Although I’ve now finished the first draft of my third novel and am working on my fourth this is the synopsis and some sample chapters from my second novel, the crime thriller ‘59 Minutes’.
Synopsis
‘Why would a man have less than an hour to tell his life story? Who is he? Who is he talking to? What is contained in the diary that lies on the table? As ‘59 Minutes’ unfolds we chart the world of a criminal as he rises to the height of his profession only to have it all taken away – reducing him to begging on the street. A criminal who becomes hell bent on revenge against the man who ruined his life – a man who shows no compassion, puts no value on life and is dangerous in the extreme.
‘59 Minutes’ is a high paced crime thriller divided into two parts. At first we listen as the criminal narrates his rise and fall from grace. Then we pick up a diary and follow his path to revenge. A path with a twist at the end so surprising it will leave you gasping.’
59 Minutes – Opening Chapters from Narrative Section
Before
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
Eleven oh one. The clock on the wall says eleven oh one. The second hand has crested the twelve and we are now into the second minute after eleven o’clock and counting. I can’t see it move but I know it is sliding across the apex and it does so with a fascination that owes everything to my circumstances. I know that second hand intimately, lovingly, fearfully and a shed load of other adverbs that would bore you to the core. I have listened to it sweep around that clock face for such a long time. Fifty-eight minutes and fifty-four seconds to go.
I might ask you to describe it to me at some point. But not yet. Not now. There are other more important things that I need to tell you in the time that remains 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. I need to tell someone and you are better placed than most, far better placed than most, to listen and understand. I need no more from you than that.
Listening is not even your responsibility. Hearing 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 drunken. But this I doubt.
As we travel together 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 I don’t have the luxury of entering a debate.
Can you also forgive me if I become a little vague or distracted? With such a short time left to me my mind may wander. It is inevitable. It is essential. My story may need some detours to make sense. It probably needs many more detours than I have time to negotiate. Therefore I have taken the liberty of giving you my diary.
It is there beside you. The big black book with the gold block lettering on the spine. It is yours to read. Not now but later. It is a cheap diary. One I was given a little over a year ago. Who gave me it is of no great importance. It is nothing more than the sort of diary you would get from a distant aunt at Christmas.
Please do not pick it up. Not now. Later when there is more time – digest it at your leisure. Then many things will become clear. Many more than I can tell you in the next fifty-eight minutes odd. Be content with the thought that no matter how obscure my rantings may get there is clarity in those pages.
So, where to 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 rush on.
Chapter 2
I was born in the west end of Glasgow. Partick to be exact. Dumbarton Rd to be very exact. Number 3 – you get the drift.
I was never the healthiest of kids. I had a tendency to monopolise whatever bug was doing the rounds. As a result I missed much of my schooling. On the upside I had 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 earned my fortune the honest way. An entrepreneur of note. But that would be a crock of crap. Yes I made money but I also managed to make a complete turkey of my life at the same time. Not that I didn’t hold promise in some areas. As you will see I excelled in places that others failed but ultimately I washed my life down a large plughole. I watched the water spin away – carrying my heartbeats 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 small reward. My father’s friend was a man called George Matthews. He owned an engineering firm on the outskirts of the city that employed about twenty people producing spare parts for the automotive industry. The hours were long. The job dull. Mind numbing dull. The factory had to sweat hard for its money and Saturday and even Sunday shifts were the norm for the first two years of my working life. I quickly lost contact with my schoolmates and found it hard to acquire new friends at work. I was, after all, far younger than anyone else in the building. My nickname was 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 that era. 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 heaven sent as far as he was concerned. In an instant, the scorn that the factory poured on its youngest member fell from his shoulders and dropped to mine. I think he always knew this was a shit deal and to compensate 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 and over the years 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 twenty third of October nineteen seventy-one, against all predictions, they took on Celtic in the League Cup final and beat 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 was nothing short of an understatement. There may never be a finer moment to be a Partick Thistle fan. But I had no love of the club and I was probably the least excited person on the terraces that day – but the game did bring one defining moment with it. After the match I was allowed into the hallowed halls of The Lame Duck for my first drink. I had turned eighteen the day before and the stained floorboards, dank smoky air and rank smell of a million men’s farts were mine for the taking.
Are you checking the clock? Eleven oh four and ten seconds. Time slips past so fast. I must keep moving.
I left Matthews Engineering two months later. I simply couldn’t take it anymore. The poor hours, the lack of pay and the endless insults. They all combined to force me out and onto the ‘Bru’ – Glaswegian for Social Security. Neither my mother nor my father were happy about this. They had been 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 poured our cash into.
When I left the job I had intended to find other employment as quickly as possible. But Britain was heading for its worst recession since the thirties and I had no qualifications, no skills and, probably most damning of all, no connections. I was prime meat for the local criminal fraternity and after six months of fruitless interviews and rejections Michael Tolt surprised me and stepped in with an offer that was hard to refuse.
He told me, over a pint in The Lame Duck, that a friend of his was looking for a reliable lad to run some errands. The friend needed someone who could keep his mouth shut and do as he was told. In return I would receive five pounds a week. The good news was that I could still sign on.
I accepted and 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 I was later to find out were expensive as hell. My interview with him was short and sweet. I was told that the job was mine as long as I could keep my mouth shut and follow orders. I agreed and was shipped out to the east end of the city with a list of addresses. In each case I turned up at the door and told 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 often verbally and, occasionally, physically abused. But most people would hand over their envelope, scowl at me and slam the door. On the rare occasions I was given no envelope I had to circle their names on the sheet with a red pen. I would hand the envelopes and the list back to ‘the Nose’. He would ask if anyone had ‘Red Ringed’ him today and if I said yes a strange smile would cross his lips.
The next time I went to a ‘Red Ringed’ house there was, on most occasions, an envelope waiting for me. The reluctant giver looking like they had met a train face on. Very occasionally a house would be struck off my list. In most cases the house had been a multiple ‘Red Ringer’. I once stumbled on a funeral leaving a ‘Red Ringer’ and I asked who had died. The woman looked at me and 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 verbal doing 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. If money was unavailable from any other source then he was your answer. It was his way of serving the community
Six months into my new life ‘the Nose’ approached me and said would I like to up my wages. I said I would and he introduced me to Sammy Dall. A small weedy man who never looked you in the eye.<
Sammy was given the job of instructing me in the finer details of loan sharking and I was told that for every new ‘client’ I acquired I would receive a percentage of the take.
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 the local shops and people came to me.
Did I feel remorse at what I did? Not really. Most of the people were only in to ‘the Nose’ for small amounts and although the interest rate was crippling it was survivable. The good news was that 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 only real down side was that it was a friggin’ cold job in the winter. On the coldest of days I would have loved to use the local café as a meeting place but my clients didn’t want people to know their business. So I stood in the cold behind the City Bakeries and breathed in the smell of hot bread while my feet froze solid.
When I was first lifted by the police it had nothing to do with the loan shark business. Far from it. I had been three years with ‘the Nose’ and was doing well. I had gained his trust and although I would never be rich, I was a lot better of than most in my street. I had a car and a license obtained with the help of two hundred quid.
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 the joys of Grant’s whisky and there was no looking back. I took to them like an alcoholic duck to a pond full of vodka. 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 cheap booze 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 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. 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. In front of the regular church going assembled congregation of the Lame Duck he called me a ‘poof’. Political correctness was also a thing of the future.
To be fair the evidence was quite damming in his eyes. I’d had no girlfriend since school. And even then it had been little more than a peck of 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 statement being perfectly accurate Michael had challenged my sexuality and subjected me to a verbal battering in the extreme. 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, arm locked me and marched me to the local police station. I was charged with breach of the peace and the next morning, at the sheriff court, I was fined twenty pounds and bound over to keep the peace.
I kept this from my mum. To be fair it would have been pointless telling her anything as my life at home had come off the rails. My father’s heart had given out on the Christmas Eve of nineteen seventy-two and my mother was terminally ill with cancer. I spent most nights back then either drunk as skunk in the Lame Duck or up at the hospital. By the time I was arrested she was past caring for anything other than the morphine 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.
Eleven eight and six seconds. Need to put my foot down
My altercation with the local constabulary did not go down well with ‘the Nose’. Word of my arrest got back to him and he was less than pleased. 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 was not stupid. I kept my job and my wages were cut to teach me a lesson. I tried to protest and lost a tooth and gained six stitches for my efforts.
59 Minutes – Opening Chapters from Diary Section.
Tuesday January 1st 2008
I don’t know why I’m keeping this diary. I’ve never kept one before but after fourteen years in prison the world is a scary place and I need some order in my life.
I was given this on Christmas day by the hostel and told it might help if I keep a record for a while. I think that’s a pile of crap but in a world of iPod’s , broadband, HD TV and SEO I’m like a polar bear in the Sahara – wrong place and lost.
I have a hangover- my first New Year hangover in nearly a decade and a half. A couple of the lads at the hostel managed to blag a couple of bottles of Buckfast and a half bottle of ASDA’s own label vodka and we celebrated the birth of 2008.
I’m stunned at how little I have in the world. That bastard Dupree took everything. He owns my homes; he raided my bank accounts and even emptied my offshore account. When I stepped out of the prison gates I had the clothes I stood in and one hundred and eight quid in my pocket (the money I had on me when I was arrested).
I was given a bed in a hostel near Hammersmith for two weeks. Two weeks that I spent trying to get back on the ladder that I had fallen from – but Dupree has ensured that the first rung was so out of sight that I may as well try and climb Mount Everest in a pair of slippers than hold out hope of gaining any of my old wealth back.
I door-stepped those of the gang who were still around and got blanked. I tried those who had retired but was told my name was bad news. I thought of staying in London but the writing was on the wall and I had to hold up a local corner store to get enough cash for a ticket back home.
I’m sitting on the edge of a single bed in a room that sleeps four. My roommates are all out looking for booze. It’s what they do every night. I’m not there yet but a few more weeks and I will take to the slippery slope with gusto. I haven’t written this much in years and already my hand is cramping up. Rachel’s letter is stuffed into my holdall. I’ve read it so often I can tell you the spacing between letters in millimetres and could, if asked, forge it to the point where a handwriting expert would struggle to tell original from copy.
I’m planning a trip to the pub tomorrow. I’ve no idea if it is still there or if Stevie is to be found. Not that I have a blind clue as to who Stevie is.
My head hurts and I’m off to the front desk for some painkillers.
Wednesday January 2nd 2008
The trip to the pub was a washout. The Lame Duck is no more. A concrete shell with a faded wooden sign that some local wit has changed to the Lame Fuck. There was no sign of life and no indication of who owns it and how you could contact them. I tried a few of the nearby pubs but it was early and the bar staff were clueless – telling me to come back later when the owner or manager was around.
I took myself up to the West End for a memory trip but I wasn’t in the mood. Everything reminds me of what I used to have. If it wasn’t the New Year break I would have usually ended up sitting in Victoria Park mixing with the retired, unemployed and scum – sad to say I was the only one that could lay claim to all three categories. But yesterday the world was out taking the air trying to shake of the excesses of the New Year.
I ate a Kit Kat but I wasn’t in need of the break – my life is one big break. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try the council and try and find out who used to hold the license at the Lame Duck.
Friday January 4th 2008
I spent yesterday in the hostel. It might be have been a Thursday, a work day, and the other side of the traditional two day New Year break in Scotland but that didn’t mean that the people I needed to see in the council were back to work. Monday I was told on the phone. It cost me twenty pence to find that out. I don’t have twenty pence to spare – how bad are things when you can’t afford to make a phone call.
One of my roommates – Charles- or ‘the Stink’ as he is affectionately known – and I use the term ‘affectionately’ in the loosest possible sense – told me to try the web.
I blanked this idea. I’m ashamed to say I may be the least web literate person in the UK. For most of my time in prison there was no internet access – the web revolution passed us all by. When they did install it we were restricted in where we could surf and I just couldn’t be arsed. I did try to Google Dupree once but to no avail and never went back.
There is an internet terminal in the hostel and I’ve asked one of the kids if they can find out who the owner of the Lame Duck was but he wants a packet of fags for his trouble so I told him to piss off.
I’ll wait until Monday and do the physical thing and visit the council.
Saturday January 5th 2008
A bad night last night. I went for a walk about eight o’clock to clear my head. I met a few of my inmates on the steps of the hostel and they were off to get slammed up in the Necropolis – the soon to be dead drinking with the long dead. I declined. Things are bad but when ‘the Stink’ offered me a bottle of meths two nights ago the smell made me gag. I’m determined to avoid that path but something in the back of my head tells me that all roads lead that way.
The hostel sits just off High St in a run down part of the city. Back in the eighteenth century this was the centre of the town and the area just across the road from where I sleep is known as Merchant City harking back to a day when Glasgow was king of the trading towns.
On the other side of the hostel is the ‘Barras’ – Glasgow’s perennial market – ‘If you can’t get it there – you can’t get it anywhere’ – a direct quote from my old man. I wandered through the ramshackle maze of buildings that make up the market – all closed up for the night. On the edges a few pubs ply their trade but last night it was hard to imagine the buzz that the area creates when it is in full flow.
As a kid I loved coming here. The men on the stalls selling crockery at prices that seemed unreal. The smell of cooked sausage smothered in tomato sauce. The sound of music through tinny speakers hung to an outside wall by a length of clothesline. There was magic in the place that seemed to vanish as I got older. Did the place just get seedier or did the cynicism that comes with old age just see the place for what it really was?
I had stopped for a fag next to one of the buildings that hosts the stalls. The shutters were down all around and the street outside was deserted save for the rubbish that the wind played football with.
I heard them before I saw them. The thumping bass beat of dance music echoing from the windows and walls around me. There were six of them. All hooded up and all on a mission. I was clearly the target from the get go. They had no fear – music racked up inviting attention. I’d been that boy and knew what was coming so I dropped the cigarette and moved away.
Three more appeared at the other end of the street and I was caught in a classic pincer. I looked round for a way to escape but there was nowhere to go.
Twenty-five years ago I would have known these boys and they would have known me. Now I was a jakey ripe for a beating. I tried to talk to them but the hoody with the beat box simply racked up the volume. This wasn’t a time for a chat – it was a time to get down and dirty on the tramp.
I didn’t take the beating lying down. I can still handle myself when the need is on but sheer numbers were against me. Even so I surprised the first three by decking them and decking them hard. It caused the others to pause and reassess their strategy but numbers and booze filled bloodstreams gave them brave pills and they laid into me.
I curled into a ball and tried to focus on when this would be over.
The three I had laid out had come too and if it wasn’t for the distant wail of a police siren I suspect I might have been joining my mates in the Necropolis as a more permanent member of the area. I lay for ten minutes after they ran off and assessed the damage. I’d had enough kickings in my time to realise that a few bones had been broken. My ribs hurt and my left hand was limp – one of the bastards had dropped from a full six feet and crushed my wrist between his knee and the ground. I staggered to my feet and headed for the Royal Infirmary. Less than a mile away but it still took me an hour to get there. Mostly because I needed to stop to hack up blood.
They kept me in overnight, strapped my ribs and put a plaster on my wrist. I had a restless night but it was free of the smell of ‘the Stink’ and breakfast in the morning was hot and free. The hospital wanted me to report the attack to the police but I declined. I might have been gone for a couple of decades but there will still be some police who remember me from days gone by and I want to stay out of their way until I figure the Lame Duck/Stevie thing out.
I was discharged with a supply of painkillers and an appointment to come back in a week.
The strange thing about the whole affair was not the beating. I’m more intrigued by the fact they knew my name.
