Random (23 page)

It’s a proper sport, man. A good fight is a thing of beauty. Up at Kirky’s place the other night, should have seen it. A classic, a proper classic. There were these two cracking dugs. Both American pit bulls. Fucking monsters, the pair of them. Reaper is Big Kirky’s dug and he was up against this beast called Bandido belonging to Charlie Dunn fae Edinburgh
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Plenty of money on the pair of them. There wis a shade more on Bandido though seeing as he was a bona fide champion. That means he has won three fights like. If he beat Reaper then he needed just wan mair win to be a grand champion and there’s no many of those aboot
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Reaper had won two fights himself though and he’s as game as fuck. Kirky fancied his chances and backed it up with big bucks
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Fair crowd down in the basement of the Star. Maybe a couple of dozen folk. No just anybody gets in. Have to be in to get in, know what I mean? Guys have been known to get a right doing if they turn up without a dug or a story that doesnae hold up
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It was Reaper against Bandido but everyone knew fine it was Kirky against Charlie Dunn. You know? Serious stuff
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These dugs were up for it. Couldnae wait to get going. Ref gives the signal and they let them go. Man but they just explode oot of the corner. Like two bullets coming oot of guns. Spit, hair, blood and teeth everywhere. The room’s like a nuthoose. Every man on his feet, roaring his heid aff, shouting on his dug
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The Bandido thing gets a hud of the Reaper’s leg early doors and looks like it is gonna tear it aff. Right sair yin Reaper’s got but it keeps going back for more because it loves big Kirky. And Kirky loves that dug
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Then Reaper gets a grip under Bandido’s throat, rips a chunk oot and there is blood dripping everywhere. Rolls on him and breaks one of his front legs then another. There is plenty of blood coming from Reaper an all but he has the upper hand. You can see Charlie Dunn thinking about pulling his dug out. He doesn’t though. Must know it has no chance now but he lets it fight on. It’s big Kirky he’s up against and you just know he’d rather let the dug die than be seen to give in
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End up, Reaper locks his jaws on this big bleeding hole in Bandido’s chest and rips it open. Had to see it
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Dunn’s dug is dragged back to his corner. Useless by this time, but this Bandido right, he had to have one last look across the pit at Reaper. Man, its eyes were all glazed over but it still needed to stare down Kirky’s dug. It was still looking at Reaper when Charlie Dunn put a bullet through its brain. Poor dug. Shows the bastards love those beasts though. Enough to put them out of their misery
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Some night though, man. Some fight. Classic
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It was about six weeks after the fight between Bandido and Reaper when Ally got word to go to the Star Bar after hours. The call came with just half an hour’s warning but that was hardly unusual. Fights can be organized months in advance but everything’s got to be kept hush until the last minute. Davie Stewart had left a message on Ally’s mobile saying that Reaper was going for win number four. Ally was beside himself at the thought. Reaper would be just one win away from being a grand champion. Magic.

He was let in to the Star by some shady on the door. He got a nod and headed for the basement.

Down the stairs and there was Kirky. No one else. Just Kirky. Kirky standing with a foot resting on Reaper’s cage. Just Kirky and Reaper.

Ally had been asking Kirky questions. Lots of them. He asked them because I had pushed him to do it. Persuaded him. Conned him into doing it.

He had asked Kirkwood and his boys about The Cutter and if they had any idea who he was. He probed them for anything they might have known.

Ally wasn’t the sharpest tool. I’d known that. It was part of how I was able to get him to think I was so into all the newspaper stuff about The Cutter. Oh and I was buttering him up big style when he came back with answers. I was well impressed with his inside knowledge. I lapped up his stories. Puffed him up and made him keen to come back with more.

And every time I got him to press Kirky and his boys for more info on what they knew about The Cutter and how close they were getting to catching him, I pushed him a step closer to his death. Ally asked too much and didn’t do it with the guile it needed. Kirky saw it for what it was and he wasn’t a happy man. He had brought Ally to his lair and was about to show him the finer arts of Reaper’s fighting skills. First hand.

I imagined Ally joking at first. Thinking he was early for a change. Thinking maybe he’d got a special invite. He’d soon have realized he hadn’t. The look on Kirky’s face would have told him that. Kirky would most probably have let Ally babble on. Let him blurt out his guilt. Except of course, Ally had no guilt to spew. He had nothing to tell that would save him.

Kirky would have stamped on the roof of Reaper’s cage, both to attract Ally’s attention and to rouse and irritate the dog. Ally wasn’t so daft that he wouldn’t have got that message. He’d have been sure what Kirky was threatening. But he’d still have been incapable of telling Kirky that he was the one that killed Spud Tierney and the others. And that was the only thing Kirkwood wanted to hear.

Kirky might have opened that cage but kept a grip on Reaper’s collar. Last chance Ally.

No chance at all.

End up, Kirky would have seen that he had no choice. He’d have let go the dog and it would have been on Ally in a split second. Four stones of fighting machine. Amazingly strong and agile. Reaper would have flown at Ally, knocking him off his feet and going for the throat. Jaws like a vice. Gripping Ally and mauling at his neck. It would have been hungry to please its master.

That dug kept going back for more because it loves big Kirky. And Kirky loves that dug.

Maybe Kirky had only meant to send out another warning, maybe he had hoped Ally would eventually have talked about why he had asked so many questions, maybe he just didn’t give a fuck.

Maybe Reaper was just more than either of them could cope with once he got a hold. You can’t break a pit bull’s grip. Hit it over the head with a baseball bat and still you can’t shake it.

Either way, Ally was never seen again. Word got out of course, no point in doing it otherwise. Win number four for Reaper. A grand champion. Not one bit of Ally McFarland was found. Probably never would be.

I had killed him. Every bit as much as I’d killed Carr, old Billy Hutchison, Tierney and Sinclair. And Wallace Ogilvie.

I had never regretted any of them before. Even in the darkest moments when I looked at myself in the mirror. Even when the demons came calling. I’d done what I had to do for her. This was different though. Ally McFarland was guilty of nothing more than being a daft boy. If it wasn’t for me he’d still be alive.

I sat quiet in front of the television, taking nothing in. All I could hear from the screen was Ally McFarland’s voice. I saw that big black Labrador cross outside our house and all I could think of was Reaper with its jaws locked round Ally’s throat.

Made me think and that wasn’t something I was comfortable with. Made me think about the others, made me look at things. For the first time in nearly seven years I had feelings other than hurt.

Carr. Hutchison. Tierney. Sinclair.

Guilt. Remorse. Penitence. Regret. Shame. Only shades of each but it was there.

All except Wallace Ogilvie, of course.

But there was something else. Fear.

It occurred to me that there was just one thing that Ally could have told Kirky. He could have told him who had got him to ask all the questions. He could have given up my name. But I was fairly sure he hadn’t done that.

After all, I was still breathing.

Still, maybe it suited Kirkwood to wait. To let me wonder. To let me pish my pants. To give him time to conjure up something worse than death for me.

Maybe.

So sweet Rachel was off the case. Gone. The men in suits had bowed to their own bad press and had booted her. She would no longer be tied down by the everyday routines of the inquiry. The emphasis of her role had shifted.

A bit of me was relieved. Couldn’t deny that. Narey wasn’t the same as the rest of them. Just as I wasn’t the same as the psycho that they thought I was. The rest of them saw bodies piling up and newspaper headlines and swallowed every word that I had fed them. They were robots. Almost too easy to toy with. She seemed to be the only one that doubted what everyone else saw to be true.

They all looked for the one they dubbed The Cutter. She left room for other possibilities. Of course she hadn’t established a dialogue with me. I had established it with her. I wrote to her. I posted to her. I brought her to the fore of their investigation. I made her. I put her in charge.

They had no right to remove her. My choice. I was in charge here. It was me who was in control. And she was smarter than them. Maybe too smart. Maybe it was better without her. But it was my choice that she was in charge of the investigation, not theirs. They had dismissed her because they were under pressure. MPs, media, the public. Journalists and television stations from all over the world were coming to Glasgow to write and talk about their so-called serial killer. And every word that was written made them sweat. Every word that was spoken made them look bad. Couldn’t be their fault. Oh no. Had to be someone else. Call for a scapegoat. Call for Rachel.

They didn’t know they were doing me a favour. They were taking away the one threat, other than Alec Kirkwood, that didn’t buy into everything that I put before them. It made me laugh. Made me angry.

I had thrown the paper across the room when I read about her being ditched. About her being replaced as the principal officer on the investigation. She was a threat to me but that was my choice to run that risk. I think I had known from the first time I saw her on the TV news that she was a bit different. I certainly knew the day she first came to the house to interview me. Someone had to come, I’d known that. Matter of procedure. Had to question me, had to consider even in the face of all the other evidence that the killings weren’t linked, that they weren’t personal. That had to be done.

But it would be cursory, I’d been confident of that. No sane person could think that one grudge connected to only one victim of a four-time serial killer was the motive for them all. Yet Rachel had been persistent. She had needled me. I’d risen to it. Just a bit but I had risen to it. Maybe that was what got her interested, maybe she was just thorough, maybe she was just a genius or a complete fucking bitch. Maybe she really did stick to those principles of policing that said random killings don’t happen very often and that they should always look close to home before thinking a murder might have been committed by a stranger.

Whatever, I knew she had not ruled out the chance that it was me or that I had something to do with it, unlikely as it seemed. She was a risk that I was happy to run with.