by John Mayer
The House
A Long Look Back A Long Fight Ahead
being
The Fifth Novel
in
The Parliament House Books Series
Call the Case
Public Law -v- Private Vengeance
John Mayer
Table of Contents
The House
Table of Contents
The House - Copyright © 2017 - 2018 John Mayer
About the Author
Dedication
Part One : The End
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Part Two : I Am The Resurrection
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part Three : Enemies Within and Without
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part Four : A Brotherhood of Strangers
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Part Five : The Best Laid Schemes …
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part Six : Yea Though I Walk …
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Part Seven : Public Private Partnerships
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Part Eight : Shifting Sands
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Part Nine : Wounded Women
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
The House - Copyright © 2017 - 2018 John Mayer
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Published firstly in the United Kingdom and available in ebook form all over the world. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever in any form now known or to become known without written permission of the author or his assignees except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, educational or other lawful purposes.
For all information and permissions, contact the author at [email protected]
About the Author
John Mayer left school aged 14 because the school was in a gang war zone and he wasn’t learning enough to satisfy his intellectual curiosity. He read privately for a year in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow before becoming the youngest member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in Scotland. Through the 1970s, he was an Indie Record Producer flying his own plane and making records which are still played as anthems today. In 1992, he became an Advocate in the Supreme Court of Scotland where he became an expert in international child abduction: rescuing the children, not abducting them, of course.
In his youth, John was shot. Twice! Once in Glasgow, Scotland and once in New York City. Don’t ask what happened to the other guys. John has always tried to bring an intellectual passion to everything he does. And when writing, he also tries to convey something much more difficult than inserting mere intellect: he tries to turn feelings into words. John is always deeply grateful for Reviews on Amazon. Enjoy The Parliament House Books.
Dedication
In memory of the late Bella McLane
Part One : The End
Chapter 1
When buying their bread, milk and bottles of home-made hooch from wee Malky McMillan’s corner shop. When passing each other, even on the sunny side of Green Street. When trudging up the well-worn stone stairs to their tenement apartments for the millionth time. And especially when hearing the thud of their old pine doors closing behind them. It all felt like the end.
Other parts of the city had felt it before them. First, the uncaring letters would come: unsigned and unwelcome, they would come disguised in their legalese. Worrying the old and weakening the sick, those letters would also poison the green shoots sprouting in the minds of the young. All that anyone could be sure of was that one dark morning, those letters would come for every one of them.
Some had heard rumours about how this worked. First, the church bells would fall silent, leaving everyone ignorant even of the time of day. Then, after the financial enticements had been secretly dangled, one by one the old shops would close. The Empire and Commercial tally-man would stop bringing new ‘tick books’ so bank accounts and computers would become an evil necessity. In the offices of Glasgow City Council Housing Department the line for roof and chimney repairs would start to stretch into a hazy distance. The bus shelters would be torn down and every bus from the city centre would speed past as though every man woman and child of them had become invisible. Some might escape to a daughter or in-laws, or if they were very lucky, to some cracked concrete high-rise in sunny Spain. For the vast majority of the old ones, they’d never known anywhere else. Some of the old women had never even been beyond the city limits; waiting at home for the monthly money sent by their men who were circling the world on cargo ships.
Of course, they were well used to trouble. Trouble in the days before birth and trouble in the days after birth. In the Calton, trouble was just everywhere, all the time. Nevertheless, it could be fought, or at least temporarily forgotten. A drink alongside an old pal in the Calton Bar could do it. A wee win on the horses was always welcome. Best of all, of course, was when linking arms with thirty thousand of their own in Celtic Park on a Saturday and singing the old songs at the tops of their voices; laughing at the police trying to arrest those on the outskirts.
But this? No. This was real trouble. For now, it was still only a rumour; but nonetheless, it was a rumour that thickened the very air they breathed. Yes. This felt like the end.
~~~o~~~
Chapter 2
The nine judges would sit in a semi-circle wearing very ordinary looking suits and ties instead of the traditional horsehair legal wigs and ankle-length ermine gowns of Parliament House. The Chairman was a steely-haired woman in a black dress, who wore jewellery and carried a woven purse she’d bought in a market in Morocco. That was extraordinary enough, but the sight of a six-foot-tall black Macer standing behind them in his shirt sleeves and open gown, McLane thought would’ve sent old Jimmy Robertson into an early grave. Sitting in a row behind the judges’ seats were the young multi-coloured clerks to each judge. Even as the judges addressed counsel and vice-versa, these clerks tapped into iPads and occasionally checked their phones. But for the lecterns on the straight polished table and the bundles of papers tightly tied with pink cotton legal tape, it was difficult to imagine that this was the Supreme Court of the United Kingd
om sitting across the street from the Houses of Parliament in London.
As Mr Brogan McLane QC, he’d appeared in so many different legal fora that the surroundings were the last thing on his mind. The night before, the Secretary of State for the UK Home Office had thrown in the towel; or at least his legal counsel had. So McLane was anticipating plain sailing. Turning around, McLane smiled a ‘Good morning’ to three adults and a toddler sitting at the back of the public gallery.
With a nod to the near distance and a flutter of his eyelashes, McLane’s opposite number seemed to float more than walk into court. His entourage of about seven followed, more as though at the feet of an eastern guru than assisting a man who was about to go into the legal journals as having lost a case he’d fought for the last three years. In return, McLane gave him and his team the kind of nod he’d afford to someone passing on the streets of Glasgow whom he didn’t know but who obviously recognised the unmistakable figure of Brogan McLane QC.
With counsel assembled, their legal notebooks opened and their last-second licks around the teeth completed, the judges came in at a casual pace in their line of superiority and after bowing to counsel, took their swivel chrome and leather chairs.
With a cheery smile, the Chairman adjusted her necklace, looked around the highest court in Great Britain and asked: ‘Now. Who appears?’
Rising in this court for the first time, McLane announced: ‘I am McLane my lady. And of course my learned friend is Mr Lionakis, the present Home Office legal counsel.’
With a kindly nod of her head towards McLane, Baroness Ardennes was all smiles:
‘Welcome Baron McLane of Calton to your first appearance in the Supreme Court. We have your Memorandum of Acceptance to the offer made by the Home Office, so I take it that this case is settled between you. Is that correct? Oh, and I think you prefer to be addressed in court as just Mr McLane. Is that also right?’
Laying his hand on the two untied bundles of papers that reached from the floor up to his waist, McLane nodded: ‘I answer in the affirmative to both questions, my lady.’
‘Splendid, Mr McLane. You may not know this, but where there is settlement we prefer to hear a quick history of the case and a setting out of the principal issue between you before pronouncing judgement. So, in your own time, Mr McLane.’
With a quick turn to the public benches, McLane nodded to the young woman holding the toddler and distracting him with a lollipop.
‘My lady and my lords, this case began with the arrest of my client some three years ago on the horrible allegation that she assaulted her own infant child to the extent of cracking thirty-five of his bones. The child was only a few months old at the time. She and her then partner were on the eve of standing trial on a long list of charges in the High Court in Parliament House, Edinburgh, when the partner committed suicide in Barlinnie Prison. The trial nevertheless went ahead and my client was convicted. She received a sentence of thirty-five years imprisonment from Lord Elmtree; one year for every fracture, my lady. I represented her at trial and at appeal.
On appeal I was able to demonstrate that far from attacking her own child, that child - who is in court today being cared for by his mother and a couple who temporarily fostered him - was, like many other children around the world, suffering from a medical condition which was then unknown but is now widely understood by the medical profession and called Temporary Brittle Bone Disease. I may say that I now represent the 134 other Appellants on the List titled ‘Claimants v UK’ who are also seeking damages from the Home Office. That figure comes to some ninety-two million pounds for wrongful arrests, convictions, imprisonments and deprivation of family life; in some cases for over twenty five years. It is that wide public aspect which has allowed this case to proceed all the way up to this court. Your judgement today will apply to all of my other clients and perhaps many more who are in other legal hands throughout the United Kingdom. This judgement will also apply to anyone in the same position anywhere in Her Majesty’s Realms and Territories and, I suppose, in several other countries. There can be no doubt that this judgement with its attendant monetary damages, will be for many families, a wholly new beginning to their blighted lives. I have heard many of my clients say that these years of conviction and deprivation from their children has felt like being imprisoned in a dark hole without a single friend to tell. Of course, for many of those who were imprisoned, that was literally the case. All of my clients say they were in a place where prayers are quickly discarded and where there is nothing to fill the mind but bitter sadness and horror. My lady, for the clients sitting behind me today and the hundreds of other people who are not here today, the words of this court will truly be like the sun coming up. A new beginning to a whole new life.
My lady I trust that is a sufficient sketch of the facts and circumstances. However, if there is any particular matter which any judge wishes me to address, then of course I will be happy to do so. If not, then I rest.’
Mr Lionakis sat staring up to the ceiling, displaying the couldn’t-care-less attitude he’d taken all along. For him the case wasn’t about medical advances, people suffering for decades or the weight of new evidence against the bald denial he’d put up for three years in place of a real defence. For him the case was only about saving the Home Office as much money as possible. At the first Home Office consultation, after careful study by his best assistant of all McLane’s legal arguments, he’d immediately taken the view that these damages would eventually have to be paid and ring-fenced a budget, put it in the hands of City Fund Managers and made just over thirty per-cent per year on those investments; so judgement today would in reality cost the Home Office only ten percent of the amount ordered by the court. And they’d pay it in instalments in the hope that some of the claimants might die, be imprisoned or be subject to some other tragedy.
Baroness Ardennes finished noting what McLane had said and tilted her head towards his opponent: ‘Mr Lionakis. Do you challenge anything Mr McLane has said?’
‘Err, I don’t suppose so. No. I too rest.’
No gavel banged nor even was there an entry made in a leather bound book. The Chairman simply smiled into the near distance: ‘Very well, then judgement is pronounced for the Appellant. A hearing on Costs will follow according to the usual timetable. The court will now adjourn.’
Unlike in Parliament House, there was no call of ‘Co-ou-rt!’. No raising to the shoulder of Her Majesty’s Golden Mace. The judges just rose, smiled at those in front of them and drifted out in the same formation in which they’d come in.
Leaving the opposing team to slope away with their tails between their legs to block some other rightful demand for compensation, McLane turned and made his way to the back of the public gallery. Reaching out to lift the child, McLane smiled at his mother and asked:
‘May I, Tina?’
With a roll of her eyes that said of all people she’d allow to lift her child, Mr McLane was at the top of her list, Tina Kelly pressed both palms into her chest: ‘Of course, Mr McLane. He’s a really strong wee fella now. You’ll no’ break him.’
Tina Kelly was a completely different woman from the one McLane had met three years before: a junkie mother vomiting into a toilet bowl in a jail cell. Now her hair was clean, shoulder length and she’d had it highlighted. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks pink, her fingernails were trimmed and, McLane noticed, even polished. Of course, before today’s judgement, she was still attending for regular reports that she was still clean of heroin, so McLane had no need to ask about that.
Lifting the wee fellow, McLane sat him on his right arm and tickled his ribs. Laughing and squirming, the child’s happy voice filled the otherwise empty Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
It wasn't even eleven o’clock in the forenoon but the London media had gotten wind of another big win for this firebrand Scottish QC. Outside on the street the relentless traffic ground by. Through the high glass front inner doors, at the sight of Tina coming down a corridor, the wolves
switched on bright lights and began baying for the story. By the One O’clock TV News, the faces of Tina Kelly and her pixelated son would be on every screen in the country. Now changed into a suit and tie and standing at the back of their little group, McLane switched on the phone that an hour before he’d made certain was off. Immediately it buzzed with several messages; but among those from his Chambers Clerk in Parliament House, offers of settlement in other cases and an array of pleas for legal help, it was the two word message at the top from Tucker Queen in the Calton Bar that caught his full attention.
It read: ‘They’re here.’
~~~o~~~
Chapter 3
Ordinarily, at just after three in the afternoon, the Calton Bar would’ve been awash with winners and losers alike; both sides hoping that their choice in the 3:30 race would be the big win of the day. All of big Tommy Sorkin’s hot steak pies would’ve been devoured and roughly half of the gamblers would’ve been buying drink for the other half.
But today up in the corner, the new TV screen Lenny had won in a city-wide bar raffle was black. Behind the bar, Lenny stood a lethargic and downcast figure, who seemed to be slowly wearing away the glass in his hand rather than polishing it. In his alcove, Tucker Queen was busy on his iPad trying to find out more information, occasionally taking sips of his half pint of beer so small that the level didn’t seem to go down. Big Joe Mularkey’s ship was known to be coming back from Africa, but pushing through a force ten gale off the Scottish west coast, so it wouldn’t be docking for at least another two hours. At the far end, Arab was leaning heavily over the bar and drinking alone: something no-one had seen him do since his mother died the year before.
Only a generation ago it would’ve been unthinkable to allow women in during the week; but in wartime, they were known to be staunch and useful. Anyway, the dozen or so women huddled together at the back around two of Lenny’s longest tables were all daughters of wartime mothers. Women who’d stood by their men and, time and time again, helped each other in time of need.
