John Totten is called. Totten has matinee-idol good looks, a coiffed pompadour and is dressed in a shimmering blue Italian-cut silk suit. He wears a Celtic FC tie, a green kerchief tucked nattily into his breast pocket and a Celtic FC tiepin. After he has taken his oath he turns to the court with a shoulder sway and a Frankie Vaughan smile. You just know the guy can dance.
Totten is a surprise to the court. Billy Fullerton is so fervently anti-Irish Republican that he is the subject of a sectarian song that celebrates him being up to his ‘knees in Fenian blood’. The song will live on long after Fullerton. Come the digital age, football directors will lose jobs because they were filmed singing this song. The song is so incendiary that men will be hounded out of public office when other people sing it in their company. It will be forbidden, rewritten, bowdlerised. Fullerton’s anger will live on in legend because of that song. But Fullerton the man is not above finding frightened Catholics guns it seems, so maybe he wasn’t who they said he was at all. Maybe he was just an angry man with nothing to be but his reputation.
‘Yes,’ Totten admits, ‘I did used to run a pitch-and-toss school.’
And yes, it did run to two or three hundred participants at one time. It was out on the Green. He points through the wall because Glasgow Green is just out there and across the road.
Two or three hundred is vast for a gambling school. The room is wondering why the police allowed an open-air gathering of that size for the purposes of gambling, how much they got as a bung to allow that and how much Totten got as his cut. The profits must have been huge.
Did Mr Totten ever use the gun?
Yes, he did, but not on anyone. He just kept it in a shed nearby and took it out sometimes, firing it into the ground at the start of a game. It was a way of fending off trouble. The rival gang he was worried about never materialised and Totten had, unfortunately, to give up the school because he got a four-year stretch for a ‘wee bit of fighting’. Then the gun was left in a cupboard in his house, along with a Luger he had as well. It worried him, guns in the house. While he was in Barlinnie a guy called Tony Lowe was asking for a gun and Totten was happy to oblige, to get rid, basically. Totten is excused and leaves the stand, smiling up to the balcony as if he is sorry to leave without doing an encore, but has another engagement.
Tony Lowe has been brought from Wandsworth Prison to give his evidence. Tony is as grey as fag ash. He is dressed in badly laundered clothes that are too big. No one wants to look at him because he is depressing after the colour of the other witnesses. Lowe mumbles that he asked Totten for a gun because he was ‘in a bit of trouble’ at that time. Even this threat to his life sounds dreary and down at heel. Totten said he had a gun and Lowe was welcome to go and get it from Totten’s home as soon as he was released. Lowe would be out well before Totten. The problem was Mrs Totten, who wouldn’t allow any of Mr Totten’s disreputable friends near the family home. Because of this, Lowe had to contact Dandy McKay, co-owner of the Gordon Club, to come with him to Mrs Totten’s house. Mr McKay duly escorted Lowe to the house and they got the guns from Mrs Totten who was glad to give them away. Then, for safe keeping, they took the guns to Shifty Thomson’s house, which happened to be in Florence Street.
Shifty Thomson is sweating even before he turns to face the court from the dock. He covers his mouth with his hand, he mumbles, he obfuscates. No one can hear him and everyone is annoyed. Thomson is such a poor liar that everyone listening feels insulted but Shifty doesn’t give a stuff. He serves other masters.
Shifty Thomson says he was given the gun by Lowe and Mr McKay to hold. He had the gun in his house for about a year. Then Mr McKay came with Peter Manuel to pick up the Beretta. Shifty always says ‘Mr McKay’, never ‘Dandy McKay’. Mr McKay this, Mr McKay that. Mr McKay took the gun down. Mr McKay said it was all right. Mr McKay left and that’s about all he knows about that.
Thomson describes the activities of the Gordon Club as, ‘you know, bit a’ horse racing and that’. He describes his own role at the club as a bookmaker’s clerk. Do you have an office? Not as such. Yes or no? I suppose, not really. Do you conduct your accounts in the street, Mr Thomson? Maybe, sometimes, I dunno. You’re a bookie’s runner, aren’t you? Not really, always.
Of all the liars in court that day Lord Cameron finds Shifty Thomson the least convincing. He interjects forcefully during Shifty’s evidence.
‘Mr Thomson. You are here to do two things: speak clearly and tell the truth. You are not doing the first one and I have severe reservations about whether or not you are doing the second.’
This doesn’t incline Shifty to either honesty or clarity, it just makes him more nervous.
He is asked, ‘If you weren’t selling the gun why did you take the five pounds Mr Manuel offered you?’
Shifty shrugs and mumbles, ‘Dunno. He’s just only gave it to me. Would you no ha’ took it?’
‘Do you see Mr Manuel in court today, Mr Thomson?’
He looks at Lord Cameron and the jury for a good long while. Then he looks around. Finally he takes a stab at it: is that him? No, Mr Thomson, that’s not him, that’s the stenographer.
Maurice Dickov takes the stand. Dickov is an underworld gentleman of the old-fashioned kind. He doesn’t want to be in a golf club or have a semi in the suburbs or a bigger car than his neighbour. What Dickov wants is for everyone to be comfortable and have a pleasant evening and give him their money. He knows everyone worth knowing, their foibles and what they’re good for. In court he openly admits to co-owning the Gordon Club with Dandy McKay.
‘And what sort of private members’ club is it?’
‘Well, it’s a bridge club,’ Dickov says. ‘Gentlemen can play cards and relax there among like-minded chaps.’
He smiles. It does sound nice, the way he says it.
‘A social club?’
‘Yes, a private members’ club. Pleasant surroundings, well-stocked bar and good company. Splendid fellows. A way for gentlemen from all over to meet each other. Mingling.’
‘Do they all play bridge?’
The public gallery laugh a little, not because it was a funny joke or because they’re being facetious, really just to tell Dickov that they know he is lying.
But Dickov frowns at them. He isn’t lying. That is what he thinks his business is. ‘Yes, for men who like congenial company and playing cards.’
‘Do most of the members play bridge?’
He shrugs and drops his voice. ‘Well, it’s not an essential condition of membership but certainly some of them do.’
‘What proportion of the members might be playing bridge on any given night?’
‘It’s hard to say really.’
‘Is it hard to say because none of them are playing bridge, Mr Dickov?’
‘No.’
‘I suppose some of the gentlemen like to make their card games more interesting? Perhaps they wager on the outcome of certain games?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t watch them playing bridge.’
‘Please answer with either yes or no: the Gordon Club is a place where men can bet with each other on the outcome of card games.’