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
