The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter (Glasgow Trilogy) (17 page)

He called them up early this morning, told them they needed to have an urgent meeting. Told them that he had worrying news for them. Told them he’d had an urgent call from his accountant
and there were things that needed to be worked out. He worded it to sound like he wasn’t blaming them for anything. His tone made it perfectly obvious that he was. Now he’s at the pub,
and he’s brought Neil Fraser with him, just as a little reminder of how angry he is. Neil is a thug. He’s not one of the more sophisticated hardmen that Peter Jamieson employs. A man
like George Daly, for example, is a hardman with a brain. Reliable and decent. Neil Fraser is a thug. Big muscles, small brain. Big mouth, small words. Big presence to have sitting beside you when
you confront these people. Useful as a warning.

The meeting is everything Young expects it to be. The two men play at being mortified. Two middle-aged Glaswegians, trying to pretend that it’s all the fault of some accountant they hired
to look after the books for them. They assure him, repeatedly, that they’re as angry as he is. If not angrier, in fact. They mutter about making sure their accountant pays the price, all the
time glancing at Fraser. He’s under strict instructions to sit there, keep his mouth shut and look mean. It’s an easy part to play, and he’s playing it better than the pub owners
are playing theirs. Young rounds it off with the warning that he can’t allow this sort of thing to happen again. Nothing against them, of course, but he can’t have his business
mistreated. If it happens again, then he’ll have to take serious action. No word on what that serious action is. All very friendly.

‘We totally understand, John, totally,’ one of them is saying to him. He’s letting them off the hook, not demanding back every penny that was stolen from the Jamieson
organization. They’re grateful for that too. It doesn’t occur to them that the pub’s principal purpose for Young is money laundering, but then it’s not clear that
they’ve yet worked out that he’s laundering drug money through the business. He hopes that if they have realized, they’ll be bright enough to continue to ignore the fact.

‘I feel like we’ve been mugged here,’ the other one’s saying, ‘and by our own accountant. Goes to show, eh, you can’t trust a soul.’

The conversation descends into the usual pit of excessive mock-outrage that you get from people caught with their fingers in the till. John sits and lets them play it out; they’ll feel
better for having said it all. He slowly turns the conversation round to local news. People in a pub hear it all, often before most other people do. Sometimes you find out some very relevant
things. Like this morning.

‘Heard there was a shooting last night. A fellow who comes in here now and then. Drugs. Probably had it coming.’

‘Yeah, who’s that?’ Young’s asking.

‘Name’s Winter. Ah’ve chucked him out of here before, when I thought he was doing a drug deal. Can’t have that. We have a reputation.’

You sure do, Young is thinking to himself. Winter must have refused you a cut. He doesn’t say it, though; no need to antagonize.

‘Got shot, huh?’

‘Aye, in his own home. No surprises, the way he’s been carrying on.’

‘How so?’

‘Been running around like Flash Harry lately. Got himself a wee girlfriend, half his age. Pretty thing, was in here with him once. Stuck up, but pretty. He’s startin’ to dress
young, go to nightclubs, live the flash life, you know. Tryin’ tae keep up with his girl. You got tae act yer age. Must’ve been show-in’ off his money one time too many. Pissed
off the wrong person, or somethin’. Drugs. They all end up dead in the end. Serves ’em right.’

Young leaves them to their moralizing. The chant of the hypocrite. If they threw Winter out of the pub, it was because of money, not drugs. That pub’s been used by dealers over the years
– it’s that sort of pub. The owners turned a blind eye. The dealers cut them in on deals done on their premises. Maybe they give them a little supply of their own to be getting on with
instead of cash. Winter obviously decided not to. His margins were probably too slim to allow for anyone else getting in on the deal. Everything points to the fact that he was struggling.
It’s what made him so attractive to someone wanting to get in on the market. An easy lure. The sort of person that a smart prick like Shug Francis would target.

He’s meeting Jamieson at a flat that Peter owns. Not a company flat, a personal one. Down by the river. Lovely view. Very few people know he owns it. A private little place where he can
indulge himself now and again. They’re sitting in the kitchen, Young tutting that his friend is still in a bathrobe at twenty past eleven. He doesn’t honestly mind. Jamieson’s the
sort of person who needs to relax now and again. Needs the occasional blowout. Can’t function well without it. Does nobody any harm.

‘I hear Lewis Winter was shot dead last night.’

‘Yeah?’ There’s a brief hint of relief in his voice. It’s been dragging on.

‘Apparently. At his house. Don’t know anything else about it. Find out in due course. No word of anyone being caught, anything going wrong. Just talk about it happening, people
saying that Winter had it coming. All talking about him being a dealer. Talking about his younger woman. Talking about him living the high life and attracting the wrong attention.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Jamieson’s nodding. There’s nothing else to say. Until they know more detail, he can show no greater concern than that.

They both know that nothing went wrong with the killing. If it had, that would be what people were talking about. It wouldn’t be a story about Lewis Winter being killed; it would be a
story about Calum MacLean being arrested, with Winter being reduced to an afterthought. A shame for him perhaps, but the perpetrator is more glamorous news than the victim. The victim only gets his
moment in the spotlight when the perpetrator is nowhere to be seen. So it went well. They’re not complacent. They assume it went well because there’s no evidence to the contrary. Time
may change that opinion.

Young leaves Jamieson to his amusements. Call it a day off. Jamieson doesn’t get many. Young gets fewer still, but that’s through choice. He’s built his life around his work
– there’s little else to do with his time. Holidays are of no interest to him. The things that tend to occupy so much of Peter’s spare time hold little interest, either. No
interest in golf or horse racing or even snooker. He plays only because Peter insists on having someone to play against. So life becomes work, work becomes life. And he loves it. It continually
thrills him. It tests him every single day. It tests his judgement. It tests his intellect. It tests his nerve. It may have its downsides, but they are hugely outweighed by the good, in his
mind.

A DC has been given the job of assessing the possibility of claiming Winter’s assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act. It’s become a big deal in the force –
getting as much as you can from the criminal. An extra punishment. A chance to raise more money. Tough to get anything from a dead guy, though. Rarely happens. Usually only comes from the living
who have been convicted, and even then you rarely get as much as you should. You have to be able to prove the link between the asset and the crime. Greig knows that his suited colleagues struggle
to do that, and knows they’ll struggle in this case. There was nothing at the house to prove that Winter paid for his assets through crime, and Cope won’t be stupid enough to hand it to
them on a plate.

The DC’s name is McGowan. Greig’s searching his memory. Little fat guy. Middle-aged. Decent fellow. Easy to talk to. Greig will keep an eye on the situation, but he doesn’t
expect to have to do anything about it. Eventually everything will be handed over to Cope, presuming that nobody else has been named in a will, and he’ll get his cut. Money for nothing. Might
not be nothing. If McGowan gets excited about something and tries to make a grab at Winter’s belongings, then he’ll have to step in. A quiet word.

Now he has a meeting with the DI in charge of the day-to-day investigation into the Winter murder. The DCI will be looking over his shoulder, acting as the face of the investigation, if it comes
to that, but most of the donkey work will be done by Fisher. Fisher hates him. Greig knows it. Fisher doesn’t make much of an effort to hide it. Strange, because they have a lot in common.
Both coppers who’ve made sacrifices for the job. Both coppers who work harder and longer than most others. Okay, Greig is thinking, maybe Fisher doesn’t have his sense of realism. That
comes from being on the streets. You learn what can and can’t be done. You lose the fantasy that all crimes can be solved, all criminals stopped. You learn to take advantage when the time is
right. That’s not bad policing. Bad policing is doing nothing at all. Bad policing is trying to do things that you know can’t be done.

Fisher is waiting for him, along with Marcus Matheson, the young cop he was on duty with last night. They’re upstairs, sitting at Fisher’s desk in the open-plan office. Greig says
hello to a couple of the other detectives as he makes his way across to them. He’s been around the station a long time. He’s part of the furniture. There’s nobody there that he
hasn’t worked with on some case or other over the years. They all know him. He knows what most of them think of him. You don’t last as long as he has without being self-aware. Some
recoil from him. Some are convinced that he’s part of the problem rather than the solution. Others are smarter.

Greig sits at the table alongside the young plod. He can see the look in the detective’s eyes; he knows what Fisher is thinking: why the hell do they put impressionable young coppers under
the wing of a disgusting crook like Paul Greig? They do it, Greig is thinking, because not everyone is as naive as you are. Not everyone believes that you have to be an angel to fight crime. People
understand that the first big step in beating the criminals is understanding them. You have to know who they are. You have to know where they live and work. You have to have a feel for the
environment. A hard thing to teach. Greig is a good teacher, and the people who matter know it.

‘So you two were first on the scene at the Winter house. Tell me about it.’ Fisher leans back in his chair. He’s been short with them, but they won’t care. A lot of
people think he’s a prick, and he doesn’t care. They know he’s a good copper. They know he’s honest and straightforward.

‘Not a lot to tell,’ Matheson’s saying. ‘We get there, the door is open, lock broken. We go in. The girl is downstairs, on the phone to the operator. She hangs up, comes
over. She was obviously terrified, maybe thought we were more trouble. You could see the relief when she saw us.’

The first and only report of the shooting came from Zara Cope. None of the neighbours heard it. Apparently.

‘Then what?’ Fisher’s asking.

‘I went upstairs to look around, PC Greig stayed downstairs with the witness. I went up, looked in a couple of doors before I found the bedroom. Opened the door. Smelled the urine. Put on
the light.’

‘You put on the light?’ Fisher interrupts.

‘Yeah, I put on the light. It was pitch-black in there.’

So the killer did stop to put the light off on his way out. He wasn’t sure why that should matter to him, but it did. A real pro. The sort you rarely catch. The forensic team were already
checking prints they’d found at the house, but Cope had told them that they had a lot of people round to the house. Friends. There had been one friend round that day. Worth checking.

Fisher pauses for a few seconds, thinking about it. Thinking about how the killer is unlikely to have gone bare-handed, but you never know what you might get.

‘That important?’ Greig’s asking him, deliberately breaking his train of thought.

‘He wasn’t killed in the dark. Guy didn’t turn up with night-goggles on. The guy had to put the light on to see Winter. Then he put it off again on the way out. How did you
find the witness?’

‘She was in shock,’ Greig’s saying. ‘Obviously. Terrified out of her wits, I’d say.’

‘Uh-huh. She didn’t say anything in those first few minutes – anything interesting?’

‘She hardly said anything at all. What she said was just gratitude that someone was there.’

How Fisher wished that Matheson were there by himself. He could talk properly then. He wouldn’t have to put up with Greig interrupting him all the time. Fisher would be able to take the
young cop aside and get a real sense of the atmosphere in the house. Get a sense of Cope’s attitude. It might also be interesting to know how she and Greig interacted.

‘You know that nothing was found at the house,’ Fisher is saying.

‘Nothing like?’ Greig’s asking.

‘No drugs. Little money. Nothing of any great value in proving that Lewis Winter was a drug dealer. We all know he was. Did Zara Cope show any worry about hiding anything? Did she mention
anything?’

‘Not a thing,’ Greig says.

Fisher’s thinking again. Apparently, Greig’s thinking to himself, Fisher can’t think and keep a conversation going at the same time. Has to stop and make a show of it.

‘How far away were you when you got the call for the shooting? How long did it take you to get to the house?’

‘Four, five minutes,’ Matheson says with a shrug.

If he could find some discrepancy. He knows Cope was on the phone to the operator the whole time. She was still talking to the operator when these two arrived at the house. But how long did she
have before she called? That’s the crucial point. Surely one of the neighbours heard the gunshot. If just one of them could put a time on it.

Fisher thanks them for coming up, lets them go on their way. Greig isn’t sure what the hell it was all for – the detective didn’t gain anything from it. Sometimes you can just
tell the way a case is going to go. Unless Fisher can find some sort of dead-cert evidence that points to Winter being in a feud with someone, this is already going nowhere. To Greig’s
trained instincts, it has the distinct whiff of an investigation that’s decomposing faster than the victim. No evidence found at the scene that can ID the culprits. No eyewitness who can ID
the culprit. No evidence to say why the murder took place. All that exists so far is conjecture about Winter being a dealer. He was a dealer, but knowing why someone might want to kill him
doesn’t tell you who did it. It’s not impossible that Fisher might catch the people who did it, but it’s already looking less than fifty-fifty.