by Anna Smith
‘I know that, Dad,’ Joe said. ‘And I know I have defended plenty of men who were probably guilty. But so have dozens of other defence lawyers. Why now take my son? Why, Dad? And why, even if you’ve been doing the job for a lifetime, why now take your grandson?’ He paused. ‘It’s just . . . It’s just not right. Something isn’t right about it.’ He walked across the room to stand beside his father. ‘Dad. If you know something and you’re not telling us, please, you know I trust your judgement in everything – always have. But please, don’t keep me in the dark. This is my wee boy. My life. I need to know.’
Marty said nothing for a long moment, then he looked at Joe and shook his head.
‘I know as much as you do, son,’ he lied.
Marty’s heart was breaking, seeing his son like this. It was bad enough that he had to watch his family in pieces over Fin, but he was now standing in front of his own boy, and looking him in the eye and lying. To deny him the truth was a betrayal of everything he had been as a father. But the consequences of telling him the truth could cause an explosion.
*
Frankie Martin was beginning to feel like he was going places. The big Colombian, Pepe Rodriguez, was as arrogant and menacing a fucker as he had ever come across. But he reckoned his new boss saw the potential of having someone as clued up and ruthless as him by his side. Frankie saw himself as a bit of a swashbuckler who could sidestep a killer blow, but could knife you in cold blood without batting an eye. He could tell straight away that the Colombian took to him after their first lunch, and in recent days there had been a couple of dinners where he listened to Rodriguez tell tales of growing up in the Colombian city Medellín, and bragging how he fought his way to the top of the cartel, eliminating his enemies along the way. Kindred spirits they were, Frankie decided.
And one evening, after they had drunk two bottles of wine and settled into brandies in a bar down in Puerto de la Duquesa, Rodriguez hinted to him that from what he’d gathered, he thought that it was Frankie who was behind Mickey Casey’s murder. Frankie didn’t flinch. He knew Rodriguez would have heard the tittle-tattle about Mickey’s demise through Durkin and the like, but he sure as shit wasn’t about to admit it. He had said nothing. Even when the Colombian gave him a wry smile, indicating that it was okay to dispose of your best friend, because, as he’d said, ‘We are not in this business to make friends. We are in it to win. To be masters of the universe.’ That all seemed a bit airy-fucking-fairy to Frankie, but he got the point. Rodriguez rated him big time, and that was what counted. He could go all the way with this guy. Okay, he still baulked at how Rodriguez had butchered O’Driscoll, and kidnapping Marty’s grandson was not something he would ever have considered, but if Frankie could move on from that then he could look to a big future. And now that Rodriguez was gearing up to take everything from the Caseys, Frankie wanted to be there to witness it. Christ. He’d even light a fucking big cigar when he saw Kerry Casey on the bones of her arse, along with the dumbfucks she had around her.
Rodriguez had told him to organise the meet with Kerry, and that he had drawn up papers with his Spanish lawyer to be given to her to sign. Only then would they be taken to where Marty Kane’s grandson would be handed over. If there was one thing in all of this that should niggle Frankie it was that a little boy was being used as barter. He should feel something about that, he told himself. But the truth was, he didn’t. Initially Frankie had been horrified that the boy had been kidnapped, but as he got to know Rodriguez a little more, he felt sure deep down that the Colombian wasn’t going to send the boy back in a box, or minus a couple of fingers, so a few days of sniffling and crying for his mammy wouldn’t do the boy any harm. It would toughen him up. He wished he could be in Glasgow for the meeting, but he knew going back there was risky because someone could eyeball him on the plane and the word could get back to the Caseys, and he’d be dead meat before he got out of the airport. No. He would orchestrate it from here. It was Frankie who had got the boys back in Glasgow to organise the moving of the kid in the past few days. So far that had gone well. Now it might only be a couple more days until this part of it was over. He hoped so, because the longer it went on, the bigger chance of some dickhead letting something slip, and it could all go tits up.
Frankie looked at his watch as he stood on the balcony of the apartment in Estepona looking out to the sun on the water. It would be almost midday back in Glasgow, probably raining and grey, but here he was, swanning around the Costa del Sol rubbing shoulders with the big players who pulled all the strings back home. Did he miss Glasgow, running the betting shops and doing Kerry Casey’s bidding like an errand boy? Did he fuck! He punched in her number. He’d have to try his best not to gloat when he spoke to her. He heard her voice after three rings, and a surprising little flip lashed across his gut.
‘Kerry. It’s me. How’s it going?’
‘Frankie. Get to the bloody point.’
‘Now, now, Kerry. Where are your manners, sweetheart? I’m trying to do you a turn here. Listen. If it wasn’t for me—’
‘Frankie,’ the voice barked back, ‘if it weren’t for you, I would still have my mother by my side, and my brother – even though he was a scheming bastard, just like you. So don’t give me your shit. Say what you’ve got to say, and get the fuck off the phone. What’s the score? When is this meeting?’
Frankie could picture Kerry’s eyes blazing with rage as she hit back at him, and for a fleeting second he fantasised about throwing her on the floor and fucking those brains right out of her. The thought made him smile, and just listening to her anger gave him a bit of a hard-on.
‘Okay,’ he said, trying to compose himself. ‘Here’s the situation. Rodriguez will be in Glasgow day after tomorrow to meet you. He will have papers from his Spanish lawyer that will basically mean you will sign everything over to him. But he’s a generous bastard, is Pepe. So he’s going to do you a turn. He could crush you in front of everyone, take all you have, make an example of you, but he’s going to make you his partner.’
‘Partner? Fuck off, Frankie. His partner? No way.’
‘Yeah. That’s the deal. The Caseys get forty per cent, and he gets sixty of everything you have. The hotel, the lot. But you work together.’
Frankie enjoyed the long silence at the other end of the phone and he knew she was trying to catch her breath, come up with some smart-arse remark. But he also knew she was well and truly fucked.
‘I want to meet on my territory. At a place of my choosing. You tell him that, okay?’
‘Aye, so you come in with the cops or all guns blazing.’
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid. There’s a little boy’s life at stake here. That’s the only reason I’m agreeing to this. We meet, we talk, I sign. We take the boy. That’s it.’
‘Where are you talking about meeting?’
Again, the long silence. Eventually she spoke.
‘There’s a restaurant just outside the city. The Three Magpies. You know it? It’s an old place. Quiet. We can go there.’
‘I know the place.’
‘Fine. We meet there. At two in the afternoon. Just me and him, and Finbar.’
‘Pepe never has a meet by himself. He will have a bodyguard obviously, and he’ll be armed. So don’t be stupid, eh?’
‘Just organise it. And make sure you’re not there.’
‘No chance. I’ve had it with Glasgow. I live in the sun now.’
She didn’t react, just replied, ‘Arrange it and let me know when it’s done.’
Chapter Thirteen
Kerry was in her study when Jack and Danny arrived. Her mind had been racing with all sorts of scenarios. Danny had phoned twenty minutes earlier to say that Sinc had received a message on his mobile with an address from where he had to pick up little Finbar tonight and where he had to take him. This was really happening. She was now faced with the biggest decision of her life. If she made the wrong call, Marty Kane might never see his grandson again. To add to her worries
, Frankie Martin had called her again this morning to confirm that Pepe Rodriguez would meet her the day after tomorrow in the restaurant she suggested. As she’d watched Danny and Jack drive through the steel gates to the courtyard, Kerry felt, not for the first time, that she was seriously out of her depth. Now she listened closely as Danny explained the latest development.
‘When Sinc got the text with the details, he told us he would have to get back straight away and agree to do it. So we told him to do that.’
‘Good,’ Kerry said. ‘So what kind of nick is Sinc in?’ She assumed he’d been given a good kicking to get any kind of cooperation from him.
Jack shrugged. ‘Actually he’s fine, Kerry. Not a mark on him. Sinc is a low-life prick, but he’s smart enough when he’s in the company he’s in at the moment to know that the only way for him to stay alive is to cooperate with us. He knows if he doesn’t, he’s a dead man.’ He glanced at Danny. ‘He’s a dead man anyway once this is all over, but we’ve told him we’ll make sure he gets far enough away from the heat and we’ll pay him a wedge. Obviously we won’t. But he’s shitting his pants right now. So we haven’t had to punch anything out of him. He’ll go along with whatever we ask. He says he can carry it off.’
‘Good,’ Kerry said. ‘So where are they holding Finbar and what’s the plan?’
‘At the moment he’s being held in an old bungalow out on the Maryhill Road. We’ve got the address and have someone driving past to case it as we speak. But from the Google Earth pics, it’s pretty run-down. We’re finding out who owns it and if it’s occupied. It could be some place that some scally has bought and they use it to stash drugs or stolen stuff. So we’re not sure. But someone will be there with the boy twenty-four seven, and they’ll be armed. Therefore I don’t think it’s a good idea to batter down the door there at this stage.’
Kerry nodded in agreement, but she was desperate to get the boy as soon as possible.
‘And where is he being taken?’
‘To another address close enough to the restaurant where you said you’ve arranged to meet the Colombian,’ Jack said. ‘Oh, and by the way, we’ve got someone all over that to examine the set-up and exactly who’s who. We’ve got some plans for that to run past you and see what you think, but we’ll come to that in a minute. The message for Sinc was to pick the kid up from the bungalow late tomorrow afternoon and drive him to the next address – it’s a farmhouse about a mile and a half from the restaurant. Presumably, the bastards are taking him there so that when you sign the papers they’ll hand the boy over to us.’
Kerry got up and walked across to the window and stood for a moment. She didn’t like the sound of this. Everything hinged on Rodriguez keeping his word and handing over the kid. She turned to face them and stood folding her arms.
‘I just have a bad feeling about this. We’re relying on Rodriguez to turn up like this was a business deal, get me to sign papers, then hand over Finbar. We can’t trust him to do that. He might come in guns blazing as soon as he sees me, or he might just get his men to start shooting once I sign the document. We can’t trust him to keep his word.’
Danny and Jack exchanged glances and both nodded.
‘Of course, Kerry, and that’s why it’s important that we do this properly.’
Kerry looked at him, waiting for more. She came back to the table and sat down.
‘Okay, so talk to me about it.’
‘Right,’ Jack said. ‘From what we know of the restaurant, there are two waiters on in the afternoon, and obviously a chef and stuff in the kitchen – and a duty manager. But in terms of staff, what we plan to do is the waiters will be phoned by the manager a little while before they arrive for their shift, and told to take the day off, that they’ll get paid, but just to keep their mouths shut. Same goes for the duty manager. He’ll disappear too.’
Kerry looked at them, incredulous.
‘Seriously? How you going to do that?’
‘Someone is paying the manager a visit at his home tonight, and he’ll be told the sketch. He won’t disagree,’ Jack said, glancing at Danny. ‘He’ll know not to open his mouth to anyone about it. And he’ll be well paid.’
‘This sounds like it’s going to get messy.’
Danny sat forward, rubbed his chin then looked at her.
‘Well, yes. It will.’ He glanced at Jack. ‘We’ve been discussing this, Kerry, and a lot of it hinges on what you want to do. But the bottom line is we bump Rodriguez and every bastard who is with him right at the restaurant. Right at the table.’
‘Christ!’ Kerry said. An image flashed through her head of the bloodbath at her mother’s funeral, bodies everywhere. She imagined similar carnage in the restaurant and her sitting in the midst of it.
‘Don’t worry. You’ll be totally covered. It’ll happen so fast. There will be a distraction for Rodriguez and the minute he takes his eye off the ball, we’ll be all over him. That’s the plan.’
‘So who’s going to be in the restaurant – I mean in place of the waiters and the manager?’
‘We’ve got three of our lads geared up for it, but wanted to talk to you about it.’ Jack looked at Danny. ‘And also, you’ll be armed, just in case anything goes wrong. It’s not as though you’ll have to shoot your way out, because you’ll be covered at all times. But better to be safe.’
The words hung in the air for a moment, and Kerry hoped her mouth hadn’t dropped open. She’d only in the last couple of weeks been shown how to handle a gun after Jack suggested she take some lessons, and while she found she was quite adept at it, she’d only shot targets. Actually using it had never really entered her head. She wondered, if it came to it, could she actually fire a gun at another human being? She was reconciled to the fact that she was the head of a gangster family who right now made their money from drugs, from people-trafficking and money-laundering. She knew they killed people and dealt out punishment beatings. But other people did that. She didn’t do the killing part. Then a thought flashed into her mind about Finbar, frightened, crying and lost and being used as a pawn in a ransom demand by that ruthless bastard Rodriguez and his cronies.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But how are you going to get me armed? Won’t they search me when I arrive?’
Jack nodded. ‘They will. But you go in and when you sit down you put your jacket over the chair. Then just forget about it. A few minutes later, when the waiters are fussing around, one of them will slip the loaded and cocked handgun into your jacket pocket.’
‘You’re kidding. You think someone won’t be watching for a stunt like that?’
‘Leave that to us, Kerry. You just keep your eye on the barman. He’ll give you the nod, so you know the gun is there, and then you’ll get another nod that it’s going to kick off. As soon as the shooting starts, you go into your pocket and get the gun, then you hit the floor and someone will grab you and get you out. If you need to use the gun, then you’ll do it by instinct.’
Kerry almost felt her head swim. Instinct?
‘But don’t worry.’ Danny seemed to see her concern. ‘We’ll have eyes on you at all times.’
Kerry pushed any worrying thoughts to the side and focused on what was needed.
‘Rodriguez is a complete bastard,’ she said. ‘To put a little kid through this kind of agony. It’s unforgivable.’
Danny nodded. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s fucking beyond evil. But they’ll pay for this, Kerry. Every single person who has had a filthy hand in this kidnapping will pay for it – trust me on that.’
Kerry knew exactly what that meant, and she would not be standing in the way of Danny or Jack when they dealt out justice for this. The boy’s photograph and story of the kidnapping had been the number-one story on the news since it happened, so anyone involved in it knew exactly what they were doing when they became a part of it. Whether they were doing it for money, or because they had no option, didn’t enter into Kerry’s psyche right now. She was thinking and reacting like Danny and Jack. S
he wanted revenge for putting the kid and his family through this hell. Her only concern now was getting him back.
‘So do we know anything about the farmhouse?’ Kerry asked.
‘Not much. Only the name of the owner, who lives in the north of Spain most of the time. I don’t know him. Retired company director, but I’ve got some people checking him out. He’s obviously involved with some dodgy people if they can suddenly pitch up and use his place.’
‘Interesting,’ Kerry said. ‘I wonder who he is. He might not even know what’s going on. He might have his farmhouse rented out or something.’
‘Possibly,’ Jack replied. ‘But we’ll have a look at him when this is all over. At the moment we’re concentrating on how we carry out this operation. We can’t afford to put a foot wrong. We need everything planned to the letter.’
Kerry nodded. ‘Of course.’
Danny looked at Jack.
‘We’ve got enough people to be able to execute this properly, Kerry,’ Danny said. ‘But I think we should get Jake Cahill back from Spain. He’s great backup and an insurance for us in a lot of ways.’
‘Sure,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘Give him a call and ask him if he can get on a plane tonight.’
‘And, Kerry,’ Danny said. ‘We’re looking at bringing in the young lads too – Cal and Tahir. They’ve been doing really well and learning fast. Jack’s boys have been training them up with weapons, and they’re sharp as a tack and keen.’
Kerry thought about Cal’s mum, Maria, who had come to her for help when she was at her lowest ebb, and she took her in. Maria’s life had changed and everything was going so well, with her daughter Jen doing well in rehab and looking like she may get back on track. It didn’t sit well with Kerry that Cal was now working for the organisation, and she hadn’t asked too many questions of how Jack was using him and Tahir. She’d left it up to them. But anything could happen in an operation like this, and she wouldn’t be able to face Maria if something happened to Cal. But she had to dismiss the thought. Cal had wanted to work for the Caseys and he’d slotted in as though he was family. That was who he was now – a foot soldier, like the others in her organisation. But she wanted to protect him on some level.
