For Those Who Know the Ending (6 page)

There was an empty house waiting for him, something even Gully could better. Nate had a daughter, Rebecca, but she lived with her mother’s parents, an arrangement that generally kept her away from the violence of Nate’s life. He had her most weekends, and that brought him some joy and plenty of extra worry. There was a woman he was in danger of getting close to, despite himself. Her name was Kelly Newbury, and no matter how hard he tried to keep his distance from her, he couldn’t quite get her out of his mind. He wanted someone else around, despite the risks.

He wanted something physical, but he needed something more, too. A beautiful younger woman, smart and aware of his work, Kelly worked in the business too. She knew what Nate did, knew the life he lived because of that work. She was, in many ways, the perfect woman for him. He wouldn’t have to hide his true self. Still couldn’t bring himself to call her. He felt too old and too dangerous. He was a man in a bubble; the only person he allowed close enough to share it was Rebecca. Doing work he didn’t like for people he didn’t trust. Keeping the woman he liked at arm’s length because of it. He cursed his stupidity.

4

He didn’t tell Joanne anything. She didn’t ask, to be fair, so it’s not like he lied to her. A lie of omission, if you insist on calling it a lie at all. If she had asked what he was working on, Martin would have told her, would have explained it to her in as much detail as she wanted. Part of him wanted her to ask, he wanted it to be that sort of relationship. Perhaps if they’d already established it as that sort of relationship, she would have asked, but it felt too early for total honesty. Lying about work was also an instinct he had never learned to crush.

See, for many years, back home, he worked just as hard keeping the job a secret as he did doing the work itself. He tried to hide it from family, but that became too hard so he lost touch with family. He tried to keep it from friends, but when that got too complicated he changed his friends. Only hung around with other people in the business, the kind of people who wouldn’t care and wouldn’t talk. They weren’t always the kind of people he wanted as friends. Flashy and aggressive, industry people who defined themselves by the damage they did. And girlfriends. There were a few. Started out being girls he liked from outside the business, ended up being girls he didn’t from inside. The business sent you on a downward spiral, even in your private life.

Now he had Joanne. A smart woman, outside the industry, and he wasn’t going to lie to her. If she put her size-four down and said no way Josef, he would have backed out. Would have walked away from the life at her instruction. He had told himself again and again, he would back out, all she had to do was tell him. But she didn’t.

She could see the expectation on his face. He had told her he was going to be working that day, and hadn’t added anything else.

‘Oh, right,’ was all Joanne had said.

She knew it disappointed him, her not asking for more. He wanted to have to explain. Wanted her to want to know. Joanne understood the nature of Martin’s work and she didn’t feel like she had to know more than that. She was happy in ignorance, and she hadn’t been happy for a long time. She had earned the right to decide how honest they were.

They went through their early morning routine. Sleepy sex and a long shower followed by a rushed breakfast. Joanne was going to be second to the bookshop, her sister there before her. Hated when that happened. Always felt that she had to be seen to work harder than Sophie to prove that her status as an unmarried single mother didn’t make her some sort of failure. She turned up for work on time and she put the hours in. Some mornings Martin slowed her down.

‘I’m off. Will you be home when I get back?’

‘Should be,’ he said to her with a nod. Waited for her to ask a little more.

She nodded and kissed him, left without another word. Didn’t give any outward sign that she cared about what he was doing. Left the house and drove into work. Thought about him constantly through the day. Wondered what he was doing and hoped that he was safe. She didn’t want to know, because that felt right for the relationship. She didn’t want to have to explain this to him, because explaining was almost as big a commitment as finding out. So she worked and pretended it was no big deal. Her, always trying to be respectable and law-abiding, fallen for a career criminal. Knowing he was pursuing that career even as she thought about him.

Her lack of interest, if we’re being honest, hurt him. Just a little bit, but enough. The thought that maybe she didn’t care, that maybe she only ever saw this as a short-term thing, a bit of fun. As soon as he disappointed her, got himself arrested, she would ditch him. But her lack of interest was limited only to his work; it wasn’t representative of their relationship. He was worrying about nothing. He kept telling himself that as he left the house.

Joanne had taken the car, so he was back on the bus. The city still didn’t seem familiar to him, but it wasn’t the concrete mystery he had first encountered. There were bits of it that he recognized when he looked out the window, others that he was sure he had seen but couldn’t convince himself were in the same place as before. Others still seemed entirely new to him. He had moved around a lot since he arrived in Glasgow, tried to learn the place. You can get the basics, major landmarks, shopping areas, those sorts of things, but not the detail. You don’t gain the knowledge a man in the business needs by looking out a bus window. Takes longer and it takes more effort. You have to be working in the city, day in, day out. You have to scout the place with all the professionalism you can muster. Even then, you won’t learn every street; you won’t learn every little hole that any city offers to hide in. He couldn’t, after thirty years, tell you every part of Brno, just the bits that mattered. That was the problem with Glasgow; it was only just starting to matter to him.

He went north of the Clyde, then got another bus that took him east. He was going to Alexandra Park for the first time. Found it and then followed the directions he’d been given to find the fountain where he was supposed to wait. There were way more people there than he had expected and he grimaced to see them. He thought it would be some small fountain hidden among the trees where the deal could take place without anyone else seeing. Instead there must have been a dozen people sitting round the black edge of the grand fountain, chatting and killing a sunny lunch hour.

Straight away, Martin understood. The person he was meeting didn’t trust him, wasn’t sure that this Eastern European newcomer was reliable. Wasn’t willing to accept that any new customer had honest intentions for their first meeting, that’s why he wanted plenty of witnesses around. Made sense. Annoying, but it made sense. So Martin walked halfway round the fountain until he saw the man he thought he was looking for.

Dale Duggan was middle-aged and it didn’t look like it had been an easy fifty years. He was overweight but still dressed in a thin, tight jumper. Maybe it had fitted at one time and maybe he just hadn’t noticed how much weight he had put on. He couldn’t have thought it was a good look, if he’d taken the time to notice what he was pouring himself into. The fact that his thick dark hair didn’t look like it had battled a brush for some time suggested he didn’t concern himself much with appearance. He was sitting on the curved edge of the fountain by himself, a blue plastic bag at his feet. Martin went over and sat near him. Not right beside him, not so close that a passer-by would realize they were there to meet. A few feet apart, a safe zone in between. Martin reached into his pocket and pulled out a brown envelope. He placed it on the safe zone, resting his hand on top of it for a few seconds, making sure that Dale had seen what was happening here. He took his hand away, glancing off in the opposite direction. Took two seconds for Dale to reach across and put his fat little hand on the envelope. Had to be quick, if it fell back into the water, that would be his wad of cash soaked. Once he had the envelope Duggan got up, slipped it into his trouser pocket and walked away.

Martin watched him go; made sure he was safely out of view before he moved. Duggan didn’t trust Martin, but Martin wasn’t dumb enough to trust Duggan either. Some guy he’d heard being mentioned by others in the business, that was hardly a glowing recommendation. Certainly no guarantee of professionalism and no guarantee that this was what it seemed to be. Duggan could have been setting him up.

He took a look around him and shuffled a few feet sideways until he was sitting in the spot Dale had vacated. Still warm. Martin sat and stared at the world around him for nearly ten minutes, taking in the park and the mostly happy workers on their lunch break. He took longer than he needed to, but careful was a valuable currency. There was nothing alarming, nothing to make him nervous. No police, nobody standing watching him. When he was as sure as he could be that it was safe, he picked up the plastic bag and strode out of the park.

Sitting on the bus with the bag on his knee, a shoebox inside the bag. Stupid thing to do. The kind of stupid you only do because you don’t have a better option. He should be in a car; they shouldn’t have met in public. Martin was clutching the bag, trying not to look like he was desperate for everyone to ignore him, which he absolutely was. There were two young men on the bus behind him, talking fast to each other. Their accents and the noise of the engine were killing the meaning of their words in Martin’s ears, but it sounded like they were engaging in a game of one-upmanship. Women’s names were being used as a means of scoring points, and each was questioning the other’s honesty. Not far in front of him there was an old woman talking loudly. She was all on her own, and each sentence seemed to have very little connection to its predecessor. None of them were paying attention to the skinhead with the plastic bag.

It was a relief to get back into the house. Relief was soon swamped by guilt as he walked upstairs and into their bedroom. He took the shoebox out of the bag and looked inside. A small handgun, although not as small as he would have liked. Ammo, but not much because he shouldn’t need any. Usman had said he would provide the gun but Martin had refused, insisted on getting one of his own. A gunman always should. Could never trust a weapon provided by someone else. Martin needed to make a connection with a seller in the city if he was going to be working here, and now seemed like the time to start. It meant storing it in the house before use though. Bringing a gun into Joanne’s home.

If she didn’t know it was there then she was innocent, that was what he kept telling himself. He pulled open the wardrobe and pushed the box in against the back beside the two other shoeboxes that belonged to him, both of which did at least contain shoes. It didn’t look out of place and there was no reason why she would check inside it. And he hoped, prayed, that it wouldn’t be there long.

It was weird being in the house without Joanne there. It still felt like he didn’t belong. It was her house, and everything in it was hers, bought either by her or her parents. But slowly, very slowly, that was changing. He was starting to create his own little spaces inside it. Chairs that he always sat on, the cup that he always used, routines that belonged to him, and made tiny little fragments of their home his. Things that Joanne silently encouraged, making him a growing fixture in her life. She would only do that if she wanted him to stick around. That thought made him smile a little.

5

Donny Gregor’s days were filled with the same, soul-crushing routine. Out of bed early, into the bookmakers he ran, watch people throw good money after bad, go home in the evening. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if he owned the place, but he didn’t even have that dubious honour. He ran it for others, so others picked up almost all the rewards. Now and again something interesting would happen, but interesting usually meant criminal and the criminal activity that floated round his business just made him more nervous. It was a little thrill, sometimes, and it might have been worth it if he was profiting, but usually it just meant Gregor was getting a taste of the risk with none of the reward.

His bookies in Coatbridge was part-owned by Peter Jamieson, although Gregor was only partly sure of that. He had dealt directly with John Young, Jamieson’s right-hand man, which was why he figured Jamieson owned some or all of the place, but Jamieson’s name wasn’t on the books. A few different people had their names on the books and it was likely some of them worked for Jamieson. Maybe some of them didn’t even exist, but that didn’t matter. Whoever they were, they never showed up or got in contact, and Jamieson had control.

That was where the little bit of excitement came stumbling into Gregor’s life. Sometimes they would use the safe in the shop to store things. Money, he assumed, although he never saw inside the envelopes and didn’t want to think about what else they might be putting in there. Didn’t want to, but couldn’t stop himself thinking about drugs or guns or worse. As long as he didn’t see it, he could plead ignorance. They were very careful when it came to keeping their secrets, much more so now that Jamieson was in jail. People were paranoid and even the trustworthy were looked upon with suspicion. The new guy who delivered the cash, a scary big fellow, had asked a few questions the first time he showed up. Asked about people approaching Gregor, trying to use the place for their own ends, or trying to lean on him. There had been no one, thank God.

‘And if anyone does come round here looking for anything, you’ll be the first person I call, Mr . . .’

‘Colgan.’

‘Colgan, right. I’ll remember that.’

Colgan was coming in through the front door of the bookies now, a sports bag over his shoulder. He looked routinely intimidating, the sort of guy that couldn’t turn it off no matter the situation. He ignored the customers, mostly men, watching the racing on the TVs and walked across to the counter. Gregor had seen him come in and had noticeably positioned himself at the counter so that Nate wouldn’t have to talk to any other member of staff.