The Long Glasgow Kiss

Sneddon didn’t answer for a moment, instead seeming to look around to reappraise his surroundings. ‘I’ve seen the way people look at me in here sometimes. Even when I’m walking my dog in the street where I fucking live. They look away. Avoid looking me in the fucking eye. They think people like me, Cohen and Murphy are the scum of the earth. We scare them. But I’ll tell you this, it’s them that scare me.’ He paused when the waiter returned to our crimson cave to replace our empty whisky glasses with full ones.

‘You should see the so-called ordinary man in the street when people like me serve them up with what they want,’ said Sneddon when the waiter was gone. ‘They’re the fucking monsters. I have an interest in a whorehouse in Pollokshields, not far from MacFarlane’s house. Discreet. One of the girls got beaten up so fucking bad we thought she’d die. Cost me a fortune getting her treatment without it being official. You should have seen the fucker that did it to her. A wee, bald, fat cunt that looked like he wouldn’t say boo to a goose. But when he was in there with the girl he turned into some kind of fucking monster.’

‘You turn him over to the police?’ The question was out and stupid before I thought it through.

‘Aye, right. That’s just what we done. What do you think we done? Twinkletoes sorted him out with some transport. A fucking wheelchair.’

‘What’s this got to do with your deal with MacFarlane?’

‘Like I said, you have no fucking idea what ordinary people want. The worse it is, the more they want you to dish it up to them. You’re not going to believe this, Lennox, but I read a lot. History, that sort of shite.’

I shrugged. It didn’t surprise me: since I first encountered Sneddon, I had sensed a hidden, dark intelligence about him. The Smart King.

‘I read a lot about ancient Rome. There was no difference between the Caesars and Rome and the Kings and Glasgow. They even had a triumvirate. Three Kings. You can learn a lot from history.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Personally I think there’s no future in it.’

Sneddon didn’t laugh – not at my joke and not ever that I could recall. ‘I’ve read a lot about the Colosseum. It used to be packed right to the top. Ordinary people turning out to watch blood and death. The fucking crueller the better. Do you know they used to make fucking children fight with swords, to the death? Or that the comedy turn was to put blind people into the ring? They’d slash and hack each other to bits, but it would take a fucking age for one or both to die because they couldn’t see each other. And the public fucking loved it.’ He paused to sip his whisky. Silver-suited and manicured, against the crimson of the booth he looked like a clubbable Satan. ‘Nothing’s changed,’ he continued. ‘We started to draw in big money from the bare-knuckle fights. The more brutal the fight the bigger the crowd the next week. So we started to put on special fights. At special prices. Only regulars were invited to buy a ticket.’

‘What made these fights special?’ I asked, though some horrible ideas had already flashed across the screen of my imagination.

‘They was no-holds-barred. No weapons, but apart from that everything was allowed – kicking, choking, gouging, biting. It started off small then just got bigger and bigger. The more blood, the bigger the crowds. And the higher the ticket price.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s have it … what happened?’

‘Someone got killed …’ Sneddon shrugged as if a human being’s death was an inconsequence. ‘A pikey. Something happened in his head and there was fucking blood everywhere, from his nose, his ears … even his fucking eyes …’

‘Let me guess … he ended up catching a train …’ I shook my head. It had been there in front of me all the time.

Sneddon made his usual crooked mouth shape to approximate a smile. ‘You’re a smart fucking cookie, aren’t you, Lennox. You make all of the connections. Yeah … he was the pikey that got mashed by the train. So no one’s the wiser.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ I put my glass down and leaned forward. ‘There’s a keen-as-mustard new pathologist on the job. Very keen on what they call forensic science. He worked out that your pikey fighter wasn’t some drunk caught on the rails. Even proved that he’d been in a fight before he died.’

‘So fucking what?’

‘So you’ve got a problem. Or another problem. The City of Glasgow Police are treating it as murder. Believe me, they’d much rather have chalked it up as an accident, but because of this sharp new pathologist they can’t.’

‘Fuck.’ Sneddon’s face hardened. Which was surprising, because there wasn’t much scope for further hardening. ‘I knew we should have minced the bastard. But I didn’t want Murphy knowing nothing about this.’