Synopsis

When it comes to revenge – timing is everything.

Enter the world of a Glasgow criminal as he rises to become one of the most powerful crime lords in the UK, only to have it all ripped away from him. Imprisoned, then reduced to a life on the street, he becomes hell bent on vengeance.

‘59 Minutes’ is a high pace crime thriller and is Gordon Brown’s second book, following the success of his first novel, ‘Falling’.

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

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. 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 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 my diary for you to read. It is there beside you. The big black book with the gold block lettering on the spine. 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.

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 23rd 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.

59 Minutes  – Opening Chapters from Diary Section.

Tuesday January 1^st 2008

Tuesday January 1st 2008
(Dictated October 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 iPods, 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 few bottles of Buckfast and a half bottle of Glen’s 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 it would seem that Dupree has ensured that the first rung is so out of sight that I may as well try and climb Mount Everest in a pair of slippers.

I door-stepped those of the gang that were still around and got blanked. I tried those that had retired but was told my name was bad news. I received eight kickings in as many days and the writing was on the wall. London was not for me. I was so skint I had to hold up a local corner store to get enough cash for a ticket back home.

Glasgow was little better. Every fucker is drawing me a blank but the kicking ratio has fallen – only three so far.

I’m sitting on the edge of a single bed in a room that sleeps four. My room mates 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 might take to the slippery slope with gusto. I haven’t written more than two sentences 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
(Dictated October 1st 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 – mostly 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 ended up sitting in Victoria Park mixing with the retired, unemployed and scum – sad to say that today I was probably the only one that could lay claim to all three categories. The whole world was out taking the air trying to shake of the excesses of the New Year and it made me feel crap.

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 find out who used to hold the license at The Lame Duck.

Friday January 4th 2008
(Dictated October 1st 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 20p 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 must 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 is 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
(Dictated October 3rd 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 Necroplolis – the soon to be dead drinking with the long dead. I declined. Things are bad but not that bad – ‘the Stink’ offered me a bottle of meths two nights ago and the smell alone made me gag. I’m determined to avoid that path but something in the back of my head tells me that all paths 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 Glasgow and the area just across the road from where I sleep is known as Merchant City – harking back to a day when the city was king of the trading towns. I’m not a kick in the arse away from where I first met Mr Read. They say what goes around comes around.

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 decided to wander 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 clothes line. There was a 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, one I had been saving since tea time, 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 was playing 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 around 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 no more than 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 it would be over.
The three I had laid out came to, joined in and, if it hadn’t been 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 the assault squad 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.