The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter (Glasgow Trilogy) (30 page)

No great surprises here. Shug tries his luck with a bunch of ambitious young men in the business. One proves to be better than the rest. Now Frank has to deal with him. It’s bad luck for
the kid.

Before he leaves the office, Young is showing him a photo of Scott. Telling him the address. A tower block, second floor from the top. Well, that’s just bloody brilliant. Very few places
worse than that. Having to make an exit from a tower block is never ideal. You’re always a long way from your getaway. But location apart, it’s a soft job. They’re breaking him
back in gently. Jamieson will be preparing a big move against Shug Francis. He must be. Should’ve done it by now. Shug’s been targeting Jamieson, so Jamieson must squash him or be
considered feeble. This may be the first strike in that squashing. Scott looks like a typical council-estate kid. Greasy hair, tracksuit, probably a bunch of silly tattoos up his arm. It should be
easy. He has one little mate who hangs around with him a lot, according to Young’s info. Andy McClure. Known as Clueless.

Frank’s walking out of the club now. A few little butterflies beginning to stir. Three months away. His last job had been a couple of months before that. It’s a long time idle,
especially at his age. He’s nodding a polite goodbye to a few of the familiar faces on his way out. He’s dropping into the driver’s seat of his car. Those who know his business
will understand that he’s back. A visit to Jamieson without stopping at the bar means work. Jamieson said it was a relief for him. He has no idea. When you live the job, you realize how empty
life can be without it. Those three months began to drag. Spain was nice, but it’s not Frank’s style. Sunshine retirement is for other people. He wants the rain of Glasgow. The tension
of the job. The thrill of it. That’s his life. Oh, it’s so good to be back.

The third book in the Glasgow Trilogy

THE SUDDEN ARRIVAL OF VIOLENCE

will be out soon...

He’s touching the front of his coat, feeling the shape of the gun. Should have got rid of it. On any other night, any other
job, he would. This isn’t any other job. This, he intends, will be his last...

It begins with two deaths: a money-man and a grass. Deaths that offer a unique opportunity to a man like Calum MacLean. A man who has finally had enough of killing.

Meanwhile, two of Glasgow’s biggest criminal organizations are at quiet, deadly war with one another. And as Detective Michael Fisher knows, the biggest – and bloodiest
– manoeuvres are yet to come...

The stunning conclusion to Malcolm Mackay’s lauded Glasgow Trilogy,
The Sudden Arrival of Violence
will return
readers to the city’s underworld: a place of dark motives, dangerous allegiances and inescapable violence...

Praise for
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter

‘There aren’t too many crime novels that take the reader into the mind of a hit man, but Malcolm Mackay’s
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter,
the
first volume of a trilogy set in gangland Glasgow, does so with steely assurance ... Mackay writes in a staccato style, as befits the essentially brutal nature of his narrative . . . There is no
appeal for sympathy, and that is refreshing in a genre that often has downright evil and sentimentalized goodness in conflict with each other until the inevitable, anticipated resolution.
There’s no resolution, certainly no redemption, here. This is a truly exceptional debut’

Paul Bailey

‘The remarkable first book of a trilogy about Glasgow hit-man Calum MacLean, this marks the debut of 31-year-old Mackay . . . Mackay’s achievement is all the more
stunning because drawing on his sublime imagination and innate empathy he has created a cast of characters so vivid - especially MacLean - that they live on in the memory long after the final page.
There are Glasgow villains, bent policemen, a gangster’s moll with smarts to die for, not to mention the shabby drug-dealer Lewis Winter who has to die . . . ‘tartan noir’ will
have a new star’

Daily Mail

‘A remarkably original debut ... a frighteningly plausible picture of Glasgow’s criminal underworld. The tension - and there’s a lot of it; this is a book
that it would be hard not to finish in one sitting - builds as Calum’s plans near fruition, as Lewis goes about his life unaware, and as the realities of this dreary, dangerous world become
clear . . . With small, quiet brushstrokes that it’s hard to see building up, Mackay turns each of his characters into real people - people with interests and back stories and all the small,
inconsequential things that make up a life - and ends up with a wholly believable and unnerving portrait of organized crime’

Observer

‘The debut writer who is being hailed as tartan noir’s most authoritative and authentic new voice ... Mackay writes in a tough-guy style that is reminiscent of
Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett at their most hard-boiled...
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter
has all the gangster genre’s classic ingredients: brutal, dramatic characters
who instil fear, hard men dealing in the profits of human misery caused through lives ruined by drugs, the sort of villains who don’t want to know where all the bodies will be buried when
other gangs muscle in on their turf’

Scotsman

‘Original... This is frills-free storytelling: the prose is clinical and un-adorned, the moralizing minimal, the narrative linear with no mystery element and nothing kept
secret from the reader. Yet Mackay ratchets up the tension like a master, and his ability to create rounded characters makes his book, despite its dark subject matter, a breath of fresh
air’

Daily Telegraph

‘On the evidence of his impressive debut Malcolm Mackay will no doubt be hailed as the newest member of the Tartan Noir community. Yet the feel and style of
The
Necessary Death of Lewis Winter
is more American than Scottish ... a quietly absorbing gangland tale, full of moral ambiguities’

Marcel Berlins,
The Times

‘From the outset Mackay’s debut makes it clear he has ambitions for this work that don’t fit the mould ... The first of a trilogy,
The Necessary Death Of Lewis
Winter
would seem to take its inspiration less from Scottish noir antecedents, and more from American TV series such as
Dexter, The Sopranos
or
Breaking Bad...
impressively
controlled and confident... Mackay knows how to pace a story . . . Measuring out its excitement more like a morphine drip than a hit, the author insidiously builds up to a powerful conclusion.
Whether he’s describing Calum’s last meal before the job and that of his prey or evoking the deceptively polite manners of his sinister employers, Mackay never deviates from the stony,
heartless, dangerously restrained style he has set himself. It’s an audacious and risky tactic, but he pulls off his first hit with the same strong nerve and cool head his hero brings to his
work’

Herald

‘Brutal, witty and well-written ... a brilliant debut’

Sunday Telegraph

‘Written with persuasive authority,
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter
is cool, laconic and very enjoyable. I look forward eagerly to the second novel in the
trilogy’

Allan Massie

Malcolm Mackay
was born and grew up in Stornoway, where he still lives.
The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter
, his much lauded debut, is the first in the
Glasgow Trilogy, set in the city’s underworld.

Follow Malcolm @malcolm_mackay

First published 2013 by Mantle

This electronic edition published 2013 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-230-76464-4

Copyright © Malcolm Mackay 2013

The right of Malcolm Mackay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The Macmillan Group has no responsibility for the information provided by any author websites whose address you obtain from this book (‘author websites’). The
inclusion of author website addresses in this book does not constitute an endorsement by or association with us of such sites or the content, products, advertising or other materials presented on
such sites.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Visit
www.panmacmillan.com
to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author
interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.