The kids buzzed toys around the floor, occasionally lifting them and waving them around as though desperate to share the joy. The old man hunkered down with them for a while. He pushed the toys around, imitated the noises they made and laughed with them. The kids took to him as though he were a favourite uncle who came around every day.
I was a more uncertain presence. They stared up at me with wide eyes as though I was a giant come down from the beanstalk with the express intention of grinding their bones to make my bread. I tried my best to smile with them, but I didn’t understand the toys, and the sheer uncomplicated joy they expressed made me feel sad. A nostalgic emptiness. For lost innocence I could no longer remember.
Their mother – her name was Chantelle – sat on the edge of the sofa. She didn’t take her eyes off the boys once. Her body language was tense: posture stiff and unyielding. She wanted me and the old man out of the house, but was too afraid to speak up. And the old man’s apparent pleasure in playing with her children was even more unsettling.
We all knew what was happening upstairs. But what could any of us really do about it? Burns was the man in control. We followed his lead.
The sounds that came from upstairs were muffled, but unsettling. The kids didn’t seem to notice, but Chantelle and I jumped in our seats at every thump and moan. There were some sounds that might have been screams, but they kept cutting off with a sense of finality that made us wonder whether it was finally over.
The old man didn’t react. He laughed and joked and stole the kid’s noses.
Finally, we heard footsteps. Malone was drying off his hands with a towel when he came through the door. ‘It’s done,’ he said. Like he’d just repaired the boiler.
Burns stood up. Ruffled the hair on the two wee boy’s heads. Said, ‘They’ll be taken care of, lass. Don’t you worry about that.’
Chantelle looked at him, eyes wide, stuck between shock and hatred. She let us leave without saying another word.
In the car, we were silent. I was in the back seat. Kept my eye on Malone the whole journey, worried about what he might say.
What had Nairn told him?
I’d taken a risk talking to Nairn the way I had. But I meant what I said. He was a nasty wee prick, but he’d been in over his head. One way or the other, he had to disappear. I wasn’t about to have a third man’s death on my conscience.
I had thought I could save Nairn. From Burns, if not from himself. But I must have known what would happen. Looking back, I saw the inevitability of it all. Nairn was a footnote. He was a pawn. A small player in a far larger game. From the word go, he’d been destined to end his life
Burns called for a clean-up crew before we left the house. After he’d done that, he gently told Chantelle what would happen if she talked to the police. She understood, of course. Given who her boyfriend had been, she was well aware that talking to the coppers was the equivalent of sticking a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger.
Kind of like offering mercy to a man that David Burns wanted dead.
We drove through the city. Parked at the rear of the city-centre office block that housed Burns Enterprises. Walked to the third floor. In the lift, I stood between the two other men. Trapped. No way I could get out of this one.
To get to Burns’s private office you walked through an open plan workspace that was busy during the day with office drones on phones and computer screens. Officially Burns ran a construction business. How he’d managed to get so deeply involved in the city’s rejuvenation plans. How he became so integral to the lifeblood of Dundee. He pumped money and funds to those who needed it. In public he spoke of his pride at being from the city. He attended games at Dens Park. Donated part of his legal profits to the club. Acted like he meant every word. ‘Dundonian through and through,’ he once said, when asked to describe himself. ‘And proud of it.’
No wonder the police hated him. He was a symbol of civic pride at the same time as being a drug dealer and a known criminal. The disparity between those public images should have been impossible to maintain, and yet he managed it with apparent effortlessness. He was every copper’s worst nightmare: a criminal beloved by the people.
The old man made sure the office door was locked before he sat behind the desk. Malone moved smoothly, as though he knew what he was doing. Unlocked a battered old cabinet unit, pulled down the rolltop and poured three glasses of whiskey from a crystal decanter. Took one straight to the old man, indicated I should help myself to one of the others remaining.
I did so.
We drank in silence. And quickly.
Burns said, ‘Bako.’ He shook his head. His eyes were focussed somewhere on the middle distance. He didn’t care if we were listening. He needed to work this through in his own mind. ‘Jesus fucking Christ. Say what you like about me – and people have – but I’ve got rules. This new breed of arsehole doesn’t give a fuck. Get off on the pain they cause.’
I’d heard people say similar things about Burns. But maybe it’s also true that old age mellows a man.
Burns said to Malone, ‘What did Nairn tell you?’
‘That this prick tried to offer him a deal.’ Nodding in my direction.
This was it, then. No way out. Like Nairn, looked like my life had only ever been leading in one direction. And this was it.
The old man laughed. ‘A deal?’
‘Said that our pal here would let him live if he gave everything up. All Nairn had to do was pretend he’d been knocked around.’
‘Priceless,’ Burns said. Then he looked at me, expression stony. ‘You still think you’re one of the good guys, don’t you? Maybe you are. I know enough cops on the job would have hurt a man like Nairn without thinking twice. But even without the constraints of your own rules, you still look for an alternative. It’s touching. Stupid, aye. But touching.’
Jesus, it didn’t even cross his mind that the deal I offered Nairn might have been serious.
What did that say about how he saw me?
Malone said, ‘He also said that he never met Bako face to face. Only talked to the bastard through representatives. First time, it was three Ukranian fucks. Offered him a choice. He could do what Bako asked, or be an example to the next man.’
‘Maybe our wee friend wasn’t so stupid after all,’ said Burns.
I said nothing. Just listened. The invisible man in the room. There by virtue of being in the right place at the right time. I wasn’t part of the old man’s war council. What I had to say was of no real interest. I did not truly understand such matters. But I was worth keeping close. Long as my mouth remained shut.
The Ukranians gave Nairn a number. It changed every few days. The number arrived by text to Nairn’s phone whenever it was updated. It did not connect directly to Bako, but to one of his operatives. The man behind the man.
The number was due to change again in twenty-four hours.
It was the best route to Bako.
‘This is going to get worse before it gets better,’ the old man said. ‘I know I value my isolation these days. But you can’t hide away all your life like the bloody Elephant Man. Pretend you don’t exist. Sooner or later you have to come out into the sunshine. Let your enemies know, this is who I am.’ He smiled. ‘We’re going to expose this fucker. Hang him out the way they used to. Stick his bastard head on a fucking pike at the border and say, “No more!” Oh, aye, what those English pricks did to Willie Wallace will look like a fucking brush with Ken Dodd’s tickle stick.’ He looked at me as though realizing for the first time that I was in the room. ‘This isn’t for you, son. You proved that with Nairn. So I want you to go back to your wee police safe house. Wherever it is. Where you left my wife. I know you trust the people you left her with, but the fact is I don’t fucking know them.’ He stood up, walked over and placed a hand on my shoulder. Direct eye contact. ‘I’m not palming you off, son. I know you think its shite. That I don’t trust you. But you’re not the man for the work ahead. You protect people. That’s who you are. You do whatever you need to do that. You don’t have the motivation to go up against this Hungarian shiteball. So I’m asking you to do what you do best. Look out for the innocent. For my wife.’
Was it a crock of shit? Hard to tell with a man whose own internal motivations were constantly up for re-evaluation.
I couldn’t argue with him, though. There were things you could fake in the name of an assignment, and others that you couldn’t. Going against your personality, your own set of ethical and moral motivations was almost impossible. The best undercover officers had something of the criminal inside them already. They could allow themselves to betray standard ethical and moral behaviours in order to achieve their goals.
I couldn’t do that. There were lines I could not cross.
Lines that men like David Burns couldn’t even see.