Every Night I Dream of Hell (30 page)

Ronnie was obviously nervous. Little jerky movements and darting looks. He was wandering into uncharted territory. He would either lose his nerve completely on the job or the pressure would settle him down. I was banking on the latter. He had been under pressure before and handled it well. On at least one occasion he had been too relaxed, went and put himself into a hell of a lot of danger because of it. People got jumpy before a job. That didn’t mean they couldn’t handle it. Pressure’s a strange thing. Brings out the best in far more people than you might expect.

We had left Garvey’s house and gone to pick up another car. A safe, clean car. The number plate didn’t mean anything to the police. The car would be made safe after the job at a garage somewhere. We were going to switch drivers at my insistence. Give Ronnie something to do, something to focus all that energy on. One thing I learned early in my career was that there was nothing worse than being the third man in a two-man job. You’re there for insurance, there to give the impression of strength of numbers. That’s fine, but it’s no fucking fun. There’s nothing to do. You spend the whole time waiting for something to go wrong so that you’ll have a part to play. Ronnie needed to be kept involved.

‘The car we’ll use is in here,’ I told them, pulling into the forecourt of a large garage.

The guy who ran the garage was an acquaintance. There are some people in the business that I know only through my reputation. They do favours for me because they’re scared of what’ll happen to them if they don’t. Ross French was one of the few who didn’t fall into that category. It was just money with Ross. You couldn’t frighten him; he was one of those people stupid enough to think that not being a career criminal somehow protected him. But he always took the money, and he never asked questions. I wasn’t the only one who used his services. He had a few cars that were passed around criminals, repeatedly resprayed and retagged and sent out to do more dirty work.

We parked the car we’d been using so far and got into the new one, a car we would use only for this job on Lafferty. French had, at my request over the phone that morning, left three sets of thin surgical gloves and three balaclavas in the glovebox. We were going to wear them, no matter how safe we felt, in the knowledge that Lafferty had security cameras in and around his house. If Original was lying about security, underplaying it, or if we took a wrong step, we would be caught on camera, and we couldn’t guarantee that we would be able to wipe out all the footage afterwards. We thought we could, but thinking something and knowing it are two different things, and on a job like that we had to know.

It was silent in that car as Ronnie drove us up to Lafferty’s house. He seemed focused on that. Grateful, I think, to have something in the present to think about. Took his mind off the near future. There was so much about that boy that reminded me of myself when I was starting out. He didn’t have my instinctive toughness, sure, but he was a fast learner and a good judge.

Lafferty was a legit businessman, most of the time. He had a lot of businesses that did a damn good job of covering up his criminality. That meant that he didn’t have to hide his money. Everything had a ready explanation, including the mansion. It was in Milngavie of course, on a street we knew wasn’t going to be easy to get in and out of unseen. For a start there was nowhere nearby that we could park, because the road up to the house was single-track. All the houses on the street had their own driveways; there wasn’t one car parked out on the street itself. These weren’t people who usually needed to park on the street when they had double garages and wide driveways for their fleet.

‘We can’t risk bumming an empty driveway,’ I said. ‘If the owners come back with the car there they’ll report it. Get round the corner; see what’s there.’

Nothing much better. Another street with money and more driveways. There were at least a couple of cars parked up at the side of this road, leaving just enough room to pass. Must have been grubby visitors. I was keeping my eyes open, looking for somewhere suitable. I wasn’t complaining though because this wasn’t a surprise to me, wouldn’t have been to Conrad either if he’d been here before. I’d visited Lafferty’s house once before and I knew what the approach was like. There was never a great chance that we’d get to park close.

‘We’re getting too far away,’ I said quietly. ‘Just park over there.’ There was a passing place we could risk stopping in. If we were quick, we would get away with it. ‘We’ll have to risk walking back up.’

‘Better have our balaclavas on from the start,’ Conrad said from the back seat. ‘Good chance a lot of these houses have cameras pointing out to the street.’

Ronnie parked the car carefully, making sure there was enough room for any car or van to pass us. Last thing we needed was someone getting our car towed while we were in there. Come out and find it gone. Everything had to be careful from this point on. Precise, that’s a better word for it. Timing was vitally important, communication, all the little things that would add up to make a job well done. And it had to be well done. It wasn’t enough to go in there and kill Lafferty. Anyone could do that. Killing a man is a challenge that any old halfwit could meet. Doing it well was the difficulty. Doing it well meant walking away without anyone ever knowing that we’d done it.

We pulled our balaclavas over our faces and stepped out of the car. Three men walking along a wealthy street looking like the guiltiest people you ever saw. We must have been quite a sight. You wouldn’t have been able to identify us, but it was a better world for everyone if you didn’t see us at all. There was urgency now. If anyone did see us they would report us and as soon as we were reported the police would be swarming the area. This now had to be a very quick job, and that wasn’t really what I had in mind.

We could kill him quickly, but that, as I just mentioned, was not the same as killing him well. We needed him dead and then we needed to get the body out of the house and out of Glasgow. Bury, burn, sink, whatever: it needed to disappear. With enough time we could gather up everything Lafferty would take if he was doing a runner and destroy that with the body. Give every impression that leaving was his decision.

Round the corner and up the street, not passing anyone, no cars passing us. It was a quiet area; that was one of the reasons people paid good money to live here. That didn’t mean we hadn’t been spotted, didn’t mean we weren’t on the clock. We reached the approach to Lafferty’s house, a big place with a manicured front garden and a brick driveway. There was a double garage attached to the house, which looked like a new build to me. Last ten years anyway – a splurge of new money.

Whoever had designed the garden was fond of trees and bushes; tall trees were all round the edge of the garden and up to the side of the house. Five-foot bushes ran up either side of the driveway. That was an easy route to get us close to the house, but the information Original had given us didn’t look the same in person as it had in his speech. I’d been here, seen the place before, but didn’t remember it well. The bushes ran up the sides of the driveway but they stopped before they reached the side of the house. There would be about eight or ten feet where we had nothing to hide behind. We moved in a shuffle, ducking and running up the edge of the driveway, tucked behind those bushes. We were on the grass, running down the side of the house, looking for lights. There had been none visible at the front. I was tired that night, mentally drained, but I was at least alert enough to spot that. We reached the corner and I ducked my head round.

The back garden was as dark as the front. No lights in the garden. The security was bad. Even for a man who thought he was safe and didn’t want to alert his neighbours, this was pretty fucking dreadful. I didn’t stop to think about it. Should have, but couldn’t. We were in a hurry. I glanced up at the back of the building and then pulled my head back.

‘Two lights on upstairs, none down,’ I whispered to the other two.

‘His office is up there,’ Conrad whispered to me.

I was puffing a little, which Ronnie wasn’t. We’d only run from the car. It was the sort of run the boy could make on his hands, but me and Conrad were panting after it, stopping at the corner to get our breath as much as to take stock. I had never thought of being older than him as a disadvantage until that moment. Experience comes with downsides.

‘Right, we have the key and we have the code for the alarm. Let’s get this done fast and get out,’ I said in a growling whisper.

Ronnie nodded, Conrad probably did too. I had said it for the boy’s sake. Conrad, a gunman after all, didn’t need to hear that sort of basic instruction. I would be lying to myself to pretend that there wasn’t a thrill in what we were doing. Standing in a traitor’s back garden with a balaclava on, ready to break into the mansion under cover of darkness. It was a thrill I knew I would hate afterwards, something else to add to the mountain of regret and recrimination, to rob me of my sleep. But for that moment the thrill was perfect. I led the way round the back, and the other two followed.

We were silent and slow. Rushing would make noise and we were still trying to be stealthy. The path round the back was narrow, up against the wall. I could see a path leading up to a raised patio, another leading down the side of the garden towards a shed. The whole place was pristine. However much Lafferty was paying his gardener, it wasn’t enough.

I’ll tell you just how tired I was at that point. As we crouched and waddled along the back wall of the house, I was thinking about how nice a garden like this would be for Becky. Somewhere she could play, have her friends over to play in. She was getting to the age where playing in the garden with her friends was babyish and uncool, but still, that’s what I was thinking. I was jealous of Lafferty’s kids, that they had something Becky lacked. It was unprofessional.

The two behind were still letting me lead the way. Ronnie must have thought I had experience at this sort of thing, which I didn’t. Sneaking around, setting up a hit. This was gunman’s business. This was where Conrad should have been in charge. We were seconds away from me taking a backward step and pushing him into the lead. Out in the city, setting things up, organizing, intimidating, I was the senior man. Conrad didn’t question that. He let me get on with doing what he knew I was good at. But this was his territory; this was his life. I needed to step back and let him do it. All I could do was try to seem convincing, make sure I did nothing that drew a snort of derision from the gunman.

That’s the thing about the job I do: it gives me no practice at stepping back. Same for all muscle with authority. Our job depends on the respect and fear we get from others. We’re the sort of people who feel that taking a single step back is a sign of weakness that we must never show. That made working with a man like Conrad on a job like this more difficult, like it wasn’t difficult enough already. It was that sense of needing to show control that had me up the front now, approaching the door of the sun lounge. Ronnie didn’t know any better, but I should have handed over the reins to Conrad by now. The superiority was naturally his.

This wasn’t how I usually went about my business, Conrad either I would guess. Sneaking around mansions in the suburbs is not how you kill a man in this business, not unless you’re in a movie. This was, by every reasonable measurement, a one-man job, but obviously I had to be there. I was the security consultant; I was Currie’s eyes on the job. Fine, a two-man job then, but there was no justification for a third wheel. Ronnie was there because I wanted him to learn, because I felt more comfortable having an ally in tow.

My gun, at this point, was tucked inside my coat. It felt heavy and uncomfortable. I had handled a gun before, but only a couple of times. Never fired one. Not once. Hoped I wouldn’t have to that night either. A gun doesn’t make you tough. There’s a saying I heard a few old hands in the industry use: the man with the gun isn’t scary, the gun is. Anyone can point a lump of metal at anyone else and pull a trigger. Child’s play. I wanted no part of the bastard things, but this was different. We could be outnumbered; Conrad might need backup.

No lights came on as I stopped beside the door. They should have; an automatic light should have been shining on us all at that point. A basic security feature even his neighbours couldn’t have objected to. I reached into my pocket and took the key out. Bloody gloves were too small for me; I could feel them tight on my hands. They were always too small when someone else picked them for me. I have large hands, and people don’t think of these things. I slipped the key silently into the lock.

Anything could have happened at that point – the key jamming because it didn’t fit, the alarm going off instantly, someone opening fire on us. It was a good point for a set-up to bite us on the arse. But nothing happened. The key slid into the lock, I turned it and slowly pushed the door open, stepping inside. The sun lounge had a couple of unused couches and a door through to the house proper. If this was locked I was going to have to break it. Turned the handle and the door kindly opened for me. The alarm panel was on the left-hand side, just inside the door.
Two three six five
. I tapped the code and the
enter
button. A flashing red light turned to stable green before any noise started screeching round the house.

The three of us were inside. This was the worst part of any job to me, and that might sound like a stupid thing to say given that every part of the job was noxious. Creeping around in close proximity to a target is lousy. Stepping silently through a house to try and get the jump on someone, knowing that a single noise out of place could blow the whole job. I hated that. It was out of step for muscle, rare and awkward. As a big man I much preferred any job that let me walk right in, batter a man and walk back out again.

We went through a large utility room and into the kitchen, a long room with an island and large windows looking out into the garden. We were banking on Lafferty being alone in the house. If he was upstairs in his office alone then we were fine. He wouldn’t hear us from up there; this house was full of large rooms and you probably had to shout to be heard from one end of them to the other. But that was dependent on there being no clever bastard skulking about in the darkness downstairs, waiting for us.