Killing With Confidence (9 page)

Harris burst out
laughing and shouted to the ageing barmaid, ‘Hey, Mary, two glasses
of my usual – in fact better make it the whole bottle.’

The large, tattooed
barmaid produced an expensive bottle of Chablis.

Harris gave Connor a
playful, but painful, dig in the ribs. ‘Les Preuses Chablis Grand
Cru – about £160 a bottle. Don’t you know what they say about
never judging a book by its cover?’

He had a point. Colin
‘The Hitman’ Harris looked nothing like Connor imagined, with his
John Lennon spectacles and an almost sheepish demeanour which gave
him an air of respectability you wouldn’t expect of one of
Glasgow’s most feared gangland enforcers. Then again, Connor
figured that was probably part of Harris’s success – the fact
that no one would give him a second’s notice before it was too
late.

Harris leaned
fractionally closer and asked, ‘Do you want something else to go
with your wine? A line, perhaps?’ The gangster asked as casually as
if he was offering Connor a cigarette.

‘No thanks, alcohol
is my only poison,’ the journalist replied. Connor had never tried
cocaine or any drugs for that matter and he hated what it did to
his fellow hacks on nights out. By ten o’clock, after several trips
to the toilets, Connor could no longer hold anything resembling a
meaningful conversation with his colleagues. He remembered seeing
the tell-tale white powder in the nostrils of a once glamorous PR
and couldn’t for the life of him figure out why a woman pushing
sixty would need cocaine in her life.

Connor simply found
drugs boring. He’d grown up with them, as his mum and uncles and
their friends had all been cannabis smokers. He’d listen to their
wild claims that dope was the only non-addictive drug then watch
them get all antsy and narky when they didn’t have any. And, worst
of all, he had to listen to the hash-heads talking shit. They
thought they were so rebellious and daring because they lived their
lives in a fug of dope smoke, evading the law, as if the law really
cared that much about them. To them, everyone else was a ‘normal’.
Thirty years on, Connor would have a quiet chuckle to himself at
how the lives of the once young and trendy drugged-up ideologists
had panned out. One uncle now made a living driving a taxi, the
other a courier van, and one of his mum’s closest friends sold
kitchen units.

They still got high
every night, while Connor had gone on to enjoy a varied and
interesting career without the need to get high. He eyeballed
Harris and added, rather unnecessarily, ‘Personally, I think drugs
are for losers, whether you’re loaded or living in a council house.
You’re still a loser.’

Harris stared at
Connor in silence. His own £250,000-a-year coke use was well known,
although he’d kicked the habit long ago. Fortunately, he decided he
quite liked the fact that Connor wasn’t afraid to speak his mind in
front of him. Harris was surrounded by quite enough yes men. The
gangster placed a hand on Connor’s shoulder and said, ‘You know,
two years ago I’d have had you wasted for calling me a loser, but
now I’m clean I know you’re absolutely correct. It saddens me to
see people, policemen or prostitutes, hooked on drugs.’ Drug abuse
may sadden Harris, but it had also made him immensely rich as one
of the country’s biggest drug suppliers.

Connor felt he’d
pushed his luck far enough and let Harris’s last remark pass
without comment. After all, he was dealing with a man whose
ruthlessness and violence were legendary.

Harris had once been
charged with the murder of the son of Glasgow’s Godfather, Mr
Ferguson, an ‘untouchable’. He had stood trial at the High Court in
Glasgow accused of killing Ferguson Junior in what turned into one
of Scotland’s longest running murder cases, only for the charge to
be found ‘not proven’ – that unique verdict in Scottish law
which means the prosecution have failed to convince the jury. But
everyone knew Harris did it. Ferguson Senior promised to pay a
million pounds if Harris was taken out. It was suspected he
wouldn’t survive a week after walking free.

However, that was a
decade ago. Ferguson Senior had died from old age and a broken
heart, never having avenged the death of his son. Harris had
survived and flourished. He’d become an unlikely publishing
phenomenon after the release of his first of four autobiographies,
based around his violent life. There was talk of a movie deal, too,
as the public’s appetite for gangster stories seemed insatiable.
Ironically, Harris’s books were all ghost-written by his former
social worker turned true crime writer Ron McLeod, who liked to
call himself Big Mac. Critics claimed that ‘writer’ was too strong
a term for Big Mac. While the books would never be literary
classics, the neds lapped them up, queuing for hours at book
signings to meet their gangster hero. For many, Harris’s life
stories were the first books they’d read since school.

But Scotland was
still a small pond, in which writers struggled to scrape a living.
His book earnings could in no way account for the top-of-the-range
Jaguar XJ parked conspicuously outside the Portman’s door.

Connor followed
Harris to a booth with torn red vinyl seats. Harris poked at one of
the holes with his index finger and sighed, ‘This place has seen
better days, but it was my dad’s favourite. And no one hassles me
in here. I can’t be bothered with the young crew who want a scrap
just so they can boast they took on Colin ‘The Hitman’ Harris.’ He
winked. ‘Although I’d have done the same myself at their age. To be
young and daft again, eh?’ His demeanour changed as he leaned over
the table to face Connor. ‘Now, here are the rules of engagement.
You can ask me anything you like, but some things I will not
answer, in case I incriminate other people or, more importantly,
myself.’

It was a strange
opening salvo, for it was Harris who had summoned Connor and anyway
there was only one question anyone, including the authorities,
wanted Harris to answer: Did you kill Ferguson Junior?

Harris paused for a
moment then plainly stated, ‘This serial killer you’ve been writing
about, I need to meet him.’

‘Ha, join the
queue.’

But Harris wasn’t
laughing. Instead an eerie look had fallen over him, half calm,
half volcanic anger. Connor suspected he’d just glimpsed the real
Harris, the one so many of his victims had encountered.

When Harris
eventually spoke again he had regained his composure. ‘No, you
don’t understand. I really need to meet him. He just murdered my
sister.’

17

Underground, Overground

April was
determined to do more than just sit on the cat again as she slumped
in her favourite chair at home. As usual, her mind wandered
randomly and she decided it was time to sieve through the clutter
of her spare room cum guest bedroom. She discovered an unopened box
in the corner with a sewing machine inside and remembered how she
had planned to start making curtains for herself, her daughter and
friendly neighbours.

April had hoped to
have become ‘the talk of the area’, seeing people nudge each other
out the corner of her eye and whisper, ‘There’s that April
Lavender, not only is she a famous journalist, but she can also run
up a fine set of drapes.’ That plan came to an abrupt halt the day
she went to price some curtain material. The shop had wanted ninety
pounds. April flounced off, later telling a friend over a bottle of
wine, ‘I could get a pair of ready-made curtains for the same
price – we have a lot to thank these sweat shops for.’

Since then the sewing
machine had lain abandoned and unloved in the spare room, along
with the fondue set and the electronic corkscrew still in its box
with its ten-page instruction booklet. Although no cork, however
stubborn, had ever managed to get in the way of April and a wine
bottle’s contents.

But, one box she was
determined to get to grips with was her Netbook, a mini laptop that
had suddenly become all the rage. She lifted the flimsy-looking
machine out of the packaging and set about powering it up. That had
been the easy part as it came with just one cable, which plugged
into a power socket. April attempted to flick through the
instruction manual, but it was all Greek to her. In actual fact, it
was all Greek, as she had accidentally flicked to the G for Greek
section instead of GB for Great Britain.

She thought about
calling Connor, but knew she would got his usual response of, ‘I’m
not the bloody IT desk, April.’ Her second best option would be her
daughter, but Jayne could be just as sarky as Connor. She tried her
anyway.

‘Okay, you’ve got a
Netbook, which should be easy enough. So, who’s your internet
provider?’ Jayne asked.

‘Eh?’

‘Who supplies your
broadband? BT? Virgin Media? Sky?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Okay, forget that.
What you need is a dongle,’ Jayne said, only to be met by guffaws
of laughter down the line.

‘A
womble
?’
April said through tears of mirth, before singing the song to the
1970s telly favourites, ‘Remember you’re a Womble.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ Jayne
snapped, ‘what you really need to do is plug in a fucking Womble.
Look, no offence, but life’s too short to help with your laptop.
Why don’t you enrol in a class or something, where they teach
technophobes like you how to work computers? I’ve got to go. I’ll
speak to you and your Womble later.’

April repacked her
Netbook – minus a Womble – and put it back in the spare
room.



Connor had
left the Portman that evening buzzing from a mix of good wine and
the adrenaline rush he got each time he had a good story. Harris
had only parted with his mum’s address on the promise that she
would be handled with kid gloves by the best in the business.
Unfortunately, Connor couldn’t get the best in the business on the
phone. ‘She’s probably bloody eating again,’ he cursed.

He wasn’t far off the
mark. April had been unable to find her vibrating mobile from
within the depths of her bulging handbag in time as she attempted
to juggle a biscuit and a cup of tea at the same time. When she
eventually found it, Connor had already left a voicemail. Unable to
remember how to access her messages, she called Connor while eating
her second biscuit.

He told her, ‘First
thing in the morning I need you to get to the Red Road flats to
interview Colin Harris’s mum.’

April wasn’t the best
with names, but after a second the penny dropped, ‘Oh, the Hitman
chappy – okay.’

‘Jackie McIvor was
Harris’s half-sister. It’ll be a splash. But we need the mum’s
reaction, too. I’ve already cleared it with the Weasel and told the
picture desk too.’

‘Right, first thing,’
April promised, brushing the crumbs from her Hob Nob from her
cleavage.

‘Oh, and, April,’
Connor added, ‘will you please do me the courtesy of not eating
while you’re on the phone to me.’

April laughed and
hung up. She checked her handbag, which contained several full
notepads and pens – half of them dried up and useless –
and left it by the door, attempting to be organised and ready for
an early morning exit.

She was intrigued by
how this whole investigation was panning out. Whoever had killed
Jackie not only had the police on his tail, but now Scotland’s most
lethal hitman. It would be yet another exclusive splash from the
Special Investigations unit.

18

That’ll Be the Daewoo

April sat
in her purple Daewoo estate urging the engine to heat up to take
the chill off the morning air. Almost every panel on the ageing
car, from the doors to the bumpers, the hatchback and somehow even
the roof, was either dented, scuffed or scratched, for April was a
truly awful driver who handled any vehicle like a
dodgem.

Her main problem was
that she was barely able to see over the steering wheel. She was
blissfully unaware that Daewoo steering wheels were adjustable and
that hers was set to the highest level. She also had no concept of
the width or length of the car, meaning she’d always take up two
parking spaces in the office car park, usually after rattling her
Daewoo off a concrete pillar or someone else’s bumper first.

When she drove, April
focused exclusively on the road ahead, paying no attention
whatsoever to her peripheral vision. Connor had accidentally
discovered this when he saw April out driving one Sunday afternoon.
He had pulled up alongside her car on the M8 to give his colleague
a friendly wave as she made one of her twice-weekly visits to IKEA,
the giant Swedish furniture store at Braehead, on the outskirts of
Glasgow. Despite sounding his horn, April’s eyes did not once
flicker in his direction.

Connor decided to
drive behind her, flashing his high beam lights. Again, April
refused to take her tunnel-like vision off the road to glance in
her rear-view mirror, although the beam from Connor’s Audi was so
strong it illuminated the entire interior of April’s car even in
broad daylight.

Intrigued, he tailed
her all the way to the IKEA car park, where he pulled up beside her
and waited. She still hadn’t noticed him. When she finally got out,
after applying another thick layer of lip gloss, April greeted
Connor with a whoop of surprise. ‘Oh, it’s yourself. Are you coming
in for the meatballs, you can’t beat IKEA meatballs.’

‘April,’ Connor
asked, ‘I’ve been following you for miles, blaring my horn,
flashing my lights.’

She let out her
trademark cackle. ‘Ach, when I get in my car it’s “Thunderbirds are
go!”’

But this morning
April was trying to negotiate the satellite navigation system her
daughter had bought her for Christmas, to find her way to the mum
of the murdered prostitute Jackie McIvor. She hated the sat nav and
the way it ‘barked instructions’ at her, complaining, ‘I never let
any of my husbands speak to me that way, so I’m certainly not about
to let a little black box talk to me like that. And, anyway, how
would you know the way around Glasgow with an American accent?’