A Cold Killing (Rosie Gilmour) Read online

  She knew she was playing with fire when she called him last month after they’d returned from Spain following the cocaine-smuggling exposé that almost got both of them killed. She knew in her heart, with the editor sending her away because of the UVF contract on her life, that she should have gone to New York to be with TJ. She should have headed straight into the arms of the man she loved and worked at the relationship that was teetering on the edge. But it had been Adrian she’d phoned. In her head, she’d convinced herself she’d just wanted to run, and she knew she could run safely to Adrian. He would protect her, as he’d done so many times in recent years, without conditions. Or had it been more than that? Her mind drifted and she ran her hand across her breasts and downwards to the softness of her thighs as she drifted into a semi-conscious slumber.

  Her laptop bleeped with an email. She sat up, rubbed her face vigorously and opened up her computer. What happened in Bosnia should stay in Bosnia, she told herself. She had work to do.

  *

  Rosie had been too late for the Met Police’s press briefing, which had taken place earlier in the afternoon at the makeshift incident room they’d set up on the pavement across from the café where Mahoney was murdered. But from what she’d picked up from the Press Association copy on her laptop, she hadn’t missed much. She’d also read and re-read the various newspapers that had splashed the story this morning – none of them with any different line than that a former university lecturer had been gunned down in what looked like an execution. The nature of the murder was a big enough line in itself, but there was no detail, and that was the mystery factor. Who shoots an ageing lecturer in broad daylight in a busy café? And why? The story had swirled around in Rosie’s head while she showered and got dressed before heading out to meet her old newspaper pal Andy Simpson for dinner. He’d called her mobile after being told by her office in Glasgow she was out of town. She was glad, and would have phoned him anyway, as much to pick his brains as for the company in London. Grizzled old hack that he was, Andy didn’t miss much, and she knew that, when in London, and surrounded by the so-called big hitters and egos, it was good to have a Scottish ally. Rosie knew Andy would be his usual wily, charming self, out to prove he was ahead of the pack but watching her like a hawk in case she stiffed him on the story. And at the same time she knew there would be a faint hope on his part that he could get her into bed, now that she was down in the Big Smoke on what he had made his own turf after fifteen years as a top front-line hack in Fleet Street.

  Rosie smiled as she clocked him coming into the bar and striding across the wooden floor. Simpson certainly walked the walk. A grin spread across his face when he saw her.

  ‘There she is. Scotland’s finest.’ He pulled Rosie to her feet. ‘Let me get a kiss at you right on the lips.’

  He planted a too-lingering kiss and held her tight.

  ‘Steady the buffs.’ She pulled away. ‘Do you do that to all the hacks who come from Glasgow?’

  Still holding her, Andy scanned her face.

  ‘Only the ones I’m secretly in love with . . . and you know I’ve always loved you.’ He touched her face. ‘You’re looking well . . . Seriously.’ He gave her another tight hug then released her. ‘Oh, and I read all about that shit in Spain. Fuck me! You could have been a dead woman.’

  ‘Aw, don’t you start, Andy. Everybody says that. But believe me, nobody knows it more than me.’ She ruffled his hair, picked up her glass and drained it. ‘Come on. It’s your round. Tell me what’s been happening to you these days. How’s life?’

  They walked towards the bar.

  ‘I’m good. But listen. About the UVF and the coke story. Fucking hell! Some mad bastard tried to burn your arm off with a blowtorch? Is that true? Christ almighty! Are you all right? Really?’

  ‘Of course I’m all right.’ Rosie shrugged, as the image flashed behind her eyes. ‘I can’t play the piano as well as I used to but, apart from that, it’s all good.’ She puffed. ‘Come on. I can’t be arsed talking about that now. It was nearly two months ago. I’ve been in hiding in Bosnia since then. The UVF put a hit out on me.’

  ‘I heard that, too. You need to watch yourself.’ He grinned. ‘I mean, a bullet or a stab in the leg doesn’t do your reputation at the front line any harm. But you don’t want to be getting killed. Because then you’ll just be a dead reporter . . .’ He leaned into her and whispered. ‘. . . And we’ve not even been to bed yet.’

  Rosie laughed and shook her head, remembering the drunken clinch with him a few years ago back in the days when she drank a lot more than she did now, and could be reckless with it, too. She knew better now. She paced herself. And she didn’t get involved with other reporters. Most of them were a bit mentally deranged, like herself, anyway. They were good fun, focused on the job, and the job was their lives. But the part that didn’t involve work was usually well fucked up. She knew that better than anyone.

  They sat back, clinked their gin and tonics, relaxed in each other’s company. Rosie was genuinely glad to see him, but she knew Andy would be looking for an equal share of anything she came up with from the Scottish side of the investigation. She’d see what he’d got first, she thought, watching him take out his notebook and flicking through the pages, but she wouldn’t be throwing her lot in with him, or any other hack in the press pack who liked to work together to make sure none of them missed out. That wasn’t how she operated.

  ‘So what’s the rumour mill spewing out on this, Andy? Don’t tell me the lecturer was a drug dealer,’ Rosie said.

  ‘No. Nothing like that. Strangely enough, there’s not been that much speculation at all. We’re all over it down here at the moment, but that’ll die down if the cops can’t keep the interest up. They have to keep giving the hacks something to keep us going. I’ve told my Met contacts that we need new lines every day to keep it alive.’

  ‘So have they given you any intelligence at all?’

  He took a swig of his drink and flipped over a page.

  ‘One line for tomorrow that I’ve got to myself, but I’ll share it with you, for old time’s sake,’ he winked.

  ‘I’m all ears,’ she said, ignoring Andy’s game face.

  ‘It’s not much really, but just that he had a flat down here in London, or he had access to a flat. That’s all they told me. Didn’t say if he owned it or whatever, just that he had been down here for the past three or four days. Looks like he came down quite a bit. I’ve been round to the place. Neighbours remembered him coming and going over the years. But, typical for London, no bastard knew who he was.’

  ‘Where was the flat?’

  ‘Just off Kensington High Street. Close enough to the posh part but far enough away, if you get my drift.’

  ‘What . . . central London? On a university lecturer’s pension?’

  Andy shrugged. ‘Could have been left to him by a rich relative or something. I’m still checking it out. But there’s nothing too mysterious about that. It’s not the kind of thing somebody shoots you for.’

  ‘Was he a perv? Maybe using the flat for rent boys?’

  ‘Nothing to indicate that. He was married. Grown-up family. Two sons. One in the USA and the other in Hong Kong . . . And anyway, this was an execution. Professional job. No doubt about it.’

  ‘What about the four guys? The Sun story said they were Russians.’

  ‘That might be right, even if it was a flyer by the Sun. One of our crime boys got a nod from the cops today that the waitress said she thought they were Russian. And you probably know that Mahoney used to lecture in East European Studies at Glasgow.’

  ‘You think it’s connected?’

  ‘Who knows. We don’t have enough information on his background yet. That’s what’s really annoying.’

  ‘Are we likely to get the names of any of the people in the café? Anyone we can get to for a bit of colour? Eyewitness accounts?’

  ‘We’re working on it. The café’s closed today while Forensics sweep the place. But
it’s supposed to reopen tomorrow.’

  ‘Great. It’ll be good for a colour piece anyway . . . But we really need something more to go on. What about the friend he was with? Apparently, he’s an old mate from university. What’s his background?’

  ‘Haven’t been told much. He lives in Glasgow. But the cops have said he’s in a right old state. In shock. I don’t think we’d get much change out of him at the moment, and anyway, we don’t even know where he is.’

  Rosie nodded.

  ‘I’ll probably only stay here for a couple of days, then head up the road. We need to dig around on Mahoney’s background back home. Maybe someone will come out of the woodwork.’

  Rosie was already thinking of her friend Mickey Kavanagh, the private-eye ex-cop with contacts everywhere. If anything was worth hiding, Mickey would dig it out. She’d call him later. But first, she had to charm Andy into staying onside, so her back was covered in London if anything blew up.

  ‘So, Mr Big-time London Hack. Where can an impressionable Glasgow reporter buy you dinner? And, remember, my expenses are only a fraction of yours.’

  ‘Fear not, my lovely. Dinner is on me.’ Andy drained his glass and stood up, offering his arm. ‘Let’s go.’

  Chapter Two

  Rosie was a little hungover, sitting at a small table in the King’s Cross café, as far away as possible from any activity, but close enough to watch. It looked like business as usual – if you didn’t know that a man had been shot in the head here less than forty-eight hours ago. Scenes of crime officers had been all over it yesterday, dusting for prints, removing anything that might help identify the killers. But there had been so much mayhem when the shooting started, with frantic customers running around, that much of the crime scene would have been contaminated by the time they got there.

  It was almost mid-morning when police allowed the owner, a pot-bellied little Greek man, to reopen, after much huffing and puffing from him that he was losing a fortune. He was clearly aware that the café would be even busier now, with punters eager to see the spot where a man was gunned down. Rosie watched him wringing his hands as he described to reporters what had happened, saying how it was just like the movies, and she could see he was relishing the extra trade that the morbid curiosity factor was bringing in. At least he had had the decency to clean the blood off the walls, Rosie noticed, as she watched him point to the table where Tom Mahoney had sat. Christ! There’s money in everything – even cold-blooded murder.

  Last night’s dinner with Andy had gone on too long. And too much drink had been taken even before they’d gone on to the Soho bar where celebrities and actors hung out. The paparazzi photographers were lurking outside, hoping that some big shot would fall out of the bar drunk, snogging a woman, or man, who wasn’t their partner. They were seldom disappointed in this neck of the woods. Andy and Rosie had been engrossed in their one-in-the-morning drunken, intense conversation about life and love and ‘where did it all go wrong’, with Andy telling her that his latest live-in lover was leaving him. Rosie had jokingly suggested he should try keeping his trousers on when he was out without his girlfriend. He was flirtatious and affectionate with Rosie all evening, both of them knowing they were not going to end up in bed but enjoying the closeness of being a couple of lonely misfits. Now on her second coffee, Rosie called the waitress over and ordered more water. Rehydration Station – too little too late.

  Earlier she’d watched as the waitress protested outside as photographers took pictures of the staff arriving at the café. She was pretending to be coy but was obviously relishing her fifteen minutes of fame, as she declared that police had told her not to talk to the media, then seconds later was blabbing to everyone.

  ‘I’m a journalist from Scotland.’ Rosie looked up when she came over to her table to take her order. ‘From the Post.’

  The waitress put her hand up as though she were a celebrity.

  ‘I’m not giving interviews.’

  Rosie managed to keep her face straight.

  Of course . . . I was just thinking . . .’ She paused. ‘Sorry, I don’t know your name?’

  ‘Karen,’ the waitress replied.

  ‘Karen. I was just thinking, that with this being such a big story and the interest from the papers and television, that someone like yourself will be crucial to the inquiry. I wondered how that makes you feel.’

  ‘Well,’ Karen said, tossing her blonde ponytail and pouting her pale-pink lips. ‘I’m doing what I can to help the case. All I can say is what I saw.’

  ‘You were the only waitress here, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. The other girl, Jen, was at the dentist. So it was just me . . . I saw it all.’

  She batted her eyelashes twice, as if she were waiting for a flashbulb to go off.

  ‘I was wondering,’ Rosie said, ‘did you actually serve those guys? . . . The four men the police are talking about?’

  ‘I’m not really supposed to say.’

  ‘I understand that. But what you’re saying to me right now . . . you know . . . it doesn’t have to come from you. I don’t have to put it in a quote. You can be anonymous. I’m just trying to gather information, and you are a very important figure in this whole case.’ Rosie laid on the flattery thick.

  Karen examined her fingernails then rolled her eyes at Rosie.

  ‘Well. As long as you don’t say it came from me.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  She glimpsed over her shoulder to see if her boss was looking. He wasn’t.

  ‘I did serve them,’ she said softly. ‘They were big, kind of Russian-looking guys. Or Polish. Or something. You never know really. You get all sorts in here, so you do. Locals, office workers . . . and all the passing trade from the street. Loads of people with luggage coming off the Eurostar on their way somewhere, usually going towards Euston Station. You see a lot of foreigners. Loads from Eastern Europe.’

  ‘So it would be nothing untoward to see four big Russian-looking men.’

  ‘Not really. They were just customers to me. They ordered the lamb stew and sat there stuffing it down. They weren’t very friendly. Didn’t hardly look at me.’

  ‘Where were they sitting?’

  Rosie watched as Karen pointed to the spot, two tables away from where Mahoney had sat.

  ‘And who was at the table between them. Anyone?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She made an indignant face. ‘Some nasty woman. She gave me a hard time for not serving her coffee quick enough. Like, as if I’d nothing better to do. I was rushed off my feet. She was dead edgy.’

  ‘Was she on her own?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She paused. ‘Actually, she spoke kind of like you. I think she might have been Scottish. Maybe. Yeah. Probably was, come to think of it.’

  ‘What did she look like?’

  The waitress shrugged:

  ‘Dark hair, kind of messy. About thirty. Jeans, shabby looking.’

  Rosie thought for a moment then asked her to describe what she saw from the second the shooting started. Karen told her she’d just cleared a table at the back of the café and had gone to the counter and put the tray down when she heard the gunshots from behind. She’d turned around in time to see the man slip from his chair and on to the floor beneath the table.

  ‘It was like watching in slow motion. I was totally stunned. Terrified. Blood everywhere. Poor guy. He’d been really nice to me, and his pal was friendly too. He was kneeling on the floor beside him and he was really crying sore, trying to stop the blood. I felt so sorry for him. The girl was there too. The angry one. She was crouched on the floor beside them.’

  ‘The girl? What happened then?’

  ‘I can’t remember much. I was screaming and hiding at the side of the counter. I was terrified they were going to shoot more people. I mean, that’s what happens in the movies, isn’t it? I had my hands over my head, so I only saw the back of the men as they left.’ She paused, licked her lips. ‘Then she left, too.’

  ‘Who?’
>
  ‘That girl. The Scottish one.’

  ‘What. She left the café?’

  ‘Yeah. Everyone else was too petrified to move. But she got off her mark.’

  ‘Really. I wonder why?’

  ‘I’m guessing she didn’t want to talk to the cops. Maybe she was on the run. Or she was part of it too, maybe, with the men.’

  Rosie tried not to smile.

  ‘That’s a bit of a vivid imagination you’ve got there, Karen. Have you told the police all this?’

  ‘Yeah. I did. They said they’ve interviewed nearly everyone in the café and the ones they haven’t got full interviews from yet, they’ve given their addresses. But they didn’t say anything about the girl.’

  ‘So maybe she’s got in touch. They’re not going to tell you that, are they?’

  Karen shrugged.

  ‘She was probably part of it. I told them that.’

  ‘Based on what, though, Karen?’ Rosie asked, surprised.

  ‘Just a feeling.’

  Rosie nodded. She’d heard more than enough. Whoever the girl was in the café, this daft waitress had condemned her as an accessory to murder. God spare us from amateur sleuths. She drank her coffee and left a fiver tip for Karen.

  ‘See you again, Karen.’ She slipped her business card into the top pocket of the waitress’s blouse.

  *

  Rosie made a cursory trip to the address she had for Mahoney’s block of flats but, as she suspected, there was a uniformed Met officer at the entrance, so she couldn’t even knock on the neighbours’ doors. By early afternoon, she was back in her hotel bedroom, putting her story together for tomorrow’s Post while trying to negotiate her way through a room-service club sandwich. Why did they do that to a sandwich? Stack it up like a multistorey so that you had to eat it with a knife and fork? By the time she’d given up on it, the plate looked like someone had trampled all over it.

  She reread her copy, keeping one eye on Sky News in the corner. They still had Mahoney’s murder high up on their news list, but there were no new lines. Her email pinged with copy from Declan, the young reporter back at the Post, assigned as her legman on the Scottish end. He’d already been to the Mahoney house, but the wife was saying nothing, was surrounded by friends and old colleagues of her husband, and too upset to speak. Her sons were on their way back from abroad. From Declan’s copy, it seemed like Mahoney was hugely respected and revered after a lifetime at Glasgow University. Rosie had written a colour piece on the scene inside the murder café based on what she had from the waitress. But she hadn’t decided what to do with Karen’s line about the ‘Scottish’ woman who left the scene before the police arrived. She’d run it past McGuire, let him decide. Her mobile rang.