For Those Who Know the Ending (25 page)

That was the one downside to having a lot of money in a big, neat pile. Hadn’t happened for him before, not two big scores within a few months of each other. Now he had more money than he could reasonably explain to anyone, more than he knew how to easily hide.

‘You’re not very busy,’ Akram had said to him. There was a hint of suspicion in his voice, like he was 51 per cent sure that his brother was hiding something.

‘Yeah I am, I got a bunch of stuff on the go,’ Usman said with a shrug. ‘Loads of wee things though, nothing worth shouting about. Why, you need a hand with something?’ Asked as though he was eager to help, eager to get his hands on any extra cash that might be fluttering around his brother.

‘Nah, nothing yet. I’ll give you a shout if something comes up though,’ Akram had told him, the suspicious tone fading as the percentage dipped to 49.

That left Usman to go back home and sit in his bedroom, looking at the wads of cash that he’d stuffed into a slit in the mattress. Not even a good hiding place in a flat this small. He took the money out and looked at it every few days, just to see it and touch it. Sixteen grand from the bookies that he’d only shifted half of when he got his hands on thirty-five grand from the Comrie job. Too much to move in big lumps without inviting suspicion. He was filtering some into his bank account, but only a couple of hundred a week. Some he was spending, wiping out any bills he had with loose cash, cheerfully running up other bills to annihilate with stolen money. But there was still thousands left, and every time he looked at it he thought about the dead dealer and the threat that he would spend the rest of his life living under.

It had been good, the last four months. Martin did no work, living off the money he’d made. Joanne liked the fact that he obviously wasn’t working any more, despite the fear of money running out, and they were happy. A few months where they were able to create normality for themselves. The cash was basically gone, much of it on the deposit for a flat, and the rate at which Skye paid rent, it wasn’t likely to make its way back to his pocket very quickly. He didn’t care, and he didn’t let Joanne pressure Skye much either. She wanted to, but in the back of Martin’s mind was the fear that Skye might move back in with them, proclaim herself unable to live in the little flat they’d got her, out of spite.

There had been a couple of people in touch with him in the last few months, looking to set him up with work. Przemek had called, offering him a gig working with some importers. Martin turned it down. He hadn’t heard of the people looking to employ him, didn’t know if they might be connected to Chris Argyle. Wasn’t worth the effort anyway.

‘I know they’re not paying great,’ Przemek told him, ‘but you need to make connections if you want to make a living round here.’

‘I’m doing fine,’ Martin had told him.

‘Living off the lover, eh?’

‘No,’ Martin told him, ‘living off my own money.’

But that couldn’t go on much longer, so he was going to have to pull in more cash from somewhere. Then Usman called.

Martin ignored him. Ignored the call and ignored the message that was left in its wake. Usman telling him that he had another job they could work, that there could be good money in it. Talking with the relaxed confidence of a man who couldn’t see the dangers coming. Asked Martin to call him back for the details. Martin didn’t. If he called Usman back and they worked another job, there would be an escalation. Bound to be, it was how these things worked. The job on the bookies had been fine, a little bit of violence but they got away with it. The job on the dealer had been dirty work, a killing that paid well. The next job wouldn’t be any better. These things always spiralled down until you reached the kind of pit he’d almost been trapped in back home. More money, more risk, more violence.

Usman had thought there would be a period of fear, a couple of months maybe, after the killing. Then, when the police had stopped looking for Comrie very hard, and the people involved in the deal had moved on with their lives, the fear would fade. But it didn’t, and Usman had come to realize that it never would. The police would keep an interest in Comrie’s disappearance for evermore. They might not actively look for him, but it would only take Martin telling them about it for Usman to get a life sentence. The other people involved, the Allens and Chris Argyle, would never stop trying to find out what happened either. That was good money for them, not the sort of thing angry professionals would ever just shrug off, and a major business opportunity scuppered.

And it had been scuppered. Gully had confirmed it in a meeting not long afterwards. People were pissed off about money going missing and word had gotten to the Allens that Argyle wasn’t convinced of their innocence in the matter. That may or may not have been true, it didn’t really matter. The deal was dead in the water, Gully’s employers happy with a sly piece of sabotage.

Usman’s mind kept going back to Martin, the cold-blooded killer. What would happen if he got arrested? He wouldn’t keep his mouth shut, not if he thought it would help him get a smaller sentence. He would drop everyone else in the shit and then flee Scotland for the old dangers of home when he eventually got out of jail. Hell, if they were able to deport him to face more charges over there they probably would. No, Martin wasn’t a man who could be trusted. This wasn’t like working with his brother, where flesh and blood tied them together. He had wanted Martin to be a friend. He’d wanted him to be someone that he could trust and enjoy working with, form a bond that he could depend upon. If that had happened, if Martin had become the kind of friend Usman had wanted him to be, then the proposal Gully put to him would have been dismissed.

Usman was a loyal friend to those that earned it, that was what he told himself. He would never turn his back on his friends, on his brother, on anyone that returned his loyalty. He would do time for them, if it ever came to that. But Martin wasn’t returning his calls, and seemed determined to put a vast amount of space between them. That wasn’t a man you could rely on.

Gully came to the flat, earlier in the morning than Usman liked to be awake for. He wasn’t expecting visitors and was still half-asleep when he heard the knock at the door. Slung on whatever combination of clothing was closest to the bed and went out into the corridor, just wanting the knocking to stop. He jerked back a little with surprise when he opened the door to Gully Fitzgerald. It had been a few months since they’d spoken; as far as Usman was concerned they had nothing left to say to each other.

‘Morning, lad, now a good time to speak?’ Gully seemed bright and cheerful, and, more importantly, alone and unarmed.

They sat in the living room, Gully doing a good job of looking sympathetic. Seemed sorry to have dropped in out of nowhere and alarmed the boy. Usman sat opposite and waited for Gully to take the lead on this. Wherever it was going, it was nowhere Usman wanted to rush.

‘I’ve got a proposal for you,’ Gully said, the friendly undertone always there to make the industry talk less intimidating. ‘There’s been some trouble within the organization, the aftermath of that job on the bookies. Your pal, Martin thingummy, he’s a wanted man.’

‘Shit,’ Usman said, running a hand through his hair. If Martin was most wanted then Usman had to be next on the list.

‘Now, he’s the one people are talking about right now, not you. He’s the one that really pissed people off and I think we can keep it that way. He cracked Donny Gregor on the skull, and that’s what’s gotten people worked up. See, Donny’s been suffering from what happened that night, health problems and the like. Blackouts, headaches, all sorts of stuff, it’s really affected the poor bastard. People have noticed, and they want to see us do something about it. They expect it from us. It’s bad timing, more than anything,’ Gully added.

‘Oh?’

‘If this had happened when Jamieson was free, and the organization was at its strongest, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. Problem is, at a time like this, we can’t afford to look weak, not in any way, so we have to be seen to do something about it. Punish anyone who hurts us. Reassures people. So that’s why I’m here, we need to do something. We, us, you, me and Nate. We were all there that night, so we all need to clean that up. People won’t put you under any pressure if they know that you helped us punish the guy who caused all the bother. Gets you off the hook, you see.’

Usman nodded along. Wasn’t going to sit there and argue with Gully Fitzgerald anyway, but he was hearing some good things. He liked the idea of
we
, of being bundled in with Gully and Nate. Talk about protecting Usman from the people who wanted to hurt Martin.

‘What, uh, what were you thinking of doing?’ Usman asked him, leaning forward in the chair to listen.

‘We want you to set up a job with him, make it seem like a right good score. You and him go and work a place over, let’s say a warehouse or somewhere like that; somewhere there won’t be anyone to get in the way. You get him in there, and, well, you can probably take a guess at the rest of it.’

Usman could guess, and guess with unerring accuracy. He nodded his head, picked at the seam of his trousers, tried to think of something he could say. Martin wasn’t a friend, not really, but he wasn’t a bad guy either, and only bad guys deserved that sort of ending. But he was dangerous, that was the fact he couldn’t escape. He was a man who no longer seemed to want to work with Usman, who knew what Usman had done and could get him into a hellish amount of trouble.

‘He doesn’t want to work with me now,’ Usman said. ‘We got a good score last time out, I don’t think he’ll want to work again for a while. He ain’t greedy.’

Gully nodded. ‘That was, what, four months ago, something like that?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well, there you go, we’re starting to get into the time when it’s safe for him to go to his work again. The man might not be desperate for work, but he’ll be tempted if you dangle a pretty-looking carrot in front of him. Something lucrative and something safe as well, that’ll be the clincher. You go to him and tell him there’s good money in a job and that he won’t even have to bring his wee gun with him, that’ll get him interested. Low risk, high reward. He won’t be able to turn it down.’

Usman didn’t look convinced, but he knew what he was being told. Gully wasn’t saying that Martin would jump at the chance; he was telling Usman that he had to find a way of pushing the gunman to accept it.

‘What do I tell him?’

‘Tell him there’s a warehouse you know some drugs move through. Tell him it isn’t well guarded because they’re scared of drawing attention, it’s a legit place most of the time, stuff like that. Tell him you know people you can shift the drugs on to as well, so there’ll be no hassle in selling it.’

‘He doesn’t like drugs, anything to do with them.’

‘Tell him you already have a buyer, and it was the buyer that brought the job to you. Money already agreed, you just got to go in and grab the gear, nice and easy. Talk about the dough, not the drugs.’

‘He’ll want details,’ Usman said. ‘He always wants details.’

‘Sounds like a pro, this boy. All right then, tell him it’s a warehouse out Clydebank way. I know we have a good place out there you can use for it, I’ll get you the full address in the next few hours, before you talk to him. You tell him there are pills going through the place, party drugs coming in from the continent. Stored there, then distributed round the city. Tell him it belongs to James Kealing, someone like that.’

Usman nodded enthusiastically, this was something he could do. Telling lies, spinning a yarn with just enough detail to convince a man like Martin. Once you started dressing it up, it looked like one of his jobs. This could work, it really could.

‘You’re going to kill him?’ Usman asked.

‘I’m not,’ Gully said with a sorry smile. ‘You are.’

Usman just looked at him. Sat there and stared across the room. The only way to extricate himself from the wrath of the Jamieson organization was to kill the man they blamed for hurting the bookie.

‘I’m not . . .’

‘I know this ain’t your sort of gig,’ Gully said, ‘but you got to be serious about the situation you got yourself into. People need to see that you’ve helped us, done something for us that nobody else could do. That happens, and they’ll welcome you into the organization.’

Usman jerked his head up, having been staring at the floor. He looked across at Gully, eyes a little wider. ‘Into the organization?’

‘Into the organization, yeah. You’ve already proven that you’re a useful fellow to have around. The job on the bookies was well done, even if it had this fallout. If you’d done that against someone else we’d all be very happy with you. The job on that dealer, shit, that was very well done as well. Textbook stuff, I would say. You pulled it off beautifully, even though it was a tricky wee thing to have to work. If you have other jobs like that, things you can work that weaken other organizations, then we’ll look after you. You’ll need to earn it, keep working jobs,’ he added with a shrug, ‘but I don’t think there’ll be any trouble in that, eh?’

‘I’ve got loads of jobs I can work,’ Usman said, ‘if I get the help. Against other organizations as well. They’d be good for Jamieson. But, yeah, I got to kill Martin?’

‘You do, yeah.’ Silence for thirty seconds, Usman looking at the floor again and Gully letting him. Letting him see how dark the job was before he offered a little more light to guide him towards justification. ‘Don’t look at it as a negative thing though. Look at it as a chance to step up and join the organization. Look at it as the chance to make sure that the boy Martin whatshisname doesn’t come back and bite you on the arse down the line, you know what I mean?’

Usman looked up and nodded. ‘I can do it,’ he said. ‘I’ll get in touch with him, set it up, let you know.’

‘Good lad, good lad,’ Gully told him, getting up. ‘We’ll help you as much as possible.’

It wasn’t betrayal, that’s what Usman started convincing himself of before Gully had closed the front door behind himself. Martin would have done the same if the roles were reversed, and there was a chance that he still would. If Usman was scared of Martin dropping him in it, then Martin had to have the same fears, didn’t he? And he was a gunman. He might already be planning to wipe out Usman. This wasn’t betrayal, it was self-defence.