For Those Who Know the Ending

by Mackay, Malcolm

  Nate went past Gully into the office, wrote the address down.

  ‘What about you?’ Gully asked him, taking the sheet of paper with the address and passing the one with the number plate to Nate.

  ‘I’ll stick around here. Tidy up this mess. Work out what the fuck we’re going to do next.’

  ‘You don’t need the doc?’ Gully looked a little concerned; he’d witnessed, suffered and inflicted enough head injuries in his time to know you didn’t take them lightly.

  Nate shook his head. ‘I’m fine. Will be, anyway. You need a hand getting him out to the car?’

  Gully smiled. ‘Nah, I got him. All this loose muscle is still technically muscle. Plus I’m the only one here who had the good sense not to get my skull caved in.’

  ‘Aye, that was clever thinking.’

  It took some effort to get him off the floor, but Gregor was able to move slowly with plenty of sturdy support from Gully. They went out the front door, taking the shortest possible route to the car, and drove away.

  Once they were gone, Nate went out and locked up, pulled down the shutter and made his way round the back, going in through the still open back door. He was inside the bookies, on his own. He wanted to punch a wall, but all that would achieve was the unwanted attention of people in neighbouring buildings and some cracked knuckles. So far this had been an almost silent night, the only noise coming from the cars coming and going. He went back through to Gregor’s office and knelt down in front of the safe. He had a horrible feeling about what he was going to see when he pulled the already ajar door open. No surprise, the two packages of cash were gone, the bookie’s own money still there.

  He sat in the chair at the desk and tried to get his sore head working. Think, you dumb fucker, how do you catch the people responsible? Is it possible to cover this? It was mere damage-limitation, he knew that much already. The job of defending the money from a known attack had failed. They could get the money back and punish the people who had stolen it, but they had still failed to protect it in the first place and it was that failure everyone would point to. That’s what would become public knowledge, unless the punishment they brought about was so severe that it overwhelmed people’s memory of the original crime.

  Shit, he wasn’t thinking straight, working out punishments for people they hadn’t even identified yet. They had to find the pricks before they could make them suffer. They would. They could trace just about any car, work out who was using it, then go after them. There was a chance here, a slim one, that word wouldn’t get out. Gregor would keep his mouth shut and only an act of crass stupidity would open it. He hadn’t lost any of his own money, no reason for him to mention tonight if they could keep him out of the hospital.

  Shit, phone call. He got out his mobile and scrolled down to the doctor’s number. Nick Hall. Once Dr Nick, but not any more. He had been off on medical grounds for ages and eventually his colleagues managed to persuade him that there was no job for an addict like him to go back to. Not that it changed his life much; he had been working as a doctor for the Jamieson organization since before he went off work sick.

  ‘Nick, it’s Nate Colgan. What state are you in?’

  ‘What state am I in? I’m fine. Why?’

  He sounded fine, but that didn’t mean anything. Nate had met the doctor a few times, sometimes when he was popping and sometimes when he wasn’t and there was little noticeable difference. The guy was a pro at covering his addiction, a hardcore user who had learned how to always appear normal. Then again, Nate figured, if anyone should be able to cover a habit, a doctor should be. Or maybe the pills he was guzzling just didn’t have a dramatic effect; Nate had heard conflicting stories about what the guy was into.

  ‘Someone’s coming round to yours with a patient right now. Can you see them?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, I’m alone.’

  ‘Gully is bringing him,’ he said, then realized that Dr Nick probably didn’t know who Gully was. ‘It’s a head injury, so we’re not sure how serious it is. He was out cold for over a minute, groggy when he left here to go round to you. Have a look, see what you can do, and if they guy needs to go to the hospital then so be it.’

  He hung up and looked back down at the safe, reached out a foot and kicked the door shut. Stupid bloody thing. He’d have to spend some time scouting somewhere better to store money from now on. He had mentioned already that they might need better stores, but there was always too much else to worry about, too much else that had to be organized. This wasn’t a criminal organization any more; it was a tower-defence strategy. Trying to build ever more effective defences before the enemy strikes, always worried that there might already be an enemy inside.

  All this because the boss was in jail. Everyone afraid of making big moves without his permission, the natural order of the business thrown into chaos until he got out. And Nate, catapulted into the position of security consultant. The man people within the organization looked to for protection, the man who was supposed to keep the likes of Donny Gregor safe from harm. Protect the money he earned and hid in his safe, more to the point. The money was always considered more important than the person who earned it.

  If word got out about this job, Nate would look like a failure. If word got out that he was there when it happened and botched the whole fucking thing . . . Fuck’s sake, his reputation would be circling the drain. Didn’t matter how powerful your reputation was now, it only ever took one screw-up for it to collapse to rubble. Nobody would call him a failure to his face, nobody in this city would fucking dare, but they’d think it. He would lose respect. But word of the job getting out was still an if.

  If this had been carried out by someone working for another organization then word would undoubtedly spread fast. They would want the world to know the joyous news that they’d hit a Jamieson business and got away with it, adding bad PR to the pile of money already gone. But if it wasn’t someone from another organization, that was different. If this was just a random opportunist then it made sense that the attackers would be desperate to keep it to themselves. Only if they were tremendously stupid would they even think of spreading the word, inviting hell to fall down on top of them. So the two guys work on their own, they hit the place and then they lie low, they tell no one. They don’t risk Nate discovering identities and chasing them down. Well, he was going to chase them down anyway, but he’d appreciate them keeping their mouths shut in the meantime.

  9

  It was very late when Martin made it back home. Usman had dropped him down the street and let him walk the rest of the way, accepting that it didn’t make sense for the car to be seen stopping outside Martin’s house in the dead of night. A glance at his watch, five past two, he was going to have to explain his late arrival. Part of him wanted to explain it in honest detail; he wanted Joanne to at least ask where the hell he had been.

  He was still clutching the bag with sixteen thousand pounds in it that was going to have to be hidden somewhere in the house. He would have to tell her about it, if she asked. He was afraid too that she wouldn’t ask. It was stupid, but as he put the key in the front door and went inside, he was afraid that she wouldn’t care enough to ask.

  The house was silent and dark. He went through to the kitchen, thought about putting the bag with the cash into the large cupboard there. No, too public. Needed to be somewhere that no visitor to the house would enter. Only he and Joanne ever used their bedroom, which was why he had to put it somewhere there. So he went quietly upstairs.

  She wasn’t asleep, she was just pretending to be. Joanne rolled over and stretched, making it seem as though he’d woken her when he entered the room.

  ‘You’re back.’

  ‘I am.’

  She put on the bedside lamp and sat up, watching him. He already had the wardrobe door open and was down on his knees. He opened the now empty shoebox the gun had been in and forced the bag of cash inside. It burst one of the sides of the box, but it went in. He placed the lid loose on top of
it, it wouldn’t fit with the side burst, and put the now empty carrier bag on top of the box.

  Joanne was watching him when he closed the wardrobe door and turned around. He stared at her, waiting for her to say something more. If she cared she would say something, he had convinced himself of that.

  ‘Didn’t think you were going to be this late,’ she said, looking at him with an impenetrable expression. He’d never been this late before, but she knew he’d never worked on something intense like he had that night.

  ‘I didn’t think I would be. I would have said. I didn’t mean to keep you awake.’

  She smiled a sort of dismissive smile, her way of saying that if she wanted to sleep she would sleep and him not being there wouldn’t change it. That self-confidence felt a little bit false and they both knew it. Martin went over and sat on his side of the bed, not making a move to undress. He looked at Joanne, almost forcing her to say something.

  ‘You were working?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I was working. I was. It was a big job. I made some money.’ He almost added the words ‘for us’ to the end of that sentence, but that would have been unfair. He had chosen to do the work, trying to imply that she was part of the reason for it was just delusional.

  Silence. He had set the question up for her, but she wasn’t responding. Joanne knew she just had to ask him what it was exactly he had been doing and he would spill his guts all over the bedroom. If she told him to stop working, he would stop. If she said she was disgusted with him and wanted him out of the house he would fight for the relationship. It was entirely up to her what happened next.

  ‘Martin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s in the box?’

  Finally. Now she was asking something that forced them down the dark road towards an honest conversation.

  ‘Money. Quite a lot of money. It is what I got for the work I did tonight.’

  ‘How much is quite a lot?’ She was on a roll now, correct question after dangerously correct question.

  ‘There is sixteen thousand pounds there. In cash.’

  Still no reaction. She sat looking at him with the same mildly quizzical expression, the look of an intelligent person putting the pieces together. There was no shock, no gasp and no horror. That was the most important thing. Sixteen grand meant he had done something significant, and she was smart enough to grasp that straight away, but it didn’t shock her.

  ‘So you made sixteen thousand pounds for one night’s work?’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  This time she looked away from him, looked down at the wardrobe and then at a random place in the middle of the bed. That warned him that the next one would be a big question.

  ‘What sort of thing does a fellow have to do to make himself sixteen grand in one night?’

  He looked at her, made eye contact. He was enthusiastic with his answer. ‘I want to tell you. If I tell you, you might hate me.’

  ‘I won’t hate you.’

  ‘Okay then,’ he said, nodding. ‘I will tell you. Tonight I worked with another man to steal that money. We took it from a bookmaker’s shop. We broke in and we took the money from it. That is my half of what we stole.’ He had been speaking quickly, excitedly, his desperation to share with her obvious.

  Joanne looked at him. She was expressionless for a while, then nodded. ‘Okay. Did you . . . did you kill anyone?’

  ‘No, I did not,’ he said. He was 95 per cent sure that he hadn’t. He had hit the bookie hard on the back of the head, but it would be bloody unlucky if he died from that. Not impossible, that was why he couldn’t be 100 per cent, but he was confident enough to say no to Joanne.

  ‘Was it dangerous?’

  He paused, considered how much he wanted to tell her, and then aimed for the truth. ‘There is always some danger. Of course. Every job has that. But it was well planned. We knew what we were doing. What we were going for. So, it was dangerous, yes, but most jobs are more dangerous than this one.’

  She gave a little laugh that was close to a snort. Martin’s attempt at honesty was wrapped in vagueness.

  ‘Should I be worried about the police battering down my door?’

  ‘No,’ he said forcefully. ‘The police will not even be called by the people we took this from. I can say that with a guarantee. Okay? The police, they will never even know about this money.’

  Now she was frowning. ‘Why would the bookie not report this?’

  ‘Because it was not legal money. It was not legal before we stole it and it is only a little bit less legal now.’

  ‘By which you mean it was already stolen money?’

  ‘Not stolen. Well, maybe stolen, maybe not. Just not legal, I know this. I don’t know where they got it from, but it was illegal earnings. It was for a criminal group, it was their money. They were hiding it there. Then we took it.’ His language skills were faltering a little under the pressure of her growing frown.

  ‘So you’re saying that the police won’t come looking for it but some bunch of gangsters might? Gangsters big enough to make thirty-two grand when it suits them? Jesus, Martin, that’s worse.’ Her voice got lower, more exasperated as she went on.

  ‘It is not worse. You are wrong. They don’t know it was me; there is no way that they can know it is me, okay? There is no way for them to reach your door,’ he said, trying to convince himself as much as Joanne. There was Usman, out there drink-driving with three guns in his possibly already identified car. There were ways. ‘You think I don’t know how to do this sort of thing properly? I know. I am doing what I am good at and I am making a lot of money for it. I want to bring money in. I don’t want to be sitting here while you earn the money. Nobody would want that. I want us to be able to live properly. To go on a holiday. To have a car each. To have some nice things in the house. I don’t want to be rich, but I want to be okay. This is how I do it and I do it very well. I am good at my job. They do not know it was me and they will never know it was me.’ He had been speaking faster and faster, the intensity rushing out of him.

  ‘All right, okay. I’m not saying you’re not good at whatever you do. I just . . . don’t want you ending up in jail.’

  He leaned across the bed and kissed her hard on the mouth. ‘You tell me to stop doing this and I will stop doing it. Right now I will stop. I will find some other job.’

  ‘You want to keep doing what you’re doing?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, not even stopping to think about it. This was all he had ever done. There were probably plenty of other things he could do well, but none that he had any interest in. This was it for him, the only job he wanted and the only one he’d ever really tried. Big jobs with big scores and fast money. Nothing else could beat that.

  Joanne breathed in heavily. ‘Right. Then we need to lay down some ground rules. I don’t want to know details of anything you do. I don’t want to know anything else that incriminates me if you get caught. I’ll play the ignorant little housewife. Maybe, if there are ways of helping you with the money that don’t get me into trouble, I’ll help, but I am not going to prison because I know more about your work than I should.’

  He nodded slowly. A little disappointed, but he understood. He had hoped he would be able to talk to her about his job, get her opinions and tap into her local knowledge. That was always the ideal relationship, someone who understood the business enough to give you an opinion worth listening to. It wasn’t fair to expect that from her, she’d never been around the business before and had more sense than to wade into the deep end on his account.

  ‘Okay, I will tell you nothing.’

  She sighed again. ‘Not nothing. You can tell me when you’re working. You can tell me . . . I don’t know, you can tell me when there’s something I really need to know. I don’t want you going out of here on some big, dangerous thing and me not knowing. Sitting here wondering why you haven’t come home, jumping to conclusions. Just, don’t tell me anything that could get me into trouble, okay?’


  ‘I would never do that,’ he said, leaning across for another kiss.

  Martin undressed and went through to the bathroom. Joanne’s reaction had been as good as he could realistically have hoped for. Of course she knew that he had been a criminal before, and she must have known that he was doing some criminal work in the city. How the hell else would he have made any money at all? She accepted it. She would go on accepting it so long as he didn’t implicate her in anything.

  That, right there, was the problem. He would never deliberately incriminate her, but he had glossed over tonight’s job. It hadn’t been the smooth process with no blowback he had suggested. He had gotten the money and done nothing that would reveal his identity, but Usman had been seen by one of them. There was a good chance they had seen the car as well. Those two things would give them a real good chance of tracking Usman down. If they tracked down Usman then they had a pretty good chance of tracking down Martin, too. If they tracked down Martin then they tracked down Joanne. They would use her against him. He knew these kinds of people; he had been these kinds of people. There was nothing they wouldn’t do to punish him.

  He went back to bed and lay down beside Joanne, his arm draped over her. They didn’t say anything else. It took her a while to get to sleep, he could tell. Took Martin much longer. Running through the job in his mind, feeling the force of the blow against the back of the bookie’s head in his fingers. The fear of a knock on the door. No, not a knock. The fear of someone coming in through the bedroom door having already silently broken into the house. They were capable, and it’s how they would approach it if they knew where he was. A new fear that he hadn’t felt back home, back when he didn’t have anything to lose.

  1.11 a.m.

  It’s the cramp that’s getting to him now. He can’t stretch his legs. His throat is dry and he’s coughing, swallowing in the hope of generating some saliva. There are tears in his eyes. He has to stay calm, keep his mind on what’s coming next, he knows that. No way of getting out of this in one piece if he panics, starts thrashing around and injures himself. Stay calm, be patient. He’s put other people in this position often enough to know how a smart man ought to handle it. Pulling against the plastic cords isn’t helping and needs to stop, the cut on his wrist is only getting worse. Stop moving; conserve what little energy is left. But the cramp in his leg, he has to do something about that or he won’t be able to move on it. He’s pushing the chair back, slowly and carefully. It’s scraping on the concrete floor, filling the silent warehouse with jarring noise. He’s moving slowly; if he goes fast, he’ll tip it over. Slowly back until the cord tied to the metal hoop in the floor begins to resist. That’s as straight as he can get his legs, as much relief as is possible.