Killing With Confidence Read Free

air about her that separated her from the
riff-raff.
    As Selina allowed her
mind to wander, her illicit lover reached his climax. The voyeur in
a nearby car with darkened rear windows was busy pleasuring himself
as he watched their tryst in the remote car park at the edge of
Strathclyde Country Park. You couldn’t actually see the act itself,
but it was clear what was going on with that blonde mane of hair in
motion and the man’s face contorted with pleasure.
    Shortly afterwards,
Selina’s lover left her after a long, lingering farewell kiss. The
tall blonde stepped out of his car and waved goodbye as the Aston
Martin sped off. The voyeur unlocked his door and wondered to
himself if this attractive-looking blonde fancied some
seconds …
     

4
    All Shook Up
    The Daily Herald was situated on Albion Street at the north end
of Glasgow city centre. At one time there had been four newspapers
in the vicinity. Warehouses and factories had made way for tapas
bars and fine dining restaurants, making the once thriving
journalists’ haunt, the Press Bar, look distinctly
tawdry.
    April felt a bit like
the pub – she was the product of a bygone era. Now she’d
learned she was to be teamed up with some young buck from the news
desk. She had seen him around, but they’d never really spoken.
She’d never wanted to. He was so sure of himself, strutting about
like he owned the place. Strange, him being dumped with her. She’d
thought he was one of the paper’s high-fliers. A favoured one.
Maybe he was being sent over to spy on her, to confirm what her
bosses already believed, that she was past it. Great, another snake
in the grass. She just knew they wouldn’t get on.
    The ‘snake in the
grass’ had been christened Connor Presley but would spend his life
being called Elvis. It had followed him all the way from school
through the doors of his local newspaper where he’d started as a
teenage apprentice. Even his own mother called him Elvis. His
attempts to label himself with a cooler variation – The
King – had been in vain. However, one advantage of being
nicknamed after the king of rock’n’roll was the kudos it gave
Connor within Scotland’s substantial crime community – an
invaluable commodity as chief crime reporter on Scotland’s largest
newspaper. Anyone who’s anyone in the crime world has a cool
nickname. Adam ‘The Axeman’ Alexander. ‘Two Shooters’ Sheridan. Or
one of his personal favourites, Barry ‘The Butcher’ Butcher, given
to him without the slightest hint of irony by Glasgow’s Godfather,
who out of a mixture of fear, loathing and respect was simply
called Mr Ferguson.
    The other advantage
of being called Elvis was that all of the underworld were as
passionate about the King as they were about making money. The
American Mafia could keep their Sinatra, as far as Scottish
criminals were concerned. In fact, it was rumoured people had been
killed in Glasgow just for trying to compare the two.
    In Barry ‘The
Butcher’ Butcher’s council house, pride of place over his
mantelpiece, was a bronze portrait of the King from his chubby Las
Vegas era. After suffering decades of accumulated nicotine layers
left by Barry’s chain-smoking ninety-year-old mum Jessie, you could
just about make out the words ‘Gone – but not forgotten’
inscribed below the King’s bloated neck. With Barry’s infamous
temper, visitors were well advised to enthusiastically appraise his
favourite piece of Elvis ‘art’ – preserved for eternity by the
tar from a million of Jessie’s Benson & Hedges. Connor always
made sure to remark, ‘That picture’s fucking magic, Barry,’ each
and every time he visited.
    This was Connor’s
calling in life. Sure, he had to deal with scumbags, but it was a
fact of life that their stories sold newspapers. Connor called it
‘West of Scotland showbiz’ for a country that lacked truly big
showbiz stars – Sean Connery, Ewan McGregor, James McAvoy and
Billy Connolly the