Just Your Usual Bleak Midwinter

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, 

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone 

Midwinter? How does December 24th suit you? Bleak? Glasgow, solstice-blasted, locked in a frozen embrace that would not yield, shivered and trembled, choked and constricted by its relentless sheen of white. And yet, here we stood on the silent street in a midnight dark, breath billowing in sinuous coils around our faces, subsiding slow and cold into the depths of shadow. Me and Linda Guthrie, the two of us wrapped and bumfled against the bitter cold, looking everywhere, saying nothing.

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, 

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Well, not snow, in fact, because Glasgow would never be party to anything so heart-warming, rosy-cheeked and delightful as a white Christmas. It wasn’t the sentimentality we resisted – no, we loved that, properly calibrated. Try to pry a Glaswegian from a jukebox howling with the high-lonesome country wail of loss, prison, divorce, deceit and death – you can’t. But that is a different beast entirely. Tonight, there was no snow, just the hard bite of frost and ice, a spear of cold to the core. Long ago? Yes. How long? Try this: so long ago that I was still police constable Stephen McCabe, based at the old Orkney Street station, and Linda Guthrie was not a lover (not that night, not ever), she was another copper like me, exhaling great gouts of cloud into the still of midnight.

Linda Guthrie and I, in plain clothes, motionless in the cold, working a night-shift on Christmas Eve. Well, bad men didn’t (all) take the day off, and we were junior, so junior we still had damp patches; there was no doubt who would pull this shift, and this job.

“I don’t mind workin’ with a Catholic.”

“That’s awful fuckin big of ye, Linda. And I’m not, not so you’d notice.”

“The Pope’d still claim ye.”

“He’d claim a pawn ticket for a chocolate watch. Times are tough, over Rome way. Crowds are down. You have to count everythin’ you can.”

“How d’ye figure you’re not a Catholic anyhow? Thought that was you for life?”

“Well, that’s you and the Pope on the same page then. I beg to differ. You were a kid once, Linda, right? And you had no say in it? Nobody asked you, you couldny help it, it was just how it was? Ye’re a kid. Bein’ a Catholic is like that to me. Somethin’ somebody else made me without askin’ when I had no say in it. Now, you’re not a kid any more...you get me?”

“Whatever you say – but it sounds like big MacPhee wasted his time sendin’ you down here the night then?”

“Sorry, don’t follow you – wasted his time how?”

“Well, he says to me, you’re on the night, aye? So I goes, aye, and he says we need to get a hold of Franny Meara, he’s been out of sight for a while. But...and here’s your bit, Stevie...we’ve got the nod off one of the CID’s wee narks that Meara always take his wee ma to midnight mass at Lourdes chapel. And...tonight’s Christmas Eve, so he’ll be above ground and we can take him. Who’s the biggest fenian on the night shift?”

“Whit? Me? That’d be Jackie Driscoll, no’ me! Christ...”

“Eh? Is he?”

“’course he is – you seen his tattoos? Fuckin sacred heart, virgin Mary...”

“Er, excuse me? How’d I see Jackie Driscoll’s tattoos? No’ my type. Nor my age, neither.”

“...right. Well, don’t be holdin’ yer breath waitin’ on detective, Linda. You’ve got a wee gap in your observation skills there.”

“Aye well, fuck you anyway, McCabe, but here we are all the same, eh?”

“And I’m here cuz I’ve got specialist skills in standin’ outside midnight mass? Big McPhee’s at it. Any tube could stand here and freeze their haw-maws off.”

“He said...he said mibbe we could do it at his ma’s house – Meara’s ma, that is. Cuz he’s got to go there to pick her up, like? But it could’ve kicked off, mibbe his brothers are there an’ all, mibbe we don’t see him go in and out, cuz she lives in they high flats over behind the college and there’s four lifts...anyhow, McPhee thought Meara would be less likely to get rowdy at the chapel. So, here we are. Here you are.”

“The other way to have played it would be to have sent a bunch of coppers over to the flats mob-handed, got Meara when he walked out the front – enough people, cover all the exits and also you’ve got enough bodies to stop any trouble. Stops all this drama outside the chapel.”

“No way, not tonight. McPhee’s got everybody else sweepin’ up all usual Friday night shite, plus your extra Christmas knob-ends. Only reason we’re here and not doin’ a tango through the puke at Govan Cross is that Meara’s show-up is one-time only. Jist cuz it’s Christmas and jist cuz it’s midnight mass. And give big McPhee credit for one thing – he knew that you’d know it started at half-eleven. Me mysel’, I’d’a shown up and wondered how I missed them all goin’ in.”

“Well, Sherlock, you coulda phoned up the chapel, or just made a big mistake. Modern police work. Fuckin great.”

“Well, would you rather be at Govan Cross or outside Lourdes chapel? Them’s yer choices, cowboy. How long’s it last, anyway, midnight mass?”

“A bit longer than usual. Kinna like a greatest hits.”

“Or a special on TV, like you get at...at Christmas. Here, is this them comin’ out now?”

“No, just the early leavers. You have to laugh, they turn out in the middle of the night and don’t stay until the end. It’s not like they’ve got a bus to catch, or they need to beat the traffic rush.”

“One or two of they guys look pished.”

“Traditional. Bit of guilt, bit of a laugh, bit of Christmas spirit, bit of confusion. Plus, it does save them havin’ to go tomorrow, when they might be sober.”

“D’ye know what Meara looks like? I’ve just got his file picture. McPhee thought you might know him. Personal, like?”

“He’s not wrong. I do know him. He’s older’n me, obviously, but he used to be a face, y’know, around?...he knew my da, definitely. He should know me an’ all, in yon roundabout kinna way. I’ll clock him, don’t worry. He’ll not be movin’ that fast, if he’s got a pensioner in tow.”

“Here, see that women, nickin’ out early, is that...her off the telly?”

“Dunno, who?”

“Y’know, her, the...she reads the news.”

“Dunno, could be – they let Catholics do just about anythin’ nowadays.”

“See, there ye go – the Pope’d definitely claim you.”

“Okay, get ready. Sounds like the mass is about over. The music’ll start and they’ll be comin’ out in big numbers. Canny imagine Meara’ll be out early, but just in case they were sittin’ at the back, get your picture out and I’ll get up next to the door. Watch me. If they get past me in the crowd, I’ll point and you clock them. Go and talk to his mother. Just babble – ‘hello, Mrs Meara, long time no see, d’ye not remember me?’ Stop them for a second and I’ll be there.”

“Who gave you the stripes?”

“Fine, then. Hook him on the jaw and drag him to Orkney Street behind your chariot, I don’t care. Right, here everybody comes, arse in gear...”

The crowd ebbed out of the church, as if reluctant to leave its candle-infused glow and undulating shadows for the uncertainty of a chill midnight. The side doors had not been opened, so the worshippers were funnelled into one snaking exit rope, stepping gingerly down the stairway, easy for me to observe and discern, despite their dark, muffled overcoatage. One or two faces I recognised – was that Lorna McGunnigle, almond features easing awkwardly into a premature middle-age, rumpled and stretched by those prams she seemed always to be pushing and by the men she turned the lights out with? And Andy McGovern, his feet crunching on the stair-spread grit, stepping lightly down for a fat man, no resistance to the doughnuts and steak bakes of the shop he worked in.

The flow slackened, thinned and drained almost to a halt, a sprinkle of slow movers and priest-chatters finally ambling through the doors, bye Father and happy Christmas to you cast over shoulders into the warm yellow-glowing chapel. Last of all, arms linked, were Franny Meara and an old woman who was owning the role of Franny Meara’s old ma. They were oblivious to me, or anything else, as they tiptoed down the salty steps, the least icy square feet in the neighbourhood, but still, that underfoot bite warned ‘be careful’. I waited until they negotiated the last stair and stepped forward, warrant card proffered and laid my hand on Franny Meara’s arm. I felt him tense and then slacken as he saw, first, the card and then my face.

“Francis Meara, you’re under arrest. You do not have to say anything -”

“Fuck, man, you serious? Right in front of my wee ma? At midnight mass? That’s no’ for real.”

“How’d ye prefer it? Gunfight at the livery stables? Five in the mornin’, drag you out yer kip in the scud, bounce yer arse down three flights and never mind the skidmarks? This way is good, Franny, this is wise.”

“Hey, it was that Wee Pedro grassed us up, right? Wee Pedro the wanker.”

“’mon we’ll get into this motor here and you can worry about who you’re blamin’...come with us, Mrs Meara, we’ve got some business with your Francis here. We’ll give you a run home, eh?”

“Are you...are you the polis?”

“Aye. Who else’d have business with him?”

“Huh. Fuckin typical. Ye can stick yer run.”

“Long walk home. Franny’ll not be with you. Dangerous town, this, they tell me. Long walk home.”

“Aye, well, if I get raped and murdered, you’ll be to blame.”

“Mibbe, but it’ll be you gets raped and murdered. I’d rather be me.”

“Bastards.”

“Car’ll be warmer. And we know where you live, sure.”

Franny Meara had no interest in the conversation; he knew his mother could hold her own in a row with coppers. Instead, he was looking at me – or, as he would probably regard it, looking into my face.

“Whoa, hold up there...I know you. You’re Joe McCabe’s boy. Aw aye, that’s who you are. Whit a fuckin gyp. Lifted by Joe McCabe’s wee snotter.”

“My name’s on the card I showed you, so aye. Mrs Kerr’d be that happy you kept up with yer readin’.”

“...ah, how is he, yer old da? Aw, that’s right, faithful departed intit? Heard he came second in a wee bit metalwork. That right?”

“No secret, that. But the world’s doin’ okay, all the same, eh? Funny how that goes...not for you, obviously, not this minute, but...big picture? S’okay. Eb’dy’s happy, foreby Franny Meara. What’s that tell you?”

“Look at me, takin’ my ma to midnight mass, and you, pishin’ on yer da’s memory, and I’m the bad guy?”

“Correct again. You are the bad guy. But since I never finished the caution, that won’t count as a confession.”

Linda, standing next to Mrs Meara without touching her, clapped her gloved hands together. I expected her to say “abracadabra!” She didn’t.

“...if you two are finished showin’ your dicks? I’m freezin’ and, much as I like the OT, there’s a fridge fulla chardonnay at home I’d like better. In the motor? Now?”

I manoeuvred Meara over to the car and Linda, scrambling quickly out of the cold, kicked the Mondeo into life. She opened the back doors to let Mrs Meara climb in; she couldn’t, not unaided, and I was not letting go of her son until she was inside. 

“Linda, a hand? To get the lady into her taxi?” Grunting, she clambered back out of the vehicle and opened both the rear doors, easing the old woman in, without thanks but also without reproach. Handcuffed, her son followed.

“If you see that wee fud Pedro, tell him his card’s marked.”

“I dunno who it was put the word on you, Franny, but don’t blame him. Or her, whoever it might’ve been. We caught you at the chapel. I was you, I’d blame God.”

I locked the car door on Franny Meara and his bradawl-eyed mother, muttering low words of bad intent at me.

Peace on earth, or something.


In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

The Undertones Stole My Title

…a brown-complected volume called Teenage Rage, How A Golden Boy Became A Child Killer, written by one Bruce P Mackenzie. I guess he would have called it Teenage Kicks, but the Undertones got there first.

It wasn’t a bulky volume, 160 pages of fonts on steroids with generous line-spacing, but who needed Dostoyevsky for the tragedy of Nicole Clancy? Not that she was the major player in the tale, rather she was a by-the-way in the tabloid breathlessness – and Bruce P Mackenzie was red-top to the bone, no less than the chief crime reporter for the Daily Banner, according to the author’s bio. Christ, the Daily Banner…

Nicole Clancy was just the same as any other six-year-old girl that sunny December morning, skipping on her way to school, chatting with her chums about all the presents that Santa would be bringing her in a couple of weeks. She loved Christmas and her mum Linda was planning to make it an occasion to remember for the whole family. Linda and Nicole had moved a few months before to a flat in Barlanark, along with Nicole’s big sister Gemma…

Hold on there, Bruce – Barlanark? That scheme was the best part of ten miles from Levenhall. What was thirteen-year-old Lachlan doing over there? Or six-year-old Nicole doing in Levenhall? What happened to you, Gemma? You’d be around thirty now, at a guess.

…although Nicole was still getting to know her new school friends, she was already a popular pupil at St Aidan’s Primary and her teacher remembers her as a cheerful and bright girl. “Nicole always had a wee smile for me in the morning” said tall brunette Mrs Wendy O’Hara…

Well, call me and all my descendants shallow, but I for one was starkly gripped by the apparent hair colour of Nicole Clancy’s former teacher, twenty-odd years ago. What if “Mrs” O’Hara had been ginger? Oh, the drama…

The background narrative waltzed on, in regulation brazen blandness.

Times were tough for single parent Linda and her two girls, but the single mum was getting used to life without her children’s dad since he had been sent to Barlinnie prison six months before. That was a blessing in disguise, since hard-man Anthony Clancy had never been slow to leave bruises on the tall blonde.

Christ, more hair colour – did no editor notice you used “single” twice in the same sentence, Bruce? And, reluctant as I was to treat Linda’s many-years-later vague recollections as “true”, I think the man’s name was Charlie, not Anthony, and I doubt he was Gemma’s father, since Linda said he gave her the child. Then again, she also said his name wasn’t Clancy, either.

Now, talking to Linda, there are lines of sadness etched in her face as she wonders if there was anything she could have done differently that would have prevented what happened to Nicole. But, back in that cold December, no-one could have imagined the horror that was to befall the chatty six-year-old.

I touched my ear to check if any brain was dribbling out, melted by Mackenzie’s weapons-grade prose; everything seemed in order, so I skimmed through irrelevant detail and verbal upholstery to the start of the next chapter, a sketch of Lachlan Doune. Or, if you prefer, The Child Who Became A Monster.

Nobody knows when Lachlan Doune turned into the murderous killer who took the life of six-year-old Nicole Clancy. Nobody knows what went through his head that fateful night. We can only guess and shake our heads at the horror that came out of nowhere.

Lachlan was the youngest of a wealthy family, the Dounes of Airdlaggan – family motto Stand Up And Fight What The World Throws – and always seemed to be the favourite of his elderly father, Abercrombie Doune, a fierce businessman with dark moods and (to his older children) a distant and unloving father. Did this attention spoil the growing boy as he wandered on his own around the former mining country that had been turned into grouse and pheasant shooting land for the Dounes’ rich friends?

Well, Bruce P Mackenzie, you are as bad a psychologist as you are a journalist, so you are at least consistent. Nice, though, to paraphrase that verbose family motto for your readers, even if you made such a bad job of it. But…‘dark moods’?

…Abercrombie had several business interests in his life, but it was the sale of his mines at the time of nationalisation that made his biggest fortune. Later, when the mining industry declined and the mines were closed, he bought the land back for next to nothing and used the rolling acres for farming, shooting and Glenbarrie Safari Park…

And on he babbled. This was old-school tabloid boilerplate, simplistic and mock-serious, bloating pages until Mackenzie could deliver the money shot. Conversations and interviews with “friends” and “local people” added no information that any random passer-by could not have provided, or invented; either would suffice. I flicked through observations that Lachlan was “a bit of an outsider” and “kind of funny, not that anybody was laughing” and made few notes. Lachlan’s siblings were dismissed as a “playboy” and a “mysterious recluse”, which seemed to be a highly impressionistic (but lawyer-approved) way to say “unmarried alcoholic woman”. There was nothing more about the Doune parents, nor anybody else. Well, what was I expecting, research?

I meandered through more empty recollections of Nicole as a “happy wee soul” who “always had a smile for everybody”. None, though, were directly attributed to mother Linda who, Mackenzie recorded had had “her life torn apart by the tragedy” and was “shattered” by the experience. Okay, Bruce P, take me to what would surely be described, again, as ‘that fateful day’…

…which he did - although it turned out, specifically, to be “that fateful Wednesday”, for which I gave myself a silver medal.

Nobody knows how Lachlan Doune came to meet Nicole that fateful Wednesday…

Whoa, hold it right there! How can nobody know? Explain that remark, Bruce…but he didn’t. There followed – slowly and awkwardly – a wander through the various paths that Nicole might have taken towards Levenhall or Airdlaggan, or the reasons that the thirteen-year-old Lachlan (“perhaps playing truant from his expensive private school, although records show that he was present that day”) might have had to find himself in Barlanark, but nothing was clear and no questions were answered.

Whatever the mystery, one thing remains horribly, undeniably clear – after darkness fell on that cold December day, residents of the Levenhall scheme heard a commotion in the street. When concerned neighbours went to see what was causing the noise, they found Lachlan Doune dancing around a fire on a piece of waste ground, strewn with empty bottles and garbage. While they remonstrated with the agitated youth, barmaid Patricia McLean noticed there was what seemed to be a small human body in the fire. She was right – it was the remains of Nicole Clancy. When scaffolder Archie Bannerman asked Doune what was going on, the youth – seemingly in a trance, or a deranged state – mysteriously said “I can’t explain me to myself”.

At last, Bruce, you managed an accurate quote.  Idly, I checked Amazon on my phone – this book was out of print and unavailable, not even as a “used” version, however much this particular copy had interested somebody. I flicked to the book’s frontispiece – no old-fashioned sheet there with dates of issue, just a barcode. I went to the issue desk and waved the book at the neckbeard tickling his keyboard there, as if I’d discovered it...

Calling Jesus

There was no name on the door, but there were on the others, and none of them was Clancy. I chapped the splintery surface and waited.

No answer. Inside, I could hear the television, canned laughter and whooping. I knocked again, the door juddering under the rap….the TV was still the only sound. I bent down and shouted through the letterbox. “Taxi for Clancy!” Inside, vague bumps and clicks. The door was opened in slow-motion by a woman with no outline, a shape you couldn’t pour custard into. She spoke in the same halting freeze-frame style.

“I never phoned a taxi. Must be a mistake.”

“You answered to Clancy, but.”

“I’m no’ goin’ anywhere.”

“Aye, I know. My name’s Stephen McCabe, by the way. Here’s a letter from a lawyer, says why I’m really here. Can I come in?”

“Eh? I canny…whit is it ye want?”

“Somebody left you money in their will, except the money seems to have taken a walk. I want to talk to you about that.”

“Canny be arsed.”

“Are you listening to me? I said, there could be money in this for you – a lot of money, actually.”

“Whit do I have to do?”

“Let me come in and talk to you – deal?”

Linda Clancy’s living room was definitely well on the upside of average for a single woman presumably living on welfare benefits, absent the junkie hallmarks of no carpet, two weeks’ worth of takeaway containers piled askew, drug paraphernalia, grim odours and unfathomable dirt. It was, in fact, clean, tidy and decorated sometime this century, furnished with Sweden’s finest flatpacks and Scotland’s tartan-est fabrics. The one startling item was a 54-inch Samsung plasma, but that was hardly uncommon and it didn’t constitute evidence that Linda was wallowing in the delights of a Cayman bank account.

Sad to say, she didn’t offer tea, a dismal reflection on her manners, although I would have declined if she had, a dismal reflection on mine.

“I’m readin’ this letter, but you’ll have to tell me whit it means.”

“It says…in a sentence, that Lachlan Doune left you his money. Pretty much all of it.”

“Who’s Lachlan Doune?”

“Lachlan Doune. He…you don’t recognise the name?”

“Who is he? Funny kinna name. Sounds stuck-up. Or some kinna teuchter.”

“Sorry to bring this up…I think. He’s the man that killed your daughter.”

“Whit? My daughter’s fine. She was up here yesterday. She’s up here aw the time. Ye’re talkin’ mince.”

“No, this was years ago – Nicole.”

“Aw…awww. Wee Nicole? Aw, no. Aye, I remember her, I…”

“You remember her? She was six and -”

“- aye, with ye now. Some guy kilt her. Aye, right enough. Awful sad. Sad for me, that is, no’ for him – ach, I suppose it was jist sad all round, eh?”

“Linda, I’m not gettin’ the normal signals from you here. You do remember Nicole?”

“Aye. Was an awful long time ago, but. Cuz, see me? I had this drug problem, awful bad, for a lotta years. A load of stuff is…hazy. I canny remember everythin’. See, even now? I canny remember ‘hings. Names? Your name? Did ye tell me it? I dunno. I couldny tell you your own name. My daughter’s awful good to me, right enough. Leanne, that is, no wee Nicole. She’s…”

“Do you have any other family now? Husband?”

“That’s a laugh. I’m Teflon to men, nothin’ sticks. It’s jist me and Leanne, no’ like she lives here, that’s only me. But she comes by regular.”

“And you’re sure the name Lachlan Doune means nothin’ to you?”

“Well, now you’ve told me, aye. He was the fuckin paedo weirdo that killed my Nicole. Mad bastard, huge but he was only twelve or sum’hin. Aye, now you say his name, I remember him. Hated him. For whit he did, know?”

“You ever meet him?”

“Meet? Naw, don’t ‘hink so. Saw him, s’pose.”

“Twenty years ago? Or since?”

“Dunno, don’t ‘hink I ever met him, like I say. Look, I told you, I didny know what day it wis, back then - it wis aw they drugs. My brain’s fucked. If I ever met that guy, I don’t remember.”

“Never got a letter, phone call from him? Or anybody else, talkin’ about him? Nobody mentioned money?”

“Money? That’s a good yin. ‘hink I’d be sittin’ here if I had money? I canny tell ye any’hin, mister. Well, actually, the one ‘hing I can tell ye is ‘jist say no, kids’, that’s right enough, cuz they drugs are bad news. S’obvious, int’it? Look at me, I’m a zombie…here, whit was that ye said about a will?”

“You were named in Lachlan’s will, but there’s no money anyway.”

“Ha! That’s typical, jist ma luck.”

“Why’d he do that, name you in his will, if he never met you?”

“That’ll be the sixty-four million dollar question, eh? Cept it isny, it’s the no-dollar question, accordin’ to you.”

“Am I wastin’ my time to ask you what you remember about the time Nicole went missing?”

“What d’you ‘hink? Fuck all, is the answer. It was an awful long time ago, and I was -”

“I know. Full of the smack and that. Somebody else told me the same thing.”

“I wisny always like that, sometimes I’ve been okay. Like now? Been clean enough for a good long time. But back then? Naw. And your memory jist gets gubbed after a while. So when do I get the money?”

“The what? The nothing, you mean? Never, seems like. Or, put it another way, you can have it right now, since there’s nothing to give you anyway. Mind you, there’s a lawyer that’s payin’ me to chase after that nothing, jist because it’s the right thing to do. How d’you like that?”

“Well, a mad bastard like that – what’s his name, Lachlan? – wouldny have any money anyway, would he?”

“Turns out he should’ve, cuz he got all the Doune cash. Families are strange, they tell me.”

“Very bastard strange, aye. Still, what’s mine’s mine, right? If that will says I should have the money, then somebody has to give me it. Aye? And if that freak doesny have it, get it off Malcolm or one of them.”

“Malcolm? You don’t remember the name of the guy that killed your six-year-old, but you remember his brother?”

“Is that his name? Good guess. I’m like one of those old guys, them that’s got that dementia? Wee ‘hings from a hunnert years ago? Clear as day. Your own address? Not a clue. Don’t mean that exactly – I know my address, but some a’ they guys don’t. Some ‘hings jist jump out, like ‘Malcolm’. If you’d gone and asked me that name, I’d go ‘whit brother?’, but there ye are, it jumped out…seems sum’hin stuck somewhere. Funny how the mind works.”

“When Nicole went missing, when she was six years old, what were you doin’ then? You have a job?”

“I was…a mother. I’ve never worked, since I had my kids…well, Nicole was the only one, back then. Aw, naw, wait a minute - there was Gemma, too, aye…but Nicole’s da was a bad bastard, in and out the jail, only good ‘hing he ever did was give me the wean. And I had my troubles, like I said, but I was a mother, that was my job.”

“The guy in jail – you marry him? Was he Clancy?”

“Whit ye gettin’ at? Why’s my name matter? Naw, we never got married, Clancy’s my name. I could tell ye his, but it’d take me a minute to mind it - Charlie was his first name, how’s that?”

“Reason I’m askin’…if he was your legal husband, he’d be entitled to some of your inheritance. Not the biggest disaster in the world, half of fuck-all is still nothin’, but if we get a hold of any of the money, well…”

“Would he? Is that true? Well, that’s…doesny matter anyhow, cuz I never got married.”

“No? Well, hardly matters, like you say. Listen, if you think of anything else, call me? Here’s my card.”

“If I ‘hink of anythin’ else, I’ll be callin’ Jesus, cuz it’ll be a miracle.” 

Dookin In Ribena

“Long way from Govan down to here on a sunny morning, doctor.”

“Jesus, Stevie! What are you...no, forget I said that, stupid question...”

“Talk to PC Wright – he needs to recognise what a stupid question sounds like.”

“Answer it, anyway. Dead body in a tree, why’re you on the spot?”

“I found it...him. Called it in.”

“That’s a funny -”

“- don’t say coincidence. Just don’t. Anyhow, seems a kinna entry-level suicide to call the chief pathologist all this way.”

“We take our turns, keeps us honest.”

“Nothin’ to do with the fact that this is the Doune family residence?”

“Is it? I don’t know. And how do you know? Although, I guess…why you’re out here this morning, that’ll also be because it’s the Doune family residence, one way or another.”

“Aye, man called Lachlan Doune called me here, arranged a 10 o’clock meeting. I’m hopin’ that’s not him in the rowan tree.”

“Well, it’s somebody. Let’s see...actually, since you’re here, might as well ask you now – you touch the body? No? Not at all? Not even to check if he was still alive?”

“Look at the colour of him. Either dead or he went dookin’ in Ribena. And he soiled himself, but it’s long dried-in. He’s been up there a good few hours. Even from down here, looks like there might’ve been magpies or crows havin’ a wee look-see. So, no, I never checked if he was alive.”

“And you didn’t touch anything else?”

“Only the front door of the house. Knocked it, rang the bell, that’s all. Never touched or moved any objects. If you’re thinkin’...that branch is, what, ten, twelve feet up there...and there’s no ladder or anything. Aye, I thought that myself. Mibbe he could loop a rope up and over, but...”

“...but there’s a ladder lying on its side next to the front door of the house. Eighty feet away.”

“I did notice that, aye. Quite interesting, I’d call it. But you must want to get on and do your job now.”

“Aye – I’ll get back to you after. Always keen to see what the reviews say...and everybody’s a critic.”

It was then that the front door of Airdlaggan House creaked open.

*** *** ***

A dishevelled, but fully clothed, woman blinked bleary at the people meandering around in front of the house and pointed, unsteady but determined.  “Who the fuck are all you people here? Are you...is that police? What are you doing here? You need to get off...Lachlan! Lachlaaaaaaaannnnnn!”

Using sophisticated detection techniques, it was around that point I determined my new client, Mr Lachlan Doune, would likely prove unresponsive to invoices.

*** *** ***

“What’s your thoughts?”

“My first thought would be that I’ll be telling DI Simpson what my thoughts are, not you.”

“Just in general, I mean. I’m curious why this guy calls me up yesterday and when I show up, he’s a Christmas ornament.”

“Well, I’d say he wanted you to see this. But I thought you didn’t know him?”

“Never said that, although, no, I didny know him. And my theory about why’d he’d call me and do this’d be better told -”

“- to DI Simpson. Aye, call that one quits. As it happens, first look says this is suicide. No defence wounds, no signs of restraint or a struggle, obvious injuries are just what you’d expect from a strangulation...”

“Slow, then?”

“Not quick. In this light, I can see the petechial haemorrhage already. We’ll need to see what we find in the bloodstream to determine if he was awake and sober when he got up there. And see what’s under his fingernails – looks like there might be some of that nylon rope in there.”

“Suggests he was awake, if he was pulling at the rope while he strangled.”

“Aye. Second thoughts, panic, pain, whatever. Or mibbe he just pulled it really tight.”

“While he fired that ladder thirty yards away?”

“Yes. My report will note the absence of an obvious way for the deceased to have found himself in that position.”

“Hope you use that exact phrase. It’ll amuse some court clerk somewhere.”

“Aye, that’s always the audience you have in mind with a post-mortem. Anyhow, I think that’s the end of this conversation, Stevie...you can read the report along with the great Glaswegian public. You can count on this bein’ all over the tabs, one way or the other. Y’might find some of your old buddies on the phone tonight – could be headline news - ‘city private eye’s horror find at mansion of secrets’...‘troubled heir was jist hangin’ there like a saggy bag a’ plums, says rugged local ‘tec McCabe, age undisclosed...’. Unless you’re still on a retainer with the Daily Banner?”

“The Banner’s ancient history and...‘heir’? What’s Lachlan Doune heir to?”

“Whit? C’mon, Stevie – sharpen up! This isn’t some smackhead’s gurned their last up a stairwell in the multis. Do your homework – it’s your first-ever country house mystery. This is pure Poirot here.”

That was when Baws Wilson ruined the atmosphere, corrupting the Golden Age of the Country House Mystery, silencing the string quartet and sending the waiters scuttling back below-stairs.

“The fuck’s aw this? How come aw these cunts is aw ower the shop? Polis, is it? Haw, that’s fuckin Lachie! Is he deid?”

“My name’s McCabe – who’d you be?”

“Eh? Billy Wilson. Baws. Whit’s happened here?”

“You got a reason to be here?”

“’Course I fuckin have. I work here. Whit d’ye ‘hink the shotgun’s fur? I’m the fuckin gamekeeper. Now, whit’s the score? He’s deid, right? Lachie? Stupid bastard that he is...what’s he done? Jesus, canny believe this. Is Deborah in? I’m gonny see whit’s the score.”

“You might find that a wee bit tricky. I think Deborah might actually be in the house, aye, but the polis baggsied first go.”

“Polis? You’re no’ polis? Ye can fuck right off then. This gun’s broke the now, but it’s fuckin loaded and it goes right back the-gether again. Out my road!”

Baws Wilson might score some points for determination and (maybe) loyalty, but the diplomatic service missed nothing when his application got lost in the post and only a very particular circle could ever accommodate his bouquet of fuck-ye’s – which probably played better in Levenhall, the forgotten stalag of Glasgow Corporation post-war social failure whose roofs distantly half-nudged their way over the sheep-pocked fields that surrounded Airdlaggan House. If Baws didn’t live in Levenhall, then the one pub that “served” its mean streets wasn’t called The Fort Apache Bar. And it definitely was. 

If A Body Meet A Body

Airdlaggan House was in Glasgow, just. I discovered that fact to my surprise and discomfort when the bus dropped me off on what looked to me like a Discover Scotland advert, all drystane dykes and bewildered sheep.

The surprise came as I walked back down the winding lane towards the roadside nameplate I’d seen from the bus, the house title scrolled across its width in Copperplate Gothic Bold. Thirty yards before I reached that sign, I came upon another, embedded in the verge, which whispered rather than shouted a quasi-welcome that read “City of Glasgow”. Still? Out here, in damp tartan fields populated by Harry Lauders and scrawny trees whose branches grew bannocks?

Apparently, yes. Airdlaggan House itself nestled in an unlikely crook of the seemingly far-distant city, even if its fields and livestock were located across an invisible border, enjoying the rustic scenery of Inver-aber-bala-strath-sneckie or whatever lay in the great beyond.

The discomfort was more a function of realising that – city address or not – the path from the road wound (uphill, naturally) a long way before it reached Airdlaggan House itself, half-visible on a tree-bound hilltop. The electronic vehicle access was closed and locked but a kissing gate let me onto the property and up the gravel roadway that split a sprawling treeless field. I climbed the hill in an artless slalom, swaying this way, that, and more, to avoid the generous dollops of sheep shit that speckled the gravel, while the perpetrators glared idly at me.

The house, as I gradually began to see, was as faux-grand as I’d hoped. A manor where a farmhouse should be, Queen Anne, neo-classical and mock-Tudor styles collided and disputed, an architectural train wreck from another country that – carpers, take note – would still cost any buyer an even number of millions. Three cars sat outside on the terminal sweep of the drive that led to the porticoed front entrance, all of them late-model with vanity plates. I became so idly preoccupied with attempting to decipher the meaning of HI2 DLD that I almost missed it.

The body.

It was the sound that caught me short, a sharp creak of rope straining in the wind, clutching against a middle branch of the mountain ash by the side of the drive. Twisting in the fatal clutch of a noose hidden now, biting into his purpling flesh, a man dangled, limbs a-droop, bobbing in a marionette dance of indecision, head turning like he was saying no to a question nobody had asked him.

Big Joe's Fan Club

"His name was Joe, big Joe McCabe. Bastard, just a horrible prick of a man. Nowadays, he’d be dealin’ tenner bags for somebody better organised, but there was none of that back then. So, he hung around with other hard men – or, if you like, real hard men – and got his screw when anythin’ was on the go. Reset...that’d be sellin’ stolen goods to you...stuff ripped off from the docks, cases of whisky, tobacco was a big favourite. And strange stuff for our neighborhood, sometimes. Cuban cigars, I remember. Was how I learned what a cohiba was, how about that? And he did the occasional wee robbery...I think. Ripped off shops, broke into offices, stole tools, whatever they could lay their hands on. And if the big man – Shuggy Devlin, he was called, needed a face striped, big Joe would do that, too, once or twice. Never worked, never had a job, just drew his dole and spent his whole time crooked. And he wisny even that good at it. Small-time, never had any ambition. Take away his back-up, take away Shuggy and his boys, and he could only hit women and kids.”

“Jack and your mama, you said.”

“Aye. He was every bully you ever heard about. My sister...she was older, never seemed to wind him up. Kinna got on his good side, agreed with him or somethin’, dunno. Just made ma look bad by comparison, I always thought, not that she ever talked back, anyway – but how do you figure the way a guy like that ‘hinks? He only hit Frances once or twice – me, more’n that, but not often, and only when I was younger.”

“You got on his good side, too?”

“Not hardly. More the opposite. See, I’m not Johnny, I’m not Frances...with me, he was, I dunno, different. Careful, after a while. Wary. You can get out your dime-store psychology book now, cuz that’s where we’re at. Seemed like he could sense a weakness in people, like – listen to me talk, jeez – like an animal can. Just somethin’ basic, fundamental. He went for the weaker ones, Johnny – he was the youngest – and my mother, some people would call her a doormat. I’d be one of them.”

“Christ, Steve.”

“Well, you asked. See, Johnny, now, in his own way...whatever bullshit he broadcasts, he likes strong women. Always been the same – not CEOs and senators, okay, but not doormats, definitely. He doesny know it, but he’s desperate for his woman not to be like his mother, cuz he’s -”

“- never gonna act like your papa. I can see that. I can see what you say abou’ John. Yeah...I can see he don’t know it, too...where they now, your mama and papa, gone?”

“Aye, long gone.”

“Just...gone?”

“Not ‘just’, not really. It’s the usual story, pretty much. Never mind the psychology, you’ve seen a hundred movies where the victim fights back – that was what happened. Only it wisny the big victims, not him and ma, it was me. He hadny actually touched me for a coupla years...longer, mibbe, thinkin’ about it...and I just watched big Joe hit him and her. Drunk or sober, he just...he had this fuckin meanness in him. Find somebody weaker’n him and lay it on them. Bastard, dirty bastard. And, like I say, it’s the usual story. I began to lip him up – you do that again, I’ll no fuckin stand for it, I’d tell him, and he’d laugh. But he never hit me, just laughed and said ‘come ahead’ and then he called me a big poof when I never actually did anythin’... happened a few times, until, y’know, the time I did do what I said and went over the line.”

“How far over?”

“Far enough. Plenty far...fuckin miles. He skelped ma cuz his tea wisny ready. Punched her on the jaw, decked her in the living room. She got up and he hit her again, I says ‘quit it’. He goes ‘aye, who’re you, ya big prick?’ and I just lamped him. End of.”

“That simple?”

“Yes and no. He howled and he looked at me so I clattered him again and he goes down...it got ugly, have to say, Jesus, was it ugly...but I’m still proud. Aye...proud’s the word. Cuz I booted him where he lay, kicked fuck out of him, over and over again and he’s shoutin’ ‘ahh’ and ‘I’m dyin’’, so I toed him again and he’s...he’s shrieking like a pig and I dragged him up and pulled him out the door by his hair – some head of hair on him, big Joe. Hah. And he’s yowlin’ away...Then I booted him down the stairs in the close and he rolled over himself, scuddin’ his way down those stone steps, two flights, big stairs they were an’ all, kept kickin’ him until he was down on the ground floor, and he’s in tears by that point. He gets half up on his knees and I booted him again in the stomach and told him to fuck off and never come back...he says nothin’ , just staggers out into the street. He ran down the road, one shoe on, blood for skin, howlin’ like livestock. I broke his jaw and five ribs, right there. Like I say – ugly. But it got the job done. I was fourteen, big as I am now, but fourteen, still. Kinna big night for me, that.”

“Madre. He come back?”

“Sure he did, when he could, when I was out. My ma wanted him back, y’see? He wheedled his way in the door and it was easy, cuz she actually wanted to say yes. I told him to fuck off but he apologised and said that anyway, I was outvoted.  Ma said okay, Johnny was just a kid and Frances would just go along. So, somehow, it was me was causin’ the trouble. And that was him, back in the house, back in her bed.”

“He still the same?”

“No...he was a lot more careful. Kinna creepy, in a way, bein’ nicer-than-nice and it’s all ‘aw-right-son, how’re ye doin the day’?’ every five minutes. But people don’t change, not like that, was a matter of time and that was the drink, that time, the time he went back to bein’ how he was. See, he’d lost a lot of his swagger after what happened when I gave him a doing and chucked him out. He never reported it to the polis – how embarrassin’ was that for a hard man, given a tanking by a fourteen-year-old? – and anyway, what did they care if somebody like him got bleached? But Shuggy Devlin and them, they knew, and he never got his face back. Plus, he was gettin’ older anyway, and soon he just gets to be a hanger-on. He never was high up the pole in the first place, and when a soldier loses it...he was nobody. I knew, eventually, he’d take it out the old way, and it’d be ma, cuz she’d complain least. Johnny was on my side by then, if you’d call it that.  And then he did it. One night, I was out, he came home early, steamin’, and he raised his hands to her.

“I came in, saw what’d happened and just told him to get off his mark and never come back, else he’d get a leathering that’d’ve made the first one look like a fuckin massage. He just went, hardly said anythin’ and I never had to touch him. My ma never said a word to me, just looked at me, like...I was the bad guy.”

Florida Fried Lawyer

“Mr O’Donovan can see you now.”

We could see him, too – hard to miss, with a white bouffant wig wafting around his skull as if he’d scalped a fashion-depleted snowman, violet-flecked red face like a pre-schooler’s Ritalin-fuelled mad monster painting. His handshake said sincerity and the sweep of his arm said yew’re welcome. Florida Fried Lawyer.

“Come on in, y’must be Stephen – welcome to the great state of Florida, sorry about the weather!”

“Oh, we get rain in Glasgow...although we’re short on hurricanes.”

“Ah, well, we might still be spared – Dixie’s movin’ slow and unpredictable, could be she just creeps up the coast, kicks them in the ass ‘bama way, serve ‘em right. We’ll see. Now, to business - I guess John has expressed to you his predicament?”

“Sure, a lot of predicament-expressing lately in our company.”

“All right. Now, the police wish him to go undercover on their behalf, at his own risk, which would expose him to significant jeopardy, you follow?”

“Uh-huh – no jeopardy worse than significant jeopardy. That’s pretty much the king of jeopardies, right there.”

“Most assuredly! So, my counsel thus far to John has been to face the unpalatable possibility of jail time. Incarceration’s not what anybody wants in their future but most likely he’ll spend a little time in one of our more white-collar corrections institutions – hey, he din’t rape a busload’a missionaries, did he? – and then prolly get kicked back home to bonnie Scot-land to finish his bit. Maybe even, God willin’, your legal people say ‘okay, time served, you can jest go’. And John’s a free man.”

“I hear a lot of what-ifs in there, Tiresias.”

“Oh, call me Ty! And yeah, the law is a capricious mistress. You can’t say for sure what hat she’s gonna wanna wear, any given day. But you...let me put it this way... you can try to determine what the weather’s gonna be like and you can select your own finery on the back of that. Dress the way you think she’ll like. Yeah?”

“I canny see the question for the metaphor, Ty, but here’s a straight one back – what advice are you givin’ to Brady Pike? What suit’s he gonny wear?”

“What what now? My dear friend Brady is lost to us. Such a tragedy. His family din’t even have the comfort of sayin’ goodbye to him. Lovin’ daddy, much missed by all.”

“Mm. I think that exact phrase was in the papers. Loving daddy, much missed. Must be true.”

“Undoubtedly. He made some, uh...some errors of judgment in some a’ his business dealin’s, just like your brother John, but he was a fine man. Not jest his family’ll miss him, the wider community has lost a real committed citizen. A good Christian. And, me personally, a friend.”

“I only wish I’d’a been able to meet him. He sounds like what we call a roaster in Glasgow. But what I asked – what advice are you givin’...did you give...to Brady Pike? Same as for Johnny – suck it up and do the time?”

“Wait along a minute, now. Do I hear somethin’ a little untoward in your tone? Whyncha come out and say it, you think there’s some malfeasance here?”

“How long did you know Brady Pike? Ten, twenty years? I don’t know that kind of detail, y’see.”

“Well, I’m sure I dunno where you’re goin’ with this, but yeah, musta known Brady a good while. His daddy was a friend a’ mine, so mosta his life, y’might say.”

“Whereas you met Johnny only...when?”

“Your brother could tell you that much, Mr McCabe, you ast him. When he and Brady set up their business together, that’s when. I did some a’ the paperwork on the legal side...and nothin’ financial, case you got a mind to spread some more’a that shit you got goin’ on there.”

“No need to be defensive, Ty. Think how this looks from my side – I’m jist a simple guy, but I see my brother here in trouble, his own fault, no doubt, but the only legal advice he’s gettin’ is ‘you’re beat, take the medicine’? Now, I could say that to him, but he’s not payin’ me to be his lawyer.”

“O-ho, he’s not payin’ me neither, how’d’ya like that? On account, he’s got no money! He’s livin’ in a north-east St Pete condo with a waitress and – whaddya know? – that’s not the lifestyle of the rich and famous in the Bay area. Where’s your theory now?”

“Actually, that’s very interestin’. Why are you doin’ charity work? Guy you hardly know, complete loser to hear you tell it, can’t pay you, and he’s got no case. So why are you takin’ out his garbage? It’s not as if you’re actually fighting it – you’re just makin’ sure his wee slot car never leaves that groove. That’s bland legal advice. You’d probably call it a-no-dyne.”

“Here, now...I’m gonna give you a little headroom, on ‘count you maybe don’t have the unnerstannin’ to grasp the idea of pro-bono, nor neither the manners to cover your lack...but I haveta say, your attitude here since you walked in my door kinda stinks. ‘fact, you strike me as a real classless motherfucker. And I’m thinkin’, why are you wastin’ your billable hours, Ty, on this hillbilly Loch Ness Monster bullshit? This one, he jest sits on his ass like some fuckin ba-boon, lets his big brother wipe his ass ‘cept there’s no cleanin’ gets done, cuz bro don’t know shit in this town. I reckon we’re done, wuntcha say?”

“You seem to have lost your dictionary, Ty. All those twenty-dollar words didn’t make it past the first question mark, huh? Anyhow, you can send your bill for no dollars at all to that condo you mentioned and we won’t trespass on your hospitality again.”

“Oh, you’re welcome. Hope you don’t spend too long in Raiford, regrettin’ this conversation, John McCabe. Y’all have a good one.”