Even by the standards of a violent city, it was shocking. At lunchtime on Wednesday afternoon, outside the front door of an Asda superstore, three masked gunmen shot dead a young man as he sat in the back of a car. Glasgow’s vicious underworld had spilled into the daylight.
Within hours, the jungle drums were beating. This was a crimeland execution. The man with five shots in his head was Kevin “Gerbil” Carroll, 29, well known to the police as a lieutenant of the notorious Daniel crime clan, whose turf wars with the Lyons family have dominated North Glasgow for much of the decade.
The gunmen’s getaway car, a Volkswagen Golf, was found burnt out with false number plates, ten miles from the scene in Airdrie.
Strathclyde Police spoke of the “alarming degree of recklessness in the execution of this attack”. Although the victim had been clearly targeted, they said “there was no doubt that someone standing nearby could have been injured”.
Carroll, it is rumoured, was shot by a professional hitman from Liverpool, hired by his own side. This was payback. He had got too cocky, too big for his boots, and the word was he had “grassed” about Lambhill.
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Lambhill, an area on the northern fringe of the city, is a name that carries a chill. In 2006 two gunmen, Raymond Anderson and James McDonald, believed to be linked to the Daniels family, carried out a daytime attack on an MoT garage. One member of the Lyons family was killed and another seriously injured.
But is the Asda outrage just part of the Glasgow crime story, which has threaded its violent, colourful path through the city for decades, from Peter Manuel, the multiple murderer hanged in 1958, to Paul Ferris, cleared of murdering a gangster’s son 18 years ago — or was this something new? Is Scotland heading down a more dangerous, US-style road, where daylight killings become commonplace?
Retired detectives are in no doubt crime has changed. Graeme Pearson, the recently retired head of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, whose career spanned the city’s most famous crime years, says that crime has become a long-term, planned activity, a multi-million pound business.
“Going back to the Fifties and Sixties, the likelihood was the criminals lived for the week, but now they engage in long-term planning to build up wealth and businesses which are predicated on crime. On the back of the business they build a position of power, influence and control. Those three things are key,” he said.
For Joe Jackson, who was head of a special unit within the Serious Crime Squad, created in the Seventies to tackle armed robberies, the most disturbing development is the method of killing. “The level of violence has risen because of the types of gun,” he said. “When I was there it was shotguns stolen from farmhouses. Now it’s automatics, coming in from Eastern Europe, and it’s bred a different type of violence.
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Mr Jackson, who wrote a book called Chasing Killers about his experiences, said this made the criminals doubly dangerous. “Before, they used to get up close and stab each other, or go to the pubs they frequented and shoot each other. But to go up to someone in a supermarket car park, where there are women and children, and start firing guns — that’s disgusting. It’s in a different league.
“They had obviously tracked him from his house, waited until he was on his own. It was an assassination. In the days of Arthur Thompson [the Glasgow gangster] , you didn’t have assassinations. These men are really dangerous cowards.”
Douglas Skelton, author of Glasgow’s Black Heart, said: “The violence has always been there. The difference is it’s now a lot more public.
“There used to be a code that the criminals wouldn’t involve civilians and families. But at Asda, all it would have taken would have been one stray bullet and someone innocent could have been killed. That’s the most disturbing aspect to it.”
One of the changed elements in the crime scene is the core business. Armed robberies and bank raids have virtually ceased as Glasgow crime barons turn their skills to creating vast networks in illegal drugs. Then there is prostitution, smuggling and a healthy market in counterfeited goods — handbags, watches, DVDs.
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“When you get violence to the extent we saw this week, things have gone wrong because it’s bad for business,” said Mr Pearson. “But criminals have all their imperfections and egos and they can’t enter into peace negotiations like nation states — they resort to violence.
“There is a significant business to fall out about. The thing to remember — the thing that doesn’t change — is the criminals’ desire for status.
“That’s why they don’t disappear to another country. Arthur Thompson and Tom McGraw [another gangster, known as The Licensee] both died in Glasgow — you would think they would go to Copacabana, wouldn’t you? But sometimes their wealth is overstated and they like their status in the area they control.
“It’s not about the money, once you dig down into it. Look at the Kray twins, who wanted to be seen alongside politicians. Look at Paul Ferris or Arthur Thompson, who would turn up at boxing events wearing a white tuxedo.”
That desire to be validated publicly may even, perversely, encourage the kind of public killing that was seen this week. “Some of them like that kind of kudos. It’s about building up their ego and reputation,” said Mr Jackson. “There’s no doubt they will all have their alibis ready.
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“The importance of this, though, is the fact that they are not doing it in their own pubs and doorways. they’re doing it in a public place. That’s very frightening.”
Six of the worst
Jimmy Boyle A friend of the Kray twins, Boyle was known as “the man they couldn’t hang” in the 1960s after he escaped two murder charges in the High Court. An enforcer, Boyle was one of the first inmates of the Special Unit in Barlinnie Prison. He later found a new life as a sculptor, artist and author
Arthur Thompson Born in 1931, Thompson was a money-lender in the 1950s and 1960s. He was said to “crucify” those who did not repay their debts, by nailing them to floors or doors. Protection rackets soon followed and he became a friend of the Krays. By the 1980s his family had entered the drug trade, led by his son, Arthur ‘Fatboy’ Thompson Jnr. Proceeds were invested in legitimate companies and helped to make Thompson rich. A police file described him as “a violent, vicious criminal who will stop at nothing to uphold his position in the underworld”. His daughter, Margaret, died of a drug overdose in 1989 and in 1991, Fatboy was shot dead outside the family home. Two years later Thompson, 61, died of a heart attack.
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Paul Ferris Born in 1963, Ferris was a former enforcer for Thompson snr and was later charged with the murder of his son, Fatboy, and other attempted murders. More than 300 witnesses were called at a trial which lasted 54 days and cost £4 million. It ended in Ferris being acquitted of all charges. He is now a businessman and author
TC Campbell A former street-gang member, robber and hard man, he was jailed for his part in the Doyle Family murders, said to be part of the so-called Ice Cream Wars, along with Joseph Steele. Both men proclaimed their innocence and in 2004 were cleared by the Appeal Court
Tam McGraw Founder member of the Barlanark Team who attacked cash-and-carry firms and post offices. He was also involved in taxis, property and ice cream vans. A drugs case against him collapsed. Said by underworld sources to be a marked man, he died of a heart attack in bed in 2007