Elvis The Sani Man

by Ian Todd

  There are calls for Assistant Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police, Jack Tipple, to resign tonight following the decision by The Court of Appeal in Edinburgh to order the immediate release of Taylor, after The Crown withdrew its objection to Taylor’s lawyer’s claim that his conviction was unsafe. It has come to light that a senior police inspector, involved in reviewing the evidence into the death of a young nurse, twenty-year-old Rosemary Bain, who died as a result of a hit-and-run incident on the 6th of June 1974, withheld evidence that could have proved John Taylor’s innocence. Tonight The Scottish Office were considering holding a public enquiry into the death of the young nurse. In addition to the announcement that Superintendent Daddy Jackson, based in Central Headquarters, has been suspended, the newsroom can now reveal that the police inspector at the centre of this long-running saga has been identified as Police Inspector Patrick McPhee, based at Springburn police station in the north of the city. McPhee was arrested, along with Sergeant David McGovern, a serving officer in Possilpark Police Station, in dawn raids this morning. Strathclyde Police tonight refused to confirm if the arrests were in relation to the police inspector’s notebook, which allegedly contains vital evidence, but denied any link to Inspector Dougan’s murder this afternoon. Already, the fall-out has begun, with the head of the city’s prosecution service, David Broderick, announcing his retirement. One of his deputies, Glenda Metcalfe, the pretty procurator fiscal who has been coordinating The Crown’s rebuttal of polis having tampered with the evidence which led to John Taylor’s continued imprisonment and alleged police collusion in the death of Rose Bain, was today sensationally removed from her current post, in order to head up the prosecution service in the city’s district courts. The move has been seen as political and already, there have been calls tonight for the pretty procurator to be returned to her previous responsibility within the city’s busy Sheriff Court.

  A forty-two-year-old man has been charged with murder after a twenty-eight-year-old woman, believed to be the accused’s wife, died in an ambulance en route to hospital, after being found injured in a flat at thirty-five Annette Street, Govanhill this morning. It is believed the death was as a result of a domestic incident.

  And we’ve just been informed that Councillor Barbara Allan, whose constituency covers Springburn, has just released a statement echoing those calling for a full public enquiry into police corruption in the city. Mrs Allan claims that violence inflicted upon the citizens of the city and the sexual harassment of females employed by the police force, has reached epidemic proportions. New superintendent for the north of the city, Miss Murdina Munro, who has recently transferred to the city from Highland Constabulary for the next two years, denied Councillor Allan’s allegations and labelled them as nonsense. Superintendent Munro went on to accuse the councillor of attempting to make political capital out of hard-working and dedicated officers such as Inspector Douglas Dougan, who have to face dangerous and often armed thugs, on an almost daily basis. Mrs Allan was quick to respond by stating that what was happening within law enforcement in the city couldn’t be made up and that the endemic collusion and corruption between public figures, the police and organised crime, was like something out of an Ian Todd novel.

  You can keep up to date with The Mankys and Johnboy Taylor on The Glasgow Chronicles’ website and on Ian Todd’s Facebook page for The Glasgow Chronicles:

  www.theglasgowchronicles.com

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  Parly Road is the first book in The Glasgow Chronicles series by Ian Todd and is also available on Amazon:

  It is the summer of 1965 and things are looking up for ten-year-old Johnboy Taylor in the Townhead district of Glasgow. Not only has he made two new pals, who have recently come to his school after being expelled from one of the local Catholic schools, but their dream of owning their own pigeon loft or ‘dookit’ and competing with the city’s grown-up ‘doo-men’ in the sport they love, could soon become a reality. The only problem is that The Mankys don’t have the dosh to pay for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  Lady Luck begins to shine down on them when Pat Molloy, aka The Big Man, one of Glasgow’s top heavies asks them to do him a wee favour. The Mankys are soon embroiled in an adult world of gangsters, police corruption, violence and crime.

  Meanwhile, Johnboy’s mother, Helen Taylor is busy trying to keep one step ahead of the local Provi-cheque men and organising a group of local women to demonstrate against the Corporation’s Sheriff officer’s warrant sales.

  Set against the backdrop of a condemned tenement slum area, the fate of which has already been decided upon as it stands in the way of the city’s new Inner Ring Road motorway development, the boys soon realise that to survive on the streets, they have to stay one step ahead of those in authority. The only problem for The Mankys is working out who’s really in charge.

  Parly Road is full of the shadiest characters that 1960s Glasgow has to offer and takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey that has been described as irreverently hilarious, bad-assed, poignantly sad and difficult to put down.

  Run Johnboy Run is the second book in The Glasgow Chronicles series and is also available on Amazon:

  It is 1968 and The Mankys are back with a vengeance after 13-year-old Johnboy Taylor is confronted by a ghost from his past. The only problem is, he’s just been sentenced to 3 years at Thistle Park Approved School, which houses Scotland’s wildest teen tearaways. Without his liberty, Johnboy is in no position to determine whether the devastating revelation is a figment of his vivid imagination or whether dark forces are conspiring against him.

  Elsewhere in the city, Glasgow crime lord, Pat Molloy, aka The Big Man, is plotting to topple those who he believes were responsible for putting him out of the city’s thriving ‘Doo’ business three years earlier. Unfortunately for him, The Irish Brigade, a group of corrupt police inspectors, who rule the city with an iron fist, are not about to stand by and allow anyone to dip their fingers into their honey pot, without a fight.

  Meanwhile, Helen Taylor, Johnboy’s mother, has come up with a dangerous plan that she believes will finally overturn The City Corporation’s policy of selling their tenants’ household goods through humiliating public warrant sales. Reluctantly, she is forced to join forces with The Glasgow Echo’s sleazy top crime reporter, Sammy ‘The Rat’ Elliot, whose shadowy reputation of having more than one master makes him feared and reviled by the underworld and the establishment in equal measure.

  Run Johnboy Run is an explosive tale of city crime in 1960s Glasgow, involving a heady mix of establishment leaders and gangsters, who will use anyone to keep control of the city’s lucrative underworld. The only problem is, can anyone really be trusted?

  With more faces than the town clock, Run Johnboy Run dredges up the best scum the city has to offer and throws them into the wackiest free-for-all double-crossing battle that Glasgow has witnessed in a generation and The Mankys are never far from where the action is.

  The Lost Boy And The Gardener’s Daughter is the third book in The Glasgow Chronicles series and is also available on Amazon:

  It is 1969 and 14-year-old Paul McBride is discharged from Lennox Castle Psychiatric Hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown whilst serving a 3-year sentence in St Ninian’s Approved School in Stirling. St Ninians has refused to take Paul back because of his disruptive behaviour. As a last resort, the authorities agree for Paul to recuperate in the foster care of an elderly couple, Innes and Whitey McKay, on a remote croft in the Kyle of Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands. They have also decided that if Paul can stay out of trouble for a few months, until his 15th birthday, he will be released from his sentence and can return home to Glasgow.

  Unbeknown to the authorities, Innes McKay is one of the most notorious poachers in the Kyle, where his family has, for generations, been in conflict with Lord John MacDonald, the Duke of the Kyle of Sutherland, who resides in nearby Culrain Castle.

  Innes is soon teaching his young
charge the age-old skills of the Highland poacher. Inevitably, this leads to conflict between the street-wise youth from the tenements in Glasgow and the Duke’s estate keepers, George and Cameron Sellar, who are direct descendants of Patrick Sellar, reviled for his role in The Highland Clearances.

  Meanwhile, in New York city, the Duke’s estranged wife orders their 14-year-old wild-child daughter, Lady Saba, back to spend the summer with her father, who Saba hasn’t had contact with since the age of 10. Saba arrives back at Culrain Castle under escort from the American Pinkerton Agency and soon starts plotting her escape, with the help of her old primary school chum and castle maid, Morven Gabriel. Saba plans to run off to her grandmother’s estate in Staffordshire to persuade her Dowager grandmother to help her return to America. After a few failed attempts, Lady Saba finally manages to disappear from the Kyle in the middle of the night and the local police report her disappearance as a routine teenage runaway case.

  Meanwhile in Glasgow’s Townhead, Police intelligence reveals that members of a notorious local street gang, The Mankys, have suddenly disappeared off the radar. It also comes to the police’s attention that, Johnboy Taylor, a well-known member of The Mankys, has escaped from Oakbank Approved School in Aberdeen.

  Back in Strath Oykel, the local bobby, Hamish McWhirter, discovers that Paul McBride has disappeared from the Kyle at the same time as Lady Saba.

  When new intelligence surfaces in Glasgow that Pat Molloy, The Big Man, one of Glasgow’s top crime lords, has put the word out on the streets that he is offering £500 to whoever can lead him to the missing girl, the race is on and a nationwide manhunt is launched across Scotland’s police forces to catch Paul McBride before The Big Man’s henchmen do.

  The Lost Boy and The Gardener’s Daughter is the third book in The Glasgow Chronicles series. True to form, the story introduces readers to some of the most outrageous and dodgy characters that 1960s Glasgow and the Highlands can come up with, as it follows in the footsteps of the most unlikely pair of road–trippers that the reader will ever come across. Fast-paced and with more twists and turns than a Highland poacher’s bootlace, The Lost Boy and The Gardener’s Daughter will have the readers laughing and crying from start to finish.

  The Mattress is the fourth book in The Glasgow Chronicles series and is also available on Amazon:

  In this, the fourth book of The Glasgow Chronicles series, dark clouds are gathering over Springburn’s tenements, in the lead up to the Christmas holiday period of 1971. The Mankys, now one of Glasgow’s foremost up and coming young criminal gangs, are in trouble…big trouble…and there doesn’t seem to be anything that their charismatic leader, Tony Gucci, can do about it. For the past year, The Mankys have been under siege from Tam and Toby Simpson, notorious leaders of The Simpson gang from neighbouring Possilpark, who have had enough of The Mankys, and have decided to wipe them out, once and for all.

  To make matters worse, Tony’s mentor, Pat Molloy, aka The Big Man and his chief lieutenant, Wan-bob Brown, have disappeared from the Glasgow underworld scene, resulting in Tony having to deal with Shaun Murphy, who has taken charge of The Big Man’s criminal empire in The Big Man’s absence. Everyone knows that Shaun Murphy hates The Mankys even more than The Simpsons do.

  As if this isn’t bad enough, Johnboy Taylor and Silent Smith, two of the key Manky players, are currently languishing in solitary confinement in Polmont Borstal. As Johnboy awaits his release on Hogmanay, he has endless hours to contemplate how The Mankys have ended up in their current dilemma, whilst being unable to influence the feared conclusion that is unravelling back in Springburn.

  Meanwhile, police sergeants Paddy McPhee, known as ‘The Stalker’ on the streets for reputedly always getting his man and his partner, Finbar ‘Bumper’ O’Callaghan, have been picking up rumours on the streets for some time that The Simpsons have been entering The Big Man’s territory of Springburn, behind Shaun Murphy’s back, in pursuit of The Mankys.

  In this dark, gritty, fast-paced thriller of tit-for-tat violence, The Stalker soon realises that the stage is set for the biggest showdown in Glasgow’s underworld history, when one of The Mankys is brutally stabbed to death outside The Princess Bingo Hall in Springburn’s Gourlay Street.

  With time running out, Tony Gucci has to find a way of contacting and luring The Big Man into becoming involved in the fight, without incurring the wrath of Shaun Murphy. To do this, Tony and The Mankys have to come up with a plan that will bring all the key players into the ring, whilst at the same time, allow The Mankys to avenge the murder of a friend.

  Once again, some of Glasgow’s most notorious and shadiest ‘duckers and divers’ come together to provide this sometimes humorous, sometimes heart-wrenching and often violent tale of chaos and survival on the streets of 1970s Glasgow.

  The Wummin is the fifth book in The Glasgow Chronicles series and is also available on Amazon:

  It is 1971 in Glasgow’s Springburn, and the stormy winds that are howling through the old tenement building closes and streets, leading up to the Christmas and New Year holidays, only adds to the misery that is swirling around the inhabitants of the north of the city.

  On the 17th December, Issie McManus’s only son, Joe, is stabbed to death on the steps of The Princes Bingo Hall, on the same evening that her man, Tam, gets lifted by the police and shipped up to Barlinnie for an unpaid fine. As her life crumbles round about her, Issie turns to her neighbour and friend, Helen Taylor, who gathers together a group of local women, who are the scourge of The Corporation’s sheriff officers Warrant Sales squad, to take command of the situation.

  Meanwhile, all the major newspapers are speculating as to whether Alison Crawford, the wife of a prison governor, will survive the shooting that killed her lover, Tam Simpson, the leader of the notorious Simpsons’ Gang from Possilpark, whilst daily headlining the gory details of her supposed colourful love life as a senior social worker in Possilpark.

  Elsewhere in the district, Reverend Donald Flaw, who recently buried the sitting councillor, Dick Mulholland, is dismayed when he is informed that Councillor Mulholland’s election manager, the former disgraced Townhead councillor, JP Donnelly, has decided to throw his hat into the ring at the forthcoming by-election.

  As the demonstrations against warrant sales in the area continue over Christmas, bringing Helen Taylor’s gang of motley women back on to the streets, The Reverend Flaw and his wife, Susan, believe they have found the ideal candidate to prevent JP Donnelly’s resurrected political ambitions from bearing fruit. The only problem lies in whether the chosen one can be persuaded to stand against him.

  Still smarting from the headline in The Glasgow Echo, announcing that sales of The Laughing Policeman have topped 10,000 copies in Woolworth’s record department in Argyle Street, as a result of the weapon being used to kill Tam Simpson going missing, newly promoted Police Inspector Paddy ‘The Stalker’ McPhee, has been instructed to assist in the campaign to get JP Donnelly elected. Along with Father John, the local priest from St Teresa’s Chapel in Possilpark, an unholy alliance is formed that will go to any lengths to stop the opposition candidate from upsetting their political masters in George Square.

  The Wummin is a fast-paced political thriller, set in the north side of Glasgow. It will grip the reader, tear at their emotional heartstrings, whilst at the same time, evoke tears of laughter and shouts at the injustice of it all. It follows this group of Springburn ‘wummin’ in their fight against social injustice and their crusade for change, whilst the odds are stacked against them by an Establishment that will do everything in its power to maintain the status quo.

  Dumfries is the sixth book in The Glasgow Chronicles series and is also available on Amazon:

  It is January 1973 and the winds of discontent are picking up speed as they gust across the wintry skies of a country in which industrial stoppages and wildcat strikes follow each other on an almost daily basis. Equal pay and equality for women are still pipe-dreams in the second city of the empire
, where hospital casualty departments are overflowing, as they welcome the victims of violence and domestic abuse, who, after being patched up, if they are lucky, are spat back out to face a world that is moving at a pace at which only the fittest can hope to survive.

  Dumfries is the penultimate book in the current series of The Glasgow Chronicles, which has followed a cheeky wee bunch of manky boys from the tenements in 1960’s Toonheid, through adolescence to their coming-of-age as one of Glasgow’s most up-and-coming underworld gangs of the early 70s.

  The problem, as usual, is that half the hapless Mankys are currently in jail, with one of them having been sentenced to 14 years for shooting two police officers in the robbery of The Clydeside Bank on Maryhill Road in November 1972…the longest prison sentence ever handed down to a young offender in Scotland.

  With Tony, Johnboy, Silent, Snappy and Pat all doing time, the remnants of what was once a thriving money-making outfit, is being managed by Simon Epstein, owner of Carpet Capers Warehouse. When Simon is not plotting the downfall of the legendary Honest John McCaffrey, ‘The Housewife’s Choice,’ and owner of Honest John’s Kitchen Essentials shop by day, but one of the city’s top moneylenders and gangsters by night, Simon is ruthlessly ensuring that The Mankys’ wheel-of-fortune stays firmly on track.

  When everything seems to be on a downwards spiral and with no reprieve in sight for those languishing in jail, hope appears on the horizon through the smoke of screeching tyres from a speeding car in Colston, as it ejects the half-dead body of Haufwit Murray, sometime police informer and one of the city’s transient gangland hanger-ons. As he lies close to death in the Intensive Care Unit of Stobhill General Hospital, with little hope of recovery, Haufwit’s dying confession to Inspector Paddy ‘The Stalker’ McPhee triggers a chain reaction that forces Wan-bob Broon, the city’s Mr Big, out into the open, bringing deadly consequences for some and celebration and hope for others.