A Cold Killing (Rosie Gilmour) Read online

  A Cold Killing

  Anna Smith

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also by Anna Smith

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Acknowledgements

  Rosie’s previous investigations . . .

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Quercus

  This edition first published in 2015 by

  Quercus Editions Ltd

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2015 by Anna Smith

  The moral right of Anna Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Ebook ISBN 978 1 78429 118 1

  Print ISBN 978 1 84866 429 6

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Also by Anna Smith

  The Dead Won’t Sleep

  To Tell The Truth

  Screams in the Dark

  Betrayed

  For Mary Myles – who fought the good fight.

  ‘To love and win is the best thing, to love and lose the next best . . .’

  William M. Thackeray

  Prologue

  London, King’s Cross, October 1999

  Ruby Reilly didn’t look up as the waitress slammed the mug of coffee on the table, but she felt like getting up and punching her out. Just because Ruby had suggested she get off her mobile and take her order, the waitress had made sure she waited even longer. She clenched and unclenched her fists, trying to calm herself down. Don’t let your short fuse fuck everything up, she checked herself. She was wound up big time. No wonder. She’d never killed before. She wasn’t prepared for the range of emotions coursing through her. At first it had been total euphoria as she’d stood watching the house burn down – with that twisted bastard inside. Burnt to a crisp, he’d be. She’d even felt her face smile as she’d calmly walked away, got into her car and sped off into the night, adrenaline pumping her on as she hammered up the motorway and out of the Costa del Sol. Then, there was the dread that she might get caught. She’d been totally wired since, jumpy as hell, and even quicker to the red-mist rage than normal. But guilt? No chance.

  The coldness of the ‘murder’ – because that’s how the cops would view it – wasn’t what made her nervous. Fuck that. She wasn’t about to start all that muesli-eating analysis shit, because the truth was, she’d waited long enough to do it. Most of her life, in fact. Killing the bastard was the good karma. The bad karma was that they were looking for her, and she’d disappeared off the face of the earth. She knew if they ever tracked her down, she’d attempt to dance her way out of it, say that she knew it was a hit and thought she was next by association, so she did a runner. But she wasn’t going to hang around for the old man’s heavies to turn up and start strong-arming answers from her. So she’d just kept on running – like she’d done all her life.

  She drove for eight hours from the Costa del Sol, stopping only for a pee and petrol, till she reached the French border, where she holed up in a dreary motel for the night. Then she headed north for the Eurostar in Paris, abandoned the car at the hire place and smoked two fags one after the other before boarding as a foot passenger. And here she was, in a busy café round the corner from King’s Cross station, in the pissing rain, where every immigrant from Africa to Bombay usually pitched up, dreaming of a better life. Ruby was just hoping she’d come up with a plan for the rest of hers.

  But first, she’d go to the care home and tell Judy. She sipped her coffee and smiled at the thought of seeing her sister, at the same time dreading hearing that there had been little progress since she last visited.

  ‘I’ve done it,’ she’d whisper in her ear. ‘He’s dead, Judy.’

  She knew her sister would just sit there, her pale-blue eyes dead, the way they’d been for twenty-five years, her now frail frame motionless, and her skin grey and shadowy like a neglected statue. Catatonic, the specialists had said. Not brain dead in any medical sense – just in another world, and chances are she would never come out of it. She was just thirty-seven. Only Ruby knew their secret. Just the smallest blink of an eye from Judy had been response enough when she murmured to her a few months ago that the time had come. Still trapped inside the childhood trauma that had made her retreat to a silent world, her sister hadn’t spoken or moved her head, but she’d squeezed her hand. The memory brought tears to Ruby’s eyes, and she quickly brushed them away and sniffed. Man up, she told herself. It’s nearly over.

  Two tables away, she watched two old guys deep in conversation. They looked quite distinguished, like they were somebody, Ruby thought, or they’d been somebody, long before they were the elegant older men they were now.

  She was drawn to their conversation – intrigued at the way the really handsome one kept lowering his voice and leaning across conspiratorially. He was very good looking, his skin scrubbed and fresh, with the weathered tan of someone who spent his weekends on a yacht in a place where the sun was guaranteed. It was him she’d noticed when they first came in, the kind of upper-class confidence about him, he wore a crisp light-blue shirt, and his khaki trousers had a crease you could have shaved with. He was clearly in awe of his friend, like a blushing teenager finally on a date with the sixth-form heart-throb.

  The other guy was much cooler, more like a journalist or an explorer than a posh boy. A mop of lush, sandy-coloured, wavy hair, greying at the temples, a cravat and brown corduroy trousers. Ruby could imagine him pontificating at a dinner party, an expert on every subject. But she also noticed how his mouth grew tight as their conversation became more intense. He leaned forward, sat back, sighed and from
time to time ran his hands over his face in frustration as he shook his head. Ruby watched, intrigued by his angst.

  She’d played games like this all her life, finding a kind of escapism in her vivid imagination, making up scenarios and scripts for complete strangers she encountered on buses and trains. It helped push away the shit that flooded her mind if she didn’t keep her head firing all the time.

  Now she watched as the sandy-haired guy put his hand in the inside pocket of his quilted jacket and took out a padded envelope, sliding it across the table. She strained her ears, engrossed and thrilled that she could actually hear them.

  ‘They’re on to me, Gerard. I know they are,’ he whispered, shaking his head, ‘I’m not safe any more.’ He tapped the envelope. ‘But it’s all in here. Everything. All the bloody lies, the deceit. Queen and bloody country?’ He looked down at the table in disgust and was silent for a moment. ‘I’m doing it for Katya . . . Gerard, I never should have involved her. I should have known better.’

  Ruby’s eyes darted from one to the other, captivated, as the posh man reached across the table and rested a comforting hand on his friend’s arm.

  ‘Oh, Tom. I’m so sorry. I do hate to see you like this.’ He lowered his voice and put the envelope in his inside pocket. ‘It’s safe with me. I won’t let you down. But you must get away.’ He bit the inside of his jaw. ‘Where will you go? Do you have a plan?’

  Ruby was so fascinated she was almost pulling her chair nearer. She didn’t even notice that the four Eastern European men who’d been sitting on the adjacent table, wolfing down bowls of stew had got up and were leaving. She’d been watching them earlier, too, wondering which backwater or bleak town they’d come from, what promises they’d been made in order to up sticks and leave their homeland. They looked like the kind of muscle she’d seen surrounding the various Russian gangsters she’d come across on the Costa del Sol. Guys that would snap your neck with one hand. One of them was a looker, all high cheekbones and big soft lips, and she’d seen him checking her out when she’d come in, had been aware he was stealing little glances at her. That would be nothing new to Ruby. She was aware of her beauty and the power she had over men. Most of them were a walkover, full of shit. But she could never resist a new challenge. She looked up, but the hunky one didn’t look in her direction as all four of them walked past her table.

  Then, suddenly, it happened. Two rapid gunshots. Not deafening, and obviously through a silencer, but Ruby instinctively dived below the table as the third shot was fired. But not before she caught a fleeting glimpse of the shocked expression on the old, sandy-haired guy’s face that split second when he became aware, too late, that the was gun pointed at him. It blew the back of his head open, an explosion of red against the bright-yellow shiny wall, and all hell broke loose. From under the table she saw him slump from his chair and slip down in a heap beside her, his eyes wide with shock. Then his friend dived across and knelt down, cradling his blood-soaked head in his hands, weeping, confused, hysterical. Two women with kids in pushchairs screamed in horror at the other table, and people ran from the back of the café to the front and then to the back, hiding, trying to make for the door, cowering in corners, some face down on the floor, waiting for the kind of massacre they’d seen played out on American television. The kitchen staff behind the open counter stood rooted as though they were watching it unfold on screen, and the stupid waitress was screeching and wailing as though it was her who’d been shot.

  ‘Get an ambulance! Hurry!’ the posh man screamed into the mayhem. ‘Oh, Tom! Please! Please stay with me!’ he sobbed, grabbing handfuls of paper napkins, trying to stem the well of blood gushing from his friend’s mouth.

  As she crouched, Ruby’s eyes met his and she gave him a genuinely sympathetic look. Poor bastard.

  ‘Did you see them?’ he asked, his face contorted in abject misery.

  Ruby shook her head slowly. She could hear sirens in the distance. She had to get out of here. Fast. She backed away, got to her feet, her eyes flicking around the room, taking in the chaos. And as she did, she was drawn to a piece of paper with something scribbled in pencil on the table where the assassins had sat. She snatched it like a thief and shoved it in her pocket as she bolted for the door.

  Chapter One

  Rosie switched on her mobile at the screech of the aircraft’s wheels on the tarmac, and it plinked with a message alert. It was Marion, the editor’s secretary. ‘Phone Mick as soon as you land,’ it read. Christ, Rosie thought. So much for easing yourself back into work. If Mick wanted to talk to her immediately, there must be something big on the go. Her stomach did a little nervous roll, somewhere between excitement and dread. Given that she’d been away for nearly two months, for her own safety, after her last big investigation into Loyalist gangsters, she hoped that it was only a story Mick wanted to talk about.

  Heathrow Airport was mobbed, as usual, and Rosie managed to ease her way through the throng at the luggage carousel to get her case. Only then did she press the speed dial to the editor’s private line.

  ‘Gilmour! Welcome home! The wanderer has returned.’

  ‘I’m not home yet, Mick. I’m only at Heathrow,’ Rosie said, deadpan.

  ‘Well, fatted calves will be butchered in preparation for your return,’ McGuire joked. ‘How were your travels?’

  ‘Brilliant. I grew a moustache and everything, like a proper nomad.’ Rosie was glad to hear his voice. ‘But what’s going on, Mick? I know you’ve not been missing me that much that you couldn’t wait till I got home before we speak. So what’s up?’

  ‘Murder. King’s Cross. Scots guy. Older. Retired lecturer at Glasgow Uni.’

  ‘Really?’ Rosie’s mind was immediately firing off half a dozen scenarios. ‘Mugged? Stabbed? What happened? What did he lecture in?’

  ‘Shot.’ McGuire said. ‘Point-blank range. Looks like an execution. Definitely a hit of some sort. He was some kind of history lecturer. It’s not clear yet.’

  ‘Christ! When did it happen?’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon. In the middle of a crowded café in front of women and weans. Some fucker just came up, pointed the gun and blew his brains all over the wall.’

  ‘Bloody hell. What’s the word? What do we know?’

  ‘Not much at the moment. His name’s Tom Mahoney. He was with a friend – Hawkins. Gerard Hawkins. Another former lecturer at Glasgow. They’d been mates since they were both students a hundred years ago. We still don’t know very much, because the cops are saying bugger all. But it seems that there were four men in the café – Eastern Europeans, the word is – and as they got up to leave, one of them pulled a gun and shot our man through the head.’

  ‘So it’s not a random nutter then.’

  ‘Nope. Definitely looks like a hit. But the question is why . . . So I want you to take a run over to Scotland Yard and see what the score is. The papers are all over it. Especially the posh papers, because he was a lecturer. If he was just some Romanian fruit-picker coming off the Eurostar looking for a job in London, nobody would give a fuck. But he’s a moth-eaten old lecturer, therefore he matters.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Rosie said.

  ‘Aye, that’s what his wife said when they told her he was dead.’ McGuire gave a little chortle. ‘Glad you’re still a hard-bitten hack and not just a nomad with a moustache.’

  Rosie felt a little twinge of shame that she’d said ‘Fascinating’ out loud, without even considering the horror for Mahoney’s family. She’d gone from nomad to journalist in one nanosecond. She couldn’t help who she was.

  ‘Sorry. But you know what I mean. I’m intrigued,’ she said.

  ‘Great. Me, too, Gilmour. So take that intrigue of yours across to the cop shop and see what the plods are saying. I’ll put you on to Marion. She’s got you booked in somewhere for a couple of days, then we’ll see what’s what. There will be a lot to find out up here as well. I’ll email you what we’ve got.’

  ‘Okay. I’ve just picked
up my bags. I’ll jump in a taxi and get to the hotel.’

  ‘Oh, Rosie,’ McGuire said, almost as an afterthought. ‘And how are you feeling? You know, with everything. How’s your arm? Did you have a good rest?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Rosie said, not really sure how to answer that one. ‘I did. It was great. I’m good to go.’ She touched her arm, pushing away the image of the blowtorch. ‘I’ll bring my photos and maybe we can have a slideshow some afternoon in your office with some popcorn.’

  McGuire chuckled. ‘Good to have you back, Gilmour.’ He hung up.

  *

  In the hotel room Rosie sat on the edge of bed and hauled off her suede calf-length boots, tossing them in a corner. Then she unzipped her jeans and eased them over her hips, kicking them off her ankles, and pulled off her T-shirt and bra. The drone of the King’s Cross Road traffic below was too far away to disturb her as she lay back on the bed, relishing the tranquility for a few moments before she had to head back into real life.

  Scenes of the last few weeks in Sarajevo ran like a movie she was watching herself in. She was either holding court, or listening intently in smoky cafés and bars late into the night with the noisy, good-humoured Bosnians who had taken her to their hearts. And Adrian, laughing and telling stories his friends revelled in hearing, as they all swapped tales of life before the war and where they’d been in recent years as they tried to move on from the hell. She’d seen Adrian relaxed and at home before, when she’d come to Bosnia eighteen months ago and he’d helped her chase down the monsters who were butchering refugees in Glasgow and selling their bones and tissue for money. That was the first time she’d had a different picture of the big, resigned-looking Bosnian who she’d met by chance four years ago. By a twist of fate, he had saved her life not once but twice since, had become her close friend and sometimes minder on big, difficult investigations abroad that required the kind of guts and commitment he brought to the table.