The Night the Rich Men Burned

by Malcolm Mackay

  CONTENTS

  CHARACTERS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  PART TWO

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  PART THREE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  PART FOUR

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  PART FIVE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  CHARACTERS

  Oliver Peterkinney – A young man ready to make his way in a world that seems determined to give him few options. He’s smart enough to make his own.

  Alex Glass – As unemployable as his best friend Oliver, but much more of a dreamer. There are chances out there for tough young men, he’s sure of it.

  Ella Fowler – They call her a party girl, but it’s all about work for Ella. Work a horrible job to pay for what will one day be a good life.

  Ronald ‘Potty’ Cruickshank – Certainly the biggest, and probably the most unpleasant debt collector in the business. People are money, and money is king.

  Arnold Peterkinney – Has looked after his grandson Oliver for a few years now, still worried about what direction the boy’s life might meander in.

  Billy Patterson – Ruthless, efficient and tough. Don’t let the rough exterior fool you though, he’s more than smart enough to grow his debt collection business in a crowded market.

  Marty Jones – Marty is a lot of things. Pimp and debt collector are two of them, and a lot of people find those things ugly. Marty makes money though, and everyone loves that.

  Alan Bavidge – There’s nobody Patterson trusts more than Bavidge. Tough, yeah, and seemingly without emotion, he does his job as well as anyone in the city.

  Jim Holmes – There are plenty of men like Jim. Big, brutal and inexplicably angry, he bounces from one employer to the next, wasting no time in making himself expendable.

  Norah Faulkner – It’s not easy building a life with a man like Jim Holmes, you have to make yourself at least as tough as he is. So she has.

  Gary ‘Jazzy’ Jefferson – Jazzy provides a public service, lending money to those who couldn’t otherwise borrow. Charge creative interest rates and sell the debt on when they can’t pay. Easy money.

  PC Paul Greig – A cop, and to many, a criminal. He’ll take money from criminals, slip them some info now and then, but it’s all in the name of crime management, you understand.

  Roy Bowles – Decades doing a steady trade in selling weapons to the criminal industry. A good, reliable, solid individual: who could be better to work for?

  Jamie Stamford – Alex MacArthur’s hard man of choice, therefore a man who doesn’t often have to face consequences. But then, you gamble like he does, and consequences will catch you up.

  Neil Fraser – A tough guy, sure, but not a smart guy. Doing a few menial jobs for John Young doesn’t make you important, he doesn’t seem to have realized that yet.

  Alex MacArthur – His organization has been running at the top for decades now, but that makes him old, and illness has left him weak. Even he can sense the change coming.

  Howard ‘Howie’ Lawson – A man with connections and no money, looking to get a little by selling guns to the suppliers who desire them most.

  Peter Jamieson – Runs one of the biggest organizations in the city, maybe the fastest-growing too. A lot of people, like Marty, are happy to be under his umbrella.

  Ray Buller – People think of them as old men, maybe a little feeble, but you don’t get to be Alex MacArthur’s second in command without being as sharp and dangerous as a razor.

  Ronald ‘Rolly’ Cruickshank – He created the Cruickshank family business, collecting bad debts from weak people, and trained his delightful, beloved nephew to replace him.

  Kevin Currie – Controls the counterfeit end of the Jamieson business, and controls it well. A man to be trusted, a man to listen to.

  Angus Lafferty – The drug business is a constant battlefield, and Lafferty is the man importing the goods for the Jamieson army.

  John Young – Peter Jamieson’s right-hand man, has been since the start. Very little gets past him, so you’d better stick to whatever rules he gives you. Not much to ask, is it?

  Don Park – He’s the brightest star in the MacArthur organization, which, coincidentally, makes him the biggest threat to MacArthur’s leadership.

  Mark Garvey – A gun seller, not as cautious as some, not as desperate as others. Always on the lookout for a good connection.

  Gordon Aird – Mr Typical, when it comes to a debt collector’s clients. A man who only knows the value of what goes into his arm and will pay for it any way he can.

  Conn Griffiths – Ranks among the best muscle in the city. Like all the best, he’s not just brutal, he’s smart too. That’s where the danger lies, and it’s why Patterson hired him.

  Mikey Summers – Got a reputation for brutality, and once he got it, the offers flooded in. Chooses to work alongside Conn for Patterson.

  John Kilbanne – He used to be a legitimate bookkeeper with ambitions. Might not be legitimate any more, but he’s still occasionally ambitious.

  Andy Leven – Businesses like Patterson’s are built on men like Leven, at the bottom of the ladder, doing the dirty work for him.

  Collette Duffy – She hasn’t quite switched on to the real world yet. When she does she might just realize borrowing money to pay your previous debt isn’t clever financial management.

  Liam Duffy – He has a good job working for Chris Argyle, and a sister he constantly needs to keep an eye on. It can be a hard life.

  Chris Argyle – Everyone’s known for years that Argyle has a growing business as an importer. Always been good at keeping himself off bigger people’s target lists.

  Willie Caldwell – He was Uncle Rolly’s moneyman for years, carried on working for Potty. Not much lately though, poor old sod hasn’t been well.

  Steven Wales – Potty’s full-time moneyman, charged with making sure dirty money comes out of the accounts smelling of roses, or any similarly fragrant cliché.

  Ewan Drummond – A pal of Oliver and Alex, a boy with the same problems and the same ambitions. Bigger than them, and maybe a little dumber. Not a great combination, really.

  Adam Jones – He’s Marty’s twin brother, and runs a club that Marty uses for some private parties. Whether Adam knows it or not, he’s in his brother’s shadow for keeps.

  Nate Colgan – In the conversation about hardest men in a hard city, Colgan often tops the list. A man who can scare the beasts out of nightmares.

  Russell Conrad – Like many gunmen, he’s a hard man to know, harder still to like. If he’s looking for you, you have a problem.

  Ian Allen – With his cousin Charlie, he runs an efficient drug business that makes an effort to stay out of the city itself. Why pick a big fight when you’re winning all the little ones?

 
Charlie Allen – Yes, he does get fed up of people calling him and Ian brothers, but who really cares? More than cousins, they’re a damned profitable business partnership.

  Donall ‘Spikey’ Tokely – Trying to elbow his way into the gun market, but he’s mostly selling to the young and inexperienced right now. People like himself.

  Robby Draper – He’ll sell you a gun if you want one, whoever you are. In desperate times, anyone who’ll buy is a good customer.

  Stephen ‘Gully’ Fitzgerald – An old-school hard man, taught the likes of Bavidge and Colgan a lot of lessons they’ve put into meaningful practice.

  PROLOGUE

  He ended up unconscious and broken on the floor of a warehouse, penniless and alone. He was two weeks in hospital, unemployable thereafter, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that, for a few weeks beforehand, he had money. Not just a little money, but enough to show off with, and that was the impression that stuck.

  It had been a while since they’d seen him. Months, probably. They were heading back from the jobcentre having made a typically fruitless effort at sniffing out employment. They went in, they searched the touchscreen computer near the door, and they left. Two friends, officially unemployed since the day they left school together a year before, both willing to do unofficial work if that was available. They bumped into Ewan Drummond as they walked back up towards Peterkinney’s grandfather’s flat.

  ‘All right lads,’ Drummond said, grinning at them, ‘need a lift anywhere?’ He was as big and gormless as ever, but the suggestion of transport was new.

  ‘Lift? From you?’ Glass asked.

  ‘Yeah, me. Got myself a motor these days. Got to have one in my line of work, you know.’ He said it to provoke questions that would allow him to trot out boastful answers.

  Glass and Peterkinney looked at each other before they looked at Drummond. There wasn’t a lot of work among their circle of friends. The kind of work that let a man like Drummond make enough money to buy a car was unheard of. They could guess what was involved in the work, but they wanted to hear it.

  ‘Yeah, we’ll take a lift,’ Peterkinney nodded.

  They followed Drummond back down to where his car was parked. Turned out to be a very respectable-looking saloon, not some old banger or boy racer’s toy.

  ‘Well, yeah, got to keep up appearances you see.’

  Glass dropped into the passenger seat, Peterkinney the back. They were in no hurry to get anywhere, but this was too intriguing to pass on.

  ‘Come on then big man,’ Glass said with a mischievous smile, ‘what’s this big job you got?’

  ‘Well, uh, I can’t really tell you much. Shouldn’t tell you much, I mean. Hush-hush, you know.’

  By this point Peterkinney was leaning over from the back seat, crowding Drummond, knowing he couldn’t keep quiet for long. Drummond’s mouth and brain had always been loosely acquainted, so things he shouldn’t say frequently slipped out.

  ‘I mean, I suppose I can tell you a bit, but you got to keep it quiet, right.’

  ‘Sure,’ they answered together.

  ‘I’m working for Potty Cruickshank. I’m one of his boys.’ He said it with such pride, such force, that they both assumed it meant something. Then they thought about it.

  ‘Who?’ Glass asked.

  ‘One of his boys? The hell does that mean?’ Peterkinney asked warily.

  ‘Nah, nothing like that. He’s, like, a debt collector. I go round and pick up money that people owe him. It’s all legit. Well, sort of, financial services, that sort of thing. Good money, real good money. You know how much I made last week alone?’

  ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ Peterkinney asked.

  ‘Not really, no. Well, now and again, but you got to be tough to make a living these days, guys, that’s how it is. How else you going to make good money?’ Said with wisdom he presumed but didn’t possess. ‘So come on, guess what I made last week.’ He was desperate to tell them by this point and unwilling to wait for a guess that might be accurate enough to take the wind out of his sails. ‘Six-fifty I made last week. Worked four days, couple of hours a day. Six-fifty. I’m telling you, it’s the life.’

  They didn’t say much more to Drummond; just let him rumble on about how much money he was making until he dropped them off. They walked up to the flat Peterkinney shared with his grandfather, a poky little place you would only invite a real friend back to. They went silently into Peterkinney’s small bedroom, a cramped room with nothing in the way of luxuries. There was only one subject of conversation.

  ‘Six-fifty a week he’s making. Him,’ Glass said. ‘He’s making ten times what we make on Job Seekers’.’

  ‘Come on, it ain’t six-fifty a week. It was six-fifty in one week, but that doesn’t mean he’ll get it every week. And look what he has to do for it. How long you think it’s going to be before someone kicks the living shit out of him? His teeth will be down his throat and his money will be up the wall.’

  Glass sighed. ‘All right, yeah, fine, but look at the money. He’s making good money. Even if it’s short-term, right, it’s still money. And he’s got to do some shitty stuff for it, but come on, you think we’re going to get a job that pays us that for non-shitty work?’

  ‘I don’t think we’re going to get a job at all,’ Peterkinney sighed, and slumped back on his bed.

  A sentence he was tired of uttering. Glass sat on the chair in the room and tilted his head back, thinking about Ewan Drummond. No smarter than either him or Peterkinney, probably less so. No tougher when push came to shove, although he was bigger than them, which helped. He was no better connected than they were, which was to say that he hadn’t been connected to the criminal industry at all as far as Glass knew. Must have gotten his foot in the door without realizing where he was stepping. All of which suggested that employment in the business, and six hundred and fifty quid a week, was within their grasp.

  Glass didn’t say any of this to Peterkinney because he knew what the reaction would be. Peterkinney would pour scorn on it; tell him he needed to get real. Peterkinney was all about getting whatever job he could, no daydreaming attached. That was fine by Glass; how his best friend had always been. A realist. They left school underqualified and stumbled together into a job market that had no room for them or interest in them. So they struggled along together, and were still struggling.

  Glass couldn’t stop thinking about it, and that was really the point. People like Ewan Drummond were useful both in the work they did and the people they encouraged. None too bright and loaded with cash. He was a walking billboard for employers like Potty Cruickshank. A debt collector like Potty had a high turnover of staff, so that positive PR was worth its weight. Glass saw Drummond and knew he was at least as capable. Six-fifty a week, four days a week, a couple of hours a day. Think about it. The money, the cars, the women, the parties. Him and Peterkinney, lounging around doing fuck-all, waiting for some godawful nine-to-five that would pay them buttons and last six months if they were lucky. No, what Drummond was doing, that was real work.

  It wouldn’t have mattered if Glass had known. Even if he’d seen Drummond lying on that warehouse floor two weeks later, it would have made no impact. He would have spent the previous two weeks thinking of nothing but the money Drummond was making, and working out how he and Peterkinney could do the same. Nothing, no matter how grim, was going to change his mind. That was the way to make good money. That was the best option.

  ‘I’ll ask the old man if he’s heard of anything going,’ Peterkinney said quietly. ‘We can go back down the job-centre again in a couple of days.’ His grandfather was going to have a word with a friend at a packaging factory on their behalf sometime today, although that would lead nowhere as usual. Their names on a list for future reference.

  ‘Yeah,’ Glass said. But he wasn’t thinking about the job-centre. Wasn’t thinking about any sort of work that was going to be advertised. He was thinking of the world Drummond now inhabited. He was thinki
ng of the money. He was thinking of the life.

  PART ONE

  1

  Start with a kick to the door. He got a crack out of it, and the plain door shuddered in the frame. Didn’t open though. Still staring back at them. Try again. Not a boot this time. Give it a shoulder. A short run-up and a collision with the door. A bigger crack and the door caves in, buckled on the hinges and smashed around the lock. Alex Glass stumbles in with it.

  ‘Shit.’ A mutter under his breath. Embarrassed by his ungainly entrance. Embarrassment pushed aside by an attempt at professionalism. He’s taking the lead here. Older by six months. His accomplice, Oliver Peterkinney, is still only nineteen. Anyway, this is Glass’s job. He set it up. He found the target.

  They’re searching downstairs, through the kitchen, through the living room. It’s a small house, which helps. Tidy as well, everything where it should be. No rubbish for someone to leap out from behind. Flicking lights on and off as they check each room. No attempt at subtlety, not after that entrance. To the bottom of the stairs. If he’s here, he’s heard them by now. He’s had time enough to get a weapon. They didn’t plan for that. What if he keeps a weapon by his bed? Something else to put on the long list of things they didn’t plan for.

  A light comes on at the top of the stairs. Glass and Peterkinney look at each other. Never been here before. Never been in this situation. If they had to make a split-second decision, they would be too late. A man has emerged at the top of the stairs. Older than these two by ten years. Fatter by three stone. Wearing nothing but his boxer shorts. That makes up their minds for them.

  They’re looking up the stairs, necks craned. Suddenly feeling confident. The amateurs just got lucky, as all amateurs need to in this business. Peterkinney moves up one step.

  ‘All right, Holmes,’ he’s saying. Because it is Jim Holmes, the target. He doesn’t need clothes to look like his picture. Big and broad, with a thick head of dark hair and a dimpled chin. ‘We can sort this out nice and quiet. No need for trouble.’ Peterkinney’s smart enough to know how dumb that sounds. You smash your way into a guy’s house and tell him there’s no need for trouble. This isn’t how Peterkinney would have played it.