Butcher

  EARLY BIRD BOOKS

  FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

  BE THE FIRST TO KNOW ABOUT

  FREE AND DISCOUNTED EBOOKS

  NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!

  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF CAMPBELL ARMSTRONG

  “Campbell Armstrong is thriller writing’s best-kept secret.” —The Sunday Times

  “Armstrong is among the most intriguing of blockbuster writers … near to unputdownable.” —GQ

  “While touching on suspense with a skill to please hard-core thriller addicts, he manages to please people who … warm to readable novels of substance.” —Daily Mail

  “Armstrong’s skill is not just an eye for a criminally good tale but a passion for the people that will populate it.” —The Scotsman

  “Subtle and marvelous … This is a dazzling book.” —The Daily Telegraph on Agents of Darkness

  “A consummate psychological thriller … Without doubt, Armstrong is now in the front rank of thriller writers.” —Books on Heat

  “Armstrong has outdone both Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follett.” —James Patterson on Jig

  “A full throttle adventure thriller.” —The Guardian on Mambo

  “A wonderful puzzle that keeps us guessing right to the end.” —Publishers Weekly on Mazurka

  Butcher

  A Glasgow Novel

  Campbell Armstrong

  1

  It was time. He’d watched bosses rise and fall and others emerge to take their places. He’d seen fragile allegiances forged only to disintegrate in squalls of treachery and violence. He was forty-five and primed for advancement and he’d waited years for his moment.

  He stepped out of his Jaguar at the top of Hill Street. He wore a full length camel-coloured cashmere overcoat against the cold October night. Beating his gloved hands together, he surveyed the city spread beneath him – the intricate splendour of St George’s Mansions lit by red floodlights, the towers of Trinity, the electric clusters of Maryhill, the dark pool that was Kelvingrove Park. Beyond lay Partick, Broomhill, Hyndland. He heard the roaring motorway ferry cars and trucks to Anderston and the Broomielaw, and then across the narrow water of the Clyde to Kingston and Kinning Park, Govan and Pollok, and beyond.

  So much buzz, so many lights, so many pockets of darkness.

  This city is mine.

  Reuben Chuck took his mobile phone from his pocket and punched in a number and said, ‘Start movin.’

  Jimmy ‘Bram’ Stoker sat in his usual private dining room at the Corinthian, a restaurant and club in an ornate Victorian building that was once the Glasgow Sheriff’s Court. His ulcer, that wicked wee cunt in his gut, was acting up. He’d eaten curried bream, and the taste kept coming back at him. Never trust bream. Specially curried.

  He finished his brandy and rose from the table and looked at his guests, a Texan called Rick Tosh and a local girl, Patsie, who’d been brought along for the American’s amusement.

  Stoker said, ‘I’ll leave you two. Enjoy.’ He made an expansive gesture, indicating that he was bestowing on them not only the finest of meals and the best wines, but also any pleasures the rest of the evening held.

  ‘Jeez, it’s only what, ten o’clock?’ Rick Tosh, a leathery man with a neck so gnarled the cords were like stretched brown rubber bands, protested mildly. He had one liver-spotted paw on Patsie’s compliant knee under the table. He planned to reach the inner thigh as soon as Stoker had split.

  ‘We’ll talk business in the morning,’ Stoker said. ‘Tonight’s for enjoyment.’

  ‘Place like this, gal like this, a guy’d have to be a goddam Baptist not to enjoy.’ Rick Tosh had a silent laugh. His head went up and down like a man dooking for apples, and his mouth opened and his shoulders shook, but no sound emerged.

  Jimmy Stoker inclined his body toward the girl, and whispered in her ear. ‘Treat him well, lassie.’ Her perfume was so overwhelming he suspected prolonged exposure to it would collapse his lungs. He shook Tosh’s left hand, knowing the right was otherwise engaged. ‘I’ll send somebody at 10 a.m. to pick you up at your hotel.’

  ‘Looking forward,’ the Texan said. ‘Adios.’

  ‘Aye, adios.’ Jimmy Stoker moved away from the table. Simultaneously, two young men who’d been standing at the bar all evening left their drinks unfinished and followed Stoker to the cloakroom. One claimed Stoker’s hat and coat and helped him into it. He’d give him the hat outside if there was inclement weather, the only time Stoker reluctantly acquiesced to covering his thick white blow-dried hair, his pride.

  ‘Nice night, Mr Stoker?’

  Stoker belched. ‘Texans are all fucking windbags. Oil this, oil that, and if it isny oil it’s cattle, and who knows how many million head and how many million acres. You could build a city size of five Glasgows on his land, he says. He’s a blowhard. Soon’s you let Americans get their mitts into your business, they’re leeches. Give em an inch.’

  The young man checked the street from the front door and said, ‘All clear, Mr Stoker.’

  ‘Righto,’ Stoker said.

  The door was held open for him. The two young men flanked him as they moved along Ingram Street toward Stoker’s parked Daimler. One opened the back door.

  Stoker climbed in and said, ‘Take me home, country roads.’

  The young man who’d opened the door settled into the passenger seat, the other got behind the wheel. The car rolled past the Italian Centre and down Glassford Street in the direction of Argyle Street. Glassford wasn’t very well lit; dark buildings on either side, old warehouses transformed into shops with flats above them.

  Jimmy Stoker tasted bream again. It was like the fish had come back to life and was swimming up his gullet on a cloud of aqueous gas. He belched profoundly a couple of times and said, ‘Never eat curried bream, boys. I swear to God.’ He undid the buttons of his grey single-breasted suit, and loosened his belt. He also popped the top two buttons of his trousers.

  The young man in the passenger seat looked round. He still had Stoker’s hat, and he held it out to him. ‘Here’s your hat, what’s your curry?’

  Stoker leaned forward. ‘See you, Jack. The last thing I need is any of your rotten jokes. See if there’s Rolaids.’

  Jack opened the glovebox and a little lightbulb glowed. He rummaged around. ‘None, Mr Stoker.’

  A car coming the other way angled abruptly into the Daimler’s path. Stoker’s driver braked to avoid collision and said, ‘Fucking bampot.’

  The other car stopped and doors swung open and three men jumped out into the glare of the Daimler’s headlights.

  Stoker shouted, ‘What the fuck is this?’

  Jack was reaching for a gun he kept under the passenger seat as the windscreen cracked and collapsed. Jack fell sideways. A piece of his scalp was blown into the back seat and blood splashed into Stoker’s eyes. The driver tried to squirm down in the seat and take the gun out of Jack’s dead hand but a second shot blew through his jawbone and he slid silently away from the wheel. Stoker opened the back door, stumbled out of the car, felt his slackened trousers begin to slide from his hips. He tripped on the pavement. He blinked, Jack’s blood blinded him. He tried to get up – if I run, if I run hard enough.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ somebody said.

  Stoker did think about it – and decided he wasn’t going out like a snivelling wee boy. He grabbed the top of his falling trousers and rose, thinking he’d make a mad rush into a dark side-street, but he stumbled again. Ah shite.

  Cardamom, ginger, chillies and fish flakes clotted at the back of his throat.

  Jesusmaryjoseph.

  ‘Move Over Darling,’ Eve Curdy said. ‘That’s my favourite.’

  ‘Nope, has to be Pillow Talk.’

  ‘When you get
down to it, Gordy, is there a difference between the two?’

  ‘Get down to it?’ Gordy had a big smile. ‘How far down?’

  ‘Oh you – you know what I mean.’

  Gordy Curdy said, ‘Pillow Talk has that extra magic.’

  They were lying on loungers in the room Gordy Curdy called The Kon-Tiki Room, created out of what had once been the cellar of his house in Newton Mearns. Both Curdys wore identical khaki shorts, red and yellow Hawaiian shirts, and they had tanning-salon tans. Somebody had once referred to them as The Trader Vics Twins.

  The décor was ersatz Hawaiian: plastic palm trees, a cocktail bar with a pineapple-shaped ice bucket, and brown hula girl swizzlesticks that fitted nicely between thumb and forefinger when you stirred. It was a cosy warm place where Gordy loved to invite clients and friends, showing them with enormous pride how an ordinary basement could be transformed, with a little imagination, into an exotic South Sea island retreat.

  On the 52 inch plasma screen Tony Randall was having a nervous breakdown. Big Rock was trying to console him. Curdy preferred the scenes between Big Rock and Doris. Doris had that special sparkle.

  He said, ‘Rock was a good actor. A poofter playing a straight guy. That’s got to be hard.’

  Mrs Curdy looked at her husband. ‘Hard?’

  ‘Oh, very hard.’

  ‘And how hard is very?’

  ‘Rock.’

  Eve Curdy slid her feet out of her fuzzy slippers. Her toenails were bright red. She wiggled them. ‘Know that rock near Dumbarton?’

  Gordy nodded. ‘They say it’s an old volcano. Inactive. Except you never know where you stand with volcanoes.’

  ‘And exactly where do you stand with volcanoes?’

  ‘That’s just it. They’re unpredictable. They can erupt any time.’

  ‘Erupt any time, mmm.’ Eve Curdy narrowed her eyes. ‘Isn’t there a lighthouse on that rock?’

  ‘You’re thinking Edinburgh. Bass Rock. That lighthouse is a firm big thing, rises tall out the sea.’

  ‘Oh, it’s tall, I remember that,’ Eve said.

  Gordy watched Doris on screen. She was talking by phone to Big Rock, who was conning her as he always did. ‘Doris never gets it, does she?’

  Eve said, ‘She gets it eventually.’

  ‘I fucking hope she does.’

  ‘Oh, so do I, so do I. Sooner rather than later, Gordy.’

  ‘My money’s on sooner every time.’

  She finished her drink, looked at her husband with head tilted. He knew that expression. I’m on to a winner here.

  ‘Get me the same again, would you, Gordy?’

  Gordy Curdy rose and took his wife’s empty glass to the cocktail bar. He fixed the concoction just the way she liked it except he added a little more rum than usual. And bagza ice cubes. The rest was just for colour.

  He opened a Miller’s Light for himself. The can popped, fizzed, spluttered out foam.

  Eve said, ‘I like that sound, Gordy.’

  ‘Pop fizz, aye. Reminds me of something.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘Trying to remember what …’

  ‘Try harder, lover.’

  The intercom buzzed.

  Eve Curdy was annoyed. ‘Oh Christ, who’s that at this time of night? I don’t suppose you can ignore it, Gordy.’

  The intercom buzzed again. ‘No, but I’ll deal with it fucking fast.’ Gordy flipped a switch.

  ‘Somebody here to see you.’ Mathieson’s voice came through the system as if he had a clothes-peg clamped to his nostrils.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Only Soutar.’

  ‘Send him down.’ Gordy flicked the switch back.

  ‘Soutar, he’s an annoyance,’ Mrs Curdy said.

  ‘He’ll only be here a minute.’ Gordy Curdy saw that Doris was crying now. Big Rock had cut her to the quick. ‘Soutar brings me a lot of business.’

  ‘Frankly, Gordy, I don’t like the way he squints. And why do we need Mathieson all the time?’

  ‘Home sec,’ he said.

  ‘But he’s always here, or somebody like him.’

  ‘He’s a status symbol, sweetheart. Round-the-clock on-site protection. You want nasty big Alsatian dogs? Or that bloody awful fencing?’

  ‘Frankly, Gordy dear, I think we should do something off the fucking wall. Build lighthouses in the front and keep them on a really low romantic glow. I could look out the window and enjoy them.’

  Gordy said, ‘Great. Hold the thought, lover.’

  ‘I’m holding more than that,’ she said.

  The door opened and Soutar came in. He was dressed in a black blazer and grey slacks and carried a black leather briefcase. He was a short bald man with one eye that didn’t open all the way. Gordy Curdy never thought of it as a squint. It was a lazy lid. Lots of people had them.

  ‘Soutar, how are you?’

  ‘Sorry to disturb. I just have some papers for you to sign.’

  ‘Aye, fine. I’ll have a gander.’

  ‘Hello, Mrs Curdy,’ Soutar said.

  Eve Curdy nodded coldly. ‘Hello Soutar.’

  Soutar opened the briefcase. Mrs Curdy watched Doris Day and thought about lighthouses and rocks and planting plum trees in the backyard and having a whole harvest of plums every year. Gordy Curdy thought about cash, making cash, fucking volcanoes of cash.

  Soutar took a gun from his briefcase.

  Gordy Curdy smiled in surprise, then lost the smile when he looked into Soutar’s eyes. He didn’t like what he saw there. The lazy lid pulsed strangely and Soutar’s eyes were darkly earnest.

  This is no joke, Soutar’s no joker.

  Panicked, Curdy stuck a hand out defensively.

  Mrs Curdy only turned away from the plasma screen when she heard the gunshot. She saw her husband fall and blood pump through his Hawaiian shirt.

  Soutar shot her in the head.

  The bullet knocked her up and out of her lounger with such force her head broke the plasma screen and compressed gas blew across the room amidst a hail of shards. Her head was trapped in the shattered frame.

  Rock Hudson’s voice said, ‘I’m a sensitive, man.’

  Then the audio died.

  Mathieson, who had the razor-cut look of a young marine, entered the room.

  ‘Done,’ Soutar said.

  ‘OK. Let’s fuck off.’

  ‘She looks good in the telly.’

  ‘A star,’ Mathieson said.

  Both men left, closing the door behind them.

  On the way out of the house Mathieson said, ‘I better phone the man.’

  Reuben Chuck stood in the living room of his riverside penthouse apartment and spooned an organic mix of chopped bananas, muesli and goat’s yoghurt into his mouth. He gazed down at the Clyde where lamplight curdled on water. He felt calm, confident. When his phone rang he was in no hurry to pick up.

  When he did he heard Mathieson say, ‘Done, dusted.’

  Reuben Chuck put the phone down without saying anything. Dusted. Stardusted. The old order changes. There would be other phone calls in the course of the night. By morning he’d be calling all the shots and gathering all the booty.

  2

  ‘I left my heart at Woodstock,’ Betty McLatchie said.

  Lou Perlman wondered how she’d drifted to the subject of Woodstock. Maybe he’d absentmindedly missed a beat. She’d arrived, prompt at 10 a.m., with mop and bucket and assorted detergents, and he certainly hadn’t mentioned music or festivals. She was small, somewhere in her late forties, bright turquoise eyes, a smile that would crick a celibate’s neck. Perlman detected a lively shade of her younger self.

  She wore her yellow-grey hair piled up and held in place by clasps, an intricate arrangement. Her faded blue jeans, adorned with trippy little zodiac patches, were strapped to her hips by a thick belt with a fancy bronze buckle. Her clothes told the story: unrepentant hippy.

  ‘It was the time of my life, Lou. We were all so bloody young and free back t
hen. We kicked ass.’

  ‘I remember being young,’ Perlman said. And he did, through an old Glasgow fog.

  ‘I get so embarrassed when I think of the things I did,’ Betty said, and laughed at past follies. ‘I had a fling with Country Joe. And two of the Fish.’

  Perlman was intrigued by her candour. ‘I thought there were three Fish. One got away?’

  ‘I tried, mind. Oh, I tried.’

  ‘Did you see Bob Dylan?’

  ‘He didn’t appear at Woodstock. People always make that mistake.’

  Dylan, formerly Zimmerman. Perlman wondered if a name change would work wonders for him as well. Lou Perlman becomes Hamish McKay, say. A name denoting tweeds and sensible brogues and maybe a wee terrier dog. ‘About this house …’

  ‘It’s a pigsty, Lou. Don’t mind me saying. I’m just being truthful. Your Aunt Hilda told me to expect the worst.’

  Lou’s Aunt Hilda was known for exaggeration, but perhaps not in this case. ‘I live alone …’ As if that explained everything.

  ‘Where do I start? This’ll take weeks.’

  Perlman shrugged. ‘Anywhere you like, Betty.’

  He scanned the living room. Pigsty, well … He’d let the place go year after year, and apart from the occasional desultory attempt at dusting or knocking spider’s webs down, he’d done pretty much fuck all.

  Now Betty McLatchie was here to transform the place, at the behest of Perlman’s aunts on the Southside, who worried about his well-being. They were kindly women, his aunts, although their concern sometimes became meddlesome.

  He gazed at the collection of WWI medals he’d bought at a jumble sale because he felt sorry for the poor long-dead sod who’d gone through shite and shellfire to earn them; the big glass jars of predecimal coins, those huge brown pennies and tarnished florins he’d had since childhood; the vinyl albums long parted from their sleeves and the CDs that lay in silvery layers on the floor around the miniaturized sound system.

  He dreaded the idea of all this being disturbed – but it was time for change. Time – he had time in spades right now.

  Betty McLatchie said, ‘I’ll get started then.’ She produced a canister of air freshener and sprayed the room briskly. Off guard, Perlman tried to dodge the scented mist but felt a few drops of moisture fall against his face.