A Cold Killing (Rosie Gilmour) (7 page)

Rosie had nodded, as if she knew all this. She didn’t want to admit that her knowledge of Eastern Europe didn’t go much deeper than what she had seen years ago on the vests of athletes of the GDR (German Democratic Republic) during the Olympics, and it had often been hard to distinguish the men from the women. She recalled shot-putters with arms like hams who walked like John Wayne, and how everyone had looked miserable, even when they won a gold medal.

‘So was that only time you went on a field trip like that?’

‘Yes. When we got back I was with Tom only one more night, and it was then that I asked him straight out about Katya. He was furious. He told me to mind my own business, that anything he did was nothing to do with me. He became completely indifferent to me after that. But I was in love with him. Long before anything ever happened between us he had made me feel like I was the only woman in the world. I never saw him after we left university, and hadn’t heard anything about him in years, because I moved away. But when I read about his murder in the newspaper it took the feet from me. I cried all day. It was like a part of my life – which I realize now was part of me growing up – like part of my life had been ripped away. He was such a big influence in so many people’s lives.’

Ruby came off the slip road for Glasgow Airport and drove to the car-rental place, where she dumped the car and quickly dealt with the paperwork. She’d booked it over the phone with a credit card in one of several aliases she’d used in recent years as she travelled the world hiding Rab Jackson’s money in offshore accounts from Jersey to the Cayman Islands. She had three different passports for that kind of travel, and two she kept for her own personal use. She couldn’t believe how easy it was to defraud her way around banks, hotels and airlines. Money opened every door – especially in banks, where the suits were only vaguely interested in where it came from, as long as you had stacks of it and were lodging it with them. She had safety-deposit boxes in banks from Amsterdam to Paris to Malaga, where she kept wedges of cash in sterling for her own use, just in case the shit ever hit the fan. Which it just had.

She crossed the car park to the taxi rank and headed for the city, asking the driver to drop her in Hyndland Road, close to where her flat was. Ruby had bought the two-bedroom flat in Dudley Drive three years ago, working on the basis that the West End wasn’t the kind of place you ran into the lowlifes employed by Jackson’s prodigy, Tony Devlin. The foot soldiers lived in the high-rise flats or the run-down council-housing schemes like Drumchapel or Possilpark or Maryhill, where they were handy for their smackhead customers queuing at the door morning, noon and night. Their dens were kitted out with slick TVs, stereos, all mod cons, their wardrobes bulging with designer clothes – all of it blagged from shoplifters and fraudsters. And they lived side by side with decent, ordinary families who busted a gut to try to keep their children out of the clutches of the drug dealers, gangsters and loan sharks who had most of the neighbourhood on the end of a debt that could never be repaid. The lieutenants, slightly higher up the food chain, would be holed up in some of the shiny new city-centre developments, either in the Merchant City or downtown, overlooking the River Clyde, bought by their bosses with laundered drug money and rented to them for next to nothing but on paper for several hundred a month. They were the guys who did anything they were told, organized shootings, beatings or slashings for unpaid drug debts. They’d be used to travel up and down to Manchester, Liverpool or London, making drops or picking up drugs in bulk. The chances of seeing any of this bunch in Dudley Drive, with its neat tenement flats side by side in uniform anonymity was minimal. You seldom saw your neighbours and nobody asked any questions. That was perfect for Ruby.

She walked briskly down the street and into the second-floor flat. It felt good to enter the broad hallway and go into the living room, with its old wooden floors and Rennie Mackintosh replica fireplace, and its big, solid bay window. This was the closest thing she’d ever had to a home since she was a kid. But there were no real signs of herself in it – except for one print of two small sun-burnished children on a beach somewhere in Ireland. She’d bought it years ago because it reminded her of happy days with Judy and her mother. She went into the kitchen and turned on the cold-water tap, let it run for a while, then took a glass out of the cupboard and drank it, enjoying the taste of the pure Scottish water she missed when living abroad. She filled the kettle and switched it on, then went down the hallway and into her bedroom. She sat on the king-size bed and opened the wardrobe doors, running her hand over the half a dozen blouses, tops and jackets on hangers. Seven or eight pairs of shoes. This was just about all she had. A wave of loneliness washed over her. Pick it up, she told herself. No more of that shit. She closed the wardrobe doors.

*

Ruby flopped on to the big sofa with her feet up on the coffee table and opened her laptop. She signed into one of her email addresses and it pinged with two new emails. She knew who it would be even before she opened it, and she cursed herself for ever giving her email to Tony Devlin. He’d have been bombarding her with messages on her regular email address – the one she used for business in Spain and the one most people had for her. But she should have kept her private one to herself. It was careless. She opened the email and read it:

It had been sent at eight o’clock this morning, probably not long after Tony got word of Malky Cameron’s surprise barbecue. Ruby knew Tony would also have been calling her mobile within hours of her driving away from Rab Jackson’s villa, but she’d tossed both her phones into the sea near Marbella before driving north. She hadn’t checked her emails – she didn’t need to. She knew everyone would be trying to reach her.

She sat back, staring at the high ceiling, suddenly transfixed by a spider spreading its web further across the cornicing so that the whole side of the ceiling would end up as one big web, where it could lie in wait, knowing that once its prey got tangled up, there was no way out. It wasn’t much different from the web she’d just cut herself out of. The difference for her was that she’d walked into it six years ago with her eyes wide open, knowing that once she was in, there might be no way out. She pictured Tony’s face, fired up with barely contained anger, telling the arseholes he surrounded himself with that everything was under control now that he was in charge. She knew what a chillingly evil bastard he could be if anyone double-crossed him. She’d seen him shoot one of his men in the chest for trying to pull a stroke with a delivery of coke from London. It was brutal and ruthless, and he’d insisted Ruby remain in the room while he dealt with what he called ‘a bit of business’ with one of the lads who had fucked up. It was the first time she’d seen anyone executed, and she had to hold on to every scrap of her strength not to faint from the shock as the blood bubbled out of the guy’s chest when he shot him. The last thing she could show was weakness. Tony was Jackson’s prodigy. When they’d left the office that night he’d taken her to dinner, and he had talked as though nothing had happened. Afterwards they went to his flat, where he made love to her for the first time. That was a shock in itself – the sex had been tender, caring – no sign of the cold-blooded killer he’d been two hours earlier. Ruby had been expecting a hungry, wild encounter, bordering on brutal. And part of her – the dangerous, reckless side she had, which she knew would never allow her to be a normal person – had been looking forward to it. Instead, he’d kissed every part of her, gently asked her permission before he entered her, and afterwards held her for a long time as if she were a baby, while she stroked his back until he fell asleep. A complete psychopath, Ruby had thought as she lay awake, the rest of the night. She realized then her biggest mistake was to have gone anywhere outside of the business relationship she’d had with him. On the occasions they had met over the last three years on the Costa del Sol, she took care of Rab Jackson’s money – laundered it through businesses, investments, construction companies, as well as charities in UK and abroad.

Ruby looked up at the ceiling again. The spider had now spread its little empire right across to the other side. Her mind flashed back to the café at King’s Cross and the moment the gun was fired at the old guy’s head. She could still see his shocked expression as he slipped down the chair and onto the floor. And then the grief, panic and frustration of his friend. She felt sorry for them. Then she remembered the look on the sandy-haired guy’s face as he went into his pocket and passed a packet over to his friend. Those bastard Eastern Europeans hoodlums must have shot him for a reason. The newspapers had been full of speculation. But she had that piece of paper, with the name of some company or other on it. She fished it out of her handbag. J B Solutions. She keyed it into her laptop and hit the search key.

Half an hour later Ruby picked up the two newspapers she’d taken from the café in Judy’s care home. It had crossed her mind yesterday to make a call to the papers, just throw them a line about the company. But she’d worried they might end up tracking her down. What the fuck did she care anyway? Why bother? She could help the papers, but what would she get in return? She didn’t need the money. But maybe she could do something for the first time that wasn’t about her. All her grown-up life had been about survival. And once she’d tracked Judy down, she built everything around her sister, squirrelling away enough money to make her life better, dreaming that one day Judy would come back to her. Then, ultimately, her life was about retribution. But that was finished now.

She picked up the
Sun
and flicked through the story, then the
Post
. She found the news-desk phone number at the bottom of the back page and dialled it. She asked for Rosie Gilmour, the name of the journalist under the headline, but when she was put through it was a young man’s voice. She told him she needed to talk to Rosie regarding the murder of the university lecturer, and she could hear the voice perk up. Rosie would be in later, he said, but he could take the information. When he seemed reluctant to give out Rosie’s mobile number, she told him to forget it and he quickly reeled the number off. Ruby hung up then punched the numbers into her phone, in the impulsive, instinctive way she’d been doing things all her life.

‘Hello. Is that Rosie Gilmour?’

‘Who’s this? Your number didn’t come up.’

‘Never mind who it is. Am I talking to Rosie Gilmour?’

‘Yes, you are. What can I do for you?’

Ruby paused and took a breath. She wanted to ask what the fuck were they playing at, suggesting the woman who left the café was in any way involved with the men who did the shooting. Where was the fucking evidence? She tightened her stomach to restrain herself.

‘Hello? You still there?’

‘Yeah.’ Ruby cleared her throat. ‘Well, what you can do for me is stop saying in the paper that the mystery woman who left the café after that shooting at King’s Cross may be linked to the murder of that old university guy. Because it’s total shite.’

Silence.

‘Right. And how do you know this?’

Silence.

‘Because it was me.’

Silence.

‘You’re the woman who was in the café? Seriously?’

‘Why? Have you had a lot of women phoning you up and telling you they were in the café?’ She knew she sounded sarcastic.

‘Actually, no. But are you really that woman?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can we meet?’

Silence.

‘I’ve got information you might want. About the men who did it.’

‘Listen. Can we meet? I don’t like doing things over the phone.’

‘J B Solutions,’ Ruby said. ‘If you’re smart, look into them.’

‘J B Solutions? I’d really like to talk to you. No names, no pack drill.’

‘J B Solutions. Find them. Then maybe we can talk.’

‘I’ll make sure my newspaper doesn’t in any way relate you to the shootings in future articles. You have my word on that. But I’d really like to meet. Can I get your number?’

‘No. I’ll call you.’ Ruby hung up.

It was nearly midday by the time Rosie left the office and made her way up to the West End to doorstep Gerard Hawkins. She’d briefed McGuire about her talk with Mari, and he’d agreed with her that they wouldn’t write it as a story but would play their cards close to their chest. It was a fantastic snapshot into Mahoney’s life, and right now it was all they had to go on. Declan had dug up only a few old colleagues who’d said nothing other than that Mahoney was a brilliantly committed individual and a gifted teacher who would be sorely missed. Mari’s story had revealed a little of who he was, and if Mahoney had been involved with a woman in East Berlin, it opened up all sorts of possibilities.

McGuire was already excited about the murder of Malky Cameron in his garage last night. Declan had been dispatched to Ayrshire, where the police had set up an incident room in the village close to Cameron’s home. Rosie could catch up with that later, but right now her priority was Hawkins, and she steeled herself for a tough doorstep.

Hawkins lived a stone’s throw from Glasgow University, where he’d lectured for more than thirty years before retiring. The electoral register had him at his home address for the past twenty-three years. Rosie guessed he didn’t want to move too far from where his life was, to stay within sight of the spires and cloisters of the ancient university. The register also said he lived alone, and Declan’s background checks hadn’t thrown up a wife.

She climbed the steps to his front door, imagining some clichéd crusty old pipe-smoking lecturer in a tweed jacket with elbow patches sipping claret in a dimly lit, book-lined living room. She rang the doorbell and waited. Nothing. She glanced over her shoulder – no sign of other hacks – then she rang again. Still nothing. Automatically, she bent down and looked through the letterbox, hoping some old West End snob didn’t call the cops to say she was snooping. But, in this neck of the woods, you’d be more likely to be lynched for being from the tabloids than for breaking and entering. Rosie stood for a few moments then in her peripheral vision she caught sight of a curtain twitching on the bay window of the ground-floor flat. She waited, then heard movement in the hallway. The sound of bolts being clicked and slid back, and a key being turned. The door opened just enough for her to see the face behind the chain.

‘Gerard Hawkins?’ Rosie put on her most expressive keen but sympathetic face.

She could see blue eyes, greying hair and a fresh face – nothing like she’d imagined. His eyes were a bloodshot and a little puffy.

‘Wh— what? Who are you, please?’

‘I’m Rosie Gilmour, Mr Hawkins. I’m from the
Post
.’

She heard him take a deep breath.

‘I’ve got nothing to say.’

‘But Mr Hawkins . . . I know you were a very close friend of Tom Mahoney all your life. I’m really sorry to intrude, but I’m investigating his murder.’

‘The police are investigating Tom’s murder. Leave it to them.’

‘Are they? Are they really investigating? Are you sure?’ Rosie took a bit of a flyer, hoping for a reaction.

Silence.

‘Look. What on earth do you expect me to say?’ He looked drained. ‘Tom was my closest friend. I lov— We were friends for forty years. He was a brilliant individual . . . and now he’s been murdered. I’m . . . heartbr— I’m devastated. I knew him all my life . . .’

His voice trailed off. Rosie’s stomach tightened. He looked vulnerable, broken. She might get lucky.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Hawkins. Really sorry.’ Rosie locked her eyes on his for a couple of seconds. ‘It’s just that . . . well, the police are not saying very much at all. Of course they’ll be investigating the murder, but they’re putting nothing out to the newspapers and, if I’m honest, that makes us suspicious.’

Silence.

‘Suspicious of what?’

‘That somehow they are thinking it might go away.’ Another flyer.

Hawkins eyes blinked twice, thick, dark eyelashes emphasizing the blue.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I’m not sure. But I don’t think they’re making this as big an issue as it should be.’ She paused, cleared her throat. ‘Tom Mahoney was a hugely respected figure within the education system here. He was a known expert in Eastern European Studies, revered all over the UK and abroad. Yet to me, and to my editor, it doesn’t look like the police are giving his murder any kind of priority. To tell the truth, I’ve seen them making more of an attempt to highlight a drug dealer or a routine killing. But this was very different . . . as you know. This . . . this was an execution.’

He gazed at Rosie, his expression somewhere between frustration and grief.

‘That’s exactly what it was . . . an execution.’ His voice was barely audible.

‘Can I come in and talk to you, Mr Hawkins?’

He looked through her and didn’t speak.

Rosie swallowed. She had one shot left.

‘Look, Mr Hawkins. I know about Katya.’

He couldn’t have been any more startled if she’d poked him with a cattle prod. He frowned, searching her face. Then he pulled back the chain and opened the door.

‘Come in.’

Game on. Rosie hoped the shock didn’t register on her face. She’d envisaged three kinds of knockbacks on this doorstep – no answer, the door slammed in her face, or, at best, a single sentence that would perhaps make an inroad for the future. But here she was following Gerard Hawkins into the stained-glass vestibule, where he stood for a couple of seconds, his eyes flicking a glance up and down her before he closed the door behind them. Then he walked along the wooden hallway without uttering a word. Rosie stepped softly behind him, searching for an appropriate opening line. She scanned the array of framed photographs hanging crookedly on the walls – snapshots of his life – and she clocked a black-and-white photograph of two very handsome young men who had to be him and Mahoney a lifetime ago. They looked like matinee idols from some old movie, Hawkins with a cigarette hanging lazily from his lips and a panama hat pushed back on his head. The other young man, the double of Mahoney’s son, who she’d encountered on the family doorstep last night, had his arm around the shoulder of his friend. The caption, in pencil behind the glass, read ‘East Berlin, 1966’.

‘Is this you and Tom?’ Rosie asked, as respectfully as she could.

He stopped in his tracks and turned his body to face her, his eyes resting fleetingly on the photograph.

‘Yes,’ he nodded, his lips twitching as he tried to find a smile.

He looked so distraught it crossed Rosie’s mind that they might have been lovers.

Hawkins spoke without turning around.

‘I loved Tom. But we weren’t lovers,’ he said abruptly, as though he’d read her thoughts.

‘Oh . . . I wasn’t . . .’ She knew she sounded flustered. ‘I mean, you look like a couple of carefree student mates.’

He stopped at the entrance to the living room and turned to her. This time he did smile, as though he was remembering something.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘We were so close at that time that a lot of people used to think we were together.’ He gazed in the direction of the window. ‘If only . . .’ Again, his voice trailed off.

‘Oh.’ Rosie berated herself for not being able to think of something else to say.

Hawkins motioned her to the sofa, while he stood behind a crimson leather armchair next to the unlit open fire.

‘I’ve just made some tea. Would you like a cup?’

‘Yes, please, I would, thanks,’ Rosie replied, grateful and a little surprised he was being this cooperative. ‘Black, please, no sugar.’

He disappeared out of the room, and she could hear the clatter of crockery as she gave the place the once-over. It looked like it had been put together by interior designers, all tasteful decor, bright but not over the top, stylish prints and curtains, but it still had a traditional feel to it. It was neat, too neat for a man, but it felt lived in. He returned with two mugs of tea.

‘I’m afraid I’ve got no biscuits,’ he said apologetically, handing her a red mug. ‘I haven’t been able to go anywhere really since I . . . since I came back up from London.’

Rosie gave him a sympathetic nod.

‘I’ve been on a diet for ten years anyway, so you’re doing me a favour . . . Ger—’ She paused. ‘Can I call you Gerard?’

‘Of course.’ He nodded.

There was a little awkward moment as Rosie wondered if he was going to speak first, and when he didn’t she decided to start with a tactful question.

‘Gerard, have the police given you any kind of motive for or idea about why Tom was targeted in this way?’

He said nothing, sipped his tea then looked at her.

‘They don’t have to. And, anyway, I don’t think the investigating officers have any idea what is going on.’

Rosie gave him a confused look.

He put his mug down on the table and took a deep breath then let it out slowly, examining the backs of his hands and picking at his fingernails, his eyes blinking several times as though he were afraid of what he was about to say but was at the same time bursting to say it.

‘Tom was assassinated, which we all know, Rosie. But . . . he was executed for a reason.’

He went silent, either for effect, or because he was choosing his words carefully. Rosie waited, but he said nothing.

‘You mean, like the Eastern Europeans had been tracking him or something?’

‘Who knows for sure? How else would these men know we were in that café at that time? But there is more to it than that.’ He sat forward, clasping his hands, and looked Rosie in the eye. ‘Look. The only reason I let you in here is because you mentioned you knew about Katya.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘What exactly do you know? Who have you spoken to?’

‘Well . . .’ Rosie swallowed, knowing she’d over-egged the pudding with her claim on the doorstep. ‘I spoke to a former student. Er . . . I don’t want to say who it is, Gerard, as I don’t want to betray her trust. But she did talk to me, and it was she who told me about Katya.’

‘Mari.’ He looked through her.

Rosie didn’t answer and tried not to blink.

He half smiled. ‘Ah Mari. Poor, beautiful, vivacious Mari. She fell for Tom the way everyone did – including me, if I’m honest. But then he met Katya and that was that, I’m afraid. Nothing was ever the same again.’

Rosie didn’t really know where this was going, but she hoped he hadn’t let her into his house so he could talk to her about Mahoney’s philandering.

‘But who is Katya exactly?’ Rosie asked.

Silence. Then Hawkins spoke.

‘Therein lies the story, Rosie.’

Rosie waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. She felt a little stab of impatience.

‘Was Tom Mahoney a spy?’

The question hung in the stillness of the room and Hawkins stared at the floor for so long Rosie glanced down in case there was something there. Then he raised his eyes slowly and looked at her.

‘Yes. He was.’

‘Really?’ Rosie hoped she didn’t sound as excited as she was. Silence again. He looked as though he was waiting for her to say more. She ventured, ‘I’ve been given information through a contact in London, suggesting that he was a spy. And that’s the truth, Gerard. So . . . so why do you think he was murdered?’

Hawkins sighed, shaking his head, and didn’t speak for few seconds.

‘Because he was about to blow the whistle. He was about to go to the media over what happened to Katya. About everything. He was going to blow it all sky high.’ He picked up his mug and sipped from it. ‘The government couldn’t risk that.’

A little wave of excitement flipped across Rosie’s stomach. She could see this on the front page.

‘Are you saying he was assassinated on the orders of the government?’

Even saying it out loud sounded ridiculous.

‘Well, we’ll never prove that of course.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Or will we? Will you ever prove that?’

‘Not unless someone can give me a lot more than a claim that the government murdered him.’

Hawkins stood up and crossed the room. He stared out of the window for a second, his back to Rosie. Then he turned around.

‘Minutes before Tom was gunned down in that café he handed me a package across the table. He knew they were on to him – told me himself . . . Those was his exact words: “They’re on to me, Gerard” . . . and he knew he would be next.’ He shook his head. ‘He entrusted the package to me. And I promised I wouldn’t let him down.’

‘Who was on to him, Gerard? Who was going to get rid of him?’

‘MI6, of course. They couldn’t risk leaving him as the only loose end. He had too much information.’

‘MI6? You’re saying they had him killed by these Eastern European guys?’

‘Yes . . . Or it was made to look that way. I don’t know.’

Rosie struggled for something to say next. She was choking to ask where the package was, but this was going so well – if a little off the wall – she had to be patient.

‘Are you going to tell me all about this, Gerard?’

‘What will you do with it if I do? Will you and your newspaper publish the story or will they be got at by the powers that be? There are dark forces at work here.’

Christ, Rosie thought. She could hear McGuire asking her was this guy wearing a straitjacket when he told her all this.

‘That’s not how my newspaper works,’ Rosie said, looking him in the eye. ‘My editor is very courageous when it comes to stories involving the establishment. We don’t bow to people – not government, not cops, not gangsters.’ She sat up straight and put her mug on the table. ‘If we can get a story that is nailed down and passed by our lawyers, then we will publish. But I need a lot more than just your word and what you’ve just said. I’ll need the information that Tom gave you. I’ll need that level of proof.’ She took a breath. ‘Look, Gerard, I’m not going to mess you around, but I can tell you now that without anything material you have that can help prove this, then Tom’s murder will go down as a random shooting by some Eastern European gangsters. End of story. So if we’re going to take this forward – and I really want to – then I need your help.’

They sat in silence for what seemed like an age, the ticking clock on the mantelpiece keeping time with Rosie’s beating heart. Gerard played with a ring on his finger, twisting and turning it, the light from the window catching the garnet set in gold. Rosie was trying not to take a deep breath, watching and waiting.