35

It feels distant already. It feels as though the precise details are fading in his memory, to be replaced with an overview. It doesn’t matter. Calum’s never going to tell anyone the story of what happened. The only people who might ask would be Jamieson and Young, but they won’t. They know better. There are some in the business who tell their employers every last detail. There are some employers who want to know everything. That won’t happen here. Too much professionalism. All Jamieson and Young want to know is that it was done, and done well. They want to know that it won’t come back on them. If they know that, they’re happy.

A quick shower, then breakfast. Something heavier today. Feeling like normal already. Amazing how quickly normality intrudes. Used to take many days to fight down the nerves, but not any more. Now it’s hours. Soon there won’t be any at all. Is that a good thing? Probably not, he’s reflecting as he works in the kitchen – probably better to have a little edge. Once you think you’ve got nothing to be worried about, you slip up. No taking it easy. Stay alert. He remembers talking to Frank, more than a year ago now. Frank told him that even now he gets nervous before a job. If he didn’t, he would quit.

You quit when you stop feeling nervous, because you’re no longer able to work out the risks. Happens to people. You become blasé. It’s a job. You go to work and you do it and you don’t even consider the risks any more. That’s downright dangerous. There’s another problem, though. You get older. You become more aware of your mortality. You become more concerned about the things you’re missing out on. Suddenly you’re not nervous, you’re just scared. Then you definitely stop. Then you’re going to make a multitude of mistakes that are going to cost you your life. But a deadening of nerves seems more likely to Calum. He’s never been truly scared on a job.

Sitting at the breakfast table, reading a Sunday newspaper. Flicking through it, looking for the one story that matters. There it is. A little sidebar. No pictures, no big headlines. Man murdered in Glasgow. Killed in his own home. Lewis Winter, forty-four. Killed after a night out. Police looking for information. Suspected links to organized crime. And that’s about the sum of it. Winter’s life and death, reduced to a little side column on page twenty-three. Maybe a hundred words. It’s not much to call a life.

It reassures Calum. The mention of organized crime is just there to reassure the public. It’s drug dealers killing drug dealers, so you have nothing to worry about. Most people will read it and think: who cares? The world’s better off without him. Let them all kill each other. The only people who’ll be terribly concerned will be the people living on his street. For everyone else, it’s one less scumbag in the world. No description of who carried it out. Most likely because they don’t have one. Certainly nothing reliable. The naked guy wouldn’t have been able to give a description anyway. Cope might have – she was calmer. But even so, they took every precaution.

He’s feeling good about what he’s read. A standard piece about a drug dealer being killed. The police with no specific requests for information. No descriptions issued. He’d be more concerned if there hadn’t been anything at all in the papers. They would be holding back information for a reason. That would be unsettling. So far, so textbook. Still, he must be cautious. Sit about the flat, doing nothing that he wouldn’t ordinarily do. Keeping an appropriate distance from the people that matter. A boring consequence of the job. Into the living room, sitting down in front of the TV, letting time die around him.

It’s the afternoon when the phone rings. Mute-button on the TV remote, picks up the phone.

‘Hello.’

‘Hi, Calum, it’s Glen Davidson – long time no speak.’

Alarm bells are going off all over the place. Loud and constant. Why the hell is Glen Davidson calling him? Glen Davidson is a gunman. Freelance. Kills, and often kills rough. Good at covering his tracks, but a nasty bastard. He’s been lucky to stay out of jail. Big fellow, been around the business since he was a kid, because of his father. It’s the family trade. Calum’s crossed paths with him a couple of times, knows him to say hello to, but nothing more than that. They’ve never done a job together. Calum wouldn’t want to do a job with him. Not trustworthy.

He’s paused longer than he should have. ‘Glen, how are you?’

‘Not bad, not bad. Keeping the wolves from the door, you know how it is. How’s tricks with you?’

Weird to hear him being so chummy, like they’re pals. Calum’s remembering all the stories he’s heard about Davidson. About his temper. That woman he put in hospital. Someone said that a girlfriend got pregnant and he punched it out of her. Might not be true. No evidence. He’s the kind of gorilla that these stories attach themselves to.

‘Same old, same old. What can I do for you?’

In other words, say something to justify phoning me. Piss or get off the pot. This is becoming a nervous call, and Calum doesn’t like that.

‘Are you keeping busy?’ Davidson asks.

Calum pauses. An offer of work? Why would Glen Davidson be looking for someone else for a job? Maybe to go along as partner, but he wouldn’t look to Calum as a first port of call for that.

‘Run off my feet,’ Calum’s saying. ‘Haven’t got a spare minute in the day.’

‘I hear that. I’ll leave you to it. We should go out for a drink sometime, in the future.’

‘Sure thing,’ Calum’s saying, knowing it’ll never happen.

Now he’s pacing around the flat, thinking about the call. Paranoia is a terrible thing, but it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. In this business, paranoia has been known to be a lifesaver. Glen-bloody-Davidson. It’s worth being nervous about strange phone calls from him. Worth being nervous about him at any time. The TV’s still on mute. The F1 cars are going round in their merry circles in silence. The rest of the world has ceased to exist for Calum. It’s now shrunk to a size just big enough to fit him and Glen Davidson.

Look back through your history. Have you done any work with Davidson or anything that might step on his toes? No, never. Always kept a safe distance. You always keep distance from other gunmen. You don’t get in their way, they don’t get in yours. Unwritten rule. Maybe he wanted you to help him on a two-man job. You have a good reputation amongst other gunmen. They know you can do the job. They know you can be trusted. No, not likely. There are so many other people Davidson would turn to first. One of them would have said yes before he got to Calum. Davidson’s been in the business long enough to have better options than Calum.

There’s that one horrible, ugly, looming possibility. He was laying down a little test for you. He wants to know if you’ve done any job recently. He thinks you might have been behind a job and he wants to find out for sure. It could only be Winter. What reason would that ape have for investigating Winter’s death? They weren’t working together, as far as you know. Or maybe they were. Maybe they were working for the same person. Maybe this person that Jamieson hinted was planning to work with Winter has found out. This person employs Davidson. Dear Mr Davidson, please find out which of the people in your business hit Mr Winter. Then what? Do they just want a name? They might want revenge. They might want to send a message to Jamieson.

So what do you do, hotshot? The temptation is to rush and tell Young or Jamieson. They’ll need to know eventually. Not yet. You don’t know anything yet. All you know is that Davidson called you. You don’t know why. Don’t leap headlong into assumptions. Never clever. Don’t contact them until you need to. You’re putting two and two together and coming up with a range of numbers. It might be innocent; it could be that Davidson’s looking to make new connections. People do that. They call you up out of the blue because they think they might want to use you in the future. He might be trying to position himself. Maybe make himself look important by working with as many other gunmen as possible. It might be that he wants to get close to Jamieson. People can see that he’s the coming man, so they want to work for him. Davidson knows you’ve worked for Jamieson in the past, so maybe he knows that you’re working for him again.

It may be that he’s on the way round to kill you. He calls you up and works out that you’ve recently done a job. He knows that you’re at home. He’s going to guess that a pro of your quality won’t have a weapon in the flat. He knows you live alone. Easy target. A fast answer to Jamieson. We stepped on your toes. You killed our man. Look how quickly we killed yours. Impressive, aren’t we? Found out who did it and killed him off, inside a couple of days. This is what you’re up against, big fellow. You’re up against people who know how to get the job done.

Most gunmen wouldn’t want to rush a job like that, but sometimes you don’t have a choice. Sometimes you go where you’re told because the alternative is no job at all. Sometimes the alternative is worse than that. So you go and you rush it, and you make the best of the circumstances you encounter. You don’t enjoy it, but that’s how it has to happen. Sometimes it’s the only way. This might be one of those occasions. For Davidson’s employers to make the best impact on Jamieson, they’ll want you dead as soon as possible. Calum’s over at the window, looking out into the street. Just like one of those pathetic old lags who have been in and out of jail, living on their nerves, terrified of every sound and shadow.

Wait. Pause. Think about this a second. Does the person employing Davidson even want a war with Jamieson? Maybe not. Maybe they want a good patch to sell gear on – everyone does – but that doesn’t mean they want a war. You get people who invade another person’s patch only because they think they can get away with it. They think the guy they’re pissing off won’t bother fighting back. Too much effort. Too much risk. Bigger fish to fry. People try their luck and fail. Jamieson hits Winter to send out the message. The message is learned and the people back off. Then why have Davidson call you up at all? Damn, can’t get away from that.

It’s scary and nervy because it’s unexpected. They should have warned him that this could happen. They should have said what level of threat this job carried. Maybe they didn’t know. It wasn’t entirely obvious that they even knew who Winter was planning to work with. Stop pacing the flat, for God’s sake, you’re tiring yourself out. Sit down, calm down and think rationally. You need to get a message to Jamieson somehow, let them know that they ought to be concerned. You find an indirect route, let them know, and then see how it plays out. You stay vigilant, but you don’t do anything stupid.