by Ian Todd
“Aye, Ah know, Pat.”
“Ma wee doos. Three hunner years ae pure royal blood. Ah bloody loved them as if they wur ma ain wee weans, and noo they’re gone…gone. Nicked by some sticky-fingered, fucking thieving basturts who don’t gie a mother’s tit fur them.”
“Whit aboot JP?” asked Mick.
“Whit aboot him?”
“Kin we no hiv a wee word tae see if we kin at least negotiate the Horsemen back? It’s bound tae hiv come fae that Irish brigade. Ye said yersel that Thompson hid said they’d hauled his arse in because JP hid been mumping his gums aboot aw the thieving that wis gaun oan up in the Toonheid.”
“That wee maggot is up tae his eyes in aw this as well. There’s nae way he widnae hiv known whit wis gaun oan. That fat fucking Christian daughter ae his is married tae Squinty-eyes.”
“Aye, noo that ye mention it, she wis probably in last night tae keep an eye oan us. She claimed she wis jist in fur the can collection, leaving her every opportunity tae nip ootside if she clocked wan ae us heiding fur the door. Did any ae youse see her and that Sister Flog go aboot the pub collecting money? Ah know Ah didnae,” Shaun said tae his brothers.
“And then there wis the two bizzies staunin ootside the front door aw night, making oot they wur jist lugging in tae the music,” Danny reminded them.
“Dae they think we’re bloody stupid or something? How the fuck did they think we widnae clock oan tae whit wis gaun oan, eh?” The Big Man snarled.
“Tiny asked that Big Jim and that shitey Jobby wan if they’d any work tae dae insteid ae hinging aboot the door ae the pub aw night. ‘We’re jist listening tae the music,’ that shitey-arsed prick Jobby said. Whit kind ae an excuse is that, eh? Dae they think we’re fucking clowns? Dae they think we came up the Clyde oan a water biscuit, or something?”
“Right, fae noo oan, there’s a cauld war oan. They basturts get nothing bit grief fae us and the first chance we get, we’ll expose the corrupt thieving basturts fur whit we know them tae be. Let’s see how they get oan then. In the meantime, this stays wae us. Ah don’t want anywan tae know that we’ve been humped up the arse by that Irish Brigade. Hiv youse goat that?”
“Aye, Pat.”
“And another thing, we’re oot ae the doo business fae here oan in. Ah want aw they Horsemen’s ancestry papers burnt…the night. Withoot the papers, they’re jist three good doos. Noo, where the fuck is ma good McCluskeys’ steak pie, Mick?”
9.10 P.M.
“Ah knew there wis a Horseman involved wae ma da, bit Ah didnae know there wis a connection wae the wans we nabbed,” Skull said tae Flypast.
“Skull, ye did well last night…youse aw did. Yer Da wid be proud ae ye, if he only knew whit time ae the day it wis maist ae the time. Ah know that it’s easy fur me tae say, bit don’t be too hard oan him. Be proud ae him…it’s no his fault that he’s the way he is. He wis a game wee man in his day, jist like you ur. There wisnae a thing he didnae know aboot doos. Whit ye did wis sweet revenge fur him…fur me and fur a lot ae other doo men across the city. They won’t know whit the fuck his hit them…which is dangerous in itsel. You wee scallywags took them oan and fucked them up the arse the way nowan else could’ve, and believe you me, a lot ae smarter people than youse hiv tried and failed. Ah think they’ll try tae keep a lid oan this, bit like everything else, it’ll probably come oot in the wash. They’re no as smart and clever as they think they ur and that makes them vulnerable. People will see that and take them oan. Things hiv changed noo. Believe you me, Ah know whit Ah’m talking aboot.”
“Christ, whit time is it?” Skull asked, suddenly jumping up.
“Ah’m no sure…probably aboot nine o’clock. Why?”
“Look, Ah need tae get ma skates oan or Ah’ll no get in the night and Ah’ve goat school the morra.”
“Christ, things hiv changed. Ah widnae hiv thought Ah wid’ve heard that coming fae wan ae youse.”
“Aye, well, Ah’ll see ye, Flypast.”
“Awright, wee man, good luck. Ah hope ye manage tae get in the night when ye get hame.”
9.15 P.M.
“Ah’ll tell ye wan thing, ye cannae beat a McCluskeys’ steak pie, kin ye?” said The Big Man, smacking they chops ae his.
“It’s the gravy,” said Mick.
“Aye, and the way they hing the meat,” Danny added.
“How dae ye mean?”
“Well, remember the coo that that wee manky mob goat us?”
“Aye?”
“The meat wis okay…nice and fresh…bit if we wur tae hiv hung the thing up fur aboot three weeks, it wid’ve tasted even better.”
“Naw.”
“Aye, Ah’m telling ye. Take that pie we’ve jist scoffed. Kin ye no jist get that wee bit ae a tang aff ae it? That’s because they hing it up and leave it. That’s whit makes it aw tender when ye chomp yer laughing gear intae it.”
“Noo that ye mention it, when Ah goat a whiff ae it through in that kitchen, Ah hid tae check the soles ae ma shoes,” The Big Man said, tae loud laughter fae the brothers.
“Aw, who the fuck’s that?” Shaun grumbled, as they heard the sound ae knocking oan the ootside door.
“Ah’ll get it,” said Mick, staunin up and heiding fur the lobby.
“Sorry tae disturb ye, Mick,” Horsey John apologised.
“Nae problem, Horsey. Whit kin Ah dae fur ye?”
“Well, we might hiv a wee bit ae a breakthrough regarding the loft.”
“Aye?”
“You tell him, Tiny.”
“Ah wis speaking tae a wee fat basturt who lives roond in Taylor Street. Ye might’ve seen him aboot. He passes oan information tae me noo and again that he thinks Ah might find interesting…always trying tae wangle himsel in.”
“Ah get the message, Tiny. Get tae the point.”
“Well, Ah wis jist shutting up the stable at aboot hauf eight the night and Ah bumped intae him. He says that he clocked that wee baldy basturt…the wan wae the Celtic tammy, carrying a couple ae egg boxes yesterday.”
“Aye? Where aboot?”
“He wis walking alang Kennedy Street towards Dobbie’s Loan and St James Road.”
“Hing oan, Ah’ll be back in a minute.”
“That’s Horsey John and Tiny at the door. They say that a wee fat squealer, who lives oan Taylor Street, clocked that wee baldy wan wae the Celtic tammy heiding alang Kennedy Street towards St James Road wae a couple ae egg boxes yesterday.”
“He wid’ve been coming fae the cabin. Probably heiding o’er tae Flypast’s,” said Danny.
“Dae ye think so?”
“Aye, that’s the route Ah wid take fae the cabin. Straight alang Kennedy Street, nip doon Dobbie’s Loan and across the Parly Road lights oan tae St James Road, right intae McAslin Street, left up Grafton Street tae Grafton Square and then doon intae Montrose Street,” The Big Man said.
“So, ye don’t think there’s anything we should be daeing?”
“Naw, if the wee fat grass said he wis seen in Taylor Street or Ronald Street, that’d be a different matter. Naw, the bizzies ur the wans we’re efter. They probably goat some thieving crew up fae Manchester or Newcastle who’ve cut a deal wae them.”
“Aye, okay, Ah’ll tell them tae furget it. Ah’m still no convinced they wurnae involved though.”
“That’s no a bad thing, Mick. Thinking that way keeps ye oan yer toes.”
“Aye, okay, Ah’ll go and tell them,” he said, heiding back through the lobby.
“The Big Man says tae furget it,” said Mick.
“Really?” Horsey John and Tiny baith asked, surprised.
“Aye, we know who done it. The Big Man wants this tae be kept between us and nowan else. We’ll need time tae plan a comeback, so don’t mention the loft again, especially no in front ae The Big Man.”
“If that’s whit he wants, Mick. Ah’d be surprised if that wee fucking Tally wan and his pals wurnae involved wae this though.”
“Aye, Ah know, bit we cannae prove
a connection, even wae the egg boxes. Ah’m no convinced masel, mind ye. Ah’ll tell ye whit. Hiv ye goat any petrol roond at the stables?”
“Aye.”
“Right, jist tae keep they wee baw-bags oan their toes, nip roond tae their cabin when it’s dark later oan the night and put a match tae it. Ye kin pour the petrol in through the wee cavie windaes at the bottom. Keep this between us noo, and don’t let any nosey fucker see youse. Ah don’t want The Big Man, Shaun or Danny tae know aboot this.”
“Aye, nae bother, Mick. That’ll take they wee harry-hoofters doon a peg or two.”
10.45 P.M.
Johnboy wis lying in his bed wae the skin oan that napper ae his scraped red raw and his left lug ringing and hinging doon an extra two inches. He gingerly touched his scalp, wincing. His maw hid broken two plastic bone combs earlier oan, in search ae nits.
“Johnboy, Ah thought Ah telt ye tae get roond tae that Stow College and let they students loose oan that heid ae yours? Ye’re back tae school the morra and noo it’s too late tae get yer hair cut,” his ma hid grumbled as he sat oan the chair in the middle ae the kitchen being operated oan by the bug butcher.
“They’d probably hiv refused tae touch it wae the amount ae bugs in it anyway,” Norma hid chipped in, looking up fae her Melody Maker.
“Ma, tell that Norma wan tae shut up. She’s jist jealous anyway.”
“Am Ah? Ae whit? That crawling, buggy heid ae yours? Somehow, Ah don’t think so, nitwit.”
“Fuck aff!”
“Hoi you, don’t let me hear ye using that language in here,” Ma hid snarled, twisting his lug intae a figure ae eight while trying tae yank it aff the side ae his heid.
“Yeeaow! That wis sore, so it wis. Tell her tae shut up then,” he’d howled.
“Norma, shut up or ye’ll be next.”
Johnboy wis thinking how strange it wis gonnae be, no hivving Tony at school, noo that he wis heiding up tae The Big Rock. He wis happy that that fat finger flickerer, Alex Milne, widnae be aroond either, so he’d nae need tae worry aboot him. It also meant that Johnboy could get back tae being friendly wae Senga withoot Tony hinging aboot looking o’er his shoulder aw the time. Johnboy hid awready made up his mind that him and Senga Jackson wur gonnae get married and live in a cracking hoose, jist like his ma and da’s, when he grew up, even though he’d telt Tony that he’d dumped her. He wis still sure she liked him, despite the knock-back she’d gied him wae his good Maltesers. He also hoped Skull hid managed tae get intae the hoose before his da locked him oot fur the night. He’d telt Johnboy he’d look oot a good doo book that hid plenty ae pictures in it, wae aw the different breeds, and that he’d bring it intae school the next day.
He’d kept meaning tae ask Tony, Joe and Skull if they played the same game as he did wae the singing drunks at night. He’d managed tae match his favourite drunk, word fur word, oan the chorus ae wan ae his songs the night before. The drunk hid been staggering blindly aw the way up the middle ae the white lines doon oan a deserted Cathedral Street, howling ‘And ye tell me, o’er and o’er and o’er again ma friend, ye don’t believe we’re oan the eve ae destruction. Naw ye don’t believe, we’re oan the eve ae destruction’. Six times Johnboy hid sang alang wae him before the drunk hid moved oan tae the Beatles. His ma and Norma hid been bleating aboot the drunk o’er the burnt toast that morning, saying whit a shite voice he’d hid, and that he should’ve been lifted fur first degree murder.
“Well, Ah bet youse two don’t know aw the words tae the song fae start tae finish,” Johnboy hid retorted, letting them know that he did.
Johnboy knew instantly that it wis fire engines as soon as he heard the growls ae the big engines and the clattering ae the bells. It hid tae be a big fire if there wur two ae them. He quickly nipped oot ae his bed and clocked them, jist as they came belting o’er the tap ae the big hill, o’er beside the Rottenrow Maternity Hospital, and thundered right oan tae Cathedral Street. The reflection ae the flashing blue lights wis bouncing aff ae aw the big glass windaes ae Allan Glen’s School and the tenements oan the other side ae Cathedral Street, lighting up the whole area. The fire engines roared aff intae the distance, rapidly changing up their gears as they passed the wee paper shoap beside Canning Lane, before plunging oot ae sight across the border intae the darkness ae Indian Territory beyond. Some poor bugger must be in trouble, Johnboy thought tae himsel, as he skipped back across the flair, bare-arsed and in his bare feet, before diving heid-first under the coats that wur spread oot across the tap ae his mattress.
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Parly Road is the first book in The Glasgow Chronicles series by Ian Todd.
Run Johnboy Run – The Glasgow Chronicles 2 isalso available on Amazon Kindle:
It is 1968 and The Mankys are back with a vengeance after thirteen-year-old Johnboy Taylor is confronted by a ghost from his past. The only problem is, he’s just been sentenced to 3 years at Thistle Park Approved School, which houses Scotland’s wildest teen tearaways. Without his liberty, Johnboy is in no position to determine whether the devastating revelation is a figment of his vivid imagination or whether dark forces are conspiring against him.
Elsewhere in the city, Glasgow crime lord, Pat Molloy, aka The Big Man, is plotting to topple those who he believes were responsible for putting him out of the city’s thriving ‘Doo’ business three years earlier. Unfortunately for him, The Irish Brigade, a group of corrupt police inspectors, who rule the city with an iron fist, are not about to stand by and allow anyone to dip their fingers into their honey pot, without a fight.
Meanwhile, Helen Taylor, Johnboy’s mother, has come up with a dangerous plan that she believes will finally overturn The City Corporation’s policy of selling their tenants’ household goods through humiliating public warrant sales. Reluctantly, she is forced to join forces with The Glasgow Echo’s sleazy top crime reporter, Sammy ‘The Rat’ Elliot, whose shadowy reputation of having more than one master makes him feared and reviled by the underworld and the establishment in equal measure.
Run Johnboy Run is an explosive tale of city crime in 1960s Glasgow, involving a heady mix of establishment leaders and gangsters, who will use anyone to keep control of the city’s lucrative underworld. The only problem is, can anyone really be trusted?
With more faces than the town clock, Run Johnboy Run dredges up the best scum the city has to offer and throws them into the wackiest free-for-all double-crossing battle that Glasgow has witnessed in a generation and The Mankys are never far from where the action is.
The Lost Boy And The Gardener’s Daughter – The Glasgow Chronicles 3 is also available on Amazon Kindle:
It is 1969 and 14-year-old Paul McBride is discharged from Lennox Castle Psychiatric Hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown whilst serving a 3-year sentence in St Ninian’s Approved School in Stirling. St Ninians has refused to take Paul back because of his disruptive behaviour. As a last resort, the authorities agree for Paul to recuperate in the foster care of an elderly couple, Innes and Whitey McKay, on a remote croft in the Kyle of Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands. They have also decided that if Paul can stay out of trouble for a few months, until his fifteenth birthday, he will be released from his sentence and can return home to Glasgow.
Unbeknown to the authorities, Innes McKay is one of the most notorious poachers in the Kyle, where his family has, for generations, been in conflict with Lord John MacDonald, the Duke of the Kyle of Sutherland, who resides in nearby Culrain Castle.
Innes is soon teaching his young charge the age-old skills of the Highland poacher. Inevitably, this leads to conflict between the street-wise youth from the tenements in Glasgow and the Duke’s estate keepers, George and Cameron Sellar, who are direct descendants of Patrick Sellar, reviled for his role in The Highland Clearances.
Meanwhile, in New York city, the Duke’s estran
ged wife orders their 14-year-old wild-child daughter, Lady Saba, back to spend the summer with her father, who Saba hasn’t had contact with since the age of ten. Saba arrives back at Culrain Castle under escort from the American Pinkerton Agency and soon starts plotting her escape, with the help of her old primary school chum and castle maid, Morven Gabriel. Saba plans to run off to her grandmother’s estate in Staffordshire to persuade her Dowager grandmother to help her return to America. After a few failed attempts, Lady Saba finally manages to disappear from the Kyle in the middle of the night and the local police report her disappearance as a routine teenage runaway case.
Meanwhile in Glasgow’s Townhead, Police intelligence reveals that members of a notorious local street gang, The Mankys, have suddenly disappeared off the radar. It also comes to the police’s attention that, Johnboy Taylor, a well-known member of The Mankys, has escaped from Oakbank Approved School in Aberdeen.
Back in Strath Oykel, the local bobby, Hamish McWhirter, discovers that Paul McBride has disappeared from the Kyle at the same time as Lady Saba.
When new intelligence surfaces in Glasgow that Pat Molloy, The Big Man, one of Glasgow’s top crimelords, has put the word out on the streets that he is offering £500 to whoever can lead him to the missing girl, the race is on and a nationwide manhunt is launched across Scotland’s police forces to catch Paul McBride before The Big Man’s henchmen do.
The Lost Boy and The Gardener’s Daughter is the third book in The Glasgow Chronicles series. True to form, the story introduces readers to some of the most outrageous and dodgy characters that 1960s Glasgow and the Highlands can come up with, as it follows in the footsteps of the most unlikely pair of road–trippers that the reader will ever come across. Fast-paced and with more twists and turns than a Highland poacher’s bootlace, The Lost Boy and The Gardener’s Daughter will have the readers laughing and crying from start to finish.
The Mattress – The Glasgow Chronicles 4 will be available on Amazon Kindle from 1st February 2015:
