the help. We don’t mind a few homers but nothing that will get you noticed. Keep it under the radar and we will be fine.’
‘Give us twelve months unblemished service and we double your cut in year two.’
He took another slug of beer.
‘It is about here that you expect me to say ‘any questions?’ but it isn’t going to happen. You are a smart kid. There is no negotiation on this unless you want to negotiate over the colour of your wreath.’
‘Get the picture?’
He finished the beer.
‘Time for me to go. The pros next doors are yours to do what with what you want. The room is paid up until tomorrow and the tab on room service is open for light refreshments but not for abuse.’
He headed for the adjoining door.
‘We’ll be in touch.’
And with that he was gone. I got up and followed him through but save the two girls and Martin, the room was empty.
We had a hell of a night. The girls were willing and more than able and the bar tab was large but at the back of my head I knew that there was no such thing as a free lunch and my new life might include a touch more than ‘a few errands’.
Chapter 14
Two days later a bruiser of a man turned up at my door and handed me a set of keys that were dripping with the grease from his just finished fish supper along with a letter, crumpled and battered. Hardly the auspicious start to the new life I had been expecting.
Inside the letter was a slip of paper with an address and the words — ‘Move in and wait.’
The keys turned out to open an office on Gordon St that lay four floors above a Chinese restaurant. It shared a common entrance with the Chinky’s (you could call it that back then) and in the following year we had a line of credit with the restaurant that made us their best customers by a country mile.
The office itself was a simple two room affair. One room was set out as a reception with a desk and a battered two-seat sofa that attended a plywood coffee table. The next room had a desk, chair and a filing cabinet that didn’t work. Decoration was from the late grime period and two forty — watt light bulbs provided some gloom. The view — a trade description violation in itself — was of a brick wall.
I made my first executive decision and, dipping into my own pocket, I called in a girl called Sally Macintyre. Sally was an interior decorator — one of the few in Glasgow in the late seventies. She usually did the houses of the rich and not so famous. I gave her a free hand, a small budget and told her I needed the place to look business like with an air of authority.
Two weeks later I had the smartest office in the west of Scotland but still no contact from London.
When it eventually came it seemed innocent enough at first.
Most of the early jobs were simple pick and drops and I pulled together a team of runners under the watchful eye of Martin.
Glasgow ’s waifs and strays flowed through our offices, turning it into an all day rush hour. The office was always alive with activity. We went from one to six phones — that raised a few eyes with the GPO — we were still a year short of the creation of British Telecom. Within a month I had rented the office next door and knocked through — creating an area for the pick and drop crew — named the PD’s by Martin. We put in a coffee and tea machine and, eventually, a telly, radio and a hot plate.
The first big job came three months in and it was a darling.
A bruiser appeared at our office and handed me a distressed envelope — clearly London specialised in the battered look. It contained a date and a time.
I made the rendezvous outside a chippie on Dumbarton Rd thirty minutes before I needed to. It was a habit back then — turning up early — it let me suss out if there was going to be nonsense. The meet was short and I was given another envelope.
The gig was a new one on me. Kidnapping. The letter gave me a name and an address. The objective of the exercise was a warning to a businessman who was not paying up on the protection front. Normally this was a knee cap job but London wanted to make a different mark this time and I was told to lift the business man’s six year old, and not to hand the kid back until the protection money started flowing.
For the record I added in ten grand to the demands — strictly for my back pocket.
I lifted the kid from school and took him to a flat that I had rented for the month.
To say I was an amateur at this was as big an understatement as could be made about me back then. For a start I had no food or drink in the flat. Naively I had assumed that the businessman would come up with the goods in hours and I would be out of there post haste. What I hadn’t banked on was that he was currently in Spain, banging his heart out with his private secretary.
I contacted his wife and she was hysterical but hardly in a place to stump up the readies. She wasn’t aware that her husband was in the protection paying business, Spain or his secretary.
It took two days to get the message to Spain and for him to return. Meanwhile I had a six year old with the appetite of King Kong and the attention span of a newt. On half a dozen occasions I considered throwing the wee shit in the Clyde and being done with it.
When I eventually handed him over to his dad at Kelvingrove Park — it didn’t matter that he saw us, he knew who we were and we knew who he was — I was so glad to get rid of the wee gobshite that I failed to count the cash. It was a grand light but by then I didn’t give a rat’s arse and I was well rid of the horror child.
The next year took on a turbo charged feel. The ‘errands’ grew in length, complexity and risk but I was up for the challenge. I shifted office after less than six months, as my needs outgrew the space, and took up residence in an old townhouse on Argyle Street.
I hit a new problem that I hadn’t had to deal with to date: what to do with the mounting pile of cash I was building. Now that might sound like a good problem but it wasn’t. Opening a bank account back then was a lot less rigorous than it is now but it was still folly to advertise a sudden rise in income. The Inland Revenue would take more than a passing interest in the discrepancy between what I declared and what I was bringing in. A discrepancy of enormous proportions, may I add.
The solution came in the form of Terry Usher; a disgraced banker who knew the ins and outs of the complexities of offshore banking, portfolio investment and tax avoidance. He managed a number of ‘clients’ and as far as I knew he hadn’t rolled over on anyone yet. Still it nagged at the back of my head that he was in control of my assets and as a precaution I took to hiding some of my cash in the most obscure places.
Even now I can guarantee that there are still a few wedges lying around in my old haunts. For all I know there could be thousands.
Probably more.
Eleven twenty eight and ten seconds.
Got to keep my foot down.
Success bred success and I was on a serious roll. Job after job was thrown at me and I met each one head on and delivered. My staff grew and before the year was out we had twenty-seven on the payroll. By year two we were up to sixty and I was no longer involved in the small jobs.
During all this time the chain of command from London didn’t change. We still received the ‘errands’ and we had little direct contact with our masters.
Our next big move was Edinburgh.
I had been told to stay clear of the Scottish capital for a number of reasons — not least that the place was as alien to me as the Amazon rain forest. London had never given me a job in Edinburgh and I was grateful as it meant staying clear of one Malcolm Morrison, known as the Major to his friends.
The Major was a well-heeled ex-financial genius who had grabbed Edinburgh the way London had grabbed Glasgow. He was highly territorial and renowned for his retribution should someone step out of line. He had the bizarre trait of wearing military gear and, as the years had progressed, so had his rank.
