The Hanging Shed

NINE

By practice, Hugh Donovan’s defence counsel had been picked by the solicitor appointed to Hugh by the court. I travelled back up to Glasgow and trekked round the hard streets of the West End to find an advocate called Samuel Campbell, working at the offices of Harrison, Campbell, MacLane. It was the name left by the secretary who’d phoned my mother. I’d used Mrs Cuthbertson’s phone first thing to fix an appointment and get the address, but I hadn’t anticipated how far along the Great Western Road I’d need to travel. Especially carrying a suitcase. I was getting hot, bothered and asking myself for the umpteenth time why I was doing this for Donovan.

Scottish advocates, if I remembered from my sergeant’s exams, were self-employed members of the Faculty of Advocates. I assumed Campbell was using his old office at the solicitors he’d trained with. I found the nameplate on the side of a sandstone pillar on a fine Georgian townhouse. The terrace sat on a side road back from and looking down on the Great Western Road itself. They must have made wonderful homes a hundred years ago, but now most of them were given over to offices.

Inside was less pretty. The carpets were worn and the chairs sagging. So was the woman in the receptionist’s chair. She managed to achieve looking bored and harassed at the same time and directed me to sit and read some of the pre-war magazines while I waited for the lawyer. I sat and smoked and fidgeted, wondering what this bloke Campbell expected of me. Then a woman appeared from down a dark-panelled corridor to take me to him. She was slim, blond and bespectacled with a careworn frown. Her boss was giving her a hard day.

She strode towards me and stuck out her hand. ‘Sam Campbell.’

I was on my feet and shaking her hand before I could wipe the surprise off my face. Her eyes registered a habitual weariness at the puzzlement she provoked in folk meeting her for the first time.

I smiled warmly at her to compensate. ‘Brodie. I’m here about Hugh Donovan, Mrs Campbell.’

There was no answering smile, just a shrug. ‘I know, Mr Brodie. We spoke this morning. I left my number at your mother’s. And by the way it’s Miss.’

Her tone was schoolmarmy and her face registered at best disinterest, at worse, hostility. I could see why she’d been left on the shelf. ‘Well, miss, I’ve come at your bidding. How can I help?’

She cocked her head to one side. ‘Frankly, I don’t know, Mr Brodie. It wasn’t my idea. My client seemed to think there might be some advantage in it.’ She made it plain that she found that idea pretty bizarre.

Don’t ever believe that Scotland doesn’t have a class system. That we’re somehow immune from England’s stratification by birth and vowel sounds. For one dizzying moment, her cultivated accent pushed me right back to my first days and weeks at Glasgow University, surrounded by so much privilege and gentile upbringing that I could hardly open my mouth for fear of sounding like an Ayrshire farmer. When I worked up courage to ask a girl out I felt like Rabbie Burns arriving among Edinburgh’s society: patronised. Samantha Campbell with her common touch – call me Sam – opened old wounds.

I felt my ears heating up. Then six years of soldiering cut in. I’d led a company of 250 fighting men. Accents meant nothing. Only actions. Only whether you got up out of your foxhole and charged when the piper blew.

‘He was my friend. Is,’ I added.

‘He needs one,’ she said dryly. ‘Come on.’

She turned and led the way down the gloomy hall and into a gloomy room. Despite bookcases filling the walls floor to ceiling, there was no room for the piles of papers bound in red ribbon and marching inexorably across the floor. She climbed nimbly round one pile and dropped into her seat. I did the same on my side of her desk. She had only one file on it. It didn’t take much talent for upside-down reading to read Hugh Donovan’s name across it. While she leafed through the file, I sat getting more and more huffy at her being so offhand with me. I’d made this pilgrimage to her office on behalf of her client whose neck I’d wanted to wring for half my life. Why should I make any effort to prevent someone else doing it for me? Officially.

I studied her. Several years older than me. Late thirties, maybe forty, but far from the dour old man I’d been expecting. She was no doe-eyed dolly, but then she didn’t seem to be trying. Face pale and devoid of all make-up so that the freckles stood proud on her nose. I bet they annoyed her. Short ash-blond hair pulled hard back behind each ear with kirby grips. Blue eyes obscured by thick glasses. Slim figure in grey cardigan and skirt. Maybe ten years ago she’d been the cliche of the mousy librarian who could turn into the slinky vamp, in the right light, with the right make-up and with the right amount of beauty sleep. Maybe a week’s worth.

She looked up and pulled off her specs, showing the dark rings of tiredness and the beginnings of lines at the corners. ‘Finished, Mr Brodie?’

‘Sorry?’

‘The inspection.’

‘It’s my job.’ I hoped she hadn’t been reading my mind.

‘Oh yes. The crime reporter.’ She made it sound like a distasteful hobby, like eating your own toenail clippings. Hislop was one thing but why should a bloody lawyer be so snooty about what I did? I was getting fed up with this. I didn’t need to be here, especially for a back-stabbing bastard like Hugh Donovan. I stood up, my anger at the whole damn thing boiling up inside me. Enough.

‘Shall I come back when you’re having a better day?’

She coloured. The pale skin glowed over her cheeks and on her neck. She rubbed the bridge of her nose where it was marked by her specs. ‘You’re very touchy.’

‘I don’t like being anywhere under sufferance.’

‘Sorry, sorry. Please sit down.’ She took a deep breath and placed her hands flat on the table as though to support her tired body. ‘I shouldn’t have been so rude. It was Hugh’s idea but I am glad you’re here. I’m at the end of my tether. You’re my last resort.’ She smiled ruefully.

‘Things are that bad?’ I whistled.

She ignored my sarcasm. ‘That’s if you’re willing to help?’

I shrugged and retook my seat. ‘How?’

She tapped the file. ‘We have an appeal in two weeks’ time. I’ve got nothing.’

‘Two weeks!’

‘You weren’t that easy to track down!’

‘What are the options? I mean what possible grounds?’

She raised three fingers. ‘One, a wrong decision on any question of law. Two, the verdict of the jury was unreasonable, or not supported by the evidence. Three, miscarriage of justice. I can’t see any one of them applying here.’

‘Do you think he did it?’

She sat back. ‘That’s irrelevant. I’m an advocate. My job is to defend.’

‘But it must add a wee bit of conviction, make you more determined, if you genuinely think your client is innocent?’

She was reddening again. Not a useful faculty in an advocate, I’d have thought. Or a poker player.

‘I put everything into this case, Brodie. Absolutely everything. No one could have done more.’

‘You could have got him off!’

‘I got close!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Didn’t you know? It was a majority verdict.’

‘A majority?’ I was astonished.

‘I thought you were once one of Glasgow’s finest? This is Scotland. A jury comprises fifteen men and women drawn randomly from the public. You always get a result. Even if it’s not the one you want.’

I’d forgotten; been away too long. ‘What were the numbers?’

‘We’ll never know if it was fourteen to one or eight to seven. The court won’t say.’

I sat stunned. ‘But surely they can’t hang a man if eight think he’s guilty and seven don’t. Can you? Surely?’

‘Oh yes they can. They do. And they will. Unless we can find something new to put in our plea.’ She waited for me to say something smart.

‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’

‘I’ll see if I can disturb the sleeping dragon out there.’ She got up and went out. I heard a brief, sharp exchange, and then she was back.

‘It’ll come. Eventually. I hope you’re not allergic to strychnine. Now, where were we?’

‘At the risk of being boring, can I ask you again if you think he did it? I haven’t seen Hugh since our teens. We parted on bad terms. I’ve been dragged up here to try to help him. As of now, I’ve seen nothing, heard nothing that suggests he’s other than guilty. I’d just like to know what you think. You, more than anyone, will have sifted the evidence. I need some… encouragement.’

She pulled her glasses down her nose. Her clear blue eyes focussed fixedly on mine. ‘I think Hugh Donovan is innocent. OK?’

‘OK. Until proven otherwise.’ I took out my notepad. ‘You’d better start with the trial. What was the evidence?’

She opened the file at a document with tab on it. ‘This is a summary of the trial report. Not that I need it.’ She looked up at me and held up her left hand with the fingers and thumb splayed open. She closed down her pinkie with her right hand. ‘First there are the clothes with the blood on them.’

‘The child’s clothes?’

‘The child’s and Hugh’s.’

‘Both of them?’ Damn.

She nodded. ‘The child’s shirt and short trousers, simmet and pants. No socks or shoes. He was playing barefoot. A lot of them do over there.’ She nodded towards the badlands of the Gorbals. ‘Saves the shoes for school. The clothes were found rolled up in a bucket under Hugh’s sink in the flat. A stupid place to hide them. But there they were. And the blood matches the boy’s. A rhesus positive.’

‘Common enough round here, as I recall.’

‘Agreed. But they were wrapped inside a shirt of Hugh’s.’ She raised her hand to stop me asking how they knew it was Hugh’s. ‘Inside the collar was a label. They’d put it on in the hospital so the patients wouldn’t lose their clothes. It said “Cpl H. Donovan, RAF”.’

Of course. They’d done it with mine when I was convalescing in Alex.

She went on, ‘He says one of his shirts was stolen.’

We both raised our eyebrows. ‘What else?’

She sighed and pressed down a second finger. ‘The murder weapon. A knife wrapped up in the same bucket. It had the boy’s blood on it too. A bread knife, so the serrations held the stains very nicely thank you.’

‘Prints?’

‘A smudged set of Hugh’s on the handle.’

I winced. ‘You’ve seen his hands. He couldn’t hold a knife.’

‘The prosecution implied he could if he wanted to. The jury seemed to agree.’

‘Anything else? Witnesses swearing they saw him killing the boy?’

‘Nearly.’ She lowered a third finger. ‘Knowledge of the crime scene. Hugh knew a couple of things that only the murderer or his accomplice could know. The number of stab wounds: seven. That the body was naked. And that there were signs of strangulation.’

‘Christ.’

A fourth finger dropped. ‘There were also traces of heroin in the boy’s body.’

‘Dear God! But that doesn’t tie the murder to Hugh,’ I said desperately.

She raised one eyebrow. ‘But you can imagine what a meal the prosecution made of it. This junkie forcing himself on an innocent child. Turning him into a ravening dope fiend like himself. The jury’s eyes were rolling around like a game of bools.’

‘Did they know that Hugh used to go out with her?’ I choked on her name.

‘The boy’s mother, Fiona? Yes. It just gave the jury something else to nibble away at. Jilted lover, betrayal of the woman who befriended him etc. Hugh said you knew her too?

Oh, yes, Fiona. I knew you. I nodded. ‘Is that it?’

She turned her extended thumb down, leaving a clenched fist. ‘Just one more teeny wee thing. He confessed.’