The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter (Glasgow Trilogy) (8 page)

He never asked much of Higgins. If there are risks to be taken, then let others take them. For now, he is cultivating the relationship. He needs the boy to feel comfortable with them. This is a
regular meeting – sometimes once a month, sometimes once every six weeks. They’re always chatty, relaxed. Young never pushes him on anything. If the boy has something interesting to
say, then he has something interesting. If not, no big deal. Next time. No pressure. Never pressure. This time Young is keen to find out certain details, but he can’t suddenly push him. He
rarely asks for specific detail, and only when he knows it’s something Higgins can easily find out. No pressure. This will be a step forward.

They meet in a small flat that belongs to Jamieson, in a quiet part of town. Access is off the road, out of view of the street. It’s quiet. Safe. Young always gets there first, lets
himself in and waits. He always goes alone. Always. A second person would scare Higgins. He’s never introduced the boy to anyone else in the business. If he can avoid it, he never will.
Higgins is smart, diligent and well mannered. He’s the sort of boy who has the potential for promotion. It’s the dream for Young: a detective on his books. Maybe higher even than that.
Someone with control over cases. Someone who can direct the flow of the police service away from the Jamieson organization. One day, perhaps. Big ambitions. For now, Higgins is still useful. For
now, he can find out little things that Young could use to big effect. Young settles in and waits for Higgins to arrive.

A sitting duck. It occurs to him every time he goes to that flat to meet Higgins. If Higgins knocks on the door and has half a dozen of his colleagues standing beside him, Young would be
finished. No way out. That’s the risk of getting close to any copper. A knock on the door. Young’s getting up, walking across and looking through the peephole. He can only see Higgins.
He opens the door, nods hello and holds the door open until the twenty-six-year-old is inside. A quiet boy, but an imposing figure. Youthful face, but tall and broad-shouldered. Now young and
athletic; likely to end up fat and with a bad back.

‘Want a cup of coffee, anything like that?’ Young asks him. They’re strolling through to the large, open-plan kitchen and living room.

‘Nah, ta, I’m okay.’ Higgins is in jeans and a hooded top. Casual. A day off. They never meet when he’s on duty. That would be criminally irresponsible.

They sit and Young asks him about his family. He does that every time. Make it seem like he cares. At the same time remind the boy that his parents’ financial security and his
sister’s livelihood all depend on him. She’s a beautician now, whatever that is. Young has no idea. It’s what she wanted, so it’s what she got. She’s useless at it,
apparently, but Jamieson owns half of the salon, and her brother is useful, so she keeps her job. Higgins has answered politely, as always. He’s smart enough not to share any further troubles
with Young. Smart enough not to dig a deeper hole. Not yet. The way things are going with his family, though, he may need to soon. Young knows it, but says nothing.

‘Heard anything relevant?’ Young asks. Standard question. It means have you heard anything that Peter Jamieson and I ought to be concerned about. The answer has always been no, and
Young assumes that Higgins is smart enough to alert him immediately if he hears anything urgent.

‘Nope, not a lot of interest happening. Most of the focus is still on outsiders.’

Always good to hear. Outsiders are the bogeymen, as much to the police as to the established crime organizations. The police, subconsciously or not, take a better-the-devil-you-know approach.
The outsiders become a priority. Takes the eye off the established order. Now and again the police would have a spurt of activity against established people, but they’re occasional. One of
the points of having a cop on the books was to boost the opportunity of knowing when the police’s interest had turned back towards the established. You try to prepare, do all that you can to
take yourself off the radar. You have a better chance with advance warning.

Young carries on the conversation, asking numerous questions about things that don’t matter much to either of them. Higgins tells him about several crimes of significance that have
occurred in the last few weeks. A couple of murders, a drugs bust, a counterfeiting operation. Young has already heard of all of these things, probably knows more about them than the police, but he
nods along politely. Don’t let the cop know that you have more information than he does. Let him think he’s the one with the valuable knowledge. There’s no mention of Lewis
Winter. Young isn’t sure how long Calum will take to carry out that particular hit. He tends to take a little longer than most men in his profession. More careful.

More ponderous. More successful. If it had happened, Higgins would have mentioned it. So he’s still waiting.

‘What do the police know about Hugh Francis?’

Higgins blinks. ‘Shug Francis? A bit. Involved in a lot of car crime. Not so much these days, harder to steal cars than it used to be. A pest, but I don’t think he’s a
priority. Doesn’t use violence. Don’t think the public are aware of him. Last I heard he’d bought a racing car,’ Higgins is saying with a smile.

‘Track-day car, yeah,’ Young is nodding. He’s heard all the charming stories of Shug’s geeky adoration of cars. ‘You guys haven’t looked any deeper into his
work?’

Higgins shrugs a little. ‘I heard someone say that they had looked into him a couple of years back. Not a lot to find. He’s a smart guy, y’know. Hides everything real well. I
think they looked at him to see if he had anything else going on, if he was using his car set-up to do other stuff. Don’t think he was, or we would have taken measures. Has a good legit
business to hide everything behind.’

Young raises an eyebrow. He isn’t going to say anything else.

‘You think we should be looking at him?’

Young thinks about it for a moment. ‘Might be worth it. Could soon be relevant. I can’t say more than that.’

He can’t say more than that because he can’t be entirely sure. It annoys him so much, not to be sure. Someone is making moves against Jamieson and, despite the scepticism of some,
Young is sure it’s Shug Francis. He has the means. He’s smart enough to pick the right targets. Jamieson is the right target. If you want to come into the market, you need to take share
from someone. You steal market share from someone worth stealing from. You don’t steal share from someone so big they can stamp on you and wipe you out with ease. Jamieson is on the rise, so
he isn’t liked by the big players. Respected, yes. Feared, absolutely. Liked, no, because they recognize the threat he poses. Someone chipping away at him would not be loathed by the top
people in the business. One thing Shug Francis has always been good at is ingratiating himself with people who matter.

They end the chat. Whether Higgins recognized the significance of Young mentioning Francis, Young can’t be sure. He seems to treat it as a normal meeting, doesn’t give any indication
that he understood the difference. Young doesn’t bring up specific cases. He doesn’t go asking for particular information. This time he has tried, and he isn’t sure it even
worked. By raising the name of Shug Francis he is making Higgins aware of his interest. He wants Higgins to go away and think about it. He wants Higgins to have a look at what the police already
know about Francis, and bring that information back to him. The cop is young. He’s inexperienced. He might not realize what he’s being asked to do.

The cop leaves first. Young waits for a boring twenty minutes before leaving the building, making sure there’s distance between them. He goes to the club, where he knows Jamieson will be.
They’ve discussed the issue so often. Someone is making moves. They need to know exactly who. There would be nothing more damaging and embarrassing than attacking the wrong enemy. They
don’t yet know exactly who is to blame. Young finds Jamieson playing snooker. He waits patiently for the frame to end, and the pair of them make their way back to Jamieson’s office.
It’s remarkable how relaxed Jamieson is about it. Young agonizes constantly, wondering who their target should be. They know the person is using Winter. Hitting Winter will send a powerful
message. He hopes it will also draw the real target out into the open.

‘Boy doesn’t know anything about Francis,’ Young’s saying as they take their usual seats.

‘Maybe there’s nothing to know.’ Jamieson knows Francis. Knows he’s smart. Knows he isn’t a risk-taker.

‘I’m convinced. Why is it so hard to find out anything about his operation? Because he’s hiding something. He has the whole thing locked down. Didn’t used to. I’m
telling you, he’s making some sort of move. If it ain’t against us, then it’s against someone else, and I can’t find anyone else who’s being moved against.’

Jamieson taps the desk. ‘So what?’

‘So we wait and see what the reaction is to Winter. When he gets hit, something happens. Whoever was working with him will need to approach someone else. They have to come out in the open,
just a wee bit. Then we know.’

‘He still hasn’t hit Winter?’

‘Not yet. Soon.’

He doesn’t like Fridays. Busiest day of the week, workwise. People are buying for the weekend. Hardcore users buy every day. A lot of casual users buy only on a Friday.
He has to make sure his people are well stocked for the spike in orders. He spends most of the morning doing that. He meets all six people that he’s using to sell his gear. Five of them are
users; they’re always difficult to track down. Unreliable. All over the place. Chaotic lives. He stocks four of them, and the one reliable dealer he has. He might make greater use of that
non-user in the future. If things are going big-time, then he might make the boy an offer. He’s jobless, maybe a little feckless, but he isn’t entirely stupid. And he’s clean,
that’s the most important thing. That stupid, using peddler. The one who hadn’t been able to sell what he’d been given. He’s nowhere to be found. He’s gone missing
with the gear he had left. Stolen for his own use. That requires punishment. He has to be seen to be tough. He won’t attack the man himself, but he will pay someone else to do it. Get back
any gear the guy still has, which will probably be none. Then never use him again.

There’s another reason why Lewis Winter hates Fridays. Zara wants every Friday to be a party. They have to go out. There is no question, no debate. They are going out. They will drink,
they will dance, they will be out until the middle of the night. Twenty years ago he would have enjoyed it. Now, he hates every second. He doesn’t like being drunk; it makes him feel more
insecure and maudlin. It increases his hatred of the people Zara attracts. They’re all terribly young and terribly trendy. Men hover around. He tries to keep pace, but his heart isn’t
in it. She wants to dance. He knows how absurd he looks. It looks like she’s brought her uncle to the club with her. People have different attitudes now. They seem more aggressive in matters
of enjoyment. They have no trouble hitting on a man’s girlfriend when he’s right beside her. The old rules have gone. Sometimes she flirts back.

If she would just stop inviting people back to the house. They have no business being there. He doesn’t want them there; she does. It’s his house. It’s their house. He’s
committed to her. Like it or not. He’ll have to sit down and talk to her. At some point in the relationship he has to stop feeling like shit. It’s making him miserable. It’s
because she walks all over him. He will say something. Not tonight. She’ll already have made plans for tonight. She’ll have called some of her friends and they’ll all have
arranged to go to the same place together. A group night out, to begin with. Some will bring boyfriends, some are single. They’re all much younger than he. They’ll all enjoy the night
out, except him. He’s just there to buy drinks. He’s there to call the taxi to get them all back home. He’s the chaperone.

He gets home after four o’clock. There’s nobody downstairs. He can hear loud music from upstairs. He knocks on their bedroom door. Zara calls for him to come in. He opens the door.
There’s Zara and a friend in the room. Another tanned, blonde, vacant-looking friend. They all look the same to him. The friend is sitting on the bed with a glass in her hand, surrounded by
clothing. Zara is in front of the full-length mirror, looking at herself. She has on a party outfit. There’s a wine bottle and another half-filled glass on the dresser.

‘Hey, sweetie,’ she coos at him. She only ever speaks in childish, endearing terms when there are other people around. Keeping up some pretence. ‘Nah,’ she says
decisively, and pulls the short dress up over her head. She throws it onto the pile on the bed. She’s now standing in front of the mirror in just her underpants. When she’s drinking she
likes to be the centre of attention.

She drinks a lot, Winter has realized. He’s known it from the moment they met, but it’s her chosen lifestyle. She’s a party drinker. It livens her up. It was too early in the
relationship to say anything about it, back then. As time has gone by, his desire to mention it has dissipated as his desire to hold onto her increases. He doesn’t like her when she’s
drunk. Now he tolerates her.

‘Wanna help me pick something sexy to wear?’ she asks with a grin.

He can’t deny that she is beautiful when she smiles like that. Mischievous. Devilish. ‘I think you’re a better judge than I am,’ he says quietly. He quickly worries that
he’s set the wrong tone, that she might think him miserable. ‘I think you look great as you are.’ That’s the right tone. She and the friend laugh, and the friend says she
bets he does. ‘I’m going to grab something to eat,’ he’s telling them now, recognizing that the time has come for him to make an exit. They want to carry on dressing up.
‘You two want anything?’ They both say no, they’re fine. He knows they don’t need anything to eat because they’ve been drinking for more than an hour already, and plan
to keep on drinking.

He makes himself a bacon roll. Nothing much – if they’re going to be out all night, then he doesn’t want much on his stomach. He sighs more often than is healthy as he makes
himself a cup of tea to go with it. He had started the relationship on the wrong foot. Having realized that he was allowing himself to be the junior partner, he should have bailed out early. It was
fear and desperation that had allowed things to roll on, and now it feels like it’s too late. It would seem as if he was trying to change her. She would argue that she’d given so much
of her life to him, and he has no right to try to push her to be someone else. He sees other men making these relationships work. It’s a fact of life in the trade that there are women around.
He knows men who happily bounce from one woman to another, never losing sleep over losing a woman. He knows others who are married, but know how to have fun. They all seem so much better at it than
he is.