Craig Russell - Lennox

In my life, I have had to explain my way out of a lot of tight corners, but this tops them all.

I am leaning against the wall of an upper-storey room in an empty dockside warehouse. I am leaning against the wall because I doubt if I can stand up without support. I am trying to work out if there are any vital organs in the lower left of my abdomen, just above the hip. I try to remember anatomy diagrams from every encyclopaedia I ever opened as a kid because, if there are vital organs down there, I am pretty much fucked.

I am leaning against a wall in an empty dockside warehouse trying to remember anatomy diagrams and there is a woman on the floor, about three yards in front of me. I don’t need to remember childhood encyclopaedias to know that there is a pretty vital organ in your skull, not that I seem to have made much use of it over the last four weeks. Anyway, the woman on the floor hasn’t got much of a skull left, and no face at all. Which is a shame, because it was a beautiful face. A truly beautiful face. Next to the woman without her face is a large canvas bag that has been dropped onto the grubby floor, spilling half of its contents, which comprise a ridiculously large quantity of used, large-denomination banknotes.

I am leaning against a wall in an empty dockside warehouse with a hole in my side trying to remember anatomy diagrams, while a dead woman without her beautiful face and a large bag of cash lie on the floor. That should be enough of a pickle to be in, but there is also a large bear of a man looking down at the girl, the bag and now, at me. And he is holding a shotgun: the same one that took her face off.

I have been in better situations.

I think I need to explain.

Four weeks and a day ago, I didn’t know Frankie McGahern. I also didn’t know that this was a state of affairs much to be desired. My life was, admittedly, not without its ups and, more often, downs, and I knew a lot of people that others would cross the street to avoid, but Frankie McGahern was a bright star that was yet to cross my sky.

I knew the name McGahern, of course. Frankie was one of a matching pair: the McGahern Twins. I had heard of Tam, Frankie’s older brother by three minutes, who was a well-known middleweight gangster in Glasgow, one of those whom the big guys left alone, mainly because it was more trouble than it was worth.

The funny thing about the McGahern Twins — depending on how you define funny — is that although they were outwardly identical, the similarity ended there. Unlike his brother, Tam was smart, hard and truly dangerous. And he was a life-taker. The viciousness he had learned in the back streets and closes of Clydebank had been professionally honed during the war in North Africa and the Middle East. Tam the alley rat had become a decorated Desert Rat.

Frankie, on the other hand, had evaded military service courtesy of a dodgy lung. While Tam had been away on active service, his less capable brother had been left in charge of the McGahern business. Frankie’s nose had been put out of joint when Tam took back full control on his return from the Middle East. With Tam’s brains behind it once more, the little McGahern empire began to grow again.

But while the McGahern operation wasn’t to be sneezed at, it didn’t make much of an impact on the Three Kings: the triumvirate of Glasgow crime bosses who controlled almost everything that went on in the city. And who provided, between them, a fair amount of my workload. The Three Kings set the limits for Tam McGahern but other than that left him and his brother alone. Tam was more than a sleeping dog they let lie: he was an evil, rabid, vicious psycho of a dog that they let lie. But on a short chain.

Until eight weeks and two days ago.

Eight weeks and two days ago, Tam McGahern was spending the evening in a grubby flat above a bar in Maryhill servicing a nineteen-year-old girl, no doubt with the direct, no-nonsense disregard for finesse that has made Scotsmen the envy of every Latin lover. McGahern owned the bar below, and, to all intents and purposes, the girl above as well.

At about two thirty in the morning, the coitus was interrupted by someone banging loudly on the downstairs door of the flat. The caller had also, apparently, shouted obscenities through the letterbox, mainly casting doubt on Tam McGahern’s dimensional capability to satisfy his companion. McGahern had come running down the stairs, dressed only in a Tootal shirt and monogrammed socks and clutching a kitchen knife. But as he had flung open the door, he had been faced with two large, sharp-suited gentlemen, each with a sawn-off shotgun. Slamming the door shut, McGahern turned to clamber back up the stairs. His callers, however, had shouldered in the door and let McGahern have it with both barrels times two.

A lead enema, they call it in Glasgow.

I found out all of this from Jock Ferguson, a friend I have in the City of Glasgow CID. Well, more of an acquaintance than a friend. And probably more of a contact than an acquaintance. Ferguson also told me that Tam McGahern had still been alive when the first police Wolseley 6/90 patrol car arrived. The two PCs apparently found that the retreating McGahern had been blasted more or less up the backside, and his buttocks and groin were reduced to a bloody mass of raw flesh. All blood and snotters, as my police chums are fond of saying.

In a classic and inspired piece of police intelligence gathering, one of the attending constables asked the injured gangster if he had recognized the men who had shot him. When Tam McGahern asked: ‘Am I gonna be okay?’, the police constable replied, despite McGahern’s balls now being roommates with his Adam’s apple: ‘Aye… of course you will.’ At which point McGahern said, ‘Then I’ll get the bastards myself.’ And died.

In much the same way as the story was being told in bars across Glasgow, it was related to me over a whisky and a pie in the Horsehead Bar by my police contact. There was a lot of talk across the city about Tam McGahern’s demise; the one big difference was that with killings like this it was usual to whisper the list of names in the frame. But there were no names with this one. Although McGahern had his fair share of enemies, he had removed most of them from Glasgow and many from this life. If Tam had recognized the gunmen at the door, he had taken their identities to his grave.

Everyone knew that none of the Three Kings was involved. There was talk of an outside job. Of an English connection. There was even mention made of Mr Morrison. Mr Morrison, which certainly wasn’t his real name, had the same kind of arrangement with the Three Kings that I had: he worked for them all in total confidence and his impartiality and independence were valued. But, unlike me, Mr Morrison didn’t investigate things for the Three Kings. He was in the removal business: specifically removing people from this vale of tears. No one knew what Mr Morrison looked like, or anything about him. Some doubted that he even existed, or thought that he was just a bogeyman invented by the Three Kings to keep the rank and file in line. Rumour was that if you ever did come face-to-face with Mr Morrison, then the next countenance you’d be looking at was St Peter’s. But even Mr Morrison was out of the frame. The killing had been professional, but too public and messy. Anyway the Three Kings had made it clear Mr Morrison wasn’t involved. And that made it official. Nevertheless, the conjecture and rumour continued, but it was just the morbidly excited speculation of minor players in a game they did not understand.

Me, I didn’t give a toss. I didn’t think of McGahern’s murder much at all until four weeks and a day ago, when his brother, Frankie, made my acquaintance.