The Hit

by Anna Smith

  ‘You bet. What are you going to do with her?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But first, I want to talk to a senior cop. A DI – I’ve met him before. You might remember. DI James Morton. He’s the guy who was in here after Don was killed. He’s a bit of a hard guy, but I want to see if I can strike up some kind of contact with him. Maybe work with him on this. To be honest, I’m not sure he’ll be up for it, but I want to see what he’s about. I did say to him when I saw him after the Boag drama that we’d meet for a drink or a coffee.’

  ‘Good. But be careful what you do.’

  The silence hung for a moment, both of their minds ticking over.

  ‘The other thing, Rosie. The British embassy and the Romanians. I mean, that was some farce that the cops just moved in and handed the guy over when you’d left the embassy. Where are we on that?’

  Rosie felt a little uncomfortable.

  ‘Okay. Well I had a conversation with the embassy press guy, and remember, he did open all the doors for us, got us out of the country – effectively saved our lives. So we owe them a bit.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Before I left, we had a meeting in his office. He’s not daft, he knows that the part about the Romanians and the corruption that we witnessed at first-hand is a great tabloid story. But he wants us to tone it down. Obviously he’s acting on the instructions of the embassy. A bit of diplomacy in the background.’

  ‘What? Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Yeah. I know. But maybe we should look at it. We can still write about the corruption, and he accepts that. But he doesn’t want the Romanian authorities to come out as though they are corrupt bastards across the board, willing to sell children. They’re trying to get into the European Union, and I think what he’s getting at is that they don’t want to be painted totally black.’

  ‘But they are bloody black.’

  ‘Agreed. But not all of them. The interior minister who came to the embassy that day did everything in good faith. It’s lower down the food chain – like the cops – that is the problem.’

  McGuire nodded his head slowly, tapped his fingers on the cup.

  ‘Well, you go back and tell him that we hear what he’s saying and we understand. We’ll bear it in mind, but we tell our story all guns blazing. If they want to come up with some statement of damage limitation from the Romanians then we’ll use that and give it a decent show – say that there are bad apples and they are being rooted out.’

  Rosie nodded. ‘I think that’s the way to handle it.’

  McGuire gave her a sarcastic look. ‘That’s why I’m the editor.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Right. I’m going up to see the managing editor to talk this money stuff through with him. You go ahead and do what you’ve to do. Good luck with your DI.’

  The meeting was over. She got up and left.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Rosie headed for a café at the Charing Cross end of Sauchiehall Street, frequented by people looking for a fast blood-sugar hit on a low budget. It was mostly bagels they sold at the counter for people on the run, and the tiny café had only a few thin tables that looked as though they’d been thrown together in haste. Outside, it had two of the same wooden and steel bistro tables, more in hope than in expectation of al fresco dining. Rosie looked up at the leaden sky. Not in this town, Toto. It wasn’t the kind of place she usually ate in, because she could never see the point of bagels, no matter what they loaded them up with, and nothing in the glass counter would ever tempt her to order a bagel with her coffee. But the latte was great, and she liked the Irish guy who owned the place. In a quiet afternoon one time after it opened a couple of years ago, he’d told Rosie the story of his life, and made her laugh when he confessed to her that he couldn’t see the point of bagels either. But he’d spent fifteen years in New York, where they sold by the millions, and were beginning to get more popular in the UK. He was right. Cheap and cheerful stodge, food of students, buskers and busy shoppers who just wanted a quick fix. Or posh ones for upwardly mobile office workers.

  *

  ‘Hey, Rosie. Long time no see,’ said Mikey Joe, with a twang somewhere between Kerry and the gangster movie Goodfellas.

  ‘I’ve been up to my eyes, Mikey Joe. You know how it is.’

  ‘I do. I’ve been reading your stuff in the Post. Christ, Rosie! You don’t half get up to some shit out there. You wanna be careful, girl.’ He stacked a few more bagels in the glass case. ‘I don’t suppose I can tempt you with any of these?’

  Rosie smiled at the twinkle in his eye.

  ‘No thanks, pal. Just the latte, the perfect way you always do it.’

  ‘Comin’ right up.’ Again with the transatlantic drawl.

  Rosie sat at the furthest table, which was squeezed into the corner at the back, but where she could still see part of the glass door. She watched as Mikey Joe prepared her coffee and dealt with two studenty types at the bar ordering some takeaway bagels. He gave her a wink as he pushed them into the bag and handed them to the young women. Then he came over to Rosie, carrying her coffee.

  ‘So, how you doing? Business good?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘Not too bad, thanks. Always on the go.’

  He placed the glass latte cup with the steel handle on the table, and turned as the ping of the door opening sounded. Two more customers at the counter. Behind them, Rosie saw the big cop coming past the window and looking curiously at the shop and the glass door as though he wasn’t sure he was in the right place.

  ‘Jesus!’ the DI said as he approached her. ‘You reporters can dig out the places.’ He sat down opposite her and looked around the place.

  ‘You fancy a bagel?’

  ‘A bagel? No thanks. I’m not the bagel type.’

  Rosie smiled. ‘Me neither. Coffee? Tea?’

  ‘Tea please. Black.’

  Rosie got up and went to the counter. ‘Can you bring a black tea, please?’ Then she went back to the table, and sat down.

  ‘I thought you liked O’Brien’s bar, schmoozing around in there,’ said the DI.

  ‘Not at this time of the day. This is one of my haunts. I like cafés – all kinds of cafés. That’s where you see a lot.’ She smiled. ‘But I like O’Brien’s too.’

  Rosie was a little surprised that her old friend Don must have told James Morton he used to meet a reporter at O’Brien’s for drinks. The cop gave her a long look and a half smile.

  ‘Don told me he used to meet up with you.’ He put a hand up. ‘Don’t worry. He didn’t share any details about how close you were.’

  Rosie glared at him. ‘We were friends. That’s all. Good, close friends, who had a lot of respect for each other.’

  ‘Of course. I’m not suggesting anything else, so spare me the indignant look.’ He glared back at Rosie, then his face softened. ‘I didn’t mind that he’d a pal in the press. Not at all. The opposite, in fact. I came through the ranks at a time when cops and the press could be found together in bars all the time. But there were some rogues out there, back in the day.’

  Now Rosie smiled. ‘You mean cops?’

  ‘Aye. Them too.’ He allowed her to score the point. ‘But a few of our boys got their fingers burned dealing with reporters. It’s not all of them you can trust.’

  ‘I know. Goes both ways. Don was somebody I knew for a very long time. And it worked for us. We were mates as well. Sometimes we’d get the calls the police wouldn’t, but I knew when I gave him a lead, or helped him with a case, that he would look after me when it came to doing the story. He sometimes gave me a heads-up – but never compromised himself.’

  ‘I know that too. And often it was a bit irregular. You got away with a lot, Rosie.’

  ‘Sure I did. But my priority was my story. That’s how it is.’ She knew he was studying her and she felt she had him on her side. ‘I’m kind of hoping that we can have a bit of a similar rapport. You know. I help you where I can, you help me. How do you feel about that?’

  ‘Is that why
you asked me to come here?’ He sat back, mock-indignant. ‘You might at least have bought me a decent lunch.’

  Rosie smiled and the atmosphere relaxed between them. She liked this guy, despite his attempts to pull rank the couple of times when they’d encountered each other before. He couldn’t yet be the big friend that Don had been – that would take time. But she hoped they could build up some mutual trust.

  ‘Actually, no. I didn’t bring you here to chat you up, James. I might have something for you. I’m sure you’ll be interested.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  ‘Helen Lewis.’

  ‘That wildcat.’

  ‘Yeah. I think I can bring her to you.’ She watched his eyebrows go up. ‘I’ve got a source who may be able to lead me to her. And if I do actually get to meet her . . . who knows, once I sound her out and get my story out of her, I might be able to talk her into handing herself in.’

  He took a long breath and let it out slowly.

  ‘We’re pretty sure she shot Frankie Mallon in her flat. We’ve no smoking gun, but word is he was shagging her – if you’ll pardon my French. Frankie was a real womaniser, a bastard of a guy. I don’t know what happened that morning in her flat, but I’m sure she pulled the trigger. Why else would she have done a runner?’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Has Helen Lewis contacted you?’

  ‘Not exactly. Well, to be honest, not at all. But, as I say, I have a contact who might lead me to her. And that contact would be valuable to you – if she talked.’

  ‘It sure would.’ He leaned forwards. ‘Do you know, Rosie, reading that stuff of yours, it makes me think that Alan Lewis has done a runner because he was mixed up in something. Maybe hiding out in Romania. Or maybe even been bumped off.’

  Rosie nodded. ‘Yeah. Well, if I get anywhere, I’ll let you know.’ She paused. ‘We could help each other a bit.’

  He said nothing, nodding his head slowly, as though he was trying to process everything she said. Then he leaned forward again.

  ‘Rosie. I’m not going to make any promises to you. But I think you’re savvy enough to know that I have a level of respect for you – otherwise I might have locked you up a few months ago when you turned up with that bastard Timmy O’Dwyer in your car. He’d obviously had the shit beaten out of him, and I know I was being kept in the dark. But hey, he’s locked up for a long time now and that’s one bastard more off the face of the earth. Same goes for Boag turning up dead like that. I suspect you know things that you decided not to share with the police. And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t want to know. If Jonjo Mulhearn was behind it, then I can sleep at night knowing he had his justice. That’s the kind of guy I am.’ He paused. ‘But it doesn’t mean that you get it all your own way here. You need to understand that. You have to be sensible about it. I’m well up in the ranks here, and much as I gave Don plenty of leeway, it’s a bit different with the position I’m in. Do you understand that?’

  Rosie knew it would not be easy to establish another working relationship with a good, reliable cop like she had with Don. She knew she had to agree to rein things in a bit on how she treated the police, especially a high-ranking DI. It was useful to have someone high up the greasy pole, but it could also work against her. His priority wouldn’t be the Post story, and she had to accept that, but this was going better than she’d hoped.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I understand, and I’ll take that on board. I’ll be as open as I can with you, but as long as you respect that I won’t be able to show you my full hand all the time. But I will put people your way if I can.’

  He drained his cup, then stretched his hand across the table and for a second put it on top of hers, surprising her.

  ‘Good. I think we can do business.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘Will you give me a shout if you get a talk with Helen Lewis? Good luck with that if you do, by the way. She’s a hard bitch, by all accounts.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll bear that in mind. I’ll talk to you again, James. And thanks for meeting me. I really appreciate it.’

  He stood up. ‘Aye. Always good to meet the reporter who brought the former Chief Constable down.’

  Rosie smiled. ‘He deserved it. He had it coming.’

  The DI nodded, smiling. ‘You’re not the Rottweiler they say you are, though.’

  He winked, then turned and walked past the counter and out of the café, before she had a chance to answer.

  Chapter Thirty

  Rosie waited for Jonjo Mulhearn on the bench by the Clyde next to the iconic bronze statue of a famous Spanish Republican heroine, La Pasionaria, a monument to the Scots who’d fought in the Spanish Civil War. Better to die on your feet than live forever on your knees was the inscription on the base. It was Jonjo’s suggestion to meet there, instead of the bar where she’d met him twice before. The old-school gangster was a useful contact and Rosie was hoping to pick his brains on something Christy and Nicu had mentioned: that there was a Russian organised crime connection to the baby selling that possibly stretched all the way to Glasgow. She hadn’t spoken to Jonjo since the day she’d left him in the bar, knowing that he’d been behind the butchering of the killer Thomas Boag, who had murdered Jonjo’s only son. Jonjo had saved her life after Boag had kidnapped her and left her to drown in a lock-up. If she’d felt bound totally by professional ethics, Rosie would have turned him in to the police when they questioned her. But she made her own rules, and it wasn’t just because he saved her life that she didn’t stick him to the cops. Deep down she approved of his kind of ‘an eye for an eye’ justice. Even now, as Rosie gazed out at the murky River Clyde flowing past, she could see herself back in that black pit where Boag had left her to die. The nightmares came crashing in from time to time, but it was still quite early days, the shrink had told her. During their sessions, he’d told her she would learn that the terrors she’d witnessed in her life would always walk beside her, but eventually they wouldn’t frighten her so much. He was right, she was coping with it better now. But every time she saw a river or rushing water in a stream, it brought the flashbacks. She sighed, blinking herself out of her gloom. She took her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through the messages. The last one from TJ was from two days ago when she’d come back from Romania. She had answered briefly saying they would talk that night, but he was still in London and told her he was working. She hadn’t called him back and he hadn’t got in touch. She was surprised at how little it mattered to her these days, but that was for another day. The truth she was trying to avoid was that she couldn’t get Adrian out of her mind. He had to be out of Romania by now. She would try to contact him tonight somehow, even if she had to phone the embassy to find out what had happened. She’d been so busy and knackered since she’d got back, there had been barely a moment.

  ‘You’re miles away, Rosie Gilmour.’

  Rosie flinched at Jonjo Mulhearn’s voice. She turned, squinting up in the sunlight to see him standing beside her. He was holding two polystyrene cups, and pushed one towards her.

  ‘I brought you a cup of tea. Black, no sugar, if I remember.’

  Rosie smiled. ‘Yes. That’s very kind of you, Jonjo. I’m sitting here like one of the homeless. Cheers.’ She took the tea and shifted up in the seat so he could sit beside her. She turned to him. ‘How you doing?’’

  He nodded, his blue eyes softer than she remembered.

  ‘I’m all right. Not too busy. Just taking things a bit easy over the last few months.’

  She wanted to ask him if he’d had any heat from the police about Boag’s body, because she knew they would suspect him. But to ask if he had been interviewed by the cops would mean she was complicit in burying the truth. Which she was, but she didn’t want to say it out loud. There was a long moment where they said nothing, and Jonjo carefully took the lid off his cup and sat it on the bench beside him.

  ‘What about yourself, Rosie? I see you’ve been in Romania. Great story that. You did well out there. Sounds a bit hair
y, though, at the end of it. You really need to watch yourself. Was that big fella there? Adrian?’

  Rosie felt a pang of stress lash across her gut.

  ‘Yes, he was. Saved our lives. But he got shot up quite badly.’ She looked out to the river. ‘He insisted I leave without him, as we had to get out fast. We are having him looked after, and the editor is sending him money, but he seems to have slipped off the radar. I can’t get a hold of him.’

  Jonjo gave her a wistful look. ‘I wouldn’t worry. If the big man is still breathing, he’ll get himself out of that. I was very impressed by him. Wish I’d had him by my side years ago.’

  Rosie nodded. ‘He’s very brave. A lot of bad things happened to him and his family in Bosnia during the war. He’s got a lot of scars, mentally and physically.’

  Jonjo dipped his head in acknowledgement. ‘We all have. But that big guy is different. I hope he’s all right.’

  Rosie said nothing. She knew Jonjo would want to get to the point of their meeting. Sure enough, he sat up straighter and spoke briskly.

  ‘Anyway, how is your investigation going? Are there more fireworks to come?’

  ‘I hope so. Do you know Helen Lewis? Married to that missing accountant?’

  ‘No. But I know Frankie Mallon – well, knew him. Fucking rogue and a coward too. Cardboard gangster. He’s wanted shooting for years, so good on her if it was her who did it.’

  ‘I’m looking into some charity the accountant was involved in, as you’ll have seen in the paper. There are links to the baby trade in Romania. The charity is Romanian, but also has a base in the UK, but I’m not sure if they would even know about the babies for sale. I can’t imagine they did. A couple of contacts told me, it was a Russian guy and the Russian mafia behind this. Do you think they could be connected here too?’

  Jonjo shrugged. ‘Hard to say without knowing more. I can put some feelers out. I’ll let you know.’