Getting out of the taxi, into the flat. Making no noise. He doesn’t want his flatmate to know that he has drugs and cash on him. It’s not safe. Maybe, a couple of years down the line, it becomes a story to tell. Not yet. He trusts Tom, and doesn’t want to get him into any trouble. Stewart makes his way carefully to his bedroom. Once he’s inside, he feels the thrill depart and the exhaustion arrive. He’s been living on his nerves for the last hour and it’s drained him. There’s an urge to lie on the bed in his clothes and let the sleep take him. No. Resist. You still have to be careful, no matter how safe you feel.
Stewart empties his pockets, putting everything on the bed. He looks at the money first, because he knows what that is and can see its value. He doesn’t count it all; the bundles of notes are mixed. He can get a good idea of the value, though. There’s at least a thousand pounds in each of the two piles of notes, each held together by a single elastic band. Drug money. Dirty money. He’s reluctant to handle it. He doesn’t want to be associated with such a thing. Stewart doesn’t earn a lot of money, but he isn’t consumed by such a love of it that this money means anything to him. It doesn’t mean anything to Zara, either. He’s convinced she’s not the sort of woman to be motivated by it. She wants rid of the money and the drugs so that she won’t get into trouble.
The drugs. He doesn’t know how much the bags are worth – he’s never bought before. The few experiments he’s had were all at someone else’s expense. He quite liked the coke he took, he liked the buzz. He knew that if it was offered to him again he would take it, but he wasn’t so enamoured that he’s ever gone looking for it. Now there’s a bag on the bed in front of him, and he hates it. He hates that he’s stuck with it. He hates that Zara has been forced to go and get it to remove it from her house. It was haunting her. Threatening to have her put in jail.
He can’t stop thinking about her. As he’s looking around his bedroom, looking for somewhere to hide it all, he’s thinking about her. He’s thinking about her as he takes a shoebox down from the top of his wardrobe. A pair of dress shoes inside. Bought for a wedding. Too tight, they left him with a blister on the side of his big toe. He’s stuffing the money inside one shoe and the drugs into the other. Not a great hiding place, but it’s only a bad hiding place if someone comes looking. If someone comes looking, then he has no prospect of hiding it all anyway. There’s nowhere in the flat where he can make two wads of cash and two bags of drugs disappear. If the police come knocking, then there’s no hiding.
Stewart’s undressing slowly, relieved to be out of his clothes. Out of his clothes again. He thinks about Zara once more as he pulls himself under the sheets. He thinks about what he had been doing an hour or so ago. On that couch. Zara underneath him. God, what a night! He starts to laugh. Quiet. Don’t let Tom hear you. Don’t give him an excuse to ask any awkward questions in the morning. Silence from Tom’s room. He lies back in bed, getting excited at the thought of Zara. Getting excited at the thought of the gunmen bursting in on them. He shouldn’t be excited by that. That was two guys who could have killed him. That thought makes him recoil. Why is he excited by that situation? It’s getting easier to understand why so many people are tempted into that sort of seedy life.
He runs his fingers through his hair. A pain shoots through him. It’s the shock as much as the pain that catches him out. He had been hit over the head by one of the killers. It might have been a punch; he might have been hit with the gun. Good Lord, hit with the gun. It could have gone off. It could have blown his brains out. Shit! He carefully feels the bump. Doesn’t feel like there’s any blood there. No cut. Just a lump. He gets out of bed, puts on the lamp and gets a little shaving mirror out of a drawer. The bump isn’t visible under his hair. He’ll have a better look in the bathroom mirror in the morning. For now it seems that nobody will be able to spot it.
He’s forgotten about his pathetic spell on the floor. Chosen to forget. That was an embarrassment. He let Zara down. He embarrassed himself. Still, nobody would know. Who would speak about it? The gunmen would surely never admit where they had been and what they had seen. Zara would never humiliate him by saying. He would certainly keep it to himself. As he gets back into bed and switches off the lamp, he’s thinking about her again. Thinking about her naked at the back door, kissing him goodbye. He’s not excited this time, but worried. Worried for her. Where is she right now?
24
She’s sitting in what is known as the victim suite. Not an interview room, nothing so cold and formal. She is the young woman who has been witness to a terrible crime. You treat her with sympathy, with heart. You treat her in a manner she can’t possibly complain about. There’s a female constable with her all the time. Making her a cup of tea, asking her if there’s anything else she wants. Keeping an eye on her. For her benefit, and for the benefit of the police.
‘I’d like to change,’ Zara says to her, ‘I feel stupid in these clothes.’ And she does. She’s still wearing the clothes she had been clubbing in, and it seems even more ludicrous in that setting.
‘I might be able to find you something else if you want, or we could send for something from your house.’
‘All my clothes are in our bedroom,’ Zara says quietly, and she starts to cry again.
Real tears. The shock of what’s happened to her. The fear of what might happen next. The realization that Lewis is gone. Gone forever. What will she do without him? It isn’t as simple as finding someone else. Lewis had been kind and patient. He had let her live her life the way she wanted. She had taken advantage of that, taken advantage of his nature. Perhaps unfairly. Where is she going to find someone else like that? There are so few in the business. There had only been two men in her life that she had ever felt any love for. One was Nate Colgan, but the love had been mixed with fear. The other was Lewis. With him, the love had been mixed with contempt.
The constable knows they’re real tears. She’s been round long enough to know the difference. Seen enough crocodile tears in this room. She knows when a victim is in shock as well, and that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Zara Cope is handling the situation with admirable resolve, although the tears are flowing despite herself. The suite has a little kitchen leading into a living room. A couch, a TV, an air freshener. A desperate attempt to give the impression that you’re in a safe and welcoming place. But you can never forget that you’re in a police station. You can never forget that you’re there to be questioned.
The door into the suite opens, a man walks in. Cheap suit, miserable expression. He looks surprised that he’s having to work at this hour of the morning. Middle-aged, maybe mid-forties, maybe more. Maybe less. Depends how well he’s looked after himself. Obviously a detective. Obviously just been told that this is his case. Get on it. Now. Gangland. Girl downstairs is a witness. Girlfriend of the victim. The gangland work can be exciting, but hard to get into. People build knowledge of it over many years. They learn who everyone is, what all the relationships are between families and organizations. It’s taken him a long time to get into it.
Michael Fisher hates the fact that people see him as a stereotype. A cop obsessed with his job. Divorced. No kids. No distractions. Drinks too much when he’s not working. Receding hairline, greying round the temples. Struggling to hold a little bit of weight off his stomach. He hates that that’s the cliché. It’s that much harder to be taken seriously. He doesn’t want to be that way. He doesn’t want to be a lazy character, plucked from the screen of a low-budget cop drama. He is what he is. He’s a cop who enjoys his work. He’s a man who hasn’t found anything else in life that he cares about enough to be distracted by.
He walks across and sits on the chair opposite the couch. His first look at Zara Cope. Pretty girl. Very pretty. Dressed like a tart. Much younger than the victim. Her record is basically clean, although she’s known. Been around a lot of criminals in her time. A cock-junkie. Chasing conquests. Looking for danger. Cheap thrills. Stupid girl. He dislikes her already.
‘Zara, my name is Detective Inspector Michael Fisher; I want you to just call me Michael. I’m here to help you in any way I can. Obviously I want to talk to you about what happened, but not until you’re ready. I don’t want you to talk until you feel ready, okay?’
Zara nods. They both know he’s lying.
He wants to hear from her right away. Two reasons. Each one is dependent on her role. If she is an innocent bystander, a victim, then he wants to hear from her while events are fresh. Give people time to calm down and you give them time to forget. Get the first account fast, and you hear the things that really seemed important at the time. You wait, and what you hear are the things that seem important on reflection. You get it fast, and you hear what matters to the witness. You wait, and you hear what they think is important to you.
Then there’s reason two. What if she’s not an innocent witness? What if she’s involved in some way, hiding something? Happens a lot. People have an insider. Someone to get them into the house. Okay, not this time – they kicked the door in. Someone to tell them where the victim is. Could be. Small enough house, though. The theory would hold more weight if there had been only one attacker, but apparently there were two. One to kill, one to keep her out of the way. So maybe she wasn’t the insider. Maybe there was none. But maybe she took money to help in some way. Maybe she’s hiding something. She might know who it was, but doesn’t want to say.
People in that industry live so constantly in a world of fear that they don’t think like normal people any more. They never grass. Never. Even if it’s someone they love who’s been killed, and they know the killer, they don’t grass. The price could be death. First instinct, stay alive. They can be impossible to work with. That’s why you question them quickly. You get them before they can put together a story. You get them before they can cover anything up. Winter was a dealer. She must have known. There’s a lot that she’s bound to know, and a lot that she probably won’t want to tell him. Get at her fast and you can pick up a nugget from her, before she has the chance to think better.
‘It’s entirely up to you,’ he says, putting a little bit of pressure on.
‘I don’t mind,’ she says with a shrug. She’s trying to look like she has nothing to hide, but she’s thinking about a lawyer. If they’re going to ask awkward questions, then perhaps she should have some sort of protection.
‘If you could answer a few questions now, then that would help us,’ he’s saying to her. ‘It’ll help us get after the people who did this straight away. I won’t ask you much, just the very basics.’ Enough reassurance to gain her agreement, if not trust.
‘Yeah,’ she’s saying, her voice a little hoarse from crying, ‘okay.’
‘Now, I just want you to tell me what you saw, what you remember. Don’t upset yourself,’ he’s saying and realizing what a redundant comment it is. ‘You know, just . . . er . . . tell me what you remember, as much as you feel able.’ You have to treat everyone in such a precious manner. There are some who don’t deserve it. She’s one of them. The tart of a dealer. Please.
‘We were out clubbing,’ she’s saying, trying to pick the right detail to give and the right detail to leave out. ‘We came home in a taxi. Some guy shared the taxi with us. Lewis was drunk. The guy helped me get Lewis to the door.’
Already there’s a hundred questions he wants to throw at her. Interrupt the silly bitch. Go on! Ditch protocol and ask the questions that might just nail a killer. Nope. Can’t. You only end up getting hammered yourself.
She goes on with her story. She tells him that she got Lewis up the stairs by herself, that he was able to walk a little. She dumped him on the bed.
‘I could hear him start to snore before I reached the bottom of the stairs,’ she’s saying. She rocks with another sob. The female officer hands her another tissue. Fisher already smells bullshit. Inconsistencies, and she’s only just started. She needed someone’s help to get him to the front door, but got him up the stairs herself? Come on. ‘I came downstairs,’ she’s saying. ‘I poured myself a glass of whiskey. I hadn’t drunk nearly as much as Lewis had throughout the evening. I was sitting on the couch and I heard a bang. Sounded like someone had thrown something at the door. Then there was another one, and I heard the door smash open. God!’ she’s saying, and putting her head in her hands.
Maybe she’s not acting, he’s thinking to himself. If she is, then she’s good. Got it down to a fine art. Acting or not, she can’t be trusted.
‘They came in. They were dressed all in black. They both had balaclavas on. They both had guns. One of them stayed downstairs and pointed the gun at me. The other one went straight up. It was like he knew where he was going. I don’t . . . I don’t know how. He was up there . . . I don’t know how long. It felt like forever. Might have been two minutes. I heard the bang.’ She’s pausing for a few seconds, seems to Fisher like it’s for dramatic effect. ‘Then he came down. The two of them just left. I don’t know what happened next. I remember sitting on the couch. Then I went for the phone.’
It all seems simple enough. Two men force their way in – one to cover the witness, one to make the kill. The story rings true.
‘Can you remember anything about them that might help us?’ he’s asking her now. ‘Height, weight, accent, anything.’
‘They didn’t talk,’ she says. ‘Neither of them said a word.’
Professionals.
‘The one who went upstairs was taller than the one who stayed with me. Quite tall. Over six foot, I would guess. I don’t know exactly. The other one was, I don’t know, average height, I suppose. They both seemed normal. Not fat, or anything. I don’t know. God, I wish I could help more.’
She tells a good story, and he’s pushed her as far as he feels able. One last question. Just one.
‘Miss Cope, do you know of anyone who might want to kill your partner, anyone who might have a grudge against him?’ Of course she does. He was scum. He was a dealer. There will be people who wanted him out of the way. She’ll know, and she’ll say nothing.
‘I have no idea,’ she’s saying, with a predictable little shrug. She’s keen on the little shrugs. Keen on making herself look like some little bimbo who found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
‘Okay, Miss Cope,’ he’s saying to her now, ‘that’ll do for now. You try and get some rest; I’ll see you later on.’
25
To the scene. There’s nothing else to get out of her. Fisher has what he needs for now anyway. It was a professional hit. Very professional. They knew exactly what they needed to do, and they did it without a single hiccup. Didn’t even speak a word. Most of the idiots who try to set themselves up as killers are just dreamers. Small brains, big ambition. They see these things in the movies and they think it’s all so easy. They go in all guns blazing. They shout their mouths off. They want credit when they get it right. They want to be celebrities. They get caught. The depressing truth is that the gunmen who get caught are the shitty ones. The talented ones know how to avoid that fate. Talented ones, like these two.
Nearly four o’clock in the morning now. Fisher gets out of the car and takes in the street. Not hard to see how they did it. Sit in the car somewhere down the street. Watch them come home. Wait five minutes. If she takes him upstairs, she switches on the light in the bedroom. Then switches it off, goes downstairs and switches on the light in the living room. They know how many people are in the house, and they can guess where each is. Easy. Going to need to get a hold of the taxi driver. He might have spotted something. And this guy who shared the taxi with them. Might be interesting to find out who he is. Could be very interesting.
They kick the door in. Does that tally? He’s thinking as he walks up the front path. If you know it’s just the two of them in there, and one of them’s downstairs, do you need to kick the door in? Surely they guess that he’s upstairs and she’s down. So you knock, don’t you? You knock, and when she answers, you force your way in. That’s how they tend to do it. M
ake as little noise as possible before you fire the gun. That’s the way the pros try to do it. She said the first she heard of them was a bang on the door, like someone throwing something at it. The first kick. Then they kick it in. Doesn’t sit well with their professionalism elsewhere.
Into the house. A forensic team already there. A DC comes across and shakes his hand, tells him where to find the body. Fisher nods, but doesn’t say anything. He’s trying to see what they saw. They come in the door, go straight to the living room. She’s there, drinking a glass of whiskey. There’s a glass on the cabinet on the far side of the room. A single glass, he notes. Okay. So one of them stays with her, pointing the gun at her. She stays there, not moving. Not speaking. And the second one goes upstairs.
Fisher makes his way up the stairs. The body is still in the house, going to be moved in the next hour. Single bullet wound, he knows that already. There’s a smell as he walks in through the open bedroom door. Piss. The figure is lying on the bed. Not a lot of blood. A little has run down the side of his neck from a wound under the chin. Sort of thing you see when someone kills themselves with a small handgun, he’s thinking. The man’s pissed himself. Before or after being shot? Wasn’t from fear anyway – no way he was awake when he was killed. Not unless there’s a second wound that he can’t see. He must have been lying like this when the killer entered the room. May have pissed himself after he was shot. It happens.
He looks more closely at the man. Typical middle-aged small-time dealer. A little overweight. Not too handsome. If his knowledge of Winter is correct, then not a big player. Not a big earner. Surprising that he has a house this decent. Surprising that he has a girlfriend who could obviously do better. Need to find out more about their relationship. Find out how long they’ve been together, what sort of life they lived. He’s looking round the room. No sign of any struggle. Even if you’re pissed, you fight for your life. He was already unconscious. All the killer had to do was put the gun to his head and pull the trigger.
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter (Glasgow Trilogy) Page 11
