Funny thing. The newspapers were going on and on about the whole of Glasgow being terrified of the man they were calling The Cutter. All except me.
Me? I was getting scared of a man called Alec Kirkwood.
I hadn’t expected fear. Had thought that was an emotion that had gone along with others. I’d told myself that I was already dead inside, that he couldn’t kill me. He’d hurt Jimmy Mac badly but that hadn’t worried me too much. He’d done worse to Hutton than kill him and Hutton hadn’t done anything. What would he do to me?
I was getting some hints. There’s a pub in Royston called the Star Bar. I’d passed by it often enough but had never ventured inside. Probably just as well. It’s the kind of pub, once you get out of the city centre, that Glasgow specializes in. The sort that if you didn’t know any better, you’d probably take one look and think it had been closed down. The windows were boarded up even though they also had bars on them. Belt and braces Royston-style.
No bouncer on the door. None needed.
I’m told that inside the bar looks like any other dodgy dive in the city. Torn fake leather upholstery, sticky floors, mismatched chairs, a fruit machine and galleries stocked with ‘house’ spirits. It smelled rancid but if you drank there often enough then you didn’t notice. Or if you drank enough.
Any face that didn’t fit or wasn’t recognized was guaranteed hard stares and would be well advised not to go to the toilets alone. The staff stood for no shite from anyone except friends of the management. They could do what they liked.
The Star had the worst karaoke in Glasgow. Women in their sixties singing Tammy Wynette and Madonna like drunken cats. Nobody having the heart or the balls to tell them how bad they were. Suggestion like that in the Star is reason enough for husbands or sons to want to stab you.
Want anything? Get it in the Star. Drugs, a dodgy telly, guns, a house burned down, a new fridge, someone’s legs broken. But don’t ask if you’re not known. That will only get you a doing.
My info on the Star Bar came from Ally McFarland. He had managed to become a bit of a regular there through his shady mates and was happy to bump his gums about the place. Ally loved the idea that he was in with that crowd. He was someone who knew someone. He did favours for important people. He could get nods back from guys at the bar. He’d get chat.
Suited me of course that he did. Ally talked, I listened. I asked questions too, almost without him realizing it. With a man like Kirkwood on your tail, it pays to know some of what he knows. Forewarned, forearmed.
Ally had also told me before about the basement at the Star Bar. Told me what happened sometimes when last orders were called, when the place was cleared of drinkers and the lights in the bar turned off. Ally had been there.
Sitting on Royston Road, it’s a typical, big Victorian pub. Purpose-built for the job with a basement that had been big enough to take every barrel of ale that a drayman wanted to drop off from his wagon.
These days it was kitted out for a different purpose altogether. Once a month, groups of men gathered in the bowels of the Star. Under the street, deep down where a century of brick kept in the noise. And there was plenty of noise. The Star Bar was owned by Alec Kirkwood and he used the basement as home turf for dogfights.
Ally loved it. Not just that it was seriously dodgy and that he had an invite. That would have been enough in itself for Ally to get his rocks off but he actually loved the fights. He had bloodlust. He’d tell me about what went on in detail that made me squirm.
I know. Irony.
It’s amazing, man. You have to see it to believe it. These dugs tear at each other like wild animals. Fierce as fuck. There’s rules though. Got to have rules. The rules go back to like the 1800s. Amazing that, is it no?
It’s like a code of honour. Marquess of Queensberry for dugs. Kirky is a big man for the rules. It’s like ceremonial, you know whit I mean? And they take it pure serious. They train these dugs like naebody’s business. Have them running on treadmills and everything.
Kirky’s like aye, let the cops ask me about the treadmills. Nae problemo, he says, just tell them it’s to keep the dugs fit. Says he’ll tell them he got the idea aff Blue Peter. Quality. Train up the dugs’ jaws and all. They have them chewing on tyres and wooden sticks to make them stronger. Crazy, man.
They look after the dugs proper. They sometimes get some wido vet who they’ll bung to come in and treat them after the fights but most of the time they do it themselves. Have proper kits with staples and drips and all kinds of stuff though. They look after them dugs. People say it’s cruel but the Grand National is much crueller on horses if you ask me. The pit’s about twelve feet by twelve and it’s fenced aff with wooden boards about two and a half feet high. There’s carpet on the floor, General George’s finest offcut, so that the dugs can get a good grip. It’s like the fuckin’ Coliseum, man.
They weigh them before the kick-aff. Dugs have got to be more or less the same weight. Stands to reason. They agree on a top weight beforehand and if either dug is over that then he’s bombed oot.
They wash them down before the fight too. Stick a hose on them and give them a right soaking. That’s because some smart bastards have been known to put poison onto their ain dug’s coat so that when the other dug sinks its teeth in it would get a right dose of it. Soon be half asleep and there for the taking. Try anything some of them.
The only folk in the ring are the owners and the ref. Everyone else is better off well oot of it anyhow. Time the dugs get into it then no one can go near them. These dugs are mental. Simple as that. They will tear into anything once they get a head of steam up. Herd of elephants? Nae bother. Bring it on.
It’s a proper sport, man. A good fight is a thing of beauty. Up at Kirky’s place the other night, should have seen it. A classic, a proper classic. There were these two cracking dugs. Both American pit bulls. Fucking monsters, the pair of them. Reaper is Big Kirky’s dug and he was up against this beast called Bandido belonging to Charlie Dunn fae Edinburgh.
Plenty of money on the pair of them. There wis a shade more on Bandido though seeing as he was a bona fide champion. That means he has won three fights like. If he beat Reaper then he needed just wan mair win to be a grand champion and there’s no many of those aboot.
Reaper had won two fights himself though and he’s as game as fuck. Kirky fancied his chances and backed it up with big bucks.
Fair crowd down in the basement of the Star. Maybe a couple of dozen folk. No just anybody gets in. Have to be in to get in, know what I mean? Guys have been known to get a right doing if they turn up without a dug or a story that doesnae hold up.
It was Reaper against Bandido but everyone knew fine it was Kirky against Charlie Dunn. You know? Serious stuff.
These dugs were up for it. Couldnae wait to get going. Ref gives the signal and they let them go. Man but they just explode oot of the corner. Like two bullets coming oot of guns. Spit, hair, blood and teeth everywhere. The room’s like a nuthoose. Every man on his feet, roaring his heid aff, shouting on his dug.
The Bandido thing gets a hud of the Reaper’s leg early doors and looks like it is gonna tear it aff. Right sair yin Reaper’s got but it keeps going back for more because it loves big Kirky. And Kirky loves that dug.
Then Reaper gets a grip under Bandido’s throat, rips a chunk oot and there is blood dripping everywhere. Rolls on him and breaks one of his front legs then another. There is plenty of blood coming from Reaper an all but he has the upper hand. You can see Charlie Dunn thinking about pulling his dug out. He doesn’t though. Must know it has no chance now but he lets it fight on. It’s big Kirky he’s up against and you just know he’d rather let the dug die than be seen to give in.
End up, Reaper locks his jaws on this big bleeding hole in Bandido’s chest and rips it open. Had to see it.
Dunn’s dug is dragged back to his corner. Useless by this time, but this Bandido right, he had to have one last look across the pit at Reaper. Man, its eyes were all glazed over but it still needed to stare down Kirky’s dug. It was still looking at Reaper when Charlie Dunn put a bullet through its brain. Poor dug. Shows the bastards love those beasts though. Enough to put them out of their misery.
Some night though, man. Some fight. Classic.
It was about six weeks after the fight between Bandido and Reaper when Ally got word to go to the Star Bar after hours. The call came with just half an hour’s warning but that was hardly unusual. Fights can be organized months in advance but everything’s got to be kept hush until the last minute. Davie Stewart had left a message on Ally’s mobile saying that Reaper was going for win number four. Ally was beside himself at the thought. Reaper would be just one win away from being a grand champion. Magic.
He was let in to the Star by some shady on the door. He got a nod and headed for the basement.
Down the stairs and there was Kirky. No one else. Just Kirky. Kirky standing with a foot resting on Reaper’s cage. Just Kirky and Reaper.
Ally had been asking Kirky questions. Lots of them. He asked them because I had pushed him to do it. Persuaded him. Conned him into doing it.
He had asked Kirkwood and his boys about The Cutter and if they had any idea who he was. He probed them for anything they might have known.
Ally wasn’t the sharpest tool. I’d known that. It was part of how I was able to get him to think I was so into all the newspaper stuff about The Cutter. Oh and I was buttering him up big style when he came back with answers. I was well impressed with his inside knowledge. I lapped up his stories. Puffed him up and made him keen to come back with more.
And every time I got him to press Kirky and his boys for more info on what they knew about The Cutter and how close they were getting to catching him, I pushed him a step closer to his death. Ally asked too much and didn’t do it with the guile it needed. Kirky saw it for what it was and he wasn’t a happy man. He had brought Ally to his lair and was about to show him the finer arts of Reaper’s fighting skills. First hand.
I imagined Ally joking at first. Thinking he was early for a change. Thinking maybe he’d got a special invite. He’d soon have realized he hadn’t. The look on Kirky’s face would have told him that. Kirky would most probably have let Ally babble on. Let him blurt out his guilt. Except of course, Ally had no guilt to spew. He had nothing to tell that would save him.
Kirky would have stamped on the roof of Reaper’s cage, both to attract Ally’s attention and to rouse and irritate the dog. Ally wasn’t so daft that he wouldn’t have got that message. He’d have been sure what Kirky was threatening. But he’d still have been incapable of telling Kirky that he was the one that killed Spud Tierney and the others. And that was the only thing Kirkwood wanted to hear.
Kirky might have opened that cage but kept a grip on Reaper’s collar. Last chance Ally.
No chance at all.
End up, Kirky would have seen that he had no choice. He’d have let go the dog and it would have been on Ally in a split second. Four stones of fighting machine. Amazingly strong and agile. Reaper would have flown at Ally, knocking him off his feet and going for the throat. Jaws like a vice. Gripping Ally and mauling at his neck. It would have been hungry to please its master.
That dug kept going back for more because it loves big Kirky. And Kirky loves that dug.
Maybe Kirky had only meant to send out another warning, maybe he had hoped Ally would eventually have talked about why he had asked so many questions, maybe he just didn’t give a fuck.
Maybe Reaper was just more than either of them could cope with once he got a hold. You can’t break a pit bull’s grip. Hit it over the head with a baseball bat and still you can’t shake it.
Either way, Ally was never seen again. Word got out of course, no point in doing it otherwise. Win number four for Reaper. A grand champion. Not one bit of Ally McFarland was found. Probably never would be.
I had killed him. Every bit as much as I’d killed Carr, old Billy Hutchison, Tierney and Sinclair. And Wallace Ogilvie.
I had never regretted any of them before. Even in the darkest moments when I looked at myself in the mirror. Even when the demons came calling. I’d done what I had to do for her. This was different though. Ally McFarland was guilty of nothing more than being a daft boy. If it wasn’t for me he’d still be alive.
I sat quiet in front of the television, taking nothing in. All I could hear from the screen was Ally McFarland’s voice. I saw that big black Labrador cross outside our house and all I could think of was Reaper with its jaws locked round Ally’s throat.
Made me think and that wasn’t something I was comfortable with. Made me think about the others, made me look at things. For the first time in nearly seven years I had feelings other than hurt.
Carr. Hutchison. Tierney. Sinclair.
Guilt. Remorse. Penitence. Regret. Shame. Only shades of each but it was there.
All except Wallace Ogilvie, of course.
But there was something else. Fear.
It occurred to me that there was just one thing that Ally could have told Kirky. He could have told him who had got him to ask all the questions. He could have given up my name. But I was fairly sure he hadn’t done that.
After all, I was still breathing.
Still, maybe it suited Kirkwood to wait. To let me wonder. To let me pish my pants. To give him time to conjure up something worse than death for me.
Maybe.