Acid Attack

by Russell Findlay

  As I listened silently agog, Smart also revealed that he made the Hughes call ‘go away’ with the following suggestion: ‘Why don’t you send a legal letter and Russell will be disciplined?’ So the time-consuming complaint from Sheriff Paul Reid, with its falsehoods about Jackie Hughes, seems to have been instigated by my own editor to make a criminal think it would land me in trouble!

  Smart explained his connection with Hughes by saying it was inherited from his predecessor David Dinsmore, who had just been promoted to the post of Chief Operating Officer of News UK. I first met Dinsmore as a schoolboy doing work experience at the local paper where he was a young reporter. Upon becoming editor, Smart claimed to have phoned Dinsmore to say, ‘Barry’s telling me you’re his best friend,’ and that Hughes had been a good source of stories for him. The dynamic of the Dinsmore–Hughes relationship was described by Smart as ‘Michelle Mone 2’ – a reference to lingerie tycoon and Tory peer Michelle Mone and her hunger for self-publicity.

  I left Smart’s office with an explanation but no apology. As I numbly returned to my desk, I felt betrayed and conflicted. Should I make a fuss or keep my mouth shut? A cool head was required. The situation was unlike anything I had experienced. Life was still consumed by the attack and its aftermath and I was acutely conscious that doing nothing was better than doing the wrong thing. Little did I know, it would ultimately lead to my departure from my job.

  That Sunday’s paper carried my investigation revealing the Kinahan gang’s foothold in Scotland under the front-page headline ‘COPS PROBE “IRISH MAFIA” FIGHT NIGHTS’. I was happy to provide a smaller story with background information about the sport’s deep links to criminality, which I saw as an opportunity to reset The Scottish Sun’s troubling relationship with Hughes, by hopefully extinguishing his orchestrated and perverse portrayal as a figure of success, celebrity and legitimacy. The story began:

  Scotland’s fight game has long been tainted by hoods and heavies. Thug promoter Barry Hughes, 37, is a crony of feared gangland boss Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson, 50. Hughes, of Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire, courts publicity as a self-styled business tycoon.

  But he has a string of convictions for violence, fraud, money laundering and carrying a knife.

  Two years ago he enjoyed a £50,000 Dubai holiday weeks before he went bust owing the tax man £9.8million.

  When another groundless letter from Sheriff Paul Reid arrived on my desk, I burst out laughing.

  25

  SUNSET

  Slinking out of The Scottish Sun office for an appointment with my GP one regular Wednesday morning, I had no idea that I would not return. Not that day, not ever. It’s not that I was at breaking point. I had already broken – it just took me a while to realise.

  Prior to the acid attack, I was dealing with an array of emotional personal issues. When William ‘Basil’ Burns came to my door, as strange as it may sound, the frenetic aftermath felt like a welcome distraction from those pains. Of course, this was illusory as the attack only added to the pressure on me.

  The immediate and intense consequences of a knife-wielding, fake postman splashing sulphuric acid in my face became all-consuming. My mind was alive and fizzing with anxious thoughts, regrets and unanswerable questions. What if my daughter had answered the door to Burns? What if his knife had found my guts? Should I have inflicted real damage on Burns? What was to be done about those who sent him? Why were the police sitting on their hands?

  Dark winter nights and mornings put me in a state of high alert while coming and going from my home. Strange cars and unknown faces were clocked, registration numbers scrawled down. Every approaching person in the street was instantly assessed, my fists clenched as I asked: were their hands in or out of pockets?, faces covered or visible?, benign or malign?, fight or flee?

  Friends and family rallied round. I smiled and nodded, got back to work. Good old-fashioned defiance and stoicism. Everything is fine, I insisted. I wasn’t lying – just kidding myself and them. When I then discovered that Gordon Smart had withheld the alleged Barry Hughes threat, yet another front opened in my already too busy, crazily cluttered mind. Initially dumbstruck, I then demanded answers. When I sat in Smart’s office and finally elicited the full technicolour details, I could only hope he would be as candid with the CID.

  Over the following days and weeks, I caught occasional glimpses of Smart, but we had no reason to communicate and he seemed to keep a wary distance.

  My initial feelings of shock, hurt and betrayal mutated and hardened into bitterness, mistrust and anger. What might I say or do if I came face-to-face with Smart in a corridor or lift? As it turned out, we would never speak again. He vanished from the Glasgow office. Promoted to the post of deputy editor in London, he unexpectedly left the company eight months later.

  I confided in two colleagues whose judgements I value. One arched his eyebrows and murmured, ‘You have got to be fucking kidding!’ while the other, eyes darting round the newsroom, rhetorically asked, ‘How can you possibly trust them again?’

  I kept getting drawn back to the collection of obsequious, pro-Hughes stories which served to fuel my anger and growing conviction that my uncompromising style of journalism was incompatible with the newspaper I worked for. Other friends and fellow journalists, measured and sensible people, were even more scathing. Their disgust helped reassure me that my feelings were entirely appropriate. The following words from Shōgun, James Clavell’s classic novel about 16th-century feudal Japan, describe my situation: ‘A man has a false heart in his mouth for all the world to see, another in his breast to show his very special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except himself alone.’ The world saw the façade of a bold and defiant journalist, my friends and family were privy to the emotions beneath the surface, but only I knew that neither of these were anything like the full truth. Following Smart’s revelation, I managed to hold it together for just over five weeks. I finally admitted that I was unwell and in need of help. When I sat in front of my GP, feeling strangely guilty for slipping away from my desk, a jumble of words came tumbling from my mouth and a garden sprinkler appeared behind my eyes. So that’s why doctors have a box of tissues to hand.

  While some men are reluctant to seek such help due to misplaced machismo, the stigma of perceived weakness, it was the only sensible option, if not for my mental and physical welfare then for my incredible, inspirational, loving daughter who deserved her real dad back. To my surprise, the GP decreed that I was not fit for work for a period of six weeks minimum. Deep down, I knew she was right, but the prognosis sat uneasily with me. Six weeks sounded like forever. Was it not slightly over the top – a bit of an unnecessary fuss? It’s not that I was ‘ill’ – not really.

  Lunchtime was spent enjoyably alone in a café, giving me time to pause for reflection, allowing the new reality to sink in. My GP had prescribed peace, space and time for recovery, to repair and stabilise my erratic emotions. I embraced the opportunity. Knowing that keeping physically and mentally active was vital, I completed a ridiculously lengthy to-do list of DIY tasks, exercised, saw friends and went on excursions.

  As I sipped coffee, I had no idea that there would be no return to The Scottish Sun or that the novelty and necessity of six weeks of breathing space would evolve into a suffocating state of limbo. Sick leave evolved into garden leave, then a protracted discussion about the terms of my departure.

  For 23 years solid I had been a newspaper journalist. It defined me. Week after week, as instructed by my old managing editor, Malcolm Speed, I hunted down stories while others chose the gentler path of tinkering with other people’s words, opining or drawing boxes on computer screens. For almost a quarter of a century, life was a machine-gun rat-tat-tat of punchy investigations and exciting exclusives, of unmasking the dangerous, exposing the hypocrites and standing up to the powerful – not to mention miles upon miles of flimflam and filler. Now, at the behest of my GP, it all s
topped.

  Little did I also know how extraordinary 2016 would become, as I rose like a phoenix from the ashes of a tawdry doorstep acid attack. I met the woman with whom I will spend the rest of my life. I exercised more, I drank less alcohol. I learned to be more appreciative of simple pleasures. I strove to be a better person – more patient and tolerant. I was free to holiday wherever and whenever fancy took me – budget dependent, of course. OK, none of these consequences had been the intention of Burns or his paymaster, but it would be churlish of me not to express my gratitude, even though I did chuckle upon hearing that Burns was continually being shunted around prisons because there was a price on his head.

  The gnawing uncertainty of my professional future meant that being off work was not all a holiday camp and the kitchen calendar continued to be marked with medical appointments, although they gradually petered out. My recovery was vital, as I needed to be fit and alert to deal with the ever-present spectre of the criminal investigation and prosecution of Burns and his getaway driver, Alex Porter.

  Burns called on his favourite solicitor. A Crown official informed me that this brief wanted access to my house for the supposed purpose of preparing his client’s defence. The thought of him poking around my home made my blood boil. The Crown employee said he was ‘flabbergasted’ at the lawyer’s request and he was duly ordered to stay away.

  My only recourse was to raise the matter with the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, the ‘independent’ gateway body for complaints about lawyers. Believing it to be pointless, other than for the purpose of creating an official record, I told them, ‘I would like the SLCC to ascertain whether ———’s request was, as I suspect, ordered by Mr Burns (or his associates) in an attempt to intimidate me.’ The response from the SLCC was asinine. I had been explicit. I wanted them to investigate why the lawyer had sought access to my home but they somehow interpreted this as a request to find out how he had got my address. Obviously, he would have had the address all along.

  I replied:

  The SLCC is viewed as lacking independence from solicitors and their trade body the Law Society of Scotland. The SLCC’s track record suggests it does not have the power or desire to act in the best interests of the public. Your failure to understand a simple letter confirms my beliefs.

  Your letter also makes it clear that the SLCC has no interest in considering serious concerns about the welfare of me and my family. Therefore, further involvement with the SLCC in relation to this matter would be time-consuming and pointless.

  When Burns and Porter were also charged with the shooting of the Daniel mob associate Ross Sherlock outside a primary school, it was a complication I could have done without.

  Chronic delays and ineptitude are the norm in Scotland’s outdated and self-serving prosecution and court system, so I was hardly surprised when the trial was set for 4 January 2017 – more than a year after the event. What really stuck in my craw was that the Crown Office was cynically using my open-and-shut case to support their shaky prosecution of the school shooting and their obvious lack of interest in going after those who ordered the acid attack. Whatever evidence they had against Burns and Porter for the shooting, it would be nowhere near as compelling as that for my attack and probably not enough to prosecute in isolation. If Burns had faced only my charge, the sensible option would be a guilty plea, not least to spare him the embarrassing ordeal of everyone hearing how Scotland’s worst hitman was battered then rescued by the police.

  I met with two Crown Office people to go through my evidence. They asked about the knife. Again, I answered truthfully that I had not seen it in my attacker’s hands. They gave me an undertaking that they would not call my daughter as a witness but asked for her to provide a taped interview to the police. This was agreed to. The meeting ended with a cheery request not to get murdered before the trial as this might make the case trickier to prosecute.

  On the day my daughter and I came back from our summer holiday, a clinical psychologist from the State Hospital at Carstairs phoned me on the instruction of the Crown. He asked when it would be possible to speak with my daughter, in order in assess how best she could give her evidence. No, I explained, that was incorrect – the Crown had pledged not to call her. Angered by the failure to even inform me of their changed plan, I emailed them. Back came the reply that there had ‘been a misunderstanding’ and that ‘no undertaking was given by them that [my] daughter would not be called as witness’.

  I was no innocent, knowing more than most about the Crown’s capacity for flannel, but this falsehood was so unnecessary and served only to destroy any residual trust I had in them. What had actually happened was that the original undertaking had been made without the knowledge or consent of Richard Goddard, the advocate prosecuting the case, and that he, understandably, wanted to keep all options open. If only they had just admitted that, perhaps some goodwill could have been recovered.

  The situation deteriorated further. My priority was always to minimise my daughter’s exposure to the whole sordid business, while being willing to do whatever was reasonably required to assist the prosecution. The psychologist, having met my daughter, recommended that she should give her evidence ‘on commission’. This would mean the she would be filmed, under oath, but prior to the main trial, with a judge, prosecutors and defence lawyers. Burns and Porter would watch on a video link, although the Crown initially failed to disclose this significant fact.

  I was not pleased but, for the sake of justice, consented. The Crown proposed this session should take place in Edinburgh, on a school day in November. Why not Glasgow, I asked? Surely they should aim to minimise the impact on a child witness? Was it because an Edinburgh judge might not be agreeable to a trip to Glasgow, even by chauffeur-driven judicial car?

  My daughter was not going to miss a day’s education and traipse to Edinburgh in order to undergo a challenging and unpleasant ordeal which could just as easily be held close to home. As it happened, the November date was scrapped when one of the defence lawyers claimed they could not make it, so the Crown came up with a new one – 20 December. The timing could not have been worse. My daughter’s previous Christmas had been defined by the horror of seeing me attacked. Now the Crown thought it was acceptable to stir up those memories by subjecting her to questioning and cross-examination about the attack, just days from the first anniversary. She deserved a normal Christmas, not a painful re-run of the previous one. Anyway, I wondered, why had they not sorted this out sooner, given they’d had a year to do so.

  Through gritted teeth, I reluctantly agreed to the new date because I feared that rejecting it could risk the trial being delayed, but I refused to go to Edinburgh as I knew commission sessions took place in Glasgow.

  The Crown compromise was for my daughter to give evidence by a video link from Glasgow while the judge and the rest of them sat in Edinburgh. I agreed but noted bitterly in an email: ‘I am disappointed that my daughter’s interests appear to be secondary to the convenience of staff and/or the judge involved in this process.’

  All we could do now was wait for our days in court.

  26

  PANTO SEASON

  Attending a festive pantomime was the perfect preparation for my long-awaited big date at the High Court in Glasgow. It was the dark days of early January 2017 when, in a brightly lit room, I was reunited with William ‘Basil’ Burns, who sat in the dock with his sidekick Alex Porter, who I did not recognise.

  I spent the morning of 4 January, my birthday, listening to a ticking clock in a windowless beige witness room having already waited more than a year for the show to begin. By lunchtime, someone decided that all the witnesses could go home with an instruction to return the following morning.

  That night, two police officers came to my door with a message from the Crown telling me not to attend the next day but could not say why. This turned out to be not the case but no explanation was ever given.

  As I went about my business the next morning, a panicke
d call came from the Crown asking where I was because the curtain was about to go up and I had top billing as witness number one. I explained about the police visit and that I was half an hour away and scruffily dressed, which was met with palpable terror, only allayed by my offer to get there as soon as possible after a quick change of clothes.

  Led into court by a costume-clad macer, I stepped into the witness stand.

  Burns, hardly bursting with vitality last time we met, had selected a grey suit to match the waxy pallor of his prison tan. He and Porter, who was on bail, sat side by side and appeared less threatening than a pair of pantomime ugly sisters. I met Burns’s neutral gaze but did not glower too hard or too long, lest the 15 jurors mistakenly thought I was the villain.

  Judge Sean Murphy QC played it straight while the cast of legal-aid-funded lawyers provided humour with their one-liners and overacting. Burns’s advocate, Thomas Ross, was naturally but unintentionally comedic, lifting his horsehair wig as frequently as Laurel and Hardy do their bowler hats.

  Having taken the oath, I was walked through the morning of the acid attack in baby steps, prosecutor Richard Goddard’s gentle questions yielding a detailed chronology of events. The macer passed me bagged items of evidence including the Royal Mail jacket and the serrated steak knife, enclosed in a plastic tube. Large TV screens flashed up photos of my street and home, my acid-splattered face and hallway and a close-up of the postman’s snapped dentures in a pool of dark blood.

  Could I see my attacker in court? Like in the movies, a ‘follow that car’ moment, I slowly pointed my finger at Burns, who gazed back emotionless.

  Serious stuff over, it was the turn of Ross. In the immediate days after the attack, I had heard Burns was trying to save face about his sore face by regaling prison pals with the fantastical tale that I had blackmailed him, invited him to my house and then attacked him. I genuinely believed that his fairytale would stay behind bars but, to my astonishment, it formed the basis of his defence.