1979

by Val McDermid

  Not all votes have been counted, but although Scotland still has an overwhelming Labour majority, the Tories are likely to command a majority of over 40 in the House of Commons.

  It was a catastrophic night for the SNP, whose support for bringing down Callaghan’s government cost them dear. Their vote collapsed and they lost nine seats, leaving them with only two MPs.

  A senior Labour Party figure told us, ‘It’s clear that the voters who deserted the SNP in droves have migrated straight to the Conservatives. If anyone doubted that the Nats are just Tartan Tories, this result should put them right.’ (Cont p2)

  10 May 1979

  HOW CLARION EXPOSED KILLER BROTHER

  Evil man who murdered reporter found guilty thanks to us

  Exclusive by Alison Burns

  Last night Joseph Sullivan began a life sentence for the murder of his brother, Clarion reporter Daniel Sullivan.

  This was the final page of a chapter that began when I discovered Danny’s brutally murdered corpse in a pool of blood in his living room.

  I’d come to have Sunday dinner with Danny, 27, at his flat in Fraoch Street in the Pollokshields area of Glasgow. But when I arrived, he’d clearly been dead for some time.

  Horror

  It was a devastating discovery.

  Our first story together was a happy accident. We were both travelling back to Glasgow after New Year with our families when our train was stuck in the blizzard and a woman went into labour.

  We went on to complete two major investigations that produced headlines for the Clarion. Both have led to a series of arrests and convictions for crime ranging from tax fraud to conspiracy to cause explosions.

  But when the police arrived at Danny’s flat that day, they weren’t interested in anyone we might have crossed. Because I had discovered his body and because I didn’t have an alibi, I became their prime suspect.

  Accusations

  During a long interview, they persistently accused me of having killed my friend when fighting him off during a sexual attack. They bullied and threatened me so much I betrayed Danny’s biggest secret – that he was gay.

  But that wasn’t enough to clear me. Next they accused me of attacking him because he’d rejected my sexual advances. They badgered me for hours before finally giving up when their colleagues found a better suspect – a young man who had regularly visited Danny at his flat.

  Even though there was no evidence against him except that he’d been in the flat for a short time on the night of Danny’s death, they arrested him.

  It was only when I started to dig deeper that the truth emerged. First, I heard that police had found a fingerprint that didn’t match the suspect.

  Fraud

  Then when I spoke to neighbours, I discovered Joseph Sullivan’s distinctive car had been seen in the street later that evening.

  The final piece of the puzzle came from a former Special Branch detective who had visited the murder flat that fatal night. His explosive testimony – given anonymously to protect his identity – revealed that he’d arrived to interview Danny shortly after Joseph had left and found him dead.

  He admitted he should have reported it to Strathclyde Police but claimed that would have compromised an ongoing operation.

  It was evidence that damned Joseph Sullivan. But why would a man kill his brother?

  The answer lies in the first investigation we conducted together.

  Danny told me his adopted brother had let slip a careless remark about tax-dodging schemes run by the insurance company he worked for. Danny enlisted my help. We were shocked to discover Joseph was a key player in the scheme, but because he was Danny’s brother, we did what we could to keep his name out of the headlines.

  When police swooped on the insurance company, Joseph was able to lie convincingly about his role because we’d suppressed his involvement. But his bosses knew better and he was sacked from his job as a clerk.

  Guilty

  He blamed Danny for what had happened and turned their parents against him. Danny was heartbroken when his mother refused to have anything to do with him.

  Danny had done nothing wrong but he felt guilty. Because he was about to take on the Tartan Terrorists undercover assignment that he feared might cost his life, he not only made a will leaving everything to his brother, he also told Joseph what he’d done.

  As the prosecution outlined at the trial (Full report, p5–6) Joseph didn’t want to wait for the money – around £20,000. He wanted to go abroad and start a new life. So he went to see his brother and demand an upfront payment.

  I know Danny would have offered what he had to hand, which would have been no more than a few hundred pounds. That wasn’t enough for Joseph. He needed Danny to be dead. In the row that followed, he grabbed a heavy onyx candlestick and smashed it into his brother’s head.

  He thought he’d wiped it clean of prints, but he’d missed the thumbprint that convicted him.

  If not for the investigation mounted by the Clarion, an innocent man might be in jail and a guilty man enjoying the proceeds of his vile act. Now Joseph Sullivan’s conviction means he cannot benefit from Danny’s will.

  Danny Sullivan loved his job and he loved the Clarion. We’re proud to have been at the heart of bringing him justice.

  Acknowledgements

  Like Allie Burns, I was a journalist living and working in Glasgow in 1979. Working on 1979 has been a potent reminder of how much we forget . . .

  Writing a novel set in the past always demands more research to get under the skin of another period, even if it’s still very much within living memory. For me, the quickest route to grasping the issues that concerned people and had an impact on their daily lives is to look at the newspapers of the times. I couldn’t have written 1979 without access to the archives of the Daily Record and the Glasgow Herald (as it was then). That was hugely complicated by the COVID restrictions we all lived under between March 2020 and March 2021, when I finished writing 1979. I want to thank the team at the National Library of Scotland who went out of their way to smooth my path to what limited archive access was available during that period. Everyone I encountered was friendly, helpful and careful. Your attitude made this book more authentic than it would otherwise have been.

  That legend of Scottish journalism, Ruth Wishart, was Women’s Editor of the Daily Record when I joined in 1977. I owe her for a hilarious and insightful trip down memory lane and its disreputable back alleys, and for taking the time to read my first draft for accuracy and authenticity. Thanks too for the salmon and the breathtaking views . . .

  Many of the details were provided or corroborated by other people’s expertise. In no particular order, my gratitude to Tommy Hughes (@TommyQH) for advice about Scottish banknotes; to Ruth Reed, Head of Archives & Art, NatWest Group for detailed descriptions and images of Scottish banknotes; to the Diageo archive staff for vodka notes; to the ever-stalwart source of so much of my forensic information, Professor Niamh Nic Daeid of the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science at the University of Dundee; to Christine Hamilton, for her recollections of the Citizens’ Theatre; to Paul Lyons, the fount of all knowledge relating to Glasgow Central station.

  Reading other people’s work is also a powerful tool for understanding other times, other lives. Ruth Rendell, Reginald Hill, P.D. James, Ernest Tidyman, John Le Carré, Norman Mailer, Penelope Fitzgerald and Colin Dexter all transported me into very different heads from my own and reminded me of the seismic social changes of the last five decades. Among the non-fiction books I found helpful were:

  Dominic Sandbrook: Seasons in the Sun

  Ian Cobain: Anatomy of a Killing

  Peter Taylor: The Provos: IRA and Sinn Fein

  Peter Taylor: Brits: The War Against the IRA

  Ed Moloney: Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland

  Alwyn W. Tur
ner: Crisis? What Crisis?

  Julie Welch: The Fleet Street Girls

  Thomas Grant: Court Number One: The Old Bailey Trials that Defined Modern Britain

  William Leslie Webb (ed) Bedside Guardian: No. 28

  Stuart Maconie: Hope and Glory

  Thanks too to my support team at Little, Brown and at Grove Atlantic. You’ve all been amazing in this strange and often frightening year. This book would not be in the hands of readers without the tireless and imaginative work of Lucy Malagoni, Laura Sherlock, David Shelley, Amy Hundley, Anne O’Brien, Sean Garrehy, Cath Burke, Thalia Proctor, Kimberley Nyamhondera, Tilda McDonald, Brionee Fenlon, Gemma Shelley and Cal Kenny.

  Thanks too to everyone at DHA who works with my books, particularly Jane Gregory, Stephanie Glencross, Camille Burns and Georgina Ruffhead. You’ve managed to keep the wheels turning in spite of everything.

  And the booksellers . . . ! Booksellers have been heroic over the last year. Innovative in how they engage with customers, whether via click and collect or events across many different platforms; supportive of readers and writers alike; but most of all, feeding our imaginations with a million different worlds.

  This has been a year like no other. I was in lockdown with my partner Jo for much of it. We never ran out of conversation, we were never bored, we never failed to challenge each other or explore a vast and sometimes bizarre range of topics, or to laugh at ourselves. (We binged a lot of box sets too . . .) Not a day went by that I wasn’t conscious of how lucky I am. And that millions of others were far less fortunate than us. Kudos to Jo for keeping me sane and keeping me going when writing felt impossible in the teeth of what was going on around us.

  Onwards, my friends.

  My 1979 Top 40

  In no particular order, this is the forty-track rotation I listened to when I was researching, prepping and writing 1979. They were all released in the late 1970s, though not all in 1979 itself. But then, like Allie, we all listen to tunes from our past . . .

  I hope it gets you in the mood for reading!

  ‘Picture This’ – Blondie

  ‘Lovely Day’ – Bill Withers

  ‘Automatic Lover’ – Dee D. Jackson

  ‘Brass in Pocket’ – The Pretenders

  ‘It’s a Heartache’ – Bonnie Tyler

  ‘Wild West Hero’ – Electric Light Orchestra

  ‘Because the Night’ – Patti Smith

  ‘Into the Valley’ – The Skids

  ‘YMCA’ – Village People

  ‘Like Clockwork’ – Boomtown Rats

  ‘Stayin’ Alive’ – Bee Gees

  ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ – Althea & Donna

  ‘No More Heroes’ – The Stranglers

  ‘Take a Chance on Me’ – Abba

  ‘Werewolves of London’ – Warren Zevon

  ‘Psycho Killer’ – Talking Heads

  ‘Kiss You All Over’ – Exile

  ‘Top of the Pops’ – Rezillos

  ‘Heroes’ – David Bowie

  ‘Don’t Hang Up’ – 10cc

  ‘English Civil War’ – The Clash

  ‘2-4-6-8-Motorway’ – Tom Robinson Band

  ‘Rebel Rebel’ – David Bowie

  ‘Glad to be Gay’ – Tom Robinson Band

  ‘Heaven Can Wait’ – Meatloaf

  ‘It’s Different for Girls’ – Joe Jackson

  ‘The Man With the Child in His Eyes’ – Kate Bush

  ‘Go Your Own Way’ – Fleetwood Mac

  ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll’ – Ian Dury

  ‘David Watts’ – The Jam

  ‘Until the Night’ – Billy Joel

  ‘Rikki, Don’t Lose That Number’ – Steely Dan

  ‘Watching the Detectives’ – Elvis Costello

  ‘(I Am Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear’ – Blondie

  ‘I Will Survive’ – Gloria Gaynor

  ‘Goodbye Girl’ – Squeeze

  ‘Make Me Smile (Come up and See Me)’ – Steve Harley

  ‘Girls Talk’ – Dave Edmunds

  ‘I Fought the Law’ – The Clash

  ‘Life in a Day’ – Simple Minds