ONEIf Nicole Carrow was being absolutely honest with herself, her most substantial reason for believing Thomas McInnes was innocent was that he had made her a nice cup of tea. She hadn’t been a lawyer long, but she still suspected she might need more than that in court. Her two weeks experiencing the practical application of Scots Law had demonstrated a few divergences from its more familiar English cousin, but she’d yet to find precedent for a special defence of Refreshing Herbal Infusion.
Nicole had anticipated an uncomfortable breaking-in period in Glasgow - acclimatising herself to the city, the people and the notorious weather - and was prepared for feeling like a fish out of water in the job for a while. However, her vision of in-at-the-deep-end had nonetheless proven short-sighted: she’d naively assumed it would be a bit more than a fortnight before she was representing the accused in a crime that had shaken the world.
Obviously the contents of the oh-so-mysterious envelope had raised her hopes and stiffened her resolve, but the sober reality was that - as Mr Campbell had pointed out - they merely thickened the plot her client was embroiled in, and apart from briefly delighting a few conspiracy theorists, would ultimately be of more use to the prosecution.
The cold facts remained that McInnes, his son Paul, one Robert Hannah and one Cameron Scott had been apprehended fleeing the grounds of Craigurquhart House in Perthshire, that the Dutch media mogul Roland Voss, his wife Helene and their two bodyguards had been found murdered within, that when Paul McInnes was detained he was soaked in blood, and that an attempt had been made to open Voss’s bedroom safe.
McInnes and Hannah had been members of the 'Robbin’ Hoods', as the tabloids had tagged them, a gang responsible for a series of country-house break-ins over a short but prolific period during the mid-1980s, the name referring to their profession of pilfering from the rich, and conveniently ignoring their omission of the giving-to-the-poor part. A speculative early spin on the story was that their loathing of the wealthy must have become intensified during their embittered prison terms, and that - whether entirely for their own motives or willingly assisting someone else’s - they had meted out terrible revenge upon their perceived oppressors by murdering Voss, an international icon of arrogant, even decadent - and some would say thuggish - tycoonery. This seemed to be borne out by the police’s revelation that while the bodyguards had been shot (once each, middle of the forehead - very quick, very clean, very efficient), Voss and his wife had been tied up and their throats cut. It hadn’t taken a pathologist to work out that Helene had been murdered in front of Voss before they dispatched him too.
It had been a particularly cruel and vicious crime, undoubtedly evidencing a heartless brutality borne of violent, furious hatred. And there had been something sickeningly demonstrative about it, thrusting its depravity before the public and forcing them to look at it. It seemed to crave their disgust, to solicit their repulsion, while at the same time its very publicness sought to rob Voss of his aura by the posthumous humiliation of such a sordid and conspicuous death. Death often built legends, lent greater stature to mere men and granted them the immortality of public mythology. But murder could be insult through injury, a faultless disgrace in an irredeemable theft of dignity, which burnt the oil portrait of a proud man and replaced it in the public eye with a grainy police b/w of a withered corpse, helpless and bested by no worthy foe, but some - and by extension any - rogue whelp.
Nicole couldn’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu as she remembered Robert Maxwell’s watery demise, the unreality, the impropriety of death paying a visit to one of the untouchable Three Rs: Rupert, Robert and Roland. Maxwell had seemed a figure so proverbially larger-than-life, a looming presence in and behind the media, and a figure she had, young in years, grown used to assuming would always be there. Someone the everyday realities of life wouldn’t touch, whose very irritatingness seemed to guarantee he would be around forever so you’d better get used to it, like the common cold or washing powder ads.
She remembered how the radio bulletin had sounded like a joke. Rich tycoons don’t fall off boats; if they do, they turn up later, safe and sound, then write a book about it and bore us all on chat shows, telling the world how the publicity - sorry - their lives flashed before them. Even while he was missing, those uncertain hours of anxious speculation and dismal journalism, she had assumed Maxwell would be found boomingly alive, having spent the whole time enjoying the amorous advances of a short-sighted minke whale. But no, the only whale they found was the dead one floating off the Tenerife coastline, and the colossus had indeed been felled.
And actually, after all, no, the world didn’t miss him.
Even before the pension-fund stories broke, he had started to become a smaller and smaller figure, just a dead businessman whose appetite for self-publicity had meant there was no-one left to blow his trumpet now he was gone. He wasn’t a giant after all, and history would make less and less of him with every passing day.
The famously ebullient financial health of Voss’s empire and his status in the UK as one of the Conservative Party’s favourite businessmen meant that the inevitable eulogising and necro-sycophancy by sufficiently important figures would safeguard his stature in certain circles for at least a while. However, the reality was that ultimately he would be remembered more for being murdered than for any of his achievements while alive. God, who could tell you two things about Lord Mountbatten, for instance?
Ee-aye-ee-aye-oh.
It was like that joke about the shepherd who, in addition to his traditional duties, had built half the houses in his village, repaired two dozen boats and knocked out all-comers in unarmed combat, bemoaning the fact that he was never referred to as Hamish the builder, chandler or boxer. 'I shag one sheep . . .' Nicole remembered someone once saying that killing a man takes away all he is and all he might ever be, but some murders can also take a sizable swipe out of everything a man ever was, and this was one of them.
To say the country was shocked wasn’t even clearing your throat, never mind an understatement. In the six months since Dunblane, the people of Britain had become reaccustomed to a world where unimaginable atrocity took place only beyond the removes of oceans or fictions. A spring and summer dominated by images of confused bovines - inside and outside Downing Street - had provided a comfort blanket of mundanity as they reassimilated themselves into the very British realm of the unremarkable. Then this.
It had been a slow burn, starting from the first sketchy and seemingly incredible reports, breaking at the tail end of the BBC news, that police had found a number of bodies in a country mansion in Perthshire. Nicole remembered the panic in the reporter’s voice - perhaps contemplating the consequences if they got this one wrong - as he stated that 'although it is as yet unconfirmed, we have reason to believe that the media magnate Roland Voss has been staying at Craigurquhart House with his wife Helene; so far the police have stated only that the bodies of three men and one woman have been discovered, and that they are treating all four deaths as murder'.
By the first ridiculous BONG! of ITN’s late-evening bulletin, the bodies were 'believed to be those of Roland Voss, his wife Helene and two bodyguards'. Five minutes in, it was confirmed that Voss and his wife had been staying in the house. By twelve minutes, the police had told the programme’s 'Scotland Correspondent' that the killings were 'sickeningly brutal and sadistic', but further details were not yet available (stay tuned!).
The nation was allowed to relax briefly while they learnt that their anuses need never again suffer the ravages of plain old bog roll now that the scientific breakthrough of the decade had delivered a quilted version; that two Eighties refugees with a coffee fixation still hadn’t shagged; and that nineteenth-century French peasants derived materialistic comfort from paying over the odds for a bland, gassy chemical passing itself off to the gullible as beer.
After the break, the day’s 'other main stories' were shunted out as it emerged that the police were holding four men in connection with the deaths, and by the end of an extended programme, it was stated with bass-toned gravity that a terrorist motive 'had not been ruled out'. Nicole had noticed that the situation was deemed to be so serious and the mood so sombre that Trevor didn’t even try to revive the viewers’ spirits with an amusing And Finally . . . clip. This meant the scheduled report from Wigan about a hamster who could play 'Waltzing Matilda' by farting into a series of colour-coded test-tubes would presumably be held over until the next night, when the last story might be about a plane crash in Zambia which, despite claiming 230 lives, had pathetically failed to turn up one corpse holding a British passport and was therefore not important.
By the time the specially convened and unprecedented Sunday Newsnight went out, the cops were getting less reticent.
'Police initially thought that tonight’s tragic and bloody events might have been the result of a burglary gone wrong, or even that the killings were part of a contingency, but they are now saying that, given the profile of Mr Voss and his well-known links with the Conservative Party - together with the sheer ruthlessness of the killings - they have to consider all possibilities at this stage.'
Yes, Nicole had thought. Especially when the Prevention of Terrorism Act allows you to hold your suspects for six days without letting them talk to a lawyer.
'Although Roland Voss was best known in the UK for his newspaper and pay-TV interests,' the strainingly stern-faced reporter continued, 'it should be remembered that his empire spans many countries, many businesses and many industries, including arms manufacture. As a result, Mr Voss had no shortage of enemies, and seemed sometimes to publicly revel in the fact, playing up to what he liked to call his ‘prizefighter image’. Indeed, you may recall that after the 1992 General Election, when his newspapers were accused of some very low blows in their campaign coverage, it was hinted by Labour sources that were they ever to win power, his would be one score they would not forget to settle. His words at that time were, famously, ‘If the British Labour Party was the most dangerous enemy I had to worry about, I’d sleep easier tonight. In fact, if it was in the top ten, I’d sleep easier tonight.’
'That is perhaps why the police are anxious not to jump to any conclusions regarding the motives behind tonight’s atrocities. As one police source told me, the fact that the bedroom safe appears to have been tampered with does not necessarily mean robbery was the principal objective, especially as at this stage it has not been established whether anything was in fact stolen.'
Eventually, out of facts and out of quotes, they moved on to reaction, which in most cases was blank disbelief. You could see it on the faces of the few establishment grandees who could bring themselves to be interviewed: System error. Does not compute.
Ordinary people got murdered. Poor people got murdered. Black people got murdered. Women got murdered. We don’t get murdered.
Occasionally one of us manages to off himself by mistake with the wife’s knickers over his head or gets found upside-down in a septic tank after a share crash, but we don’t get done in by the unwashed when we’re trying to enjoy a spot of hunting and fishing in the countryside. We’re safe from that sort of thing.
Aren’t we?
One by one they struggled to make sense of it, in a repetitive litany of incredulity, confusion and white-faced horror solicited by the noticeably unsettled anchorman, who was plainly wishing it wasn’t Peter Snow’s night off. And as no-one could make sense of it, thoughts turned instead to retribution; the only way forward after such a senseless loss of precious human life was to . . . er . . . kill someone else.
Rentaquote time.
'This is an outrage of unprecedented proportion,' blustered one ruddy-faced Tory backbencher - perhaps forgetting about an awful lot of dead Irish people, perhaps not - 'and if there was ever a stronger argument for the return of the death penalty, then I can’t think of it.'
No, I’ll bet you can’t, Nicole had thought.
'. . . lack of the death penalty as a punitive sanction in a case like this makes a mockery of British justice,' said another apoplect, as one by one they hitched their agendas to the back of the bandwagon of indignation rolling out from Perthshire.
'. . . well documented that Roland Voss was a strong advocate of the death penalty and it would certainly be his wish that these men were made to pay that price for what they have done tonight . . .'
'. . . how long will we continue to listen to so-called liberal excuses over the death penalty as outrage follows outrage, atrocity follows atrocity, murder follows murder . . .'
And soundbite follows soundbite.
'. . . of course with the autumn party conference coming up soon in Blackpool, the annual calls for the return of hanging are bound to be all the louder, and all the more difficult to shout down.'
Ah yes. There was the rub. Need something to resuscitate the party faithful at the last get-together before the election in the spring, if they can hang on that long.
By the time the first-edition front pages were flipped briefly before the camera at the end of the show, the mood of the lynchmob had reached hysteria.
'HANG THESE BASTARDS NOW!' led Voss’s own flagship tabloid, one frothing voice amidst a baying clamour.
'SCUM FOUR MUST DIE!' screamed the next.
'FOUR LIVES FOR FOUR LIVES', demanded yet another, with a strap elaborating: 'VOSS MURDERS: Nation calls for return of hanging'.
It struck Nicole that The Nation must have called the paper directly, given the short time between the story breaking and its going to press, but who could say. The Nation had clearly made up its mind, and it would be a brave or foolish person who stood before it and argued the contrary.
'God help whatever poor bastard ends up defending that lot,' she had muttered to herself as she switched the TV off, before taking her empty cornflakes bowl into the kitchen then going to bed.
Her radio alarm clock woke her up the next morning with the news that she was a poor bastard in need of divine intervention.
'. . . holding the men overnight under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, with the approval and, indeed, we are told, concerned assistance of the Scottish Secretary, Alastair Dalgleish. Two of the men, Thomas McInnes and Robert Hannah, served seven-year sentences for their parts in what became known as the 'Robbing Hood' break-ins, and police say they are investigating possible political motivations and exploring any links these men might have established with terror groups, particularly European left-wing factions, given Mr Voss’s media interests on the continent.'
Nicole sat bolt upright in bed, turning the volume louder and listening in frustration to more pompous conjecture as she waited for the names and their connections to be repeated, just to confirm she hadn’t been confusing the remnants of her last dream with the words from the radio that had stirred her.
She remained glazed-eyed and entranced for a few more fuzzy-headed seconds as her just-woken brain struggled to cope with the pace of her thoughts. She reached over and switched off the radio with a tut, its tinny burbling an irritating distraction as she attempted to process the information she had just received.
Last night, like everyone else in the world, she just couldn’t believe it, but had been gradually forced to accept the truth of this incredible development as the stark fact was coloured in with details, quotes and human emotional response. Nonetheless, there had remained an unreality about it, in common with all truly momentous events, perhaps because the 'news industry' had for so long made its living from over-dramatising the banal.
Disbelief was a reaction borne of so much wolf-crying, with the public so desensitised by the hyperbole with which the most tedious events were related (and the deceitful exaggeration with which the most harmless quote could be twisted or recontextualised to create 'a sensation' where there was barely a story), that when something truly remarkable happened, you just couldn’t deal with it. The media, having robbed every superlative of its meaning through misuse and over-use, did not have a vocabulary with which to convey such import. Once you’ve used up all your language of astonishment on Hugh Grant getting his cock sucked, how do you express the shock of thirty schoolchildren being gunned down in a gymhall, or of one of the world’s most powerful businessmen being forced to watch his wife bleed to death before having his own carotid opened as his bodyguards lie slain in the hall outside?
Usually, it all got more real in the light of day, as you woke up and found that you hadn’t dreamt it, and (most importantly) as you realised that the world had failed to stop - and that apart from having to listen to tail-chasing discussions on the subject, it wasn’t actually going to affect your life.
But this morning, the confirmation that it was all still there ('Voss still dead shocker') had been accompanied by the realisation that it was going to affect Nicole’s life. Thomas McInnes. This was a man she knew, that they were talking about, no longer some face in the paper or a name on the radio. A man who had sat down in front of her only a matter of days ago, a man whose voice, clothes, face she could remember. And by extrapolation he was one of the men all those MPs and journalists last night had said they wanted to see hang. One of the perpetrators of the most audacious crime of the decade. One of the men who had slaughtered four human beings in cold blood.
Which was where it broke down.
And with his son involved, too - how could that possibly have come about? What was this, The Generation Game does armed robbery? Brucie: 'Let’s see, they got the toaster, the teasmaid, the fondue set, the cuddly toy . . . okay, they lose marks for the four dead bodies, but other than that, didn’t they do well?'
She could not believe it.
Blank, staringly, simply could not believe it.
A mocking voice told her she sounded like a serial killer’s nextdoor neighbour. 'Eeeh, you’d never have thought. He was so quiet, you hardly knew he was there. Very polite to speak to . . .'
So she searched for something solid, some rationale that could support her instinct in the face of all the evidence that was already in the public domain and all the evidence that was bound to emerge in the coming days and weeks.
Exhibit A, your honour: one cup of tea. Milk and two sugars.
The defence rests.
God help us.
In mitigation, it had been a very good cup of tea.
After the self-doubt maelstrom of the first two days, she had thought that if she could get through the first week of the job she might find her stride, start to galvanise herself, get into the role and gradually remember the plans she had and the ambitions that had driven her this far.
And she did, battling through with her eyes fixed on Friday evening like a shipwrecked sailor’s on the shore ahead. She had been most grateful not to know anybody in the city, because if she had begun to unburden herself, she feared she would crumble completely. She had gone out for a drink after work with her bosses on the Monday and with Ian, her fellow subordinate, on the Wednesday, but in a way she had still been in character. None of them knew her from any other context, so she could hide behind her mask until she felt confident enough to take it off. Unfortunately, it’s the second week that gets you.
That’s when you realise that last week wasn’t hell because you were new and inexperienced, but simply because that’s what it’s like to work here. When you see an eternity of all the things you hated most on that first Monday morning, priolled out towards the horizon: the dingy Portakabinesque offices, like a candidate for demolition in a street otherwise embarrassed by its wealth of architectural splendour; the musty smell of suspiciously damp books; the rows of hideously Seventies grey-metal filing cabinets, like a set left over from a Monty Python sketch; the flickering strip-lighting and the glowering low cloud outside the draughty windows. That’s when you realise that this is not a game, but what you do when you grow up.
Thomas McInnes had appeared in the afternoon of that awful second Monday, right after her meeting with Mrs McGrotty.
Her first appointment of the day had been with a shrivelled-looking man called Mr Taylor, who explained at great length and with much historical detail - a great deal of which seemed somewhat tangential, which is saying something when you’re working in a legal context - that he wished to sue the council because it had taken them three years to mend a broken gutter-pipe around the roof of his house. 'Why didn’t you try and get it mended yourself?' she had asked, with unintended insensitivity.
'What the fuck you talkin’ aboot, how didnae I get it fixed?' he exploded animatedly, deeply wounded by her apparent lack of compassion. 'S’no up to me to get it fixed, is it? Up to the fuckin’ cooncil to get it fixed. S’how we pay wur rent and wur poll tax, innit?'
'Look, just to help me get this straight,' she said, trying to couch her words in as conciliatory a tone as possible. 'Couldn’t you have arranged for it to be repaired and then submitted the bill to the council?'
'Assno the fuckin’ point but, is it?' he yelped, a flurry of upper-limb gesticulation. 'Issi principle of the thing. S’no up to me to go runnin’ aboot after plumbers and then try chasin’ the fuckin’ cooncil for the cally. Be easier chasin’ fuckin’ Red Rum and hopin’ it shites gold.'
'So you wish to complain to the council for their laxity in responding to your complaint, and their delay in carrying out the repair to your guttering?' Nicole asked.
'Naw, ya stupit bitch,' he said, eyes ablaze with incredulity at her persistent obtuseness. 'I want to sue them for the psychological damage. I’ve been up to high doe ower this cairry-on, so I huv. Fuckin’ post-dramatic stress hingmy. Three years of listenin’ to the drips on the windae ledge - like Chinese water torture. And aw the cairry-on of phonin’ them up and askin’ when somethin’s gaunny get done. My nerves are shot to fuck, so they are. I’m on tablets, you know.'
By lunchtime she had dealt with half-a-dozen more such victims of a troubled world in need of Manson & Boyd’s assistance in their heart-rending battles for justice, including one man wishing to contest his ex-wife’s custody of his two children on the grounds that her new boyfriend was 'a prodisant' and that their spiritual welfare was under serious threat; and a woman seeking compensation from the Strathclyde Passenger Transport Executive after twisting her ankle alighting from one of its orange double-deckers, who was able to furnish Nicole with figures for her settlements down the years from the city’s other main operators as a guide to how much they should ask for.
Inexperienced as she was, Nicole nonetheless feared none of them were terribly likely to qualify for legal aid in pursuing their cases.
Ian had joked last week about the mythical 'Manson & Boyd Justice Fund', which he suspected clients would readily believe existed, and which might assist in legal crusades when legal aid applications had been rejected. Just fill in the form: give your name, address and a brief summary of the case you are fighting. Then tick the appropriate box which best explains the moral rectitude of your cause:
(1) It just isnae right.
(2) It’s against God’s law.
(3) They cannae do that, can they?
Over the course of the morning, she had been directly insulted eight times (five instances prefixed with the distastefully emotive epithet 'English'), been referred to as 'hen' (which she suspected was seldom applied in affection) more times than she could remember, and been asked twice by male clients if she would make them a cup of tea 'while they waited for the lawyer'.
This last had happened several times the week before, too.
'No, I’m rather busy right now. In fact, I’m so tied up, would you mind nipping out to the chemist and fetching me a packet of tampons,' she had promised herself she would say next time, but of course didn’t.
And then Mrs McGrotty had come in.
She was an elephantine creature in a shapeless brown coat that looked like it had been fashioned from dog-pelts and then dragged behind a heavy goods vehicle for a couple of days, its sleeves over-reaching her arms so that it appeared that she had shopping bags instead of hands. The door had burst open before her as two accompanying children - one about seven, the other nearer four - formed a noisy vanguard-cum-herald, and the two young girls had continued to burble, argue and occasionally trade punches throughout the early exchanges of Nicole’s conversation with their grandmother.
'They’re no mine, like, they’re oor Angela’s, but she’s fucked aff withoot tellin’ us anythin’ this mornin’. Fuckin’ cheek of her, me comin’ up here to try and sort this shite oot as well. Treat you like a fuckin’ skivvy, so they dae. Think you’re just here to look efter them and they don’t need to tell you anyhin’ if they don’t waant to. It’s nae wunner I’m up to sixty a day, between this and her Barry bein’ back in the Bar-L. Mind you, polis stitched him up for that wan. He never hut that boay - well, no much, but wance your face is known they’ll just pull you in for anyhin’. Six months just like that, bloody liberty - boay was oot of hoaspital in a fuckin’ fortnight. Right enough I’ve said to her enough times she’d be better aff withoot him, but they never listen at that age, do they, specially not when they’re aw misty-eyed like that. Ach, you should’ve seen him when the weans were born but, picture of young love, so it was. Puts it aw in a different light when you’ve got wee yins, just forget aboot everyhin’ when you look at them playin’ you come ower aw sentimental, so you DEMI! I’LL TAKE MA FUCKIN’ HAUN AFF YOUR FACE IF YOU TOUCH NAOMI AGAIN, RIGHT?'
Followed by injured wailing on the part of the chastised and a competitive tearful bid for further sympathy by the oppressed sibling.
'So Mrs McKechnie, what exactly were you . . . ?’
'HERE!' she suddenly barked, Nicole placing a relieved hand on her chest when she realised it was not she who was being thus addressed. 'Yous sit nice while I talk to the lassie. ’Mon. Play wi’ this.'
Nicole watched in horror as Mrs McGrotty’s yellow hand removed a ring binder from the desk and offered it to the older sprog, who took this as a cue to help herself to a further clutch of folders and a box of highlighter pens that had been sitting nearby.
Nicole found herself rooted to her chair and helpless as Demi and Naomi began to tear documents from the folders and Mrs McGrotty looked challengingly at her, demanding full attention as she resumed her stream of consciousness.
'. . . way that scheme’s been goin’ it’s nae wunner there’s nae bulbs in the lights in hauf the closes and it’s not like I don’t know my ain business cause I’ve tell’t thon yin a dozen times faimlies like that can get singl’t oot, specially when there’s cairry-on like that nonsense last year with the new railings they were puttin’ in . . .'
Nicole felt herself slump inside, knowing her eyes were gradually glazing but aware Mrs McGrotty was less concerned about her victim’s on-going attention levels once initial capture had been accomplished.
'. . . oor Chic gettin’ laid aff by that cheeky bastart ower in Milton just cause he was late a coupla moarnins, as if it was his fault the bookies wasnae open on time that day, and after him comin’ in on a Sunday the week before as well . . .'
Demi and Naomi coloured in a few affidavits in streaks of luminous yellows and greens, then disappeared around the side of the desk, out of Nicole’s view, giggling and chattering, occasionally silenced by an interruption to the Joycean catharsis.
Nicole made a couple of attempts to interject, to perhaps maybe kind of sort of ask what legal matter Mrs McGrotty wished to pursue, or even to inquire whether she might have mistaken these offices for those of her GP, but got no further than the words 'So Mrs McKechnie . . .'
'. . . no easy when you’ve weans runnin’ aboot I’ve tell’t them but do they care? N.O. N-FUCKIN’-O. Too busy givin’ oot grants to darkies and sendin’ wee thugs on hoalidays tae Kenya to be worryin’ aboot the state of . . .'
Demi appeared on the outer reaches of Nicole’s vision; or rather, her hand did, swinging something white on a string.
'DEMI!' came the throaty rasp, this time accompanied by a reaching, haymaker of a slap. 'Leave the lassie’s bag alane. That’s the lassie’s fanny pads you’re in at there. You’ve no to touch them.'
Mrs McGrotty smiled understandingly as Nicole felt the colour drain completely from her face, leaning over the side of the desk to see the contents of her bag abandoned randomly within a short circumference surrounding the two little girls.
'Fuckin’ law unto themsels this pair. Just never know what to dae aboot them, dae ye?'
Nicole knelt down, frightened for a moment that she might succumb to tears as she gathered up the remaining Lil-lets, her car keys, purse and other items. She found herself at eye level with Demi, and tentatively held a hand out to receive the pendulous tampon for disposal. The girl stared at her in apparent deep puzzlement. 'Can I have that please?' Nicole said in a croaky, plaintive half-whisper.
Demi’s brow creased into a determined furrow.
'NUT! GETTYFUCK!' she suddenly decided, and lashed out at Nicole with an open-handed swipe that caught her painfully around the bridge of her nose.
'HERE! THAT’S BAD,' stated Mrs McGrotty, further clarifying the moral position with another clout to the offending granddaughter.
'I’m awfy sorry aboot that, hen,' she offered, then deciding another show of penitence and retribution was appropriate, slapped Demi yet again. 'You’re in for it noo,' she warned darkly. 'Showin’ us up in front of the lassie, ya ignorant wee hoor. Noo just sit doon and shut up fae noo on.
'But that’s what I’m talkin’ aboot here, see? What chance have you when there’s that kinna hing . . .'
Nicole’s eyes were now watering, as was her nose, both in reaction to Demi’s blow. She pinched the bridge and held her head back for a few moments, blinking hard until her vision cleared.
'MRS McKECHNIE,' she barked firmly as she brought her head back down, beginning to appreciate that volume was the most valid currency of debate. 'I’m sorry, could you please tell me concisely what it is you think I can help you with.'
'What?' Mrs McGrotty asked in disbelief, eyes filling with offended anger. 'What the fuck do you think I’ve been talkin’ aboot here the past hauf-an-oor, ya stupit English cow. The poofs! That’s what I’m talkin’ aboot. The poofs next door! There’ two of them, right in the next hoose.'
'And have they been bothering you in some way? Loud music or something? Late comings and goings perhaps?'
Mrs McGrotty looked at Nicole like she was the thickest human being ever to have walked the earth, which by coincidence roughly matched Nicole’s own self-assessment at that moment.
'What do you mean? They’re poofs! Zat no enough? I’ve tell’t the cooncil a dozen times, but they’ll no listen, and I waant them oot. I mean, we’ve got weans livin’ in that hoose. I’m no wantin’ Demi an’ Naomi exposed to any filth. Weans have to be protected. What kinna upbringin’ dae the cooncil want them to have? Tell me that. An’ you’re askin’ me what’s wrang? Mind you, I’ll bet the likes of you hinks it’s fine, long as you’ve no to live there. In fact, here I’m are, pourin’ ma heart oot an’ you could be wan o’ thay lez-beans. Probly hink I’m the wan that’s no normal, zatit? Probly hink there’s nuhin’ wrang wi’ poofs. Well mark ma words, hen. If they’re sayin’ poofin’s awright the day, it’ll be child-molestin’ that’s awright the morra. Christ, don’t know what I’m daein’ here. Waste o’ ma fuckin’ time. Demi! Naomi! ’Mon!'
And with that, they were gone, as if sucked back out of the room by a tornado of indignation.
As the door slammed, Nicole put her head down on the desk and cried, hearty, snuffly, snotty sobs, the anguish of someone who not only felt very lost, but who feared she was reaping what she had arrogantly and headstrongly sown.
She used to think Rob had been her self-inflicted punishment for her teenage rebellion, but she knew now that he was merely a separate, self-contained disaster, an integration of sin and retribution, mistake and consequence. The real invoice had just arrived for her, here in Glasgow, September ’96, humiliated, lost, alone and found out.
This is what you want-– this is what you get, as John Lydon put it.
Jesus. Being fourteen once had a lot to answer for. The dark years. Black clothes and heavy eye make-up, and the obligatory Cure albums providing their soundtrack of facile angst-platitudes, essential listening for huffy teenagers. But you don’t just rebel. You need something to rebel against, and in true Blue Peter fashion, you can use an ordinary household item, like your father.
It should have told her something that she opted for politics; she had choice of weapons and picked an inflatable squeaky hammer. Annoyance and attention, but no damage. Dad was an Old Tory, sure, and his father was an Old Tory, and politics was in the blood, but it was an enthusiasm, not a vocation. If she had wanted to hurt him, she could have chosen any number of tried and tested methods. Maybe she had just been trying to show off. Little girls like to do that in front of Daddy. And so it came to pass that Nicole did declare herself a Lefty. Her pal Monica, who was into Howard Jones at ten and The Smiths a bit later, had declared herself a vegetarian (her father owned a bacon-curing business).
She met Rob at university in London, after a meeting at the student union to discuss plans for protest about some reactionary outrage that she couldn’t now remember. It had been one of the first such events she attended, a hall full of young people desperately looking for a common cause and a set of shared beliefs; what they needed wasn’t politics, it was religion. There was an overwhelming sincerity and worthiness, earnestness about it all, a reverence that seemed, well, again, religious. Until, of course, the SWP mob fell out with the RCP over some minute point of interpreted socialist principle, and the Labour Group got shirty with the Marxist Group about what slogans to put on their placards, and the Intergalactic Socialists for a Marxist Universe started a spat with the Vegan Organic Hamster Protection League . . . And so on. Her older flatmate, Pippa, who was in her final year and had been round the houses with this stuff before, had sung her a song when she announced her intention to attend:
One Trot faction, sitting in a hall,
One Trot faction, sitting in a hall,
And if one Trot faction, should have a nasty squall,
There’ll be two Trot factions, sitting in a hall.
Two Trot factions . . .Her faith had been restored slightly in the bar afterwards, where she recognised a guy from the meeting, someone who had seemed refreshingly aloof, watching events from the back, arms folded and wearing a sardonic expression. He was very accurately caricaturing some of the speakers, and cutting ruthlessly through all the bullshit and posturing to get to the issues that the meeting should have been about. Nicole took one look at him in action, drink in hand, surrounded by a laughing audience, and would later blush at some of the thoughts that popped into her head. Unfortunately, thoughts were all she’d ever have. His name was Eberhardt - his father was German and his mother a West Indian from East Ham - and his wit, intelligence, laughing brown eyes and flowing dreads all belonged to Martina, the drop-dead blonde sitting on his right.
Rob was the consolation prize. Nicole made the mistake of thinking, because she had seen him laugh at Eb’s jokes, that he had (a) understood them and (b) a sense of humour.
She had seen Martina on TV in recent months, presenting some Channel Four kids-and-chaos affair, and had heard her romantically linked to several B-list celebrities. Funnily enough, the last time she saw Eb was on TV too, but it was on the news. He was working in Rwanda for an aid agency, surrounded by a rag-bag of children who were shrieking and laughing at everything he did as they followed him around the refugee camp. His hero status remained very much intact.
By contrast, Rob’s stock had fallen, it would be fair to say. The humourlessness that she had mistaken for integrity, the ideological snobbery she had thought was political commitment. She still felt embarrassed for the green first year who had fallen for it, but she couldn’t blame her for not seeing through him right away. He was very good at emotional manipulation, at eroding your bases from within, making you feel worthless without him. Making you need his approval, making you feel that he was a pillar without which you couldn’t stand up. This, of course, he achieved by subtly chipping away at your self-respect, and cutting you adrift from the values and beliefs you had moored yourself to.
Her most frequent mistake was thinking he was listening to her. She thought he understood what she was saying about her family, her relationship with her father, when really all Rob latched on to was that her father was an establishment gargoyle from whose clutches he could rescue her. It was his fantasised ideal of their relationship. He was always trying to take her by the hand and lead her through the streets of London, like she was the bloody pit-owner’s daughter who needed her eyes opened. The bizarre, sliding-scale inverted snobbery that made him think he had been afforded priceless insight by being brought up by parents who earned less than hers, even though it was still in a middle-class house in a middle-class neighbourhood with a middle-class school, middle-class friends and middle-class values. Amazing, apparently, the difference in your ability to understand the world, depending on your mum and dad’s combined take-home and the size of their bloody drawing room. Wasn’t this what they were trying to get away from?
But then Rob wasn’t very big on irony.
He couldn’t see the joke in his class-warrior act any more than he could see that his use of - for want of a better expression - 'political correctness' was in itself a vehicle for his own prejudices. Actually, there wasn’t a better expression, that was the problem. Nicole didn’t think political correctness existed as an entity or a code or a system or anything else. It was a phrase that certain conservative elements had thought up because they needed a stick to beat back at the liberals with. It was a phrase coined by people who resented the fact that you couldn’t treat niggers, yids, shirt-lifters, bints and cripples the way you used to, who wanted to believe that it was all part of some organised agenda (and therefore reversible), rather than a natural, gradual, evolved process of increased understanding and therefore tolerance, which was leaving them all behind.
Rob, however, used it to look down on people and social groups in what he thought was an ideologically sanctioned way. A new snobbery for the Nineties. His sneering disdain when he heard someone address a woman as 'luv' or 'pet' or 'darlin’', for instance, thinking there was a crime in the language, unmitigated by innocuous intent. People who didn’t recycle their newspapers. People who bought the wrong newspapers in the first place. People who talked about 'girls', not 'women'. He never realised that what he was really sneering at was that they were somehow less than him, beneath him. And the fact that they were almost invariably working-class was probably significant. (Just maybe.)
God knows how, but they lasted more than eighteen months. In the end it was taking him to actually meet her parents that finished it, but then maybe, in a devilish way, taking him to meet her parents had been her way of finishing it. She must have known what would happen.
Rob just wasn’t programmed for it. It did not compute. Her father was warm, welcoming, genuine, generous and, above all, magnanimous. Rob must have been shattered not to find himself perceptibly disapproved of, nor any great strain between Dariusz Carrow and his younger daughter. Her dad didn’t agree with her politics, but had (almost infuriatingly) refused to be upset by her apostasy; indeed he seemed amused (in a not quite the full hundred per cent patronising manner, though close) that she had turned out this way. But that was him through and through. He was someone who was entertained by life’s twists and surprises, rather than constantly disappointed by its failure to meet his expectations (which, she too late understood, rendered her efforts at rebellion rather futile). To Rob, politics was about good guys and bad guys, knights and dragons. He never had the grace to acknowledge positive aspects of political opponents, couldn’t admit to qualities of humour, wit, generosity or conscience in a Tory. He saw them as non-persons, sub-human, or (of course, thank you Mr Bevan) vermin. Nicole had heard such terms before, but more importantly, so had her grandmother, in Poland. She could read his mind at the dinner table, see him find all sorts of ideological significance in the constituents of the delicious menu her mum had prepared for them (he must have been shattered at the absence of servants), but the overall atmosphere of warmth and civility was what finally flipped him out. He was one of the knights, and he clearly felt duty-bound to slay the dragon, despite the dragon’s hospitality and conspicuous failure to breathe any fire.
Her dad didn’t rise to it at first, trying to be both diplomatic and polite in changing the subject. But Rob had to fight, needed to fight. Even though this was being served up unprovoked at his own table, Dariusz was clearly prepared to let it go rather than cause a scene that would upset his daughter. However, a combination of annoyance that Rob was upsetting his daughter and the fact that his wife had already weighed in and been subject to some moral accusations that were as insulting as they were bizarre, meant that the gloves had to come off.
And Nicole enjoyed it. She really, utterly, massively enjoyed it. It was like watching the All Blacks against her old school team. Her father was a trial lawyer, for God’s sake - what chance did the goateed pipsqueak think he had? She could see the look on his face, the defeat, the self-disgust, the realisation that he was finally playing for his team, fighting for his side, wearing the jersey - and getting an absolute trouncing (or gubbing, as they’d say round here). The desolation of seeing his supposedly infallible moral sword blunted and useless, the first time he’d ever really got to unsheathe it.
And it wasn’t fair. Not fair at all. She knew that. She could not possibly have condoned some of the stances her father took or the tactics he employed, but his technique was nonetheless breathtaking to watch.
Rob couldn’t face her, and she knew that too. There was no big scene, not even a heavy phone-call. In fact he never rang again, and tended not to be around the same bars, clubs, meetings or buildings as her after that either.
She saw a bit more of her parents, though. There had been a few shared glances between her and her father during his demolition of Rob, a few mutually noted glints of enjoyment, a joke just the two of them were in on. So she made a greater effort to go home the odd weekend, and her father made a greater effort to be there when she did.
They were able to talk politics together from time to time, and although he never attempted to change her views, and she definitely couldn’t accept his positions, he did nonetheless teach her a few things.
'We’re not monsters, Pepper, that’s the first thing you’ve got to appreciate,' he once said. 'This demonisation, it’s not healthy, not constructive. You know I’m not some rampaging oppressor; neither are my family or your mother’s family. And we’re not ‘the exception that proves the rule’, either. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking everyone who doesn’t agree with you is some kind of alien whom you can’t possibly relate to or communicate with.
'I know that shouting a few slogans and lobbing some metaphorical rotten apples at a few aunt sallies can help get a head of steam up, but it’s no substitute for political debate. It’s also not a million miles away from what your man Orwell was on about. You go back and read about the Two-Minute Hate next time you see a bunch of protesters chanting hysterically on some demo. What this country needs, as a democracy - maybe now more than ever - is an exchange of ideas, some discourse. And you can’t have that if you don’t respect the other side a little.'
'Well I don’t think anyone ever told Thatcher that, when she was talking about ‘wiping socialism from the face of the Earth’,' Nicole replied. 'That didn’t exactly do a great deal to engender an atmosphere conducive to reasoned debate, did it?'
'No, it didn’t,' he conceded. 'It certainly reduced the currency of debate - I think deliberately. After years of consensus politics, she knew it was going to be a time for really taking sides, and it stiffened a few spines to mix it like that. Some would see it as a deft political manoeuvre, but certainly it left a bad taste in a few mouths. None more than your grandfather’s. I know you’ll find it hard to believe, but we used to argue about politics a great deal, while you and Gillian were tucked up in bed upstairs. Your grandfather was what was called a ‘Wet’. An Old School Conservative who saw politics as a more gentlemanly affair than it has become today. He always said he found Thatcher and her accomplices . . . rather ‘thuggish’, was the word he used.'
'And you?'
'I was younger, and it was a climate for a younger generation. I’ve got my reservations in retrospect, but at the time, Pepper . . . Well, it was exciting, let me tell you. It was intoxicating. Things were really changing, rapidly. And I know you’ll tell me that while the champagne was flowing and the Porsches were lining up around the Square Mile, the bill for the party was being met elsewhere - in the North and in Scotland - but by God it shook the country up. It changed it, moved it forward. And there will be winners and losers every time there’s change, so don’t tell me to feel guilty because I was one of the winners this time. For despite the aspects that seem rather distasteful in hindsight, if I went back there I’d sign up to be a part of it all again.'
'You’d vote for her if she made a comeback?'
'No, no. I just mean that I don’t regret the choices I made back then. Different measures suit different times. I don’t believe I was wrong, we were wrong or even she was wrong, even though I do regret some of her legacies.'
'Like what?'
'Well, like this mutually suspicious politics of hatred that we’ve been talking about. I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to put it behind you, rise above it. It’s no good me saying ‘don’t reduce politics to a slanging match’ and you replying ‘well, your lot started it’. At some point you’ve got to write off the old scores and look ahead to a new game. And although I know you don’t respect the people in the Cabinet just now, you have to look beyond them, too. It’s about ideas and values, not slogans and personalities.
'I don’t know, maybe I’ve turned into an old Wet like your grandfather, or maybe it’s just the lawyer in me, but I think politics is more fun when there’s two strong sides squaring up, no quarter asked or given, and respect on both sides. Because if you don’t respect your opponent, you’re not respecting the game, and that means you’re not respecting our parliament.'
'What, so you’re telling me after all this time that you respect the Labour Party? That you respected Neil Kinnock?'
'I respect the fact that the Labour Party has always been an advocate for, well, sections of society that have perhaps not been so high on the Conservative agenda. And you have to respect the fact that the Left’s agenda doesn’t cover the whole spectrum either. I know it sounds trite to say that ‘it’s all very well looking after the poor but someone needs to look after the rich’, but there’s a grain of truth in it nonetheless. And that truth is that in Britain we need two sides, two advocates, each reminding the other about the issues that aren’t on their agendas, the parts of the board that their plans don’t cover.'
'It might help if a few of the current cabinet thought that way too,' Nicole said.
Her father had arched his brows, seemingly troubled by unspoken thoughts. 'Yes, well,' he said. 'I’d have to give you that one. I do often wonder what your grandfather would have made of the likes of Portillo and Swan. He was a great admirer of Lord Home in his day, of men who saw their role in government as one of service. The problem with those two is that they are very much creatures of current politics. One gets the impression when one of them drafts a paper or makes a speech, they’re less concerned with how the idea would affect the country than how its reception will affect their standing within the party. I never thought I’d hear myself say it, Pepper, but I do fear that it’s a symptom of a party too long in government.'
'Well, it seems there’s at least one thing we’re agreed on.'
However, there had been another consequence of her father’s humiliation of Rob back then, something that strengthened Nicole’s resolve to make her own way in law, something that confirmed the difference between them. She had enjoyed his mastery, certainly, and thrilled at his oratory, but was disturbed not only by his use of arguments that she found abhorrent, but more by his use of arguments that she knew he found abhorrent.
There were lawyers, she knew, who although they would (obviously) never admit it, nonetheless took pride in achieving a verdict they knew to be unjust, considering it a testament to their own prowess that they could play the game so expertly. Lawyers who well knew that their client had done it, for instance, but whose egos it boosted to win the case, to let their own abilities wield more power than the facts. And she knew that it wasn’t all down to egotistical misanthropy; whatever his or her beliefs or intentions, a lawyer has to do whatever is in his or her power to win the case, and can soon forget the morality of it as the race gets faster, the contest heats up.
But there was still something very distasteful about it, something that underlined how it was just a game to the lawyers when it meant a hell of a lot more to the other people inside and outside of the courtroom. Gods playing with the mortals for their sport.
There was a look on Rob’s face, fed up with him as she had been, which she recognised and which bothered her. She knew it from courtrooms, from the many spare mornings and afternoons she had spent watching trials. The bewildered, frustrated and - most significantly - impotent look on the face of the poor sod on the stand, as he sees truth, fact, logic and reason implode and disintegrate under an onslaught of semantic gymnastics, molecule-width hair-splitting, near Dadaist reinterpretation, and mean, downright sophistry. And she didn’t just mean the accused or the plaintiff; how often had she seen the honest eye-witness, or the casualty officer who treated the victim, or whoever, stagger back into the body of the courtroom feeling like they had been unmasked up there as a malignant liar, an incompetent moron, or both?
The devil, it seemed, was never short of an advocate. The ordinary punter, however, was often less spoilt for choice in his representation. And so what if it sounded naive? She wanted to assist people as they cowered before the imposing and forbidding complexity of this machine which otherwise sucked them in, twisted them, stretched them, turned them inside out and upside down, and then spat them out, telling them as they lay there, dazed, whether it had (by the way) found for or against them.
A guide through the maze, a Sherpa on their climb.
Nicole’s real sin hadn’t been a rebellion, but a vanity. While her father expertly worked the machine, she thought she could take it on. This is what you want: to defend the ordinary Joe who is being buffeted, abused and toyed with at the unknown whims of a shapeless entity he can no more understand than he can control. This is what you get: 'Post-dramatic stress hingmy.'
'Don’t touch the lassie’s fanny pads.'
Careful what you wish for.
When the sobs subsided, she remained in place with her head on the desk for a while, wondering whether she should attempt a Major Major-style exit out of the window, only never to return again. Trouble was, she was two floors up over West Regent Street.
She heard the door open, then looked up slowly to see a man standing before her, holding what was locally known as a tammy in both hands. He looked mid-to-late-fifties, tall and broad, carrying excess weight in places that paradoxically suggested he was once a lot more trim. Formidably so, even. 'Oh God, I’m sorry,' she said with a sniff, suddenly sparking herself into action, tidying a few items on her desk and harassedly moving around to gather some of the debris from the office floor.
'Let me get those,' he had said, almost to himself, placing his tammy on a chair and kneeling down to pick up a few sheets of paper.
'No no,' she said, failing hopelessly not to sound flustered. 'I’ll manage, I’ll manage.' She sniffed again, her tubes still a little choked, her face feeling conspicuously puffy. 'I just need a moment here . . .'
'Look, tell you what,' he said in deep, soothing tones, 'why don’t I make you a wee cuppa tea while you take a wee minute to sort yoursel’ oot. Maybe even nick oot for a bit of fresh air.'
'You know, I’m perfectly capable of making myself a cup of tea if I decide I want one,' she snapped, not taking her eyes off the multicoloured documents scattered around her. 'I’m not . . .'
'Miss Carrow,' he interrupted, the voice again soft but lent persuasion by its diaphragmic bassiness, 'I’m sure you’re extremely capable of makin’ yoursel’ a cuppa tea, and plenty more besides. But you look like you’ve had a helluva rough day, an’ I’m just sayin’ let me make you wan while you . . . recompose yourself, if you like.'
She suddenly stopped fumbling around on the floor and looked up at the man, closing her eyes for a second and then giving him an apologetic smile. 'I’m sorry,' she half-whispered, shaking her head. 'I don’t mean to be rude. You’re right. I have had a hell of a day.'
He held a hand out to her to help her climb back to her feet. Nicole grasped it and laughed a little.
'A cup of tea would be just lovely,' she said. 'Mr . . . ?'
'McInnes. Tam McInnes.'
Mr McInnes had looked to the kettle and mugs while she finished gathering up the stray stationery and opened a window. He placed the steaming mug on the desk in front of her and took a seat opposite.
Nicole took a few warm, restorative gulps and sighed, a long, slow exhalation. 'That bad, eh?' Mr McInnes inquired.
'You’ve no idea,' she said, and then began, inexplicably, to rant to this total stranger, letting go everything from the past couple of weeks and far beyond between mouthfuls of tea, while he sat there and nodded sagely, or responded with understanding, unjudgmental comments.
'My own fault, really,' she had said during one of the more lucid passages. 'Being such a bloody-minded and impetuous creature. Such a bloody stereotyped middle-class daughter, trying to rebel against Daddy for reasons I can’t even begin to understand, and that I don’t think Freud understood so well either. Do you have children, Mr McInnes?'
He nodded with a smile, his eyes straying just long enough for her to detect the conflicts of love, hope, disappointment and regret.
'Aye.'
'Well, forgive them,' she said, 'for they know not what they do. My father’s a lawyer. His father was a lawyer. Two of his brothers are lawyers. I suppose if I really wanted to rebel I should have gone into the arts or something.'
'Or become a crook,' Mr McInnes offered.
'No. Two sides of the same coin. If you’re going to play fast and loose with the law anyway, you might as well get a bit of security.'
'So what was your big rebellion?'
Nicole laughed. 'Coming here, I suppose, among other things.'
'To Glesca?'
'Yeah, sort of. Well, partly. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know.'
She had another gulp of tea.
'Daddy specialises in libel law, and I grew to see that as a way for rich, successful people to make themselves even more rich and successful because they’d never heard the phrase ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me’.'
'I wouldnae be so sure they hadn’t heard it,' Mr McInnes offered. 'Seems to me being called a few names hasn’t hurt a few of them, financially speakin’.'
'Yes, but that’s precisely my point. It just seemed to be about money, nothing but money. Among people to whom only money meant anything, my father included, and that was something I could never understand.'
'Well, it certainly comes in handy when you’re peyin’ for the messages.'
She shook her head, laughing sadly at herself.
'I know, I know. It’s pathetic. I’m a collage of clichés. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing here. Some bunch of reasons that seemed so important once upon a time but suddenly didn’t seem quite so inspirational this morning.
'I came here because I wanted to prove I could make it on my own, away from all that . . . benevolent familial support. I also had some insane notion about helping people. Maybe some adolescent Gareth Pearce fantasy, I don’t know.'
'Why here?'
'Well, I didn’t want to leave England, and I couldn’t think of anywhere more different from London, more removed from what I was used to. It’s also a different legal system, which meant an awful lot of extra studying and even a few correspondence courses, but it meant that I’d be working within something my family - and I suppose I really mean my father - was excluded from.'
'So did your father dae somethin’ to upset you? Ach, sorry, that’s none of my business.'
Nicole shook her head and waved her right hand placatorily.
'No, no. You’re quite right. It’s a logical enough question. But the fact is quite the opposite. He provided everything for me. Put me through school, university, and was ready to set me up in the legal profession for life. I always loved him, dearly, but I don’t know . . . I wasn’t trying to bite his hand; I wasn’t trying to throw it all back in his face. I don’t know what the bloody hell I was trying to do.'
'Maybe you were tryin’ to make him proud of you,' Mr McInnes said flatly, a notion that made her suddenly sit up. 'You could have been a good wee lassie and gone and worked for his firm, but then you’d only have been a good wee lassie. Maybe this way you’re tryin’ to show him what you can achieve on your own, even to repay him for everythin’ he’d given you.'
Nicole just sat and stared, fixated by the sad-smiled man opposite, and thinking that his words were quite the most disarmingly perceptive ones she had heard in several years.
Another part of her wondered at what mistakes he had made and what harsh lessons he had learnt as the price for such understanding.
'So, Mr McInnes,' she eventually said, after some polite small-talk had cleared the ashes of their previous discussion. 'I hope after all that that there is actually something I can do for you.'
'Aye,' he said, rather darkly, and produced an A4 brown envelope from inside his jacket.
'I need you to look after this,' he explained, placing it on the desk. 'I need you to record that I’ve gie’d you it, sealed, then haud on to it until next Monday afternoon. If I don’t pick it up before then, open it.'
'What’s in it?'
'If we’re baith lucky, you’ll never find oot.'