Every Night I Dream of Hell (6 page)

We parked next to Conn’s car and went inside. A little reception area with glass doors on either side. There was a shout of ‘through here’ from the right so we went into a large empty room to find Conn and Mikey. Two big men in their thirties, Mikey younger, darker and a little softer round the gut. There was a pasty halfway into his mouth, so he could only nod a hello to us both.

It had been a workroom; Conn and Mikey were sitting on units at the side of the room. It had a bare floor and tiled ceiling and not much else to look at. It was clean; place hadn’t been used or broken into since the previous owner went tits up. There was a large window that looked out the front to where we’d parked.

‘You must be Ronnie,’ Conn said, reaching out a hand.

Mikey had met Ronnie before; helped him out of a little jam when we were chasing down a dealer working on Jamieson’s patch. Conn hadn’t, and was polite enough to say hello first. Politeness is often the first casualty of professionalism, so Ronnie appreciated the gesture.

Conn went back and sat beside Mikey; me and Ronnie loitered around in front of them, close enough to whisper. It was cramped; we were huddled together like we were hiding the conversation from non-existent passers-by. It felt right though, the way men like us ought to talk when we’re discussing the dirty end of the business.

‘What’s the latest?’ I asked, in a tone that said I wanted to take charge of the conversation. I knew what I needed to hear, and I didn’t want to hear anything else.

‘Latest is what it was,’ Conn said. ‘The police are on it. I heard DI Fisher’s name being mentioned. Don’t know what conclusions they’re jumping to, but we’ll need to keep our heads down. They see us sniffing around, they’re going to think we’re involved.’

We were involved, of course, just not the way Fisher would want us to be. ‘How clean did you leave it?’ I asked.

‘Clean enough, I think,’ Conn said as I watched flakes flutter from Mikey’s mouth. ‘We weren’t gloved; didn’t think we’d need to be. Touched the door and nothing else though. Took our time leaving, wiping anything we might have touched on the way in. Can’t guarantee we weren’t seen, but we didn’t see anyone. Not a great area for going unseen, mind you.’

I trusted them both; they were about as good at this as anyone in the city and they made a hell of a team. I nodded, accepting that there was no need to say any more on the subject of their professionalism.

‘We went and saw the wife again,’ Mikey said, swallowing down the last of his brunch. ‘That was Marty’s idea; he wants this figured out as fast as possible. We went round and had a word with her when we were sure the cops had gone.’

‘How sure?’

‘We called her first, checked; she said they were,’ Conn said. ‘We went round, checked the area first. Seemed clear. We didn’t have long with her though; the cops aren’t going to leave the grieving wee woman alone yet.’

‘And?’

‘And she had fuck-all to add to what we already know. She was holding it together, best she could. Said nobody had been in touch with Christie that he hadn’t been expecting until this new chance came along. Said he got a call asking him to come to a meeting inside, like, an hour, or some fucking rubbish like that. Should have smelled a rat at that.’

‘She says this was some new person that Christie had no connection with, but, I don’t know,’ Mikey said. ‘He wasn’t daft. Got led around by the cock sometimes, but that was a problem for him and the wife to sort out. I figured with his experience he wouldn’t go running off to a meeting with someone he’d never even heard of.’

That made sense; even someone with little experience shouldn’t run into a potential danger zone like that. A man who’d been around the business a while, he would know that.

‘So what are we thinking?’ I asked.

‘First thing, he knew the person who called up and invited him to the meeting. Maybe someone he’d done business with before, or a woman he’d been involved with,’ Conn said. ‘The lure worked, and they had a pro there to hit him. It was someone that was good enough to get in and out without being seen, far as we know, and make a clean shot on Christie. I think we can assume a pro.’

‘Which leaves the why part,’ I said.

‘Aye, that bit’s what’s got Marty farting fury,’ Mikey said with a casual smile. ‘He’s worried that we might be under attack, that this might be the start of something big instead of all the pishy wee shite we’ve had to put up with so far.’

We’d all been waiting for something big, expecting it to come. The fact that this much time had passed without a major attack was some credit to the people running the organization, shoring up the defences and repelling any of the small attacks that were made. Some people tried their luck, looking to pick a little bit of the business away while Jamieson sat in his cell, but none had succeeded. Maybe that had helped to put the big guys off, but it wasn’t going to stop them forever. Someone was going to roll the dice and take a shot at what he considered a weak opponent.

‘He have anything to back that fear up with?’

Conn shook his head. He always did the majority of the talking for the two of them. ‘Just more fear. Don’t get me wrong, he’s done a hell of a job, wouldn’t have thought he was capable, but he’s been sitting there waiting for something like this to come along for a while now. He’s ready for the fight, just needs the fight to get ready for him.’

‘Not the worst way to be,’ I said quietly. ‘So what’s our part in the play?’

I looked sideways at Ronnie, indicating that I meant him and me, but mostly I was just making sure he was still there. He hadn’t said a word since we arrived, which was fine if he had nothing to say, but he needed to impose himself a little more around established guys. It was way too easy to disappear into the background of a conversation when men with reputations were talking, but if he ever wanted to be taken seriously then he had to learn to speak up. Guys like Conn and Mikey meet new kids in the business every damn day, and they forget about most of them pretty quick. You have to make some sort of impression, and sitting next to me is no more than a good start. It’s easy to get lost in the deep shadows of other people.

‘We’re going to look at the more obvious stuff, the stuff that might have us bumping up against the cops,’ Conn said. ‘We’ll start with everyone around Christie and see where it takes us. You start with Adrian Barrett and try and work your way back to Christie from there. We’ll see if we meet in the middle.’

‘Adrian Barrett, huh? Anything to support that?’

‘He’s flavour of the month,’ Mikey said with a shrug. The work we did, the world we inhabited, was all just a little too easy for Mikey. He wasn’t as smart as Conn but, quiet as he was, there was nobody more comfortable with brutality than him. There was a danger that that made him sloppy, complacent, but there weren’t many better in a tight spot.

‘The bosses think he’s here with a crew,’ Conn said. ‘I’m sure someone’s mentioned him to you already.’

I nodded.

‘He ain’t here alone anyway,’ Conn went on, ‘so he might just have the means to make a hit against Christie.’

‘Not much of a message though, is it?’ Ronnie asked. ‘I mean, the message is strong, but if we have to search around to work out who’s sending it then it doesn’t do him a lot of favours.’

Conn nodded. ‘True, but there’s another side to it. There’s nothing worse than uncertainty. Uncertainty makes us all look weak, and that helps him make more attacks in the future. You get circumstances as well when you can only pull off a move at a certain time. He knows that once the first shot is fired, everyone’s going to be keeping their head down. So he pulls this now and only shows off that he did it later on when he can profit most.’

‘What do we have on Barrett anyway?’ I asked them.

‘A name,’ Mikey said with a smile. ‘Not much else, uh?’

‘Not much,’ Conn nodded. ‘The rumours say he’s been here for a month or two, but I don’t know. I think that might have been a bluff. I think he might have had people here for a month or two, spreading the word that he was with them, but I figure he only showed up more recently. We think he has a crew with him, some serious people maybe. Got a good supply behind him as well, judging from the moves he’s making. Comes from the Midlands, apparently; Birmingham or something.’

‘I heard not Birmingham, but somewhere close by,’ Mikey said.

‘Yeah, lot of different stuff going round; take it all with a pinch of salt.’

‘We’re sure he’s alone, not fronting for someone else?’

‘You thinking of Park?’ Mikey asked, smiling.

A little bit more history for you now. Don Park is a senior man in Alex MacArthur’s organization, and everyone with the power of sight can see that he’s trying to edge MacArthur off a cliff so he can take control. MacArthur’s old and coughing up his lungs, so he might not need much of a shove. That means Park making big moves of his own, and getting an outsider to front up a network attacking Jamieson would be a good start. Park was the one we’d all been waiting for.

‘Makes some sense, doesn’t it?’ I asked.

‘It does, but nobody’s seen any link,’ Conn said with a despairing shrug. Somehow it would be better if it was the devil we knew. ‘Worth looking at though, when you’re trying to find Barrett. That’s all we’ve got,’ he said with a sense of finality, looking at his watch, ‘and we ain’t got any time left either. Come on.’

He and Mikey got up, headed for the door. If they were in a hurry then we would give them a head start; just good form to not all rush away from the same location at the same time. Me and Ronnie edged our arses onto the units and did our best to look like we had a clue what was going on around us.

‘How do we find Barrett then?’ Ronnie asked me.

I started laughing, because, come on, what else could I do? ‘That would be the question,’ I said. ‘He needs to stay somewhere I suppose, so we start looking round for places he might be staying. If he’s brought a crew with him then we should be able to track them down. Might take some time though. Needle in a haystack.’

We were driving back into the city, listing hotels and other places they might be hiding out in while they tried to crack Glasgow.

‘Are those two going to be able to keep themselves out of a police station if they’re sniffing round the case?’ Ronnie asked with a hint of genuine concern.

‘They have about as much chance as we do, which is some. They’ll be careful, and we do still have some people inside the police who can help us out of a little trouble, just not a lot.’

‘Huh. So they’re good at all this then, are they?’ he asked me, fishing for something more than he was going to get. Ronnie wanted info on everyone he met. That was the right attitude to take. Best way of keeping yourself alive and free was knowing who the threats were. Threats from the bad intentions of enemies, threats from the incompetence of friends.

‘Very good, and you’d be wise not to say anything to the contrary.’

I left it at that, because that was as much detail as a smart kid like Ronnie needed. Mikey and Conn were two of the best in the business, Conn smarter than Mikey, Mikey more brutal than Conn. They’d both been working for Billy Patterson for three or four years and had been his top men since Alan Bavidge died. That was the business side of them, and that was all anyone really needed to know.

The personal side was straightforward. Mikey was married with a couple of young kids and I think I’m right in saying Conn was godfather to the youngest. What Ronnie was plucking up the courage to hint about was Conn’s private life, which was very private. In my opinion it didn’t really need to be. Nobody further down the food chain was ever going to dare question him to his face about it, and nobody further up the chain gave a damn about who a profitable employee slept with. Okay, if he stopped being good at his job then it would be open season, a stick to beat him with, but as long as he was brilliant at his work then his business was his own. He didn’t seem to see it that way. Spent too much effort hiding himself from the world, but that was up to him. It wasn’t Ronnie’s place to try and make it an issue.

We stopped at a pub in Craigton that Jamieson owned, place that had unreachable pretensions about it. I introduced myself to the manager as the new security consultant and asked if there was a room me and my assistant could use for an hour. In a quiet back room we sat and wrote out a list of places we could check. A few hotels in there, some houses we knew Park owned, a few other decent hiding places that might be good for a long-term option.

We were about to make some phone calls when my mobile rang: Kevin Currie.

‘Nate, listen, there’s big things going on. Lafferty’s gone nuts about this hit on one of his guys and he’s calling a meeting.’

‘Meeting of who?’

‘Everyone whose name he can remember. He wants a big meeting tonight, everyone involved in running the organization these days. Marty tells me that you and Ronnie are helping his boys investigate, so the two of you might as well come along.’

‘Jesus,’ I muttered.

‘I know, it’s stupid, you don’t need to tell me. I tried to talk him out of it but that just pissed him off even more. It was his boy that got killed and he’s getting all emotional about it. He probably thinks it makes him look weak, has to be seen to do something big about it.’

Yeah, they always think they have to be seen doing something big about it.

She was waiting for me when I got back to the house. I wasn’t in the mood for her, or for anyone else. Too much to think about, and my thinking is better done alone. But Kelly smiled at me even when she saw my scowl, and that forced me to soften a little. I unlocked the door and let us both in.

Kelly was thirty-one but could have passed for a weary twenty-five if she’d made the effort. Pretty, girlish features, long dark hair and a look around her eyes that told you just a fraction of what she’d seen. I didn’t ask what she’d been through, because it was rude and because I knew some of it already. I knew her father and brothers were about the worst people I’d heard stories about in my many years of hearing stomach-turning stories. I knew she’d gotten into some sort of relationship with Tom Childs, a boy who worked for Kevin Currie. Childs got her a job with Currie too, and all was going well until Childs overreached. Tried to step up and become a gunman, got himself killed.