On the night she died, Catherine McCluskey had asked to meet him. She had been unable to pay her rent and was threatened with eviction. She wanted him to drive her to a friend in Neilston, between Glasgow and Paisley, to see if she could arrange digs. He had told her he was working and could not drive her all the way to Neilston and, at that, she began to cry. While he was trying to calm her down, he drove her along Pollokshaws Road and Cathcart Road, finally reaching the hill on Prospecthill Road, where he stopped. She asked him to take her to Rutherglen but again he refused. He turned the car until it was facing back the way they had come. He told her he was going back to his beat and, if she was going, then she should go because he was not waiting there any longer. He opened the car door and she got out.
The court stilled as he spoke in a soft voice, giving his version of what happened next. ‘I told her I was going back to Cumberland Street but, if she insisted on standing there, she would be left. At that time, the car door was open. I shut the door. She was standing on the pavement on the south side of the road.’ He said he had started the car again and left her there but, after driving for about 100 yards, he thought better of it and decided to go back for her. ‘It was very dark and there are no street lamps there. I reversed back to where I thought she was. I was on the crown of the road most of the time and gradually steered the car back to the pavement.’ That was when he must have hit her. He noticed the tone of the engine changing and a ‘bit of a jar’. He looked around in the darkness but could not see the woman anywhere. Then he opened the offside front door and began to get out.
‘I saw her face on the ground below the offside running board, immediately beside the offside front tyre. I knelt down. It was Catherine McCluskey.’ Her face was slightly to one side and he turned it over. Blood bubbled from her mouth then receded again. He looked under the car and saw that she had been caught up on the propeller shaft. He reached under to free her but she was well and truly stuck. He also knew she was well and truly dead. And then the gravity of his situation dawned on him. He was a serving police officer, away from his beat, driving a stolen car with a dead woman on his hands. Panic set in. Switching off the headlamps, he considered jacking the car up to free her but was unsure if he would be able to raise it far enough. Then he thought he might be able to dislodge the body by driving forward a bit. This did not work, so he reversed again – still no luck. He tried the manoeuvre again and this time he felt the body jerk free. Still in a state of fright, he drove off, leaving the mangled woman lying in the roadway behind him. At some point, probably in Cathcart Road as he had told PC Moffat, he became aware of the roaring of the engine and he stopped to tie up the damaged exhaust.
John Cameron looked at his client in the face and asked, ‘On July 28, 1950, did you assault Catherine McCluskey?’
James Robertson stared back at him and stated firmly, ‘I did not.’
‘Did you strike her on the head with a rubber truncheon?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did you do anything to render her unconscious?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did you deliberately drive a motor car over her and murder her?’
‘No, sir, I did not.’
Harold Leslie KC, prosecuting, accused, ‘Is it not the case that, before you got that woman out of the car, you struck her with a rubber truncheon?’
‘No, certainly that is not the case,’ Robertson replied, his voice by now little more than a whisper. ‘I reversed the car into Catherine McCluskey and killed her but it was an accident.’
Robertson had been confident that the jury would believe his story but that confidence was misplaced. They were out for just one hour and three minutes and, when they returned, they found him unanimously guilty of stealing the car and the logbooks and guilty by a majority of murder. As the foreman read the verdict, Robertson, who had until then kept his gaze firmly on a spot just below the bench, turned and stared coldly at the eight men and seven women. He saw the fifteen faces that had considered his case, saw some of the women crying and saw that his gamble had failed.
There was only one sentence for murder and the judge settled the black cap on his head and pronounced it for doom. As Robertson was led away, word of the verdict was carried from mouth to mouth to the crowds outside. The people jostled and pushed to catch a glimpse of the convicted killer as he was hustled into the waiting van to take him to Barlinnie Prison, the Big House on the Hill, but his former colleagues on the force had erected a tarpaulin to block their view. As the van turned on to the Saltmarket, the sea of jeering and cheering people parted to allow it to turn towards High Street.
An appeal was lodged and duly denied. A plea for clemency was made and duly refused. On 16 December 1950, a noticeably thinner and hollow-eyed James Robertson was taken from the condemned cell to the specially prepared gallows room in the Big House where he paid the ultimate penalty.
To the end, his wife refused to believe her husband was a killer. The very thought was ‘absolutely ridiculous’. She told a reporter, ‘The facts are that my husband never went out by himself. He was keen on his hobbies, gardening and carpentry, and when he went out he took us all with him and, at times, the children only.’
But the facts were that James Robertson had been seeing Catherine McCluskey and had, in all probability, killed her – whether accidentally or with malice aforethought. As his own solicitor, Laurence Dowdall, said later, he was ‘the fellow who chose to hang rather than let his wife down in public’.
9
THE LOVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME
Robert Scott
It was civilian plumber William Young’s habit to lock the prisoner in the workshop while he went for his tea break. The lad had been working with him for a year, had proved a trustworthy and willing assistant and, while Mr Young was away for his morning cuppa, had simply continued in his labours.
But this time it was different. This time the young man had something on his mind. And, as he heard the plumber turning the key in the door lock, whatever it was that was preying on him took hold.
Perhaps he sat for a few minutes and thought about what he was going to do. Perhaps he thought about the events that had led him to this point in his young life. Perhaps, as the final seconds of that life ticked by, he thought back five years, to a different time and a different place when he was a very different person …
Robert Scott first met William Vincent at a car coffee bar near the Graham Square Car Market in the east end of Glasgow early in 1954. They had little in common. Robert was a seventeen-year-old, handsome, muscular east-ender from Forge Street in Parkhead; William was older, bespectacled but dapper and owned his own business in the city’s trendy west end. He made a bit of money on the side as a police informer but that did not come out until after his death. He was also a homosexual with a taste for good-looking young men – and the well-built Robert Scott fitted that bill perfectly. But, on their first meeting, all they did was talk, for, at that stage, the younger man’s dreams were leading him elsewhere. They were common, everyday dreams for most young people – of fame, perhaps, of fortune, definitely. His dreams took him from that coffee bar and from the east end that was his home to the bright lights of London, where the streets are paved with gold. But, within weeks, he realised that those bright lights hid a dark side and the pavements were not gilded but hard and cold and grey.
Four months later, in the summer of 1954, he was back in his home town and at another coffee stall, this time in St Vincent Street, he bumped into William Vincent again. It’s possible Robert knew William was homosexual. It’s possible he knew he was being chatted up. It’s possible he had his own leanings in that direction. However, it’s equally as possible he didn’t know any of these things, believing the man’s interest was merely friendly. Whatever the truth, he refused William’s offer of another coffee, saying he had to dash for a bus. Vincent told him he had his car nearby and offered to run him home. Robert, though, refused – although he did agree to meet the
man the following Saturday for a drink.
They met in a pub in the city centre and then moved on to the Crocodile Club in Park Circus. William was a generous host. He kept getting them in and Robert kept knocking them back until he was as drunk as the proverbial lord.
Finally, as the night grew old, the young man thought of wending his weary way home across the city. But William would not hear of it. He only lived round the corner, he said. There was no need to go all the way to Parkhead, he said and invited him to stay the night at his mews flat at 43 Park Terrace Lane, above his thriving car spraying business. At one time, they had been coachman’s apartments and stables respectively but that was in the days of yore and the horseless carriage had put paid to all that. There was, however, still an air of Victorian charm about the lane, with its cobblestones and gas-powered street lighting. It is doubtful, though, if the somewhat worse for drink Robert Scott appreciated its olde worlde appeal on his first visit. He spent the night in William’s bed, too drunk, he said later, to recall what, if anything, happened.
As it turned out, it was the beginning of what would become a far from beautiful friendship. At first, everything seemed fine. William seemed to be passionately in love with his young friend – or at least hopelessly obsessed with him – and Robert was sufficiently happy with the relationship to take him home to meet the parents. Bill, as he was introduced, launched an immediate charm offensive. He took them for trips in his gleaming Jaguar. He invited them to tea in his tastefully decorated flat. He said he had big plans for Bob. He would set him up in business, perhaps even make him a partner in his own firm.
But Bob’s father, also called William, found something about the man’s charm distinctly offensive. Although pleased that a new world of possibilities was opening up for his son, he did not fully trust this older man. Whether he suspected there was something more than friendship between the two men is unknown. Perhaps the thought never occurred to him. This was Britain in the 1950s and such things were not even thought of, let alone talked of, in most homes – and certainly not in the East End of Glasgow. The Friends of Dorothy had not yet appropriated the word gay and homosexual acts were still illegal. The idea of his son having sex with another man might well have been the furthest thing from his mind.
And there is no evidence that there was anything physical between Bill and Bob at this stage. William Vincent was besotted by the younger man, of that there is no question, but there was the night when young Robert stormed angrily from the room when Bill and his friends were passing around photographs of naked young men. And, on another night, the young man rebuffed a sexual overture from Bill saying, ‘Don’t think I am like those other pals that you know.’
Robert Scott may well have been a homosexual who had been conditioned by society into convincing himself he was not. William Vincent, later painted as a corrupting influence, may well have been a man aware of his own sexuality who recognised similar traits in a younger man. If he had been an older man who was pulling a younger woman, some might have regarded him as a dirty old man – others, of course, would have classed him as a lucky dirty old man. Heads would shake, tongues would cluck but he would have been accepted not reviled. As it was, especially after his death, he was painted as a pervert who preyed on the innocent. And that may actually have been the case.
Whatever the truth of their relationship, Robert Scott changed. His father said that he transformed from being happy to moody and unstable. It is possible he had become disenchanted with his friendship, realising he had drifted into a circle of which he wanted no part. It is also possible that he was battling his own urges – that he was, in fact, homosexual and his inability to accept it was having an effect on his psyche. It is known that he shared William’s bed on more than one occasion. Society – not to mention the law – told him that such things were wrong and that would have brought him into conflict with his hormones. Whatever the case, forces were building inside him.
And, sooner or later, those forces would explode.
Perhaps he thought of these things as he sat in the workshop. Outside the locked door he would have heard the sounds of other prisoners going about their daily routine. A voice here, a whistle there, the clatter of work tools and buckets and other lives and other problems. But they were out there and he was in here and neither the twain would meet.
His gaffer had only been gone a few minutes but would be back soon.
He did not have much time …
Britain, in the 1950s, still called up its young men for National Service in the military. The scheme had been instituted in 1939 and continued until 1960, by which time over five million men had gone through their period of service. In 1955, Robert Scott, drowning in a sea of self-recrimination and self-loathing, was thrown a lifeline. His call-up papers came through and he was posted to 16 Company, RAOC, at Longtown in Cumberland. The posting would get him away from William Vincent – away from the life into which he had somehow fallen. But Bill would not or could not forget his young love. He wrote to him constantly, telling him how much he missed him, how much he wished they were together again, kisses carefully crossed at the end of each loving note. In June 1957, Bill travelled south to Cumberland to meet up with the young squaddie in a hotel. He invited him up to his room while he changed and, once there, suddenly jumped on Robert and kissed him on the mouth. The young man jerked away feeling, he said later, ‘terrible and disgusted’. William Vincent would try that trick once too often.
Robert Scott wanted to use his period of service to distance himself from the older man and his lifestyle. As time wore on, he stopped replying to Bill’s letters. So Bill began to write to Bob’s commanding officer asking if he knew why his young friend did not write back and requesting information about buying him out of the service. Although he was still fixated on Bob, he still had an eye for a cute young man. In 1957, he chatted up a Dundee youth in a Glasgow pub and took him home. Afterwards, he gave him a job but, within two weeks, his new-found love turned nasty, attacking him with a piece of rubber hose and leaving him bound and gagged and light of a ring, a watch and over £100 in cash. A desperate letter was dashed off to the Cumberland CO asking if Robert could be given special leave but the young man refused to come home.
In January 1958, Robert received his discharge papers and headed back to Glasgow. William was at the station to greet him but his joy soon turned to despair and then anger when the young man told him he wanted to go home to see his parents. Robert had grown up during his stint in the army and he wanted nothing more to do with William Vincent. He returned the gold cigarette case that Vincent had given him. He told him he never wanted to talk to him again. He was not to phone and he was not to write. Whatever there had been between them before was now over.
But the phone calls and the letters and the pleas to meet kept coming. Furious at his rejection, William threatened to tell the young man’s parents exactly what he got up to on those many nights he stayed in the west end flat. A meeting was actually arranged between William Vincent and the Scott family but it degenerated into an argument and things were said on both sides that everyone would live to regret. Robert Scott stormed from the room, vowing never to talk to any one of them again.
From that moment he tried to make it on his own. He moved in with a friend. He found a job as a salesman and even worked nights as a waiter in a New City Road bar. But William Vincent was always in the background, asking him to come back, begging him to return, pleading for one more chance. Finally, Robert wanted to finish it once and for all. He decided to meet up with the older man and tell him that there was no hope for them, now or ever. On Saturday 12 April, after he finished work in the bar, he went to a late-night club where he thought he would find Bill. But the man was not there that night so Robert, desperate to see things through, phoned him at home. Bill told him that, if he wanted to see him, he should come round to the flat. It was nearing midnight but Robert agreed to go. He wanted things to end that night. He wanted to be free.
He had the rope in his hands now. He had wanted things to end that night in 1958 and they had but not the way he’d planned. Now they would finally end. Now he would put a stop to the despair and the anguish and the pain.
It is just a simple thing. Stand on the metal work table, throw it over the beam, loop it round his neck and step off. It would be all over soon.
He would be free.
Robert Scott walked through the night to Park Terrace Lane, his coat hunched around him to keep out the cold. He had no idea what was going to happen. He thought he was going to finish a chapter of his life that would, as far as he was concerned, have been better not written. In reality, he was going to destroy two lives.
And what were William Vincent’s intentions that night? Probably what they always were – to win Robert’s affections once more. He had never given up hope that the two of them could be together again. Sure, he had been far from faithful but what was he, a monk? He had needs and, if Robert would not fulfil them, then he needed to find others who would. But that did not mean he did not love the lad. Or perhaps William Vincent was simply that most pathetic of creatures – a possessive, obsessive older man infatuated with an attractive younger person he could not have.
Whatever his motivations, he made his final, fatal error as soon as he let Robert in. He did what he always did – he threw himself at the young man and tried to kiss him. On previous occasions, Robert had simply pulled back from such embraces but this time something inside snapped. This time he wanted to show Bill just how revolted and disgusted and so utterly sick he was of the whole affair. This time he would end it all forever and completely.
He did not mean to kill William Vincent. He just wanted the man to see how serious he was. He just wanted to hold him against the wall, his fingers clamped round his throat, to show him that he meant it when he said it was over. He just wanted Bill to realise that it all had to stop.
Bloody Valentine Page 14