The Damage (David Blake 2) (30 page)

The meeting with Alan Gladwell was reconvened at the same venue. Virtually his whole crew was there, and so was ours, with the exception of Hunter and Danny. I’d had about an hour’s sleep the night before, so my tolerance for bullshit was non-existent. When Amrein started to recount the main points of the previous meeting’s discussion, I interrupted him.

‘Mind if I say something Amrein, before you go through everything again?’ I asked.

‘Not at all.’

‘I’d like to tell you a little story I heard once, Alan,’ and I looked him in the eye, ‘mind if I do that?’ I didn’t allow him to reply, ‘it’s all about a man who went a bit crazy last year and started shooting people at random. You’ll remember it. After all, it happened in your backyard.’

‘Of course I remember it. It was the biggest news story in Glasgow for years. You’re right he was crazy, sick in the head in my opinion. Killed a couple of people who didn’t deserve it.’

‘More than a couple. He shot four civilians, but that’s not what got him the biggest coverage, was it?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘It was the big cheese Police Officer he gunned down that got the tabloids really in a spin. What was it they used to call him? DCI Gangbuster?’

‘I don’t read the newspapers,’ Alan said, coolly.

‘Well then you’ll just have to take my word for it. His real name was Detective Chief Inspector Robert McGregor. His speciality was taking down heavy-duty crews and locking up long-established crime families. His methods were a bit rough; a bit of blackmail, intimidation, paying large amounts of government money to grasses, then whisking them away into the witness protection programme. But the thing about him was, he got results. Every time he took a firm down he made sure it was his face on the Ten O’Clock News. Some even said he was a future Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.’

‘Yeah, I’d heard of the bloke.’

‘I bet. The thing is, to the likes of you and me, DCI McGregor was a problem. He had a very good record of putting people like us out of business and his last port of call was Glasgow, where he told everybody who’d listen that he was going to take down the crime barons. Trouble was, he was so high profile he was untouchable. No one could get near him and, if anyone ever tried, the outrage would have been colossal. A firm like yours would have been rolled up in five minutes if you’d killed him. You and everybody else in your outfit would have been doing life before you knew it.’

‘I agree,’ he said calmly, ‘so what’s your point? The bloke who killed him was all over the Breakfast News this morning.’

‘Except that we know it
wasn’t
actually Leon Cassidy.’

‘Come again?’

‘Leon Cassidy. The man the police got for it, the fella the jury convicted, the one the judge gave a life sentence to. He wasn’t the shooter.’

Alan Gladwell smiled as if I was a conspiracy theorist, ‘of course it was him. They found the bloody rifle at his flat. Like I said he was a sick fuck. I mean if it had just been that copper he’d shot then I’d have given him a medal, but he took out innocent civilians in the process.’

‘Collateral damage,’ I told him. ‘In the larger scheme of things, they didn’t matter.’

‘You reckon?’ and he frowned at me, ‘listen pal, this is all very fascinating but we haven’t got all day. There’s an entire fucking city waiting for you to make up your mind…’

I managed to ignore and interrupt him at the same time, ‘Yeah, I reckon, they were chaff, cannon fodder, the PBI,’ and when he looked blankly at me I explained, ‘the Poor Bloody Infantry, you know, the ones who get sent into battle by the generals, sacrificed for the greater good.’

He was looking confused, so I carried on.

‘Isn’t that the way you viewed it, Alan? Leon Cassidy was the perfect patsy, your very own Lee Harvey Oswald. He couldn’t hold down a job, had a history of mental problems, was booted out of the army as a young man, but not before he had weapons training. There were previous convictions for assault, a failed marriage and a lost custody battle, even a restraining order from the wife. You couldn’t have invented a better suspect; a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. Then one day he does – he becomes the ”Sandyhills Sniper”, gunning down a man on a petrol forecourt. No one sees him, all they hear is the shot. The next day he does it again. He’s an impatient little psychopath is Leon. He waits all his life to commit a murder then he does two in twenty-four hours.’

‘Is there a fucking point to this?’

‘My point is you fucked up.’

‘Did I?’ and he shook his head, ‘what the fuck are you talking about?’

‘Yeah. I knew it was you the moment I saw the arresting officer on the TV news this morning, DI Stephen Connor.’

‘What about him?’

‘Connor has been on your father’s payroll for years. Don’t bother to deny it. Everyone in our world knows you own the guy. He didn’t make a move in Glasgow without your dad’s say-so and when he did move it was only to lock up the guys your father told him to.’

‘So fucking what?’

‘Getting rid of McGregor wasn’t enough of a win for you was it? So Stephen Connor got to arrest Scotland’s most wanted, when everyone knows he couldn’t catch syphilis. Couldn’t resist it, could you? You had to give your dog a bone.’

Gladwell looked like he couldn’t even be bothered to argue with me, ‘so what are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that, all the while you’ve been bullshitting me about not wanting to kill anyone any more, you were setting up Leon Cassidy to take the fall for five murders you ordered, four of which were just random civilians used to cover your tracks for the real hit. You took out McGregor and no one batted an eye lid because they didn’t realise it was you, but I did, this morning, the moment they gave the microphone to your bitch Connor. And it reminded me of another little case in Glasgow about two years ago. I’m sure you remember it. Two guys came up from London to try and take over a club and deal some drugs in your backyard. Unsurprisingly they ended up dead, shot in their car when they parked up on wasteland, for a meeting with a local crime lord, or so the story goes, but it wasn’t close range, was it? No shotguns or semi-automatics like you’d expect. No, these guys were both shot with a rifle from distance, by a professional, someone good, who knew what he was doing, someone who had been hired to remove the competition. You’ve done it before Alan. I should have made the connection before now but I didn’t. I made it this morning though. So how long before SOCA works it out and comes after you?’

‘Is that your excuse for pulling out of this Edinburgh thing? Not got the balls to take on SOCA?’

‘No,’ I told him, ‘I’m pulling out, but not because of that.’

‘Why then?’

‘Because I am not going to send my men up north so you can carve them up.’

‘Fuck are you talking about?’ I knew I was going out on a limb here.

‘A man who can kill four innocent civilians to get at one copper isn’t going to make peace with the guy who killed his brother. You know it’s funny,’ I said, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you over the years. You’re supposed to be a hard and ruthless man. A man to be feared, and yet when it comes down to it you can’t even look me in the eye and admit it.’

‘Admit what?’

‘That it’s you that’s coming after me. You’re the one behind it all, pulling the strings, ordering the hits. Your dad would have looked Bobby in the eye and declared war but you, you hide behind these talks like a bairn behind his mother’s apron strings.’ Alan Gladwell was looking at me like he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was hearing, but I wasn’t finished yet. ‘I killed your brother, carved him up with a machete if you want to know, while he screamed for his life, and you’re down here doing deals with me one day, then shooting my men in the back the next. What kind of spineless cunt does that? Your father would be disgusted. Shooting civilians in the street and gunning down men in bars, then pretending you know nothing about it? Take some responsibility for your actions, man, admit it and come at me in the open if you’ve got a pair.’ I stopped for a moment and watched him absorb my words. I’d given him a lot to think about and some of it would have hurt, not least the bit about his brother and his father. If he wasn’t looking to kill me already he would after today, that was for sure. If I’d read this situation wrong I’d just made myself another powerful enemy.

‘Come on then,’ I urged him, ‘why don’t you just say it like it is.’ I’d barely finished my sentence when he lunged for me with a roar, hurling himself across the table towards me.

‘Come here!’ he screamed, ‘come here, you bastard!’ Amrein’s bodyguards were already in between us and Gladwell’s men were trying to pull him back. My lads were steaming in between us too and fists were flying. ‘I’ll fucking murder you! I’ll put you in a fucking wheelchair just like your brother!’ He was being dragged away by Fallon and his men, but he was still shouting. Amrein was trying to get a word in but Gladwell was having none of that. ‘Fuck you Amrein, you fucking cunt!’ then he started jabbing his finger at me as Fallon and two of his lads bundled him towards the exit door. ‘There’s contracts out on you,’ his eyes were bulging, he was losing it now, ‘on all of you! You’re all fucking dead! Every hit man in the country knows your names and I don’t care what it costs me! You’re all fucking dead!’

With one last heave, Fallon and Gladwell’s boys managed to manoeuvre Alan Gladwell out through the fire exit door and into the courtyard at the back of the hotel.

Amrein looked shattered.

‘Thanks for setting this up, Amrein,’ I told him sarcastically, ‘it’s been useful.’

Kinane walked up to me. He looked flushed, and I’d noticed he landed a couple of tasty blows on Gladwell’s boys but he hadn’t managed to get near Fallon, who had shown a cooler head than I expected by bundling his boss out of the way before he did something he could be arrested for.

‘How did you know it was him?’ asked Kinane.

‘I didn’t,’ I admitted, ‘but I do now.’

.......................

T
he days following our meeting with Alan Gladwell were chaotic in the extreme. Everything went wrong. The local Police started acting on tip-offs they would normally have ignored, meaning a couple of our dealers were arrested on the outskirts of the city and one of our pubs was closed down due to illegal gambling activities, because a few guys were playing cards in there for money. Meanwhile someone tried to set fire to one of our clubs and a bomb threat was sent to the hotel we were about to open, which resulted in our entire staff being evacuated during their training for opening night. There was barely a corner of our business that did not experience some form of assault, harassment or legal sanction and I could have traced just about all of them back to Alan Gladwell or Ron Haydon MP and his tame Chief Constable. Even Maggot was arrested and threatened with a charge of living off immoral earnings. He got quite upset about that and foolishly started threatening to name the names of Police officers who had visited the Sports Injury clinic in the past, until one of the detectives interviewing him gave him a slap. When Kinane found out he’d been so stupid he gave him another one, so Maggot went round for days sporting matching black eyes. He looked like a panda.

I took all of that on the chin because, right in the middle of it all, Our young’un finally opened his eyes. There was no way he was ever going to walk again, but at least he was alive and there was no brain damage. I can’t tell you how relieved that made me feel. Danny was drifting in and out of consciousness while I was there and not really making much sense. I just told him everything was going to be okay and watched as he went back to sleep. I had no idea how I was going to be able to tell him he was paralysed.

That afternoon I was sitting with Palmer in my office in the Cauldron, getting updates on the latest outrages committed against our firm, when Kinane burst in.

‘Our Kevin’s been robbed,’ he said, and he looked as angry as I’d ever seen him. I said nothing. I just let him speak, ‘he was taking the stash down to Sunnydale. He’d barely got into the place when they jumped him; vans and cars pulling out to block him, shotguns and Uzis waved at him. They got him out of the car, smacked him about and drove off with it. We found it later, burned out, the stash missing.’

Kinane didn’t waste any words.

‘Braddock,’ I said.

‘Has to be! Who else knew our Kevin was coming down with the stash? We vary the timings and the vehicles but we have to let him know we’re coming, so he’s ready to unload. We give him the make and model of the car so his scouts can look out for it. A rival firm wouldn’t have any of that information and how could they just sit there in their cars, tooled up like that, without Braddock’s crew knowing about it and scaring them off? They know everything going on in that estate. It was him alright.’

‘Is Kevin okay?’ I was buying time with my question, trying to work out what to do.

‘He’s lost his front teeth,’ Kinane said wearily, ‘got a smack in the face with an Uzi.’ In Kinane’s world this was the equivalent of a grazed knee, ‘he’ll live, but he wants payback.’

‘I’m sure he does,’ I assured him, ‘and I know you do too.’

‘Well then,’ he urged me, ‘give me the go-ahead. Let me sort this cunt out once and for all.’

‘No,’ I said.