For Those Who Know the Ending (26 page)

A few weeks went past and there were no more calls from Usman. Seemed like he had moved on, maybe found himself another pair of bloody hands to work the job for him. A part of Martin was relaxing at the prospect of not having to work with the boy again. Another part was starting to get nervy at the thought of not having enough money. He needed a reliable income.

Then Usman called again. This time Martin answered.

‘Martin, man, where the hell have you been?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘Nowhere, aye, right, good one. Listen, you fit for some work?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Martin said, but it didn’t quite sound like he believed himself.

‘I got something to put to you, man, it’s worth hearing. You want to listen?’

Martin held the phone in his hand, thought about it. Money was running down. Joanne had just started working an extra shift in the bookstore, extending the opening hours in the hope of a few extra quid. Less time for them to be together at home. Money was another thing they didn’t talk about much, something that Joanne didn’t like to make an issue of. She had always looked after herself and Skye, didn’t need Martin or anyone else trying to help her out. Didn’t change the fact that he wanted to help.

‘Look, I ain’t leaning on you here,’ Usman said, leaning heavily, ‘but this is a good one, man, real good. None of the shite we had with the last one, that’s guaranteed. No, what’s the word, complications. Come on, what do you say, eh? Come round to the flat, the one in Mosspark, I haven’t used that in ages, we’ll have a wee chat about it. Never hurts to have a chat, does it?’

Martin was silent, standing in the kitchen with the phone in his hand. This felt like home now, felt like a place he was sharing rather than occupying. It was hard to imagine being anywhere else, being
with
anyone else. This house, Joanne, that was life now. The life he hadn’t realized he wanted and now couldn’t live without.

‘Jesus, you still there, man?’ Usman asked, shouting a little because he thought Martin had put the phone down and wandered off in a moment of sudden senility.

‘I’m here,’ Martin said, his voice harsh. ‘I’m thinking.’ He paused again. ‘I don’t think so, Usman, I don’t think I need the trouble of another one of your jobs.’

‘Listen to me, Martin,’ Usman said quickly before Martin could hang up on him. Too quickly, sounded a little desperate. ‘This job isn’t going to have trouble. I have something, not going to be as big as the last one for cash, but it’s going to be damn good. I been saving it up, a nice easy one, you know? Something to break us back in gently after a long break. Good money, twenty-five, thirty grand maybe, to split between us. One night’s work. In and out of a place, that’s all it is. Not even anybody there to interrupt us. Get in, get a few boxes of gear and get out. I got a guy already to buy the lot, so we get the money on the night. It’s that easy.’

‘Thirty thousand pounds of gear has security.’

‘Not good security, not this lot,’ Usman said, his voice sounding insufferably smug down the phone line. ‘Look, I’m not giving you all the details over the fucking phone or you could go and pull the job without me. Let’s do this the proper way. Come to the flat, tomorrow afternoon. Two o’clock, right? Martin? Two o’clock.’

More silence before a reluctant answer. ‘Maybe,’ Martin said, and he hung up.

He went. Two o’clock the following afternoon he was walking through the little alley and knocking on the door. Usman answered, smiling broadly as he welcomed Martin in. They went up the unlit stairs and into the small flat, a place no more welcoming than it had been the last time Martin was there. They sat in the living room, Martin watching warily as Usman did all he could to make this seem like a meeting of old friends.

‘It’s good to see you, man, how have you been?’

‘Fine,’ Martin said, and shrugged.

‘Good, yeah, chatty as ever, huh? I’m glad you came though, seriously. I have this job, right, and it’s pretty basic stuff, but I need a second person there with me.’

‘What is it then?’

‘A warehouse job. Down Clydebank way. You heard of James Kealing?’

Martin half-shrugged and shook his head. He had heard the name, but it wasn’t mentioned as frequently as the likes of Jamieson and MacArthur.

‘Well Kealing’s got a decent little operation, not as big as the real big beasts, but he’s been around a good long time and he knows how to run an organization. His old man was, like, some mad bastard or something. Anyway, Kealing knows how to keep himself in expensive suits. Dangerous enough guy, is what I’m hearing. He moves some gear, and a lot of it is, like, that synthetic shit, party drugs, legal highs, highs that used to be legal and ain’t any more. That sort of thing. Plenty of buyers, but it’s a crowded fucking market, margins aren’t great unless you got the latest flavour of the month. Gets it from Europe, Holland or somewhere, and stores it in his warehouse before he moves it on.’

‘You want to steal these drugs.’

‘Yes I do.’

‘And you think that this man, this man who has a good operation, will not have any security at all at this warehouse? He is that good?’

‘There’s going to be some security, Jesus, I ain’t saying the door will be wide open and we can just walk right in and there’ll be a sign pointing to the gear. What I’m saying is there ain’t going to be much, not as much as you might think. There’ll be cameras, maybe alarms, shit like that, but we can handle that. We can handle it because we’ll be moving fast, you see. No guards. Nobody armed. We won’t even have to bring any weapons along with us. Just a van. We scout the place, see what’s there, deal with it when we get there. In and out fast, like, in a proper fucking hurry, you know? That’s going to be the challenge with this one, getting in and out fast enough.’

Martin started to nod his head. Working against the clock, rushing in and out. If there were no guards on site then it could be possible.

‘Best thing is, right, I already got someone to buy all the gear off me. Haven’t confirmed anything yet because I don’t know for certain how much there’ll be, but there should be plenty. It was that lad that pointed me in the direction of it and that was months ago, so this has been well scouted. We take it straight to him from the warehouse, get our cash, and we’re done. And he’ll pay nice. Not market value, but you don’t get market value on stuff you’ve nicked out of Kealing’s warehouse, do you?’

‘This man is dangerous?’ Martin asked.

‘Kealing? Dangerous as usual, no more than that. Probably less dangerous than the people we’ve worked over so far, you know. He’s got a smaller operation than any of them.’

They were both silent this time, Martin thinking and Usman watching him, wondering what there was to think about. He could sense that Martin was close to biting, that the hook was bouncing around right in front of him.

‘I would like more details,’ Martin said quietly. ‘About the money, about the warehouse.’

Usman smiled. If he wanted detail then he was basically saying yes, because he had to know that he wasn’t getting any good detail until he committed to the job.

‘I think we’ll clear twenty-something thousand on this one. I’m hoping over twenty-five, but that depends on how much of the stuff is in there and what it all is. I think I know, got a guy that used to work there that gave me a good idea of what was in there a couple of shipments ago. I’m guessing it’s roughly the same this time around; they probably have a pretty consistent supply. What they had then would get us between twenty-five and thirty. Let’s say roughly twelve and a half each, but don’t go nuts if it’s a wee bit under. We scout the place, we spend ten minutes max robbing the place, I handle the sale afterwards. Minimum ten grand each.’

‘The warehouse?’

‘I will tell you about that when you tell me that you’re in on the job. Them’s the rules.’

There was another pause, Martin seeming reluctant to acknowledge that this was the best job offer he was going to get any time soon. Twelve and a half probable for robbing a warehouse with basic security. Almost impossible to say no to.

‘I’ll help you,’ Martin said. ‘But we have to do this properly, make sure that we have all the knowledge we need before we go in.’

‘Of course we will, of course we will,’ Usman told him, grinning and leaning back in his chair. ‘We’ll scout it until we know every fucking brick.’ And then, surprisingly quickly, the smile faded into a more serious expression.

Martin left a few minutes later, drove back home. The house was empty, Joanne at the bookshop again. It was peaceful in that house, but never lonely. Even when she wasn’t there, there was a sense of her presence. The smell of the place, the feel of it. Everything was a reminder of her, of the life they had together.

There was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep that life. It was a strange feeling, to realize that the things he was prepared to do weren’t about money any more, weren’t about power or position, they were all about maintaining the value of the good life he’d built. That was a change. Something he’d never considered before, when he worked with men who were married or had kids. Always assumed their motivations were the same as his, that it was all about the money and family concerns were something separate. But they weren’t, and he was beginning to understand that. The need to protect the good things you have, the best thing you’ve ever had.

20

It was a small warehouse, sharing its yard with two other equally unimpressive buildings. The place had seen better days, all the buildings too small to house the major stock that could pay for upgrades. They were innocuous, which made them ideal. There was no gate at the front of the yard, nothing to stop Usman and Martin getting a van right up to the doors of the warehouse. The other buildings were in use, the area busy through the day. Martin and Usman were in a yard across the street, this one seemingly unused. Sitting in Usman’s car, watching.

‘I can see a camera at the door of the warehouse,’ Martin said.

‘Uh-huh, there’ll be some on the other buildings as well, might cover all of the yard,’ Usman said. ‘Don’t mean it’s anything to get too worked up about though, does it? I mean, we knew there were gonna be cameras, just means we have to work extra fast.’

They watched a little longer, aware that in the daylight they couldn’t linger long. There were people using the yard next door to the one they were in, although not many, and there was a danger they would stand out if they stayed.

‘You’re sure there’s no guard on that building at night?’

‘Sure.’

‘What about the other two buildings?’

Usman paused, thought about it, realized he hadn’t even asked Gully about the other two. Didn’t know this warehouse shared a yard with them, something Gully should have warned him about.

‘Well, I doubt it, right. I mean, if there was a guard he would be working the whole yard.’ He paused. ‘Okay, I don’t actually know about the other two, right, but that’s what scout-ing’s for, eh? Come on, that’s what this is all about. Good prep, and then we go do the fucking job. I’m right, you know I am.’

‘So we will have to come back at night and watch this place, make sure that they don’t have guards. And if they do have guards, then it becomes a very different job.’

Usman sighed, fed up already of the miserable bastard he was having to work with. One last time, he told himself, and then stopped sighing. One last time because he was going to kill him. One last time because he was going to give him a punishment he didn’t deserve. Martin had only gone into that bookies because Usman offered him the job. He’d only become a threat to Usman because Usman hired him in the first place. That wasn’t Martin’s fault. And, yes, he was miserable, and he could be annoying, and he was as distant as the sun most of the time, but he had never let Usman down. Not once. He was nothing worse than a professional who wanted detail to make sure that they did the job well. But Usman was still going to kill him.

‘We were going to have to come back and scout the place at night anyway,’ Usman said calmly. ‘We’ll scout it tonight and if things look good, we’ll do it tomorrow night. My contact that worked here said there were no guards, I thought he just meant for the building, maybe he meant for the whole place, the other two as well. I don’t know. I’ll call him, check what he has to say about it. We come back tonight and see it with our own four eyes.’

‘And your man is sure that the gear is in there?’ Martin said, keeping the solemn tone that Usman had uncharacteristically adopted. ‘I don’t want to go in there and find a warehouse full of toilet roll or something.’

‘My guy says there’s always stuff in there, a constant stream of it. Kealing brings it in in small amounts, always has about the same supplies running through it. Sounds like taking it in regular, small amounts is the safest way for him to get it in without being seen. Think it comes by boat or something like that. Fishing boats, is what I heard one time, but I don’t know if that’s what Kealing does. A fishing boat leaves, like, Holland or Portugal or one of those places, and it meets up with one from here out at sea, they transfer the stuff across. The second boat brings back a small amount of stuff pretty much every week. Someone picks it up from a wee harbour somewhere and they store it in the warehouse, then it gets distributed out in smaller amounts. Always plenty of it though. If it reeks of fish we’ll know I was right.’

‘If it reeks of fish nobody will buy it,’ Martin said, knowing that wasn’t true at all. The detail was relaxing him.

They left; Usman dropped Martin at his house and went on back to his own flat. His proper flat, the one Gully came to, not the one he met Martin in. He wouldn’t use that again. Not that they’d need a meeting place from now on anyway.

Gully was in the kitchen, making lunch for him and Lisa. She had been shopping that morning, bustling around the house the rest of the day. They were converting the spare bedroom into a study, something they could afford to do with Gully working again. They were busy, active, doing things together. Taking on projects. Converting the spare room felt like it might just be the start of it. They had a three-bedroom house, but Sally’s room was off-limits, not spare while it still contained her memory. Still, these last couple of months had felt like the best in years.