Random

by Craig Robertson

  The guys I was with were lapping it up. The man’s pure class, they said. Got five jacuzzis in his house, they said. See that suit? Bought me a drink. Great guy.

  Aye, right. He nodded and grinned at me just the way he did with everyone else. I don’t think he heard a single word I said. When I found out who he was, that suited me fine. Alec Kirkwood had fought his way out of Asher Street in Baillieston, a mental bampot who was as handy with his head as he was with a baseball bat. He hurt a lot of people and won the kind of reputation you need to separate yourself from the herd.

  Those that tried to stop him found their houses fire-bombed. Those with asbestos homes had their pets poisoned. Some even went to their kids’ school to find that Uncle Alec had already picked them up and looked after them for a couple of hours. He never touched them. It was a message.

  A mental case. Psycho. Mad, bad and deadly to know.

  He worked his way up. Swapped his bovver boots for an Armani suit and his knuckleduster for a chartered accountant. Too smart to get his hands dirty these days. Still plenty of blood on them though.

  He now had one of those knock-through council house rows where three homes had been turned into a ranch. He was established. He was establishment. Other city establishment. He thought himself a cut above the rest, a smart guy among smartarses. A game show host among mongrels.

  Those who knew said that Spud Tierney was a dealer for Kirkwood. He was an irritating wee shite by all accounts. It was only being Kirky’s boy that had kept him alive for as long as it did. People knew he was Kirkwood’s and that was his passport through closes and schemes, it was his shield of invincibility. Right up till when I killed him.

  They said he was a yappy wee dick who was always winding folk up. He’d needle guys twice his size and the only wonder was that he’d never been killed sooner.

  Spud was low life and low rent. He’d bang out wraps to wasters. A few quid here, a dirty tenner there. He’d shank out smokes and snifters, pills and pokes to any hoodie or Burberry bam that had scraped the necessary from their giro.

  He wouldn’t be missed but there was something else. I’d worked it out. I just hadn’t worked out if it would be a good thing or not. I had sawn off Spud Tierney’s finger for my own purposes. Kirkwood obviously wouldn’t know that. So what would he think? Easy peasy, he’d take it as a sign. Tierney had been killed because he was Kirkwood’s and that finger was someone’s way of telling him so.

  There was probably a hundred ways that a wee nyaff like Spud could get himself stabbed. World he lived in, it was obvious. But being found minus one digit would be sure to have Kirkwood thinking it was more than just a deal gone wrong, more than just someone taking a dislike to his mouse-eating face. He’d see that single missing finger being stuck right up in front of his face. He’d think rivals. He’d see threat.

  You’d maybe think that for someone like Kirkwood, there’d be a hundred possibles who’d have done Spud Tierney to get at him. Maybe you’d think thousands. The people who know people say the truth is quite different. There’d maybe be thousands who’d like to, hundreds who’d like to think they had what it takes. There would be a handful who’d actually have the balls.

  They spoke of candidates. Could be sure Kirky would be doing the same.

  There was the Gilmartin brothers from Easterhouse. Two up-and-comers who had been throwing their weight about. Supposedly a big jump up in class for them to look at Kirky but you couldn’t rule it out. Men get greedy.

  Tookie Cochrane. Big bastard. Kirky’s counterpart on the south side. Word was it was unlikely to be Tookie, he’d know a full-on turf war was a waste of everybody’s time.

  Mick Docherty. Medium-sized dealer who thought he was big league. He thought he was Huggy McBear, all flash gear and a big, big mouth. The suggestion was that Kirkwood liked Docherty for it because it would take someone stupid or crazy to do Spud Tierney. Docherty didn’t just deal it, he used it. He was way fucking unpredictable.

  Seemed Kirky was sure that the sawn-off finger was a message from one of them. Don’t shoot the messenger? Aye right, he wouldn’t just shoot him, he’d rip his balls off and nail them to the gates of Ibrox. He’d shoot the messenger and whoever sent him.

  Word was already out that Kirkwood wanted to know every second of Spud Tierney’s whereabouts for the day he was killed. He wanted to know everyone that he sold to, everyone that said boo to him, everyone that stood next to him while he pished. He wanted to know everything he ate, everything he drank, he wanted to know which side of the bed he’d got out of in the morning. If anyone so much as looked at Spud the wrong way – or the right way – then he’d know.

  He also made sure that the people knew exactly what he had said to his right-hand man, a maniac by the name of Davie Stewart. ‘Five o’clock,’ he’d said. ‘If no one turns up the fucker who did Spud by five o’clock then we pull in bodies and hurt them.’

  They say Davie Stewart had smiled. They say that Davie would have been hoping that five o’clock saw nothing but silence. He liked hurting people and that was why Kirkwood had him around. Davie didn’t give a flying fuck about Spud Tierney but he would gladly break fingers or fry someone’s bollocks to find out who did him in. And Kirky would gladly let him.

  Five o’clock? It came and went. It was showtime. Davie Stewart’s show.

  There was a guy worked for Mick Docherty who ran drugs out of the Victory on the edge of Baillieston. They say it was strictly Kirkwood’s turf but it was borderline and small beer and so it had been let go a long time ago as long as Docherty’s boy, name of Jimmy McIntyre, behaved himself. Everyone behaves and everyone’s fine.

  Davie Stewart and two others hauled Jimmy Mac out of the Victory, kicking and screaming in front of a pub full of punters, and tossed him into the back of a white van. The fact that he didn’t go quietly would have been perfect for Kirkwood. If you make a point, you want everyone to hear it.

  In no time, Jimmy was sitting in a chair in front of Kirky. He was a lanky sort with red hair and way too many freckles. He was still talking tough and making out how he wasn’t worried. He talked the talk but he looked about ready to shit himself.

  They say Davie Stewart didn’t look all that pleased at that, thinking that if Jimmy Mac gave it up too easy then he would miss out on his fun. Maniacs are like that.

  Alec Kirkwood pulled up a chair and sat right in front of Jimmy, looking him hard in the eyes, saying nothing. Davie Stewart took up a position to Jimmy’s left. Jimmy knew he was there and was dying to glance at him but was shit-scared to defy Kirkwood by looking away. Davie was boring his eyes into him, no doubt thinking all kinds of bad thoughts and trying to force them into Jimmy’s skull.

  Five minutes Kirkwood looked at him without a word.

  Jimmy spoke. Jimmy was joking, Jimmy was giving off casual, Jimmy was trying real hard for cool. He got nowhere near it. He had nothing to say but he spilled his guts anyway.

  He asked if it was about Spud Tierney. He asked it twice. He said if it was then he knew nothing. If he knew anything then he’d say it.

  Kirkwood just sat and looked at him.

  Jimmy kept saying he knew nothing. Kept saying he would tell him anything if he had anything to tell.

  Davie Stewart got out of his chair. Jimmy heard him move but couldn’t look. Kirky wouldn’t let his eyes go. Jimmy’s left eye strained like fuck. He could feel Davie Stewart’s breath on him and he wondered if every story he’d heard about this mad bastard were true. They were.

  Jimmy Mac sweated. He began to pish himself. He was near to crying.

  At last Jimmy couldn’t take it any longer and turned his head to Davie. Big mistake. As soon as he turned, Davie Stewart stuck a screwdriver in his eye.

  Jimmy screamed for a long time. Blood and tissue spurted from his eyes and he opened his lungs and roared.

  Davie hadn’t thrust the screwdriver all the way home of course. Too high a chance that would have killed him. He just forced it in enough to burst the
eyeball and let Jimmy Mac know that he was serious. It was a message. Kirkwood’s message to the other city.

  They let Jimmy scream for a bit then sob for a bit. Then Davie grabbed his hair and yanked it back hard on his head. He asked him what he knew about Spud Tierney’s death.

  Jimmy Mac found a voice and burbled that he didn’t know nothing. If the Tierney killing had anything to do with Mick Docherty then he knew nothing about it.

  They knew he was telling the truth then. He was too shit-scared to do otherwise.

  All of that was bad enough and all down to me, but it got worse.

  Before they bundled Jimmy Mac into the white van and before they drove him back to the Victory and before they threw him out of the van’s back door onto the street in front of the pub. Before they did all that, Alec Kirkwood told Davie Stewart to bring out a pair of pliers and clip off Jimmy Mac’s pinkie.

  Shit.

  CHAPTER 15

  They talked about Spud Tierney from the back seat of my taxi. It was all over the papers, talk of turf wars, tit-for-tat violence, contract killings and gangsters. Mostly it was shit.

  Sometimes they talked to me, sometimes they were on mobile phones. Acting tough, talking gallus, playing the big man, playing the big so what. Nobody in Glasgow was scared of a bit of organized criminal bloodshed.

  They might have been outraged or shocked, disgusted or interested but not frightened. Most of them were way too cool and street smart for that. Scared was for Edinburgh or teuchters. They lived in Glasgow, therefore they were duty-bound to be hard about such things. Curious indifference was the most they were allowed to muster.

  ‘Aye, stabbed. That’s right. A dealer. Know Alec Kirkwood? Aye, one of his guys. Bodies going to be piling up, way I got told. See the game last night? Terrible, wasn’t it? Ref was hopeless.’

  Or else they were on their high horse about it. A disgrace. Police should be doing something about that kind of thing. More bobbies on the beat. If those people had proper jobs then they wouldn’t have the time to go round stabbing each other.

  Others relished it because if they were killing each other then they were leaving normal folk alone. Let the fuckers stab each other all they want. Every one deid is one less bampot on the streets. Give them more fucking knives and guns and let them get on with it.

  They still didn’t talk about me because they didn’t know I existed. If anything I had slipped further into the shadows because they thought Thomas Tierney was a gangland killing. Glasgow had no idea who I was. Outside the ranks of Strathclyde Police I was nothing. They knew me, they wanted me but no one else gave a damn.

  A cop got into the back of the cab just days after Tierney. Saw him for polis right off. The clothes, the hair, the way he carried himself, all off-job casual but couldn’t have been anything else. Polite enough but no chat, which obviously suited me just fine. Gave me an address in Millerston, couple of streets back from Hogganfield Loch, and settled back in the seat. We had driven maybe five minutes when his mobile rang.

  ‘All right, Gavin? How you doing?’

  Pause.

  ‘No, heard nothing. She’s keeping it all to herself. Asked around but no one knows what’s going on.’

  Pause.

  ‘Aye, I know. Place is going mental.’

  Pause and a narrowed glance at my eyes in the rear-view. I watched the road.

  ‘I don’t know how she expects to keep a lid on this for much longer. Three of them for fuck’s sake. One was bad enough but three? Shit’s going to hit the fan big time when this comes out.’

  Long pause.

  ‘She doesn’t have a clue. Not a Scooby. Neither of them do. Miles out her depth. Fucking drowning in it she is. Serves the bitch right.’

  Pause.

  ‘No, no way. Sorry but all she has to do is hold her hands up and admit she’s not up to it. Should have it taken off her. Fucking three of them. Fucking unbelievable.’

  Pause.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  Pause.

  ‘That’s no the point. Nothing to do with it.’

  Pause.

  ‘No, I don’t know either. No idea. Some sick joke. But it shouldn’t matter. Nothing to do with it, certainly no reason for her to run with this.’

  Pause.

  ‘Aye well, we’ll see soon enough. Fuck knows what’s going to happen if there’s a fourth.’

  Very short pause.

  ‘Well, you can hardly rule it out.’

  Pause.

  ‘I’m just saying. This is out of hand already, Gav. Way out of hand. Three of the fuckers.’

  Long pause.

  ‘Yeah, but he doesn’t know that, does he? So he’ll think what he wants, do what he wants.’

  Pause.

  ‘Oh no. No chance. That’s her call. No one talks about it, she says. Her call.’

  Pause.

  ‘Not our problem. Our problem is what happens when this comes out. We’ll all be right in it then. Way she’s going it’s her mess. Let her lie in it.’

  A long pause then a laugh. A harsh, crude laugh.

  ‘Aye, course I would. Am no denying that. So would you. Not the point though. Like I said, it’s way out of hand already. Fuck knows how this is going to pan out but I can’t see how it’s going to be good.’

  Short pause.

  ‘Aye. Too right. A fucking nightmare. Shit! We should be all over this. Blasting it from the rooftops, not this softly, softly pish.’

  He breathed out hard.

  ‘No, nor me, mate. All right. Speak to you tomorrow. Cheers.’

  He snapped his phone shut with an angry click. At the sound of it shutting, I looked in the mirror and caught him glancing at me. He glared back, challenging me. My eyes went back to the road. Nothing to do with me, guv.

  Maybe it was nothing to do with me. Maybe I was paranoid but it didn’t seem likely. I made him for a cop and was sure that every cop in Glasgow was talking about me. As much as no one else knew I existed, I must have been number one topic of conversation for the police.

  I knew I was gripping the steering wheel a bit harder than I should have been the whole way through his chat. The chat that might have had nothing to do with me. I was cool. I was detached. I was compartmentalizing. But I knew it was having an effect. My heart was beating just a bit faster. My blood was hotter. The he and the she of his talk with the Gavin guy were reverberating round my head. I was thinking, calculating, considering. I think I might even have been sweating just a bit more than I should. I was aware of my pulse.

  Suddenly I was aware of traffic lights changing above me as I drove along Cumbernauld Road into Stepps. Fuck, fuck fuck. I slammed on my brakes just after amber had become red. Fuck. Streets and windows and signs jolted into my head and it was like my ears had popped on an aeroplane. I slid to a halt a few feet beyond the line and realized I hadn’t noticed much except his voice since some time back when we were on the bypass.

  He shot forward a bit in his seat and swore.

  ‘Fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry about that. Changed on me.’

  ‘Aye. So I saw.’

  He glared at me again in the rear-view.

  I tore my eyes from his before I could glare back at him. So tempting but that would have achieved nothing and might have done a whole lot of harm. Heart beating fast. Pulse throbbing. I had a long game to play.

  I breathed and I waited. Tried to make a point of not holding the steering wheel too hard. Long game. Big move still to come. Cool your blood.

  The red ticked away like a stopped clock. Tick, tick, tick. Changed. Red. Red and amber. Green. Took my time. Eased away.

  He glared at me again. I looked back blankly.

  ‘Fuck’s sake.’

  Like it was all my fault.

  He was just one cop. One polis man among eight thousand. One man among a million in Greater Glasgow. What the fuck did his opinion matter? He obviously didn’t know what he was talking about. Didn’t know anything about an
ything.

  I was on edge. Didn’t realize it until then. Had wanted people to talk about me, about it, about them, but as soon as one did I got edgy. Not good. There were big things about to happen. The most important thing. Not the time to get anxious.

  I didn’t look in the rear-view mirror again. Eyes front. Didn’t look at him again, didn’t breathe until we had gone onto Royston Road and it was time for the turn onto Mossbank Drive.

  ‘This one?’

  ‘Aye. Then first left.’

  I turned right. I turned left. He said twenty yards. I stopped. He got out. He left a shit tip. Closed the door behind him without a word.

  He was nothing. I breathed. Big city, small village. He knocked on the door of a house which opened and closed behind him.

  I breathed and drove off. I drove on.

  His conversation might have had nothing to do with me. I didn’t care. I knew what I had to do. I knew what was going to happen.

  CHAPTER 16

  I’d read about serial killers. I would look in bookshops and in the local library. Never bought a book, never borrowed one. I’ve a very good memory. Some I read on the Internet but kept that to an absolute minimum. I knew everything was logged, everything monitored, everything watched.

  I watched documentaries. Bought satellite television just for that. Read magazines, paid for in cash, bought in different places.

  Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Fred West. Jeffrey Dahmer. Dennis Nilsen. Albert DeSalvo. David Berkowitz. Alexander Pichushkin. Pedro Alonso López. I knew them all.

  Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, Charles Ng, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Albert Fish. Leopold and Loeb. Aileen Wuornos. Harold Shipman. Andrei Chikatilo. John George Haigh. John Christie. Peter Sutcliffe. Josef Fritzl.

  Then there was Jack.

  Some said the Ripper was overrated. I always remembered someone saying that to me: ‘Jack the Ripper is overrated.’ Just like that.

  In purely numerical terms he was probably right. But what he forgot, what they all forget, is that Jack got away with it. The single most famous serial killer in history yet still unknown. Outstanding.