For Those Who Know the Ending (7 page)

‘Mr Colgan,’ he said with a smile, ‘would you like to come through to the back?’ Asked quietly. A little too obvious, perhaps.

‘Yes please.’

Donny Gregor, Nate knew straight away, was one of those people who revelled in being around criminals. You could see the nerves in him, but you could also see the desperate effort to make himself useful. Try and strike up a friendship, then tell his equally pathetic wee friends about it afterwards. Tell people that he had met Nate Colgan, spoken to the man on equal terms. Hint that he’s important to Peter Jamieson, try and make himself seem like he’s some sort of big gangster. There were always plenty of people like that around; the kind who wanted to seem dangerous by association. Nate, and others like him, did a good job of avoiding the kind of people who were thrilled by their proximity to criminals, but Gregor was one of the few useful idiots.

The bookie led Nate through the side door to the offices at the back of the building. A couple of people might have turned to glance at the new arrival who was going straight through with the manager, but nobody let their look linger. You didn’t need to know the business to know that Nate Colgan wasn’t the sort of guy you got caught leaving your eye on. Gregor and Nate disappeared through the back of the shop, along a short corridor, and through to the little office Gregor used.

There was nobody else there. The routine was, or should have been, Donny Gregor waiting out in the corridor to make sure they weren’t interrupted while Nate put a particularly well-sealed package into the safe. This time Gregor had broken the routine. He had closed the door behind them, standing inside the room, self-consciously clearing his throat to make sure Nate knew he had something to say. Nate, with the bag still slung over his shoulder, stopped and looked down at the shorter man with a firm look. Inquisitive, yes, to start with, but more than that. Just a tiny little bit threatening. The sort of look that told Gregor he better have a damn good reason for breaching the reassuring set-up they always used.

‘Listen, Nate, I was thinking of phoning you anyway, even if you hadn’t turned up. I don’t know, maybe calling you isn’t the right way to do these things.’

‘Why?’ Nate asked. Gregor had the whiff of a man who was set to ramble.

‘Well, I don’t like to make a fuss. I mean, I’m not that sort, am I? I get on with my work here and I try to be useful, and I don’t like raising alarms about every wee thing. Plenty of things round here that I can take care of without calling for help. But I think, the last, I don’t know, week, maybe longer, this place has been watched.’

Now he had Nate’s interest. ‘Watched? How sure are you?’

Gregor puffed out his cheeks. This was his moment in the spotlight and he wanted to play it right. He wanted to sound like the sort of gangster that Nate Colgan spent his days hanging around. He wanted, as everyone did, to make a good impression on the people who seemed to matter.

‘I can’t say a hundred per cent. It seems like it to me though, so I’m fairly sure. I’ve seen the same car with someone in it. I thought it was suspicious the second or third time I saw it. The one time I went out and went over to the car though, there was nobody there. So, I don’t know, I can’t be a hundred per cent, but sometimes, you know, you just get that feeling. You know what I mean? The feeling that you’re being watched? I got that.’

Nate doubted very much that Gregor was familiar with that feeling because he doubted Gregor spent very much of his life under other people’s microscopes. He also doubted that someone watching the place would make a point of parking the car in the same place every day. It sounded false.

‘So you went over and there was nobody in the car. But every other time you’ve seen the car there was someone else inside?’

‘Well, I don’t know about every time. I can’t vouch for that. Look, Mr Colgan, Nate, I only want to give you the best information so you can take educated steps. I only want to tell you what you can use, what matters. I can’t honestly stand here and say that every single time I’ve seen the car there’s been someone in it. I wish I could, but I can’t. Sometimes there was a person sitting in the driver’s seat, on their own. Maybe, I don’t know, sometimes there wasn’t.’

‘Uh-huh. Yes or no would do.’

Gregor did well to keep the scowl off his face. Wasn’t easy, this big ape had no right speaking to him that way in his own office. Okay, fine, he didn’t have much practice speaking to people like Nate Colgan, but he knew what manners looked like. Gregor had met Jamieson’s right-hand man, John Young, had spoken to him personally, and Young had been far more polite than this. Just because Gregor was sitting in a bookmakers all day, that didn’t mean he wasn’t important. How would the Jamieson organization function without people working down the chain like him? Men like Colgan ought to have a little more respect.

Nate was silent for a minute or so. Put the bag down on the floor and gave this suspicious car a little thought.

‘It’s been parked in the same place every time?’

‘Just about, yes. Yes.’

The same car in the same place almost every day. That just didn’t seem likely. It didn’t sound like the sort of thing any decent scout for a job would do, if indeed it was a scout and he was any good at his job. You use different cars, you park in different places, and you use a couple of different people if you have the numbers.

‘You sure it was the same person you saw each time?’

‘I think so, yes.’ Making a real effort to keep his answers brief now. A petulant effort that Nate didn’t care about.

The same person in the same car in the same place. It was either the world’s dumbest scout or not a scout at all. One last question.

‘This car. Was it there over the weekend?’

Gregor paused. ‘I don’t think I noticed it over the weekend, no, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, does it? I’m off Sundays, and there have been days I didn’t notice it through the week as well.’ That answer was a little longer, trying to be persuasive. The drama was rolling slowly away from him.

‘And is it out there now?’

‘Not now, no.’

Nate nodded. ‘I’ll think on what you said; see about confronting the person if they show up again. For now, I need to use the safe.’

Gregor was standing guard out in the corridor while Nate opened the safe. He had two packages this time, larger than usual. Money had come in that wasn’t budgeted for, although Nate wasn’t entirely sure where from. It was his job to protect it, not earn it. Could have come from anywhere in the organization. After Angus Lafferty ‘disappeared’ they were left with all sorts of business problems. He had been their importer and they needed a new one, one who knew his place, but Lafferty also had a good collection of legit businesses that filtered money smoothly. The organization wasn’t able to keep a hold on all of them, so it was getting harder to clean money, getting harder to deal with the unexpected windfalls any well-run organization should expect to get.

He placed the two packages in the safe. There had to be thousands in each. He was no expert on the weight of money, but if it was in large bills to reduce the size of the package then there could be a good twenty-five or thirty thousand in each. Even in mixed bills you were still looking at a lot of money for someone to walk away with. The packages were very carefully sealed, if anyone tried to open them, it would show. The anyone they feared being Gregor. Nobody, Nate included, was willing to entirely trust some random bookie with their cash.

Gregor was standing out in the corridor chewing a finger when Nate emerged. The bag over his shoulder still looked as full as it had going in. That was because Nate had put a bundle of books in there as well, this way anyone who cared to watch him going in and out wouldn’t notice a difference.

‘You’ll look around though?’ Gregor asked. ‘I’m not being a wimp here, I’m just asking, because, well, if this place gets hit, I get the blame.’

Nate looked down at him, saw the fear in him. Fear of failure, fear of letting Jamieson down. Fear of catching the violent blame if Jamieson was pissed off about it. It was good that he was afraid, made him more alert to genuine problems. He was only half-right about where the responsibility would fall. Yes, he would get some of the blame if the place was targeted. It was his business; he had a duty to make sure nothing went wrong here. But the person who would carry most of the blame would be Jamieson’s security consultant. Mr Nate Colgan.

‘I’ll check around,’ Nate said.

Gregor was obviously just relieved that he had passed the message on. Now he could say, if something did go wrong, that he had done his bit, he had warned someone clinging to a higher link in the chain. In Gregor’s mind, it became that more senior person’s problem to deal with. Wouldn’t provide much protection for a man as junior as Gregor, sure, but it was something.

Nate left the bookies and made his way out to the car. Slung the bag onto the passenger seat and looked up and down the street. Nothing stood out. There were people around, but it was a sunny afternoon and this was a fairly busy commercial street. At a glance there wasn’t anything that looked like a threat. Nobody hanging around a doorway, nobody sitting in a car. There was nothing that should make a smart man nervous. Nate drove away. The day was too short and he was too busy to hang around chasing the ghosts of Donny Gregor’s limited imagination.

That ghost, it gnawed away at him though, chewed on the back of his mind just long enough for Nate to need to do something about it. Gregor was no squealer; he didn’t go running for protection every time some bastard looked at him funny. As far as Nate knew, this was the first time he had ever raised a security concern. Might not have been much to raise a concern about, but it was still the first time his bottle had rolled off its shelf and hit the floor. Which led to a different train of thought. Maybe Gregor was involved in a set-up. Maybe he was giving out this info because he was planning to clean the place out and pretend someone else had hit the bookies in his absence. He wouldn’t be the first who tried that little trick. Jesus, first person you look at when money goes missing is the person who was supposed to be looking after it, that’s just common sense. Never trust a man who’s already in the industry.

Problem with that theory was that it didn’t add up. Gregor wouldn’t have thrown out something that vague as a cover for an inside job, you need detail to protect you. Something that points a damning finger at a certain person, someone that’s already not trusted therefore easily incriminated. Gregor would know people he could incriminate; people that the Jamieson organization would be only too happy to blame. He hadn’t done that. Even he, desperate and not planning well, would have more sense than to wrap his cover story in such a thin blanket.

All of which brought Nate back to the realization that Gregor might actually have been on to something. Perhaps people
were
watching the place, getting ready to hit it, and maybe they weren’t as dumb as Gregor made them sound. Let’s say, just for the fun of it, that they were watching the place every day. It’s a busy street, there’s parking nearby and once you go too far down the street you don’t have a proper view of the doorway. Not an easy target to watch without being seen. So how would you go about it? You’d park your car there, watch the place a little, and leave the car empty most of the day. Watch from a different spot, the car left unattended to make it look like the vehicle belonged to a regular Joe, using the parking space while they went to work nearby. It wasn’t a bad little strategy, actually. Sort of thing someone who had really thought this through might go for.

Final question. Why would someone watch it that long if they were planning to hit the place? It’s a bookies, there’s not an awful lot to watch before you learn the routines. You work out ways in and out and you work out who’s going to be there at certain times of the day or night. You suss out the basics and then you hit the bloody place, not much more to it than that. Gregor was talking like this super-spy had been lurking on his doorstep a long time. Probably more than a week, certainly since before the weekend. What were they waiting for? Hard to think of anything other than the two wads of cash Nate had just put in the safe.

6

Martin had the gun tucked into the side of his jeans. Wasn’t where he wanted to put it, he would have preferred it in his inside coat pocket, but either the gun was too big or the pocket was too small. Wherever the issue, size mattered and this was bad planning. He thought he had used the coat before, back home, on jobs. He was sure a gun that size would fit in the inside pocket, but this one didn’t and it was too late to go buying a new coat. Too late because the job had started.

He was in a back alley, walking tight against a tall wall, keeping himself wrapped in shadow. Hardly necessary, the place was almost pitch black, but shadow is always a welcome accomplice. There was little light in the alley, which made it more difficult to count the buildings as he made his way down. Had to make sure he found his way into the correct one. Breaking into the wrong building on his first job in the city would make Martin Glasgow’s new punchline.

He pushed open a metal gate and stepped silently inside. Looked like the right place. Martin fiddled with his balaclava, making sure it was properly in place. Hated these things, how anyone could use them regularly was beyond him. Focusing on the wrong things. It was strange, his mind always raced when he worked a job, always wandered off into irrelevant areas, like it wanted to think about anything other than the rather important task at hand. Some people, back home, had said that they found an incredible focus when working jobs, like the rest of the world melted away and the only thing that existed was the target. That sounded like bullshit to Martin; his adrenalin pushed and pulled his mind in every direction it shouldn’t go, and he had worked every sort of job you could think of.

There was a burglar alarm, but no chance that it would be switched on yet. The back door would be locked, but the building wasn’t empty. There was a metal grill covering the front of the shop now that it was closed for business, and a metal gate covering the back door that was left open because people needed to leave through it. The manager was still in there, that was vital. Martin needed the manager to help him along. He crept up to the back door and paused, listening for anything that should worry him. There was a frosted window on the back door, no light visible behind it. One man, and hopefully only one man, was in the building. So just because you can’t see anything, doesn’t mean nothing’s there. That’s why Martin was standing in perfect silence, his ear almost touching the door, holding his breath. Nothing.