The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter (Glasgow Trilogy)

by Mackay, Malcolm

‘I’ll find somewhere.’

  He’s trying to put on his sympathetic face. That’s just for form. He suspects she’s smart enough to see through it. You don’t live the life she has without learning what a liar looks like.

  ‘I should ask you if you would like a lawyer present, before I continue,’ he’s saying, ‘although, of course, I’m only going to ask you a few wee questions about what you saw. You’re just a witness. But if it would make you feel more at ease.’

  He’s presenting it as if it’s the most reasonable thing in the world, but she knows it would make it look like she has something to hide. ‘No, it’s okay,’ she’s saying, her tone attempting to suggest that she doesn’t think a lawyer is at all necessary. Why would it be? She’s done nothing wrong.

  He’s nodding, looking at the sheet of paper he has in front of him. Doesn’t look, from where she’s sitting, that it has much written on it.

  ‘Before we begin,’ he’s saying, ‘is there anything you remember from last night, anything that you want to tell me?’

  She’s shaking her head. He made it sound like he expected her to have something new to say, but she doesn’t. ‘No. No, nothing. I’ve thought about it. A lot. But there’s nothing.’

  ‘That’s okay – it was just in case anything had come back to you,’ he’s saying. He’s trying to sound like the consummate professional, the sympathetic copper, but there’s an underlying tone that he can’t disguise. She’ll probably notice, he’s thinking to himself, but he doesn’t much care. He never solved a case by sucking up to a dealer’s bit of skirt.

  Down to the useful stuff. Oh, how he wishes there was something better to throw at her than this. Maybe there will be. Maybe the people who are examining the laptop found at the house will discover something that incriminates her. Anything at all would be nice.

  ‘Zara, I need to know what club you and Lewis went to last night. Can you remember the name of it?’

  ‘Er, yeah. Heavenly, in the city centre. Do you know it?’

  ‘I know of it,’ he’s saying. Big place. Should have proper CCTV. That could help.

  ‘We go there now and again. Just to unwind. Just a night out. You don’t think they were there, do you? You don’t think they followed us?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ he’s telling her.

  She’s not as tearful as she was the night before. Understandable. Appropriate. If she’s performing, then she’s judging it well.

  ‘I wonder if you know the taxi driver who took you home? I need to talk to him, in case he saw anything on the street after he dropped you off. He might have noticed people, or a car.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she’s saying, shaking her head.

  ‘That’s okay, it was a long shot. Did you call him, or was he just waiting outside for random pickups?’

  She’s running a hand across her forehead. ‘I think he was just outside. I don’t remember calling. I think he must just have been outside.’

  ‘That’s fine. The club should know who waits outside regularly. I can find out from them.’

  So far so good, she’s thinking. No lies. Nothing to trip me up. But there’s one more. She knows he’s going to ask about Stewart, and she’s going to have to lie. This is when she has to be at her most cautious. The danger is real. If she’s seen to be evasive or difficult, then they’ll get twitchy, they’ll start to press her. Once that happens, she’s in trouble. She’s a suspect.

  ‘The last thing I wanted to ask you about was the man who shared the cab with you. Do you know the man? Do you have a name for him? An address, perhaps, where I could reach him?’

  ‘No,’ she’s saying, shaking her head. ‘I’d never met him before last night. I think I danced with him earlier in the evening. He was leaving at the same time we were. That was it.’

  Fisher is nodding. ‘Okay, Zara, thanks for that. I think the forensic team will be at the house for at least another twenty-four hours, perhaps longer. We’ll let you know. If you have nowhere else to go, then you can stay here another night. I’m sure that would be fine.’

  She’s sitting on the couch, thinking bitterly about it. She has nowhere else to go. Her friends are all fair-weather ones; she wouldn’t turn to them in an emergency. She’s had almost no contact with her parents in the last eight years. They’re bringing up her daughter, and they seem happy to do it without her getting in the way. They have more contact with Nate than they do with their own daughter. Nate. An appealing prospect. She would feel safe with Nate. Would he want to see her? They haven’t spoken for almost a year. He’s always polite, respectful. There’s always that underlying danger with him. The fear. No. Get the money from Stewart, use it to get a place of her own. There must be somewhere she can rent. She’ll sell the house, if the police don’t take it. She’s not going back there.

  28

  John Young is in a pub when he hears the news. It’s half past ten in the morning, and he’s not there for a drink. One-third of the pub is owned by the Jamieson organization, and it appears to be the only third that isn’t making any money. It’s remarkable that the other two owners would try such a thing. That they would think they could get away with it. But then, some people are stupid. They came to him because they were in debt. In debt to bad people. They made Young an offer. One-third share in the pub to make the debt collectors go away. He took it. The pub had the potential to make money. Easy money in a legit business that could be used to filter more ill-gotten cash.

  This is Young’s area. He picks out the right businesses to invest in. He’s the one with the head for this. So when it goes wrong, it reflects on him. He doesn’t like things that reflect badly on his judgement. Who does? The pub is making money, as he was sure it would. They were cleaning bad money through it, as he thought they could. A call from an accountant had suggested that the money the pub was making was not being split evenly between all three parties. Remarkably the two other owners, who still run the place, handling the day-to-day stuff, think they can screw Peter Jamieson.

  They will get one warning. Just one. The pub’s a useful place to have, and Young doesn’t want to have trouble with it. Kicking the other owners out and taking it for themselves would mean trouble. It is the next step. If they really think they can hide money from the people they ran to in the first place, then they’re kidding themselves. They need to understand that. Make them understand. If they try it a second time – which very few ever do, having already been warned – then they will be punished appropriately. They only have their share in the business because Young did a deal with the debt collectors. He didn’t pay the full amount owed, but the other owners don’t know that. All they know is that they owe him.

  He called them up early this morning, told them they needed to have an urgent meeting. Told them that he had worrying news for them. Told them he’d had an urgent call from his accountant and there were things that needed to be worked out. He worded it to sound like he wasn’t blaming them for anything. His tone made it perfectly obvious that he was. Now he’s at the pub, and he’s brought Neil Fraser with him, just as a little reminder of how angry he is. Neil is a thug. He’s not one of the more sophisticated hardmen that Peter Jamieson employs. A man like George Daly, for example, is a hardman with a brain. Reliable and decent. Neil Fraser is a thug. Big muscles, small brain. Big mouth, small words. Big presence to have sitting beside you when you confront these people. Useful as a warning.

  The meeting is everything Young expects it to be. The two men play at being mortified. Two middle-aged Glaswegians, trying to pretend that it’s all the fault of some accountant they hired to look after the books for them. They assure him, repeatedly, that they’re as angry as he is. If not angrier, in fact. They mutter about making sure their accountant pays the price, all the time glancing at Fraser. He’s under strict instructions to sit there, keep his mouth shut and look mean. It’s an easy part to play, and he’s playing it better than the pub owners are playing theirs. Young rounds it off with the warning that he can�
��t allow this sort of thing to happen again. Nothing against them, of course, but he can’t have his business mistreated. If it happens again, then he’ll have to take serious action. No word on what that serious action is. All very friendly.

  ‘We totally understand, John, totally,’ one of them is saying to him. He’s letting them off the hook, not demanding back every penny that was stolen from the Jamieson organization. They’re grateful for that too. It doesn’t occur to them that the pub’s principal purpose for Young is money laundering, but then it’s not clear that they’ve yet worked out that he’s laundering drug money through the business. He hopes that if they have realized, they’ll be bright enough to continue to ignore the fact.

  ‘I feel like we’ve been mugged here,’ the other one’s saying, ‘and by our own accountant. Goes to show, eh, you can’t trust a soul.’

  The conversation descends into the usual pit of excessive mock-outrage that you get from people caught with their fingers in the till. John sits and lets them play it out; they’ll feel better for having said it all. He slowly turns the conversation round to local news. People in a pub hear it all, often before most other people do. Sometimes you find out some very relevant things. Like this morning.

  ‘Heard there was a shooting last night. A fellow who comes in here now and then. Drugs. Probably had it coming.’

  ‘Yeah, who’s that?’ Young’s asking.

  ‘Name’s Winter. Ah’ve chucked him out of here before, when I thought he was doing a drug deal. Can’t have that. We have a reputation.’

  You sure do, Young is thinking to himself. Winter must have refused you a cut. He doesn’t say it, though; no need to antagonize.

  ‘Got shot, huh?’

  ‘Aye, in his own home. No surprises, the way he’s been carrying on.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Been running around like Flash Harry lately. Got himself a wee girlfriend, half his age. Pretty thing, was in here with him once. Stuck up, but pretty. He’s startin’ to dress young, go to nightclubs, live the flash life, you know. Tryin’ tae keep up with his girl. You got tae act yer age. Must’ve been show-in’ off his money one time too many. Pissed off the wrong person, or somethin’. Drugs. They all end up dead in the end. Serves ’em right.’

  Young leaves them to their moralizing. The chant of the hypocrite. If they threw Winter out of the pub, it was because of money, not drugs. That pub’s been used by dealers over the years – it’s that sort of pub. The owners turned a blind eye. The dealers cut them in on deals done on their premises. Maybe they give them a little supply of their own to be getting on with instead of cash. Winter obviously decided not to. His margins were probably too slim to allow for anyone else getting in on the deal. Everything points to the fact that he was struggling. It’s what made him so attractive to someone wanting to get in on the market. An easy lure. The sort of person that a smart prick like Shug Francis would target.

  He’s meeting Jamieson at a flat that Peter owns. Not a company flat, a personal one. Down by the river. Lovely view. Very few people know he owns it. A private little place where he can indulge himself now and again. They’re sitting in the kitchen, Young tutting that his friend is still in a bathrobe at twenty past eleven. He doesn’t honestly mind. Jamieson’s the sort of person who needs to relax now and again. Needs the occasional blowout. Can’t function well without it. Does nobody any harm.

  ‘I hear Lewis Winter was shot dead last night.’

  ‘Yeah?’ There’s a brief hint of relief in his voice. It’s been dragging on.

  ‘Apparently. At his house. Don’t know anything else about it. Find out in due course. No word of anyone being caught, anything going wrong. Just talk about it happening, people saying that Winter had it coming. All talking about him being a dealer. Talking about his younger woman. Talking about him living the high life and attracting the wrong attention.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Jamieson’s nodding. There’s nothing else to say. Until they know more detail, he can show no greater concern than that.

  They both know that nothing went wrong with the killing. If it had, that would be what people were talking about. It wouldn’t be a story about Lewis Winter being killed; it would be a story about Calum MacLean being arrested, with Winter being reduced to an afterthought. A shame for him perhaps, but the perpetrator is more glamorous news than the victim. The victim only gets his moment in the spotlight when the perpetrator is nowhere to be seen. So it went well. They’re not complacent. They assume it went well because there’s no evidence to the contrary. Time may change that opinion.

  Young leaves Jamieson to his amusements. Call it a day off. Jamieson doesn’t get many. Young gets fewer still, but that’s through choice. He’s built his life around his work – there’s little else to do with his time. Holidays are of no interest to him. The things that tend to occupy so much of Peter’s spare time hold little interest, either. No interest in golf or horse racing or even snooker. He plays only because Peter insists on having someone to play against. So life becomes work, work becomes life. And he loves it. It continually thrills him. It tests him every single day. It tests his judgement. It tests his intellect. It tests his nerve. It may have its downsides, but they are hugely outweighed by the good, in his mind.

  29

  A DC has been given the job of assessing the possibility of claiming Winter’s assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act. It’s become a big deal in the force – getting as much as you can from the criminal. An extra punishment. A chance to raise more money. Tough to get anything from a dead guy, though. Rarely happens. Usually only comes from the living who have been convicted, and even then you rarely get as much as you should. You have to be able to prove the link between the asset and the crime. Greig knows that his suited colleagues struggle to do that, and knows they’ll struggle in this case. There was nothing at the house to prove that Winter paid for his assets through crime, and Cope won’t be stupid enough to hand it to them on a plate.

  The DC’s name is McGowan. Greig’s searching his memory. Little fat guy. Middle-aged. Decent fellow. Easy to talk to. Greig will keep an eye on the situation, but he doesn’t expect to have to do anything about it. Eventually everything will be handed over to Cope, presuming that nobody else has been named in a will, and he’ll get his cut. Money for nothing. Might not be nothing. If McGowan gets excited about something and tries to make a grab at Winter’s belongings, then he’ll have to step in. A quiet word.

  Now he has a meeting with the DI in charge of the day-to-day investigation into the Winter murder. The DCI will be looking over his shoulder, acting as the face of the investigation, if it comes to that, but most of the donkey work will be done by Fisher. Fisher hates him. Greig knows it. Fisher doesn’t make much of an effort to hide it. Strange, because they have a lot in common. Both coppers who’ve made sacrifices for the job. Both coppers who work harder and longer than most others. Okay, Greig is thinking, maybe Fisher doesn’t have his sense of realism. That comes from being on the streets. You learn what can and can’t be done. You lose the fantasy that all crimes can be solved, all criminals stopped. You learn to take advantage when the time is right. That’s not bad policing. Bad policing is doing nothing at all. Bad policing is trying to do things that you know can’t be done.

  Fisher is waiting for him, along with Marcus Matheson, the young cop he was on duty with last night. They’re upstairs, sitting at Fisher’s desk in the open-plan office. Greig says hello to a couple of the other detectives as he makes his way across to them. He’s been around the station a long time. He’s part of the furniture. There’s nobody there that he hasn’t worked with on some case or other over the years. They all know him. He knows what most of them think of him. You don’t last as long as he has without being self-aware. Some recoil from him. Some are convinced that he’s part of the problem rather than the solution. Others are smarter.

  Greig sits at the table alongside the young plod. He can see the look in the detective’s eyes; he knows what
Fisher is thinking: why the hell do they put impressionable young coppers under the wing of a disgusting crook like Paul Greig? They do it, Greig is thinking, because not everyone is as naive as you are. Not everyone believes that you have to be an angel to fight crime. People understand that the first big step in beating the criminals is understanding them. You have to know who they are. You have to know where they live and work. You have to have a feel for the environment. A hard thing to teach. Greig is a good teacher, and the people who matter know it.

  ‘So you two were first on the scene at the Winter house. Tell me about it.’ Fisher leans back in his chair. He’s been short with them, but they won’t care. A lot of people think he’s a prick, and he doesn’t care. They know he’s a good copper. They know he’s honest and straightforward.

  ‘Not a lot to tell,’ Matheson’s saying. ‘We get there, the door is open, lock broken. We go in. The girl is downstairs, on the phone to the operator. She hangs up, comes over. She was obviously terrified, maybe thought we were more trouble. You could see the relief when she saw us.’

  The first and only report of the shooting came from Zara Cope. None of the neighbours heard it. Apparently.

  ‘Then what?’ Fisher’s asking.

  ‘I went upstairs to look around, PC Greig stayed downstairs with the witness. I went up, looked in a couple of doors before I found the bedroom. Opened the door. Smelled the urine. Put on the light.’

  ‘You put on the light?’ Fisher interrupts.

  ‘Yeah, I put on the light. It was pitch-black in there.’

  So the killer did stop to put the light off on his way out. He wasn’t sure why that should matter to him, but it did. A real pro. The sort you rarely catch. The forensic team were already checking prints they’d found at the house, but Cope had told them that they had a lot of people round to the house. Friends. There had been one friend round that day. Worth checking.

  Fisher pauses for a few seconds, thinking about it. Thinking about how the killer is unlikely to have gone bare-handed, but you never know what you might get.