Nobody talked much about Billy Hutchison from the back of my cab. Glasgow went on being Glasgow. City centre. West end. South side. Rat runs. Drunks. Businessmen. Drunk businessmen. Airport dashes. Rain shine and rain. East end. North side. Big tips, no tips.
Pollokshields. Carntyne. Barmulloch. Ibrox. Parkhead. Carling Academy. Queen Street Station. More drunks. Traffic jams.
So much city. Maybe it was no surprise that no one seemed to notice a single soul slipping from it. Single because no one connected Billy the bookie to Jonathan Carr. No one talked about the double killing that nobody knew about. No one talked about the double killer that walked unknown among them.
To the people in the back of my taxi I was just mate or driver. I was just a pair of eyes in the rear-view mirror.
To me, they were just yawning, jabbering, disconnected mouths. I listened for mention of Billy but there was none. But for a single day when Radio Clyde news carried a fifteen-second report as part of their twice-hourly news bulletin, there was nothing. Even that day it disappeared when some ned got himself stabbed in Possil and the sports news was extended because a Rangers defender had a knee injury.
Billy had come and gone in a flash and people either didn’t notice or didn’t give a fuck. That wasn’t what was bothering me though. I didn’t give a fuck about Billy either. I didn’t care that they weren’t talking about him but I did want them to talk about me. Or rather, about the man that dispatched Carr and Hutchison. The man that cut off the little fingers of their right hand and posted them to the police. I wanted them to talk about that man.
But Glasgow just went on being Glasgow.
Gallus. That was the word that summed up the city best. A Glasgow word. It meant bold and cool, it meant great, it meant cheeky and brash, it meant fearless and cocky. It meant self-confident and stylish. It meant all that and more. Hard to explain if you hadn’t used it since you were old enough to talk. Glasgow was certainly gallus though.
Time was I revelled in that gallusness. I was part of it. As gallus as the next guy. But that was before, before it was all taken away. Now I was on the outside looking in through a rear-view mirror as Glasgow spilled in and out of my taxi on their way to or from a drink or an airport.
Busy the night, driver?
Sometimes I just looked at them through that mirror. Held their gaze and let them try to guess. Do you know who I am, what happened to me, what I have done? Do you know what I am going to do? They never did. They never even came close.
Instead they bleated about the weather. Moaned about rain as if it was important. A little rain never killed anybody.
Football, money, traffic, football, rain and football. What I had done hadn’t dented the consciousness of this place, hadn’t touched the sides. That would change, I knew that. I needed to be patient.
Sometimes though, when they moaned on and on about such trivial nonsense, about nothing at all, I wanted to slap them, to tell them what real troubles were. To let them know what real suffering was. Mostly though I just wanted them to shut the fuck up. I needed to let them drift in and out through the taxi, blissful in their stupidity and their ignorance. The eyes were supposed to be the window to the soul but they saw nothing in mine. They looked but they did not see. All the time I was thinking, planning, waiting, wondering. Inside it was all there but they just couldn’t see it.
The SECC. Central Station. Wee wifies with bags of messages. Hyndland. Pick-ups at the ranks. Flagged down in the street. Mount Florida. Early starts. Late finishes.
Garthamlock. Celtic Park. Kids to school. No smoking. No drinking. No eating. No throwing up. Cathcart. Johnstone.
I drove them. Drove by them. Drove through them. Picked them up and laid them down. I took their money. Gave them their change. I was right there and they did not see me. They did not know that I existed.
Suited me fine. For now.
I’d drop the flag and set the meter going, ferrying the sleepers and the talkers, the happy and the sad to wherever it was they wanted to go. Sometimes of course I’d get duffed for the hire and some chancer would do a runner into the night leaving me out of pocket.
I’d been sixth on the rank at Central on a slow Wednesday evening, one of those long waits that can happen when you time it wrong in between trains. Sitting watching the to and fro, flicking the wipers on and off to keep the windscreen clear, moving forward every few minutes till all at once a train has come in and there is a queue desperate to get moving.
When I got to the front, a hard-looking sort in a black leather jacket and a bag slung over his shoulder was the next in line. Wouldn’t have been my choice but it wasn’t mine to make. He got in the back, gave me an address in Barrhead then got on his mobile to tell someone that his train was in and that he was in a taxi, would be there in twenty.
You get a feeling for people. Even when you couldn’t care less about 99 per cent of them, even when they only existed on the very edge of your world, sometimes they set off alarm bells. This guy stank of trouble.
I caught him in the rear-view. He had finished his call and was staring out of the window. Scar just in front of his ear that ran onto his jaw line. Eyes set hard. Permanent scowl on his lips. Don’t know if he sensed me looking but he turned and stared at the mirror. My eyes switched back to the road.
I turned the cab onto Waterloo Street and made for the motorway. Ten miles to deepest Barrhead, past the airport and off. Silence all the way. Quiet the night, driver. Through the lights on Main Street, first right at the roundabout then deep into the warren of crescents. He was on the phone again. Nearly there. One minute.
Next left and into a narrow street with three-storey flats either side. Snipers alley.
‘Stop there on the left,’ he said.
I stopped.
‘You’re no getting paid for this so fuck off.’
I held his eyes in the mirror but he stared me down, daring me to argue. He didn’t take his eyes from mine as he pointed up to the left. I followed his arm and saw two figures on the balcony, one holding what looked like a rifle.
The door was locked and would stay that way till I unlocked it. I could have driven off with him in the back seat but that didn’t seem a great idea. I didn’t know what was in that bag that had been over his shoulder. Anyway, he’d read my mind.
‘You’ll no reach the end of the street. Like I said you’re getting fuck all money. Now piss off.’
I released the lock, the red light disappeared and he opened the door. It slammed shut and I watched the back of the black leather jacket as its wearer slipped into the close without once looking back.
I was raging and out of pocket but something deep inside my dead soul found it funny. A runner had just taken me for a mug and I’d let him. The hard man had decided he’d get a free ride home and that I could do nothing about it. He thought I was nothing and maybe he was right. He thought I was no one. A nobody.
I laughed quietly to myself as I put the taxi back into gear and drove slowly out of that street in search of the motorway. I wasn’t a nobody. I was somebody that they hadn’t heard of yet.
I’d killed. Carr and Hutchison. More would follow. I was going to be known. And yet here was some gallus bastard with the bare-faced cheek to leave me without a fare. I laughed.
It happened. Door lock was supposed to stop it but you weren’t always ready. Money is coming out of the pocket, handle is released and before you know it they are out the suicide door and off into traffic with your money in their hand. Comes with the territory. But there is no way they’d have had the nerve to try it if they knew what I was capable of. There wouldn’t even be a bare hire if they knew that. There’d be a tip every time.