Every Night I Dream of Hell (3 page)

If you’re interested in how, I had taken that little stash of drugs and dirty money she turned up on my doorstep with to Ross Kennedy to handle. He worked most closely with Angus Lafferty, Peter Jamieson’s biggest drug importer, but his loyalties were made of smoke. He bought the drugs from me for less than their street value but as much as I could get in a hurry. He also cleaned the money for me, because making dirty things look respectable was always his greatest talent. Since then the money, about four and a half grand in all, had been gradually filtered into an account I’d opened to house it, waiting for Zara.

I was looking at that number and looking at the phone, wanting to call and wanting to crumple up the paper and pretend she had never existed. But I was going to call, both because I had to and because I wanted to hear her voice. I wanted to know that she was doing okay. Since she’d left the city she’d left my professional radar, so I had no idea what sort of state she was in.

The phone rang for a while before she answered it and I heard her voice, cold and flawless.

‘This is Nate,’ I said to her hello.

There was silence on the other end, the kind of heavy pause that insinuated horror. She wanted me to call so I was calling; it was up to her to say something next.

‘You got my note.’

‘It was inside my front door, so yeah.’ Talking to Zara always ripped me in half. Part of me wanted to be nice to her, let her know that I still cared. The other part wanted to make sure that she kept her distance, stayed away from me and stayed away from Becky. That was the part that usually won, because protecting Becky from Zara’s influence was my priority.

‘Yeah. Well, we need to talk. I take it you still have the money you owe me?’

Needling away, emphasizing the word
owe
as though she had done me a favour. She hadn’t; she had nearly led the police to me and had indirectly tied me to Lewis Winter through his product. It was a dangerous thing to be tied to a man whose murder was part of the MacLean confessions. It was hard to think of the last time Zara had done me a favour. Becky, I guess.

‘The money I raised, cleaned and hid for you is sitting in a bank account, waiting.’

‘Good.’

‘You want the bank details? We can make this nice and simple and you can take the money without any fuss.’

This was me giving her the opportunity to keep her distance, something I didn’t really want but that I thought we were both smart enough to understand was the best option. But she didn’t keep her distance; she kept barrelling right on into my life.

‘I want to see you,’ she said, like it was a sudden revelation. ‘We should meet up. There’s stuff we need to talk about.’

I sighed, but I kept it light enough to make sure she didn’t hear. I wasn’t looking to provoke. Maybe ten per cent of my worry was about my own feelings at seeing her again, another twenty was about whatever trouble she was going to try and drag me into, and the other seventy was the ever-present fear that she would want to talk about Becky. Whatever the split, it was still a hundred per cent of worry.

‘Where and when?’ I asked. I knew I was walking into trouble; this isn’t me looking back and thinking I could have done something different. I knew it then every bit as much as I know it now. I went along with it because that was all I could do. The alternative was no, and no meant conflict with a dangerous woman at a dangerous time.

‘Um, Wednesday, how about? I can come round to yours.’

‘No,’ I said, a little too quick and a little too hard. ‘Wednesday, fine, but we’ll meet somewhere.’

‘Neutral territory, huh? Fine, if that’s what you want. You know the Greek place right on George Square?’

‘I do.’

‘Midday?’

‘Fine.’

She made a big effort to sigh down the phone at me. ‘It’s always a pleasure to talk to you, Nate.’

She sounded like she was about to say something else but she stopped herself and I heard a door closing in the background.

‘You have company,’ I said.

‘Yeah, well, maybe now I have a chance of a grown-up conversation. I’ll see you on Wednesday.’

I hung up without saying goodbye because I was feeling petty. Resentful might be a better word for it, and disturbed by the fact that I was jealous of whoever was having the conversation with her right now. Some new man in her life, hopefully giving her a good sort of life. I looked at the letter and I thought about its desperate contents, and I knew that whatever he was giving her, it wasn’t a good life.

We were sitting in a car park outside a big plain white building. Big windows, could have been a building for just about anything, but the sign sprawled across the wall said it was for a telephone company.

‘Call centre,’ Ronnie told me, sitting in the passenger seat. ‘He’s something technical in there. I don’t know what. Supposed to be quite senior. I think that’s because most of the other people working there are students. Lot of short-term people. From what I can tell, he knocks off at five every day, goes straight home on the bus, doesn’t leave the flat when he gets there.’

‘That usual for him?’

Ronnie shrugged. ‘No idea, but it’s what he’s doing now.’

I nodded. We both guessed that wasn’t the life Kirk Webster had been living before he grassed up Peter Jamieson and John Young; just the life he was now stuck with. He was hoping that keeping his head down was going to help him stay out of trouble, like trouble ever walks past you because you don’t look it in the eye.

Kirk had helped the organization by placing fake calls in the records to implicate some people, removing real calls from the records to protect others. A simple precaution, but it was illegal and it was all about hiding much more serious crimes. The police knew it, because Calum MacLean told them, but it’s never enough to know something. They needed more proof than they had, and they managed to get Kirk’s name. They questioned him; he cracked like a dry biscuit and told them everything he knew. That added to Jamieson’s sentence and played a big part in John Young’s sentence. Young was Jamieson’s right-hand man, and the most senior organization man Kirk had met. Now Kirk had to be punished.

‘That’s what he looks like,’ Ronnie told me, holding his phone across to me. ‘You’ll not have trouble picking him out.’

Wasn’t a brilliant picture, but it showed me a thirty-year-old guy in a tracksuit, dark hair with a mini Mohawk. He looked ridiculous, easy to pick out. A man not smart enough to understand that the concept of keeping your head down included keeping your head restrained.

‘Right, you can leave it with me,’ I told Ronnie.

I got out of the car and walked halfway across the car park to where mine was parked. A couple of minutes later Ronnie pulled away and went off to do whatever things he killed time with. He had a girlfriend, Esther, who he lived with, and it seemed like he had a good little circle of friends. I wondered how long all of that would last. As secrets grow, friendships shrink.

The boring part of the job, sitting there and waiting for someone else to stick to their schedule. Which he did, emerging from the building at about ten minutes past five, walking quickly, looking around without ever knowing what he was looking for. He was scared of everything, and that was why he couldn’t see the danger. You get so wrapped up in believing that every shadow is about to jump at you that you can’t pick out the real threat.

I let him get well ahead, then drove to his flat. He lived in Greenfield, a line of old council flats running down a side road with a bashed and bedraggled bus shelter at the corner. There weren’t many cars on the street so parking was easy. I stopped at the top of the street, with a view of the bus stop down at the bottom. I could have made more effort to hide away, but your effort matches your need. I didn’t need to die of effort outwitting Kirk Webster.

Took another ten or fifteen minutes of waiting for the bus to stop and Kirk to get off. He walked quickly up to one of the four-storey buildings, dipped in brown roughcast and left to degrade, and went inside. I watched and I waited and wished I was somewhere else. This was cheap, and the world would know it.

No point sitting there wishing your superiors had better judgement. You go and you do the job, so I went and I did the job. Up to the front door, in and up the stairs to the second floor. Three doors on each floor, and I found the one I was apparently looking for, number 8. I knocked and stood a step sideways so that he’d still be able to see me when he opened the door but he wouldn’t be able to see much of me. I doubted he would recognize me, but I’m a big unit and wherever I am, I look like I’m there with bad intentions.

The door opened a couple of inches, me leaning sideways against the doorframe, watching for any sign of security. There was no chain on the door, no sign that the clown had gone to any real effort to protect himself. You’re living in fear of the Jamieson organization and you don’t even get a chain for your door?

‘Yeah?’ he said out into the corridor, still only holding the door an inch open.

‘Delivery,’ I said with a bored tone.

And he paused just long enough to let me take complete control of the situation. People always pause. Even when they’re not expecting a delivery they’re still willing to believe it might be for them. People want to believe that there’s something wonderful arriving. I spun a half-step and shouldered the door, shoving it open and Kirk backwards.

As soon as I stepped inside I closed the door behind me, keeping as much of the noise inside as possible. Kirk was back against the wall in the narrow corridor, looking at me and shaking his head.

‘No, oh no, please, no,’ was about as much as he had time to say.

I didn’t want him to start cranking up the volume, so I threw a fast punch, straight-armed, aiming for the middle of his face. It wasn’t a hard shot, but it was a silencer. Caught him on the tip of the nose and knocked his head backwards, making it bounce off the wall behind him. The shock shut him up, made him drop to his knees. This wasn’t a man practised in the art of fighting. No man who voluntarily drops off his feet when he doesn’t have to is a competent fighter.

While he put his hands up to his face, I reached out and grabbed him by his stupid hair, dragging him in through the door to his cramped little kitchen. He was whining and spluttering, blood coming out of his nose.

The kitchen was already a mess by the time I got there. Food packaging, crumbs and general assorted dirt were scattered over every surface. There was a stack of magazines on the small kitchen table that looked like they’d been there a good while. Some were tech mags, others weren’t. There was a laptop on the table too, probably used to view the same content as the magazines. Looked reasonably new, maybe bought with the money the organization paid him. The kitchen had old cream units, a cooker that didn’t look old and didn’t look used; this was a young guy not living much of a life as far as I could tell.

It was my turn to make that sad little life a little sadder. I threw him at the table. He hit it side-on and smacked into the magazines, sending them skidding off the table. He reached out and held on to the table because he thought that would help him. His legs had gotten drunk without him; he was wobbling. It was exactly what I wanted him to do, hold a position while I picked up a chair and smashed it against him. It was a dramatic move, smashing a chair against a guy, watching the legs fly off, but it didn’t do a whole lot of damage. An effective scare tactic. It also had the benefit of not having to throw a punch. No need to cut my own knuckles to make him hurt.

Did the trick; he let go of the table and crumpled onto the floor. He was saying something about how sorry he was, but even he knew that wasn’t going to help him any. He had grassed up Peter Jamieson, and that had to carry a severe punishment or Jamieson would look weak. He should have been punished as soon as his evidence was used against Jamieson in court, but the organization was too disorganized to do anything about it. But they were always going to remember Kirk. Those who need to be punished don’t get forgotten.

Kirk crawled across the floor, trying to make himself as small as possible. I let him get close to a cupboard door and swung it open, making it clatter off the top of his head and bang shut again. No great damage done, but he needed to know that this wasn’t over yet. I stood over him, placed the toes of my left foot on the edge of his tracksuit bottoms to hold his leg in place, and stamped on his ankle.

The animal scream he let out caught me by surprise. Took me all of half a second to react and kick him hard in the mouth. Harder than I’d meant to: heard the crunch of teeth and a choking sound as one or two made their way down his throat. He did his best to cough them up while I pressed my boot on his stomach to complicate matters.

We were getting towards where we needed to be for this punishment to suffice. Kirk was trying to shuffle backward on his arse, looking to get up onto his knees. I moved beside him, let him get up to his knees with his hands on the fridge-freezer, and then slammed a knee into the back of his neck. His face hit the door of the freezer hard and he slipped sideways. I caught him by the hair, pulling him up onto his feet, but he was desperate to fall over.

I opened the fridge door and failed to get a reaction; Kirk was already at the point where he would accept any punishment that took him closer to the end of the beating. I shoved his head into the fridge and slammed the door as hard as I could. There was an explosion of plastic as the little shelf on the inside of the door shattered against the side of his head. The few items that had been in it went for a fly, dropping out onto the floor when I pulled the door open again.

Kirk’s head took another couple of slams before I let him drop unconscious onto the floor. Looked like there was a little flap of skin ripped open on the side of his head, just beside the hairline. One ear looked chewed. There was blood running out of him from various places. I pushed the fridge door shut and stood looking down at him.

He was a poor soul, and if there were any thoughts running through his tiny mind right now, they would be misguided. This beating was nothing. This was a punishment that needed to be given, because the city needed to see that a punishment would come for anyone who crossed Jamieson. He got this beating, and his scars would show the world that he had gotten it. Kirk would think that this was the end of the matter. The city would think this was the end of the matter. Even the police, who must have expected Kirk to be a target, would think the punishment had been served and the issue was closed. When Kirk finally got himself out of the hospital and went back to his work, he would be happy. He would think he could go back to his normal life, the old one that was free of fear. That was the happiest he would be.