For Those Who Know the Ending (12 page)

‘Money. Quite a lot of money. It is what I got for the work I did tonight.’

‘How much is quite a lot?’ She was on a roll now, correct question after dangerously correct question.

‘There is sixteen thousand pounds there. In cash.’

Still no reaction. She sat looking at him with the same mildly quizzical expression, the look of an intelligent person putting the pieces together. There was no shock, no gasp and no horror. That was the most important thing. Sixteen grand meant he had done something significant, and she was smart enough to grasp that straight away, but it didn’t shock her.

‘So you made sixteen thousand pounds for one night’s work?’

‘I did, yes.’

This time she looked away from him, looked down at the wardrobe and then at a random place in the middle of the bed. That warned him that the next one would be a big question.

‘What sort of thing does a fellow have to do to make himself sixteen grand in one night?’

He looked at her, made eye contact. He was enthusiastic with his answer. ‘I want to tell you. If I tell you, you might hate me.’

‘I won’t hate you.’

‘Okay then,’ he said, nodding. ‘I will tell you. Tonight I worked with another man to steal that money. We took it from a bookmaker’s shop. We broke in and we took the money from it. That is my half of what we stole.’ He had been speaking quickly, excitedly, his desperation to share with her obvious.

Joanne looked at him. She was expressionless for a while, then nodded. ‘Okay. Did you . . . did you kill anyone?’

‘No, I did not,’ he said. He was 95 per cent sure that he hadn’t. He had hit the bookie hard on the back of the head, but it would be bloody unlucky if he died from that. Not impossible, that was why he couldn’t be 100 per cent, but he was confident enough to say no to Joanne.

‘Was it dangerous?’

He paused, considered how much he wanted to tell her, and then aimed for the truth. ‘There is always some danger. Of course. Every job has that. But it was well planned. We knew what we were doing. What we were going for. So, it was dangerous, yes, but most jobs are more dangerous than this one.’

She gave a little laugh that was close to a snort. Martin’s attempt at honesty was wrapped in vagueness.

‘Should I be worried about the police battering down my door?’

‘No,’ he said forcefully. ‘The police will not even be called by the people we took this from. I can say that with a guarantee. Okay? The police, they will never even know about this money.’

Now she was frowning. ‘Why would the bookie not report this?’

‘Because it was not legal money. It was not legal before we stole it and it is only a little bit less legal now.’

‘By which you mean it was already stolen money?’

‘Not stolen. Well, maybe stolen, maybe not. Just not legal, I know this. I don’t know where they got it from, but it was illegal earnings. It was for a criminal group, it was their money. They were hiding it there. Then we took it.’ His language skills were faltering a little under the pressure of her growing frown.

‘So you’re saying that the police won’t come looking for it but some bunch of gangsters might? Gangsters big enough to make thirty-two grand when it suits them? Jesus, Martin, that’s worse.’ Her voice got lower, more exasperated as she went on.

‘It is not worse. You are wrong. They don’t know it was me; there is no way that they can know it is me, okay? There is no way for them to reach your door,’ he said, trying to convince himself as much as Joanne. There was Usman, out there drink-driving with three guns in his possibly already identified car. There were ways. ‘You think I don’t know how to do this sort of thing properly? I know. I am doing what I am good at and I am making a lot of money for it. I want to bring money in. I don’t want to be sitting here while you earn the money. Nobody would want that. I want us to be able to live properly. To go on a holiday. To have a car each. To have some nice things in the house. I don’t want to be rich, but I want to be okay. This is how I do it and I do it very well. I am good at my job. They do not know it was me and they will never know it was me.’ He had been speaking faster and faster, the intensity rushing out of him.

‘All right, okay. I’m not saying you’re not good at whatever you do. I just . . . don’t want you ending up in jail.’

He leaned across the bed and kissed her hard on the mouth. ‘You tell me to stop doing this and I will stop doing it. Right now I will stop. I will find some other job.’

‘You want to keep doing what you’re doing?’

‘Yes,’ he said, not even stopping to think about it. This was all he had ever done. There were probably plenty of other things he could do well, but none that he had any interest in. This was it for him, the only job he wanted and the only one he’d ever really tried. Big jobs with big scores and fast money. Nothing else could beat that.

Joanne breathed in heavily. ‘Right. Then we need to lay down some ground rules. I don’t want to know details of anything you do. I don’t want to know anything else that incriminates me if you get caught. I’ll play the ignorant little housewife. Maybe, if there are ways of helping you with the money that don’t get me into trouble, I’ll help, but I am not going to prison because I know more about your work than I should.’

He nodded slowly. A little disappointed, but he understood. He had hoped he would be able to talk to her about his job, get her opinions and tap into her local knowledge. That was always the ideal relationship, someone who understood the business enough to give you an opinion worth listening to. It wasn’t fair to expect that from her, she’d never been around the business before and had more sense than to wade into the deep end on his account.

‘Okay, I will tell you nothing.’

She sighed again. ‘Not nothing. You can tell me when you’re working. You can tell me . . . I don’t know, you can tell me when there’s something I really need to know. I don’t want you going out of here on some big, dangerous thing and me not knowing. Sitting here wondering why you haven’t come home, jumping to conclusions. Just, don’t tell me anything that could get me into trouble, okay?’

‘I would never do that,’ he said, leaning across for another kiss.

Martin undressed and went through to the bathroom. Joanne’s reaction had been as good as he could realistically have hoped for. Of course she knew that he had been a criminal before, and she must have known that he was doing some criminal work in the city. How the hell else would he have made any money at all? She accepted it. She would go on accepting it so long as he didn’t implicate her in anything.

That, right there, was the problem. He would never deliberately incriminate her, but he had glossed over tonight’s job. It hadn’t been the smooth process with no blowback he had suggested. He had gotten the money and done nothing that would reveal his identity, but Usman had been seen by one of them. There was a good chance they had seen the car as well. Those two things would give them a real good chance of tracking Usman down. If they tracked down Usman then they had a pretty good chance of tracking down Martin, too. If they tracked down Martin then they tracked down Joanne. They would use her against him. He knew these kinds of people; he had
been
these kinds of people. There was nothing they wouldn’t do to punish him.

He went back to bed and lay down beside Joanne, his arm draped over her. They didn’t say anything else. It took her a while to get to sleep, he could tell. Took Martin much longer. Running through the job in his mind, feeling the force of the blow against the back of the bookie’s head in his fingers. The fear of a knock on the door. No, not a knock. The fear of someone coming in through the bedroom door having already silently broken into the house. They were capable, and it’s how they would approach it if they knew where he was. A new fear that he hadn’t felt back home, back when he didn’t have anything to lose.

1.11 a.m.

It’s the cramp that’s getting to him now. He can’t stretch his legs. His throat is dry and he’s coughing, swallowing in the hope of generating some saliva. There are tears in his eyes. He has to stay calm, keep his mind on what’s coming next, he knows that. No way of getting out of this in one piece if he panics, starts thrashing around and injures himself. Stay calm, be patient. He’s put other people in this position often enough to know how a smart man ought to handle it. Pulling against the plastic cords isn’t helping and needs to stop, the cut on his wrist is only getting worse. Stop moving; conserve what little energy is left. But the cramp in his leg, he has to do something about that or he won’t be able to move on it. He’s pushing the chair back, slowly and carefully. It’s scraping on the concrete floor, filling the silent warehouse with jarring noise. He’s moving slowly; if he goes fast, he’ll tip it over. Slowly back until the cord tied to the metal hoop in the floor begins to resist. That’s as straight as he can get his legs, as much relief as is possible.

Martin’s thinking a little more clearly now. The pain has taken a step back, letting his mind take a step forward. Thinking about Joanne. She’ll be at home, waiting for him, worried that he’s not going to return this time. She knew he was going out on a job and she understood that it was riskier than normal. They had agreed that he would tell her when he had something big on. Let her know that he was going out but without giving her any sort of detail. He told her there was a job, that it was dangerous, little more than that. He told her he would be late. She nodded along, didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask for any more detail, which he was relieved about; but he should have been home by now. She would be worried. That’s what’s causing him the most concern. The thought of her at home, on her own, worried that she might never see him again.

Nothing he can do now but wait. His mind is drifting, taking him back to other dark times. Taking him all the way back to a time when it was someone else tied up in a warehouse. Remembering the things he did to that person. Wasn’t just him, there were other people there as well. People he hardly knew and didn’t care a damn about. Can’t even remember their names now, if he was ever told them. They were paying him, that’s why he was there. He was the hired help, willing to do whatever he was paid for.

The victim, what was that poor bastard even there for? It was six or seven years ago, they were in some old warehouse in Brno. It was . . . no, he can’t remember. Come on; don’t let your mind leave you. You need to be sharp for this, you need to be alert. If you forget stuff, get sleepy, there’s no way of getting out of this, no way at all. Think, that guy, the sad soul in the warehouse.

He was middle-aged. Soft as well, definitely not a fighter. Didn’t seem like the sort of guy who would have survived as long as he had in the business. He was crying a lot because he knew what was going to happen to him. Martin was there to knock him around while the employers watched. They didn’t want anything from him, information or apologies; they just wanted to see him suffer. He had upset them and he had no way of redeeming himself, so he got punished.

It took ages, that’s what Martin remembers now. No tools, just knocking the guy around, trying not to break his own fingers as he did so. Just to make the guy suffer and make the people who paid him feel tough. It was pathetic, on reflection, but a lot of the jobs he did back then were. Knock some guy around, chase down someone who doesn’t realize he needs to run from you, go send a bloodstained message, this person needs to die. Never a good explanation for why, just money and a target. Every person was a walking price-tag and when someone wanted rid of them enough to meet the price, they became a walking target.

That man in the warehouse. Martin spent a couple of hours on him. He was unconscious for the last ten minutes or so, which was probably a good thing. He had been unconscious before during the beating, but Martin had stepped back and given him time to come round. This time he wasn’t coming round, he was either dead or dying. That was when they got out a can of petrol and poured it over him. One of them lit a match, threw it down. There was a whoosh as his clothes went up. Martin stood back, waiting for the man to scream or roll around, but he didn’t. Hopefully he was already dead, or close enough not to suffer from the burning. That was tacky, unnecessary, a gangster wanting to do something dramatic, like killing him wasn’t enough. They left him there, a charred corpse stuck to the floor. Pasted down by his own melted flesh. Maybe someone else came and washed him away, because Martin never heard the police mention the body.

Matej Dobek. That was the name of the man who hired him for that job, the man with the match. Can’t remember the victim’s name, pretty sure he was never told it. Often wasn’t, on that sort of job. Matej Dobek. He was scum, a real bad one, taking pleasure in the power he could buy. But Martin can remember him, what he looked like. Shoulder-length black hair and dark eyes. Smiled a lot. Happy with the horrors he created. He can remember the conversation he had with Joanne in the kitchen before he left the house. Remember what she was wearing. He told her he would be back in the early hours of the morning. Maybe it’s still the early hours; maybe she isn’t worried at all.

He’s thinking about Joanne because he wants to think about her. Thinking about her is nice, pleasant, makes him feel better. It’s a distraction; it’s a lack of focus. It won’t be long now, they can’t be far away. He has to clear thoughts of Joanne and thoughts of the past out of his mind. He has to think about himself, his situation. Think about Usman. Think about the next hour. His life until now doesn’t matter; whatever remains of the rest of his life doesn’t matter. It’s the next hour. In that hour, everything will be decided.

1.29 a.m.

He went home to be sick first, which wasn’t part of the plan. Threw up in the toilet, slumped onto the bathroom floor and waited for his heart rate to return somewhere close to normal. Lost all track of time. The whole thing had taken a lot longer than he’d expected, should have been finished by now. He should be drinking to forget, but he isn’t. Usman’s glancing at the clock in the car and realizing that he should have been done at least an hour ago.