The Long Glasgow Kiss

‘I’m improving my word power …’ Twinkletoes beamed. I imagined how much more interesting his expanded vocabulary would make the experience of having your toes lopped off with bolt cutters – Twinkletoes’ speciality as a torturer and the origin of his nickname. Or ehh-pee-thett as he would probably call it.

‘An expressive vocabulary is a true treasure,’ I smiled.

‘You’re not fucking wrong there, Mr Lennox.’

‘Mr Sneddon wants to see me now?’ I asked. I unlocked my car. ‘I’ll follow you.’

Twinkletoes stopped smiling. He swung the back door of the Sheerline open. ‘We’ll bring you back to your car. Afterwards. If that isn’ae in-con-veen-ee-ent.’

‘Okay,’ I said, as if he was doing me a favour. But the thought did run through my head that I might return unable to count to twenty on my fingers and toes.

Twinkletoes McBride may have been sadistic and psychopathically violent to order, but at least he was a friendly sort of cuss. The same couldn’t have been said of the driver of the Humber, a thin, meagre and nasty-looking thug with bad skin and an over-oiled Teddy Boy cut. I’d seen him before, lurking menacingly in the presence of Willie Sneddon. To give him due credit, lurking menacingly was something he did extremely well and it made up for his lack of conversational skills.

We drove out of the city, west, passing through Clydebank and out along the road to Dumbarton. The only car on the road. The ugly tenements eventually gave way to open country and I began to feel uneasy. A free taxi ride from Twinkletoes McBride in itself was enough to make you wary, but knowing who had summoned your presence was enough to start the lower parts of your digestive anatomy twitching. Twinkletoes was one of Willie Sneddon’s henchmen. Willie Sneddon was the King of the Southside – one of the so-called Three Kings who ran almost all the crime worth running in Glasgow. Willie Sneddon was bad news of the worst kind.

When we turned off the road and headed up a narrow farm track, I started to think that the news was about to get worse. I even found myself casting an eye over the car door handle, reflecting that at this speed jumping from the car wouldn’t be a break-neck job. Getting caught by Twinkle and his taciturn chum, though, probably would be. Willie Sneddon was the kind of social host to become piqued if you declined his invitations: once I’d started running, if I wanted to hang on to my teeth, toes and maybe even my life, I’d have to keep running until I was back in Canada. We jolted over a pothole. I calmed down. It made no sense that Sneddon had anything unpleasant planned for me other than his company, which, in itself, would fill my unpleasantness quota for the month. I had done nothing to offend Sneddon or either of the other two Kings. The truth was, I had tried to avoid doing work for them as much as I could over the last year.

I decided to sit tight and take my chances.

The farm track ended, as you would expect, at a farm. The farmhouse was a large Victorian granite job, suggesting a gentlemanly sort of turf-turner. Beside the house was a huge stone barn that I guessed was not being used for its original purpose, unless it was home to an equally gentlemanly breed of cattle: the two small windows in its vast flank were draped in heavy velvet that glowed ember-red in the night and yellow electric light shone from under the heavy wooden barn door.

Twinkletoes and Happy Harry the driver conducted me from the car to the barn. I could hear voices coming from inside. A lot of voices. Laughter, shouting and cheering. Twinkle pressed an electric bell push and a peephole slid open as we were checked out by whoever was on the other side.

‘I’ve never been to a milk bar speakeasy before,’ I said cheerfully to my less-than-cheerful driver. ‘Does Sneddon have an illicit buttermilk still in here?’

He replied by lurking menacingly at my side. Twinkle pressed the bell push again.

‘Maybes we shou’ try da udder door,’ I said in my mock-New York gangster voice and smiled. It only served to confuse Twinkletoes and deepen the menace of his companion’s lurk.

I had half expected the doorbell to be answered by a heifer in a dinner suit. As it turned out, I wasn’t far wrong: a bull-necked thug swung open the door. Stepping across the threshold was like diving into a pool; we were immersed in a humid fug of cigarette smoke, whisky fumes and sweat. And the faint copper smell of blood. A simultaneous wave of noise and odour-heavy warmth washed over us: men shouting in anger-edged eagerness, the odd female voice shrill and penetrating. The barn wasn’t exactly full of people, but they were elbow-jostle crowded in a circle around a raised platform upon which two heavily muscled men were beating the bejesus out of each other. Both were stripped to the waist, but they wore ordinary trousers and shoes rather than boxing gear. And no gloves.