How To Kill Friends And Implicate People (21 page)

SIXTY-THREE

SAM

11:55

I called Hanya next, and cut straight to the chase. ‘How would you like to see Paula Lafferty’s flat?’

Hanya met me twenty minutes later outside Paula’s address. It was a tenement building on Bunesan Street, a few miles south across the river, backing onto the motorway. Hanya parked one street over. I needed to change my clothes, and we couldn’t be seen doing that right out front of the place we wanted to visit. I chained my bike to a lamppost next to Hanya’s car, then climbed into the backseat. She kept a spare suit in the boot, in case her clothes got dirty on the job. It was better than the creased clothes I had in my bag. Hanya stood and watched for passers-by while I got changed.

It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it would do for now.

Round on Bunesan Street, the buzzer had the surnames of everyone in the building; all eight apartments had a listing. None of them mentioned either
Lucas
or
Lafferty.
The number we’d been given for Paula was 0/1 on the ground floor. The name on the card read
Monroe.

I shrugged and pressed the button. When a small electric voice spoke, Hanya took the lead. ‘Police, ma’am. We’re here about Paula.’

There was a muted buzz and the lock clicked open on the entrance. We stepped into the hall and knocked on the entrance to flat 0/1. A chain rattled on the other side, and an elderly woman opened the door. Her hair was black gone to grey, and she stood with a stoop in her shoulders, hunched forward.

‘Hi there, Ms Monroe?’ Hanya produced her ID. ‘I’m DI Hanya Perera. This is my colleague Sam Ireland.’ She left a pause. Time for Ms Monroe to assume I was a cop, too. ‘May we come in for a minute?’

The old lady stepped back to open the door. ‘Please, call me Sarah, officer. I’ll put the kettle on.’

She walked away from us down a short and narrow hallway and turned left through a door. We followed her into a large kitchen. The floor was covered in red tiles; half of them were cracked and in need of replacing. The fitted cupboards looked like they’d been put up in the seventies, but gleamed damp. The smell of disinfectant hung in the air.

‘Ignore the smell,’ Sarah said. ‘I was just cleaning. Tea or coffee?’

‘I’m good, thanks,’ I said.

Hanya gave me a look that said,
Take the drink,
and asked for a black coffee.

‘Actually, I’ll take a glass of water,’ I said. ‘If it’s no trouble.’

Hanya gave me another look. I’d gone from refusing Sarah’s hospitality to choosing something that wasn’t on the menu. Sarah picked a glass off the draining board next to the sink and poured me a drink from the tap. I took it with a nod. Hanya’s coffee was going to take longer, as Sarah filled the kettle and switched it on.

Win for me.

‘How can I help, officers?’ Sarah said, busying herself by wiping down the counter with a damp towel.

The surface was already shining wet with the same disinfectant as the rest of the kitchen. I wondered if she would spend her whole day doing this, over and over. The hallway had been spotless.

‘We’d just like to ask a few questions about Paula. She lives here with you?’

‘Oh aye. Rents a room. It’s been so quiet since my Charlie died, you know, I like to have another voice in the place.’

‘Charlie your husband?’ I asked.

The look she gave me said I should leave the questions to Hanya. ‘Och no, he was my dug. When your dug passes away, first thing everyone asks is, when are you getting another one? Like they’re just things on one of they, whatya call them, factory belts?’

‘Conveyor belt.’ Hanya nodded along. ‘Sure. They’re family.’

‘Too right,’ Sarah said. ‘I couldn’t replace my Charlie, so I got a human in instead.’ Her eyes twinkled as she smiled, showing she was in on the joke of it all. ‘Paula’s a nice lass. Friend o’ my grandson. She’s not in any trouble, is she? Not seen her for a couple days.’

‘Does that happen often?’ Hanya avoided answering Sarah’s question like a boss.

‘Young lassies. Like yourselves, I bet you know how it is. Off chasing the men, going to the dancing. Sometimes we’re like ships in the night, me and Paula. Other times I don’t see her for a week. I know she comes in, because she cooks and cleans up.’ She dropped her voice, conspiratorial. ‘I always have to clean again after she’s finished – she never gets it all out.’

‘Could we take a quick look?’ Hanya said.

Sarah paused. She was thinking it over. Should she ask for any paperwork? Was Paula in trouble? Was it okay to let strangers into Paula’s room?

I decided to go onto the front foot, ease her decision. ‘It’s nothing serious. She’s made a few bad friends, and we’re trying to help her out, make the problem go away before she gets hurt.’

Sarah sucked on her lips then nodded. ‘On you go.’

Bingo.

SIXTY-FOUR

FERGUS

11:42

I should go easy on these guys. Getting information out of a couple of stoners isn’t going to be simple. I’ll just guide them along.

‘I think you know why I’m here,’ I say. Giving it a try.

‘Well, if Joe sent you, it’s gonnae be about the Babycham, aye?’ Nazi Steve says.

The what?

I don’t say that. I just nod. Wait them out. The more they assume I already know, the more I’ll be able to get them to tell me.

‘It’s about that ’hing he wanted recorded, innit?’ Baz says. He turns to Nazi Steve. ‘Remember how he got us going to the Barras to buy him a new tape recorder, replace that one you broke.’

‘Oh,
I
broke it, did I?’ Nazi Steve sits up, showing emotion for the first time. ‘Cal puts it through the dishwasher, but I’m the one who broke it?’

‘Well, he only put it in to get rid of all the shit left over from those old batteries, the wans you’d left in there too lang.’

Nazi Steve looks at me smiling. He shakes his head like,
You believe this?

‘Okay, guys,’ I say. ‘Sounds to me like it was Cal who broke it. So why did he need a new one, what was he recording?’

‘Okay, well, see—’ Baz pauses, looks at me with some serious side-eye. Maybe he’s wondering why I’m asking this. Don’t I already know? But he’s high, so he presses on with the talking. ‘So Paula had started hanging out with us, aye? Fucking hot, that lass. I think she wanted me.’

‘Nah,’ Nazi Steve says. ‘She wanted me.’

‘Thing is, Cal wanted her, so I couldn’t make a move—’

‘Fuck oaff, man.’ Nazi Steve slapped his groin. ‘It was me she wanted, I telt ye. But I’m a married man. Well, mostly.’

‘So she’d hang out here, and we’d all get stoned. Then one day she goes on a weird trip, starts telling this story, says she’s an undercover cop, but her mission was abandoned and nobody seems to remember she’s here.’

‘Just sounded like the story to
ET
to me,’ Nazi Steve laughs.

‘Aye,’ Baz continues. ‘But Cal believed it, didn’t he? So he keeps asking questions, and she keeps spinning this story. Like, she says that the polis in Glesga are corrupt as fuck, and they’re helping to control the drugs an’ that. But that’s fucking bullshit, by the way, because the cops did all that big reorganisation, didn’t they? Changed every’hin’.’

‘And I didn’t leave the batteries in the fucking tape player, did I?’ Nazi Steve turns on Baz. ‘The thing was working fine first time around. It was when the batteries were running oot and Cal says he can get more juice out of ’em by sticking it in the microwave for a few minutes, that’s when it got messy.’

‘Oh aye, aye,’ Baz says. ‘Right an’ all. It was all Cal.’

Nazi Steve throws his hands out to me to say,
Finally
. He settles back into his seat.

‘So this story she’s telling?’ I prompt them to get back on track.

‘Aye, well. That’s it, mostly. She says the cops used to be one of the biggest gangs in Glasgow, but now there’s this new lot, some rich banker wankers.’ He sniggered at his own rhyme. ‘And that they’re aw trying to work out a new deal. It’s aw baws, you ask me. Think we’d live here our whole lives and not hear any of this, till some lassie fae Belfast starts talking?’

‘So what did Cal do?’ I ask.

‘Well, he thinks this is good information, like. He thinks he can blackmail Paula, because she’s been working in the drugs and all that carry on, so if she was an undercover cop, all them gangs would want to kill her.’

‘And what’s he blackmailing her for?’

‘To try and get his hole, probably, what else? He’d been crackin’ onto her for ages.’

‘And how does the tape fit into all of this?’

‘Aye, well. We recorded what she was sayin’, didn’t we? Stevie here likes to record people when they’re high, because it’s pissin’ funny to listen back to it all after.’

‘It’s great.’ Nazi Steve nods. ‘People come out with some daft shite.’

‘So,’ Baz keeps going. ‘Cal has all o’ this on tape. But then he gets the idea of getting more. He wants Paula to record a conversation with those guys.’

‘What guys?’

Nazi Steve slaps Baz. ‘You’ve missed the best bit.’ He turns to me. ‘She says that some of the cops are working with two guys, Joe and, whassissname, the commie wan.’

‘Martin Mitchell?’

‘
Aye
. That fuck. So, Paula says she’s heard rumours that Joe and Martin are going to try and fuck everyone over, and work with some of the cops to take control of every’hin’ theyselves.’

My gut tightens. They might think this is all bullshit, but I saw that bedroom. This is all making too much sense. Joe and Martin working together. Joe decides Martin is drawing too much attention, and orders me to take him out. And he wanted the body to be found to send a message to everyone else,
Don’t fuck this up, or else
. . .

‘So Cal says he can set up a meeting,’ Baz continues. ‘She can pretend to be a hooker or something, and he can be her pimp, and then blackmail her into getting them to talk about it on tape.’

‘That’s horrible,’ I say. ‘For her.’

‘Oh, aye, I suppose.’

I’m buying this. All of it.

So that puts Paula in the room with Dominic Porter and Martin Mitchell. It doesn’t explain who Dominic was trying to call when I killed him, but that’s the least important detail in all of this.

‘Do you know where Paula lives?’ I ask.

‘Sure. With my nana,’ Baz says.

He reels off the address with no thought to the fact he might be landing his grandmother in trouble. Skunk and a gun will do powerful things to a person’s conscience.

I slip my gun into the harness stitched into my jacket. My hand stops shaking straight away. I bow a little at the guys and say, ‘Thanks.’ Then add, ‘Might be best if you lay low for a few days. Joe is pissed off.’

I walk out and leave them to their cloud of imagination fuel. On my way down the stairs I call Joe.

‘The leak is already dead,’ I say when he picks up. I give him a quick rundown of what they said. I only do the edited version, saying Paula was an undercover cop who’d lost touch with her people, and that she’d been claiming the cops were corrupt, and a foreign gang were buying out Glasgow. When I mention the bit about Paula’s boss being killed, he makes a grunting noise that tells me he already knew that part of the story.

‘I didn’t know he had someone working with him,’ he says. ‘Butler never gave anyone else up. Good for him, I guess. We worked him hard.’

‘I have Paula’s address,’ I say. ‘Want me to head round and see if she has any proof hidden away that might burn you?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’ll deal with that.’

I give him the address through a grin. I’ve left out the parts about him scheming to take over the city, and the real reason I was hired to kill Martin. Joe has no idea
I
know about that, and he wants to keep me in the dark.

He’ll send one of his dirty cops round to Paula’s address.

‘Are we clear?’ I say.

After a long pause he says, ‘Yes. Enjoy your holiday, bawbag.’

I know what you’re up to, Joe.

That might come in handy.

One problem down. One to go.

Time to get back to Alex. I try dialling his burner, but it rings out. Baws.

I’ll head round to his building again, try and figure out which flat is his.

SIXTY-FIVE

SAM

12:32

The room was small.

The old tenements had huge rooms. In poorer times, each room would have housed two or three families. Now, many of the buildings had been renovated, and the rooms divided up to create private spaces. The wall to the right looked like it was original. It had older wallpaper, and there was a fireplace in the middle.

The wall to the left was thin and new.

There was a single bed pressed against the new wall, neatly made with a cushion on top of the duvet. The disinfectant smell was in the air, and the window had been opened to let it dissipate.

This didn’t strike me as how Paula would have left it.

‘Sarah,’ Hanya called out. ‘Have you tidied in here since Paula went out?’

‘Oh yes. Always do. She never makes the bed. Gives me something to do.’

There were no bookshelves, DVDs, not even a TV. There was a dressing table underneath the window, and a chest of drawers near the fireplace. A wooden kitchen chair was next to the bed. I started going through the dressing table, and Hanya took the drawers.

I found a small ashtray on the windowsill, with a few half-used joints stacked neatly. There was a plate on the dressing table that had been used as a dumping ground for loose change, hair pins and assorted business cards. One of them was mine.

I raised it up for Hanya to see, then slipped it into my pocket. Best not to have anything in here with my name on.

‘If you were an undercover cop,’ I said to her quietly, ‘where would you hide things?’

‘If I were an undercover cop, why would I be here?’ she said. ‘And why would I be undercover in the first place?’

Well, sure, those were better questions.

I got down on my knees and started looking under the furniture. Under the bed I found a small notebook and a purse. The latter held a few bank cards in Paula’s real name, and fifty pounds in notes. I opened the notebook on the mattress. A few other business cards fell out. Journalists, a couple of other private investigators. The first few pages were covered with dates and names. The last one with anything written on just contained three words in big black ink,
Who is clean??

The rest of the pages were blank.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said.

I looked down again at the words. I thought back to the guy on the reception desk at the hotel.

‘I saw some lassie on a pushbike a few minutes earlier, and I saw the cops, but I didn’t see anything else.’

I hadn’t really listened to what he said. Or rather, I had, but I’d let what I knew about the events taint what I heard. He’d only seen me and the cops. He wouldn’t have connected a timeline, because he didn’t know when the attack took place. I’d added that on afterwards.
Of course he’d seen the cops,
I’d assumed,
they turned up after the attack.

What if they’d turned up before?

Then Joe Pepper had called me
after
I’d handed my business card to Dasho and Robinson. I’d watched Robinson talking into his phone seconds before mine rang. Had it been Joe on the other end? This all fit together too neatly.

‘Han, I’ve got a very bad feeling. You know those loose threads you’re always telling me not to pull on?’

She nodded. ‘I’m getting it, too.’

‘Paula is an undercover cop. She’s investigating a conspiracy. She’s killed in the street, and the only people my witness can remember seeing are me and the cops.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And everywhere we go in this, we’re running into Joe, Robinson and Dasho.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And the CCTV footage seems to have gone missing.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And Joe Pepper is able to make CCTV footage vanish.’

‘Yeah.’

Hanya pulled her jacket off and rolled up her shirt sleeve, then leaned into the fireplace and started feeling around. She grunted as she found something. She slipped on a pair of plastic gloves from her pocket, and reached back inside, producing a gun. I don’t know the first thing about weapons, but Hanya is an expert. She ran her hands over it, wiped some dust away, and smoothly clicked a button that released the clip.

‘Glock,’ she said. ‘Fully loaded.’

She slammed the clip back in.

The door buzzer rang. We both froze as we listened to Sarah shuffle down the hallway. She held a brief conversation with a muffled electronic voice, then called out for us to hear.

‘It’s more of your polis.’

Hanya slipped the gun into the waist of her trousers, at the small of her back. She shrugged her jacket back on to cover it. Neither of us could be found there. Hanya wasn’t on official business, and she’d helped me impersonate a police officer.

We heard the front door open, and Sarah said, ‘Oh, hello, come on in. I was just talking to some friends of yours.’

Then we heard Alan Dasho say, ‘Really?’