The Fall of Tam Moncrieff

He was out on the hill when the news came through of the death of his daughter’s son;
He was old and grey, but tall and lean, coming down in the setting sun.
A heroin overdose, they said, had taken his life away;
He’d gone to the city to look for gold, but all he found was clay.
The old man bent as he leaned on his stick, but never a word he said;
His heart turned cold, cold as a stone, as he turned and walked to the shed.
He took his precious Purdies down and cut the barrels off;
In the grey of the dawn his old Transit van started up with a purr and a cough.

He took the long road south from there by mountain and by strath,
But no one in Auld Reekie then could feel his approaching wrath.
The first place that he made a call was a pawn shop down in Fife,
Where a man he knew gave a thousand pounds for the jewels of his long dead wife.
The Forth Road Bridge was clear going south, and he found a place to stay—
An old hotel in the centre of town, with his van parked some streets away.
That night he went out to find his man and it didn’t take him long;
Big Tam was his man if he wanted a deal for something hard and strong.

In a suit and tie and a long brown coat, the old man limped down the street;
In the back of a pub in the New Town was where they’d arranged to meet.
The old man looked Tam in the eye and explained what was his need;
The case he opened looked full of tens; he was aware of Big Tam’s greed.
He said he wanted to open up a new market in the north;
A hundred times what was in the case was what the deal was worth.
Big Tam’s eyes narrowed and he asked, “Do I know that you’re for real?”
The names the old man mentioned then were enough to clinch the deal.

After midnight the following day was when the deal went down,
In an antique shop in Montague Street on the other side of town.
Big Tam he opened up his case—it looked as pure as snow.
The old man laid his brief case down and opened it kind of slow.
You could hear every breath as they gazed upon the rows of hundred pound notes;
What they didn’t see until too late was the old man reach in his coat.
When they all looked up, they were looking down four barrels short and cold,
And the man who held them was tall and straight—now he didn’t look so old.

No one moved a muscle, but the colour drained from Big Tam’s face,
When the old man said, “I’m Dan Mackay—I’ve come in judgement not in grace.”
Then he told them all the story of his daughter’s only son,
And cold sweat ran down Big Tam’s brow, before his tale was done.
“There’s many a beast I’ve killed,” said Dan, “Nobler far than you.
But you’re going to wish you never were born by the time that I am through”
With a case and a gun in both his hands from the table he went back;
He walked out of there with £1,000 and a million pounds in smack.

His old transit van was parked outside and the engine roared and growled,
While back inside Big Tam went nuts—going out the door he howled,
“We’ll take the BMW and catch this Dan Mackay.
He’ll never leave this town alive, tonight he’s gonna die”.
But they never did catch the old transit van by the bypass or the bridge;
On the motorway and the A9 north, it always had the edge.
Big Tam and his henchmen didn’t know that at the heart of the battered van
Was a Cosworth engine, six speed gears and a driver who was the man.

Many a time, with a stag in the back, that race he’d always win,
But now he played Big Tam like a fish, and he steadily reeled him in.
He went through Drumochter and the Slochd like the wind on the mountainside;
By Inverness and the Kessock Bridge they couldn’t catch him though they tried.
By Contin, Garve and wild Braemore, he took the long road west;
Some call it the Destitution Road; it’s a road that he knew best.
He let them see him take the turn that heads down to Little Loch Broom,
But then he pulled away again, just to give himself some room.

At Corrie Hallie he finally stopped and put on his mountain gear;
In the clear still morning air he heard the BMW getting near.
In his rucksack went the heroin; he took a long stick and a gun.
He pocketed the thousand pounds just at the rising of the sun.
The BMW screamed to a halt, and Tam said, “There’s the van.
There’s empty cases across the road, so now we’ve got our man!”
The three of them ran up the path, but young Jake got far ahead;
He never saw the snare wire, he went down and cracked his head.

But when the other two came up, there was nothing there to see,
So they kept on going up the hill and thought they were still three.
At last they caught a glimpse of Dan as he disappeared into the mist;
Big Tam got off three hurried shots from the handgun in his fist.
On up An Teallach’s mighty slopes, Big Tam was left behind;
Red Billy was a wee hard man, but he was running blind,
So he never saw the hazel stick that sent him down the rocks;
The old grey man that hunted them was as cunning as the fox.

When Big Tam came gasping up at last, he could hear poor Billy scream;
He saw that Billy couldn’t move, it was like a nightmare dream.
He swore that he would bring Dan down—it would only take one hit.
If he had been a wiser man, that was the time to quit.
On the Corrag Bhuidhe pinnacles was where they finally met;
It was there drug baron Tam Moncrieff would settle his final debt.
On the edge of the abyss they stood as the sun came shining through;
“You’ve got something there”, said Tam, “that doesn’t belong to you.”

In one hand Dan held the rucksack, in the other he held his gun;
Big Tam’s eyes glittered when he saw the smack shine in the sun.
“You’re right”, said Dan, “but it’ll be no good for the journey you’re going to take.
Why don’t you leave it and change your ways?” But Big Tam made his last mistake.
He raised his gun to bring Dan down, but his shots went echoing wide;
A million pounds of heroin hit him on the side.
He could have let his old life go and caught the hand held out,
But instead he clutched his drugs and gave a great triumphant shout.

He balanced on that bitter edge for an eternity of time,
But the day had come at last when he would pay for every crime.
Down from that fearful peak he fell a thousand feet or more,
But Dan looked up to the heavens above, where he saw an eagle soar.
And all around there blew like snow the price of a grandson’s life;
It was scattered on that jagged cliff, where each rock shone like a knife.
And long they looked in Edinburgh town for the return of Tam Moncrieff,
But never he came, for he’d paid the price, the price of an old man’s grief.

© Alex J MacDonald