59 Minutes Read online

  59 Minutes

  Gordon Brown

  Gordon Brown

  59 Minutes

  Prologue

  The bastard kissed the tips of his fingers, reached down and patted me on the head. I looked up and saw the smile leave his face.

  ‘So different. It should have all been so different.’

  I struggled to get up but my attacker and the man from the Spanish photo were good for the game and I was pinned to the floor. The first fist caught me behind the ear — the knuckleduster slicing open my skull. Snap, crackle and pop and the second fist mashed my nose to mince.

  Just the beginning. I tried to curl into a ball. Just the beginning.

  The door to the room closed as the bastard left and it was time for more pain. The attacker reached between my legs and grabbed at my balls. The squeeze was so hard it felt like one of them burst. A thumb searched for my left eye socket and a forefinger for my right — fluid spurted and darkness fell.

  Then they got serious.

  Chapter 1

  The clock on the wall says eleven oh one. The second hand has crested the apex and we are now into the second minute after the hour and counting. I can’t see it move but, with a fascination that owes everything to my circumstances, I know the tick of that second hand intimately, lovingly, fearfully and a shed load of other adverbs that would bore you to the core.

  Fifty eight minutes and fifty four seconds to go. Not long now. There are important things that I need to tell you in the minutes that remain to me. So many things, that we may not have the time we need.

  But I will try.

  Why? Why will I try to tell you these things? Because I need to tell someone and you are better placed than most, far better placed than most, to listen and understand. Listening is not even your responsibility. Understanding is what you need to do. It is up to me to make you listen. If I fail, you will drift away like the sober leaving the drunk.

  But I doubt this.

  As we travel together down this short path, there will be a number of questions that you will want to ask. I’ll tell you now that I won’t answer them. I’m sorry I can’t be more co-operative but debate is a locked five bar gate on our trip.

  Can you also forgive me if I become a little vague or distracted? My mind may wander. It is inevitable. It is probably essential. My story may need some detours to make sense.

  To help, I have left a diary, of sorts, for you to read. It is there beside you. The big black book with the gold block lettering on the spine. Who gave me it is of no great importance. It is nothing more than the sort of gift you would get from a distant aunt at Christmas.

  Please do not pick it up. Not now.

  So, where should I start? Where would you start with a clock ticking like a time bomb?

  ‘Start at the beginning and go on. And when you reach the end stop.’

  It is a bad lift from Alice in Wonderland but you get the gist.

  By the way it is nearly eleven oh two. I must move on.

  Chapter 2

  I was born in the west end of Glasgow. Partick to be exact. I was never the healthiest of kids. I had a tendency to monopolise whatever bug was doing the rounds. I missed much of my schooling, replacing it with an in-depth knowledge of doctor’s surgeries, hospitals, my bedroom, my grandmother’s bedroom and a private TB clinic. Suffice to say I left school with no qualifications and little prospects.

  It would be nice to say I went on to make good and earn my fortune the honest way. An entrepreneur of note. But that would be a crock of crap. True, I made money but I also managed to make a turkey sandwich of my life on the way. I held promise and I excelled in places that others failed but ultimately I washed my life down a large plug hole and watched the water spin away — carrying my heart beats and my ambition to a dark place.

  After leaving school, I found employment with a friend of my father. It was menial work. The sort that requires little thought, a lot of graft and rewards you with a thin pay packet.

  My father’s friend was a man called George Matthews. George owned an engineering firm on the outskirts of Glasgow that employed twenty men who slaved hard to produce spare parts for the automotive industry. The hours were long and the factory had to sweat for its money. Saturday and even Sunday shifts were the norm for the first two years of my working life. I lost contact with my schoolmates and found it hard to acquire new friends at work.

  Being far younger than anyone else in the building my nickname was not very original — ‘Junior’ — and since the work’s recreation revolved around the Lame Duck pub I was, at sixteen years of age, excluded from that particular avenue of respite.

  Michael Tolt was my only friend of note from back then. It is Michael, dead these many years, that is, in part, responsible for me sitting here talking to you.

  When I joined the firm I was his saviour. In an instant, the scorn that the factory poured upon its youngest member fell from his shoulders and onto mine. I think he always knew this was a shit deal and in compensation he became the one person I could talk to at break time or see outside of work.

  He was a fanatic for football, and for Partick Thistle in particular. Over the years he dragged me along to a nightmare collection of games. He never tired of his obsession and was rewarded for his long term service with the club when, on the 23 ^rd October 1971, against all predictions, they took on the might of Celtic in the League Cup final and hammered them four — one.

  I still remember standing on the terraces at Hampden Park at half time — Partick were four up against one of the best sides in Europe. To say that there was a party atmosphere wasn’t even close to the truth on that day. There may never be a finer moment to be a Jags fan.

  But I had no love of the club and I was the least excited person in the Partick Thistle throng. But the game did bring one defining moment with it. After the match I was permitted entry into the hallowed halls of The Lame Duck for my first drink. Having turned eighteen the day before, the stained floorboards, dank smoky air and rank smell of a million men’s farts were mine for the taking.

  Eleven oh four and ten seconds. Time slips past so fast. I must keep my foot on the gas.

  I left Matthews Engineering two months later. I couldn’t take it anymore. The combination of poor hours, the lack of pay and the endless insults forced me out and onto the ‘Bru’ — to survive on state handouts.

  Neither my mother nor my father were in the happy world about this. They were reliant on my contribution to the house to help offset the mountain of debt they had acquired. No, and let’s be honest about this, the debt was not theirs but my father’s, and my father’s alone, the local bookie being the open drain he so easily poured our cash into.

  When I left the job I intended to find other employment as quickly as possible. But Britain was heading for its worst recession since the thirties and with no qualifications, no skills and, probably most damning of all, no connections I was prime meat for the local criminal fraternity. After six months of fruitless interviews and rejections Michael Tolt stepped in with an offer that was hard to refuse.

  He informed me, over a pint in The Lame Duck, that a friend of his was looking for a reliable lad to run some errands. This friend needed someone who could keep his mouth shut, do as he was told and, in return, would receive five pounds a week. The icing was that I could still sign on.

  A week later I met Tony ‘the Nose’ Campbell.

  Chapter 3

  ‘The Nose’ lived in one of the better houses in the West End of Glasgow: a home stuffed with antiques that meant nothing to me but were expensive as hell. My interview with him was short and sweet. I was told that the job was mine as long as my lips didn’t part and I took orders like an SS guard. I agreed and was dispatched to the east end of the city with
a list of addresses scribbled on the back of a fag packet.

  In each case I was expected to turn up at the door and inform the inhabitant that ‘the Nose’ had sent me. In return I was usually given an envelope, which I stuffed in my pocket.

  The door openings were never pleasant. I was never welcome. I was never asked in. I was verbally and, occasionally, physically abused. But most people still handed over their envelope.

  On the rare occasions I was given no envelope, I had instructions to circle their names with a red pen. When I handed the envelopes, and the list, back to ‘the Nose’, he would ask if anyone had ‘Red Ringed’ him today. If I said ‘yes’, a strange smile would cross his lips.

  A ‘Red Ringed’ house always had an envelope waiting for me on my next visit — the reluctant giver with a face that looked like it had met with a train head on.

  Occasionally a house would be struck off my list. Usually a multiple ‘Red Ringer’.

  I once stumbled on a funeral leaving a ‘Red Ringer’ and I made the mistake of asking who had died. The woman spat in my face.

  I was no fool. I knew what was going on. Within the first week of my new job I was more than aware I was collecting money for a loan shark. The abuse I received left me in no doubt. But ‘the Nose’ would simply tell me to grin and bear it and point out that I was really doing them a service, providing a source of cash when people were most in need. In his mind it was his way of serving the community. I adopted the same attitude and put my head down and worked hard.

  Six months into my new life ‘the Nose’ asked if I would like to up my wages. Do cats lick their balls was my reply and so I was introduced to Sammy Dall.

  Sammy was a small weedy man who never looked you in the eye. He was given the job of instructing me in the finer details of acquiring new clients — for which I would receive a percentage of the profits.

  It was a reflection on the state of the economy that I earned ten pounds within two days of starting my new role. It was easy money. Sammy was a great teacher, and a past master at drawing in punters and fleecing them. After a couple of weeks I was given a pitch near some local shops and business boomed.

  Did I feel remorse at what I did? Not really. Most of the people were only into ‘the Nose’ for small amounts and, although the interest rate was crippling, it was survivable.

  By then I was no longer collecting door to door. People came to me to pay up and if they didn’t I simply added them to the ‘Red Ring’ list, and someone else sorted it out.

  The down side was that it was a cold job in winter. There were days when I would have loved to use the local cafe as a meeting place but my clients didn’t want others to know their business. So I stood in the cold behind the City Bakeries, breathing in the smell of baking bread while my feet froze solid.

  I had been three years with ‘the Nose’ when I was first lifted by the police. Things were motoring along nicely. I would never be rich but, having acquired a car and, better still a license — obtained with the help of a two hundred quid bribe to a bent driving examiner, I was now mobile and I was a lot better off than most on my street.

  My incarceration was a direct result of my love for beer. The Lame Duck had opened my eyes to the wonders of McEwan’s Export and then to the joys of Grant’s whisky. After that there was no looking back. I took to them both like an alcoholic duck to a pond full of ethanol.

  With my wallet never short of a five pound note, I could indulge my liking for alcohol in a manner that my mates could only achieve through the cheap stuff from the off license or the dreaded home made hooch that some of their fathers made.

  It was a wet Tuesday evening when the police felt my collar. Life seemed full of wet Tuesday evenings. It’s a Glasgow thing. Rain and Tuesdays. I had been in the Lame Duck. Why not? It was far warmer than my mother’s flat? Central heating was still a wonder of the future to my family, and the pub came with the built in warmth of humanity.

  I was six sheets to the wind and should have been in a good mood. But I was in a shit mood. I’m not a violent drunk but on that night I had been in a boilermaker of an argument with Michael who, smashed out of his face, had accused me of being gay. To cap it he had done so in front of the regular church going assembled congregation of the Lame Duck by calling me a poof. Political correctness, like central heating, was also a thing of the future.

  To be fair to Michael the evidence was quite damning in his eyes. I’d had no girlfriend since school. And even then it had been little more than a peck on the cheek from Mandy McCulloch. I openly shunned the frequent stag nights if strippers were involved and a recent attempt to set me up with Michael’s youngest sister had been a disaster — I had ended the evening by calling her a frigid, ugly cow. To add cream to the cake I had done this in front of Michael.

  Despite, in my opinion, my description of his sibling being perfectly accurate, Michael had challenged my sexuality, subjected me to a verbal battering in the extreme and I had stormed out of the pub looking for something to hit.

  Unfortunately, on that particular cold wet Tuesday night, I chose to hit an off duty policeman, who, with great aplomb and very little effort, arm locked me and marched me to the local police station. Appearing at the sheriff court the next morning, I was fined twenty pounds and bound over to keep the peace.

  I kept all this from my mum. She needed more grief like a hole in her skull. My father’s heart had given out on the Christmas Eve of 1972 and my mother was terminally ill with cancer.

  I spent most nights back then either drunk as a skunk in the Lame Duck or up at the hospital. By the time I was arrested my mother’s life revolved around the diamorphine they were feeding into her drip. The money from the loan sharking had gone to providing the best care that could be bought back then. It still wasn’t much but it was better than nothing. At least she spent her last few days in the comfort of a private room.

  My altercation with the local constabulary did not go down well with ‘the Nose’. Despite my best efforts, word of my arrest got back to him and he was pissed off. He liked his workers to keep a clean slate. The less interest we generated from the authorities the better. I was now tarnished and ‘the Nose’ was angry, but he wasn’t stupid. I was good at my job. As such I was kept on but my wages were cut and, when I tried to protest I lost a tooth and gained six stitches for my efforts.

  Eleven eight and six seconds.

  Chapter 4

  On the day my mum died I was freezing my knackers off behind the City Bakeries. ‘the Nose’ found out at ten in the morning but didn’t send anyone to tell me until after three — hence ensuring that I had collected the day’s takings.

  The funeral was small and depressing. I paid for the best of coffins and a do at the Partick Halls. There were twelve of us in a space built for hundreds. The following day I handed back the keys to the hovel that had been my home since birth and, with the help of ‘the Nose’, obtained a deposit on a small flat off Hyndland Rd in Glasgow’s west end.

  I had stepped on to the property ladder.

  Six months later ‘the Nose’ joined my mother in Maryhill cemetery.

  He died in a fire.

  As I stood outside the shell of his house a policeman, with the hint of a smile, told me that ‘the Nose’ was no more. What the policeman didn’t tell me was that ‘the Nose’ had, prior to being burnt alive, been divested of both hands, his genitals and a large proportion of his face.

  ‘the Nose’ had been in debt to people far uglier than himself for more cash than he could ever pay back. There’s irony in there somewhere.

  ‘the Nose’ had met his match and I was out of a job.

  The next few months were hard. As soon as word got round that ‘the Nose’ was history a range of suitors came to call on my customers. I was on my own and my competition came with a heavy mob attached. I tried to keep some of the customers but in the end I lost them all. The new boys on the block simply wiped a percentage of ‘the Nose’s’ slate clean and they were sudden
ly heroes. I was booted off my patch and fell back on what little savings I had.

  In the scheme of things my next move could have been smarter but I was badly missing spare change in my pocket and, when Michael gave me the name of another contact I went along for the ride.

  This time it wasn’t loan sharking. It was lower than that.

  I was a look out.

  My first job was keeping watch for a local gang on the back lot of an old disused bus station. I was there to ensure that the gang could carry out their various escapades without fear of being caught. It was down to me to give them the few vital seconds to make good an escape when the law, or other interested bodies made an unexpected appearance.

  For my pains I would catch a pay packet of three quid for the job. I moved into ‘look out’ land and, on a good week, I could pull in six jobs. It kept me in beer and fags.

  It was then that I discovered I had more than a small gift for breaking and entering. It wasn’t something I had ever tried but it was something that I would excel at.

  I stumbled upon my talent when Jimmy Call, the leader of my new gang, turned his attention to the local betting shop and the safe that squatted in the premise’s back room.

  Rumours had abounded for years about the amount of money that lay in that little grey treasure trove. The fact that it had sat untouched for more than ten years was down to the evil bastard who owned the bookies — one Malcolm Smillie, a man of little compassion.

  Jimmy hatched a plan to do over the shop and make off with the safe. It was a crazy plan from the start. At its best it would seriously hack off Malcolm and at worst we would all end up in the canal wearing the latest in heavyweight body bags. But Jimmy was short on the smarts, cased the joint for over a week and announced that the back door was the weak point — everyone knew weak points were not the issue but this passed him by.