For Those Who Know the Ending (20 page)

Aiden was thinking too much about how he was going to handle the future, not focusing enough on the present. He didn’t notice the guy on the other side of the street, walking slowly and checking his phone. He was a short guy, shaven-headed, didn’t stand out at all. Looked casual, like he didn’t have a care in the world, but if you were observant and a little paranoid you might think it was funny that he was keeping exact pace with Aiden. But Martin was good at that. Didn’t matter where he was, he could blend into the scenery, make himself seem like just another guy on the street. It was easy for him to tail Aiden, and text Usman the details as he went.

16

It had been a day since they sat him down in that garage and he talked his way out of a grave. Maybe they wouldn’t have killed Usman, maybe they’d just have battered him badly enough to make him a walking advertisement for their revenge. Whatever, he had got out of it in one glorious piece, which was a significantly lower number of pieces than he had feared when they’d bundled him into their car. But it had changed everything.

The first thing he had to do was make sure that Martin didn’t find out. That was key, and he had made it clear to Nate Colgan as well. Wasn’t easy telling Nate Colgan anything, insinuating that you knew better than him, but he had. If Martin found out, he was likely to run for the hills, or wherever Czech people run for. Colgan agreed with a half-shrug. So they were keeping Martin in the dark, and that was why Martin was out tracking Comrie, happily oblivious to the new people looking over both their shoulders.

It was never going to be the same. Not now that he had someone the size of Nate Colgan on his back. There was a reason every single person in the city was intimidated by that man. A good reason, a bloody one. Usman had heard enough skin-crawling stories to know he wasn’t going to defy Colgan. What the big man said went, which meant Usman had to tailor every job from now on to make sure it suited him, or at least didn’t offend his sensitivities. Usman wasn’t naive enough to think it would just be this job and then he’d be free to do as he pleased. Once Colgan had him under the thumb, he was never letting him out.

That was the punishment. Work every job as though you’re an employee of Peter Jamieson without having any of the benefits of actually working for the man. That was the high cost of stealing thirty-two grand from him. Colgan hadn’t mentioned paying the money back. He would have, if it had just been about the beating. Every penny would have gone back, maybe with a little interest tacked on to act as compensation to the bookie. Now they were letting Usman and Martin keep the cash, but Usman was going to have to earn it.

There had been a knock on his door a few minutes ago. Usman didn’t think a lot of it. People were always coming to see him, his brother, friends, Alison, Martin. Could have been someone looking to set up a job and hoping he would work it with them, that still happened even while he was lying low. He pulled the door open to find Gully Fitzgerald filling up his doorstep.

‘Come in,’ Usman said quickly.

Gully smiled and stepped inside. He was on his own, dressed like a middle-aged man out for a stroll in the sunshine. He looked so innocuous, if you didn’t know him. But there were stories about Gully as well; he had a reputation of his own to scare the children with. And it didn’t matter how far removed he was from the worst of those stories; he was still a big unit. Broad, tough, ready to knock you around if you happened to annoy him. The smile was designed to make you think that nothing could annoy him, that you were always safe. But it was a trap Usman had seen others use before.

‘Something the matter?’ Usman asked.

‘Nothing the matter with me,’ Gully said in his usual cheerful tone. ‘Just that me and Nate think now would be a good time to go over some of the details about this job of yours. See if there’s anything we can provide that gives you a better chance, you know. Make sure you have a proper chance of making it happen.’

‘I do,’ Usman said, trying to get a little cheerful confidence into his own voice. It would be good to have matching tones, he figured. Cheerful attitudes walking forward hand in hand in the spirit of newfound friendship.

‘Aye, well, you might. I’m not saying you don’t, but we can help to make sure that this job happens, and happens properly. That’s a help to you, wee man, and you shouldn’t be turning help away.’

They had gone through to the kitchen because that’s where Gully had wandered unchallenged without knowing where he was going. He was sitting now at the small breakfast bar, looking back at Usman who was still standing in the doorway.

‘So,’ Gully said, ‘details.’

Usman sighed to illustrate his reluctance, and then gave every detail he could think of. ‘We’re tailing Comrie right now. He’s at Argyle’s office as we speak, I figure that’s them either giving him the stuff or telling him to set up the meeting before they give him the stuff. So we’re a couple of days away from it happening, tops. They won’t want this dragging on, not when they’ve got a dipshit like Comrie handling the handover. Longer he’s involved, better chance of the whole thing going tits up. Once we know he has the stuff, the two of us will track him constantly. They’re going to do the handover somewhere private. So we’ll go and watch. We’ll try and make sure that we don’t go anywhere near the Allens’ employee, keep them out of it. Safer that way, you know. Pick up Comrie and the cash after the handover and take him away, out of sight.’

‘Take him away and . . . ?’

‘Kill him, I suppose. Would be better if we didn’t have to, but I don’t see a way around it. We want to get him out of there, give ourselves enough time for them to think he’s done a runner, go looking for him. No way of taking him quietly without him seeing us. That means there’s only one ending for him if we want to stay anonymous. Can’t take him and then let him go, that doesn’t help us, so we kill him. That’s what Martin used to do, back in the old country. He was a gunman, and a bunch of other stuff, so we can handle that.’

Gully nodded. ‘You think you have a chance of persuading them that he’s run?’

‘If he does the handover alone, then disappears with the cash, yeah.’

‘He might do the handover alone,’ Gully said with authority, ‘but he’ll be watched. A man like Argyle isn’t going to let some random dealer go off-radar with his gear or his cash. He’ll be watched all the time. That’s why you’re going to need some backup for this.’

Usman began to look doubtful, then doubted himself instead. ‘You think?’

‘Aye, I do, son. So you’ll need someone to watch the watchers, make sure they don’t nip in and block you off. We can take care of that. You and your man focus on what you’ve got to do. Track him; find out exactly where it’s going to happen. The second you know, you call us. I don’t care if that blows your cover with your mate; you’re not getting this done safely without us. Then you go and pick him up as cleanly as possible. Get the cash, keep it. Kill him. That has to be done, there’s no way out of this job otherwise.’

Usman nodded. ‘Sure, yeah.’

Gully got up and smiled at him. ‘We’ll be waiting for your call then.’

He let himself out, strolled back to his car. Gully wasn’t in any rush, never was these days. Nothing to run for. Back when he was young, man, he never slowed down. Life was lived fast enough to blur at the edges. Attacking targets and intimidating everyone. Never kept track of days because they buzzed past at such a speed. Living fast was the only kind of life that mattered. But life found a way of slowing him down eventually. Meeting and marrying Lisa, trying for a kid for years. Then Sally came along, and Gully started thinking about surviving, rather than living. The priority was making sure he was around to see her grow up; protect her from mean people like him. Then she was stolen away from him anyway. He hadn’t been motivated to live fast since. Life blurred only because he drank so much.

He would go and see Nate, tell him about the meeting with Usman. Let him worry about the details; let him worry about the dangers. There would be dangers to the job as well, Usman was gambling on this one and even the best-case scenario involved some kind of trouble. If he didn’t have Nate and Gully breathing down his neck, he would probably have a contingency plan to pull out of the gig. Let the deal happen without interference. Couldn’t do that now, no way Nate would let him. Usman was going to have to go through with it, whatever danger turned up to join him, and Gully and Nate were going to make sure that he could. They would have to work security for this job, and keeping a gunman and a thief safe from some established dealers was going to be risky. Riskiest job Gully had worked in years.

He wasn’t nervous. It was the politics of it that always got under his skin. Taking risks with your own life for the sake of some employer you hardly knew. Shit, Gully had never even met Peter Jamieson, wouldn’t get the chance until he got out of prison. You weren’t even taking risks to protect that employer, just to shore up the profitability of his business. That’s all this was, taking lives so someone else could make money. It was always that way. Used to be that Gully could accept it when he was making some money for himself, when he was earning for someone he knew and cared about. Old Danny Knight had been a likeable boss, treated him well. Money didn’t seem like enough any more. Still, he would do it, because he had told Nate he would.

Nate had known for a while that Chris Argyle was cosying up to Don Park. Holding Don Park back was a priority. If he had Argyle supplying him, at a time when the Jamieson organization was struggling to replace its former supplier, that would put them in a position of weakness. Then you pile the Allens on top of that. Argyle supplying Park, the Allens distributing for him. That was the sort of flow that turned drugs into cash quickly and effectively, a much better set-up than the one the Jamieson organization was limping along with. Simple solution. Botch their deal and strangle it at birth. Argyle loses money, big money. The Allens find out that they won’t be safe working with Argyle and Park, but they don’t suffer from the lesson. Might want to use them in the future, so don’t burn that bridge. Argyle, and by extension Park, is the enemy. The enemy suffers. You look stronger by comparison.

Would have been exciting, once upon a time. Let’s hunt down our enemies. Let’s scupper their deals, cost them a lot of money and weaken their ties. We’ll risk our lives and we’ll piss off some very tough people at the same time. Young men would be excited by it. The drama of the fight, the money and drugs involved, the people whose futures you were changing. That’s why young men were the absolute worst ones to do it. They got excited and they revelled in it. Jobs like this should be done by people who recognized their real value. People like Gully, who understood there was nothing to get excited about.

17

Aiden hadn’t even seen the gear; Duffy had it in the car in a big holdall that would be handed over at the last moment. There were three of them in the car with Aiden: Duffy and two big guys who hadn’t felt the need to share their names. They were sitting in the back, looking ready for a fight. Eager for one, it seemed like, all twitchy movements and beady eyes. That worried Aiden. They might not have thought he was very bright, but he was smart enough to know that they shouldn’t go into this looking for trouble. This situation needed to be kept calm. Aiden, in the passenger seat, kept glancing back over his shoulder at them, and it was annoying Duffy.

‘Forget them,’ Duffy said quietly. ‘They’re here for the worst-case scenario, nothing else. They know it. You just focus on
your
job.’

They were parked at the bottom of the street. Down in Govan, watching a large building that used to belong to an engineering firm and was now being converted into something else. The place was empty while the work went on. The inside of the building was gutted; plenty of builders there through the week but none on a Sunday. The street was basically empty.

‘You’re sure about this place?’ Duffy asked him. Wasn’t the first time he had asked him either and it was starting to grate. It was also feeding the sense of looming trouble for the two jackals in the back.

Aiden had picked it and Sarah McFall had been happy to use it. It was a perfect spot for this gig. A big building, lying empty. It was on a corner, so Aiden could get in one side and Sarah the other without their chaperones bumping into each other, because she would have people along for protection too. Meant Duffy could watch the place without anyone seeing them.

‘It’s a good spot,’ Aiden told him. ‘You don’t need to worry about that. Trust me, yeah?’ Trying to sound calm, but his heart was racing already.

They were both watching the clock on the dashboard. The plan was simple, like the best ones always were. Sarah goes in first, bang on five o’clock. At ten past, Aiden goes in by a different entrance. They make the exchange once they are both inside. Each of them will be alone, a third person appears and they walk away, no deal. They check each other’s bag, and, if everything is satisfactory, Sarah leaves. Aiden waits ten minutes and then leaves. Basic, simple, sort of thing that leaves little opportunity for error. Makes it a little harder for any random passer-by to spot something untoward. Gives both sides the chance to get in and get away without ever crossing paths. That, Aiden thought as he looked back over his shoulder again, was a particular relief.

Eight minutes past five on the clock on the dashboard. Aiden glanced at his watch, it said nine minutes past. That was late enough. By the time he got the bag out of the boot of the car and got inside the building it would be ten past.

‘Right,’ he said loudly, trying to project confidence, ‘I’m away in. Give me ten or fifteen minutes before you panic.’

Duffy looked at him with scorn, didn’t say anything. Aiden got out of the car and walked quickly round to the boot. His nerves dictated that he move fast, too much energy to look casual. He opened it and found a large blue holdall. First time he’d seen it. He had to assume that the contents matched everything the Allens had put on their carefully considered list. He lifted it out, a little surprised at how heavy it was, but it was the good kind of surprise. It felt substantial, felt like the sort of weight a big deal could be built upon. He slung it over his shoulder and closed the boot.