A Cold Killing (Rosie Gilmour) (4 page)

‘OK. Sure.’

‘Anything else for you down there, apart from enjoying yourself, spending my money?’

‘No. Not at the moment.’

‘OK. Come back tomorrow then. Give it the morning then get a lunchtime flight. There’s more to be done up here.’

‘I agree. I’ll talk to Marion.’

McGuire hung up.

*

Andy’s suggestion of a curry had put Rosie in the mood, but she didn’t want company. Once she had sent her story, she took a stroll around the King’s Cross area, along to the station, towards a little corner and a wall a few yards from the entrance. Every time she came to London her feet seemed to make their way to this spot. It was almost a ritual, a kind of reaffirming of who she was, how far she’d come. A lifetime ago, Rosie had pitched up here after she’d had as much as she could take of living with her mother’s sister’s family and their chaotic existence in the Glasgow tenement. She had just turned sixteen, and all she possessed was twenty quid, a hold-all full of clothes and a head full of dreams. She stood looking down at the spot where she’d woken up shivering after sleeping outside on her first night in London. She recalled the chill, the loneliness, the feeling that she’d been on the run all her life. But nothing had been stronger than the hope that surged through her that drizzly morning. Now Rosie smiled to herself as she gazed around her at the bustle of human traffic around the station, each person with their own story, their own dreams. She had done all right. She’d come a long way. Her mother and father would have been proud. She shook herself out of the moment and walked away.

She found a little Indian restaurant, where she devoured a massive meal, savouring every hot chilli like a true Glaswegian who’d been deprived of their staple diet for weeks. Bosnia had been great for lots of other reasons, but no matter where she travelled to, she missed her curries. She sipped from a bottle of lager and looked out of the window at the steady stream of London traffic, and across the road, at the people with bags and suitcases on wheels heading up towards Euston. She thought of the woman Karen had told her about who had run out of the restaurant. She was intrigued by that. It didn’t need to be anything to do with the shooting – the Eurostar probably carried at least half a dozen drug mules or criminals every trip. Perhaps the woman had a bag full of cocaine and couldn’t afford to be anywhere near the police. She felt a little guilty that she hadn’t passed the line to Andy, and would have to lie to him that it had come to the news desk on wire copy. She knew he wouldn’t believe her, but that’s how it was. Her mobile rang. It was Mickey Kavanagh.

‘Hi Mickey. You were quick.’

‘That’s what all the birds say.’

‘I don’t believe that for a minute. An international stud like you?’

‘I try,’ he said, ‘but I just get so excited.’

Rosie heard him chuckle. She was looking forward to having dinner with him. She owed him for his help on her last big story.

‘You’re going to love this, Rosie. I’ve checked out the owner of Mahoney’s flat.’

‘And?’

‘It’s him.’

‘But that’s not what I was told. It’s a different name.’

‘I know. I got one of my mates to run a passport check. The name on the register has a valid UK passport, and guess who’s mugshot is on it?’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘I kid you not. It’s Mahoney. He had two passports – well, two that we know of.’

‘What the fu—?’

‘He’s a spook, Rosie.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Well, I’m still digging. I’ve got mates looking into it. But I’d put good money on Mahoney having a past that involves more than his Eastern European Studies at Glasgow Uni.’

‘My editor’s going to love this.’ Rosie could imagine McGuire punching the air with excitement.

‘Yeah. But you know what that means, Rosie. You’ll get bugger all from the cops now on the murder.’

‘We’re already getting nothing.’

‘Not surprised. They’ll be playing this close to their chest, but I’ll see what I can dig up.’

‘Brilliant. Hey, Mickey. Let’s have a big dinner. I’m back tomorrow.’

‘Sure. I’d love that. I’ll keep you posted.’

Ruby examined her reflection in the full-length mirror of the hotel lift, glancing over her shoulder, satisfied by the way the skin-tight black jeans emphasized her firm bottom. The cream, soft leather vest clung to all the right places, showing her toned, suntanned arms and athletic shoulders to maximum effect. More rock chick than glamorous, and topped off with a luscious mop of shoulder-length jet-black hair, tousled perfectly to give that I’m-fun-and-I’m-carefree look, which was far from the truth of who she really was. But for the next few hours, Ruby just wanted to relax and savour the moment of a job well done. More than a job – an ambition. She’d waited exactly twenty-five years to watch that bastard finally get his day. Revenge was indeed a dish best served ice cold. She pulled down her sunglasses and winked at herself in the mirror as the lift doors opened into the palatial foyer of London’s Ritz Hotel. Nobody would ever think of looking for her here. Those halfwits back on the Costa del Sol would still be sifting through the smouldering embers of the house. Fuck them. The jungle drums would be beating all over Glasgow by now, and that definitely niggled, but the bastards would never find her.

She eased herself on to a stool at the bar and ordered a large vodka and tonic, watching the barman as he kept pouring, waiting for her to tell him to stop. She didn’t.

‘My kind of barman,’ Ruby murmured, lowering her dark glasses a fraction so their eyes met.

‘My kind of woman,’ the barman replied with a hint of an accent.

He had that been-around-the-course glint that said he knew who was up for it and who wasn’t from the moment they walked into the bar. She liked that in a man. Straight and to the point. Ruby flashed him a flirty smile. She took a long, lingering drink and watched from behind her sunglasses as he polished tumblers at the far end of the bar, sneaking furtive glances at her. She smiled inwardly. Just for the sheer hell of it, she might even get laid tonight.

*

The following morning Ruby arrived at Euston just in time to catch the ten o’clock train for Glasgow. She stepped on board and slung her small case in the overhead rack, where she could keep an eye on it, then slumped into a seat, hoping nobody would join her at the other side of the Formica table. She could have gone first class – it was not as if money was a problem. But first class was never all that busy, and she didn’t want to risk being in a place where she might be easy to spot. You never knew who was on a train from London. Any of the toe-rag drug runners making a drop or a pick-up for the firm could be sitting on the train; even that far down the food chain they would have heard by now that Rab Jackson had been murdered in Spain. Torched in the famous Costa del Sol villa he’d retired to five years ago. He had left Tony Devlin, the hoodlum who had become like a son to him, to take over the business. Rumours would be flying all over the shop as to who was responsible – there would be claims from rival gangs from Glasgow to Manchester that it was their hit. But alarm bells would have rung at the very top of the organization when they couldn’t get hold of Ruby. And once they discovered that her body wasn’t in the burnt-out villa along with Rab’s, there would be all sorts of serious shit flying around. Because Ruby was the accountant.

She drained the bottle of mineral water she’d brought with her and bought another and a coffee from the trolley as it passed. Gazing out of the window, she sipped from the polystyrene cup as the countryside whizzed past. She sometimes forgot how green it was back home. She’d been away too long, but it had been a means to an end. Call it dedication – more than that: it was a vocation. Everything she’d done in the recent years had been orchestrated so she could finally achieve the retribution her mother and sister deserved – even if it
was
too late for both of them. The landscape of Rosie’s childhood sped past her in a flurry of images. Train trips down the Scottish coast to Helensburgh, her mother’s adoring face while she and Judy giggled and played games during the journey . . . before it was all snatched so brutally away.

Ruby yawned and sat back, but her mind was too full of business to sleep. Her thoughts wandered back to the previous night at the Ritz, and the barman, who she’d surprised by whispering her room number as she left the bar. Then surprised him even more when she’d kept him up most of the night with her sexual athletics until they’d both collapsed, exhausted. When she’d asked him to leave so she could get a couple of hours’ sleep, he didn’t look in the least resentful. If that had been a man treating her like that, she’d probably have been upset – though no man she’d slept with had ever asked her to leave the bed.

She carefully took the little red book out of her handbag and ran her forefinger down the various bank account numbers where she’d stashed a fortune away in the past three years, ever since Rab Jackson had been gullible enough to allow her access to his accounts. Fuck him. He was so stinking rich on the misery of others he wouldn’t have known exactly how much money he had anyway. That’s what made it easier for Ruby. Jackson had been too busy with the sycophant film producers and writers who fussed around him, delighted he’d agreed to let them make a movie of his chequered life, to notice that Ruby was systematically plundering his bank account, siphoning cash to various personal accounts she had set up in different countries. It would take forever to disentangle the complexities of her handiwork on Jackson’s investments. But that wouldn’t stop them being suspicious. As she closed the diary, a scrap of paper fell out of it onto her lap. She studied the scrawl on the paper, at first wondering what it was, then she remembered picking it up from the table in the café in King’s Cross. She strained her eyes to read it, but all she could make out was what looked like the name of a company. J B Solutions. She didn’t know why she took it in the first place, but stuffed it back in the notebook and put it away.

*

As the train disgorged its passengers onto the platform at Glasgow Central Station, Rosie stepped out and melted into the crowd. She’d tied her hair back and pulled on a black baseball cap with the brim pulled low over her eyes, and as she strode through the concourse she didn’t linger to look at the throng of people coming and going, living ordinary lives, making their way home from work, heading off for the weekend to be with loved ones. She kept her head down and walked out into the late-afternoon sun and filled her lungs with the fumes of Glasgow traffic. She was home. For the moment. She jumped into a black taxi and closed the door.

‘Where to, doll?’

‘Bridge of Weir, please.’

She saw the driver eyeing her in his rear-view mirror. It was at least a thirty-quid hire to the affluent country village twelve miles outside of Glasgow. She could see his mind ticking over along with his meter. In her shabby jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap, he’d be hoping she had the money to pay. But without a word, he stuck his car into gear and headed out of Gordon Street and up St Vincent Street, towards the M8 motorway to Renfrewshire.

Ruby stared out of the side window at the sun throwing shadows on the city’s magnificent sandstone buildings. Pictures of herself at various stages of growing up flooded through her mind. The carefree Saturday afternoons going to the matinee at the Odeon Cinema with her mother and Judy, then afterwards sitting in George’s Square, feasting on fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, until it was time to get the bus back up to the Maryhill tenement where they lived. Happy days – even though she knew that by nine thirty in the evening while she and Judy were in bed, the men would come knocking on their door with plastic carry-out bags of vodka and a few cans of beer. They wouldn’t stay long, and then some other man would come, or maybe even two together. Ruby and Judy could hear them laughing, sometimes arguing, then noises they didn’t recognize. She’d blackened Billy Millar’s two eyes in the school playground one day when he shouted at her that her mother was a whore. He never said it again, but it didn’t make it any less true. It was her mammy, and she’d heard her crying in the night too often after the men left for her to feel anger or disgust at what her eight-year-old concept of a whore was.

Ruby swallowed the lump in her throat as the cab pulled out of the city and onto the motorway. Her stomach knotted a little at the thought of seeing Judy again. She’d been coming back as often as she could to see her sister in the home. Three or four times a year, if she could manage it without anyone finding out where she was. As far as most people were aware, Judy was long dead. And Ruby decided she’d keep it that way when she’d found her all those years ago, a half-starved wreck in a locked ward of a Dickensian NHS psychiatric institution. Judy would remain dead so she could work towards the single goal that had driven her since that night all those years ago. She blinked away the picture. At least Judy was in a decent place now, and not in that shithole where they’d left her rotting for years. Ruby’s money had made sure she was well cared for, and every time she came over from Europe she’d sit with her, talking to her empty eyes, holding her hand, telling her stories of the two of them as children, hoping to provoke some reaction, evoke some memory. But Judy’s fixed gaze never flinched. Nothing. Maybe today it would be different.

*

The nurse on reception looked up and smiled when Ruby came through the swing doors and into the sterile tranquility of the main foyer.

‘Hello, Ruby.’ She put down a folder and came out from behind the desk. ‘How lovely to see you. Are you well?’

‘Yeah,’ Ruby said from behind dark glasses. ‘I’m good.’

She couldn’t remember the name of the middle-aged nurse who always greeted her with a caring smile each time she visited. Ruby viewed it with the cynicism with which she had viewed most things as she grew up. You get what you pay for. If it had been the NHS hospital, you’d hardly have got a nod from the staff, they were so hard pressed. Here, amid the oil paintings and leather sofas in the foyer, it was all grace and charm. If you weren’t coming in to visit a loved one who was either in a permanent vegetative state or wired to the moon, you’d think you were in a boutique hotel.

‘How is she?’ Ruby asked, as they walked along the polished corridor to Judy’s room.

The nurse turned to Ruby and made a sympathetic face.

‘The same, I’m afraid.’ She sighed. ‘We just have to keep hoping. We should never give up hope.’ She paused, turning to Ruby. ‘She’s up, and we got her dressed. We told her you were coming.’

Ruby nodded as they turned the handle on the door and walked in.

Judy was sitting in a glossy white wicker chair by the window, a shaft of setting sun catching the paleness of her cheeks.

‘Look who’s here, Judy. Your wee sister.’

Judy stared straight out of the window, where acres of soft green grass stretched and spread into foothills in the distance. A male nurse pushed a wheelchair carrying an elderly patient down a tiny path towards the lake.

Ruby gave the nurse a nod.

‘Thanks. We’ll be fine now.’

The nurse backed away, smiling, knowing she’d been dismissed.

Ruby took a deep breath and swallowed back her tears. Every time she came here it was the same. It ripped the heart out of her. Judy was all she had in the world. Even as children they had clung to each other, both somehow aware of the fragility of their lives. Then, after the fire, the terror of that night and the awful brutality, everything died – not just their mother – in the inferno of their home. Judy had retreated into her silent world, and she hadn’t spoken a word for years. While Ruby grew up shunted from one children’s home to the other, she had believed her sister was dead. The social workers had even told her so. No details. Nothing.

Ruby walked towards Judy and stood in front of her and the window.

‘Hey, Judes. How’s it going, big sis?’

She bent over and kissed her cheek. She put her arms around her and held her close, wanting to bury her face in her sister’s hair and again feel safe, like they used to when they had curled up in bed like spoons at night.

‘Oh, Judy,’ Ruby said, fighting back tears. ‘I do miss you so much.’

She composed herself and pulled up a chair so that they both sat facing each other. Judy stared past her. Ruby moved around again, so that she was in her line of vision. She knew she could see her. Judy had to know she was there. She had to.

‘Guess what, Judy,’ Ruby said, pouring them both a glass of fizzy water from the bottle in the ice bucket. ‘He’s dead.’ She smiled broadly. ‘I did it.’

She reached out and stroked her sister’s hair with one hand, while clutching her soft hand with the other.

‘He’s gone, Judy. I did what I said I would do. I killed the bastard.’ She squeezed Judy’s hand and looked into her eyes. ‘They say shit doesn’t burn, Judy. But it’s a lie. Because let me tell you, pal, that piece of shit burned like a fucking stick.’

She smiled, willing Judy to respond – anything. Then, to her astonishment, Judy’s empty gaze slowly moved from the window. Her eyes flickered a little, then focused on Ruby, who sat barely breathing, terrified to break the spell. Then Judy’s pale eyes glistened with tears, and Ruby watched as they spilled over and down her cheeks. But it wasn’t like crying, because Judy’s lips had a hint of a smile. Then Ruby felt her sister squeeze her hand tight.

‘I know you can hear me, Judy. I know you can.’

Ruby wrapped her arms around her sister, and her own tears fell as she felt Judy’s arms slip around her for the first time in twenty-five years.

*

Ruby lit up a cigarette as she sat in the conservatory of the home’s cafeteria. She took a long, satisfying draw, held the smoke in and then let it out slowly, still feeling elated over how Judy had reacted. Somewhere behind those eyes, her sister was there, and her chat afterwards with her specialist was encouraging. It would take time, he said. Time, she told him, was all she had now. But he stressed there were no guarantees.

The couple from the table at the window got up and left, and Ruby squinted at the copy of the
Post
the man had left on the table. She could see a headline on the front page: ‘M
YSTERY
S
COT
F
LED
C
AFÉ
B
LOODBATH
.’