I wanted time to think but I knew my decision. Martin was right. Hobson’s choice.
A day later I offered him twenty percent of my cut and he agreed. I phoned the number on the piece of paper and was told to go to Tennents Bar in Byres Rd in the west end of Glasgow. I told them about Martin and was asked to bring him along. They didn’t seem bothered about him.
I was to meet a man carrying a copy of the Daily Telegraph. Brave man — that could get you killed in some pubs in Glasgow back then.
I turned up with Martin in tow and we were bundled into a car and driven to a small flat in Yoker. We were told to cool our heels in the flat for forty-eight hours and we would be contacted. We had no guards but it was clear what would happen if we stepped outside the door.
Two days later and David Read was headline news on Scotland Today when his body was found in a coalbunker behind a small hotel on the south side. We later found out that he had been discovered with a dick in his mouth. Not his own but Craig Laidlaw’s. Craig’s body was found on wasteland near the Clyde and three other known associates of Read’s were declared permanently AWOL.
On the third night the gunman and his mate reappeared and told us how it was going to be. We didn’t have much choice so went along for the ride.
Chapter 13
You would think that my life was full of the cloak and dagger nonsense back then and, to be fair, it sometimes felt like that. But most of the time I just put my head down and got on with life. True I was no nine to five guy but I looked on work as work and that way kept my head screwed on — at least for a while.
As soon as we were dropped off at the Albany Hotel I knew things were changing for the better.
How did I know this?
Simple really. Full length leather jacketed, jewellery-laden guys with bottle blondes on each arm don’t walk up to me every day and say ‘Welcome aboard son.’
I was ushered into the hotel lobby, whisked to the top floor and shown into a suitably plush suite. Martin and I were herded into one corner, handed a large whisky and told to chill.
I often wondered what was going through Martin’s head back then. Maybe you would know?
No?
Well time to move on.
Mr Leather dropped the blondes on a chair and flipped them a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses. The girls were all fur coat and nae knickers but the way they got to work on the champagne showed they were no strangers to the good life.
Our driver lifted me by the elbow and led me to the next room where Mr Leather was stripping to a Saville Row suit and an outrageously out of date kipper tie.
He motioned for me to take a seat and the driver dropped another three fingers of malt into my glass.
‘Names don’t matter son,’ said Mr Leather. ‘You won’t see me again.’
He stood at the far end of the room and I noted that his hair seemed to have a life of its own. Expensive wig. A crap one but expensive. Add to that the way the fat round his waist failed to move with him and I suspected that a twenty-four hour Playtex was de rigueur for my new leather coated friend.
‘I’ll keep it short,’ he said. ‘Life’s changing. Small time gangs are on their way out. Think big, that’s the secret. This is nearly the eighties and we need to change. Take your Mr Read. Nice operator — until he pulled that diamond stunt. Wrong job, wrong place and no thought to the future. Hard to think that he expected us to let a million quids worth of ice just walk.’
A million and all I got was a lousy grand.
‘ Glasgow wasn’t high on the list for us but your Mr Read changed that. A bit of research and a bit of planning and here we are.’
He paused to sip at the beer he had just poured.
‘Anyway new management needs new personnel. Personnel with ambition and drive. Word goes you’re not half daft and a whizz at the old safes. So, we say to ourselves, we need someone with a bit of nonce and cool under pressure. You seem to fit the bill, so here’s the script. We set you up in an office. None too grand but nice — if you know where I’m coming from. We give you a contact and he passes on a few errands we need done. You help us out and we cut you in for five percent of the action.’
‘You’re going to need some help. I’m assuming that is why your friend is here. It’s up to you how you fund the help. We don’t mind a few homers but nothing that will get you noticed. Keep it under the radar and we will be fine.’
‘Give us twelve months unblemished service and we double your cut in year two.’
He took another slug of beer.
‘It is about here that you expect me to say ‘any questions?’ but it isn’t going to happen. You are a smart kid. There is no negotiation on this unless you want to negotiate over the colour of your wreath.’
‘Get the picture?’
He finished the beer.
‘Time for me to go. The pros next doors are yours to do what with what you want. The room is paid up until tomorrow and the tab on room service is open for light refreshments but not for abuse.’
He headed for the adjoining door.
‘We’ll be in touch.’
And with that he was gone. I got up and followed him through but save the two girls and Martin, the room was empty.
We had a hell of a night. The girls were willing and more than able and the bar tab was large but at the back of my head I knew that there was no such thing as a free lunch and my new life might include a touch more than ‘a few errands’.
Chapter 14
Two days later a bruiser of a man turned up at my door and handed me a set of keys that were dripping with the grease from his just finished fish supper along with a letter, crumpled and battered. Hardly the auspicious start to the new life I had been expecting.
Inside the letter was a slip of paper with an address and the words — ‘Move in and wait.’
The keys turned out to open an office on Gordon St that lay four floors above a Chinese restaurant. It shared a common entrance with the Chinky’s (you could call it that back then) and in the following year we had a line of credit with the restaurant that made us their best customers by a country mile.
The office itself was a simple two room affair. One room was set out as a reception with a desk and a battered two-seat sofa that attended a plywood coffee table. The next room had a desk, chair and a filing cabinet that didn’t work. Decoration was from the late grime period and two forty — watt light bulbs provided some gloom. The view — a trade description violation in itself — was of a brick wall.
I made my first executive decision and, dipping into my own pocket, I called in a girl called Sally Macintyre. Sally was an interior decorator — one of the few in Glasgow in the late seventies. She usually did the houses of the rich and not so famous. I gave her a free hand, a small budget and told her I needed the place to look business like with an air of authority.
Two weeks later I had the smartest office in the west of Scotland but still no contact from London.
When it eventually came it seemed innocent enough at first.
Most of the early jobs were simple pick and drops and I pulled together a team of runners under the watchful eye of Martin.
Glasgow ’s waifs and strays flowed through our offices, turning it into an all day rush hour. The office was always alive with activity. We went from one to six phones — that raised a few eyes with the GPO — we were still a year short of the creation of British Telecom. Within a month I had rented the office next door and knocked through — creating an area for the pick and drop crew — named the PD’s by Martin. We put in a coffee and tea machine and, eventually, a telly, radio and a hot plate.
The first big job came three months in and it was a darling.
A bruiser appeared at our office and handed me a distressed envelope — clearly London specialised in the battered look. It contained a date and a time.