Capital Offence

Chapter 2

The night started kind of normal for a Saturday evening in the mid eighties. Jamie and some of the guys drinking poor man’s Black Velvet - cider and Sweetheart Stout, sugary, a kid’s drink - then cruising up and down the roads between Cramond and Silverknowes on their motorcycles. They weren’t exactly Hell’s Angels. Truth be told, Jamie’s parents didn’t fancy lending Jamie or his brother Dave the car so they could cruise around aimlessly. Jamie’s dad had saved too long and hard for the deposit on his Ford Capri, and so long as the hire purchase payments were coming out of his £900 salary each month he would rather keep the car at home where he could polish and admire it. So Jamie and some of his pals had saved up their own pocket money for motor bikes. This was not out of a spirit of wild rebellion - just a move for a little independence and pulling power over the local women.

Jamie was doing first year law at Edinburgh University, and couldn’t afford a complete break with the family just yet. He couldn’t even keep a bike at home - his parents forbade him to buy one, and he couldn’t shout defiance so long as he still lived with them. Instead, he shared one with Dave. Dave had moved out of the family house when he’d got a job in a bar, and had bought a magnificent old Triumph - a 1968 T120C with black frame, gleaming chrome and a burgundy and white tank. When he found the bills for upkeep too steep, Jamie had agreed to come in with a half share from his grant. The pair of them used to tinker with it from time to time in the common stair at Dave’s flat, annoying the hell out of the neighbours, stripping down the more easily accessible parts to convince themselves that they were tuning every last ounce of performance out of the machine. Defying their efforts, it continued to run powerfully, if a little erratically.

Dave Maclean had tried a succession of jobs whose common factor seemed to be that work rarely started before the evening, and went on late into the early hours of the morning. He was not concerned at his parents’ disapproval. Dave was a year older than Jamie, and it terrified Mr and Mrs Maclean that Jamie’s obvious hero-worship for Dave would divert him from his studies. The signs were there early on. Dave was the one with the bad reputation. Jamie did mostly the same things as he did, but somehow everyone felt they were out of character. “Don’t let that Dave lead you astray,” they’d say. “He’s not got your sense”, as poor old Dave got caught yet again in the middle of some wild scheme Jamie had hatched, or at the least, encouraged beyond the point of rational self-preservation.

Dave was always ready to take a risk - and Jamie loved that. Jamie had chosen to devote his considerable intelligence to the study of the law, so he felt he had to watch his step - within reason. Through Dave, he could live some of those little dangers vicariously, and Dave, flattered by his smart younger brother’s attention, was always willing to push the boat out a little. In return he got to date some of Jamie’s smart Uni girl friends - the ones who fancied a bit of rough - at least rough as perceived from a comfortable middle class academic perspective.

And the other side of the coin - Jamie got to meet some of the bar girls and waitresses who worked with Dave - girls whose relaxation with members of the opposite sex was exactly that - though the members were generally anything but relaxed until much, much later in the evening.

Anyway, that night Dave was there, together with Tam Byrne and Vaila Hoswick on Tam’s Norton Commando. Joe Conley was riding pillion on Malkie Paterson’s BSA Spitfire, while Ritchie Sherret and Annie Malcolm were on Ritchie’s clapped out Lambretta scooter.

Now if you’ve had any dealings with Jamieson Maclean MSP, or if you’ve followed his career in the papers and on TV, you might already be starting to become a little confused about the details here. It’s never been widely known that he did, indeed, once have a brother. Anyone remembering him from the old days would have picked up the impression that there must have been some sort of bereavement within the family, or at the very least an irreconcilable drifting apart. The UK can be a surprisingly big place.