Lennox

CHAPTER TWELVE

I remember seeing, before the war, a circus film in which a lion-tamer placed his head in the mouth of a lion. I recall thinking it was a pretty stupid way to make a living. Now it was my turn. There was one last King left in the pack.

Hammer Murphy.

A name like Murphy was a badge in Glasgow. It marked you out, made clear your background and allegiances. Your religion. To Glasgow’s Protestant majority, a name like Michael Murphy was the name of the enemy. A Fenian. A Mick. A Taig. Glasgow may have been the least anti-Semitic city in Europe, but it made up for it in the red-hot mutual hatred between Protestant and Catholic. It wasn’t really anything to do with religion, but with origin. The Protestants were indigenous Scots, the Catholics the descendant families of nineteenth-century Irish immigrants.

Hammer Murphy was no more than five foot seven but could never be described as a small man. He gave the impression of being as wide as he was tall. Packed with muscle. Packed with hate. The other two Kings tended to joke about Murphy’s lack of brains. He certainly was no scholar, but there was no underestimating Murphy’s vicious animal intelligence.

Everybody knew Hammer Murphy’s story. It was the stuff of legends. And knowing the story made you want to avoid knowing the man.

Murphy had learned at an early age that he had been born with the deck stacked against him. He realized that he didn’t have the intelligence to learn his way out of the cramped Maryhill tenement flat he shared with his parents, five brothers and two sisters. He also worked out that the British class system strictly rationed opportunity and that as a working-class Glasgow Catholic he didn’t even own a ration book. It had been obvious to the young Murphy that he would never enjoy the things in life that others had been gifted by birth outside the tenements. Unless he took them.

All of this had contributed to a dark, malevolent fury that burned deep within Murphy. To begin with, violence had been his way of venting that fury. Violence for its own sake: ‘Old Firm’ matches between Celtic and Rangers providing the fevered tribal atmosphere. Then he had sought to combine violence with a strategy for survival and success. Productive violence. In his five brothers he had a ready-made gang. The Murphy firm had never been imaginative. It had taken the obvious route: starting with a minor local protection racket, stealing cars, house-breaking. Then they moved into loan sharking. And into another gang’s patch.

It had all started as small stuff: a squabble between two insignificant wideboy gangs over a worthless patch of Glasgow turf. But a legend had been born. It was then that Murphy earned his nickname.

The other gang’s leader had been Paul Cochrane. The usual way these things were settled was through attrition. Repeated gang battles. Advances made racket by racket, shop by shop, bar by bar, bookie by bookie. But Murphy had suggested to Cochrane that they settle it between themselves. A ‘square-go’ in front of both gangs. Whoever won would be the leader of both. Cochrane didn’t ask what would happen to the loser.

It was expected that weapons would be used and Cochrane had had a set of home-made knuckledusters, a short but lethal spike projecting from its top. Murphy had used his fists, his feet, his forehead. Even his teeth. Cochrane’s kicks and punches had made no impact on Murphy’s battle-hardened face. When Cochrane had come at him with his weapon, Murphy had broken his arm. The fight had been swift, brutal and very one-sided. Cochrane had gestured his surrender with his unbroken arm.

The triumphant Murphy had then turned to the assembled gang members and told them they were now totally under his control. That now they were stronger. Better. Harder. He promised more money. More power. This was the beginning of something good for them all. Then, in a calm, measured tone, he told them that anyone who opposed him would get the exactly same as Cochrane was about to get.

It was a builder’s short-handled, barrel-headed lead mallet.

In front of forty witnesses, Michael Murphy committed murder. More than that, he made it a spectacle: an exposition of extreme, psychotic violence to shock men who dealt in violence every day. When he was finished, he made Cochrane’s former deputy scrape up what was left of the erstwhile gang boss’s head with a shovel. His point had been made.

Everybody got to know about it. Including the police.

Murphy had been arrested, naturally. He could easily have ended up being hanged. But he had already achieved the status of a legend. The fear that surrounded him bordered on the superstitious. Maybe some thought that if they bore witness against Hammer Murphy, his execution would be no barrier to his returning to exact revenge.

The police knew that he had killed Cochrane. They knew where, when and how. But they couldn’t put together a case against him. Murphy was released.

Two more bosses were to meet a literally sticky end courtesy of Murphy’s lead mallet. After that, his criminal organization spread like a stain across Glasgow’s West Side. It grew to such an extent that the only obstacles to total domination of Glasgow were Willie Sneddon and Jonny Cohen, the two most successful black marketeers in immediate post-war Glasgow.

Things soon got messy. The Second World War had just ended and there were a lot of guns in illegal circulation. The conflict between the three yet-uncrowned Kings had threatened to turn Glasgow into a new Chicago. At the beginning of ’forty-nine, Sneddon and Cohen combined forces and hit Murphy hard. Murphy’s bookies were turned over by Cohen’s armed robbers every second week. Top men in the Murphy organization were crippled or killed by Sneddon’s hardmen. In the meantime Murphy hit both the Cohen and Sneddon operations hard. After Murphy’s Jaguar exploded just as he was about to get into it, he called for a truce.

Jonny Cohen had then brokered the Three Kings Deal. In October nineteen forty-nine, over lunch in the elegant art deco surroundings of the Regent Oyster Bar in Glasgow’s business district, the three most violent and powerful criminals in Glasgow divided up the city and its most profitable criminal activities. It was the coronation of the Three Kings. The deal struck became a successful and stable arrangement and now, five years on, Glasgow’s criminal business was still conducted in comparative peace.

But Hammer Murphy continually strained at the bonds the deal put on him. Of the Three Kings, the bookies’ money was on Murphy to be the one to shatter the peace. Whenever a deal was done, Murphy worried that he had been swindled by the other two. He also envied the influence his rivals had with the police, a foothold he had failed to attain. And if one of his firm was arrested, Murphy suspected that Sneddon or Cohen had instigated it through the bent coppers on their payroll.

Murphy was volatile, unpredictable, suspicious to the point of paranoia and the chip on his shoulder was as precariously balanced as it could be. And now I was going to have to find out if he was holding back about Tam McGahern’s murder.

There was no way I could simply turn up on Hammer Murphy’s doorstep the way I had with Jonny Cohen, or even Willie Sneddon. Instead, I ’phoned him from my office. I only got to speak to one of his goons but left a message explaining in none-too-specific terms what I wanted to talk to him about. I was told to call back the next day for an answer.

But I got my answer within a couple of hours.

After I ’phoned Murphy, I called John Andrews at his office and gave my code name and fake company details again. He didn’t take my call. I explained to his secretary that it was urgent and she checked again, but again I got the brush-off. In a way I was glad to put off showing him the stills of his wife. Again I thought about how easy it would be to walk away from the whole sordid business.

God knows John Andrews was a difficult man to like, but it was as if I owed something to myself. To the Kennebecasis Kid. To prove that I could still do the right thing even after all the shit I’d been through. I had encountered another human being who I suspected, somehow and for whatever reason, was being exploited. Manipulated. It could be that I had it all wrong, but I knew that if I walked away, then I was walking away from whatever decency was left in me.

*

I had a habit of taking lunch in tea rooms that sat on the corner of Argyle Street. There was something about the tea rooms’ large picture windows, high vaulted ceiling and black marble that reminded me of a place in Saint John I used to go with my parents when I was a kid back in New Brunswick.

I was on my way there when they took me off the street: two big Micks with busted-up noses and dark business suits.

‘Mr Murphy has sent us. He wants to see you. Now. Get in the taxi.’ My escorts flanked me and indicated the black cab that pulled up to the kerb. I allowed myself to be guided into it. I tried not to think that this was trade-mark Murphy; that God knew how many people had been taken off the street in the same manner, probably, given their obvious accustomed expertise, by the same gentlemen. Except the others who had been spirited away had never been seen again.

They took me out to Baillieston. It sat even greyer and uglier than usual under a moody sky and the scrapyard we entered merged seamlessly with its landscape. There was a huddle of Nissen huts in one corner of the yard. Against this backdrop, the honed razor gleam of the parked silver-grey Bentley announced Hammer Murphy’s presence like a royal standard on a castle.

My escorts delivered me into the main hut and waited outside. Hammer Murphy sat behind the desk. Like the Bentley, there was the sheen of a sharpened razor about him: all grey mohair and freshly barbered and Brylcreemed. Since the last time I had seen him he had grown a pencil-thin moustache. The Ronald Colman look sat with his battered Irish spud face no better than the Tony haircut and mohair suit did.

It’s often difficult to imagine how some people can resort to the most extreme forms of brutality; to equate the inner violence with the outer appearance. That wasn’t the case with Hammer Murphy. He gave you the feeling that he was perpetually on the verge of smashing his fist into someone or something. There was an intense density to his build, almost as if fury was an energy that bound the atoms of his body tighter together.

I considered making a witticism about the new moustache, but decided I would rather survive the encounter.

‘Hello, Mr Murphy. You wanted to see me?’

Murphy looked at me with hate in his eyes. I knew not to take it personally. Hate was always there.

‘I heard you wanted to talk to me,’ he said. His thick Glasgow accent was still tinged with the Galway his parents had left. ‘But something’s come up. Something I need you to explain to me.’

‘If I can.’

‘You’re looking into Tam McGahern’s death. You’ve been throwing your weight around a bit, I hear.’

‘No more than I have had to.’

Murphy stood up. ‘Follow me.’

We went out into the yard and across to another of the Nissen huts. I noticed that I picked up my two-Mick escort again on the way. One of the heavies undid the padlock and we entered. This hut was used for storing engine parts and other smaller items salvaged from the scrap-yard. There was something bigger on the floor of the hut, wrapped in a stained oily blanket. The package was about the size of a human body. I felt my pulse pick up the pace. Whatever was wrapped up in that blanket, I didn’t want to see it. Everyone knew that Hammer Murphy was a life-taker, but no one, least of all me, wanted to be an indictable witness to the fact. That could cut short a promising career.

‘Listen, Mr Murphy…’

‘Shut the fuck up and look,’ said Murphy. One of the goons closed the door behind us. I shut the fuck up and looked. The other goon peeled back the blanket from the body’s face.

‘Fuck,’ I muttered.

‘You do this?’ Murphy asked.

‘Me? Fuck no. I thought you…’

Murphy looked at me blankly for a moment. ‘If we had done this and you was looking at it you would be lying next to him.’ I spent a moment considering my promising career while I looked down at the mortal remains of Tam McGahern’s erstwhile faithful retainer, Bobby. Someone had adjusted his DA hairstyle with a heavy object. His head was caved in on one side and a lot of what should have been inside was now outside his skull. I tried to dismiss the image of a five-pound barrel-head lead mallet from my mind. Hammer Murphy had no reason to lie to me.

‘Then who?’ I asked.

‘Well, you gave him a hiding. And one of his muckers two hidings.’

‘We had a disagreement. We fell out over who should succeed Mr Churchill. He said Rab Butler and I’m a Tony Eden man.’ The gag didn’t take so I moved quickly on. ‘Bobby and his chums didn’t tell me everything I needed to know about McGahern. Added to which they had a little party planned for me. I spoiled their surprise. Anyway, I also gave Bobby here a couple of quid. He was pathetic, in a way. A wanker playing at big shot.’

‘Could it have been that cunt Sneddon?’ Murphy said it as if it was a double-barrelled name. The Wilmington-Smythes and the Cunt-Sneddons.

‘No. Sneddon doesn’t even know about Bobby. If I had wanted Sneddon to get involved he would have sent Twinkletoes McBride to ease the flow of information. But that would have been about the extent of it. How did you come into possession of the body?’

‘Sneddon, Cohen and me are splitting up McGahern’s bars between us. Like always I got shafted. Sneddon got the Arabian Bar, the kyke got the Imperial and I get left with the fuckin’ Highlander.’

‘Good little earner, the Highlander. From what I saw,’ I said conversationally, as if we were discussing the comparative merits of models of car and there wasn’t the stink of stale blood and spilt brain matter from the Teddy Boy corpse on the floor.

‘Anyway,’ continued Murphy. ‘This piece of shite was lying upstairs from the bar.’

‘In the same flat that McGahern was killed in?’

Murphy nodded. ‘We didn’t want the polis finding out. So chummy here is going to the mincer.’

So it is true, I thought. Murphy owned a meat processing plant in Rutherglen, not far from where Tam McGahern had his garage. The rumour had always been that that was where Murphy disposed of any embarrassing reminders of business deals gone wrong. And not just his. He was supposed to have a profitable sideline in processing dead meat for Jonny Cohen and Willie Sneddon. I had become particular about where I bought my Scotch pies.

‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘He had nothing to give. He knew nothing. Why kill him?’

Murphy shrugged. ‘Wee shites like him get killed all the time. By other wee shites like him. You sure you know nothin’ about this?’

‘Nothing. I didn’t expect to see him again.’

‘You won’t now.’ Murphy nodded and the goon covered up Bobby’s face. ‘You wanted to talk to me about Tam McGahern’s killing. He had it coming. He had it coming from me. But I didn’t do it or order it. It’s like this…’ He jabbed Bobby through the blanket with the toe of his handmade oxblood. ‘All the usual suspects in the clear. There was one thing I wanted to tell you about McGahern. Something that only came up this week.’

‘Oh?’

‘I have a share in a travel agent. A silent partner, you could say.’

I’ll bet, I thought.

‘I’m not connected officially with the business,’ Murphy continued, ‘so McGahern wouldn’t have known I would find out.’

‘Find out what?’

‘Tam McGahern made three trips inside two months. To the same place. Amsterdam. Now what would a wee gobshite like McGahern be doing in fucking Holland?’

‘Tulip smuggling?’ I smiled. Then I stopped. Murphy’s expression suggested he was considering stopping me smiling permanently. ‘I don’t know. You any idea?’

‘None. But it’s new gen and I thought it might be useful to you.’ He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. ‘I’ve got the exact dates here. To and from Holland. No hotel bookings though.’

‘Thanks.’ I looked at the sheet and pocketed it. ‘I needed something new to go on.’

Murphy’s taxi took me back to Argyle Street. No goons. I sat in the back as it bumped its way back into the city centre and thought about what I had got. Why had McGahern made so many trips to Holland? It was only once I was in the taxi that I remembered what Bobby had said about McGahern meeting with a foreign type at the Central Hotel. Maybe the big fat guy had been a Dutchman. After the taxi dropped me off I walked back to my office and ’phoned Willie Sneddon. He groaned when I told him about Holland and asked if I needed more money to travel there.

‘I’ve got enough to keep me going for now,’ I said. ‘It could be nothing to do with him being killed. I’ll check things out this end before I start booking boat tickets.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Not at the moment.’ Sneddon was paying the bill, but I wasn’t going to tell him about Bobby’s new hair parting. There are some things that it’s better not to have seen. I considered telling him about what Wilma had said about it being Frankie that night above the Highlander, but still held back. ‘I’m not being funny, but you are more connected to the kind of business McGahern was involved in. What would Amsterdam mean to you from a business viewpoint?’

‘Dunno. Diamonds, I suppose. But McGahern wasn’t in that kind of league. Even I would need to get expert help if I got into that. Ask Cohen.’

I said I would and hung up. I tried to get John Andrews on the ’phone again but was given the same brush-off. I considered posting the photographs to him, but there was no guarantee his wife wouldn’t open the envelope. I thought about sending them marked ‘private and confidential’ to him at his office, but all it would take would be a careless or pushy secretary and there’d be all kinds of shit to contend with. Dirty pictures of your wife in a plain brown envelope don’t do much for your standing in the business community.

Let it go, Lennox.