My boss, Cammy Strang, ran a legit taxi operation. As legit as a private hire firm gets in Glasgow anyway. Cammy was ex-army. He would look after himself and his drivers and sometimes that meant hurting people. But an occasional swing of a baseball bat didn’t make Cammy a bad guy. Not compared to some.
Bribes and bungs, threats and lies, punters hijacked and flyers taken down. That kind of stuff was just business. It was what you had to do to survive, what was needed to turn a profit but it didn’t make you a crook. Not compared to some.
He’d started out with just one cab, driving it himself. Established private hires tried to put him out of business but Cammy wasn’t having it. He paid a couple of late-night visits and made his point.
He bought more cars and took on more drivers. Ended up with a fleet of eight, made himself a bundle.
Working for Cammy was a good deal. You could work hours that suited you both and he’d be straight with you. No need to worry about all your money being there or that he’d take someone else’s side over yours. Play fair by Cammy and Cammy would play fair by you. Above all, if you got a call for a job from Cammy then you knew there would always be someone in the taxi. Sounds obvious enough but elsewhere, other firms, that wasn’t always the case. Plenty of them ran ‘drops’.
The driver would get a call, pick up a package rather than a passenger and deliver it. No chat from the back of the cab, no tip. Door-to-door drugs. Class A all the way. There had never been drops in any of Cammy’s cabs. He held a hard line on drugs, would have nothing to do with them.
But the wolves were out there, getting closer. Three other private hire firms had been bought out in the past few months alone. Word was that all three of them now did drops. Word was one guy was playing monopoly.
The more cab firms that were taken over, the less chance of getting a job with another company. Less chance of another job, less scope for saying no when asked to do a drop. Just business.
Cammy knew that the guy was coming and knew he could do nothing to stop him. Cammy had one baseball bat, the guy had a whole team.
Time to retire, Cammy told us. Tenerife for him and the missus. An offer he couldn’t refuse. We knew.
Who’s taking over the firm? asked one of the boys. I held my breath.
‘Guy named Arthur Penman,’ Cammy said. I breathed again. Sometimes it’s better the devil you don’t know.
Cammy didn’t say goodbye. The handover was to be on the Wednesday and he went home Tuesday night as per usual. Wednesday came and there was a new face behind the desk and a couple of new faces in the cabs. Handover done, Cammy and Jean halfway to Santa Cruz.
Penman was a lanky guy with glasses and a nervous cough. Studious looking. I recognized an accountant when I saw one. Penpusher not drugs pusher.
Penman wasn’t the man.
Our jobs were safe, he said. Business as usual, he said. Even giving us a couple of new drivers. He owned other cab firms, he told us, so he wouldn’t be there all the time. He’d pop in regularly though, just to keep us on our toes. The radio controller would do the rest. And the new drivers, Tobin and McTeer. He knew them already and they’d help things tick over when he wasn’t around.
Nobody said much. Wasn’t much to say.
The radio controller was new too. A grumpy big guy with close-cropped hair and an angry, pock-marked face. Old Annie had gone into early retirement. Tollcross for her, not Tenerife. Spending the rest of her days smelling the McVities biscuit factory. Which was a bit ironic really.
Penman’s new drivers were sullen and sure of themselves. They only spoke to each other, seemed to drive when they felt like it and spent a lot of time holed up in the cab office with crabbit Robert the new controller.
A week went by and nothing much changed. I still drove a cab with passengers in it and Penman’s was the only name above the door. There were moans and mutterings amongst the drivers. I dodged most of the gossip because there were things I didn’t want to know. A name I didn’t want to hear.
Then on the third Wednesday, two weeks after Penman first showed up in the office, he was back.
I heard the sound of laughter as I went in. Penman was sitting on the edge of the desk, long legs crossed in front of him and arms across his chest. He was listening like everyone else, a smile on his face.
A few feet from him, a man with his back to me was holding court. All I could see was a smart suit stretched across broad shoulders, neatly cut hair and arms going. He was tugging at his cuffs as he spoke, then arms open wide. Inviting. Including.
The guys were laughing, lapping up the routine. They liked this guy. Funny man. Stand-up comic, stand-up guy. Written all over their faces.
I didn’t want him to turn round. Didn’t want to see him. Didn’t want him to see me.
I sidled round the side and joined the edge of the group. Stood next to Tobin, one of the new guys, who turned and took me in with a slow look, saying nothing.
The suit was still talking, winding up his spiel now. Saying how pleased he was to be an associate of Mr Penman, saying how things could go on as they were under Cammy, maybe be even better. Maybe more money to be made.
He threw in another couple of jokes and started glad-handing the troops. He shook hands with them, beginning at the other end of the line and working his way along. Chatting with some, listening to others as if they were saying the most interesting thing he had heard in his life, laughing at the funniest jokes he’d ever heard.
Eventually he got to me. Alec Kirkwood reached out for my hand and looked into my eyes, a smile playing on his lips. He didn’t say anything, just nodded. Placed his other hand over the one that was holding mine. Felt like I was being blessed by the Pope or measured for size by the Devil.
Held my hand. Held my eye.
All sorts of thoughts. Most of them bad.
I had been on the edge of Kirky’s world and that had suited me fine. Knowing people who knew people who knew him had been close enough. Now he was in my world and me in his. Glasgow’s two scariest men, some would say. Face to face, hand in hand.
Except I wasn’t scary. Not in my head. Not in my scary head. I was just me, doing what I had to do. He was a professional psychopath. He was in front of me and in my way. I was in front of him and in his sights.
Kirkwood had taken my hand with a knowing smile and released it the same way. All the time I wore my best dead look. Cold eyes, corpse expression. Nothing inside, nothing to read.
Still, he smiled and nodded as if I was an open book.
He moved on into the cab office and Tobin followed him. He too looked at me as if he knew something.
But they couldn’t. OK, they could but if they did then why slow-play their hand? Why not string me up and electrocute my bollocks or whatever they did? Maybe Kirkwood was being cute, wanted to be sure, wanted to flush me out. He knew where I was – right where he wanted me. I wouldn’t, couldn’t go anywhere. He was trying to unnerve me, break me.
Shit, if that was his game then I was playing right into his hands. Get a grip.
Kirkwood had been buying up private hire firms all over Glasgow, it was obvious he was the monopoly wolf. No surprise then that he bought out Cammy. Coincidence. And all he had done was smile at me. No more than shake my hand and look at me. Get a grip.
If Kirkwood knew then I would be dead. He was my boss now and I was on his radar as well as his payroll but that was it. Grip. Stay calm, give nothing away and it will all be OK. Being crazy wasn’t helping.
Yet all the time, a voice called to me, telling an old joke that wasn’t funny. Being paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.