Pay Off (19 page)

'I'm not coming back. You'll never see me again. I can't trust you, not after what you did to me. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'll do it on my own.' The sentences came out in short, sharp bursts like bullets from a gun.

'Get-Up, listen to me. I can't take back what I did, but I can try to make it right, if you'll let me,' I said, remembering Tony's words. Symbiosis. I needed this man.

'No,' he said, with a finality that left me in no doubt that I would never see him again. But there was one thing I had to know before he cut the connection and disappeared from my life forever. Had he finished the job?

He continued. 'If you hadn't saved my life I wouldn't even have phoned,' he said and then ground to a halt, realizing what a daft thing he'd said, then blustering on regardless. 'I would just have told Read's mates what you'd been up to. But you did, so the car's back where you wanted it. I rang Dancer like you said and he collected it from me. I said you'd send the rest of the money to him. Now we're even.'

'Get-Up, listen to what I say. Keep away from Laing, right away. Keep your head down. And if you need any help you can come to me.'

'No, I'm on my own now. You won't ever see me again.'

'Good luck, Get-Up. I mean it.'

'Go to hell.' Click, and he was gone.

Later Tony came and sat on the bed and laid down the law. Shona was to move out of the flat, soonest. She'd go and stay with her parents. That way if McKinley went back on his word - I began to interrupt, to say that Get-Up wouldn't let me down, but Tony steamrollered over me -then nobody could get to her. Sammy was to be told to lie low, I certainly wasn't to go near her for a while, at least until we knew what had happened to Laing and Kyle. I was to keep out of the way, Tony would be my eyes and ears in 155 London. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir. Tony made me feel small, small and vulnerable, but I accepted the sanctuary he offered, the safe cool sanctuary of the strong, and I remembered Sammy and the polar bear.

Shona and Tony wanted me to go somewhere warm, to lie in the sun for a couple of weeks, to come back suntanned and rested and ready to go back into harness. I agreed.

I telephoned Sammy and told her I'd be out of the country for a while.

'How was Paris?' I asked.

'Don't ask,' she said.

'Good, I'm glad,' I replied, and I was. My stomach had been churning at the thought that she might have enjoyed herself with him. She broke the silence by asking what had gone wrong and I told her, warning her to keep a low profile and to have no further contact with Laing.

'You don't have to worry on that score,' she said, and I could picture her white teeth and easy smile as she brushed her long hair behind her ear. 'How's Get-Up?' she asked.

'Vanished. I doubt we'll see him again.'

'Where are you going?'

'I don't know yet, but I'll be in touch, I promise.' I paused, unsure of how to pose the question. 'Sammy?' I asked.

'I'm here.'

'When I get back, will you come up to be with me in Edinburgh?' Hell, that didn't sound right.

'On the payroll, you mean?' she asked.

'You know what I mean.'

'Yes, I know.'

'Well?'

'Well what?'

'If I was with you, young lady, I'd put you over my knee and give you a good spanking.'

'And if you were with me, I'd let you.'

'Stop teasing, Sammy. Will you?'

'I think I might.'

'Is that a yes?'

'It's a yes. But you knew that before you asked. Now away you go and enjoy your holiday - send me a card.'

'I might.'

'Rat. I love you,' and that one caught me with my guard down, right under the chin, and it sent me reeling onto the ropes.

'Must go. See you soon,' I said and fumbled the receiver back on the hook, cursing myself for becoming so awkward with her, and wondering how three words could so quickly turn me back into a gauche schoolboy. And I hadn't even told her that I loved her.

I rang her back. 'I love you,' I said.

'I know that, stupid,' she said, and hung up.

The first package holiday Shona could arrange was a fortnight in Malta, and she flew with me to London and put me on the plane at Gatwick, partly out of concern but mainly to check that I actually went.

I asked her if she wanted to come with me but it wasn't on, because I'd done enough damage to the firm over the past few months and someone had to mind the shop.

Shona had booked me into a modern, comfortable hotel overlooking St Paul's Bay, just a couple of minutes' walk through its gardens and across the road to the seafront.

The resort had grown up around a picturesque fishing village on the north-east coast, and it reminded me a little of Oban with its work-worn boats bobbing in the sea.

I spent most of my time walking around the harbour, stopping off at the dozens of friendly bars and cafes, eating at the local restaurants, resting and exercising my shoulder. The stiffness was going and the scars healing, but it would still catch me unawares every now and again and the pain would make me wince.

I did all the touristy things, went on trips around the capital, Valletta, took a boat trip to the island of Gozo where I bought a lace shawl for Shona, and cruised around the Blue Grotto, but most of the time I just lay on a towel on one of the huge flat rocks by the sea and turned brown like a lamb chop under a grill.

At the start of the second week the young nephew of the hotel owner came running up and stood over me, blotting the sun from my burning face, bare chested and panting, his cut-off blue jeans several sizes too big and held up with a piece of grubby string knotted at the front.

'Telephone for you,' he gasped. 'Come quickly.'

I gave him a handful of Maltese cents and patted his dark curly hair, jogged with him back to the hotel and took the call at the reception desk.

'Shone,' I said, it couldn't have been anyone else, she was the only person who knew where I was. 'What's wrong?'

The line was crackling and buzzing and it sounded as if she was talking with a mouthful of potato crisps, but I heard her say: 'My God, what have you done? All hell's broken loose here.' And then she explained what had happened, repeating herself when the line got so bad that I couldn't make out what she was saying.

They'd found McKinley first, in a disused warehouse on the Isle of Dogs. He was naked and covered with cigarette burns and quite dead. The little finger of his right hand had been severed with bolt cutters or something, and he'd been kicked and beaten hard enough and long enough to break most of his ribs and his hip.

He'd been chained by the hands to a metal girder running sideways across the warehouse, and his wrists were chafed to the bone where he'd struggled and fought to free himself but there was nothing he could have done because his legs were also chained, to the rusting back axle of a long-scrapped truck and his ankles too were bloody and frayed.

At some point he'd been hit repeatedly with a long metal bar and there were weals across his back and stomach, but they were nothing compared with the patches of burnt flesh where lighted cigarettes had been pushed and gouged into the soft, vulnerable parts of his body.

It had taken him several hours to die, and he must have begged and pleaded for them to stop every second of every minute of every hour because he'd told them everything he knew and he hadn't done anything, he'd been used from the start, and please God why didn't they believe him?

There hadn't been a single thing he could have said to stop them.

Whoever had tortured and killed McKinley caught up with Iwanek two days later in Spain, where he'd rented a villa about half an hour's drive inland from Alicante airport.

It was a white-painted building around a cool courtyard that would normally sleep six people but Iwanek lived there on his own, high on a sun-bleached trill surroundedbygroves of orange trees.

From the side of his private pool he could sit and watch planeloads of pale tourists arriving for their two weeks in nearby Benidorm and then departing with brown skins and suitcases full of sandy clothing and cheap presents.

He drank a lot, invited local girls and holidaymakers back 159 to his villa and his bedroom and began to put out feelers, tentatively probing the market for the briefcase of white powder he'd hidden under one of the flagstones in the kitchen.

There were plenty of wealthy people in the villas around the east coast of Spain, many of them British villains on the run, and he reckoned they'd be keen to buy and he hoped to make contact with dealers in the Benidorm resort.

He thought he would be able to make six figures without trying, but that's not how it worked out, and the middleaged woman who cycled up the hill to cook for him each evening found his body tied to the large oak bed in the main bedroom, spreadeagled like a stranded starfish on a white sandy beach, only the sheet she'd so carefully washed and ironed wasn't white anymore, it was stained with blood and sweat and shit, the flies buzzed around the burns all over his body and the mouth was wide open in a silent scream of agony. When she staggered to the kitchen to get to the phone, she nearly tripped over the stone floor which had been ripped up to get at the hidden drugs.

McKinley's death, macabre as it was, had at first merited only a few paragraphs in the London editions of the nationals, and the discovery of Read's body at Loch Feochan became a seven-day wonder of the 'Police Probe Mystery Slaying' variety, but an enterprising reporter on one of the more sensational tabloid Sundays linked all three murders, cobbled together some spurious background on drugs smuggling between Spain and Britain and the paper splashed it.

The story spread north of the border, the Herald and the Scotsman both following it up and doing extended features on the influx of drugs along the Scottish coastline, and the Daily Record did a colour piece on the men who man the coastal cutters. The media's like that, feeding on itself ad infinitum, one reporter's throwaway line becoming another's page lead.

'What about Laing?' I asked.

'There's no sign of him. Tony thinks he's either been killed as well or gone to ground. Either way he says you'll probably never see him again. What are we going to do?'

'Don't worry,' I said, trying to soothe her. 'It's OK, that's the end of it. It's over.'

'I can't hear you,' she said through the crackling and buzzing. 'Are you still there? Hello? Hello?'

'It's all right,' I shouted, cupping my hand between the receiver and my mouth, trying to focus my voice and the reassurance in it. 'It won't go any further. It can't. Nobody knows I was involved, Shona, and as far as anyone else is concerned the trail stops cold at Laing and Iwanek.

'From what you've said, it looks as if they've got the cocaine back and that's all they wanted. It's over, Shona.'

'I'm frightened, I didn't realize it would end like this. Two people have been murdered, horribly murdered, and you're to blame. What have you done? Was it worth it? Are you proud of yourself?'

She was becoming hysterical now, hyperventilating and I was too far away to help, to hold her until the panic left her. 'Do you want me to come straight back?' I asked. 'I can probably get an earlier flight.'

'No, stay where you are, you need the rest. I'll be all right, I just worked myself up into a panic, that's all. Be careful.'

'There's no need to be careful, don't you understand?' I said. 'It's over, finished. I'll be back in a week anyway. How's David?' I asked, trying to change the subject.

'He's fine, but we're both missing you. Take care.'

'And you. And don't worry, it is finished. I promise. I'll see you soon.'

Then she was gone, my link with home broken, but I couldn't stop smiling as I replaced the receiver because it was over, or at least it soon would be.

I walked down to the harbour and went along to one of the small bars with pretty white tables and blue and white striped umbrellas outside on the pavement. Inside it was cool and in semi-darkness, and I sat on a wooden stool at the corner of the bar furthest from the door and ordered a bottle of champagne. I filled a glass and raised it in front of me, towards the shaft of bright sunlight that sliced through the doorway, spearing the gloom and illuminating a black and white mongrel Iying on the stone floor. The light had a religious look as it poured in, as if I was on hallowed ground, back in the church where I'd said goodbye to both my parents. I nodded towards the doorway.

'Rest easy, Dad, I got the bastards.' I drank to him, and to my mother, then I drank for drinking's sake and then I ordered another bottle. Soon I was laughing out loud and drinking toasts to David, to Shona, to Sammy, to Tony, and to Ronnie Laing, missing believed tortured and killed. They'd catch up with him eventually, if they hadn't already. They wouldn't believe his protestations of innocence any more than they'd have trusted McKinley's version of events. Laing couldn't prove he'd been out of the country because passports aren't stamped for visits to France, a bonus of being in the EEC. Sammy had taken the receipt from the carpark at Heathrow along with anything else that could show Laing had been in France, and Amanda Pearson had long ceased to exist.

His car had been seen near the drugs snatch and the hotel bills in Oban and Glasgow had been paid for with his American Express card, along with a hire car that had been dumped in the hotel carpark. Guilty as charged and sentenced to die by torture, screaming, crying and begging them to stop.

Then I drank to Jim Iwanek, who'd died in agony on a bed in Spain, begging them to leave him alone and telling them everything he knew.

He'd told them where the cocaine was, and he'd told them who I was except that the name I'd given him was Alan Kyle, and before long Kyle would be dead and then the circle would be well and truly closed.

The second week passed quickly. I worked on the tan and spent the afternoons skindiving and I even went waterskiing, the shoulder giving me no problems at all. I managed to get the FT and the Wall Street Journal at a local shop, usually two days late and costing five times the cover price, but I read them from front to back as I lay on the rocks, water lapping at my feet.