As we stood at the foot of the stairs, I said to the others, ‘Give me the machete. We’ll go up there and if you just hold him down, I’ll cut his two thumbs off.’ The reason I had decided to cut off his thumbs was that if you are without a thumb you can’t really do anything with the other four digits. It’s like cutting your toes off. That’s the way I had started thinking. There was no point in stabbing somebody when you could cut his Achilles tendon or take his toes off. Tam was normally the violent one, but along with Pawny even he was saying that was taking it too far. I was arguing that we’d just go up and cut his fingers off, but the others were still against this.
After about half an hour literally arguing at the back of this close, Tam says, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, we’ll go up the stairs. If the pair of them are full of it, full of fight and rowing, then we’ll do what you say. But if they are straight, cool and calm, we’ll just walk away and leave them, and put what he did down to a bad experience.’ We agreed on that and went upstairs. We walked through their door and found the place immaculate. They were sitting watching television, all lovey-dovey. I was still saying to myself, ‘Wait a minute, here. I can’t come all the way and not do anything,’ so in the end I tried to start an argument with the pair of them. At that they asked if I was just there to cause trouble.
By now, my brothers were getting restless, telling me it was time to go, so we left. The guy didn’t know how close he had come to losing his thumbs. If we had gone in there and the house had been a mess, or either of them had given us any excuse, then they were coming off.
This incident shows how I was already at a stage where I could totally put feelings to one side. Had I become callous? When I look back, I wonder how I ended up doing that. I believe it was a culmination of things building up over the previous two years, a deterioration in me from somebody who could differentiate between right and wrong, who had emotions and feelings. Why I had become so desensitised I neither knew nor cared. The fact is I was playing a new game with different rules. In other circumstances, it could have been me being threatened with having my thumbs chopped off. The margin between keeping and losing them could simply be a cuddle, as we had shown. Fortunately, the guy still had all his fingers. But it could have gone the other way.
While I had been in the army, I had done my best to stay in line and had avoided the temptation to experiment with drugs. Now in Civvy Street, I sampled Ecstasy and temazepams, and flirted briefly with cocaine, though I never ventured towards heroin. During leaves, I had been anxious to avoid trouble. Now, with the uniform and shackles off, I was being increasingly drawn into the gangland world of my brothers. My attitude towards violence was changing dramatically; the machete incident was just one example.
While I was anxious to build the family strength by cementing good relationships with, for instance, my old friends the McGoverns, sometimes my efforts seemed to take a backward step because of others. Lobban, a known affiliate of ours, was clouding our good name by becoming known as someone who could not be trusted and we needed to distance ourselves from him. Tam’s bravery, and his penchant for violence, caused problems, too. Thankfully, it was his sheer reputation that often scared away potential retaliation.
Something would simply come into his head and he’d disappear. One night we were in the Tower Bar and I came back from the toilet to discover he had gone. I asked the barmaid where he was and she just pointed to the door and said, ‘He’s disappeared.’
I ran outside, saw a taxi and assumed it was him inside. I opened the door and leapt in as it was pulling away. Tam was there. ‘Where are you going, Tam?’ I asked. He said nothing and the taxi drove straight to the Talisman. It was a Friday night, full house. Tam opened the door and at the bar were about a dozen of the McIntyres and their crew. He walked right into the middle of them and said, ‘I’m not here for any of you tonight. I’ll leave you. But I’m here for him.’ Everyone knew who he was referring to even before he pointed.
The individual, who I’ll call ‘Peter Coward’, had instigated a dreadful attack some time earlier on my dad, by now a harmless and helpless alcoholic who sought and caused no trouble to anyone. As the old man was leaving the Talisman one night, he was set upon by a gang who were little more than animals and had given him a terrible beating. Now we could see that although Coward had cronies around to protect him, the expression on his face showed he was nevertheless afraid. Neither he nor his pack knew I was unarmed, or that Tam had only a single knife. I was asking myself how this was going to go down. The opposition probably had the same thought. It kicked off with a few punches being thrown, but that was as far as it went and we left with them cowering in a corner, Coward’s mates protesting they didn’t want trouble. The truth is that Coward and his crew were too scared to move, thinking that Pawny and a team of our friends were waiting outside for anyone venturing through the door. They also knew they had to be careful. The Talisman was one of our regular haunts; we were often in there and they could easily be picked off.
As the days passed, they became increasingly worried about us, wondering what we were planning. Adding to their paranoia was the fact that each day we would sit at the Springbank Cottage bar in Garscube Road with our friends Robert Taylor and Drew Elliott. Sometimes Frank McPhie, known as ‘the Iceman’, would appear. Maybe Coward and his pals had the idea we were watching for them.
Tam was determined he would have his revenge on Coward. One night he had sat for six hours in Springburn Park watching and waiting. When he had spotted his quarry, he had slashed him severely in retribution for the savage attack on Dad. Coward had to be taken to hospital. Others had also been eager to leave a mark of their own disgust on him and had set off to visit him only to find him guarded by police. It would not be the last chapter in that story.
* * *
While I had been a serving soldier, I had little understanding of the extent of the violence facing my family. My brothers made little play of the risks they took or fights in which they became involved. Now, seeing the ongoing war against the other crews in Springburn brought home to me the level of hatred and viciousness.
I became increasingly conscious of curiosity in my army background and knew my skill with guns was attracting interest. When you look back, you see things differently. I only realised much later that I had had an intimidating effect without actually doing anything. I was always just into having a drink and a good time, being nice to people who would say, ‘He’s a good guy,’ but that would be in circles not involved in the bother. Once I was among those who were part of the trouble, there was a very different slant to my presence. ‘Need to watch him. He’s very deep, always thinking, always looking at things and analysing them.’ That was more the impression I seemed to make. In fact, I wasn’t conscious of doing any of that. I was simply out to enjoy myself.
* * *
Was his full-time presence creating too much interest in the brothers’ activities? Pawny had been advocating for some time the need for a hideaway where the family would meet without fear of rivals knowing. He did not want to rent, so suggested the brothers buy a suitable house. Alex’s commendable army record made him the logical choice to apply for a mortgage, with Pawny guaranteeing the deposit and monthly payments. It was left to Alex to choose and he settled on a house in North Carbrain, Cumbernauld, but it was a choice he would come to regret. The brothers had unwittingly moved into the Cumbernauld equivalent of Springburn or Posso, and it had more than its share of wild teenagers and hoods. Plus, the house ended up being a bolt hole out of the way for all sorts of people on the run from the police.
Buying the house would turn out to be a bad move, life threatening, and one the brothers came to regret.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Lobban was known as ‘Mr Benn’ after the animated television series about a businessman who each day changes his outfit and becomes another character. Gibby had always been looked on as something of a mystery, his loyalties forever in doubt. Many thought of him as a c
obra, capable of shooting poison into anyone around him regardless of whether they were friend or foe. For now, he wore the same colours as the Shannons, but for how long would that continue? As the months passed, it would be those who had been his friends who would be the victims of his treachery.
Meanwhile the skirmishes with the McIntyre team and their backers were an increasing irritant to the Shannons, who were by now fed up running about trying first to find their targets and then to shoot or stab them. One day, the snake Lobban came up with a solution. ‘Let’s go straight for the top. Cut the head of the viper off, two vipers, and then we’ll be able to do our own thing.’
He convinced the Shannons it was the best way to go. He sounded almost like an army strategist as he expounded on his theory. ‘There’s no point in aiming for the foot soldiers because there will always be somebody willing to take their place. Just go straight for the top.’ Alex agreed: take out the main man and it would be problem solved. It was time to rid themselves of the cause of this cancer that was eating at the family heart.
Two people were to be murdered in different parts of the city. One was said to be a leader in the McIntyre camp who lived in the north end, the other a businessman who had offered support to this group. It would be a daring, audacious strike guaranteed to leave the whole of Glasgow gangland quaking. To take out two of the highest-profile figures in the underworld in a single swoop, much as the Corleone family did in The Godfather, would give undisputed control to those responsible. No one would offer a challenge, knowing it would leave them vulnerable to similar treatment. The assassins would be Alex and Lobban. Alex had reservations, though, about whether the man he was to kill was sufficiently high profile. His chosen target would have been someone else in the same crew.
The movements of the targets had been carefully watched, the plot to kill them worked out in detail. The hits would be made on a Sunday night when it was known both were in the habit of sitting in their respective homes watching television with their families. Neither had any cause to suspect they were going to be attacked and for that reason would almost certainly answer in person when someone knocked on their door. Alex would provide the handguns and Pawny act as driver. Everything was set, times and distances calculated to the last detail. The shootings would be simultaneous, leaving no chance for the families of one victim to telephone a warning to the other.
Alex had one major obstacle to overcome. Leaving the house late on a Sunday evening would leave naturally curious Angie to wonder where he was going. He could, of course, simply tell a lie by saying he was off for a few drinks with family or friends, but the relationship with his wife, by now into its sixth year, had been built on honesty. The couple believed in one another and in what they said. If something went wrong and Angie discovered the reason for his absence, how would she react? On the other hand, he could not tell her the truth. To have done so would have made her complicit in the heinous crimes he and Lobban were about to commit. So he devised a compromise.
He decided to tell her nothing. He would slip her a Mickey Finn, drug her, leave, murder, return and wait for her to wake up as though she had simply nodded off. She would have no reason to believe her husband had not been by her side throughout. And so, on the chosen night, the children had been put to bed and were asleep as he rested on the comfortable settee, his arm around Angie’s shoulder. As the time to leave drew near, he offered to make tea and spiked the drink with around eight temazepams. Angie’s head slowly drooped and she quietly went off to sleep.
Why did he choose such a course? Was it selfish, to make sure he had a cast-iron alibi by leading her to believe he had been with her all the time? Or was it because he didn’t want her to be involved in any way? This way if she was ever questioned by the police it would be impossible for her to lie. All she would be able to say was she had been sleeping.
It was dark as he made his way to the banks of the Kelvin river. He used his knowledge of the Winthrop Theory to find, in the pitch black, where the pipe hides were located. The drugs and money had long gone to their intended destinations. He removed the pistols and replaced the pipes. That done, he walked to a phone box in Maryhill from which he telephoned Pawny to tell him everything was set. ‘Right, hang on there. I’m on my way,’ he was told.
It was around eight o’clock. Alex stood near the phone box and waited, and waited. Pawny should have been with him in only a few minutes. They had no mobile telephones then, so he rang Pawny’s home only to be told he had left some time earlier.
Again, he waited, a bag under his arm holding the weapons. Curious police patrols passed by, scrutinising him but not stopping to question or search. At eleven, having stood in vain for three hours, he gave up, reburied the weapons and went home. Angie was still asleep on the settee. He sat down beside her, wondering what had happened to his brother, and within five minutes she woke up. He believed fate had warned him to give up waiting and get home when he did.
Next day, he telephoned Pawny. ‘What happened?’ Alex asked.
‘Fucking car broke down. Couldn’t get it going and no way of getting a message to you. No phone near.’
In a way, Alex was glad the murder plot had failed. He had seen his target but hadn’t spoken to him. He found it difficult to believe that he was going to knock at the man’s door and, when he answered, put a bullet in his head. What he found most surprising was that he didn’t have a care in the world about doing it. Once he’d carried out the murder, that would be the end of it. He had set out to kill a man who had never harmed him or his family for the sole reason that he happened to be in the opposing team.
There was a parallel in what he’d planned to do in the anonymous killings committed by the terrorists in Northern Ireland whom he’d not so long ago monitored. They too murdered men simply for being on the wrong side.
He debated with himself when to admit to Angie what he had done that night. Months later, when he was back in uniform, he told her the whole story. She listened and said nothing, but her anger was apparent. To this day, she has never forgiven him.
The plot to wipe out two of the leading lights behind the Springburn crew might have been aborted, but the desire of the Shannons and their friends to remove the opposition continued to escalate.
Meanwhile, Alex found himself in demand.
* * *
In this, the first half of 1991, the storm was leading to the hurricane. It was a time for taking sides and taking stock. Arthur Thompson, deprived of the services of Paul Ferris and Tam Bagan, was looking forward to the release from prison of Arty. The heir to the Thompson throne had been promised weekend leaves from open prison, but his threats and clumsy efforts at retribution on those he saw as enemies, mostly made on the back of his father’s name, had left him more despised than he realised.
A short distance across the city Tam McGraw was building up strength in the Caravel pub, planning a coup that would make him and others millionaires. The idea was to smuggle huge amounts of Moroccan hashish from Spain in coaches by offering free holidays to young people and deprived Glasgow families. McGraw was already wealthy, and there were some who were envious of his riches and upset at being left out of the hash bonanza.
Paul Ferris, having split with the Godfather, had been briefly linked with McGraw, the Licensee. Now, since his departure from the Ponderosa, he discovered that he was increasingly a target for the police.
These three – Thompson, McGraw and Ferris – went about with £50,000 contracts on their heads. Was each trying to rub the other out? Were others further afield, in London and Merseyside, behind the bounties? Money by the bucketful was on offer, but only to the right man. Finding him was the problem.
At about this time word was quietly spreading that on the streets was an ex-soldier belonging to a tough north end family who was versed in gangland ways. Embroiled in a vicious gang war, he was highly skilled in weapons. Alex Shannon knew that he could become a rich man just by pulling a trigger. The offers were coming left, right and c
entre. He wasn’t interested. But still they kept coming.
In fact, he was already mulling over a change in his career – but not to become a hit man. He was contemplating a return to the army. Angie had given him an ultimatum: soldier or separate. She was increasingly disturbed by the mystery surrounding so many of his actions and by his links to Lobban.
The Shannons had also suffered a blow in their fight against the McIntyre brigade, with the loss of their good friend Blink McDonald. Along with five other Glaswegians – Thomas Carrigan, Robert Harper, Michael Carroll and brothers Mick and James Healy – he had gone down to Devon to rob a bank in Torquay of £6 million. Mick Healy was on the run at the time from Shotts prison, where he had been serving ten years for robbery before fleeing in a butcher’s van. The bank raid was wracked by bad luck and ultimately failed. Blink escaped back to Glasgow but was arrested when armed police burst into a Chinese restaurant where he and Sheila were dining. The angry restaurateur was left furiously waving his unpaid bill. Blink had a gun but was never able to use it. The men endured a wait of two years and a series of aborted trials to hear their long sentences.
During that time, there were many other developments in Glasgow and when the name Lobban was mentioned to Mick Healy, he had a frightening story to tell of betrayal.
Healy had been at home when he suddenly found himself looking into a pistol held by Ferris, who had been let into his home by Lobban. Ferris had been hearing tales that Healy had called him a grass, a hated police informer. Those tales came from Lobban. Ferris blasted a bullet into Healy’s music player, then demanded to know whether the stories were true. Healy denied the accusation and Ferris left, but the incident had left both men angry and wondering about Lobban. Healy, in particular, would not forget Gibby’s role.
The Underworld Captain: From Gangland Goodfella To Army Officer Page 17