Silent Money Page 13

  ‘Don’t you fucking threaten me, you little punk.’

  ‘I’m not. Just the opposite. Because you have my respect, and yes, because I’m scared. I’ll take my chances, I’ve got no choice. Any other option leads to me one day getting caught by the cops or being done in by your boys. The only way I want to be in this business is if I’m in control of my own destiny. That means being invisible, and it means not being part of anyone’s organisation. I’m not disrespecting you, Ivan. It’s the only way I know how to make this work for me.’

  ‘Nobody says no to me. You should know that.’

  ‘That doesn’t change. All of this is between us. Think of the kudos when you pull the rabbit out of the hat. Everyone’s a winner. You put the word out you’ve solved the problem and, bingo, the next day I say we’re open for business again. Think about it.’

  Ivan didn’t move a muscle, and he didn’t take his eyes off Michael.

  Michael spoke again. ‘Are we agreed?’

  ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  Michael turned to look at a painting, not trusting himself to keep his icy composure under Ivan’s relentless stare.

  ‘I’m going to let this play out,’ Ivan said at last. ‘If it works, fan-fucking-tastic. If it doesn’t work, my friends here come and see you. They’ll take you somewhere nice in the car and they will rearrange your anatomy one bit at a time, starting with your big mouth.’

  Ivan stood up and walked away without looking back, and his minders fell in behind.

  Michael ran the back of his hand across his forehead. He sat there for several minutes. He had kept his operation, but he was sure there would be a price to pay further down the line.

  chapter thirteen

  Charlotte was a lot more suspicious about Michael’s disappearing act to the Scottish Highlands than he thought she would be.

  ‘Is there something going on? I thought you’d be gone for a couple of days and it turned into a fortnight. You disappear off to goodness knows where, you never have enough change for a decent phone conversation, and then you’re back in Glasgow for days before you get in touch. Tell me the truth. Are you seeing someone?’

  They were standing in Michael’s living room. Charlotte hadn’t taken her coat off since she arrived.

  ‘Of course not,’ Michael said. ‘I needed a break, and it was the perfect time to take it. I did invite you, remember? But you’re right, I should have called you the moment I got back. It won’t happen again, I promise. Can I take your coat?’

  She stepped away from him. ‘I think you need to be more open with me, Michael. I don’t mean to pry, but a lot is going on in your life that you’re not telling me. We shouldn’t have any secrets.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call. Now, will you forgive me?’ He stepped forward and gave her a little kiss of contrition.

  She bit down on her lower lip. She obviously had more to say.

  ‘It’s embarrassing, Michael. I haven’t got a clue what you really do for a living. I’m always being teased by my friends that I’ve become a gangster’s moll. It was funny at first, but now the joke’s wearing a little thin. And your fancy office, all the stuff that keeps arriving at your house? Where’s the money coming from to pay for that? Tell me, Michael. What’s going on?’

  ‘If you want to know, I’ll tell you,’ Michael replied. ‘If you’re sure you want me to.’

  Charlotte gave a few rapid, jerky nods. ‘Yes, Michael, I want to know.’ She took off her coat and sat down, folding it across her lap.

  Michael sat across from her, looking her directly in the eye. Charlotte’s elbows were resting on her coat and her hands were clasped under her chin. An unconscious gesture of prayer, he thought. Her eyes were a mixture of despair and expectation. He could see she yearned to know the truth, but was afraid of what that truth might be.

  ‘I help people keep more of their money.’ There was a flat tone in his voice, to make his confession as anticlimactic as possible. ‘That means helping them invest it better and, for some of them, paying less tax than they did before. Nothing illegal, but some of my clients like to sail close to the wind.’ Michael shrugged. ‘There, so now you know. I don’t rob banks and I don’t steal from little old ladies, but I do deal with some shady characters. Do you still love me?’

  ‘Of course I do, darling. Don’t be silly.’ Charlotte looked relieved and embarrassed at the same time. ‘And I suppose a lot of people are impressed by appearances. Is that why you need to have a fancy office?’

  ‘A business expense, Charlotte, a necessary one. As you say, people can be superficial.’

  Charlotte’s smile turned into a frown. ‘But I still don’t see why that meant you had to disappear so suddenly. Are you in trouble or something?’

  ‘Just the opposite. I wanted to stop a problem from happening. Some people simply want advice on how to legitimately pay less tax. Like your Uncle Clarence, for example. There are others who are less scrupulous and want me to be … more creative, shall we say. And occasionally, I have a client who is too greedy and wants me to do something I’m not comfortable with. That’s what happened the other week, and this chap wouldn’t take no for an answer. I kept out of his way for a couple of weeks, until he decided to go elsewhere to get someone to do his dodgy stuff. As soon as he stopped hassling me, I was able to get back to normal. That’s the reason for my little disappearing act.’

  ‘But Michael, that’s awful. Did he threaten you? You should go straight to the police if that happens again. I won’t stand for someone being so beastly to you.’

  ‘It’s not that simple. It’s all a matter of degree. If word got out that I got one of my clients into trouble, others might think I’d do the same thing to them. It’s a small world. I didn’t want to start any rumours. It was easier to do it this way, without ruffling any feathers.’

  ‘You’re too nice to people, Michael, that’s your trouble. Whoever this chap is, he deserves to have a few feathers ruffled, and a whole lot more besides.’ She laughed. ‘But I know I’ll never stop you trying to look after people, no matter how much they deserve to get into trouble. Sorry for being silly. Will you forgive me?’ She went over and hugged him.

  Despite himself, Michael felt a dull pang of guilt.

  * * *

  The money kept rolling in, and Michael kept lavishing it on his new life. He would buy thoughtful gifts when he spent weekends at one of Charlotte’s friends’ houses in the country or some remote shooting lodge. He would pick up the bill for a meal, without any qualms about the cost. Above all, he acquired the things that sent the right signals: the exclusive watch, the Savile Row jackets. All part of a secret code that identified who he had become. Michael had tasted the deep pain of rejection; now he savoured only approbation and esteem.

  It was easy to see who had worked to join this exclusive club and who had been born into it. Charlotte was not the only one who went on about how hard up she was: every one of her blue-blooded friends thought the same way. Michael would have loved nothing more than for some of them to have been in his shoes when he was younger: the grinding boredom of real poverty, the constant worry that you could fall into some abyss at a moment’s notice. With an allowance slipping into their bank account every month, they had gone through life in a reverie of self-indulgence. Not having to worry about the next bill was something Michael would never take for granted.

  Their rose-tinted view of poverty, he found amusing. He supposed that, deep down, it was about guilt for some of them. Charlotte was never happier than when she was joining some protest march about apartheid or human rights, popping a fiver into a collection box for striking miners, or swooning over the anti-establishment posturing of rock stars. And getting involved in the Second Chance charity. Michael would have preferred her to display her social conscience somewhere less close to home, but he couldn’t budge her.

  The arrivistes into
Charlotte’s social circles fell into three categories. There were the ones, like Michael, who bought or charmed their way on board. There were charismatic con artists and hangers-on, displaying an effortless disaffection with the whole scene while all the time scheming to keep their place at the table, always with an eye for the main chance to sweep some of society’s riches their way. And there were the genuinely gifted artists, writers and philosophers, their talent matched only by their poverty; people in this category were sponsored, even championed, by the wealthy elite.

  It was the last group that Michael enjoyed talking to the most. He filled his mind with new ideas, new tastes in art, new books to expand his horizons. Inspired by that first meeting with Kenny McGowan, he started to read more Nietzsche, collected first editions of rare books, became more educated about what was good and what was indifferent in the art world.

  * * *

  Nietzsche said that if you have a ‘why’ to live, you can bear any ‘how’. Michael was about to be tested on that. It seemed that for one smurf, the terror of Big Jockie was not enough to resist the temptation to run off with the money with which he had been entrusted. Within twenty-four hours, Ron was able to tell Michael that the smurf had been found. Now Michael needed to let Big Jockie know what to do about it.

  Michael sat alone in his study, silently contemplating what action to take. He wanted nothing that carried the risk of permanent injury, no lasting effects. He remembered the injuries someone from his schooldays acquired in a street fight – broken jaw from punches, cracked ribs from kicks. Painful and debilitating, but after a few weeks the boy was back at school. That would be his instruction to Big Jockie. A second transgression would result in a more permanent disability. He didn’t want to think about a third time.

  After calling Big Jockie, Michael pondered the kind of person he had just become. This had been his baptism into the world of crime, he realised, and it was right for him to have decided to order the punishment of the smurf himself. The men in the world he had chosen would never shy away from using violence when it was necessary – sometimes even when it wasn’t. To hesitate, to show weakness or a lack of resolve, might one day prove fatal. And it would certainly be the coward’s way to leave such things to Ron. He was about to pay the blood price for his life of crime.

  What does not kill me, makes me stronger. By being decisive when called upon to do so, he was sending a message that disobedience and betrayal would not be tolerated. This would be the way to make sure it didn’t need to happen again.

  That turned out to be naive. Some smurfs just couldn’t be relied on to think logically, to behave rationally. No matter how clear the message that any disloyalty would be summarily dealt with, that they would invariably be caught and punished, there was always some impetuous, hot-headed, unthinking young kid who would be unable to resist the temptation of a single, reckless moment. As the number of smurfs increased, Big Jockie started to be called upon more and more often; and Michael realised that all his intellectual philosophising about the power of deterrence, about the logic of violence, wasn’t having the impact he had hoped for.

  It was a sickening feeling. He wanted success, but not at this price. He decided to change tack, told Ron simply to fire any smurf who misbehaved and to step up recruitment to cover replacements as well as growth. After the first smurf was fired without retribution, another transgressed a fortnight later. The next one was the following week. Then another. Then another.

  Ron had had enough.

  ‘The operation’s going down the toilet,’ he told Michael. ‘And it’s your bleeding-heart conscience to blame. I admit I was wrong to say don’t hire Big Jockie – that fucker had the smurfs terrified. Now it looks like he’s been put out to grass. Word’s getting out that screwing us over doesn’t carry the same penalties anymore. I can’t hire fast enough to make up for the piss artists that are fired, never mind handle more business.’

  Michael cursed his earlier weakness. Nothing is achieved without danger, Nietzsche had said. He vowed never again to let sentiment blind his decision making.

  The phone calls to Big Jockie resumed. Soon they began to become so much a part of his business routine that it wasn’t the violence that bothered him; it was the impact the beatings were having on business efficiency.

  ‘We need to be smarter at keeping the smurfs in line,’ Michael told Ron. ‘We have to wait too long for a smurf to start working for us again after he’s learnt his lesson. And it’s far too indiscreet. There has to be a better way.’

  ‘You don’t want to get too sophisticated with that lot,’ Ron replied. ‘Fear of Big Jockie keeps them in check, and anyone who Big Jockie works over is a walking advert for what happens if you step out of line. Nice and simple. Let’s keep it that way.’

  ‘The street operation is your call,’ Michael replied. ‘But this is different. There’s too much in the papers these days about the violence on Glasgow’s streets. All it takes is some interfering do-gooder, and we could find ourselves getting some unwanted attention. It has to become more inconspicuous. Smurfs filling up A&E at hospitals all over Glasgow is too high-profile. We need something that’s effective but invisible.’

  Michael was shocked with himself that the solution came to him while he was attending an anti-Pinochet rally in George Square with Charlotte. Speaker after speaker denounced the brutality of the Chilean dictator’s regime, detailing the torture that was meted out to Allende supporters. If Michael wanted a lesson on how to run a system of terror, all the information he needed was in the graphic details of the leaflets handed out at the rallies. He scrutinised them, and Charlotte delighted in his new-found enthusiasm for the fight against totalitarian regimes.

  It wasn’t that overnight he’d turned into a monster, he told himself. What he was looking for was very specific. Not life-threatening; no permanent injuries. But something severe and agonising that could be deployed in a controlled, disciplined way to achieve exactly the result required. Michael wanted less violence, not more. One short, sharp, shock, not the uncontrolled frenzy of Big Jockie’s fists.

  He found what he was looking for in a liquidation sale in the West End. It was a wind-up generator that Ron christened the Electric Warrior, after the T. Rex album. With a minor adaptation, the faster the handle was turned, the higher the voltage. The higher the voltage, the greater the agony. Legs and torso were first, the flesh and muscle absorbing the current and lessening the pain. Then feet, penis, anus – each one provided an excruciating and intolerable increment. If anyone needed more of a lesson, they were given a soaking with a hose. Water would make it worse the second time around.

  It was perfect. Big Jockie could mete out the punishment, and the smurf would be fully recovered the same day, not a mark on them. The punishment would fit the crime: a few shocks to the body as a taste of what a full session would be like; for a more serious or repeat offender, a level of severity that was appropriate. No more having to rely on what mood Big Jockie was in. If violence was a necessary evil in the operation, at least this way it could be done with bloodless efficiency.

  If the smurfs behaved, none of it would be necessary, Michael kept telling himself. If they transgressed, they had only themselves to blame.

  The Electric Warrior brought order and discipline to the job of keeping the foot soldiers under control. It was precise, proportionate and persuasive. Michael devised a three-square grid containing an array of offences and their consequences, which he shared with Ron. The left square represented a ‘mild’ lesson. If you had to be punished a second time you moved to square two. The third square was reserved for anything that threatened the security of the operation, and contained precise instructions for delivering a level of pain that was unendurable. The Electric Warrior became a business process designed to increase productivity and eliminate inefficiency. Michael had no doubt that Ivan would one day plan some retaliation for being thwarted in his plan to take him ov
er, and he wanted the smurfs to be left in no doubt that whatever pressures they were put under, no matter what temptations came their way, they would never dare give in to his demands.

  But when the first attack on the organisation came, it wasn’t from Ivan but from a low-level crook. Mickie Ferguson somehow found out which smurfs would be carrying money, where and when. He hit six of them in twenty-four hours, netting ten thousand pounds. When Michael met with Ron, they were both clear that they had to deal with it, and deal with it ruthlessly. Nobody should be under the illusion that the money the smurfs were carrying was easy pickings.

  ‘I suppose it had to happen eventually,’ Michael said. ‘You’re sure he’s working alone, not in cahoots with these smurfs?’

  ‘Pretty sure,’ Ron replied. ‘We’ve leaned on each of the ones who were robbed, and their stories stack up. They’re not all from Second Chance; there’s some of my boys there too. I reckon Mickie has been keeping his ear to the ground, picking up enough gossip to identify these six as regular carriers. He must have decided to knock off all six in the same day before we had a chance to change the routines or put in more security.’

  ‘And definitely nothing to do with Ivan? You sure about that?’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied.

  ‘Okay,’ Michael said. ‘First thing is to find Mickie Ferguson. That has to be done now. We need to deal with this firmly and quickly. Send a message that this is unacceptable.’

  ‘A bounty will flush the wee fucker out,’ replied Ron. ‘There’s no loyalty amongst these Easterhouse bampots. Let me put the word out that the first person to point us in his direction has a ton coming to him. I guarantee we’ll be frying Mickie Ferguson’s arse by Friday.’

  Michael looked out the window.

  ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘What we do now will set a precedent as to how we deal with this in future. I don’t want anyone benefitting from our problems, even if they are helping us. I want you to bring in two people who know him. Take them to a quiet spot, maybe the woods outside Barrhead. Toss a coin and whoever loses, Big Jockie uses the Electric Warrior on him, level two. Let the other guy watch. When he’s seen enough tell him he’s got twenty-four hours to find Mickie or he’ll get the same, for twice as long. We can play that game with more of his pals until Mickie turns up.’