Ways to Die in Glasgow

by Jay Stringer

  ‘I had to change the plan,’ he said. ‘Our guest had to check out ahead of schedule. You know where I am.’

  Lambert ended the call and pulled the car out onto the road, making sure to wait until there was no traffic to see where he’d come from.

  Bed was calling.

  Killing someone, Lambert had discovered, will jack a person up quite high. The blood and endorphins had been racing around his system, better than any drug he’d tried. But the comedown was equally harsh, and his energy levels drained on the drive home, with nothing but the monotonous routine of stop, start, indicate, pause, go.

  He took the motorway, figuring the constant traffic and overtaking would force him to stay awake. Home was only a ten-minute drive down this stretch of road. He lived in Paisley, a large town a few miles out from Glasgow, and he made it back without falling asleep at the wheel.

  The estate where he lived with Jess was modern, a small collection of two-storey terraced buildings set back from the high street, and he saw there was already a car in his driveway as he approached. An obscenely shiny BMW.

  His father-in-law.

  Joe McLean. A business owner and developer. He’d been a cop, a long time ago, before his investments in land had started to pay off. Now he made a good living from buying and selling land and investing in new property developments. McLean climbed out of the car and waved at Lambert as he pulled up, all big gestures and broad smiles, playing the happy family. He stepped forward to slap Lambert on the shoulder.

  ‘Andy, son, how you doing?’

  ‘Tired.’

  Lambert walked on past him to the front door and stepped inside the house, leaving the door open for McLean. In the living room, which was very clean and very white, the two cats glanced at the newcomers. One was black, which always set off a latent superstitious streak in Lambert; the other was ginger and shaped like a rugby ball. But it wasn’t feeding time, so they settled back down to sleep. Once inside, the mood of both men changed.

  McLean’s smile dropped away.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ His tone dropped below freezing. ‘My golf caddy is a better fucking criminal than you. We agreed how this was going to go. We made a deal with everyone.’

  ‘We did. I changed the plan. I had to—there are too many people looking for him. It’s going to be difficult to get rid of him dead. It would have been impossible to hold onto him alive.’

  ‘Is that right?’ McLean paced the room, Lambert stepping out of his way. ‘And you’re the expert on all of this now, are you? Are you going to be the one who explains to the washer lady why we changed the deal? You going to talk to Gilbert?’

  Lambert slumped onto the sofa. The cats hissed and ran through to the kitchen. This hadn’t been how he’d planned on spending the day. It wasn’t how he’d planned on spending his life, for that matter. He was at the end of a run of five midnight shifts, and it was his weekend now. He just wanted it all to go away.

  ‘Look, Joe,’ Lambert said, unable to keep the sulk out of his voice, ‘there was no option. I was protecting you. Us. The law might come looking for him now, and I don’t want them sniffing around either one of us. What would that do to Jess? There’s a solicitor firm in the city too, and they’ve hired a PI to find him.’

  ‘A PI? We still have those?’ McLean didn’t see the problem. ‘Fine. I’ve dealt with them before. We threaten him or drop him in the Clyde.’

  ‘It’s her not him. Samantha Ireland. Sam. Jim’s daughter.’

  ‘Jim Ireland’s girl, is that right? That’s interesting. I thought she was going to university, wanted to get away from Glasgow and move somewhere hip.’

  ‘Aye, that was the plan. Dropped out of uni when Jim got sick. She’s only doing the job because she thinks it’s what her old man would want, keep the family business going.’

  ‘There’s a son too, right? Philip?’

  ‘Aye, he works with her. Drives her around, goes into scary places with her. He’s a big lad, looks like a bouncer crossed with an ape. They might be useful, though. You wanted to find out if anyone else knew what we were doing, right? Well, if Sam and Philip are going round shaking trees, then they might draw a few people out into the open.’

  ‘Which “open” would that be, Andy? You’ve seen too many films. All that’s going to happen if we let her go around asking questions is that she’ll lead people right to us. She needs to shut up.’

  ‘I’ll make sure it doesn’t come to that.’

  McLean stopped pacing and peered down at Lambert. He’d spotted something in the tone of voice. ‘You fucking her? You cheating on Jess? Is that what I can smell on you?’

  In truth Lambert didn’t know whether it was sex or death that he smelled of most.

  ‘No, I, just—look. We both knew Jim, right? We both owe him. Rab had it coming—he was in the game. Sam doesn’t, and that’s not a line I want to cross. All she’s done so far is get threatened in the Pit. I’ll make sure she doesn’t get in too deep.’

  ‘Maybe.’ McLean nodded. ‘Maybe. We do owe her old man. We should try and keep to that. You know who else is owed? Me.’ He waved at the room around him. ‘Who gave you this? Who paid for you to marry my daughter? I’ve taken a chance on you, and you keep fucking up.’

  ‘I know. I know. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Aye, I’m starting to think sorry is my name, the amount of times I hear it said to me.’ He took a deep breath and made a show of smoothing out his coat, calming down. ‘We’ll try it your way. Keep an eye on Jim’s daughter; see if we can play it nice on this one. You mentioned the Pit—how is Murdo looking?’

  ‘He might be a problem. He’s already asking questions.’

  ‘Did Rab give up anything else last night?’

  ‘No. He just kept babbling. Too many drugs, I think. He kept crying and apologising, over and over. He called out Mackie’s name a lot—you know his nephew? Well, that’s his name. I’ve met him a couple of times, not the brightest spark.’

  McLean stared at a photo for a long silent moment. A snap from the wedding, Lambert and Jess smiling, on a children’s climbing frame. Lambert couldn’t read the expression in his father-in-law’s face.

  ‘His nephew is going to have to go as well. Can’t have him running round.’

  ‘Who will we get to do it?’ Lambert said.

  McLean turned to him, his face blank. ‘You, bozo. Start cleaning up this mess.’

  Lambert yawned and ran a hand through his hair. He felt his shoulders sag. McLean opened his coat and fished around in a large pocket stitched into the lining. He pulled out a clear plastic bag and tossed it at Lambert.

  Lambert caught it with both hands and looked down at the pills inside the bag.

  Speed.

  McLean spoke without any trace of humour. ‘Sleep when you’re dead.’

  Seventeen

  One of the advantages of being a cop was that Big Brother was on Lambert’s side. He had him on speed dial. He had Mackie’s full name and address within minutes, along with his full grisly history.

  Malcolm Jack Mackie lived in Govanhill. It made perfect sense. He’d served time for slicing up his high school sweetheart, and Govanhill was the murder capital of Scotland. It was a small part of town just south of the river. The slum landlords were out of control in Govanhill, with run-down houses and crowded tenements. The council turned a blind eye to the conditions so it could shove immigrants into those tenements and forget about them. There had been more murders in those few crowded streets than anywhere else in the country.

  Just last year Lambert had picked up a case in which a driver had been dragged from his car and stabbed to death, all for the crime of running an amber light at a crossing. Even driving through Govanhill on the way somewhere else could be a dangerous game. It was only a matter of time, at the present rate, before even the police refused to go there.

&n
bsp; Mackie lived in a four-storey tenement on Bowman Street, nestled between a bookie’s and an old cobbled lane that ran along the back of his building. Lambert took a walk down the lane before doing anything else, to get a good sense of the area. It helped to see if anyone was likely to care before you committed a bunch of crimes. He had to step over a mattress that smelled of piss and a bin that had been tipped on its side, sending the litter and dog shit across the cobbles. There was a low metal railing separating the yard of Mackie’s building from the alley, and it allowed Lambert to get a good look at the back windows. Mackie lived on the third floor, and the windows were dark, even with the sun beating down. They gave off a sense of emptiness. Work in this job long enough, Lambert thought, and you learn to spot it. There was nobody inside.

  He walked round to the front door and pressed the buzzer for Mackie’s flat. It was easy to spot; it was the one with ‘fuck off’ written on the nameplate. When there was no answer, which he’d known there wouldn’t be, he started pressing the other buttons until he got a response. He announced he was polis, and the door buzzed open.

  Lambert climbed to the third floor. Another advantage of being a cop was learning how to break into places. A rookie police officer will attend enough B&E calls in his first year of uniform to learn how to break into pretty much anywhere. The outer storm door was closed, but nobody ever locked the mortice. The second lock was a simple latch, and all that took was a credit card and a few seconds. Lambert pulled on a pair of gloves and worked his way through the storm door. The inner door was going to be more of a problem. It was a simple enough Yale lock, but it was deep in the wood, with no easy way to get at it. The door was flush against the frame, and the lock looked new. A large frosted pane of glass covered the top half of the door, casting a dim light inside, and that was going to be the quickest way in. Lambert shrugged out of his coat and held it up over the glass, then punched the lower left corner, near to where the lock was. The sound was unmistakable, like stepping on broken glass on a hard floor, but it was muted enough for him to get away with it. He knocked a few remaining jagged bits of glass from the edge and reached through the fresh hole to open the door from the inside.

  The door swung inwards and banged heavily on the wall. He stood in the doorway for a moment, listening for any reaction. Inside he found the light switch. The sunlight wasn’t penetrating the curtains, and the flat was cast in darkness until Lambert started flipping the switches. The walls were painted brown, which may well have been covering other stains, and there was a hardwood floor. The ceilings were very high. In the hands of anyone other than Mackie, this could have been a nice place.

  There were five doors leading off the empty hallway, and Lambert took them one at a time. The first one, beside the front door, led to a cupboard piled high with junk. Coats, boxes, bags, a ladder. All the essentials.

  The next door opened onto a large bedroom. The heavy curtains were on the far side, with a metal bed in the centre covered in sheets that hadn’t seen clean in a few months. Clothes were piled around the floor. Lambert knelt down and found shed carcasses of carpet beetle larvae ground into the floor. In a pile next to the bed were handwritten letters. Each one was addressed to ‘Jenny T’, whom Lambert guessed was Jennifer Towler, the girl Mackie had cut up when he was younger. The letters varied in age; some were old and faded, with the ink nearly gone, and some were fresh.

  Next was the living room. It was clean and sparse, with just a sofa, a chair, a large TV on a table and a shelving unit piled with DVDs. Lambert checked out the collection to judge Mackie’s taste; it was an odd mix of 80s action and Disney cartoons. On the floor beside the sofa was a Columbo box set, a stack of comics and a few empty cigarette packs.

  The kitchen was a mess. A holy shit pile of a mess. There were plates stacked on every surface, with dust and mould, and a lot of full bin bags heaped by the door. Empty pizza cartons were scattered across the floor. There was a sickly sweet smell in the air, and Lambert found an air freshener plugged in at an electrical socket.

  So, Mackie was the kind of person to go to a shop, buy the freshener plug-in, bring it home and set it up, all rather than carry a few bin bags down a flight of stairs. Lambert suspected he wasn’t dealing with a criminal mastermind.

  Next to the kitchen was the bathroom, which was actually quite clean. There was a little dirt on the shower tiles, and a build-up of toothpaste in the sink around the plug, but nothing that couldn’t be sorted with five spare minutes and a cloth.

  ‘What kind of person lives in a place like this?’ Lambert asked out loud, mimicking the old TV show catchphrase. Someone who spends more time in the pub than in his own flat. He sleeps here, watches DVDs and only steps into the kitchen to dump plates and takeaway cartons.

  Then he found Mackie’s stash.

  Back in the living room, Lambert had noticed that the DVDs were pushed right to the front of the shelves, with space in behind them. He went through, shelf by shelf, until he found bags and bottles of pills.

  Cocaine.

  Speed.

  Medication.

  Some of the bottles were genuine prescriptions, with Mackie’s real name printed on them. Others had a woman’s name. Lambert pocketed the speed and coke. They might come in handy later on. There would have been more money to be made in taking the medication, but he didn’t like to mess around with it unless he knew for sure what it was.

  He lowered himself onto the sofa and stretched like a cat, tabbing another speed to keep the sleep away, though it would be a while before it kicked in. It wasn’t a great batch.

  Sit there and wait?

  Go out and find him?

  The easiest thing was to deal with Mackie here. Clearly he lived alone and didn’t get visitors; there would be no problems. But he didn’t know when Mackie would come home or what state he’d be in. If Lambert went on the hunt, he could corner him, pick and choose the time and place.

  Then what?

  Look at you, he thought to himself, pretending you’re a pro at this. Pretending to be some kind of cool bagman, rather than a coward, too scared to stand up to your father-in-law.

  His phone rang, the unlisted one.

  As soon as he accepted the call, he heard someone talking fast on the other end. He recognised the voice but still waited to hear the introduction.

  ‘It’s Gilbert,’ the voice said. ‘We have a problem. I need to talk to you about Mackie.’

  What were the odds?

  Eighteen

  Lambert drove back towards the city and parked up in Carlton Place on the south bank of the Clyde. Stretching from there to the north side of the river was a suspension footbridge. He walked across it, pausing for a second to look down at the brown oily surface of the water and check he wasn’t being watched.

  At the other side he turned and walked down some concrete steps to stand beneath the base of the bridge. It was a perfect spot for discreet meetings, out of sight from the road on both sides of the river. People walking along the path could see you, but you could also see them coming.

  Gilbert Neil was waiting there, leaning on the low railing and staring out at the water, doing the same trick Lambert had done on the bridge. He knew Lambert was approaching but played it cool, letting him get close and then speaking without turning around.

  ‘It’s really shite, isn’t it,’ he said. ‘The river? People all over the world know the name of it. The Clyde. It’s in books and songs, old poems. They think it’s old and romantic. Then they come to look at it and find nothing but a brown sludge.’

  ‘Aye.’ Lambert leant in beside him. ‘But it’s our brown sludge.’

  ‘You Weegies. You love the city—until it’s time to burn part of it down.’

  ‘It’s ours to burn. Listen, Gil, there’s been a change of plan. Rab had to go ahead of schedule.’

  If Gilbert was angry, he didn’t show it. He was a practical m
an. He lived his life by dealing with complications as they arose, and this was just another one to sort out.

  ‘The washer lady will be pissed off,’ he said. ‘That’s not how we agreed to play it. But we have other issues too. Mackie’s been asking around for Rab. The Pit, Gaz, me—he’s working his way through everybody.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to Murdo? Does he know anything?’

  ‘Not yet. He called me to give the heads-up on Mackie, but he also asked if I’d seen Rab. He’s starting to wonder. He’s just a beaten-down old fuck, so we can deal with him when he figures it out, but it’s bigger than that. Too many loose ends; people are starting to talk.’

  ‘You mentioned Gaz. Gary Fraser?’

  ‘Aye. Mackie went to him because Rab did, last night not long before we grabbed him. He’d asked Gaz for a loan of sixty Gs, so it’s not connected; but it brings Gaz into the circle, someone else who might start wondering what’s going on.’

  ‘And why is Mackie asking? What’s tipped him off so fast?’

  ‘Someone tried to kill him last night.’ Gilbert finally turned to face Lambert. ‘Two hit men. In the house on Copland Road. To be honest, I’d assumed it was you or Joe who ordered it.’ When Lambert shook his head, Gilbert went on. ‘The Venture Brothers.’

  ‘Venture Brothers?’

  Gilbert smiled. ‘Look, I know it’s a stupid name, and you know it’s a stupid name. But just in case there’s a little old lady out there going by the name of Mrs Venture, and now grieving her two boys, I think we should stay quiet on the name, stupid or not.’

  ‘Grieving?’

  ‘Well, like I say, they tried to kill Mackie. He killed them instead. Two people, with guns, and he was naked and unarmed, and he won. Shot one with his own gun, beat the other. He took a bullet in the leg, and it didn’t even slow him down. A hooker died too, some Polish lassie, only been in the country five minutes.’