The House_Dark Urban Scottish Crime Story

by John Mayer

  Taking the seat at the opposite end, McLane took his time in opening his bag, setting out his pen, ink and papers, blowing a little fluff from his jacket sleeve and sighing deeply the way the old judges did as their signal to the assembled court that they were ready to hear narration of who appeared. Lifting his eyes and shooting daggers at Pembroke, McLane inwardly saw himself in a street fight; laying all six of them out before strolling in to the Calton Bar for a drink.

  To the immediate right of Pembroke, Sotheby-Yarrow hadn’t even made eye contact with McLane, but he spoke first, implying that Pembroke wasn’t going to expend even one breath on McLane’s issues:

  Without so much as a morning greeting, Sotheby dragged out the words:

  ‘We think you’re grossly underestimating the clout of our ministerial certificate, McLane. When push comes to shove, as we’ll make sure it will, that’s what’s going to be conclusive. I know this area of law isn’t in your usual field of play. Perhaps you haven’t read the case law, much of which I’ve developed since becoming Senior Counsel to the Secretary of State for Housing and Urban Development. I think you’ll find that line of law supports what I’ve just …’

  ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.’ This time it was McLane who was dismissive. ‘I’ve read those cases and found them, for the most part, to be … how can I put this? Argued like a bawling wean after having its arse skelped.’

  At this fluent use of his Glaswegian mother tongue, derisive sniggers broke out among the three Junior counsel who were younger clones of Pembroke and Sotheby. However, the only girl at their end did glance at McLane with a look which suggested that she agreed with his analysis of the standard of pleading in this line of case law.

  Laying both elbows on the table, McLane looked at none of them in particular: ‘That translates to ‘bloody awful’ in your world.’

  Leaning back into his uncomfortable chair, which had obviously come from the commercial world via someone who’d taken a large design consultancy fee from the Faculty, it was obvious to McLane that none of these people had ever played cards for the last coins in their pocket. Their legal positions and relative status around their end of the table was written all over their scowling faces. Had they been learning from Big Joe Mularkey, by now he’d have horse-whipped them all.

  Unfolding the UK Government’s Ordnance Survey map of the Calton, McLane unnecessarily spread the thing out to its fullest extent; which went almost half way up the table. Outlined in red was the boundary. Outlined in purple was the old Meat Market and the streets around it which he’d played a part in ordering to be demolished. In thick bright yellow were the addresses of those who’d taken Glasgow City Council’s blood money. And in black was a circle around the address where he, Big Joe Mularkey and Peggy had grown up.

  Looking at their gold pocket watches, Pembroke and Sotheby were beginning to lose sight of that wine list. Bundles of case reports were carefully stacked and topped with Lord Gill’s ‘Bible’ on City Planning Law. All of this was standard bluster and when McLane sat back down, Pembroke and Sotheby’s hopes rose again. Only when McLane went to the bottom of his bag and brought out a thin bundle of foolscap handwritten sheets tied in pink cotton legal tape, did six pairs of eyes begin to widen.

  After a whisper between the two Seniors, it was Sotheby who spoke again. Pointing and wagging his finger at the foolscap papers, he more sneered than advised:

  ‘If that’s someone’s hand written legal opinion, I think you’ll find that, given my status, my opinion will be preferred in court So you can shove that up your … Oh sorry, ma'am.’

  Ignoring this pitiful put-down, McLane flung his right ankle over his other knee and let the papers fall into his lap. Putting on his reading glasses, he started at page one:

  IN THE TWENTY FIRST YEAR OF THE REIGN OF OUR SOVEREIGN

  KING GEORGE THE THIRD

  this

  DISPOSITION of LAND

  quoad

  The Fields of May: Belonging to the Right Honourable the Fourth Earl of Mayfield and being that right bonny area or piece of land outlined in red on the plan annexed and attached hereto and duly witnessed as being a legal part of this deed, which land is Registered in the Great Register of Sasines of Scotland marked FoM101 and lies north of the river Clyde to the Eastern side of the City of Glasgow and which land the good Burghers and City Fathers now wish to include as part of their fair said city; now Compeareth the said Fourth Lord Mayfield, being of sound mind and body and accompanied by his guid man of legal affairs hereby IN CONSIDERATION OF THE SUM OF ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED POUNDS (£180,300) STERLING …

  At the other end of the table, heads were turning and foreheads were beginning to wrinkle while McLane ploughed on. By the third of twelve pages of this deed written in the late 18th century, he was relaxed and starting to enjoy himself. One could send a Junior out for this or that, but for Seniors, it was simply impossible to walk out of a JC while the other party was speaking. Getting to the end of this charade might take half an hour and then there were the staged questions to be dealt with. Despite his rising anger, though inwardly seething, Pembroke remained as quiet as the grave.

  Licking his middle finger and carefully turning from page three to four, McLane continued:

  Ay, but the pairties dae hereby agree that the guid Fourth Lord Mayfield shall not be divested of a’ rights for evermore, but hold the Sword of Damocles over the said guid Burghers and City Faithers and their legal successors in title forthcoming for evermore so help thee GOD by BURDENING THE GROUND wi’ the forthcomin’ conditions: PRIMO that before FINAL REGISTRATION of this Disposition of Land firstly there shall be paid by the said guid Burghers and City Faithers to the said guid Fourth Lord Mayfield in addition to the price mentioned above, the sum of FIVE POUNDS, THREE SHILLINGS AND TUPPENCE (£5 3/2) for every granite stane that will come from the quarries of the said guid Fourth Lord Mayfield’s Estate in Aberdeenshire and be taken to build the hooses fur the guid workin’ people who will inhabit a new area of the guid city of Glasgow to be known as The Calton: and furthermore, should the Guid Lord ever dawn the day when …’

  McLane was now about twenty minutes in. With bulging eyes, Pembroke decided that, in this instance, he could take his chances in front of the Dean of Faculty. Shoving his chair back loudly and huffing and puffing, red faced from his cheeks all the way up across his bald head, he was a man full of venom. Sotheby had seen this before, a few times both at school and around dining tables when someone thought they’d get the better of Heriot Pembroke. He jumped up to plead with his old friend to sit down, but his efforts were in vain. Shoving Sotheby back into his chair, Pembroke strode round the table and pointed his finger to within an inch of McLane’s face:

  ‘You fucking piece of scum! What nonsense is this? You’re blatantly wasting our time and if these were better times, I’d offer you a duel, sir. Do you hear me? A duel, I say!’

  Resisting the swelling temptation to offer back any time and place, McLane continued his reading aloud but now in a playful tone. When Pembroke turned and snapped down the handle of the door, McLane pulled his glasses down his nose and cracked a cheeky schoolboy grin:

  ‘Tut Tut, dear boy. You aren’t leaving, are you?’

  Pembroke turned and tightened both fists; actually frightening the only woman in the room. McLane’s heart didn’t skip a beat. He just broadened his grin while Pembroke growled like a caged animal through gritted teeth. After a moment’s composure, he turned around and again snapped down the handle. With the door half open, McLane interrupted his reading and said softly:

  ‘I’m so sorry you’re leaving. You haven’t heard the best bit yet.’

  ~~~o~~~

  Chapter 50

  Notwithstanding the odd celebration here and there and the recent big shindig in the Calton Bar in particular, ever since the ‘All Clear’ from the epidemic the whole Calton had collectively held its breath. Whatever this was, this thing that had begun as an ugly rumour and had grown into St
atutory Compulsory Demolition Order GLW/CAL/DEMO 2018, it still wasn’t over. With Young Father Flaherty still saying Mass for those incinerated bodies whose souls were drifting through the ether that once was the air they breathed, every man, woman and child old enough to comprehend was scarcely able to believe that they were all still there. ‘All there’ was of course a relative term. But although each one who’d lost a much loved relative or friend grieved deeper and longer than anyone else knew, while wee Malky kept selling milk, big Tommy kept baking pies and the Calton Bar kept selling beer, enough of them survived. It was true that they’d slightly more than survived. The odd children’s party had been organised. An old folks outing to see a tribute act to Francie and Josie in the Kings Theatre had been a big hit. But after the applause had ended and the kids had fallen asleep tired out, collectively they continued to hold the gut wrenching feelings and the awful memories they now carried around on their bony backs in their every waking moment like so many sacks of coal. Some of what they’d been through so far could - and it was right that it should - be passed on to the young ones, just as the hard old times had been relayed to those now bent with the weight of this most recent trouble.

  For some, such as Big Joe, Arab and others, the feelings which arose when they imagined the City of Glasgow without the Calton, was very similar to those times when they’d come close to death at the point of a knife or the barrel of a gun. However, this feeling of emptiness went further than personal fear. To imagine the Calton razed to the ground; its smashed buildings in half standing ruins and its people dead and scattered, was to realise that sometimes the horrors of what drifts past on TV every day can come to your own door with all the horrific annihilation that only humans can bring down upon the heads of other humans. All agreed, however reticently, that personal fears were mixed with a swirl of other feelings about mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. Everyone was holding their own grief in their own way about what had happened to those who were incinerated. And when they showed signs of not being themselves, everyone else knew that, but for a few breaths in the Old Meat Market, there they walked.

  One morning, Sean McCulloch had just got up out of bed in the early hours and taken his roofer’s hammer to every glass window pane in the house; for absolutely no discernible reason, but he was shouting something about needing air to breathe. Then again, after breakfast one morning, wee Betty O’Farrel just put down her cup, closed her newspaper and before the kids had left for school, walked out like a zombie and hadn’t come back for over a week. Her eldest, Nancy, aged only thirteen, after eleven hours of tense, nervous waiting, just stopped herself from shaking, fed and washed the wee ones and carried on until her mother walked back into the house without a word about where she’d been.

  So they all knew in their hearts, it was for the best that some of the facts just be allowed to be swallowed whole by the downward pull of human nature into mother earth’s deepest chasm. Everyone. Absolutely everyone, was feeling it and feeling it more deeply than they showed at school, in the shops and in the Calton Bar.

  But now, after the latest visit by McLane, a new Word had come like welcome warm rain to raise the corn that would feed them over the winter. The Word was one they didn’t understand, but of course, he did, and that was all that mattered. The Word was ‘Burdens.’

  In the Calton Bar, the men had been given the whole story chapter and verse from his own mouth, so Big Joe Mularkey was able to re-tell it; without of course some of the more technical terms that Brogan could so easily trip off his tongue. Down in the bookie’s shop Arab had told about a dozen, as had Tucker in wee Malky McMillan’s corner shop, but in each re-telling something of the subtlety was lost until only the bare bones of the thing remained; and because skeletal details are rarely funny, the zing had gone out of what had originally caused the roof of the Calton Bar to raise from its six inch nailed clamps. It wasn’t until Big Jemima Gilligan’s daughter had come home for her birthday weekend from university in Aberdeen had the women properly gathered in the function room at the back of Capaldi’s Café to hear her explain it all to them.

  Unused to being the centre of attention in the company of women she’d known all her life, Jessica Gilligan, third year law student just a few days under twenty one, perched herself on one of the old unused freezers and waited until everyone in front of her was comfortable.

  Clasping her hands tightly together, this was very different from weekly tutorials where she’d take her turn to give a full account of the facts, her analytical approach and concluded legal opinion on some set topic. Sitting before these women she knew and loved so well, the feeling was even more powerful than those she’d only recently felt when a certain very posh fourth year began to frequent her rooms.

  When they’d finished saying how well she looked and how since her last visit home she seemed to have that look of experience in her eye, the women eventually hushed themselves. Looking firstly at her mother in the front row, then nearly a hundred other faces she knew so well, Jessica coughed, wrung her hands and raised her eyes to the back of the room:

  ‘Wow. I feel so privileged to be sitting here facing you all. I know that many of you have heard from your men what Mr … I mean Baron … Oh I’m sorry … sorry. I just can’t get used to calling him Brogan. Ever since I first had the idea that I could maybe … maybe go to law school. I mean, he’s always been such a … a hero to me. Sorry. I’ll start again.’

  Feeling a sense of pride that he knew her well enough to give her half an hour of his time on the phone and ask how her studies were going, Jessica drew a deep breath and started again:

  ‘Right. As I said, I know your men have told you a wee bit about what’s been going on. Last night I spoke to … Oh I just … I can’t … so it’s gonna be Mr McLane if that’s OK. I spoke to Mr McLane on the phone and he was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant about it all. He apologises for not being here himself but he’s preparing for the big court hearing in Parliament House that’s coming up on Monday morning. He was kind enough to say that I’ve got a good grip of the whole thing, so here goes.’

  Slipping off the cold steel top of the old freezer, Jessica straightened her skirt at the back and touched the tips of her fingers together the way Professor Elizabeth Sayer did before delivering her lectures; every one a tour-de-force:

  ‘What I’m about to tell you is quite a long story and begins a very long time ago. In the reign of King George the Third, actually. More precisely, in the year 1781 when there was a village here. That village was called Blackfaulds and I think it was actually sited right here where we are now. But the wider surrounding area we know as the Calton was still called the Fields of May. Now, all of the land, that is the village and the Fields of May belonged to the Fourth Lord Mayfield. According to Mr McLane, he was a very good and generous man to all his tenants.’

  Old mother O’Neill, who alongside her own mother had delivered Jessica, slipped her arm through Jessica’s mother’s and patted the back of her hand. Maria McCarthy, who’d been a few years ahead of Jessica at school and who now had five children, leaned forward in admiration as Jessica got into her stride:

  ‘Lord Mayfield came under pressure to sell the Fields of May but he didn’t want to sell the land. He thought he and his tenants would be better off working the Fields and selling the produce to the growing city of Glasgow. Now although his enemies were powerful …they were the Burghers of the old City of Glasgow … the Fourth Lord Mayfield was a canny old sod. He was under pressure in The House … that is the House of Lords in London to you and me … and knew that if he didn’t sell the Fields of May, then the Burghers of Glasgow would gang up on him and have their friends try to force a Compulsory Purchase Order through the House of Commons. So he boxed cleverly. He pulled the old landlord’s trick of selling the Fields of May, but burdened … now remember that word ‘burdened’ … the Deed of Disposition chock full of conditions; one of which was that the Burghers would, free of charge, quarry and shape the stones for bui
lding him a grand House on his estate. Mr McLane says the estate is miles and miles wide with rolling green hills that are all tied farms and the great house is a fabulous old place. He of course, has stayed in it. But back to the story. Then, only after they’d delivered the stones for his House, could they get on with the much more extensive - and very expensive - quarrying of the stone they needed to transport down to Glasgow and begin to build on the Fields of May. One of the main conditions was that they also had to use labour from Lord Mayfield’s estate. The whole venture made him a fortune and the work kept dozens of estate families in good wages for donkeys’ years.’

  So far, Jessica was on a roll. Her audience were as quiet as church mice and she’d gotten used to the sound of her own voice in the back of this cafe where, as a child she’d been taken for treats on birthdays and holidays. Tapping the tips of her fingers together, she continued:

  ‘Now, one of the burdens … you can think of these legal burdens as written conditions but backed up by the force of law … was that … just let me remember the actual wording … Ah yes! Should the Guid Lord ever dawn the day when, for any reason now known or to become known, the houses which form the Calton are by Order of their Lordships in Parliament House to be demolished by the Burghers of Glasgow or their successors who have political control of the City of Glasgow, then … Oh sorry, I can’t remember the exact wording. Let me look at this sheet.’

  Unfolding a sheet of paper she had up her sleeve, Jessica read:

  ‘Oh, aye. Here it is. The burden is that if they demolish the Calton then … the successors to the guid said Burghers shall return every milled stane intact to the successor of the Fourth Lord Mayfield and if they do not, then they shall pay the price of every damaged stane which is today the sum of Five Pounds, Three Shillings and Tuppence per stane or the Sterling amount then equivalent to the said sum per stane; and only if the said …’