After He Died

by Michael Malone

  Then they sat in a companionable silence, each one’s presence at the table enough in that moment, until she dared to breach the quiet with a question she needed an answer to.

  ‘Last time we spoke you were about to unburden yourself, Joe.’

  He nodded. ‘I was, but I’ve since seen my confessor. I’m good now.’

  Paula narrowed her eyes. ‘You were saying Thomas’s death was all your fault. How can confession make that alright?’

  ‘I was talking guff, Paula.’ He smiled. ‘I hadn’t slept in days and I was trying to fill my calorific needs with gin. None of that is fertile ground for a healthy mind.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ he smiled.

  ‘Here’s another saying for you. Liar, liar, pants on fire.’ She paused. ‘How much did I tell you about the cottage?’

  ‘What cottage?’ Joe looked mystified.

  ‘In Bute?’

  ‘There’s a cottage in Bute?’

  Paula told him. And as she talked his mouth fell open.

  ‘You really knew nothing?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Wow, Tommy did that for you?’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘That’s beautiful.’

  ‘He was all about the grand gesture, eh?’

  He sat back and placed his hands on his lap. ‘Tell me more about this wondrous cottage.’

  Paula thought about the cottage. The notebook she’d torn up.

  And asked, ‘Where’s the parish computer?’

  32

  Cara loved this feeling. Strength in her thighs, breath light in her lungs, her cushioned feet drumming on concrete. She felt at this pace she could run forever. Or until her feet bled, whichever came first.

  The music that came through the pods tucked in to her ears changed to ‘Love is a Losing Game’. Sorry, Amy, she thought, this ain’t running music. Reaching across with her right hand, she flicked at the screen of her iPod, which was strapped to her upper left arm.

  A van drove by. The driver beeped his horn and the passenger shouted something out of the window. Wind whipped his laughter past her, truncated it to a burst of noise. She made the universal sign for wanker and dismissed the incident as unworthy of any more of her attention.

  She was on the Great Western Road. A crossing was drawing near. She looked around and judged her pace to see if she could get to the other side without adjusting. There were too many cars, so she slowed, dodging an old woman and her tartan shopping trolley. Then she swerved to miss a bald man and his yellow Lab, its tail high.

  A car slowed as if keeping pace with her. A long, dark-blue Ford. Mondeo? She turned to the side to see who it was, but all she could make out was the lower half of a male face. Wait. Could that be?

  No. She was imagining things.

  The car sped up and moved on. She shot him the finger. For a second she had thought it might have been the guy who had been in the back of Farrell’s car. She gave herself a mental shake. She hadn’t seen enough of him on either occasion to make a solid judgement.

  She came to the crossing, thought about stopping to stretch out the niggle in her left calf, but ran on the spot instead. She only had a couple of hundred yards till she reached the entrance to her flat, so she might as well wait. Keep her heart and lungs working till the very last moment.

  Minutes later, she was almost home, approaching the shop where she was going to buy her breakfast – today was cheat day, so she could eat whatever she wanted. Then, up ahead, leaning against the wall ten yards before the secure entrance to her flat she saw a tall, lean, hooded figure, a small wiry dog on a leash at his feet. She slowed to a walk as she neared him and bent her head forwards as she tried to see his face.

  ‘Danny?’ she asked. Her brother Sean’s friend. ‘What the hell are you doing here? How did you know…?’

  ‘You want me to speak to Tosh Gadd’s missus, aye?’ His features were sharp under the hood – hollowed cheeks under cheekbones like blades. She caught the sight of his crumbling yellowed teeth as he spoke.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said with a small thrill of achievement. ‘How we going to make that happen? I can never get a hold of you.’

  He gave a small shake of the head in acknowledgement and looked beyond her as if checking out the cars that were parked along the road. Satisfied that whatever he was looking for wasn’t there, he turned back to her.

  ‘In the next couple of days. Has to be, cos then I’m out of here. Got some money coming to me, you know? Get word to my ma. Time and place. City centre, aye?’

  ‘You okay, Danny?’ she asked and then turned to track the movement of his head, to see what he was looking for. Then she looked down at the small dog, whose limpid eyes were fixed adoringly on her owner. Cara got down on one knee, unable to resist saying hello to the small creature.

  ‘Cara meet Sandy,’ said Danny with a note of pride in his voice.

  The little dog wagged her tail and closed her eyes a little as she enjoyed Cara’s touch. ‘She’d talk to Old Nick this wan. Totally useless as a guard dog, ken? Loves everybody.’

  Cara got back to her feet and looked into Danny’s face, searching for a trace of the small boy who was never more than a shadow’s length away from her brother. She found little of him. What a waste of human potential. Danny wasn’t a bad lad. He’d made the wrong choices – from the very limited menu that were handed to people from their class. His decisions had all but ruined him.

  Whatever this deal he had going on she really hoped it worked out for him. And then he could get to know his child, and learn how to become a good dad.

  ‘You sure you’re alright, Danny?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye. Golden, darling. I’m golden.’ He looked into her eyes and she saw a haunted man. A hunted man. The light in his eyes indistinct with need.

  ‘When was the last time you ate, Danny?’ She heard him in her mind saying that he had money coming to him and read it as the lie it surely was. An addict’s attempt to pretend that everything was on the turn for the better.

  ‘Disnae matter, Cara. Just arrange it, will ye?’

  She fished in the small pouch just inside the hip of her running tights and pulled out the tenner that was going to pay for her cheat-day food. She pressed it into his hand. ‘Here, away and get something warm in you, eh?’

  A look of shame, warring with gratitude and relief, was her thanks. Then he looked over to his right and saw something he didn’t like. ‘Got to go.’ And head low, hands in his pockets, he rushed away from her.

  Cara was tempted to follow him. Instead she looked up and down the street at the parked cars. What had spooked him? A blue Mondeo sat three cars up from where she was standing. Could that be the same car?

  She moved towards it, but the indicator light flashed and before she could reach him the car took off.

  33

  Paula was sat at a small Formica-clad table tucked into a small recess of the main corridor that led to the staircase and the priests’ sleeping quarters. Perched on the table was a small laptop, which was dwarfed by a boxy, black printer that squatted beside it.

  Paula sat down and ran a finger along the top of the printer.

  ‘You need a new cleaner,’ she said.

  ‘Our Martha’s a gem so she is, but she won’t come near this desk. She thinks computers are the work of Satan and just touching it will be enough to pull her down into the depths of hell.’

  ‘Bless,’ said Paula and switched the laptop on. ‘I’ll just check your browsing history to see if you are indeed under threat of that very thing.’

  ‘Are you going to explain what you’re up to?’ asked Joe at her shoulder. An image appeared and Joe said. ‘You’ll need my password, or you won’t get past that screen thingy.’

  The screen thingy was an image of a brass smiling Buddha, with a lined-off blank rectangle across his capacious stomach where the password went. Paula placed the cursor inside the rectangle and shifted to the side so that Joe could type it in.
r />   ‘Very Catholic,’ Paula said nodding at the image.

  ‘We like to be inclusive here at St Matthew’s.’ Then, ‘Don’t you watch me,’ he said as he slowly pressed on a series of keys with the index finger of his right hand.

  ‘Is that how you type?’ Paula asked.

  ‘What’s wrong with my typing technique, Mrs Gadd?’

  ‘Don’t you do the Parish newsletter?’

  ‘Indeed I do construct that wondrous message of hope and enlightenment.’ Joe had finished typing, so he pressed enter.

  ‘Must take you all week,’ Paula said as the screen came to life. She brought up the internet search engine. ‘How good is your connection?’

  ‘Connection?’

  ‘You do have the internet?’

  ‘Course we do. We’re not living in the dark ages.’ Joe rested a hand on Paula’s shoulder.

  ‘But you’re living in mortal peril for your soul according to Martha.’

  ‘I make a quick act of contrition every time I switch this machine on.’

  Paula laughed, felt a surge off love, reached across and patted Joe’s hand. Without looking she knew he was smiling. No words were needed. They both understood. Affection given and gratefully received.

  ‘A series of numbers…’ Paula typed. ‘That I found in a notebook in the Bute cottage.’ She finished. Waited for a response and was given a new screen branded with a high street bank. She paused to consider what her next step should be. ‘A notebook that I destroyed after reading and memorising a chain of numbers…’ She explained as she typed. This was just like her own home banking screen. Just a different bank. And entering it all was surprisingly easy.

  A new screen appeared, asking for the first, third, fourth and sixth number of a security number – and the third, fifth, sixth and tenth letter of a password. She faltered. Should she be doing this? Did she want to find what might be here? Whatever it was might have led to the deaths of two people already. She felt a flutter of nerves in her stomach and took a deep breath. Whatever was going on she needed answers. She couldn’t stop now.

  Certain that this was part of a trail of clues that Thomas had left for her, the answer to the required parts of the security number, and the password were, she hoped, going to be straightforward. She made a leap of intuition and, using her fingers, she worked out the numbers that corresponded with Christopher’s date of birth and then entered them for the security number. Then she did the same with his Christian name, typing in R … S … T … E for the password.

  The computer screen froze, a small circle turning in the middle, showing her that her request was being processed. She held her breath. The screen changed…

  And they were in.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said. That was almost too easy. She sent a silent thank-you heavenward to Thomas.

  Joe leaned over her, his head moving nearer the screen and she could feel the heat from him on the skin of her cheek.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ he asked. Joe slammed down the lid of the laptop as if the detail on the screen had just burned his eyes. ‘What in the good Lord’s name is going on, Paula?’

  ‘I … I…’

  ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘I honestly don’t.’

  ‘And how did you work out where you needed to go just from a series of numbers?’

  ‘The numbers were written in a pattern. A series of six numbers followed by another eight. Just like the series printed on the bottom of each of my cheques.’

  Joe turned and walked away. Paula reached behind the laptop, dislodged the cables, lifted the machine up, slung it under her arm and followed him.

  They ended up back in the kitchen. Paula sat the laptop on the table between them. At which Joe made a small note of surprise.

  ‘It’s portable, Joe. That’s why it’s called a laptop.’

  ‘Pfft. I knew that.’

  He clearly hadn’t even considered it.

  Paula lifted the lid and the screen they’d been studying reasserted itself. It was a statement page from a major British high street bank. It showed one deposit of one million pounds paid in two years earlier. One withdrawal of one hundred thousand pounds a week before Thomas died and another for the remaining balance the day after he died.

  ‘What are we looking at?’ Joe asked, worry etched into his face. There was something else there. Something beyond the worry of Thomas and why he had a notebook that led to this bank account. He bit his lip, and Paula thought he wasn’t quite ready to spill.

  ‘That,’ she said and held a finger over the top of the screen. ‘What does that mean to you?’

  Joe read. ‘Ballogie Holdings.’

  ‘Quite a distinctive name, eh?’

  Joe looked at her and nodded. ‘We grew up in a flat on King’s Park Road. At the corner of Ballogie Street.’ He looked completely baffled. ‘Why would you have the numbers to an account in your head, an account that bears the name of a street near where I grew up?’ Then his face changed as a thought occurred.

  ‘What do you know, Joe?’ Paula asked quietly.

  He rubbed the skin under his nose with the length of his index finger.

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘I really don’t know what this is all about, Paula. That was one million pounds in there. Why would Tommy have access to that sort of money?’

  ‘There’s nine other accounts. If they are all the same, that means ten million.’ She heard a tremble in her voice. ‘We need to go to the police,’ Paula said.

  ‘No,’ shouted Joe, and closed the laptop lid again.

  ‘Joe, I think people have been murdered because of this. There’s a very serious amount of cash in here. What do you know? If you don’t spill I’m leaving here and going straight to Stewart Street.’

  He crossed his arms and legs and swivelled in his seat so that his knees were pointing away from her.

  ‘Joe?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Joe. You said to me earlier about your gambling…’

  ‘I can’t, Paula.’ He looked at her with desperation.

  ‘Let’s go back to that conversation.’ She leaned towards him. ‘You got in too deep with gambling debts…’

  ‘And Tommy said if he did a favour for some people they could make it go…’ He put both hands on the table. ‘Except…’ He pointed at the laptop. ‘You think Kevin and Elaine died because of all of this?’

  ‘It’s too much of a coincidence to be otherwise.’

  Joe rubbed at his face, enough that Paula heard the rasp of skin over bristles. ‘Dear God, what have I done?’

  ‘You haven’t done anything, Joe.’ She thought about the possible sequence of events: Joe got into debt, and somehow Thomas, with his business acumen and knowledge of the financial world was brought into the picture to sort it out. There was a lot of money involved here. Could Thomas have been their target all along? Might Joe have been singled out, then manipulated to give them, whoever they were, access to Thomas? ‘It looks like other people took advantage of something…’

  ‘But if it wasn’t for me…’ His eyes were bright, begging. Help me, they were saying. Help me make sense of this.

  He leaned back in his chair. Now he couldn’t look her in the eyes. ‘Who knows better than me that confession is good for the soul, eh?’ He titled his head back and looked upwards as if looking for divine intervention.

  Then he looked her in the eye as if permission had been granted.

  ‘As I said the debts got crazy, and this guy turned up. Sat in that chair where you are now.’ His eyes darted around the room as if the exact words he needed were eluding him. ‘Said I was to call him Moscow, cos that’s near where he came from.’ He took a deep breath as if to acknowledge his own naivety. ‘And I’m thinking, I’m a priest. He’s not going to do anything dodgy to me is he? He said he knew I had family that could help me get rid of the debt. I got angry at that. No way did I want the guys involved. Then he explained tha
t if Tommy provided them with a certain service, the fee for this service would equal the amount of my debt.’ His eyes filled up. ‘To my shame, I weakened. Called Tommy. He came round. Quickly caught on…’ Joe’s eyes clouded now as he looked into the distance, as if he could see and hear Tommy sitting right there in front of him. ‘And between them they came up with a plan to clear it completely.’

  ‘Just how much did you owe?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ he shrugged. ‘The guys I owed would add interest and then I would go double or quits and then they would add more interest.’ He closed his eyes. ‘It came to hundreds…’ he paused, ‘…of thousands.’

  ‘Holy shit, Joe.’

  ‘Believe me, before they started to add all that interest stuff my debt was in the low thousands. It just escalated so quickly. It was bewildering.’

  ‘So, this plan. What was it?’

  ‘I didn’t really follow it. Tommy and, latterly Kevin, were the key parts of it.’

  ‘Kevin?’

  ‘Well, Tommy’s business really. The idea was – I’m grasping here you understand? – The idea was that, for a certain length of time, a legitimate business held the cash – God knows where it came from – out of the reach of the authorities. And then it would be moved on.’

  Paula sat with that. Then she recalled the news bulletin she’d heard the day that the two police officers came to visit her. Something about a money-laundering scheme that took advantage of the Scottish financial system.

  ‘As I said earlier, Joe you weren’t to blame for any of this,’ she sought to soothe his conscience as her mind worked through the implications.

  ‘I wasn’t?’

  ‘These people were aware of an anomaly in the Scottish system that allowed money to be moved completely legally, right?’

  ‘Right…’ Joe scratched his chin.

  ‘And they needed someone with the legitimacy to make it work. And the acumen to know how to work it.’ Paula paused to allow Joe to catch up. ‘Understand?’