8
David ‘Fizzy’ Waters is lying asleep in his bed, as any civilized person should at this hour. Something’s pushing at the edge of his awareness. A noise. Faint. He’s opening his eyes, sitting up. A mobile, ringing in the bottom drawer of his bedside cabinet. There are two phones in there. Both pay-as-you-go, both only used by contacts. He’s pulling open the drawer, picking out the old phone with the lighted display. Some random mobile number he doesn’t recognize. Not usually a good thing. Getting out of bed, creeping out of the bedroom. He doesn’t want to wake his girlfriend, if he can avoid it. Out into the corridor, answering the phone. Could be anyone on the other end. You never know these days. Since Shug decided to fight his way into the drug trade there have been more unsavoury characters in his world than ever.
‘Hello.’
‘Hi, Fizzy, Mr Waters – it’s me, it’s Tommy Scott.’
Speaking of unsavoury characters. A peddler with big ambitions. One of the few who was willing to try working a network for Shug. Lewis Winter taking a bullet to the skull scared most people off. Not Scott. He was enthusiastic. Ambition conquered fear and common sense. Thank goodness for that. Turns out he’s good at the job. It was unexpected, but he hasn’t put a foot wrong. Yet. He has a network of peddlers up and running and making money. Now he’s calling at ten past one in the morning, which suggests he may just have lost his footing.
‘I have a problem, but it might be a good problem.’ Scott sounds a little breathless. Sounds like he’s trying to keep the volume down. Fizzy’s closing his eyes. He’s never yet heard of a good problem.
It used to be cars. Nothing else. Shug owns a collection of garages across the city, runs a solid, legitimate business. Makes enough money to be comfortable. Apparently, these days, comfortable isn’t enough. Started out stealing cars. Now there’s a network, the only meaningful one left in the city. Maybe the last large car network in the country. Car security gets better, making money from them gets harder. Someone steals the car, someone else resprays and retags it, someone else deals with electronic tracking, someone else creates a false history, someone else moves it south and someone else sells it. That’s a lot of someones to pay. Any more and there wouldn’t be a profit left for Shug. You can’t move the high-end cars that would yield bigger profits. Too distinctive. You can sell those abroad, but it’s a very specialist market that Shug has never quite cracked. So moving drugs around became attractive. Already moving vehicles, why not put something in them? But it’s hard. Just establishing yourself, getting credible, is treacherous. It brings a lot of challenging people into your life. People like Tommy Scott.
‘What’s the problem, Tommy?’ Fizzy’s asking in a whisper.
‘Frank MacLeod. You know Frank MacLeod? Well, he came after me, but me and Clueless were able to set him up. We’ve got him. He’s here. At my flat. He’s lying in the corridor.’
‘Dead?’ Fizzy’s asking with hope.
‘Nah, not dead. He’s alive. We cracked him on the head. Thing is, I thought you or Shug might want to see him. Might want to talk to him. Could be a good opportunity to get some information from him.’
And this is supposed to be a good problem. What the hell sort of information is Frank MacLeod going to give them? How could they ever trust a word that came out of his mouth? Any information from an old pro like MacLeod is useless. Guy like that, he’s loyal if he’s anything. Fizzy’s about to say something, but it’s dawning on him. Scott isn’t calling because he thinks they’ll want to talk to Frank. He’s calling because he wants someone else to come and kill him.
He should be angry, but he’s not. Fizzy doesn’t blame the boy for wanting someone else to do that job. Ugly work for ugly souls. He’s thinking of Glen Davidson, and the night he went to kill Calum MacLean. Fizzy drove him there, waited outside. Davidson never returned. Instead, one of Jamieson’s thugs turned up with a van. He and MacLean drove off with Davidson’s body. Maybe, professionally, Scott should take responsibility for Frank. Maybe he should pull the trigger himself, prove that he can. He caught him, he kills him. Fizzy wouldn’t do it, though, and he’s not going to force someone else.
‘Listen, kid, you’ve done well, getting him there. He’s at your own flat?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Right. I’ll get someone round. Won’t be me or Shug. It’ll be someone to take care of him. Someone to get rid of him. You sit tight. Don’t let him move.’
He’s thinking that he should have been more enthusiastic towards the boy. Too late now – he’s hung up. Getting rid of Frank MacLeod, that’s a coup. Jamieson’s gunman. One of his closest allies. If Frank went to kill them, and they got the better of him, then they’ve done something noteworthy. Something many others have tried and failed to do. Have to tell them that later. The first people to get the better of Frank MacLeod. First he knows of, anyway. If anyone else had bettered Frank, he’d be dead by now. Nature of the work he does. Would be preferable if there was a way of doing this without contacting Shug. This is why Fizzy ought to know more about the business. Especially about the people they’re using. He knows Shug’s using Shaun Hutton as his gunman now, although he hasn’t had a job for him yet. He likes Hutton, seems a better option than Davidson was. A more pleasant person, anyway. Not that that’s how you judge a gunman, but still. Shug knows Hutton’s number, Fizzy doesn’t. Shug is keeping a lot more secrets than he used to.
The phone’s ringing. It’ll take a while for Shug to answer. His wife will wake first, and then wake Shug. Then he’ll spend thirty seconds bitching into thin air. Then he’ll answer his phone. They’re too old for this. This is the first time it’s occurred to Fizzy. If they were going to do this, they should have done it ten years ago. They were in their twenties, they had fewer responsibilities, and the market would have been easier to get into. They had the energy and the ability to take risks. Starting in your thirties has more disadvantages than advantages. More money to start you up, but less of everything else.
‘Fizzy – Jesus, have you looked at a clock lately?’ Still sounding groggy, not happy to be awake. Shug’s not an instinctively aggressive soul, and he doesn’t hold grudges, but he can be tetchy.
‘We have an issue.’
‘What sort of issue?’
‘A little bit good, bigger bit bad.’
Fizzy’s explained what’s happened. He’s told Shug that Frank MacLeod is lying on Tommy Scott’s floor, waiting for a bullet. Someone needs to deliver it. Shug’s said almost nothing so far.
‘What about Scott? He’s got MacLeod’s gun.’
‘Scott’s not a gunman,’ Fizzy’s saying, digging the boy out of a hole. ‘This is a great chance to get rid of MacLeod and weaken Jamieson. We get rid of one of Jamieson’s best – think how that’ll look. If Scott and his halfwit pal do the job, God knows what might go wrong. We need a pro round there. Someone who can do the job and remove the body cleanly. Get this right and we get rid of the old man without anyone knowing.’
There’s silence on the other end. Shug’s thinking. Fizzy can hear him moving around. He’ll be out of the bedroom by now, into his den. Doesn’t want to keep Elaine awake.
‘Okay. You’re right. I’ll make a call.’
Shug’s hung up; he’s going to call Hutton. This is just horrible. Fizzy’s sitting in his living room now, his phone in his hand, and he doesn’t know what to do. Nothing. There’s nothing he can do. His part in this is over. Wasn’t much of a part. Hutton will go there and do the job. The phone traffic will stop, so as not to link people to the scene any more than they already are. The proper and professional thing to do is nothing. Never used to be like this. Not back when they started. Best mates, running a small business, making a bit on the side with stolen cars. A few times the owners caught them in the act. Had to fight their way out. One was quite badly injured. That was unpleasant. Still, nobody ever died. They never crossed that line. Now they’re leaving that line a long way behind.
