The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter (Glasgow Trilogy) (19 page)

‘What’s your name?’ Fisher asks him.

‘Adam Jones.’

No bells are ringing. Fair enough. Off the hook. For now.

Into a little office. Small and cramped. Whitewashed walls, a single small window high up on the wall. It feels like someone converted a toilet. Not a sign of a luxurious establishment.
He’s been in the offices of club managers before. He can’t remember one like this.

‘Last night a man named Lewis Winter was shot dead in his house. He was here at the club before he went home,’ Fisher says.

‘Okay,’ the man nods needlessly. Trying to show off how casual and relaxed he is. Trying badly.

‘I want to have a look at your CCTV. The killer may have been here too. We’ll want copies of everything you have from last night. Everything.’

The manager leads him along the corridor to another room, the security room. There are two tiny monitors on a rickety table, and a chair in front of it. That’s the extent of the security
room.

‘The footage from last night should be here,’ the manager’s saying, picking up tapes from the table. ‘Obviously we keep everything, just in case. Cameras go on when we
open, off when we shut. Expensive stuff, ya know. Very expensive.’ He’s shoving a tape into a machine and switching on a monitor. ‘What time was yer man here?’

‘I don’t know,’ Fisher tells him, and ignores the sigh that follows. He knows roughly when they arrived, and roughly when they left, but that’s not the point. It’s
not them he’s looking for. It’s the people near them. It’s the man who shared the cab with them.

Fisher sits in that little room for more than an hour. He fast-forwards through long sections of video. He picks them out when they arrive. He watches the footage of the night and gets a new
impression of the relationship between Winter and Cope. They arrive with others. They dance together for a while, but he looks absurdly out of place. Hard to spot an older person there. She starts
dancing with a younger man right in front of Winter. Treating him like shit with legs. Getting close to this young man.

The rest of the hour is taken up in watching Zara Cope dancing close with a young man, looking to all the world like a couple. Winter is sitting by himself. A lonesome figure. Downing bottle
after bottle of beer. Numerous questions are flitting into Fisher’s mind now. They can wait. First priority is picking out anyone at the club who seems interested in Winter. Nobody stands
out. A woman, apparently desperate, goes and sits next to him. The pictures aren’t good, jumpy and at a distance. They look like they’re talking. Eventually the woman gets up and walks
away. It takes Fisher a few minutes to realize that Winter is asleep at the table.

Nearly an hour later – after half past midnight on the security-camera clock. Club should be shut at midnight. Cope and the young man she’s been getting happy with walk across to
Winter. She’s talking to him. She’s sitting beside him. She’s helping him up. Struggling. The young man steps in. It looks like young siblings carrying their embarrassing father
to the exit. They go out through the hall. Fisher marks the time. A quarter to one. He ejects the tape and finds the one for the doorway CCTV. The manager has long since disappeared, leaving the
detective to his own devices. Said he had a lot of work to do. Probably gone to call the owner. Remember to check who the owner is too.

The doorway tape in the machine. Fast-forwarding. He’s given up on looking for the killers. Long shot that they would have been there. Probably waited at the house. That makes the taxi
driver and the young man who shared the taxi more important. First problem. Damned club. Bloody idiots. Who-ever’s in charge of their security wants shooting. The camera doesn’t record
a wide enough area. You can see the doorway and most of the pavement outside, but you can’t see right up to the road. It’s too close. He won’t see them getting into the taxi.
Shit! Why the hell have they got the camera focused on so small an area? Ah, easy enough to guess. They don’t trust their own door staff. They want to keep an eye on them. Hard to blame them
for that.

Not as good as he hoped it would be. Interesting, though. The three of them come out of the club and onto the pavement. Zara hails someone, presumably a taxi. The younger man helps Winter across
to the taxi and they move out of view. Can’t see the taxi, can’t see who gets into it. They shared the taxi with a young man who just happened to be leaving at the same time as they
were. That’s what she said. Coincidence; not someone she knew. Random stranger – don’t know his name. Nope, not buying that any more. She was lying about this much at least. Look
at Winter. Jesus, look at him. He can hardly stand.

Think about her story. They share a taxi with a stranger. He helps her get Winter to the door, then leaves. She gets Winter all the way up the stairs, along the corridor and onto the bed by
herself. No fucking way. Not a chance. Look at him! He can barely stand up. If the young man wasn’t helping him out of the club, he would have been face-first on the pavement. Lying bitch.
You did not get him all that way by yourself, not in that state, not a wee girl like you. Someone helped you. The young man. He came into the house. Had to. He came into the house, and yet
he’s nowhere to be seen when the plod arrive. Fisher rewinds, gets a shot of the young man, mostly the back of his head. That could be our killer. More than a stranger.

Fisher goes looking for the manager. He finds him in his office, on the phone. The manager hangs up when he enters without knocking.

‘D’you have a list of the taxis that wait outside to pick up your customers?’

‘Aye,’ Jones is saying, reaching into the drawer of his desk. ‘Your lot made us draw up a list, keep a watch on who uses the place.’

Your lot. Charming. The manager passes a list across to him. At a glance, he sees nothing that stands out. There are taxi firms that he knows are owned or controlled by organized crime, but he
sees none of them on this list.

Fisher shoves the list into his pocket. He looks at the manager, sitting looking back across the desk at him. Looking nervous. Looking at the tapes, wondering what’s been found on
them.

‘I’m taking these tapes with me. They’re important. I might send someone else round to have a word about a few other things I happened to notice while I was here,’ he
says and leaves the office. It’s an idle threat. If the club was open past its hours, then that’s for the plods to deal with. He might send someone to warn them about it, though, so
that they can bitch about the positioning of the security cameras while they’re there. Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. Make them see that they need to have a better view of the
outside.

Back to the station. Give the tapes to someone with the time to go through them in detail.

‘Find out who the guy leaving with them is. Try and spot anyone else that might stand out.’ They won’t spot the killers. That’s too much to ask for. You never know what
might come up, though. They might spot someone talking to Winter or Cope that he didn’t spot. They might find out that the younger man has connections. A bit of luck. That’s what he
needs. Luck. Now the taxi driver. Find him. He can add to the picture. The picture of Cope and the younger man.

A thought. A grim thought. Cope wasn’t treated as a suspect. She was a witness and she was a victim. There was no pressure to make sure that they knew where she was going next –
people assumed the house where Winter had died. Maybe not. Maybe she goes somewhere else and he has no way of getting to her at short notice. Fisher stops in the middle of the office.

‘Someone get me that plod that was looking after Cope.’ He’s worried. She’s a suspect to him. She lied to him repeatedly when he interviewed her, and he now has the
proof. She’s hiding something, and that’s something he wants to find. First, Fisher has to know where she is.

His phone jingles in his pocket. He takes it out, looks briefly at the screen. A text from Shug Francis. Greig puts it back in his pocket, unread. Standing outside a
newsagent’s, waiting for his colleague to come out with a bottle of water. Walking the beat. Reassuring the public. Utterly tedious. Largely pointless. Catching criminals whilst walking the
beat is very rare. Being in the car, you get the call and you’re there that much faster. You have a better chance of actually catching criminals. This is just a way of being uselessly
visible, letting the public see your pretty face.

His colleague comes out, hands him a bottle. Surprisingly warm day. Busy Saturday afternoon. The shops are busy; it reassures the owners to see you popping in and out. Stops them complaining,
that’s the main thing. Walking along the street, not saying much. Not on the beat with young Matheson today. They’ve given Greig an older cop to work with, which seems pointless. A
cynical guy, obviously bored with his job. Doesn’t seem to treat it with a lot of respect. Needs to realize that this is a vocation. He won’t last much longer. Mind you, he’s
lasted long enough already. Amazing how some people hang on.

Plod through the day. Hot and dull. Nothing happening. No big incidents, nothing of much note. Hot Saturday, though, so there’ll be a lot of unpleasant work for the night-shift. People
drinking all day in the heat. People falling over, falling off things. People knocking each other down. Men trying to impress women by knocking lumps out of each other. Men trying to have their own
way and knocking lumps out of women. Lot of ugly domestics on a night like this. Greig hates domestics. Tricky business. Better avoided. He’s glad when the shift’s ending and they can
wander back towards the station. Out of the uniform, into a T-shirt. Maybe go for a drink before he goes home? Nah, better go home, check that text.

Into the flat. He has a casual girlfriend, but it’s very casual. Hasn’t spoken to her for a few days. That’s how his relationships go, and it’s how he likes them.
It’s always been that way. He needs space – he feels everyone does. That’s where relationships go wrong, when someone intrudes on the space of the other. No desire for marriage,
no desire for children. Love the job. Enjoy the life. Don’t spoil it. Don’t let others spoil it. Well, that’s obviously harder to do. It’s that thought that leads him to
take his mobile phone out of his pocket and look at the text.

Come round and see me when you can.
That’s all it says. Innocuous, you would think. Greig knows better. He knows that Shug doesn’t ask him to pay a visit unless it’s
urgent. He wants Greig to come and see him as soon as he gets the message. Greig texts back.
Just finished shift, still want me to come round?
He hopes not. It might have been urgent in
the afternoon, but not important now. Better always to try and keep your distance. Doesn’t matter how good you are at this sort of thing – you don’t want to be seen too often in
the company of people like Shug. The phone gives a little rumble. He checks the text.
Yes
is all it says.

He hates visiting Shug. Hates visiting anyone in the business. They ought to know better than to ask him. His relationships with people inside the criminal industry are important. They help him
to be a better copper. People find it hard to get their heads round that. They think that no cop can have any relationship with any crook. Not true. Knowing them makes it easier to know who’s
up to what. His relationships with career criminals have brought him a wealth of information that he has often put to good use. Those relationships have resulted in some very serious criminals
being put behind bars, but there are some who don’t want to admit that. Some, like that stuck-up prick Fisher, want to believe that policing means there must always be a ‘them and
us’ attitude.

People think Shug is a nice guy. Everyone who knows him considers him a harmless and charming character. Obsessed with cars. Obsessed with them. Loves racing them. Loves fixing them up. Seen as
a wee bit of a crank. There are some who genuinely think he’s only in the business because of the cars. He has a string of garages, all round the city. People steal cars, take them to the
garage. They get resprayed. They get retagged. All distinguishing marks – like the engine block number – are filed down and removed. A false service history is created. The car is then
driven south and sold across the border somewhere. Doesn’t do it too often. Not enough to raise undue interest. Not enough ever to be a crime wave. Shug’s smart about it. The best car
man in the city.

But he’s smart. People forget that. People think of him as a harmless geek and forget what he’s actually doing. He’s running a lucrative business within the criminal industry.
He’s been running it for more than a decade, since he was in his mid-twenties. It takes a smart man to start that young and last this long. It takes a ruthless man to ensure that he has no
competition. People think Shug has no competition because others think it’s too hard to set up and run a car ring. There’s some truth in that. It’s a tough thing to do these days,
car security being so good. Others have been tempted, though. Money to be made, and only one competitor in the market.

That’s where Shug’s reputation has served him well. Nice guy. Charming geek. Hard to imagine him doing anything worse than nicking the occasional car. His people don’t use
violence. They steal cars – that’s it. They don’t car-jack. They do no harm. Except to people who try to muscle in on their business. They’ve driven people out of the city.
Out of the industry. They’ve used some tough cookies to do the work for them. Violent work. Ruthless. As soon as he knows you’re making moves on his patch, Shug sends people round to
wipe you out. Greig’s not sure if he’s ever had anyone killed – doesn’t think so. Wouldn’t put it past him, though.

Greig turns a blind eye and a deaf ear to these things. Shug is one of the criminals that the city needs. The least of all available evils. If others get involved in the car racket, then they
might get ambitious, might start using violence. People break into houses just to get the car keys these days. That’s something to be avoided. Only tends to happen here with opportunists:
burglars who stumble across the keys, or junkies getting desperate. Shug keeps things simple, reduces the amount of work that the police have to do. It’s crime management. It’s why
Greig is involved with people like Shug. No violence. Keep the number of stolen cars down. People are insured. It could be worse. That’s the point. It could be a lot worse.