Free Killing With Confidence by Matt Bendoris Page A

her husband then?’ enquired Connor.
    ‘No, I don’t. Too
obvious,’ Bent said.
    Funny how an editor’s
real views often betrayed what they put in their papers. ‘Well, I
shall hopefully find out Crosbie’s real views, too,’ Connor
added.
    Bent didn’t answer as
he stared unfocused at some imaginary spot on the carpet.
    Connor and April took
the silence as their cue and quietly slipped out his office leaving
Bent to his thoughts.
    ‘He certainly knows
more than he’s letting on,’ April remarked.
     

16
    Colin ‘The Hitman’ Harris
    The Portman
bar was unimaginatively named after Portman Street where it sat on
a corner in Glasgow’s rundown Kinning Park district. Like many of
the pubs in the area it had thrived when heavy industry ruled. But
those days were long gone. Now, the Portman was a miserable little
drinking den full of dead-eyed regulars. Its floorboards were bare
and scuffed, and its walls were yellow from nicotine even though
the smoking ban had forced drinkers to puff out in the wind and
cold for several years now.
    The boozer was almost
completely empty, but even so Connor barely noticed the
bespectacled figure sitting at the bar reading the Daily
Herald . He ordered himself a pint.
    ‘Are you not buying a
beer for me?’
    The reporter turned
to size up his inquisitor.
    A slim, middle-aged
man wearing a blue pullover and casual trousers, best described as
slacks, smiled back at him and offered his hand as a welcome.
‘Colin Harris is my name, and you must be Elvis. Actually, I’ll
have a glass of Chablis, stopped drinking beer the last time I got
out of jail, puts too much on the gut.’ With that remark he clasped
the remains of his beer belly.
    Connor screwed up his
face and replied, ‘With all due respect I don’t think this is the
type of establishment that sells wine, never mind Chablis.’
    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,