Every Night I Dream of Hell (35 page)

How scared would Currie be? He had to know that I would find out, and he had to be terrified of my reaction. That wasn’t a good thing. A senior man who’s scared of what you might do to him becomes dangerous. Tonight I would calm those fears, but only a little.

There was nobody to call, nobody to talk to. Couldn’t call Ronnie and get him up to speed with events, tell him where the meeting was going to be. Couldn’t call Conn or Mikey either; didn’t trust them. Conn had been in on it, had to have been. Mikey went along with Conn, and that left me on the other side of the fence from them.

I kept going back and thinking about why they’d used me for this. I kept coming back to Zara. They used me because she knew all about me. She could tell Barrett and his crew scare stories. They would pull stunts like the one at the hotel with Zara drugged up; try to scare me because they were afraid of me. A public way of presenting them as Lafferty’s crew, and I fell for it. There was a problem with Currie’s plan. Not Currie’s, actually; Jamieson’s. The problem with it was that they put me front and centre as their man, and ditching me now would make them look unstable. So now they had to keep me around, after the performance had closed.

I killed the day in silent thought and then drove to the meeting. I didn’t recognize the cars on the street. Rang the buzzer and was let into the building, made my way up the narrow stairs and into the office. It looked like I was the last man to arrive. Kevin was there, Ben Carmichael with him. Conn and Mikey were both there, both looking tired. Looked like men who had worked a long night and not gotten enough sleep off the back of it. Billy Patterson was there too. He was Conn and Mikey’s boss, but he was supposed to answer to Marty. Marty wasn’t around. Just the people in the know, and me.

‘Nate, good to see you,’ Kevin said.

The five of them were congregated near a desk on the far side of the room. I made sure I stayed a little nearer the door. It was the only exit, and I wanted nothing between me and it. Violence wasn’t likely, but you put me in a room with people who’ve lied to me and there’s a chance.

‘I know I’ve already said this,’ Kevin said, ‘but I really am sorry about Ronnie. I was shocked when I found out. That bastard Conrad.’

The others nodded solemnly and watched me while I watched them back. There was a heavy silence in that room, a bunch of people trying to keep their nerves in a headlock while they waited for my reaction. There was a little bit of implied criticism in Kevin’s words. Conrad had been my mistake. This was Kevin making it clear that Ronnie being killed was at least partly my fault. He was right, of course.

I nodded a little, and didn’t say anything. Let them drown in the quicksand of their silence.

‘I had a talk with Peter a couple of hours ago,’ Kevin went on, trying to take the lead. ‘He was very sorry about Ronnie as well, of course. He was also relieved and pleased that we managed to sort out Lafferty, get it done. So, uh, yeah, he was pleased. There’s still some work to do,’ he said, looking across at me.

I stood in resolute silence and looked back at him. Left it long enough to make sure that whatever I said next didn’t need to be a response to the bullshit he’d just spouted.

‘I went to see Ronnie’s girlfriend last night. Told her he wouldn’t be coming home.’

That added another layer of depth to the silence. All of them looked at me. Mikey and Carmichael were doing their best to show no expression, Kevin and Billy were shocked and Conn just looked sad. Looked like he sympathized with me for making such a mistake. Even the best of us occasionally lets humanity trip us up.

‘I think the least we can do,’ I went on, ‘is see that she gets something from us. Something to keep her quiet, but also something to express our sorrow. Ronnie had a friend, Owen Turner. You own a slice of his business. I think it would be a worthwhile gesture to hand that slice over to Esther.’

Kevin looked at me, nodding very slowly. I had spoken in a steady voice; there was nothing there to give away my rising anger. But I was still standing by the door, still facing the rest of them. It felt like me against them.

‘Of course,’ Kevin said, ‘that’s the least we can do. I’ll make sure it happens as quickly as possible. Does he have anyone else, family?’

‘No, none that he mentioned.’

‘Okay,’ Kevin nodded, probably relieved that he only had to compensate the girl. It was a twenty-grand compensation, generosity not usually forthcoming in this business.

Silence made its way back into the room and filled the place. Kevin was watching me, waiting for me to say something else. I was watching him, letting his discomfort grow. He must have known by that point that something was wrong. They all did.

‘Everything’s clean then?’ Billy asked, directing the question at Conn.

This was an attempt to move away from bad news. I think Kevin would have hugged him for changing the subject if he could. Get them off Ronnie and Conrad and onto the things that went well. The clean-up, for one.

‘Yes,’ Conn said quickly. He was smart enough to grab hold of the opportunity to change the mood. ‘Couldn’t have gone better. Bodies are gone, a lot of Lafferty’s key items as well so it looks like he ran. Maybe they’ll believe it, maybe they won’t, but it was well done. We think we’ve cleaned away all the security footage as well.’

‘We haven’t had any word from our police contacts yet either,’ Carmichael said, Kevin’s right-hand man trying to move the tone towards something conversational. ‘They haven’t been tipped off about any of the three being missing yet. Shouldn’t be long before someone starts asking questions.’

A few more nods of the head, a few more glances towards the doorway where I was standing.

‘Barrett and his crew have been charged,’ Kevin said. ‘Bunch of stuff, but the murder of Lee Christie is in there. That might not stick, because it was Nasty that did the deed and he’s not around to be charged with anything, but they’re still looking at good time. Been charged with possession of the gun, charged with resisting arrest.’

‘We might need to lean on anyone that was supporting Lafferty,’ Conn said. They were so determined to carry this conversation to a non-explosive conclusion.

‘Don’t think we’ll have much trouble with them,’ Kevin said with a shrug. ‘I’ll have a word with one or two, the more senior guys who backed the wrong horse. Doubt there’ll be any trouble though. Once they know Lafferty’s gone and he’s not coming back, they’ll be queuing up to lick Peter’s boots again. Should make them more loyal, in the long run. They’ll be desperate to prove their loyalty as well, so we can use that. Might have to push one or two out, I suppose; we’ll see.’

They were moving towards the end, and they wanted to draw me into the conversation before it finished to make sure that my grim mood wasn’t directed at them. Billy looked at me before he started to talk.

‘Garvey’s done a runner,’ he said. ‘Myself and BB went round to his house and the place had been hastily cleaned out. Nobody there. We’ll keep looking though.’ Said with a smile and a shrug, designed to let the room know that that was the last point of business.

They had dealt with the treacherous Lafferty and the English thugs he’d hired to attack us; we had lost one of our own but otherwise could all move cheerfully on. Everyone else in the room seemed to accept that, but their opinions didn’t matter. I wasn’t finished.

‘You make sure the girlfriend and his friends are looked after and I won’t make trouble,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep working for you, because employers will always lie to people like me. But you made a mistake in not telling me. A dangerous mistake. I don’t like being kept in the dark. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything, but you played me like a sucker and I don’t like that.’ My tone wasn’t good, not as calm as I wanted it to be. My mouth felt tight.

The rest of them looked at me, but only Kevin had the seniority to say something. He could have tried to deny it, but he was smart enough to see the ugly cul-de-sac that lie led him into. Instead he went for conciliatory.

‘You’re right,’ he said, looking down at the floor like a guilty schoolboy. ‘You’re right and I apologize. There’s no excuse for it, only an explanation. Zara suggested using you, said your . . . history together would make the whole thing more convincing. It was her opinion that you would work the job aggressively because she was involved, and that the rest of the industry would be convinced by it. We wanted to hire you anyway, so . . . She asked that you be kept in the dark. She said if you knew, you would walk away and leave her stranded. I don’t know, I didn’t want to argue with her, not when she was taking the risk she was. We went along with it for her sake and that was a mistake. It’s just . . . I don’t think it changed anything, Nate. Not really.’

That was it. That was his justification for stringing me along: the fact that, in his mind, it didn’t change anything. Well, it changed things in mine. Changed the way I looked at Kevin and Jamieson and the rest of the organization. But I couldn’t stand there and say that to them, because I still worked for them. I would keep working for them. But things had changed.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Just so we’re clear, you don’t have to tiptoe around me, or hide Original from me. I know what happened, all of it. You should have told me. You want me to be security consultant or some other bullshit name for having me run round the city being your clenched fist. Fine, I’ll do that, but from now on I’m an insider.’

Kevin nodded faster than he should have. The others were silent. I gave them all a look. The sort of look that told them they’d made a mistake with me that could still prove very dangerous. Then, because I’d had quite enough of them, me and the rest of the world, I left the office and went home.

In the past, as if the past meant anything, I had been able to put people, events, anything I wanted, behind me and just move on. Not this time, and it took me a long time to understand why. It had all been my fault, that was the main reason. I had employed Ronnie, forced him to come and work with me when I knew he didn’t want to. I wanted someone beside me. Shit, maybe I wanted someone in front of me. I spent hours that night trying to work out if I had hired him for the role he died playing, acting as my shield. I let him go in ahead of me; I allowed him to stand between me and Conrad when I should have known that Conrad could still pose a threat. I still don’t know the answer. Maybe I did hire him just to have him stand between me and a bullet. Maybe, subconsciously, I was just that cynical.

Zara was on my mind as well. She was another example of my weakness and stupidity. If she had said to me that she wanted to stay, if she had made a play for me, I might just have given in. I told myself all the time that I was strong enough to say no to the things I wanted but should avoid, but that day I could have been won round by her. She was still beautiful and dangerous and capable of damaging both me and Becky, but I would have found a way of ignoring that. I wanted her, but she didn’t need me. I was glad about that. Maybe I would give Kelly a call. Maybe a fragile relationship was better than none at all.

But my mind kept coming back to Ronnie, lying dead on the floor of Lafferty’s office, just inside the door. I shouldn’t have gone to his girlfriend, shouldn’t have told her. That was unprofessional and I surprised myself with my behaviour. But some good came of it, because it forced them to do something for the girl, something that Ronnie would have liked. Handing over Kevin’s share in Turner’s shop to her would put money in her pocket, buy some silence perhaps, but also help Turner. Ronnie was worried about his friend, worried that he’d made a mistake by introducing the boy to Currie. This was a chance for Currie to make sure it was a mistake that didn’t come with regrets.

They would give her the share in the business, as well. I would make sure of it. They understood, I could see it in them. Kevin understood that when I told him he had to hand over the share of the business I would be checking; I would make sure that it happened. If they didn’t hand that share over, I was going to take a short cut through every single one of them. Currie, Billy Patterson, Conn Griffiths, even Peter Jamieson himself. There isn’t one of them I wouldn’t have taken down if they had held out on paying Ronnie’s girl.

I didn’t bother going to bed. No point, not with everything that was running through my head. People and their faces, the things I had done and things I knew I was still to do. I thought about Ronnie, obviously, but I thought about Rebecca a lot. Thought about her father being a killer, a man she needed to be protected from. That’s what Zara had said, and she was right. I protected Becky from Zara, but maybe I needed to protect her from me as well. I wouldn’t though, because I was both protector and danger in her life, the person most likely to ruin her and the person I was least capable of scaring away.

I thought about myself, thought about the life I needed to build for myself. I thought about Kelly, and maybe building a life with her. But it would have been a life with her in it, not a life built around her. I wasn’t capable of committing to anyone other than myself, not really. Maybe Becky, but I was at least smart enough to know that she had to be kept with her grandparents to lessen the damage I could do.

The night turned into morning and some light crept into the living room as I sat in my chair and let my misery and doubt consume me. This was what I deserved, this sense of failure and uncertainty. This was what I’d earned with my life. Remembering Lafferty as I shot him, remembering his choice of last words.
You don’t understand what they’ve done to you
, that’s what he said. He died being right, as little as that means to him now.

Hours passed, I suppose, with me just sitting there letting them go. I had nothing to add to them, nothing to spend them on. Time was better without me at that moment; the world was. Anything I did in that exhausted, depressed mood would have been hateful and violent because that was all that was in my mind. I had been played like a puppet by men who now feared me. It’s a very dangerous thing, to have powerful people terrified of you.

EVERY NIGHT I DREAM OF HELL