The widows, p.16
The Widows, page 16
‘I’ll never be able to thank you, Ruby,’ Ellie said. ‘I’m still trying to take these past few days in.’
Ruby nodded.
‘Yep. Me too, Ellie. Truth is, I probably wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t found me in your stable that night.’ Ruby stood for a moment, shifting on her feet. Then she stepped forward and they hugged hard and for a long time. When she eased herself away, she turned to her car and opened the door.
‘Look after yourself and your boy,’ Ruby said.
Ellie didn’t answer but swallowed and nodded.
They both got into their cars and drove down the dirt track road, Ruby turning right and Ellie turning left – both going in different directions, their paths unlikely to ever cross again.
As Ruby hit the main road that headed to Scotland, she glanced at herself in her rear-view mirror. She pressed a key on her mobile and it answered after three rings. She’d made the brief phone call last night before she left the farm, and despite all the questions, only said where she was and where she was headed.
‘Hey. It’s me,’ Ruby said softly.
‘You want back in the game?’
‘I do. Kind of.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Driving north.’
‘Good. Call me when you’re close. I flew in this morning. After your call.’
He hung up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It was a very long time since Ruby had last been in Glasgow, the city where she came into the world in a snowstorm, three floors up in a grimy tenement building in the East End. Of course, she knew nothing of this, and had been mesmerised as a little girl when her mother described the day she was born, and how the city was paralysed for days, gripped in the worst freeze for decades. Ruby used to shiver at the thought of it, and she would ask her mother to tell the story again and again about how she had wrapped her up in blankets and held her close, keeping her warm and alive until the crisis was over.
The story had stayed with her long after her mother had gone, long after her murder, and Ruby was alone, a ten-year-old orphan with nowhere to go. By the time her mother was buried in what she heard them call a pauper’s grave – though she didn’t understand what that was – the authorities were there to take her away from the only life she knew. Despite her mother’s lifestyle and nightly visits from strange men who smelled of alcohol, she didn’t want to leave her life. She didn’t want to go anywhere with these people in harsh blue uniforms, who carried her kicking and screaming down the tenement’s stone stairs as the neighbours stood on the landings in tears. Why couldn’t they come and rescue her and keep her in their family, with her friends? She wouldn’t eat much, she’d told her best friend Tony one afternoon, and he said he would ask his mum. But he later broke the news to her that his ma said she couldn’t afford another child on top of the five of their own. And so she began what passed for a new life in the children’s home in the city, a big former manor house where girls like her with no one were prisoners whose dreams slowly died day by day.
Ruby found herself taking a detour before she reached the city, to drive past the children’s home in the East End. She wanted to see if it was still there, because she was sure she’d read somewhere that it was being knocked down to make way for a block of luxury flats. The irony of it. She drove down the street and could see the lorries and diggers, and parts of the road closed off to cars. She got out of her car and walked down to see what was left. The building was mostly rubble now, but she could still see what looked like the long ground-floor corridor that used to be polished till shining, and some of the remnants of iron bed frames.
It looked as though the building was being torn down after being left derelict for many years. Soon, this place would be home to the upwardly mobile in the new upmarket Glasgow. She didn’t feel angry about it any more; she had left it behind, or most of it, and she had sought her retribution for the men who physically abused her and Cissy. When Cissy had arrived at the home, Ruby became her best friend and protector until the day they escaped. The only thing that moved her right now amid the noise of the machinery was thinking of Cissy, and how desperate she would feel in prison. She prayed that Bella would be strong enough for both of them. Their time would come. But first she had to set to work. She pushed the call key on her mobile.
‘I’m here.’
‘Where?’
‘My old home – the children’s home, that is. They’ve torn it down.’
‘I heard. You okay?’
‘Yeah. But some memories are coming back all right.’
‘Yep, I’m sure. I’ll come and meet you there. We’ll go for something to eat.’
‘Thanks.’
Later, they sat at a secluded table in the Blythswood Hotel up at the square, more famous over the years as a red-light district where the city’s women wrecked by alcohol or drugs would be on the street for business at any time of the day or night. Now it was a five-star hotel for the top drawer, and from its foyer to its restaurants and bars it whispered of luxury and affluence, even if not everyone in the place had earned their money legally. Not that Ruby could judge, she thought. Because here she was on the run and sitting next to Leo McCafferty, a man of mystery, who carried out his life of crime under the radar. He wouldn’t have called it a life of crime, though. He had told Ruby from the very beginning, when he offered her the chance to work for him, that what they did – the people they removed – were eliminated for a very good reason, whether the job was ordered by the shadowy forces in the security services, or by gangsters in the underworld.
The waiter poured red wine into their glasses.
‘Here’s to us, Ruby,’ Leo said, holding up his glass. ‘And to Glasgow, where it all began.’
Ruby clinked her glass to his.
‘And to survival,’ he said. ‘We’ve come a long way. You especially.’
‘I know,’ Ruby said, sipping from her glass and enjoying the taste of the wine.
He shook his head, looking straight at her.
‘That was some shitshow in the Lake District,’ he said.
Ruby shook her head.
‘You have no fucking idea, Leo. It all happened so quickly.’ She sighed and put her glass down. ‘Poor Bella and Cissy. Bloody Christ! I couldn’t do anything for them. I feel terrible about it. But I had to get away. It was the only way to save them.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘Then to find that they’re facing trial for the drugs that were scattered around. In all the chaos of that night I didn’t see the rest of the coke in the car, or I’d have picked it up. And they might even be facing charges for the two stiffs I left on the ground. Shit. I have to do something about it, I need to help get them out.’
Leo raised his eyebrows.
‘But you can’t, Ruby. You have to remain missing.’ He paused. ‘They’ll get out. Eventually. It’s not as if you can hand yourself in, is it?’ He leaned in, lowering his voice. ‘Anyway, word on the grapevine in the Costa is that Tommy has everyone looking for you, trying to dig you out. And I heard that big Digby has his boys searching for you down south too. You need to lie low for as long as it takes.’
‘They’ll pay for this, Tommy and Billy, and whoever set us up. Digby too. I’ll ruin the lot of them.’
‘Good. You need to keep a cool head, though. I’ve been looking at a way we can get to them. We just have to be patient.’
They ate for a few moments in silence, then Ruby ventured, ‘What do you mean, you’ve been looking at a way to get to them?’
He waved a hand.
‘Nothing as crude as bumping them off. But we’ll take everything they have.’
‘How?’
‘We’ll get to their money. There are ways.’
‘I don’t think so. Tommy and his crew have everything stashed and hidden in accounts all over the place, and it’s all laundered through the businesses he has. Everyone does it. That’s why he’s still on the go big time.’
‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘I hear some Russians have taken over his restaurant and two of his bars in Marbella.’
‘What? Seriously?’
‘Yep.’
‘How did that happen? Tommy would never agree to that.’
A smile played on his lips. ‘Something to do with a shipment to Newcastle that didn’t get delivered. He lost a fortune of the Russian’s money.’
Ruby’s mouth dropped open.
‘Fuck! That was the Russian’s load in the car? And the money?’
He nodded, smiling. ‘You like that?’
‘Oh Christ! He was actually doing a drop for the Russian, and he included us in it to be bumped off? What a complete bastard. And a stupid one at that. He deserves all he gets.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about him. It’s not as if he’s skint. He’s still with the Russians, even though they’re mad at him.’
‘That will be his downfall.’
‘It will be all of their downfalls. And we’ll make sure of it.’
‘But how, Leo?’ Ruby asked. ‘I can’t go back in there and be a part of anything Tommy and his crew are doing.’
He leaned forward.
‘Look, you know about his money and his business, don’t you?’ He waited for an answer but none came. ‘And you know about his shipments, how they come and stuff and how they’re paid for?’
‘Well, to some extent,’ Ruby said. ‘But I was never involved in anything like that. He would never discuss that side of the business with me – he’d just say that he had stuff coming in or going out. It was just him, Billy and Terence, and the few trusted guys they had around them. They were all very tight.’
Leo nodded slowly.
‘You know how he cleaned his money?’
She shrugged.
‘All I know is he bought restaurants, bars and stuff. The estate agents were all cleaning money as far as I know.’
‘But there’s a different way these days. All the big shots do it.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a way to buy goods – an ancient way of buying, used in the Middle East. It’s a system where you don’t actually hand the money over to the person you’re buying the goods from – like, if you’re buying a load of coke, you don’t actually give it to the dealer in, say, Columbia or Amsterdam. You take the money to a secret broker, say, in the UK. He gives you a code to prove that the money has been received, and then that code is sent by the broker to the dealer who you are buying the coke from – say, in Columbia. Once he’s received the code, he then releases the cocaine and it’s shipped to you as normal.
‘Sometimes the dealer who you’re buying from will receive the cash through an account, or it could be in properties, say, in Dubai, which he can then sell on. Therefore, the money is laundered and he receives clean money. It’s called Hawala.’
‘What?’
‘Hawala. They’ve been using it for centuries in eastern countries as a way of doing trade.’
‘But how do you know your money will arrive safely with someone if it’s not transferred into a bank or through property?’
‘Well, you don’t. It’s all based on trust.’
‘Trust? With gangsters who would steal the eyes out of your head?’
He smiled.
‘Yes. But even very powerful gangsters have to trust each other to keep the wheels of the drug trade turning.’
They sat for a moment, Ruby trying to get her head around it all. Then she asked, ‘So how could we get on board with that?’
‘I’m looking into it.’ He paused. ‘I have an in with a broker I trust. He tells me that Tommy Mallon is using Hawala a lot nowadays. He’s working with the Russians and that’s how they deal, so he will be doing that.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I just need to get more details of where his boys take the money to – the brokers. They’re everywhere.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. And the broker gets a cut from every transaction.’
‘And then what do we do when we know who they are and where they take the money to?’
‘The broker will work with us for a good whack of what we can take from each transaction.’
‘Take it how?’
‘We steal it.’
‘Oh,’ Ruby said.
Leo smiled as Ruby rolled her eyes.
‘We will be at the centre of it. If we know where the money is and when the Hawala transaction is taking place with the hard cash being handed in to the broker, in Glasgow or anywhere, we can be on it. The mob wouldn’t know who’s behind it. They’re just happy to parted from their dirty money, and their drugs arrive on time.’
‘Why have the cops not been onto this?’
‘They are. But they’ve just not figured it out enough to make any big arrests.’
‘It sounds very complicated. And dangerous. What if someone found out we’d siphoned off their money?’
‘They’ll never find out.’
She found herself smiling.
‘Yeah, sure. What could possibly go wrong?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The first night in the cell was the worst. The thought of being locked up in the dark was freaking Cissy out, and Bella could feel her panic building up throughout the day. In the mid-afternoon all prisoners were locked up for an hour – something to do with staff shortages – and Cissy paced the floor, constantly going to stand at the door, counting the minutes, and at one point kicking the door repeatedly. Bella glanced at Brenda, who shook her head. Suddenly a loud banging came from the outside.
‘What the hell’s going on in there?’ a voice of authority shouted.
‘It’s me, Cissy! I want out of here! I can’t be locked up!’ Cissy shouted back, banging her fist on the door.
‘Well, you should have thought about that before you did anything stupid. Now sit on your arse till it’s time to get out or you’ll be in trouble.’
Cissy turned to Bella, a perplexed look in her eyes. Bella got up from the bed and went across to her. She put her arm around her shoulder and eased her away from the door.
‘Cissy, darling, listen to me,’ she said. ‘You’re going to be fine. You’ll get used to it – you have to. Just take some deep breaths and try to calm down.’ She walked Cissy the few steps to a plastic chair and sat her down.
Cissy fought back tears and nodded, biting her lip.
‘I don’t like it, Bella. It scares me.’
Bella stroked her hand.
‘It won’t scare you, Cissy. You can’t let it. You can deal with this. You’re strong.’
Cissy tightened her lips but said nothing.
When the door eventually clicked open, they emerged along with the other prisoners filing along the corridor. Bella sensed them sniggering behind her back but she didn’t turn around. Then suddenly Cissy stumbled and fell to the floor, as the women laughed and walk past. Bella and Brenda dropped down to help her up.
‘You all right, Cissy?’ Bella asked.
‘Yeah. Someone behind me clipped my heel and I tripped.’
‘Hey!’ Bella couldn’t stop herself from shouting to the women who had just walked past, and were grinning. ‘Whoever did this, it’s not fucking funny. Grow the fuck up.’
Everyone stopped in their tracks and turned around. A thick-set woman with cropped hair and beefy cheeks glared at Bella. Then she took a step towards her.
‘Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?’
Bella stood her ground. It was too late to back down now, but she didn’t know what she was going to do next. She stuck out her chin, defiant.
‘I’m saying whoever did this’ – she glanced at all three of the women standing in front of her – ‘had better stay the fuck out of my way. You want to be a bully, then bully me.’
The squat woman folded her arms and sneered.
‘Oh, tough bastard, are you?’ she said, glancing at her mates.
‘We just want to get on with our time here. We’re not looking for trouble, but if it comes, then I can deal with it.’ Bella could feel her hands shaking.
‘Now, now, ladies,’ Brenda stepped forward. ‘Everyone just take a breath, for Christ’s sake.’ She looked at the fat woman. ‘We’re all in the same boat here, and nobody’s looking for trouble, so can we just calm down and try to get on with each other, because nobody’s going anywhere? You get my drift?’
Everyone stood for a long moment, then some of the women began to move away. The squat woman glared again at Bella then turned and followed the others. Brenda held Bella’s arm for a moment until they were well behind the women.
‘Just take it easy, Bella,’ she said. ‘You really don’t want to pick a fight with that bird. She’s banged up for knifing a police officer in the throat during a pub brawl. She’s doing five years. She’s nuts.’
Bella nodded and they walked down the metal stairs and out to the communal area, where they sat watching other prisoners arguing among themselves and tried to ignore the raw banter about grown women being scared of getting locked up.
Later, as the clock slowly ticked towards eight in the evening, the prisoners were told to go to their rooms and bed down for the night. Cissy put on a brave face at first when they went in and they took turns on the toilet, brushing their teeth and changing into the prison pyjamas.
‘You all right?’ Bella asked as Cissy sat on the bottom bunk.
‘Yeah,’ Cissy said unconvincingly. ‘You?’
Bella wiped the toothpaste from her mouth with the hand towel and ran her fingers across her face.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I could do with a decent moisturiser, not to mention a large gin and tonic.’
