A Cold Killing

Book 0: Rosie Gilmour

by Anna Smith

Genres: Female Sleuths; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Crime reporter Rosie Gilmour returns from hiding in Bosnia to a story of a brutal execution. University lecturer Tom Mahoney was shot at point blank range and the killing has all the signs of a hit. But who would want to kill a retired lecturer? Rosie throws herself into the investigation, looking for a witness that has gone missing. A witness that might hold the key to the story. But she has her own reasons to stay hidden. As Rosie digs deeper, she finds the story has connections to the Ministry of Defence and MI6 and Mahoney's past is darker than anyone could imagine. Rosie's running out of time to find out the truth, before Mahoney's killers silence her for good. 'Anna Smith is the real deal . . . Rosie Gilmour is a captivating character who drags the reader along at breakneck speed' Daily Express

Release date: March 26, 2015

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 297

Sample

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.

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.

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.’

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 –. . .