Vendetta: Turning Your Back on Crime Can be Deadly by Ferris Paul

Author:Ferris, Paul [Ferris, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Perseus Books Group
Published: 2005-10-13T22:00:00+00:00

43

DEAD MAN WALKING

March 2003

‘What you looking at, you cunt?’ Billy McPhee staggered more than stood in the middle of the bar at Shettleston Juniors’ Club, waving a knife in the air. As per usual, he’d been running amok. Elsewhere that night, he’d chibbed two young guys for no greater sin than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. McPhee wasn’t finished for the night. ‘Ye’re aw fucking shitebags,’ he roared, glowering at the bowed, terrified heads around him. ‘Fucking waste of time.’

McPhee slipped the long-bladed knife into the back of his waist-band making sure the handle didn’t get caught in the bulletproof vest he was never without. Standing at the bar, he lifted his pint and continued gabbing to his cousin, Crater Face McCormack. He didn’t notice the door swing open at speed.

‘McPHEE!’ someone shouted.

‘Who the fuck wants to know?’ asked McPhee, turning from the bar in the direction of the voice.

‘This is for you, you bastard.’ The man lifted his pistol and shot Billy McPhee in the face at point blank range.

Chaos broke out in the pub, with customers diving under tables, running for the toilets, heading to the fire doors. They thought they were all going to die but the gunman took to his heels and fled the building. It was only McPhee he was after. Billy McPhee lay on his back, blood flowing from his mouth and a hole in the side of his face. Surely he was a goner? Then someone leaned over him to check his state and heard a gurgling and the sound of breathing. He was alive.

The hit on Billy McPhee would have worked if the gun had been of any half decent calibre but it was a gas gun nicknamed The Rat Catcher for obvious reasons. Powerful enough to kill small, furry rodents, it was just too weak to take out the larger variety. To make matters worse, the bullet hit McPhee in the mouth slightly off centre. Instead of smashing through the back of his mouth and into the soft tissue of his brain, it crumpled some teeth and ripped off a section of his throat. He’d live but he’d never be much of singer again.

It was December 2002, Gordon Ross had been dead just a couple of months and now The Licensee’s brand-new lieutenant almost copped his lot. Me? I didn’t care and wouldn’t have shed a tear if he had died. But there was some street justice in the damage to McPhee’s voice box.

‘That’s that wee cunt Ferris back in jail again.’ It was a stranger, an unknown man, talking to Billy McPhee in Glasgow’s Barrachnie Inn on the night I had been recalled to prison in 2002. The two men shook hands and laughed. McPhee took him to the bar and ordered drinks. The pair were being watched by curious local eyes.

The stranger turned out to be a cop. No surprise there – McPhee had gone the same way as his boss, The Licensee. That night, Billy McPhee threw a party to celebrate my return to jail.

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