The Hanging Shed

by Gordon, Ferris,

  I blamed it on the extra four months I served after the fighting stopped last May. It was my own fault. My hitherto underused German was no sooner on display at the surrender of the 15th Panzer Brigade than I was seconded to the clear-up task force interrogating Nazi camp commandants and SS zealots. While my regiment was shipped home to be showered with the roses and kisses deserving of heroes, I was noting down the forced confessions of psychopaths and fanatics. Useful training for a journalist I suppose.

  They let me home to a bitter autumn. A cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of the year for a journey…

  I chose to be demobbed in London. A grateful nation gave me a Burton’s suit and trilby, a good mac, a solid pair of shoes and enough money to keep me drunk for as long as my liver lasted. Whenever I sobered, the tremors started. Whenever I slept, storm troopers came for me with slavering dogs and whistles. My language skills seemed to have improved; the nightmares were in German.

  It was easier to stay drunk, skulking in south London, feeling sorry for myself, plunging in and out of black moods. Waking up with lead weights on my chest. Suffocating in my dreams. A few times the neighbours knocked on their ceiling to complain about the noise, like murder was being committed. I thought they were imagining things until I woke to the sound of someone sobbing and found it was me. Christmas came and went and winter ate into my battered bones. I hunched over tepid briquettes with a quilt round me gazing into the glow, looking for my future but only seeing my past.

  I wanted to go home to Scotland, but how could I face them in this state? A wreck. A drunk. Just a liability to my mother. I fended her off with letters but I knew from the tone of her replies she was worried sick. They were even asking about me at her kirk. Where was her wee boy? The bursary winner, the scholar, the one that escaped. What was I up to? Why didn’t I come home to see her? Throughout, she never stopped going, never explained, never sought comfort or understanding from a soul. She’d never needed anyone’s approval except that of her man, my dad. And she was as certain of that fifteen years after his death as the day he married her.

  But I hadn’t been completely forgotten. I was demobbed at the same time as the Guard’s brigadier who’d run the interrogation programme out of Berlin. He’d been given his old job back: on the board of the London Bugle. We had a beer. We had several beers. He got his editor to fling me some crumbs and keep flinging them at me until one day as the year turned I caught one. I managed to stay sober long enough to crack out a thousand words on black marketeering. It didn’t take much footslogging round my favourite bars to get the ammunition. The Bugle seemed to like the article, well, half of it anyway. They asked for more and I was beginning to scribble irregular pieces on the darker side of London life. I’d even started going to Les’s boxing gym to get my leg moving again and help soak up the anger that seemed always on tap.

  So this cry for aid was premature. I wasn’t ready. Guilt hung about me like a shroud. Guilt about how I’d loitered in London and not come home to see my mother. Guilt about how I’d let myself go. Guilt that I’d made it home and scores of better men hadn’t. Guilt that my first feeling in response to Hugh Donovan’s summons was anger. I stabbed my fag out and marched up the hill.

  EIGHT

  There was no welcome flick of the curtains from my mother’s tenement. For a minute I panicked thinking the worse. But of course she wasn’t expecting me. I went in the close and up the single flight of stone stairs and knocked on the door. Nothing. I knocked louder. Then I checked my watch. It was half past one. Tuesday. I left my case by her door and hung my dripping coat on the doorknob. I walked down to the entry and out the back. Sure enough. I could hear the noise of splashing from the brick wash-house. Smoke was coming out the open door.

  I stuck my head in. It was the witches’ scene from MacBeth. My mother was standing wreathed in steam next to a cauldron – the washing bine: the big metal dish that sat on a waist-high brick column. Underneath, a coal fire spat and glowed and boiled the water. My mother wore a headscarf and a pinny. Her blouse sleeves were rolled up and her arms were red and wet with suds. She held a sheet in both hands and was rubbing it up and down the ridged washboard that protruded from the bubbling pot. Behind her, one of her neighbours, Mrs Cuthbertson, was grinding the big handle of the mangle and pulling through another sheet. A steady cascade of water filled a wooden basin below the mangle. My mother’s face was puce but she was happy in her work, humming away to herself.

  She looked up and her face lit. She flung her hands to her face, stopped and dropped them to her apron. She dried them and shot round the bine to me. She clutched my arms afraid to get me wet against her soaking washday clothes.

  ‘Douglas! You should have phoned. I’ve nothing ready. I havenae baked a thing. Are you all right? Is anything the matter?’

  ‘Mum, it’s OK. Can I no’ visit my mother without it being a national disaster?’

  She looked up at me, her face losing its smile, tightening. ‘You’ve come about Hugh, haven’t you?’

  Later, I heard her version of the story as we sat quietly sipping tea in front of the coal fire in the back room. It felt, as it always did, like being wrapped up in a cosy blanket. A tiny place. Two rooms, front and back, with the scullery leading off the back room. As the light fell outside, I got up and lit the gas mantles to send a soft glow round the room. The clock on the mantelpiece beat out the rhythm that had measured out my quiet boyhood absorption in a new book from the library. I prodded the fire so that the glow illumined the big black metal fireplace. We sat either side of it, mimicking the Wally dugs whose black china eyes gazed down on us from the mantelpiece. She’d drawn the curtain across the bed-in-the-wa’ and the room tucked itself round us. It was a world away from a cold cell in Barlinnie.

  ‘You don’t seem that surprised, Mum.’

  ‘About two weeks ago, Jessie Cuthbertson got a telephone call asking for me. It was a secretary from a solicitor’s office. Wanting to get in touch with you. Jessie had your number in her book and she gave the woman it. I hope you don’t mind?’ she asked anxiously. ‘We’ve got a note of the name.’

  ‘Of course not. It was fine.’

  She nodded. ‘That poor wee bairn. And him Fiona’s boy too. The trial was in all the papers here, once they found he was a Kilmarnock man.’

  My stomach flipped. It was one of the few times my mother had ever used her name in this house. Going out with a Catholic lassie had been as counter-cultural as voting Tory. Hugh had got past the religious censoring by dint of being a neighbour’s child.

  ‘Did you not think I should know?’

  She looked embarrassed. ‘You had enough troubles. I thought maybe you’d heard and decided to say nothing. You don’t phone that often. Oh, I know it’s such a fuss.’

  It was true. It involved me phoning Mrs Cuthbertson and her running up the stairs and getting my mother to come down. And my mother then panicking that I needed to call her and her shouting down the line because she was so far away. Trauma all round rather than a casual kindness. Letters were always easier somehow, and more lasting. I reread hers at least two or three times, just to hear the gossip about the town. But clearly there were some things that weren’t for writing down.

  ‘My fault, Mum. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to get the phone put in here. And don’t you worry, I’ll pay the bills.’

  She looked startled and anxious. ‘Oh, I don’t want that thing going off in the middle of the night. What would I use it for anyway? Everyone I need to talk to is just a walk away. Except you, of course.’

  We had some more tea and then she looked me in the eye. ‘Did he do it, Douglas?’

  As usual I’d underestimated my mother’s ability to absorb the unthinkable. She was taking it calmly and sensibly, as though Hugh had been caught plunking school.

  ‘It’s hard to draw any other conclusion.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But there are a lot of questions.’

  ‘What
like, son?’

  ‘The big one is why? Why would Hugh do such a thing? The boy was missing for a week. They searched Hugh’s room early on and found nothing. Then they found the body in the coal cellar outside Hugh’s tenement, and found Hugh up to his oxters in evidence linking him to the murder. Where was he hiding the boy all this time? How did nobody see him, hear anything? Who told the police to look there? What about the other four missing boys? If it was Hugh, how did he keep them quiet? Why did he dump Rory’s body where it could be found? Carelessness or arrogance? Maybe they asked all these questions at the trial and the answers still added up to him being guilty. I don’t know.’

  We sat in stillness for a while, each of us, I’m sure, imagining that wee broken body lying in the dark. And wondering about the missing lads. Her hair shone silver in the flickering light. She shook her head, as though puzzled with the badness in the world.

  ‘When is it?’ She meant when would they hang him.

  ‘Four weeks. April the thirtieth.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  Not it’s no business of yours; keep away from this because mud sticks; what will the neighbours think? No question that I wouldn’t, shouldn’t, get involved.

  ‘I don’t know. The odds are against him. So is time. I’d just be wasting my efforts.’

  ‘But you said there were questions.’

  ‘But who’s going to answer?’

  She must have read something in my face. Even before I admitted to myself. She nodded. ‘Just like your dad. He always had to know.’

  ‘If Hugh didn’t do it, somebody did.’

  ‘It’s not about Fiona, is it?’

  ‘No, no. That was a long time ago.’ I hoped I sounded convincing.

  ‘I’ll make up a bed in the front room. It’s back to sharing the scullery, son.’

  I shook my head. ‘Just the one night, Mum. I’ll get digs up in Glasgow for a week or two. That’s where I’m going to be spending my time. I’ll visit a lot though.’ I smiled to soften the blow as she failed to hide her disappointment.

  NINE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘He was my friend. Is,’ I added.

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

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

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

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

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The inspection.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Things are t
hat bad?’ I whistled.

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

  I shrugged and retook my seat. ‘How?’

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

  ‘Two weeks!’

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

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

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

  ‘Do you think he did it?’

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

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

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

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

  ‘You could have got him off!’

  ‘I got close!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

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

  ‘A majority?’ I was astonished.

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