Gordon Ferris - The Hanging Shed

‘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 that 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.’

I’d forgotten; been away too long. ‘What were the numbers?’

‘We’ll never know if it was fourteen to one or eight to seven. The court won’t say.’

I sat stunned. ‘But surely they can’t hang a man if eight think he’s guilty and seven don’t. Can you? Surely?’

‘Oh yes they can. They do. And they will. Unless we can find something new to put in our plea.’ She waited for me to say something smart.

‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’

‘I’ll see if I can disturb the sleeping dragon out there.’ She got up and went out. I heard a brief, sharp exchange, and then she was back.

‘It’ll come. Eventually. I hope you’re not allergic to strychnine. Now, where were we?’

‘At the risk of being boring, can I ask you again if you think he did it? I haven’t seen Hugh since our teens. We parted on bad terms. I’ve been dragged up here to try to help him. As of now, I’ve seen nothing, heard nothing that suggests he’s other than guilty. I’d just like to know what you think. You, more than anyone, will have sifted the evidence. I need some… encouragement.’

She pulled her glasses down her nose. Her clear blue eyes focussed fixedly on mine. ‘I think Hugh Donovan is innocent. OK?’

‘OK. Until proven otherwise.’ I took out my notepad. ‘You’d better start with the trial. What was the evidence?’

She opened the file at a document with tab on it. ‘This is a summary of the trial report. Not that I need it.’ She looked up at me and held up her left hand with the fingers and thumb splayed open. She closed down her pinkie with her right hand. ‘First there are the clothes with the blood on them.’

‘The child’s clothes?’

‘The child’s and Hugh’s.’

‘Both of them?’ Damn.

She nodded. ‘The child’s shirt and short trousers, simmet and pants. No socks or shoes. He was playing barefoot. A lot of them do over there.’ She nodded towards the badlands of the Gorbals. ‘Saves the shoes for school. The clothes were found rolled up in a bucket under Hugh’s sink in the flat. A stupid place to hide them. But there they were. And the blood matches the boy’s. A rhesus positive.’

‘Common enough round here, as I recall.’

‘Agreed. But they were wrapped inside a shirt of Hugh’s.’ She raised her hand to stop me asking how they knew it was Hugh’s. ‘Inside the collar was a label. They’d put it on in the hospital so the patients wouldn’t lose their clothes. It said “Cpl H. Donovan, RAF”.’

Of course. They’d done it with mine when I was convalescing in Alex.

She went on, ‘He says one of his shirts was stolen.’

We both raised our eyebrows. ‘What else?’

She sighed and pressed down a second finger. ‘The murder weapon. A knife wrapped up in the same bucket. It had the boy’s blood on it too. A bread knife, so the serrations held the stains very nicely thank you.’

‘Prints?’

‘A smudged set of Hugh’s on the handle.’

I winced. ‘You’ve seen his hands. He couldn’t hold a knife.’

‘The prosecution implied he could if he wanted to. The jury seemed to agree.’

‘Anything else? Witnesses swearing they saw him killing the boy?’

‘Nearly.’ She lowered a third finger. ‘Knowledge of the crime scene. Hugh knew a couple of things that only the murderer or his accomplice could know. The number of stab wounds: seven. That the body was naked. And that there were signs of strangulation.’

‘Christ.’

A fourth finger dropped. ‘There were also traces of heroin in the boy’s body.’

‘Dear God! But that doesn’t tie the murder to Hugh,’ I said desperately.

She raised one eyebrow. ‘But you can imagine what a meal the prosecution made of it. This junkie forcing himself on an innocent child. Turning him into a ravening dope fiend like himself. The jury’s eyes were rolling around like a game of bools.’

‘Did they know that Hugh used to go out with her?’ I choked on her name.

‘The boy’s mother, Fiona? Yes. It just gave the jury something else to nibble away at. Jilted lover, betrayal of the woman who befriended him etc. Hugh said you knew her too?

Oh, yes, Fiona. I knew you. I nodded. ‘Is that it?’

She turned her extended thumb down, leaving a clenched fist. ‘Just one more teeny wee thing. He confessed.’

I rubbed my face with both hands. Short of a Pathe newsreel showing Hugh murdering the boy, this case was as watertight as a Clyde steamer.

‘To all five?’

‘Just Rory.’

‘Duress?’ I tried.

‘Do you mean is it likely he was forced to confess? Yes. I have absolutely no doubt. Round here, your former colleagues are not known for their compassion towards child molesters, far less child murderers. When I first saw Hugh, his face – such as it is – was badly bruised and so was his body. Resisting arrest, they said. By the time he got to trial the marks had pretty well vanished. And of course the police claimed they’d used kid gloves.’

I nodded. It wasn’t new. I’d seen plenty of interrogations that involved gentle persuasion with a truncheon or a boot. Disillusionment was one of the reasons I joined the army; not that I found many choirboys among my fellow NCOs.