Free Random by Craig Robertson Page B

cut. Always adjusting his cuffs or the knot in his tie. Grinning like a man who knew all the answers. I guess he was good-looking. Ask a woman.
    I’d say he was about thirty-two. Face unmarked, which surprised me even before I knew who he was. There was something about him reminded me of George W. Bush. That wasn’t a compliment.
    Game show host. Businessman. Politician. It was as if he had been on some correspondence course for charisma. He was glad-handing everyone around him. He even shook mine. He would hold people’s gaze with this grin and nod at whatever they were saying as if they were saying the most interesting thing he’d ever heard. Above all, there was a supreme confidence about him. It was an arrogance, a sureness that was almost surreal. It was as if he was running for election but had already got every vote locked away.
    The guys I was with were lapping it up. The man’s pure class, they said. Got five jacuzzis in his house, they said. See that suit? Bought me a drink. Great guy.
    Aye, right. He nodded and grinned at me just the way he did with everyone else. I don’t think he heard a single word I said. When I found out who he was, that suited me fine. Alec Kirkwood had fought his way out of Asher Street in Baillieston, a mental bampot who was as handy with his head as he was with a baseball bat. He hurt a lot of people and won the kind of reputation you need to separate yourself from the herd.
    Those that tried to stop him found their houses fire-bombed. Those with asbestos homes had their pets poisoned. Some even went to their kids’ school to find that Uncle Alec had already picked them up and looked after them for a couple of hours. He never touched them. It was a message.
    A mental case. Psycho. Mad, bad and deadly to know.
    He worked his way up. Swapped his bovver boots for an Armani suit and his knuckleduster for a chartered accountant. Too smart to get his hands dirty these days. Still plenty of blood on them though.
    He now had one of those knock-through council house rows where three homes had been turned into a ranch. He was established. He was establishment. Other city establishment. He thought himself a cut above the rest, a smart guy among smartarses. A game show host among mongrels.
    Those who knew said that Spud Tierney was a dealer for Kirkwood. He was an irritating wee shite by all accounts. It was only being Kirky’s boy that had kept him alive for as long as it did. People knew he was Kirkwood’s and that was his passport through closes and schemes, it was his shield of invincibility. Right up till when I killed him.
    They said he was a yappy wee dick who was always winding folk up. He’d needle guys twice his size and the only wonder was that he’d never been killed sooner.
    Spud was low life and low rent. He’d bang out wraps to wasters. A few quid here, a dirty tenner there. He’d shank out smokes and snifters, pills and pokes to any hoodie or Burberry bam that had scraped the necessary from their giro.
    He wouldn’t be missed but there was something else. I’d worked it out. I just hadn’t worked out if it would be a good thing or not. I had sawn off Spud Tierney’s finger for my own purposes. Kirkwood obviously wouldn’t know that. So what would he think? Easy peasy, he’d take it as a sign. Tierney had been killed because he was Kirkwood’s and that finger was someone’s way of telling him so.
    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