They were moving towards the end, and they wanted to draw me into the conversation before it finished to make sure that my grim mood wasn’t directed at them. Billy looked at me before he started to talk.
‘Garvey’s done a runner,’ he said. ‘Myself and BB went round to his house and the place had been hastily cleaned out. Nobody there. We’ll keep looking though.’ Said with a smile and a shrug, designed to let the room know that that was the last point of business.
They had dealt with the treacherous Lafferty and the English thugs he’d hired to attack us; we had lost one of our own but otherwise could all move cheerfully on. Everyone else in the room seemed to accept that, but their opinions didn’t matter. I wasn’t finished.
‘You make sure the girlfriend and his friends are looked after and I won’t make trouble,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep working for you, because employers will always lie to people like me. But you made a mistake in not telling me. A dangerous mistake. I don’t like being kept in the dark. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything, but you played me like a sucker and I don’t like that.’ My tone wasn’t good, not as calm as I wanted it to be. My mouth felt tight.
The rest of them looked at me, but only Kevin had the seniority to say something. He could have tried to deny it, but he was smart enough to see the ugly cul-de-sac that lie led him into. Instead he went for conciliatory.
‘You’re right,’ he said, looking down at the floor like a guilty schoolboy. ‘You’re right and I apologize. There’s no excuse for it, only an explanation. Zara suggested using you, said your . . . history together would make the whole thing more convincing. It was her opinion that you would work the job aggressively because she was involved, and that the rest of the industry would be convinced by it. We wanted to hire you anyway, so . . . She asked that you be kept in the dark. She said if you knew, you would walk away and leave her stranded. I don’t know, I didn’t want to argue with her, not when she was taking the risk she was. We went along with it for her sake and that was a mistake. It’s just . . . I don’t think it changed anything, Nate. Not really.’
That was it. That was his justification for stringing me along: the fact that, in his mind, it didn’t change anything. Well, it changed things in mine. Changed the way I looked at Kevin and Jamieson and the rest of the organization. But I couldn’t stand there and say that to them, because I still worked for them. I would keep working for them. But things had changed.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Just so we’re clear, you don’t have to tiptoe around me, or hide Original from me. I know what happened, all of it. You should have told me. You want me to be security consultant or some other bullshit name for having me run round the city being your clenched fist. Fine, I’ll do that, but from now on I’m an insider.’
Kevin nodded faster than he should have. The others were silent. I gave them all a look. The sort of look that told them they’d made a mistake with me that could still prove very dangerous. Then, because I’d had quite enough of them, me and the rest of the world, I left the office and went home.
In the past, as if the past meant anything, I had been able to put people, events, anything I wanted, behind me and just move on. Not this time, and it took me a long time to understand why. It had all been my fault, that was the main reason. I had employed Ronnie, forced him to come and work with me when I knew he didn’t want to. I wanted someone beside me. Shit, maybe I wanted someone in front of me. I spent hours that night trying to work out if I had hired him for the role he died playing, acting as my shield. I let him go in ahead of me; I allowed him to stand between me and Conrad when I should have known that Conrad could still pose a threat. I still don’t know the answer. Maybe I did hire him just to have him stand between me and a bullet. Maybe, subconsciously, I was just that cynical.
Zara was on my mind as well. She was another example of my weakness and stupidity. If she had said to me that she wanted to stay, if she had made a play for me, I might just have given in. I told myself all the time that I was strong enough to say no to the things I wanted but should avoid, but that day I could have been won round by her. She was still beautiful and dangerous and capable of damaging both me and Becky, but I would have found a way of ignoring that. I wanted her, but she didn’t need me. I was glad about that. Maybe I would give Kelly a call. Maybe a fragile relationship was better than none at all.
But my mind kept coming back to Ronnie, lying dead on the floor of Lafferty’s office, just inside the door. I shouldn’t have gone to his girlfriend, shouldn’t have told her. That was unprofessional and I surprised myself with my behaviour. But some good came of it, because it forced them to do something for the girl, something that Ronnie would have liked. Handing over Kevin’s share in Turner’s shop to her would put money in her pocket, buy some silence perhaps, but also help Turner. Ronnie was worried about his friend, worried that he’d made a mistake by introducing the boy to Currie. This was a chance for Currie to make sure it was a mistake that didn’t come with regrets.
They would give her the share in the business, as well. I would make sure of it. They understood, I could see it in them. Kevin understood that when I told him he had to hand over the share of the business I would be checking; I would make sure that it happened. If they didn’t hand that share over, I was going to take a short cut through every single one of them. Currie, Billy Patterson, Conn Griffiths, even Peter Jamieson himself. There isn’t one of them I wouldn’t have taken down if they had held out on paying Ronnie’s girl.
I didn’t bother going to bed. No point, not with everything that was running through my head. People and their faces, the things I had done and things I knew I was still to do. I thought about Ronnie, obviously, but I thought about Rebecca a lot. Thought about her father being a killer, a man she needed to be protected from. That’s what Zara had said, and she was right. I protected Becky from Zara, but maybe I needed to protect her from me as well. I wouldn’t though, because I was both protector and danger in her life, the person most likely to ruin her and the person I was least capable of scaring away.
I thought about myself, thought about the life I needed to build for myself. I thought about Kelly, and maybe building a life with her. But it would have been a life with her in it, not a life built around her. I wasn’t capable of committing to anyone other than myself, not really. Maybe Becky, but I was at least smart enough to know that she had to be kept with her grandparents to lessen the damage I could do.
The night turned into morning and some light crept into the living room as I sat in my chair and let my misery and doubt consume me. This was what I deserved, this sense of failure and uncertainty. This was what I’d earned with my life. Remembering Lafferty as I shot him, remembering his choice of last words. You don’t understand what they’ve done to you, that’s what he said. He died being right, as little as that means to him now.
Hours passed, I suppose, with me just sitting there letting them go. I had nothing to add to them, nothing to spend them on. Time was better without me at that moment; the world was. Anything I did in that exhausted, depressed mood would have been hateful and violent because that was all that was in my mind. I had been played like a puppet by men who now feared me. It’s a very dangerous thing, to have powerful people terrified of you.
EVERY NIGHT I DREAM OF HELL
Malcolm Mackay was born and grew up in Stornoway, where he still lives. His much-lauded Glasgow-set novels have won the Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read Award and the Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award, and been shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger and the Scottish First Book of the Year Award. Every Night I Dream of Hell is Malcolm Mackay’s fifth novel.
Follow Malcolm @malcolm_mackay
Also by Malcolm Mackay
ANATOMY OF A HIT
(ebook short story)
THE NIGHT THE RICH MEN BURNED
The Glasgow Trilogy
THE NECESSARY DEATH OF LEWIS WINTER
HOW A GUNMAN SAYS GOODBYE
&
nbsp; THE SUDDEN ARRIVAL OF VIOLENCE
First published 2015 by Mantle
This electronic edition published 2015 by Mantle
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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ISBN 978-1-4472-9158-9
Copyright © Malcolm Mackay 2015
Cover photographs: © Miguel Sobreira / Arcangel Images
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