The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman (20 page)

       
‘He took the drugs?’ asked Tony. I nodded. ‘And the money?’

       
At that I smiled, thinking of Iwanek opening the briefcase and finding stacks of newspaper cuttings.

       
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Just a couple of hundred pounds and a lot of waste paper.’

       
‘And how were you going to point the finger at Laing and Kyle?’

       
‘McKinley was the first signpost, the fact that he was involved would trigger off Laing’s name. To make it even more definite I borrowed Laing’s Rolls-Royce and made sure that it was seen in Oban, close to where the drugs were due to arrive. And I paid for a hire car and the hotel bills with his American Express card.

       
‘His trip to Paris was a complete secret because he didn’t want his wife to find out. What can he say against all that evidence? He’d been pushed out of the drugs business and this was his way of getting his own back – the evidence is circumstantial but overwhelming. And it’s not as if I had to convince twelve good men and true. Circumstantial evidence would be more than enough for the sort of people I’ve been dealing with.’

       
‘So that’s why Get-Up drove off in such a hurry,’ said Shona.

       
‘Sure, I asked him to put the Rolls back in the carpark at Heathrow, with the credit card under the passenger seat for Sammy to find. I just hope he did and that he didn’t decide to keep the car and make a run for it. Laing will never know that his beloved car was up in Scotland, and he’ll never see Sammy again.

       
‘We left a hire car from Glasgow in Oban, and it won’t take them long to find it and check that it was hired in his name and paid for with his Amex card. Laing won’t know what’s hit him when they catch up with him.’

       
‘They’ll kill him,’ said Tony, and his voice was tinged with sadness as if a doctor had just told him I had a terminal illness. But it was sadness at what I’d done, not pity for Laing and Kyle.

       
‘He killed my parents,’ I replied defensively. ‘Don’t forget that.’

       
‘What about Kyle?’ asked Shona. ‘What will happen to him?’

       
I was tired now and my throat was burning from the effort of talking but I had to finish it, I had to tell them everything, even though the fine mist had started to come back into the room and the banging in my head seemed to be getting louder and louder.

       
‘I managed to get Kyle’s fingerprints on a briefcase, and the idea was to put the drugs in it and plant the case in his car. It could have gone two ways then. Either I tipped off the police and he went to prison for a long time, or the suppliers would trace him through Laing. I didn’t care much what happened. But that’s all off now. No drugs, no plant. He’s in the clear, for the moment. But if they catch up with Laing they might still get to Kyle.’ Despite everything that had happened the prospect still pleased me. I wanted them dead.

       
‘If they’re that dangerous you shouldn’t have got involved with them,’ said Shona, concern showing in her eyes.

       
‘You can’t deal with filth like Laing and Kyle without getting your hands dirty,’ I said, and I was surprised at the venom in my voice and the way she recoiled from me. ‘It’s all right, Shona, believe me.’ She looked at me disbelievingly. ‘OK, I know this looks bad but it’ll soon heal,’ I added.

       
Tears filled her eyes and she shook her head. ‘You just don’t understand what you’ve done, do you?’ she asked, but she ran out of the room before I could answer. I tried to raise my head, to call after her, but the pain in my shoulder made me wince and I lay back, gasping.

       
Tony sat silently by my side, and it was some minutes before he spoke again.

       
‘You’ve been an absolute prat, you know that. You’ve let us all down, you’ve betrayed our trust. You haven’t only been messing with the lives of a few London thugs, you realize that? You’ve put your friends and your family at risk through your stupidity. I expected more from you than that.’ He was looking through the window as he talked, down the Mound and across to Princes Street where afternoon shoppers mixed with office workers on late lunches. He walked over to the window and put his hands on the sill, resting his forehead against the glass. It steamed up from his breath as he sighed deeply, a depressing sigh that said as much as the verbal lashing he’d just given me. He stood upright and with his index finger drew a question mark in the condensed vapour, and as he pressed the dot under the curve he turned and folded his arms across his chest.

       
There was nothing I could say because he was right, and the fact that he had put it into words made it hurt all the more.

       
‘What’s done is done,’ he said, and now he was businesslike, Tony the negotiator, the wheeler-dealer, the salesman who wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘Let’s take this from the top. Is there any way you can be traced through this madman Iwanek?’

       
‘None, I used a false name and I contacted him, not the other way round.’

       
‘Always?’

       
‘Since the first time.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I answered an advert, he used a box number so I wrote to him and he telephoned me.’

       
‘Telephoned you where?’

       
‘A flat I’d rented in Earl’s Court – under a false name. The rent’s paid until the end of the month and there’s nothing in it that will identify me.’

       
‘Fingerprints?’

       
‘I wiped it clean before I left for Oban. Thoroughly.’

       
‘What about the car thief?’

       
‘False name again, and he never got in touch with me. I paid him in cash and he’s no idea what I was up to. He didn’t care so long as he got his money. I can’t be traced through him.’

       
‘What about this guy, the one who fixed up the drugs deal?’

       
‘Davie Read? He thought I was a London banker who’d been dipping into the firm’s funds for a spot of gambling on the commodity market. Get-Up fed him the cover story and I used another false name. Anyway, Read’s dead.’

       
‘Dead now, but he could have spoken to any number of people before you met him in Oban.’

       
‘There’s nothing he could have told anyone. Besides, if he’d suspected anything he would have stopped the deal cold.’

       
‘True,’ he said and fell silent again, biting the inside of his cheek as he always did when deep in thought. He came over and sat on the right-hand side of the bed.

       
‘How much does Get-Up know?’

       
‘He doesn’t know who I really am, or at least he didn’t until he dropped me here. He thought he’d arranged a straightforward drugs buy, that I was a dealer who’d been elbowed out of Glasgow and was looking for an alternative supply. He thought he was doing me a favour.’

       
‘He thought you were going to hand over the money?’ I nodded. ‘And he didn’t know about Iwanek?’ I shook my head. ‘And what the hell were you going to do afterwards?’

       
‘Pay him off, tell him I was skint and that I was going back to Glasgow. I’d never have seen him again.’

       
‘And what do you think would have happened to him?’

       
I couldn’t answer that, because we both knew the main reason for using McKinley was his connection with Laing and that the two of them would be in the frame together.

       
‘You were sentencing him to death, you bastard,’ he shouted and thumped the pillow next to my head. ‘You callous, unthinking, cynical bastard. He probably saved your life, bringing you back here. He could have driven off and left you bleeding on the ground. And you were setting him up like a clay pipe at a shooting gallery.’

       
I wanted to say that McKinley was just a foot soldier in the drugs war, that they probably wouldn’t have hurt him, that they’d have gone for Laing first and probably got their cocaine back from Kyle and then they’d have called off the dogs, but I didn’t believe it so I didn’t say anything. I just nodded.

       
‘You’ll have to tell him everything now,’ he continued. ‘If he ever comes back. And if he doesn’t, sport, we’re all in trouble, you, me and Shona. He might not know who you are but he definitely knows Shona now and where she lives. You’ll have to tell him everything and offer him a darn sight more than a payoff. He can’t go back to London, you realize that?’

       
I nodded again. ‘I know.’ Read knew McKinley so the people who brought the drugs in would be looking for him. Besides Laing he was the one lead they had.

       
‘The signpost you hoped would send them to Laing is now pointing right in your direction. Your only hope is to uproot it and bring it up here. Offer him a job, anything, but he has to stay close to you. It’ll be a form of symbiosis, he’ll need you to protect him, you’ll need him to keep out of trouble. You’d better stick together like Siamese twins.’

       
‘I guess you’re right, Tony. I’ll speak to him when he gets back.’

       
‘If he gets back.’ He stood up and walked over to the window again.

       
‘That leaves only one character in your sordid little drama.’

       
‘Sammy,’ I said.

       
‘Sammy,’ he repeated thoughtfully, as if it was the first time he’d heard the name. He was chewing the inside of his cheek again and the arms were folded across his chest.

       
‘I can’t keep saying I’m sorry, Tony.’

       
He ignored me. ‘How much does she know?’ he asked. My heart soared then because his question meant that Sammy hadn’t told Tony anything, she’d kept my secret to herself. Because she loved me? Then I flushed as I remembered how I’d used her.

       
‘Everything.’

       
‘Everything?’

       
‘She knows who I am, who I really am, she knows what happened to my parents, she knows exactly what I planned to do and she was prepared to help me.’ I was proud of that, proud that she was my friend, my lover, and ashamed that I’d abused her trust.

       
‘Then she’s a lot dumber than I thought,’ he said. ‘Did you explain everything, she knew what she was getting into?’

       
I didn’t have to answer that one because he could tell from my shamefaced expression that I hadn’t. I hadn’t told anyone the full story. I take that back, there was one person, David. ‘She’s not in any danger, Tony. I promise.’

       
‘That’s not a promise you can make, sport. What makes you think they won’t track her down once Laing tells them where he was?’

       
‘She didn’t use her own name and I rented a separate flat for her. A short-term let, paid in advance. She’d never met Laing before, and all she has to do is to lie low for a few weeks.’

       
‘Until he’s killed? Is that what you mean?’

       
‘Yes, if you like. There’s precious little chance of Laing ever bumping into Sammy again, and once he’s dead she’ll be one hundred per cent in the clear. That still stands, Tony, whatever might have gone wrong she will be all right. I’ll call her and tell her what’s happened and that she’s to take care, but it’s hardly necessary. She knew that once she got back from Paris she was never to see him again. She knew what she was getting into.’

       
‘You’d better be right. You had no right to use people the way you did. I’m tempted to say that what has happened is all your own fault, but there’s no point rubbing your nose in it. I just hope you’ve learned your lesson, that’s all. Fight your own battles in future and don’t play God.’

       
Then he patted me on the shoulder and left me alone. Later Shona brought me a drink of water, her face tearstained and her eyes red from crying. She got on the bed, leant alongside me and hugged me and kissed me on the cheek, and then left the room without saying anything.

I slept fitfully, I dreamt of suitcases full of cocaine and shotguns exploding and dinghies full of men in black waving guns and shouting. They were chasing me and I was running through water, it dragged at my feet and held me back and the men in black were catching up with me, closer and closer, because they were running on top of the water, skating along the surface. I looked up, gasping for breath, pains in my chest, and I saw Sammy on the loch side and she was screaming, and then her face melted into Shona’s and David was standing next to her, crying, and then the men in black had them, surrounded and held them. I kept on running in slow motion but I looked over my shoulder and they weren’t chasing me any more, they were carrying Shona and David off into separate dinghies, and then the outboard motors kicked into life and I waded out into the water after them, waving my arms as they roared off into the darkness. Then I was alone and the freezing water was up to my neck, numbing my body, and then it was over my head and I lost consciousness.

       
I woke with a raging thirst. It was morning and the sun streamed in through the window where Shona was standing, her hands holding the cord which she’d pulled to open the curtains and thrown light onto my face.

       
She came over and helped me to sit up, pushing a pillow behind my back and fluffing up the duvet, fussing like a broody hen. ‘There’s a mug of tea next to you,’ she said, smoothing the quilt professionally like a nurse with a difficult patient.

       
‘Shona,’ I said, and waited until she’d stopped moving and stood by the bed, hands by her side.