Craig Robertson - Random

Wasn’t much to tell. Glasvegas had been into him for money for a while. Nothing too serious then a couple of big bets went wrong and suddenly he owed Billy five grand. He tried to bet his way out of the hole and one came good but then three went bad. Billy had warned him the last one was the last one until he started paying it off. Billy had told him he couldn’t run a line that big and might have to pass it on. That made Glasvegas ready to shit himself. That was why he ordered the cut and shut Skodas. And why he couldn’t pay for them just yet.

‘And why you bumped off Billy?’

‘What? No! No, no, no. Naw! What? No!’

‘Did you fucking well kill Billy Hutchison?’

‘No way. Not my style. Couldn’t hurt a fly.’

Frankie frazzled Glasvegas for a fourth time to make sure but he was already convinced he was telling the truth.

The gambler was crying now. ‘I’ve never killed anybody in my life. Never even won a fight since I was at school.’

Frankie Grant nodded at the other two. It wasn’t him.

‘Who else owed Billy money? Give us another name.’

Glasvegas eagerly coughed up two names. Two more dead ends to be chased down. In return, one last shot of electricity was pinged through his body. Just for the fun of it. Just for his mother.

It was Davie Stewart and Kirkwood himself who went after contacts of Wallace Ogilvie at Glasgow Council. One of them was in the planning department and the other a Labour councillor. Men bought with fine wine, expensive meals and timeshare apartments. Brown envelopes stuffed with used notes were so 1980s.

The planning officer, a senior guy there named McMartin, wasn’t for playing ball at all until Davie Stewart threw his cat out the window of his penthouse flat in Finnieston. Until the point that Stewart grabbed the thing by the scruff of its neck and opened the window, this McMartin still seemed to think he was used to playing with the big boys and had no need to worry. He knew people, he thought. Problem was he didn’t know people like Davie. The window was shut with the cat still learning how to fly. That was when McMartin got the message.

He gave them the names of people who Wallace Ogilvie had business dealings with, including those that were off the books. He told them of people that had grudges against Ogilvie. A worrying development.

The planning officer was patted on the head and told to give it ten minutes before he went looking to see if his cat had eight lives left.

The councillor wasn’t named but he was old school, exunion official, and a friend of a friend of Kirkwood. This guy was not averse to talking to friends of gangsters. It was part of how he got where he was. That’s why Kirky was doing it himself. The councillor wasn’t going to respect common or garden crooks or be frightened by them. Top man or nothing for this job.

He told them how contracts might be won and who might have lost them. He wasn’t naive enough to give them chapter and verse on the subject but they got what they wanted. He gave them names, individuals and companies, and pointed them in the direction of deals that didn’t turn out to be what they promised.

The councillor also gave two names from Kirkwood’s inner city. Two men that Wallace Ogilvie didn’t deal with directly but who were associates of his associates. Nothing unusual in that. Do business in a city like Glasgow and you are no more than a couple of degrees of separation from a criminal, of either the organized or disorganized variety.

It was the names that interested Kirkwood. One was Alan Devlin who ran one of the biggest security firms in the city and had recently guarded the building of new homes for three housing associations in the city in return for taxpayer’s cash. Kirkwood knew Devlin well and he wouldn’t have hesitated to kill Ogilvie if he had screwed him over in a deal or even if he had just looked at him the wrong way. But freezing the cunt to death was hardly his style. He’d have had him decapitated or buried under a block of flats. Or both.

The other name was Mick Docherty. As well as dealing drugs and shooting off his flash mouth, Docherty had a line in providing cheap labour, all foreign and all off the books. The suggestion was that Ogilvie had his fingers in the building of a new school and a contact of his had been in charge of labour for tarmacking the driveways. The councillor said that the middle man was dodgy enough to have gone to Docherty to provide the workers. It wasn’t much to link mouthy Mick to Wallace Ogilvie but close enough for Kirkwood’s purposes. Just perfect, in fact.

Kirky had already let it be known he would catch the man they were now calling ‘The Cutter’. Said he would do what the cops couldn’t. Said he would do their job for them. That was why he had made sure everyone knew he was chasing leads, letting slip bits about Glasvegas, council contracts and baseball-bat beatings.

Everyone in Glasgow wanted this guy caught. They were prepared to buy into anyone that could do it. Anyone. City was crying out for a hero.

The councillor had given him the name of the middle man in the school building project, a guy called Archie Kepple. It wasn’t clear if Kepple knew Docherty’s labourers were wetbacks or if it suited him not to know. Either way, it was time for Kirky to pay Mr Kepple a visit.

He had an office on the first floor of a building on Renfield Street, not far from the lawyer Carr’s. When Kepple’s secretary was told that Alec Kirkwood was there to see him regarding Wallace Ogilvie, she asked if he had an appointment. Kirkwood said he was confident that Mr Kepple would see him and he was right. He was to be shown right in.

Archie Kepple was a nervous little man who kept playing with a glass paperweight on his desk. Kirky was used to people being nervous around him and didn’t take offence.

To begin with Kepple was very evasive about Wallace Ogilvie. Made out he had to think about the name, which was pretty stupid given that he had been all over the papers as a victim of the serial killer. It’s the kind of thing you would remember.

Then he tried to play down his business involvement with Ogilvie, said they had only had a couple of dealings. That’s when Kirky smiled and told him to cut the crap. They were both businessmen, men of the world, they could talk straight. The paperweight was going like a yo-yo.

Kepple nodded at Kirkwood’s suggestion. Yes, businessmen.

Sometimes need to cut corners to get deals done, said Kirky. Yes, sometimes, agreed Kepple. Need to deal with people that we normally wouldn’t, declared Kirky. Kepple blinked a lot but nodded.

Kepple’s fiddling with the paperweight was starting to get on Kirkwood’s tits. He glared at it and Kepple promptly put it down and shoved it away from himself.

‘People like Mick Docherty.’

Kepple opened his mouth and closed it again. Opened it again to say no more than ‘Em…’

‘It’s OK, we all do it. Docherty is a piece of scum and I’m sure you wouldn’t work with him if you didn’t have to. Hard times in the building trade. Needs must, eh?’

‘Mr Docherty is, um, an associate but I’ve no reason to think.. .’ Kepple’s voiced trailed off unconvincingly.

‘Of course you haven’t,’ smiled Kirkwood. ‘Best not to, don’t you think?’

Kepple’s head dropped as he nodded again.

‘Did Mr Docherty ever meet Mr Ogilvie?’

‘No.’

Kirkwood stared at him.

‘No, yes, once. I was having a drink with Wallace when Mr Docherty came in. I introduced them. That was all though.’

‘It’s possible that they met after that though, isn’t it? Once they knew they had a mutual business acquaintance? It is possible.’

‘Well, yes. I suppose so.’

‘It is, isn’t it? And you do know that Mr Docherty has a rather. .. unsavoury reputation?’