The Sudden Arrival of Violence

by Malcolm Mackay

  Out the door, locking it. He’ll chuck the keys along with the clothing. Down the stairs and out through the front door, looking carefully up and down the street. Nothing out of place. No car that he doesn’t recognize. Calum’s stopping at the top of the three steps outside the front door. Pretending to fiddle about with something in his bag. Using the seconds to look carefully. Is there anyone peering out a window who can see him? Anyone slinking down in the driver’s seat of a car, trying to hide from him? Can’t see anyone.

  Down the steps and along the street. Moving quickly, but not so fast that it would grab the attention of the casual observer. Round the corner and along the next street. Every now and again checking behind him. Not too often–that would be conspicuous. Mustn’t look like a man who’s checking behind him. Onto the street where he left his car last night. Starting it up and driving away. So far, so good; but so far was the easy part. Now he needs the help of others. He’s going to see his big brother.

  9

  The phone call is made by one of the women who work across the hall. They think it odd that Hardy hasn’t turned up for work. They can’t remember him taking a day off in all the time they’ve shared the top floor of the building. They didn’t report it straight away. You don’t, do you? You don’t rush to call the police just because someone doesn’t turn up for their work. Could be any number of reasons. Maybe Richard Hardy is sick. Been a bit of flu going around, after all. So they do nothing, until a client turns up looking for him. An Asian businessman who visits regularly. Been visiting for years, seems to be an important client for Mr Hardy. They buzz him into the building. The man’s knocking on the office door, obviously unsure whether or not to leave. His accountant’s never stood him up before. It’s so unlike Hardy.

  One of the women has come out into the hall and is talking to him now. Asking whether Mr Hardy cancelled their meeting or not.

  ‘No, he didn’t. I’m very surprised at him,’ the business-man’s saying.

  ‘I don’t want to overreact,’ the woman’s saying, ‘but he’s never missed a day before. We both said it when we got here. We both said: He’s not here, and that’s not like him at all.’

  ‘I have his mobile telephone number,’ the businessman’s saying, putting his briefcase down and taking his own phone from his pocket. Calling, but getting no answer. People don’t like to make a fuss. The businessman and the woman are agreeing that they’ll leave it until lunchtime before they take it any further.

  The businessman’s down the stairs and out the front door when he stops in his tracks. Isn’t that Richard’s car? Sure looks like it. Might not be, but that’s the sort of car he drives. A pause. He’s taking his phone out of his pocket and trying again. This is concerning. Holding the phone to his ear, leaning against the car he thinks is Hardy’s. Sounds like the ring is echoing. That’s weird. It’s coming from inside the car. It is Richard’s car. That’s his phone on the seat, the display lighting up as the businessman rings it. Well now, this is beginning to look like something worth being nervous about. Richard would never go off without his mobile. Goodness, he would never go off without his car. A man of his age, how far would he get? No, this is definitely unusual. He’s been buzzed back in now and he’s knocking on the charity-office door. He’s talking with the women.

  At this point, because none of them know Richard’s home number, they call the police. The woman calls. Helen Harrison, her name is, if you’re interested. PC Joseph Higgins is interested, for about ten seconds. When he hears the missing person has been missing for a couple of hours and has only missed one appointment, he is less bothered. Pretty blasé about the whole thing, in fact. The car’s outside. The woman’s confirmed that Hardy usually gets to the office before them. So Hardy gets here. Decides to nip along to a shop to pick up something. Maybe falls over. Maybe takes a turn. Maybe some emergency comes up. A respectable, ageing guy like Hardy, it’s usually health-related. He’s gone somewhere and had some kind of episode. Probably in a hospital as we speak, being told that he needs to lower his blood pressure, take a holiday. No big deal.

  Left his mobile in the car. Not a lot they can do, truth be told. As far as these people know, the man’s been gone two hours. No search party needed for that. He’s finding out Hardy’s address.

  ‘We’ll pop round,’ PC Higgins is saying, nodding to his silent, disinterested colleague. ‘If he’s there, we’ll tell him to call you. If not, we’ll ask around, make sure people know to keep an eye out for him. Not much more we can do, though. Right now he’s only late for work, not technically missing.’

  Higgins is good at polite. Not particularly good at interested. The woman knows he’s going through the motions, but what more can you expect at this early stage? Police these days. Hard to feel safe when they won’t go to any lengths to look for a good man like Richard Hardy.

  Higgins and his colleague, PC Tom McIntyre, are making their way to Hardy’s address. It’s a quiet Tuesday morning, this is something to do. Something harmless, which gives them an excuse to avoid bigger investigations. That’s how McIntyre sees it. Not Higgins. His instinct and ambition see a case like this as a waste of time. It’s a quiet morning, though. Uncharacteristically nice weather, too. A little drive out to the suburbs. Nice little area where Hardy made his home. Finding a parking place along the street and walking up to his front gate. A plain but neat front garden. Detached house, sort of area mostly populated by the middle-aged and upwards. There’s a driveway and a garage. No car in the drive, garage locked up.

  Before they’ve even reached the door they can see something’s amiss.

  ‘Newspaper,’ McIntyre’s saying, pointing at the end of a rolled-up newspaper sticking out of the letterbox.

  ‘I can see that,’ Higgins is saying, looking at his colleague with a frown. They shouldn’t be lumbering him with people like McIntyre. Higgins is twenty-six, McIntyre in his early thirties. If McIntyre had talent and ambition, he’d be higher up the chain by now. He’s become lazy, just looking to avoid work. The sort of person who holds younger cops like Higgins back. Ringing the doorbell and waiting. Nothing. Knocking on the door and waiting. Nothing.

  ‘We’ll check with the neighbours, see if they know whether he was home last night,’ Higgins is saying. A thought’s forming in his head, thanks to that newspaper. Let’s say he didn’t leave the car at the office this morning and go somewhere. Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that the car’s been there since last night. Now he’s been missing for fifteen hours, and it starts to look interesting.

  First door they knock on is opened by a grey-haired old lady. Big surprise.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ Higgins is saying, doing his best at insincere friendly. ‘We’re looking for your neighbour, Mr Hardy. He doesn’t appear to be at home.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ she’s saying, nodding her head in the way people do when they know something you don’t. Particularly people who aren’t used to knowing something you don’t. ‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ she’s saying, revelling in her moment. ‘He wasn’t back last night. Didn’t come home.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’ Higgins is asking.

  ‘Of course I’m sure. I hear him, every night. He comes back and parks his car in the garage, and he slams that garage door shut. Every night, slams it shut. And he leaves his outside light on until he goes to bed after ten. Every night, that light blaring in through our windows at the side of the house. Not last night, though. Wasn’t a light in the house last night.’

  Okay, so now he’s a missing person. A proper, actual missing person, rather than some old fart late for work. It’s a myth that a person has to be missing for twenty-four hours before the police get concerned. They get concerned at the point when a person’s disappearance seems concerning, logically enough. Might be sooner than twenty-four hours. In some cases a person has to be gone much longer. Here’s a reliable fellow who didn’t get home from work last night. Didn’t turn up for work in the morning. Completely out
of character. Now it’s worth calling it in to the station. They’re back in the car, Higgins radioing in a report and a description. It’s the fact that he left his car behind that gets Higgins. You don’t go off the grid for hours and leave your car parked at your office. And with his mobile inside it. That’s another funny little act worth noting.

  Back at Hardy’s office. The client with a missed appointment has gone. Has a life of his own to get on with. The two women from the charity office are still hanging around, having more fun than they’ve had in years. They call the janitor for Higgins, and he unlocks the office door. Hardy locked up, but didn’t leave in his car. No sign of disturbance in the office. First thought is that wherever Hardy went, he went willingly. Locked up and left. His car locked, too; Higgins tried the door handle on the way in. A thought occurs, and he’s kicking himself. Not literally, of course. He doesn’t want to say it. Doesn’t want to accept that he might have blundered. He’s about to ask the question of one of the women, when he gets a message on the radio. No Richard Hardy admitted to any local hospital or the reported victim of a crime. He’s looking at Helen, the charity worker, who’s trying hard not to look thrilled.

  ‘Do you know if perhaps Mr Hardy had a girlfriend or partner of any sort?’

  She’s about to say no, and then she’s pausing. They’d never considered it. He’s an old man, a widower. It seems so unlikely, but if you can’t disprove it, it becomes a possibility.

  Everyone feels a bit embarrassed. McIntyre’s smirking just enough for his colleague to notice. Helen’s gone toddling back into her own office to share the wonderfully salacious new theory with her colleague. Higgins is taking a stroll round the office, looking at the files on the shelves, in the hope of seeing something notable. Hope realized: two of the first four names he sees written in block capitals on the side of the bulky files are familiar. Men known to the police. Nothing major, but people of dubious repute. It’s the sixth name that stops him in his tracks. He’s standing there staring at it. Francis Autos. There’s a row of big thick files, one for each of the last seven years. Shug Francis. Higgins is pulling down the file for this year.

  ‘Hey,’ McIntyre’s saying, ‘don’t get into that. Let’s go.’

  Higgins is ignoring him. Shug-bloody-Francis. And it’s everything: employee payment details, tax forms, the whole nine yards. Even if Hardy isn’t missing, this is a chance. Higgins is on the radio to the station. DI Fisher will want to be all over this.

  10

  They’ve been sitting looking at each other for the last ten minutes. Every now and then William will shake his head. Sometimes he’ll ask Calum to repeat himself. Then another shake of the head. Calum got here early. Waited for William to come home from work. That was lunchtime. Calum’s given William a brief rundown of what he wants to do. The bullet points, if you’ll pardon the pun.

  ‘Okay, fine, give me the details then,’ William’s saying.

  And Calum’s smiling, because he knew his brother would say that. He’s asking a lot of William, and he knows it, but he also knows his big brother won’t let him down. Just by asking for the detail William’s committing himself to this. As Calum knew he would. It’s dangerous for William, but he’s always wanted his brother to get out of the business. He’ll accept the risk.

  It was the one thing in all of this that Calum agonized over. Sure, he regrets that he won’t see his mother again, but there’s no danger for her in that. It’s the risks William will take on his behalf that made Calum stop and think. Is there a way of doing this that doesn’t put his brother in danger? Short answer is no. In a perfect world Calum would have had everything prepared months ago. It’s not a perfect world, rather obviously. He could prepare things like the clothes, but for the fake identity and the bank accounts he had to wait. Do those things months before your escape opportunity comes along and you’re asking for trouble. Someone finds out you’ve purchased the ID and wants to know why. Only reason you need the ID is to do a runner. You can’t explain it away. A good gunman doesn’t do business with counterfeiters. You do no business with any criminal you don’t absolutely have to. So that had to wait.

  ‘I needed to wait until I had a job,’ Calum’s telling William. ‘I had one last night.’

  William’s grimacing, slightly raising a hand. ‘Don’t tell me what I don’t need to hear.’ It’s one thing to know what your little brother does for a living. Quite another to hear him describe it. William already knew there was a job. He didn’t want to know more when he lent Calum the car; doesn’t want to know more now.

  ‘So I had a job. I know that Peter Jamieson and John Young won’t expect to hear from me or see me for as much as a week. They won’t get pissy if they don’t hear from me for a fortnight. So I maybe have that long to get away. Put some distance between me and them.’

  ‘Good,’ William’s saying, nodding his head. He knows what this is. This is the good news before the work starts. The little hook to convince him it’s all going to work out, before Calum reveals the mountain of preparation and risk. ‘I’m guessing you’ve worked out the detail then,’ William continues. ‘Tell me what we need to do, in order.’

  Calum’s nodding. This would be so much harder if William didn’t know the business. If he was too stupid to work out what happens next. Calum’s always thought of himself as the more intelligent of the two. The more cerebral. That doesn’t make William dumb. William went to work in a garage when he was eighteen. By twenty-four he had a share in the business. A small one, but he made it work for him. Now, at thirty-two, he runs the place. Owns most of it, although not quite all. Yes, he’s occasionally sidestepped legality in pursuit of profit, but he’s always been smart enough to get away with it. Smart enough to make no enemies. That’s been key. That ends today. If Jamieson finds out that William helped Calum escape, then William makes one big enemy.

  ‘First thing we need to do is get rid of my car,’ Calum’s saying. ‘Respray and retag, break it down for parts–whatever. I need to make a little bit of money out of it. They’d expect it to be missing. They don’t know that I use you for the cars, although they might guess. Obviously you deny it if they ask. So the car needs to disappear.’

  William’s nodding, thinking. ‘How much cash you got?’

  ‘About six hundred.’

  William’s frowning now. ‘Won’t get far on that. Six hundred quid? All right, listen. Breaking it down might be safer, but I think you should go for a dressing-up. A good spray and tag, and nobody knows it was yours. I can get it a new logbook. Sell it. Car like that, you could get, maybe, a grand and a half after costs. Might be a bit less if we’re selling in a hurry. Gives you more to run with.’

  Calum’s nodding. ‘As long as it’s safe. Safety first. That needs to be the first thing,’ he’s saying. ‘After that, I need a new identity. I know a guy who can come up with a new passport and driver’s licence in good time, if the money’s right. I can’t go and see him about it,’ Calum continues, with a bit of a shrug. A ‘you know what that means’ kind of shrug.

  ‘I can go see him,’ William’s saying. A pause. ‘I know a guy: does fake service histories and whatnot for cars. I know he does driver’s licences too. I could have a word with him.’

  Calum’s shaking his head. He chose his man carefully. Any counterfeiter who lasts is a good counterfeiter. But a driver’s licence and a passport are two different things. These new biometric passports require a speciality. They also need the passport to be falsely registered–something his chosen man can do for him. Same with the driver’s licence, but that’s easier.

  ‘We’ll stick with the guy I’ve chosen. He should be fine. I’ll tell you what I need.’

  ‘I’ll go see him tomorrow then. You have enough time for all this?’ William’s asking.

  ‘I hope so,’ Calum’s saying quietly. ‘The counterfeiter will already have IDs he can use. They set these things up and hold the IDs for years before they sell them. Gives them a history.’

&nb
sp; ‘Is this one of those dead-baby things?’ William’s asking with another frown.

  ‘Might be a stolen ID, might just be made up. I will need to set up a bank account in the new name, but that’ll be a piece of piss. Then I’ll need to book tickets to get myself out of here.’

  ‘You’ll need his ID before you can get through an airport,’ William’s saying. ‘If you’re not leaving Britain, you could always just drive.’

  ‘Nah,’ Calum’s saying. ‘I will have to leave at some point. Jamieson has connections with people all over the country. He could find me anywhere in Britain.’

  ‘He could find you anywhere,’ William’s warning.

  ‘He could. But he won’t.’

  Another moment of silence between them. Quiet in the house. William lives alone. He’s never married, although he was with a girl called Morven for years. Six years, maybe a little more. Then it all fell apart, in no time at all. Calum never knew why. Knew William didn’t want to talk about it, so didn’t ask. Been a couple of girls since, but William hasn’t settled. The elder brother’s the one to break the silence. Has to be. He has the right to ask; Calum only has the right to answer.

  ‘So you going to London or what?’

  ‘Probably. Just to begin with. Then on somewhere else. I’ll see how the land lies. See where I can go.’

  ‘You got any idea where you’ll end up?’

  ‘I have an idea,’ Calum’s nodding, and saying no more. It’s not an idea he’ll share with William. Not yet. Safer for his brother to know as little as possible. William understands that.

  ‘So does this have something to do with that wee fire-cracker you were knocking about with? The one who came and called me all sorts of terribly insulting things at the garage?’ William’s asking with a smile, teasing but genuinely interested.