Hell To Pay (10 page)

"Sick of me already?"
The car's stopped at the traffic lights and Tommy's smiling. He's not taking me seriously.

"No," I snap. How can I have a sense of humor after what he's just told me? "I don't want to drag you into my business, that's all."

Tommy fixes me with an intense stare. "I'm already in your business." He pauses to let his words sink in. "Now, do I drop you at a bus stop, or do you want to stay at my place where no-one will find you?"

Arguing with him is pointless, so I don’t bother. I’m physically and emotionally drained, like a cloth someone’s used many times to wipe a counter with and wrung out. I need sleep and my stomach’s rumbling away, old man style. I can’t remember the last time I ate.

"Okay," I say, "I can sleep on the couch."

He grins. "That’s disappointing. We could have shared my bed. I have mirrors on my ceilings, you know. Think of all the fun we could have."

I throw back my head and chuckle. "Yeah, right."

It feels good to laugh because I haven’t laughed in so long.

For the rest of the journey, we travel in silence.

Tommy’s apartment was the epitome of a bachelor pad. There were two gaming chairs in the living room, a huge beanbag, a plasma telly the size of a cinema screen and a décor designers would describe as “minimalistic,” but I’d call impersonal. It proved he was single, because no woman would live in a place this.

There was a drinks cooler nestling in the armrest of one of the gaming chairs and he delves inside, grabbed a bottle of Becks, and asked me if I wanted one. I shake my head. I need to stay alert; to concentrate. 

Five minutes later, he’s made me some hot chocolate and toast and I’m curled up in a chair, wrapped in a duvet and watching
Tom & Jerry cartoons
.

For the first time in a long time, I feel safe and I want to sleep. But there are things I need to know.

"Tommy, who are you?"

He puts on a goofy grin. "I’m the Scottish Jack Bauer. Jock Bauer’s the name."

He says it in a Sean Connery voice.

"Very funny. But who are you really? Why did you help me and not just contact the police? You could have been killed."

A wry grin lights up his face. "I’m the guy who saw a photo of someone’s sister and thought I’d like to meet that girl."

He leans across and presses his lips to mine and I don’t resist. As our tongues entwine and I inhale his musky scent, I have an urge to run my fingers through his hair. When his hand reaches under my top and caresses my breast, I whimper. It feels so good that I don’t even warn him about my scars.

His lips tickle my ear. “Let’s go to bed.”

He holds out his hand and I take it.

Afterwards, we lie in a tangle of limbs, our bodies exhausted. He’s drifting off and I am too when a thought makes its way inside my head and stays there like a bullet in the brain.

"What drugs was Shug on?"

A dozy smile from Tommy. "Eh?"

"You said Shug was on a methadone program. Right? That means he was injecting heroin."

Tommy eased himself up on an elbow. "Aye, that’s right."

He’s lying.

I scramble out of bed, pulling on my clothes.

"You’re not Shug’s pal, are you? So, why have you been helping me?"

Tommy props himself up on a pillow and watches me. "Smart girl, I knew you’d cotton on.”

An image of Shug when he was a wee boy getting an injection from the doctor, screaming and trying to wriggle out of Mum’s arms, comes into my head. Even the promise of a comic from
Woolworths
didn't calm him down.

Tommy pulls himself up to get out of bed. Even through my anger, I can’t help but appreciate the way his torso ripples when he moves.

"We need to talk about this, sweetheart."

But, I’m not listening.

"Shug would never inject heroin. He was terrified of needles."

That’s the point where I swing the baseball bat I found under the bed at him. He catches sight of it, but can’t get out the way in time. There’s a satisfying ding as metal makes contact with skull and he goes down.

Wasting no time, I drag him onto the bed and handcuff him to the bedpost with some cuffs he conveniently left in the drawer. 

After making some more coffee to stop myself from shivering, I sit and wait for him to regain consciousness.

There are a few questions I need to ask.

Chapter 27

"Fuck. My head. Did you have to hit me so hard?”

Tommy doesn’t look happy, but I wouldn’t expect him to after the way I hit him.

Whilst he’s been out, I’ve been waiting for him to wake up; wanting me to be the first thing he sees.

"Sorry," I say, sounding as unapologetic as anyone can be, because I'm far from sorry: the bastard lied to me.

Tommy gazes up at me with a lopsided grin on his face as if this is all a game.

"If you fancied some S&M you only had to say."

"You lied to me. You didn’t know Shug at all."

He won’t get a reaction from me.

"Who are you?"

"I was about to explain that when you clobbered me one."

He looks at me as though he’s still expecting an apology, but I raise my eyebrows upward.

"I’m listening."

"My name is Tommy. I didn’t lie about that."

"Whoop Dee bloody do. Well, thanks for that nugget of truth. I’m so glad it wasn’t all make-believe."

"My name’s Tommy McIntyre. I was in the army, first in the Royal Engineers then as a training instructor."

Hence the fit body.

"I didn’t know Shug, but I knew about him. Couldn’t stop nicking things from what I hear. But not a bad guy."

My shoulders hunch. “Tell me something I don’t know."

"But, he got greedy. Started nicking stuff out of fancy houses. Stores weren’t enough for him any more. One of the houses he targeted belonged to a woman called Natalie Hunter…"

My face wrinkles in confusion. He’s saying that name as though I should know it.

"She used to be a high class call girl. Wrote a book about it and it was serialized in all the papers."

Nope, still doesn’t ring a bell.

"Anyway, she’s Sandy McNab’s mistress. Has been for years. He set her up as a lady of leisure. She lives in a mansion set in acres of grounds. It has its own stables and heart shaped swimming pool. No neighbors for miles."

I cut in. "Thanks for the estate agent’s report. Can you get to the point."

Tommy raises an eyebrow. "Like you did with me earlier, Nancy?"

My ‘fuck you’ glare is greeted with a grin.

I lift up the bat, giving it a wee swing. "Keep talking and stop leering, or I’ll belt you over the head again."

He looks like a dog about to have a good meal. "I love it when you talk dirty."

I lean over the bed and pull the cover over his naked body because its distracting me. "And cover yourself up."

Can’t have him distracting me with that body. The body that not so long ago I was exploring every part of, tasting and gaining pleasure from.

He clears his throat.

"Your brother and a pal targeted the house when Natalie was away on holiday. They grabbed money and jewelry. Then they did something really stupid. They found a gun stashed in a safe box under the bed and Shug pocketed it. He should have left it well alone, but he smelt a big payday. One that he maybe reckoned would set him up for life. So he blackmailed Natalie. Told her he wanted twenty grand or he’d give it to the police."

My mouth’s gone dry. I could tell where this was heading, but I need to hear it.

"She told McNab, but he couldn’t touch Shug. Not until he found out where he’d put the gun. With Shug in prison after he got caught breaking into another house and his accomplice in the robbery dead of a suspected overdose, he knew someone had to be hiding the gun for Shug. After ruling out some more obvious choices amongst the criminal fraternity, he thought of your parents. Who better to hide a gun than two law-abiding senior citizens who’d told everyone they’d washed their hands of their boy?"

It all started to make sense. Why my parents were targeted. Why they killed Shug.

Sinking back in the chair next to the bed, I gaze over at Tommy tracing every line of his face and studying his body language, looking for any indication that he was lying. There’s none and my gut feeling is that he’s telling me the truth.

But, there’s one thing I don’t get; that doesn’t make any sense to me.

"If you don’t know Shug, why are you involved in all this? Why didn’t you let them kill me? None of this is anything to do with you."

Tommy’s eyes have lost their sparkle. "This has everything to do with me. You see that gun Shug took, that was used to kill my brother. He was an undercover cop, placed in McNab’s organization. But, McNab got suspicious and he shot him with that gun."

He turns away from me, starts rubbing his wrists.

"Christ, Nancy. If we’re going to do this again, we’ll need bigger cuffs."

"Aw, shut up,” I snap. “Or, I’ll put you in the trunk of a car, so you can experience what I did."

As I’m unlocking the cuffs, I expect another joke, but Tommy's eyes aren't quite meeting mine.

"Whilst we’re being honest, there’s something else I need to tell you." Tommy's jaw clenches. "I was there that night."

Chapter 28

"What?"

So much for getting all the lies out the way. But this…

How would he know to find me there? Was he involved?

My hands are shaking. Should I have kept him tied up or bludgeoned him to death with the bat to save myself?

"I don't understand how you could have been." I pause to try and slow down my breathing. "I genuinely don’t."

He can’t look at me as he speaks. "I figured out where the pair were headed when I saw them leave McNab’s unofficial HQ. Some bar he owns. When I got there they’d left. You were lying on the floor, half-dead. I phoned an ambulance."

Now I knew he was lying.

"But, I remember getting to the phone." And the police told me there'd been a emergency call from my phone. They assumed it was from me although the person had said nothing and hung up.

I study him for any sign of deceit. This time, he doesn't look away, he soaks in my gaze. Either he’s an expert liar or he’s finally telling the truth.

"You passed out before you could dial."

"And you left me there? You didn't even try to help me?"

"You'd already lost so much blood. I thought you were dead. Besides, the police couldn't find me there. Sandy McNab would have found out. Come after me. There's cops on his payroll; snitches for hire. One of them gave up my brother. They must have. Who else would have known he was an undercover? They don’t exactly share these things around the station."

"You're un-fucking believable," I roar, reaching for the bat because I want to hit him again.

How could I have trusted someone who left me to die? They told me I was lucky to survive because I’d lost so much blood. Tommy could have helped stench the flow before the medics arrived.

"What would you have done?"

His words follow me as I stomp out the room and head for the bathroom where I slam the door, lock it and slump to the floor. I need time to think.

After what seems like an eternity of sitting on the floor, I’ve got to admit that I’d have done the same as Tommy.

Chapter 29

As the city lights lit up his kingdom, Alexander McNab gazed down from his penthouse suite on the 19th floor of Clyde Valley Mansions and congratulated himself on a job well done. Not bad for a wee scrapper from Govan.

Using all his ingenuity and cunning, he'd pulled himself up by his fraying bootstraps and now wee Sandy was a man of means and a respected pillar of the community to boot, thanks to the PR firm he’d hired and his many charitable works.

If he'd learnt anything along the way, it was that money could buy you respectability, no matter how you'd come by that money. Last night, he'd been at a benefit dinner to raise funds for a series of boxing gyms throughout the city, aimed at keeping young boys out of trouble. He'd won the biggest prize of all when he'd bid over forty grand for a cushy executive box at the next Scotland international rugby match at Murrayfield. To a man, everybody had applauded his generosity. Now, if that's wasn't respectability, then what was?

Three loud raps on the door interrupted his chain of thought. He'd dispensed with his butler for the night, so he was forced to answer the door himself, which annoyed him - he didn't get to where he was today so he’d still end up answering his own door. That was the butler’s job. 

He knew the caller was McGregor, his head of security, because nobody else was allowed on this floor - including his wife. She didn’t even know he owned this place and he did his utmost to keep it that way. If the soppy cow ever got around to divorcing him, he wanted to make sure all his assets were hidden, well away from vultures masquerading as lawyers.

He barked, "Come in," and the sturdy frame of McGregor appeared, his face as repugnant as ever thanks to the blade someone had dragged across one of his cheeks, narrowly missing one of his bug eyes that always looked like the eyelids had been propped up by invisible matchsticks.

He stood there, a big lummox, waiting for McNab to tell him he could talk.

McNab let him wait and poured himself a dram.

"Get on with it, Jim, I've got some Glenmorangie to drink."

McGregor’s voice was pure baritone. "It's the girl, boss. She got away. Left Shaun and Ritchie with two sore heads. Shaun says the bird had some help."

McNab raised a well plucked eyebrow. He'd thought the girl was flying solo. Having someone else in the mix, an unknown quantity complicated things.

McGregor continued, "It was somebody they'd never seen before and the guy was pretty handy."

The vein in his forehead throbbed. This was all he bloody needed: some bird making a mug out of him.

No way was that happening. 

"Do we know who he was?"

McGregor shook his head.

The glass McNab was holding shattered in his hand, cutting into his flesh, but he felt no pain. He was more upset about the blood dripping onto the expensive carpet and wasting his good whisky.

"I want you to handle this, Jim. Find the bitch and her mystery man and this time I don't want any dots left to connect. The dead cannae talk."

McGregor who hadn't even flinched when he’d broken the glass, nodded. "Aye, boss."

McNab tapped his nose. "Mind and find out what they know first. By whatever means."

McGregor was his muscle: he couldn’t expect him to think as well.

"And, Jim, handle it personally."

There was a glint in McGregor's dead eyes. The man was no doubt looking forward to getting out his torture tools. Nobody came up with more creative uses for power tools than this man.

"And there'll be a nice wee bonus in it for you too, Jim."

The guy almost cracked a smile, which would have made him look even more sinister.

After McGregor left, McNab went into the bedroom where a young woman with long brown hair was coked out of her skull and lying naked on top of the bed, her long, languid limbs stretched out as though she was posing for a
Pirelli
calendar.

"Hey, bitch," he said, digging into his pocket and producing a wad of notes. "Get the fuck out. We're done."

He threw the cash at her as she stared up at him through glassy eyes, unblinking. When she showed no signs of budging, he stooped down and picking up her shoes, hurled them at her. One hit her squarely on the face and she yelped like a kicked dog.

"Didn't you hear me? Fuck off."

He left her mechanically retrieving her clothes and headed for a shower. He needed to wash that filthy wee whore off him.

Even in the shower, with the heat up full, he couldn't relax. He still didn't have the gun and that worried him. After he'd had that Kerr couple offed, he'd figured it must be in their garden, but they'd dug it up and found heehaw. What if the girl or the guy with her had it? They could use it to blackmail him or take it to the cops. He couldn't let that happen. He’d worked far too hard to get where he was.

Now there were two people on his hit-list. He needed to find out who the guy was, so the first thing he did was phone his police contact.