The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter (Glasgow Trilogy) (3 page)

He had met Lewis Winter through a mutual friend. They were at a party where Winter didn’t belong. He was there with his much younger girlfriend. It was only three or four months ago, and
someone had introduced them for reasons inexplicable to Calum. Perhaps because they were the only two criminals the mutual friend knew, and he thought they would get along. Winter is into his
mid-forties. He has grey hair around the temples; he’s struggling to keep his weight down. He looked as though he had just lost. He isn’t a man for a party. He isn’t a man blessed
with great success. If he’s the subject of this conversation, then things aren’t liable to get any better for him.

‘Winter’s become a problem. The job would be for you to deal with him.’

Calum nods. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Surprising that Winter should have become a problem to a man like Jamieson. Winter is small-time, always has been. He is a man cursed. Every
success was swiftly followed by a crushing failure. Twenty-five years of it, no sign of a change.

‘Sounds simple. Anything I should know?’

Jamieson shakes his head briefly, a slight shrug of the shoulders. ‘Anything you think you should know?’

A key distinction to make. What you should know is what you need to know, not what you want to know. You want to know why Jamieson plans to murder this man. You don’t need to know that.
Lewis Winter is a long-term, small-time drug dealer. Jamieson is involved in many facets of criminal life, drug dealing included. Lewis Winter steps on Peter Jamieson’s toes. If
Jamieson’s not seen to take action, then he could look weak. Perception is vital. The things you need to know relate only to your ability to do the job well, and to the consequences. You need
to know if there’s anything hidden that could catch you out; if your target has friends or contacts who might catch you up. Only what will help you do the job. Only what will help you live
with the consequences.

‘Does he have any sort of security that I should know about?’

Not a question he would usually ask about Lewis Winter. Winter is small-time, he has no security. At least none to speak of. He has no bodyguards. He has no hangers-on who would be capable of
causing trouble.

‘He might own a dog, that would be about it,’ Jamieson shrugs.

‘He doesn’t,’ Young chips in from the side, his first contribution.

‘There you go,’ Jamieson smiles. ‘He’s living with his girlfriend now, that wee trollop.’

‘Zara Cope,’ Young says. ‘A slut, but a smart one.’

‘A smart slut,’ Jamieson is saying with a smile and a shake of the head, ‘those are the ones. Man, those are the ones. You know she had a kid with Nate Colgan six or seven
years ago,’ he’s saying to Calum.

‘Does the kid live with them?’ Calum’s asking, always worried about that scenario.

‘Nah, with the grandparents.’

Nate Colgan. It’s a name that conjures images that are better left unseen. A hardman. Not a caricature of a hardman. Not someone who walks around flexing muscles, covered in tattoos,
playing the role of the angry man. A real hardman. A man that people like Jamieson use, but treat with care. A man you would all do very well to avoid upsetting. A man Calum is worried about
upsetting. He met him once. Colgan seemed surly. When he spoke, he was surprisingly intelligent. Not unpredictable. Not an explosion of anger for no good reason. That’s not hard. That’s
crazy. Hard is people knowing what you’re going to do to them and being unable to stop you. Calum didn’t know what the relationship between Colgan and Cope was these days. Better to
avoid her, if possible.

A thought occurs.

‘Is Winter still working alone these days?’ Calum asks.

This matters. Winter alone means killing Winter. Winter in an organization means killing Winter and paying for it later. People can’t be seen to be weak.

Jamieson is glancing across at Young. Calum can’t see the response.

‘As far as we know,’ Jamieson begins, ‘he’s still working alone. He’s been making moves in my areas, though, and not being subtle about it. Like he’s trying
to piss me off. Like he knows he has backup. I don’t think he does. Yet. I think he will. I want to get him before he gets backup.’

That’s as much as Calum should know. No more detail. No word on who the backup is, how close it might be. It hints at something bigger, though. An ugly hint.

A nod of the head accepts the job. No shake of the hand, not necessary. This isn’t a gentleman’s club, after all. This isn’t a gentleman’s agreement. This is business.
Calum has agreed to it. If he fails, then he will probably be punished. Not killed. If you kill a man for failure, who else will want to work for you? You ostracize him, though. You make life
tough. Calum knows this. He’s seen it happen to others. It’s happened to talented people. Mostly it happens to the loudmouths, to the idiots who think they can do the job, but
can’t. It’s easy to kill a man. It’s hard to kill a man well. People who do it well know this. People who do it badly find out the hard way. The hard way has consequences. Even
the talented must be wary of that fact.

Jamieson is sitting in the chair, watching the door close behind Calum. Young is still sitting on the couch to his right, sitting in silence. Jamieson is a man of definite
action. He makes the call to have a man killed, and he turns back to his horses, or his golf, or whatever hobby is occupying his attention today. Only, today, he doesn’t. Today he sits
tapping the table, still looking at the closed door.

‘He’s got a lot of talent, that boy,’ he says softly. ‘Something about him I’m not sure of.’

‘He’s just socially awkward,’ Young shrugs, ‘that’s his way. Smarter than your average bear.’

‘Aye,’ Jamieson nods, ‘that’s a fact. Frank told me that, first day he met him. Said the boy was smart, said he had the guts for it too.’

Courage and intelligence are worth little alone. It’s why Jamieson and Young work together, and always will. It’s why so many people are almost good at what they do. They have one or
the other. A stupid person can have enough courage to make them useful in this industry. A smart person can do a lot. To be great, you must have both. You have to know when to rely on your brain
and when to rely on your guts. Some people have enough of both to keep themselves free and working for decades. Sometimes even people with an abundance of both make a mistake. One mistake. One
simple, sloppy mistake. Twenty years in jail. Unemployable thereafter. The smartest of all know not to take their brains for granted.

‘You worried about the job?’ Young’s asking him. It’s rare to see Jamieson being uncertain about a job.

Jamieson shrugs. ‘I don’t care how good the boy is – this is the sort of job that can trip him up. Trust me. I ain’t saying he can’t do it. I ain’t saying
he’ll botch it, not at all. He’s the best we can get for the job. But these are the ones. Look at it. We don’t know what we’re sending him into. We don’t know what
Winter’s got.’

He says it reluctantly, because he knows that it’s an implied insult towards his friend. It’s always Young’s role to plan the job. It’s Young’s role to know what
they are likely to be up against. They think they know, but they can’t be certain.

Young sighs impatiently. They’ve been over this before. Lewis Winter is now working with others. He’s moving into new territory because he believes he can get away with it.
He’s making himself more high-profile because he needs to, if he’s going to attract the new business he wants. They know that he’s becoming a danger to them. They know that he has
bigger people behind him. Or that he will have. They aren’t there yet. There’s a promise of support. So you get rid of him before the promise is realized. It makes sense. It’s
logical to Young. He’s justified it to himself. It’s necessary to kill Lewis Winter. Now Jamieson is questioning.

‘He has no support yet. I’ve been having him watched. The only contact he has is over the phone. There’s no extra security. Not yet. We know that. The boy himself will check.
He won’t just blaze in there. He’s smart.’

Jamieson nods his head. All of that is true. ‘The boy will follow him. So long as he doesn’t follow him so long that the support arrives.’

‘He won’t have to worry about Winter’s new friends. We have to worry about them. He doesn’t. He has to worry about the girlfriend. Maybe he has to worry about one or two
dick-head hangers-on.’

Jamieson smiles and nods. There are always hangers-on, people who want to be a part of it. They find a sop like Winter and attach themselves to him, try to bleed him dry.

‘What about that wee gold-digger?’

The gold-digger. There are plenty of them floating around too. Always have been, always will be. No worse than the hangers-on, and in many ways more fun. The same aim: bleed you dry and move on.
Most gold-diggers are of no consequence. You enjoy their company, you give them a little something and then you move them quietly along. Some are more dangerous. Some are harder to get rid of. Zara
Cope has always been one of those. A smart girl, one who knows how to make it last. One who knows how to get more than money. She knows how to get control. She’s been with Winter for a while
now, moved in with him. She’s always with him, pulling the invisible strings. She has her claws in deep, and she will surely be there when Winter expires.

Young’s shrugging. ‘He’ll judge how to deal with her. He’s smart enough to work it out.’

‘Hope he doesn’t kill her,’ Jamieson says quietly, ‘I wouldn’t want to piss off Colgan.’

‘Would it piss him off?’

‘He still carries a candle for that bitch,’ Jamieson nods solemnly. ‘I don’t know Colgan well, but I know that much. Obvious.’

‘The boy will judge it.’

Jamieson turns and reaches for the remote control, putting on one television. Not a lot of sport on this afternoon. Not a lot of work to do, either. Building up to things. Should be building
more quickly, but new things keep getting in the way. New things, like Lewis Winter’s new friends.

The first thing is easy. You find out where the target lives, and you track him. If you know the target well, then you can skip a lot of this. Many people end up killing those
they know well. It’s people they worked with, people they’ve seen around the industry many times. They may have partied with them. They may even be friends. But you do it, because
that’s the job. The victims know that, as well as the aggressors. If you don’t go into the industry with your eyes open, then someone or something will soon open them. You soon learn
how it works. You track them to learn their routine. Everyone has some sort of routine. Sometimes messy, sometimes only a sliver of routine in a chaotic life. The routine is when you get them.

Calum doesn’t know Winter well enough to skip any of this. The boring necessity. He finds out where he lives – that’s easy. No secret. Winter must know he’s at risk in
this business, but his track record suggests that he doesn’t plan well for these eventualities. Every time he takes a step up the ladder, it breaks underneath him and he tumbles back down. He
has ambition, and nothing else. He has some brains, but no sense. He has no obvious security at his house when Calum drives by. When he leaves and goes to meet a couple of street dealers who work
for him, he goes on his own. He’s oblivious to reality. Or maybe he doesn’t care. There are people like that. There are always people who take huge risks and don’t even try to
protect themselves from the consequences. They’re either not afraid of death or don’t care much for life.

Winter has been knocked down enough times by life not to care much for it. As he talks to these two idiots – young men who sell product to their friends and family in exchange for more for
themselves – he doesn’t care. He’s taking risks that don’t matter to him. A lifetime in the industry, and for what? He’s little further forward than he was when he
started. Younger men than him are running major organizations, buying up legitimate businesses, achieving. He’s dealing with two monosyllabic, illiterate junkies. This is what it’s all
come to. He’s earning less than thirty thousand a year on the deals he’s doing. He has a house he can only just afford to pay the mortgage on. He has a girlfriend who was the well-known
cast-off of many better men than he. She’s demanding. She’s changing his lifestyle to suit hers. She’s heightening his ambitions to match her own. He needs to pay for her love. So
he’s taking risks.

He had hated school. He’d worked for a haulage company for a couple of years, but he’d hated that too. Then he fell into the business via an old school friend. A little bit of
dealing, nothing big, just at parties. Working on the bottom rung of the business, but having fun while you’re doing it. An employee for a big organization that got you regular work, that
looked after you. Back then he had enjoyed it, but that was such a long time ago. Now a middle-aged man, trying to be a big player. Unable to make money or connections. He had a success in his late
twenties, a big deal. He was going to get rich. The police didn’t get him, but they got almost everyone else involved in the deal. The one guy who didn’t get caught. That made his name
poison for a while. Then another potential deal, in his mid-thirties. Working with a partner, Jimmy Morrison – don’t call him Jim. But Jimmy screwed him, did a runner, took all the
cash. Left Winter penniless and humiliated. A laughing stock again. Still trying to recover.

Then an offer to get involved in something bigger. Out of nowhere. Make some moves, prove you can hack it. Get on Jamieson’s patch. He’s the first person going to be knocked off his
perch. You start the moves. We’ll be right behind you. An offer from someone Winter trusts. Someone Winter knows has the ability to back up the offer. So he makes the moves. If it goes wrong?
So what. Jamieson will kill him, and that’ll be the end of it. What a loss. A life that gives him nothing. Take it. Feel free. Peter Jamieson is welcome to possession of this life. If it goes
right, then maybe life becomes something more. Maybe something worth living. Zara stays for good. Children. No more hanging on by his fingertips. A big player. Relax. But he has been here before,
and he knows that hope is evil. It sucks you in and spits you back out, laughing at you all the while. No, accept the risk; don’t get carried away by the possibilities.