’ll get him.’

  ‘Nothing new on it?’ She hoped he was calling her with a new lead. It had been the same stories the past few days, the horror and outrage revisited, but nothing to take the story forward.

  ‘No. Not yet. But I’m giving you a heads-up on something. It’ll be out on a press release later. A car has just been recovered from the Carron Valley Reservoir.’

  Rosie had to think for a moment to place it.

  ‘Carron Valley? Out towards Stirling?’

  ‘Yep. A couple of guys were fishing yesterday, spotted it and called in.’

  ‘So what’s the story? Bodies?’

  ‘No. That’s the mystery. The plates check out to an address down over the borders, but no sign of the owner. He’s a student. It seems him and his girlfriend went camping in Scotland about a week ago. But nobody’s heard from them in a couple of days. Their parents are obviously frantic now that the car has been found.’

  ‘Any suggestions of suicide or anything?’

  ‘Nope. They’re a couple of students, doing well at uni and taking a holiday. No sign of anything being wrong before they went missing. In fact, the guy has been phoning home every night as his father is having treatment for cancer, but he dropped off the radar two nights ago and they can’t raise him on his mobile.’

  Rosie felt the cold chill run through her.

  ‘Are you thinking Boag?’

  ‘Trying not to, Rosie. I hope to Christ this couple aren’t his latest victims. But we’ve nothing at all to suggest that – because we’ve got absolutely nothing, except a car fished out of the reservoir. Forensics are all over it. Looks like it’s only been in the water for a day or so, but there will be nothing much to find from it. Their camping equipment is in the car, as though it’s been stuffed in there in a hurry.’

  ‘Does it look like the work of Boag? Is it not gay men he picks up? What would he want with a young couple?’

  ‘That’s anybody’s guess. And another thing. The couple had a dog with them. No sign of that either.’

  ‘That’s weird, Don. It’s giving me the creeps.’

  ‘You and me both, darlin’. Look, I’ll give you a shout and we’ll have a drink at O’Brien’s. I’ll know more later this evening or the morning.’ He hung up.

  ‘What’s that all about?’ Matt asked.

  ‘Missing couple. Young students on holiday, and their car has been fished out of the reservoir at Carron Valley.’

  ‘That doesn’t look good, does it?’

  ‘No, definitely not. One of these ones that you just know in your gut is not going to end well.’

  Rosie punched in McGuire’s number as they headed back to Glasgow.

  *

  Tadi waited anxiously in the kitchen, having been summoned from the workshop. He could hear voices behind the door, but O’Dwyer’s was the loudest. He couldn’t work out why he had been asked to a meeting. Any instructions they gave to him were usually issued with the usual snarl from Timmy or Finn, and he rarely met the big man himself. His head flooded with worrying thoughts. Had he stepped out of line giving Ava a lingering kiss in the kitchen before she left? He hoped that whatever they wanted him for, it wasn’t to tell him that he couldn’t see his family again. That would be too much for him to bear. He wiped his sweaty palms on his dungarees and stood waiting. Then suddenly the door opened and Timmy appeared. He jerked his head for him to come inside, and Tadi approached sheepishly.

  ‘Come in, Tadi.’ O’Dwyer looked up from his desk, a mug of tea clasped in his big hand. ‘Sit down.’

  He motioned him to sit on a leather armchair. Finn and Timmy both sat on the sofa opposite him and all three faced O’Dwyer.

  ‘So, Tadi.’ O’Dwyer looked at him. ‘You enjoyed your little visit from that lovely wife of yours, eh? And the nipper?’

  Tadi nodded and half smiled. He didn’t want to look too excited or happy, as he couldn’t gauge what the mood was.

  ‘Yes. Thanks, Mr O’Dwyer. Thank you.’

  ‘Okay. That’s good.’ He paused, sniffed, and slurped a mouthful of tea. Then he leaned forward on the desk. ‘So listen, boy. Here’s the situation. You’ve been here now, how long? Three months, is it?’

  ‘Th-thirteen weeks, sir. I’m here thirteen weeks tomorrow.’

  O’Dwyer looked at him slyly. ‘You keep track. Of course, I must remember you’re a smart one. You know a lot of stuff, don’t you? Clever with your hands and your mind. You’ve worked well here.’

  Tadi wondered where this was going. O’Dwyer slowly looked from Timmy to Finn.

  ‘Okay. Well, listen to this, lad. We’ve got a little job for you to do. What you might call a special job.’

  Tadi looked at him but said nothing.

  ‘Do you understand me, boy?’

  ‘Yes. I understand. A special job.’

  O’Dwyer eyed him.

  ‘We’re going to a house. The home of someone with a whole lot of money.’

  Tadi swallowed the dry ball in his mouth. They were going to rob someone. He could feel his chest tighten.

  O’Dwyer put the mug down.

  ‘I’m not asking you to do it for nothing, Tadi. There is a big reward for you, if you do what you’re told. Do you want to know what the reward is?’

  Tadi looked at Finn, who stared back at him blankly. Timmy was lean and thin-lipped, his eyes in another world.

  Tadi nodded his head slowly.

  ‘Okay. Your reward is that you can walk out of here with your wife and the nipper and never come back. How do you like that?’

  Tadi’s gut felt like a hand had reached in and twisted it around. The very idea that he could walk out of here with Ava and Jetmir at his side was almost making him dizzy with longing.

  ‘I would like that very much, Mr O’Dwyer. Very much.’ He could feel his eyes glazing and blinked twice.

  ‘And we’ll throw a few quid to you. Make your way in the world, or go back to that shithole you came from. Up to you. But you’ll be a free man.’

  Tadi was afraid to say anything. He didn’t know how he was supposed to react. These men were vicious, edgy, and one wrong move could get him a beating.

  ‘I . . . I would like that.’

  ‘Okay. So you’re in.’ O’Dwyer got to his feet and came round the desk to stand facing him. ‘You’ll be told only what you need to know. You come with us, and you don’t open your mouth unless it’s to ask an important question on the job. You do what you have to do, and when we leave we come back here and that’s it. Do you understand?’

  Tadi nodded. O’Dwyer leaned down and he could smell the tea and cigarettes from his breath.

  ‘If you open your mouth to any of these fucking morons out there now, or at any time, it won’t be just you dead. Do you know what I mean?’

  Tadi didn’t need it spelled out. He meant Ava and Jetmir. He nodded his head vigorously.

  ‘Of course, Mr O’Dwyer. I say nothing.’

  ‘Good. Now fuck off, and we’ll let you know when the job is happening.’

  Tadi stood up and backed away. They looked at him as though he was supposed to say than
k you, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak. He turned and walked out of the room. He stopped briefly in the kitchen, where Mrs O’Dwyer gave him a sympathetic smile. He nodded in acknowledgement, then looked down as he slipped out of the door.

  Chapter Five

  Jonjo Mulhearn was awake long before the first glimmer of light spread across the sky. Today was the day. He lay with his hands behind his head, gazing around the prison cell that had been his home for the last nine years. As prison cells went, it wasn’t a bad gaff, with satellite television, a desk and an easy chair. He knew people who lived in worse bedsits, he often told himself. Life in the Special Unit of HM Prison Shotts was all right. He’d been in a lot shoddier, from stinking Wormwood Scrubs to freezing his balls off up in Peterhead jail. It had been here, for the first time in Jonjo’s considerable criminal career, spanning most of his life, he’d been able to look inside himself and see what he was. They provided shrinks and self-help groups where you could find out more about yourself than you ever imagined, if you really wanted to. And there were trades to be learned, not that he was ever going to use them. Jonjo still ran his crime world from behind bars, but learning a bit of metalwork, or how to use a computer, passed the time. He didn’t feel like a caged animal. He’d made up his mind when he got sentenced to twelve years for shooting the two wasters who’d tried to muscle in on his turf, that he’d get through his time. It was the longest sentence he’d ever been handed down, but with good behaviour and all the rest of that crap, he knew he could manage nine years, until he’d be back home to his family. It was a mindset thing.

  But all of that fell apart when the word came about Jack. His beloved Jack. Just the picture of him as a toddler still caught his chest when he thought about it. Butchered by some fucking psycho who’d picked him up in a gay bar. A fucking gay bar. He knew what people would say on the outside – Jonjo’s boy is a fairy – but he also knew they’d never say it to his face. If only he’d come to him, told him, he’d have seen the kind of da he was underneath all that shit he had to build up to keep himself top of the heap. He looked at his watch. In fifteen minutes, he’d pick up his bag and walk out the door. His brother Tony was picking him up, and no doubt there would be some kind of celebration tonight with all the faces from around the city. But it would be muted. Jack wouldn’t be there, and Jonjo would have to look his wife in the eye and tell her that life had to go on, even if he didn’t believe it himself. There was to have been retribution, and it was meant to be swift. Thomas Boag was being held on remand and had appeared in court. Jonjo had made sure all the arrangements were in place. The bastard wouldn’t see daylight. His guilt was never in doubt, so why the fuck squander money giving the cunt justice he didn’t deserve? Jonjo’s boys promised him they’d see to it, and he’d be able to read in the papers how they made the fucker suffer. Then came the sudden news that Boag had escaped. In the name of fuck! The cunt cops couldn’t even hold their own shite.

  His door clicked open and he sat up.

  ‘You right, Jonjo?’

  ‘Aye.’

  He got up and walked towards the door, taking one last look at his empty cell. He’d said his farewells to the lags last night before lights out, as they’d sat drinking tea in the recreation room. They’d been like family, or as close as you got inside. The Special Unit had been an experimental regime designed to house around eight violent and disruptive prisoners, and was first set up in Glasgow’s Barlinnie jail. It had been so successful, they built one at the newer Shotts Prison twelve miles away. Prisoners were more settled in the relaxed regime. They were still violent men, even if they’d proved they could live together in some kind of harmony.

  Normally, when one of the lifers was leaving the Special Unit, the guys would be lining up shouting their goodbyes: ‘Get a ride, big man’; ‘Knock yourself out’; ‘Kill a cop for me . . .’ But now, as Jonjo walked along the corridor, not a word was uttered, even though the boys were all there. The wee schizo, who’d cleaved a warder’s head off as he escaped the State Mental Hospital in Carstairs thirty years ago, stood with that odd smile he had, where you never quite knew if he was going to cave your head in with an ashtray or offer you a cup of tea. Another two, sent to the unit for shotgun murders, stood with their arms folded. And two of the toughest men in the jail, who were also now a couple, stood silent, their faces set. Nobody had ever judged them. Rules of the Special Unit. Whatever went on within these walls, stayed within these walls.

  Jonjo walked through the iron doors, the prison officer ahead of him, keys jangling. Then through another gate, another alarm. The crackle on the radio, then another gate opened. Then to the main area, where an officer behind a counter was waiting for him to sign for the bag of clothes he’d been wearing the day he was jailed for life. A black pinstripe suit and white shirt. He suddenly saw himself standing there in the dock that day. Now he was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, feeling fitter and younger – physically anyway. As he walked towards the huge prison exit door, it clicked open. He stepped outside into the thin morning, the sky pale grey. He was tempted to look back, but didn’t. He looked across at the car park, and saw his brother Tony get out of the car. They resembled each other, but Tony was fatter, his face bloated with drink. He watched as he walked the few steps to meet him.

  ‘You’re looking good, Jonjo.’

  ‘You’re still a fat bastard.’

  They embraced, big bear hugs that lasted long enough for their driver to be shifting around on his feet, not knowing where to look.

  ‘C’mon. Let’s get to fuck before they shout me back,’ Jonjo said.

  ‘You all right, big man?’

  ‘Aye. As right as I can be.’

  They both got into the back seat of the silver Mercedes.

  ‘There’s a wee do on tonight at the Tavern for you. Usual suspects. You okay about that?’

  ‘Aye,’ he sighed. ‘Is Mary all right?’

  Tony took a moment to answer. ‘She’s getting by. That’s all. But she’ll be glad to see you.’

  Jonjo didn’t answer. He’d be glad to see her too, thoughts of holding her in her arms and feeling his cheek next to hers. He’d only held her once – at Jack’s funeral. But even then it was with one arm, the other handcuffed to a prison officer. Once in nine years. What a fucking waste. He’d wasted it himself, and he knew that. But it was how he lived, and the truth was it had brought them everything they had. He gazed out of the passenger window at the countryside flashing by, as they began to approach Glasgow. They passed Barlinnie jail, and the big external wall he remembered as a kid trying to climb . . . the big gasworks at the other side. Memories of a lifetime flooded through him. He pushed them away. Only one thing was on his mind now, and Tony hadn’t even mentioned it. He was probably too scared to spoil the moment of freedom. But there would be no freedom for Jonjo. Thomas Boag. He was all that mattered now.

  The driver pulled off Great Western Road and into leafy Kelvinside where huge sandstone villas had stood for generations, and you could nearly smell the success. It was only a ten-minute drive from the sprawling Drumchapel housing scheme where Jonjo grew up, but it was a world away. When he’d been sent to jail, he and Mary had just bought this big house and were in the process of moving in – so he’d never even spent a night in it. But during her visits Mary told him how they’d settled in, and she’d brought him pictures of all the rooms. But even now, it felt like going into a strange house. The car stopped and he opened the door.

  ‘Nice looking gaff, isn’t it?’ Tony said.

  ‘Aye. Feels funny though.’ He looked up at the bay windows and thought he saw Mary fleetingly. He got out of the car.

  ‘Right. See you later then.’

  ‘You sure you’re up for it? Just getting home and all that. Everyone wants to see you.’

  Jonjo sighed. He wasn’t up for it. Not in the slightest. But he’d be there all right.

  ‘No problem. I’ll be there.’ He closed the door.

  As he climbe
d the wide stone steps, he heard the door locks click and suddenly the big oak door was pulled open. Mary stood, her eyes a little crinkled at the side, the blue of them piercing in the daylight. Her blonde hair was swept back and she looked fresh and beautiful, her grief hidden somewhere behind the make-up. But Jonjo could still see it. She stepped back for him to come in.

  ‘Jonjo.’

  Now he managed a smile for the first time, stepped into the hall and dropped his bag on the floor. He glanced around at the high ceiling, the cream walls and all the brightness. He and Mary looked at each other for a long moment before he stepped forward and took her in his arms. They stayed that way for a while and he could hear her sniffing a little. He felt so choked he couldn’t trust himself to speak. Finally, she composed herself and pulled back.

  ‘You must be starving,’ she said, as though feeding him would make all the pain go away. ‘And you’ll want a long, hot bath. And I’ve got a new suit for you, Jonjo. I hope it fits. I . . . I—’

  ‘Sssh,’ Jonjo said. He took her face in his hands. She was nervous. She’d probably longed for this moment as much as he did, but now she was talking on her nerves.

  ‘All in good time, sweetheart.’ He kissed her on the lips, a soft kiss, then a long lingering kiss, and he remembered how good it had been to lie with her from the very first time when they were fifteen and he stole her from the local hard man in his gang. He’d had to fight for her then and he’d fought for her all his life. Now there was just them. He held her tight.

  ‘Okay. Let’s start with the grub,’ he joked, trying to find his old self. ‘Then you can show me around our swanky house.’ They walked into the massive kitchen and he let out a low whistle at how lavish it was.

  After they’d eaten she’d shown him around and was running a bath for him while he walked around the top hall. He noticed the room at the end of the hall that she hadn’t shown him yet. It must be Jack’s room. They hadn’t even mentioned his name. Too much, too soon. He was afraid to mention him in case he would explode. As they’d eaten breakfast, he’d been talking about his plans for coming home, and all the stuff they would do. But not a word about Jack. Nothing about Boag. Now, he took a few steps towards the room and quietly opened the door. He stepped inside and crossed the carpet, gazing at the posters on the wall. Celtic, Henrik Larsson, rock bands. A computer sat on the desk. Nothing had been touched – it was like a shrine. He walked around, seeing Jack in every corner – noisy, with his mates, studying, eating. All the things he’d missed out on when he was inside. He’d seen his son on visits, and at first he’d been shy and difficult, then as he got older he got used to it. If he’d been ashamed of his da he never showed it. But it was clear Jack didn’t want his life, the life of a criminal, and Jonjo was glad of that. He was proud that he’d gone to university. He picked up a football medal from the shelf, and placed it back down. Then the blackness in his head came on, at how it had all been torn apart because of Boag. Suddenly he was aware of Mary at his back. He turned around and she stood there, tears running down her face. Jonjo went across to her, put his arms around her and held her close.