For Those Who Know the Ending (22 page)

They were out of the van, at the edge of the yard, looking back up the street at Duffy’s car. It was schoolboy stuff, sneaking around like this, trying to catch a glimpse of the enemy. Nate looked at his watch. Jesus, what was taking this long? That wouldn’t have been Sarah McFall’s van parked on the other side of the building. She would have used a car, made sure she had something that didn’t in any way stand out wherever it was she was taking the drugs, rather than picking a vehicle for this location. That big van had to be what Usman was using. Get Comrie into the back of it, out of view of the passing world, and get away.

That meant they should be out by now. The time it took Nate and Gully to get down to this yard, turn the van to face the exit and then stand here gawping back up the street like a couple of old women was time enough to get Comrie out. Then it became a question of how long Duffy was prepared to wait before he went looking for awkward truths. A couple more minutes, at the most.

‘If they let him go,’ Gully said, ‘this whole thing is fucked anyway.’

‘They won’t.’ Nate spoke quietly.

‘I don’t know, that boy’s a bit wishy-washy. He’s only in it for the cash.’

‘He’ll do it,’ Nate said. ‘Not for the cash, it’s about having to explain to you and me why he let Comrie walk away . . . There, they’re getting out of the car.’

Gully looked up the street, saw the driver’s door and the two back doors of Duffy’s car opening. Nate was already round to the driver’s side of the van. They waited about ten seconds, long enough for the three men to approach the door of the building, and pulled out of the yard. Shit, they were already inside, young men moving faster than these old men expected. Nate raced the van along the street and screeched to a halt outside the door of the building. Then they were out – and into the building in seconds, just quick enough to cut Duffy off.

Nate and Gully more than filled the doorway, both standing expressionless. Duffy stopped still, his breathing becoming heavier as his mind and heart raced. Nate and Gully didn’t need to act threatening, didn’t need to introduce themselves upon arrival. If you knew who they were then you knew what this meant, and Duffy clearly knew. His muscle did not. One of them started laughing at the older men blocking the exit. The other one pulled a knife from his trousers.

Gully, still expressionless, opened his thin jacket and took out a small handgun. He wasn’t going to use it, not even as a last resort. He wasn’t a gunman, never would be. He ruined lives, he didn’t end them. Hated guns as well, they spoiled a good fight and got you into more trouble than you could handle. These kids didn’t know any of that though, they couldn’t see past the gun to the reluctance of the holder. The one with the knife dropped it with a clatter.

‘Nate, right,’ Duffy said. He was nervous, obviously, but holding it together. Talking with an authority he clearly found natural.

Nate nodded very slightly. ‘Liam Duffy. How is Mr Argyle these days?’

‘Always looking for good help.’

A good answer. Nate laughed. ‘I’m sure he is. He could certainly use it. Fancy sending one of my guys in here with a big bag full of drugs to collect a big bag full of cash. Not the sort of thing a good employee would allow to happen.’

Duffy smiled, but it was a shoddy attempt at covering his nerves. His stomach was churning, failure punching him in the gut. Aiden Comrie, working for Peter Jamieson. His first instinct was that it wasn’t plausible. That brainless nobody, working a scam this effective for a man as serious as Nate Colgan. No, that couldn’t be right. But the evidence was looming over him. Comrie gone and neither the drugs nor the cash left behind. Nate Colgan and Gully Fitzgerald, standing in the doorway, gloating. The evidence was too much to argue with.

‘So Comrie’s with you, huh?’ Duffy said. He could feel the nerves radiating off the muscle standing behind him. They were in a spot where they might get shot, and that scared the crap out of them. Best-case scenario, they were about to be associated with an embarrassing failure. This was, if they were lucky, a very bad career move.

Nate just smiled at the question. Stood there and smiled. Don’t go into detail when detail could expose your lies. He wanted Duffy to think that Comrie had gone of his own free will, that they’d failed to spot the traitor in their midst. Never tell the world you killed a man if the world is willing to believe something else. It was too late for them to get him back now anyway, but Nate wanted to make this failure as big as possible. Make it as dispiriting and damaging as he could. It would make the deal between Argyle and the Allens shaky. The Allens get their produce but Argyle loses his money and won’t get it back. The Allens get annoyed about being so close to a publicly botched job and begin to question the wisdom of working with Chris Argyle. But the big one, the one that matters most, is the unrepresented man, Don Park. He sees Argyle making a spectacular bollocks of a relatively simple job, finds out he hired a man who was working against him and got himself set up. That was going to damage the relationship between Park and Argyle, maybe irreparably.

‘So, uh, what now, huh?’ Duffy’s asking. Showing weakness, giving all the power over the situation to the other side.

Nate shrugged. ‘I think we’re just about done here, don’t you? Unless you boys have anything else you’d like to say, hm? Any message you’d like us to take back to our bosses. You already know the message you have to take back to yours.’

Duffy scoffed, a belated attempt to downplay the situation that fooled no one.

‘Right then,’ Nate said with a smile. ‘Thanks for the cash, boys; you have yourselves a safe journey home.’

Nate and Gully turned and left. They made it look as casual a departure as possible, but both of them were alert for an attack. Not from Duffy, he knew better than to try and rescue a lost situation. One of the muscle might have been stupid enough to try their luck once they saw a back turned towards them. They didn’t. Nate and Gully got into the van and drove away.

This had been Nate’s gig. If there was someone to report to, to claim glory from, then he could do it himself. Gully was happy to be dropped off at home.

‘Make sure you get rid of that gun,’ was the last thing he had said as he got out of the van. He had put the small handgun into the glovebox, Nate assuring him that he was going to get rid of it before he did anything else. Guns were treacherous little bastards; Gully couldn’t remind Nate of that often enough.

Usman drove for a couple of minutes, all three in the van sitting in silence. Nobody was following them, they were clear. He relaxed, took a quick look over his shoulder at the two men in the back of the van.

‘Won’t be long now, Aiden,’ Usman said with a broad smile. ‘We’ll get this done as quick as possible; no point making life any more awkward than it has to be. Just business, you know.’

‘Yeah, yeah, business, good,’ Aiden said, and he smiled.

He was a businessman now. Thinking about meeting with Don Park. What would he say to a man that senior? It was a chance to make a better first impression. This was a clean slate. Tell Park how much he’d like to work for him without coming across as a crawler, that was the challenge. He had another chance to impress a senior man, and his heart was starting to beat fast. First the Allens, then Argyle and now Park. Those kind of connections made him senior, too.

‘Is this going to take long?’ he asked the little guy with the gun, sitting in the back of the van with him.

The skinhead shrugged, like he didn’t know and he didn’t care. Another one who thought he was above talking to people like Aiden. Aye, fine, be like that, but his attitude would change when he was taking orders from Aiden, probably not long from now. That was a great thought.

Lisa was in the kitchen, sitting at the table with her laptop open. A short woman with short blonde hair, a brittle look. Gully touched her shoulder as he walked past, went over to the fridge and took out a carton of orange juice. He wouldn’t be hungry; they’d had a big lunch. That was traditional, a big Sunday lunch. Lisa spent all morning cooking it. Get the family sitting down round the table for a roast dinner. Of course, the family just meant the two of them now, but they kept to the routine, all the family habits they’d developed with Sally over the years. It was a little part of clinging on to her.

‘You weren’t long,’ Lisa said.

Gully was filling a glass. ‘No, not long,’ he said, which was as much as he planned to tell her about his working day.

She watched him walk over and sit at the table, that forceful look he got when he knew he wasn’t entirely welcome. He was just getting in her way, annoying her, but he seemed to consider it a necessary evil. They needed to talk more, Lisa knew it. It went in cycles, sometimes they had a normal, functioning marriage in which they spoke to each other often and seemed to get along. Then there were the other times. Times that could last for weeks or months when they hardly spoke and everything they said seemed to annoy the other. At least this time they both knew what had sparked the fresh hostility, it was him going back to work. Lisa had told him so, and didn’t think she should have to tell him again.

‘Anything doing?’ she asked him. There wasn’t a hint of interest in her tone, but that didn’t matter. Him sitting there had forced her to say something.

‘Not really, no,’ he said. He wasn’t going to tell her that he’d been pointing a gun at a bunch of drug dealers, pissing off the sort of people who were stupid and violent enough to come looking for revenge. Lisa had no interest in the things that he did. ‘What about you?’

Lisa looked at him with a frown. ‘I’ve been sitting here doing nothing. You’re the one who went running off God knows where.’

He nodded. ‘It was nothing really. Just making sure of security somewhere. Done now. Good to get a wee bit more cash in the pocket. I was thinking, maybe we should look at booking a holiday for this summer. Don’t want to leave it any later than this. We can afford it this year.’

She glanced at him and then back at the screen, reluctant to show any enthusiasm. She was thinking about Sally. Thinking about holidays they took with her and thinking it was wrong for them to enjoy a holiday without her. The last one they’d been on, the only one since Sally died, had been miserable, guilt smashing any enjoyment.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe it would be better to stay at home this year.’

Gully nodded, didn’t say anything. He had never been the sort of man to try and force his wife into doing something she didn’t want to do. He would sit down at the table and nudge her into a conversation but he wouldn’t go further than that. He understood that this was a slow process. He took a gulp from the glass, emptying it, and got up.

‘Well,’ he said, walking across to the sink, ‘maybe we can think about it for a week or two. Maybe then,’ he said with a shrug, not finishing the sentence.

Trying to buy himself a little time, a couple of weeks to bring a little optimism back into their lives. Lisa stared at the screen of the laptop, considering whether a holiday might actually help them both. Not to forget Sally, they would never do that, but to live a life around the grief that her death had caused. Have a few weeks together, away from all the reminders, happy. The thought of being genuinely happy again. It seemed impossible.

18

Usman kept on driving. Aiden just sat there, watched Martin and occasionally looked out the front of the van. If there was anything going through his head, any thought that this might not be what they had told him it was, then he didn’t show it. There was no visible sense of concern. No questions, no attempt to jump either of them and take control of the situation. He accepted it.

Usman checked the mirrors constantly. Making sure Aiden wasn’t playing up, making sure they weren’t being followed, increasingly confident that he had nothing to worry about on either score. Checking Martin as well, looking for nerves. There hadn’t been any when he took a gun into the bookies, but he hadn’t had any intention of using it then. This was different. This was Martin going into the job knowing it could only be successful if he pulled the trigger and killed a man. Every time Usman caught a glimpse of the gunman, though, there was no sign of nerves. No sign of anything. He looked the same as he always looked, disinterested, calm. That was Martin. The same old Martin.

‘Not long now,’ Usman said over his shoulder for the third or fourth time. He was trying to kill the nerves before they could be born.

He had gone in with the intention of forcing the moron into the back of the van, and Comrie had removed that need. He had given them a hand, walking into it quite happily. This job would have fallen down if they’d been trying to catch a smart man. Even a dumb man who understood the danger he was in. They had lucked out.

They were heading out towards Bridge of Weir. Aiden wasn’t too concerned by the change of scenery, city replaced with increasingly green landscape. In his mind, he was thinking that this made sense. A meeting like this, this big, you don’t conduct in public. A man like Don Park will have all his meetings off the radar, somewhere that the chance of being discovered is as small as possible. Getting out of the city, that was getting way off the radar. That, somehow, just about added up to Aiden.

Usman pulled onto the track leading up to the farmhouse. The metal gate was closed. He stopped and got out of the van, moving quickly, worried that if Aiden was going to do something he would do it now. He didn’t. Usman was back in the van and through the gate, stopping again to get out and close it. He drove slowly up the hill to the farmhouse.

It was a recently renovated building, and the barn across the yard was obviously new. The metal shined, there was no rust, it looked like a farm just about to open for business. Actually, it had just closed. The renovation of house and barn, the purchase of new equipment, had been made by someone with a dream of being a farmer. Reality bit hard. The place went bust before it really got started.

Usman parked beside the barn, out of view of the gate, switched off the engine and looked back over his shoulder again, smiling at Aiden.