Free Killing With Confidence by Matt Bendoris Page B

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