On Saturday as I saw pictures of the police allowing pro-Independence supporters to hold demonstrations on motorway bridges near Glasgow, I recalled a scene in my new novel, ‘Flight of Evil: A North British Intrigue’.

It’s 4 years from now and the Nationalists are out of office. But it is not easy to reduce the influence of the party over state institutions. This blurring of the edges between party and state springs from the era of Janey Snodgrass who, after her defeat, has gone off to a middle-level position in the United Nations’s climate change bureau.

The excerpt comes from a middle chapter. It shows what ensues as a result of her successor Clova Bruce failing to disentangle her perosnal life from politics. She mishandles a horrific accident that results in tragedy in a flat in the Govanhill area of Glasgow. She relies on a sympathetic policeman to try and extricate her from the hole she has fallen into.

Her readiness to circumvent the law comes as she is fighting a campaign in a referendum that her Unionist rival Gavin Ogilvy has called. Two million refugees are stuck in tents on the Pennine Moors of northern England , casualties of the civil war that erupted in London in 2021 and soon spread in nearly all directions. Bruce is leading the NO campaign formed to keep these people out on account of their likely disruptive influence and strain on Scotland’s meagre resources. It is 7 points ahead when Clova Bruce’s messy private life sparks off a crisis which will soon have unpredictable consequences far beyond Scotland….

‘For Glasgow it was a mild February evening with the temperature hovering around 8 degrees centigrade. Gordon Hoy was standing behind a tree on the other side of which was a gorge under which the White Cart river swiftly flowed.

He was spending this Friday evening in Linn Park, comprising 52 hectares in the southern outskirts of the city . It is more like a hilly and muddy country park than a well-tended city park of which Glasgow has quite a number. Linn Park attracted people who were keen to escape the bustle or drudgery of city life. From dog walkers to courting couples to youngsters from the nearby Castlemilk housing scheme in search of a few hours of oblivion fortified by bottles of cheap Buckfast wine.

It was a particular couple that Hoy was training his long-range photographic lense on. He only knew the name of one of them, Davy Trainor. Luckily, he was wearing a white-coloured padded jacket. As he made love to his companion, a pretty, dark-haired girl, Hoy snapped away. He was only really interested in Davy. He had entered the public eye in the last few months.

When the young man rested with his back to the tree and his trousers wound around his ankles as his partner bent down to induce a second arousal, Hoy knew that the cold and discomfort were worth it.

In twenty minutes of covert photography he had got what he wanted. He had already tipped off the Irishman Peadar McHale, a stringer in Glasgow for various world newspapers, that he might shortly have some hot photos. He said they were of Clova Bruce young partner. As she threw herself into the referendum, he was increasingly by her side, especially at public events geared for young voters.

Clova was married to an elderly painter but it was a nominal relationship. A woman almost twice his age being escorted by a dashing guy rising up in the musical business would signify that she was a politician very much in tune with the times.

Owlish and inscrutable behind his thick beard and glasses, McHale had thrown aside his caution and said that indeed he was interested in such a haul.

‘Who would take them and what would they be prepared to pay’, Hoy asked?

‘There are several publications from the North-East of America which are regularly taking stories from me and others as Scotland hots up politically again’, McHale replied.

Hoy said he would give the Irishman twenty per cent of whatever profits were made from the transaction but he would want to write the accompanying story It would be one adopting the line of how the personal so often gets in the way of the political in the story of Scottish Nationalism.

McHale agreed and he was very rapidly able to get back to Hoy to tell him that the glossy weekly Atlantic Carnival was ready to offer £150,000 for a five thousand word piece but only if the photos were sufficiently revelatory.

It was not a good idea to check the quality of the photos at the perilous spot where he was located with little between him and the rushing torrent near where he stood. So he gingerly crept away to inspect them in his car. He was relieved to see that there were at least eight good photos showing the different stages of the love-making he had observed. A close-up showing the sated Davy with his back to the oak tree around which he and his girl had cavorted, even revealed the small scar extending from his lower lip.

A provisional contract had been signed with the magazine that laid down he would be paid one-third of the fee upon handing over the photos, another one-third on submission of the text, and the remainder soon after publication. The magazine stipulated that it would own the copyright of the photos as soon as the first part of the fee was paid.

He was heading to his third floor tenement flat in the fashionable Hyndland district in the north-west of the city. He and his wife had bought it together upon teaming up after their respective divorces. Marianne Logan was back to earning an income as a reporter dealing with crime stories on the Daily Bugle. It was quite a come-down for someone who had started out in this unglamorous field thirty years earlier and had gone on to do weightier things.

By now she and Gordon were keen to leave Scotland. They were veteran Scottish Nationalists but they had worked out that independence would be no bed of roses for them. Indeed, there were already signs that only grinding austerity offered it any real chance of success. They knew the Bugle’s staff pension scheme was rickety. £160,000 pounds, on top of savings twice that much, could enable them to buy a condominium in the Florida panhandle. Once they had even higher hopes than this, dreaming of settling down in Fort Lauderdale or even Palm Beach.

That was during the years when they were the power couple of the Scottish media. A mere six years earlier when it looked as if Scotland was poised to emerge from the British shackles and soar heavenwards as a newly independent country.

They had mortgaged their flat and, combined with a large loan from the bank, had launched Scotland’s Own in 2013. It was a magazine designed for everyone who had some kind of passion for Scotland and, back then, there were many such people. …



Within a year, Scotland’s Own was selling 50,000 copies a week. The loan was paid off, the mortgage redeemed thanks to bumper profits rolling in…. By 2017 Scotland’s Own’s circulation had tumbled in line with the decline in fortunes of SNAP. Profits were still being made but they would be toiling in the media world for another ten years before they could walk away and permanently enjoy life in the sun.

Scotland’s Own in 2022 was a monthly selling only 6,000 issues. He had been unable to get his old job back and his name only appeared in the Bugle as an occasional outside contributor. His wife agreed with him that the magazine was unlikely to revive even if Scottish separatism took off again. Digital media, dominated by comedians and self-publicists who doubled as performance artists, increasingly absorbed the new wave of nationalists and they were simply too old to adapt to the new communications formats.

But, as a concession to modernity, Hoy had begun to discreetly follow Clova Bruce around since her unexpected emergence as head of a party which she quickly renamed Action Scotland. If she consented to give him an interview, he concluded, it was unlikely to be very revelatory. So with small video camera to hand he had hours of tape that could make a video diary if her rise was unstoppable. Besides, he had heard the rumours about her strong erotic drive. While his wife wrote up stories of drug wars, embezzlement and family feuds from the back of the Sheriff’s court, he trailed the new separatist star in his Ford escort.

It was the kind of journalism that he had developed a knack for at an early age. He had tracked runaway Hollywood idols to their Highland boltholes or tracked down Glasgow hoods to their Spanish hide-aways… Hopefully filming in the sub-arctic conditions of Linn Park would be his last such assignment. Once the Atlantic Carnival splash appeared, he and Marianna would swiftly disappear. Like most journalists, the last thing they wanted was to ever become the story themselves.

Even before he read Hoy’s text, Clayton Pell, the magazine’s editor, reckoned he had a major scoop on his hands once he saw the explicit photos of youthful congress occurring in some benighted corner of Scotland. He knew the Scotland Question was coming to the boil as the war drums beat in the rest of the island. Opinion polls showed that in the campaign for the referendum, to decide whether Scotland should take in large numbers of English refugees, the ‘No’ side had a seven per cent lead. If this persisted, it would be a stinging rebuke to the pro-American Prime Minister Craig McEwan, well known Stateside because of his film career.

Before putting out the magazine, Pell decided to show the material to a contact in the CIA with whom he had a mutually convenient arrangement to pool information on breaking stories. Within thirty minutes, he got a call from the director herself, Verona Phelps. She said the story was exceptionally important. Accordingly, she was asking to be given the final decision on whether to print or not. She said the Agency would provide the money to pay off the Scottish journalist provided it could be allowed to have pre-publication use of the photos.

‘Clayton, the situation in Scotland grows more serious by the day and if it goes pear-shaped across there, then we can probably wave goodbye to our plans for a spring offensive in southern Britain’.

‘I wouldn’t ask to have prior use of the photos if it wasn’t that serious’, she went on. The likelihood is that you will probably still be able to run the story but a week or two later than planned’.

‘Alright Verona, I hear what you are saying’, Pell replied. ‘But if the story gets bigger still, perhaps you could tip Atlantic Carnival off about the details. After all, I’m playing ball right now’.

‘Clayton’, she said, ‘the story may well develop fresh impetus and if it does you are likely to get an even more fascinating piece’.

‘Let’s hope so Verona. Have a good one’ Pell said, ending the conversation.

Three days later a package was delivered to Clova Bruce at her office in the Scottish Parliament. It was marked ‘Strictly Private and Confidential…’

She had a delegation from Norway to meet before heading across to Glasgow for an evening rally. By the time she got to the package, her secretary was on a coffee break. She cut open the top of the package with scissors and allowed the contents to slide on to her desk.

There was no covering note, only 8 A-4 sized photos which showed Davy having sex with a pretty brown-skinned girl about his own age.

‘Oh the fucking wee cunt’, she exclaimed. ‘There’ll be hell to pay for this’.

Knowing her secretary was due back any second, she stuffed the contents into the envelope and shoved them in her computer bag.

The CIA’s Scottish desk had decided it would be interesting to offer Bruce an opportunity to see the photos before they were published. ‘It might just make waves’ the New Age poet and part-time lecturer in literature at Napier University, Carter Bellingham opined. She had a stormy side to her nature and a reputation for being impulsive. ‘Let the dice roll and see how they fall’, he recommended to Washington.

It is unlikely that a literary spy like Bellingham could have predicted what would ensue within a matter of hours. Upon her return, Ms Jamieson was informed by her boss that she now needed to be in Glasgow earlier than expected. So the meeting with the Norwegians would need to be drastically scaled back.

She managed to get away after twenty minutes. Even the composed Norwegians were surprised at how subdued the Scottish leader appeared to be, so different from her bubbly and forthright image.

In the car she told her driver to head for the Strathbungo district of Glasgow and then to proceed to the venue for the rally which she would find her own way to an hour or two later.

It was nearly 6pm and raining. She unfurled her umbrella , pulled up the collar of her coat, and entered another park, Queens park. She wished to collect her thoughts before confronting her lover about his betrayal.

Her behaviour that afternoon suggested that Clova Bruce had not really made the transition from private citizen to elected politician and leader of her party.

All of her thoughts revolved around her partner’s deception. She did consider from where the photos had originated. But she failed to ask questions which a seasoned politician, even one with a racy private life, might well have asked.

What does the person who sent them want?

How much is this linked to the referendum?

How much harm can they do to me if they are released to the media?

What is the best way to contain any damage from the photos?

She knew the photos were very recent because she was the one who bought Davy the fur-lined bomber jacket he had been wearing. She had bought it for him after they had gone on ‘a walk-about’ in the centre of Dundee several months ago.

There was a good chance he would be back in his flat since he had been at classes that afternoon up at the Art School where he was doing a part-time degree.

Albert Drive was a wide partly tree-lined street with houses which had once belonged to professional people who had serviced the needs of poorer citizens. It had since gone downhill but it was not as bad as Allison Street which paralleled it to the north. Landlords, some linked to her party, had crammed gypsy families from Slovakia and Romania into once spacious flats which had been endlessly sub-divided. Perhaps six thousand gypsies inhabited an area which had once been a magnet for aspirational Glaswegians.

On Albert Drive, it was still more profitable to rent out tenement flats to nurses or consultants in the nearby hospital or to young accountants starting out in their profession.

As she opened the gate and used the combination code to enter Davy’s hallway, she was still rehearsing how she would confront him with his treachery. Pressing the doorbell, she heard footsteps. He was in.

‘Oh hello Clova’. ‘This is a nice surprise’ he said as he kissed her.

‘I thought you were speaking up at the Cupar Institute a little later. Indeed, I was hoping to get along’.

‘Never mind about that’ she replied. ‘We need to talk because I think you’ve got some explaining to do’.

‘You look out of sorts Clova. Shall I open a bottle of something?’

She said nothing as he took a bottle of 2021 Hawkes Bay Merlot out of the fridge and put two glasses on the table in the kitchen which they had entered.

After sitting down, Clova took out the packet she’d received and flung the photos towards Davy.

‘What’s your explanation for these’ she asked in the high-pitched voice familiar to Davy whenever she was agitated?

Davy looked at the photos and was amazed to see that it was himself and Gabriella.

‘What the hell’ was all he could say.

‘Never mind “what the hell”, what have you got to say for yourself.

‘Why are you screwing this trollope? Am I not good enough for you all of a sudden’?

Her eyes starting to redden she went on: ‘You used to say that it was the phenomenal sex that we had that was the unbreakable bond between us’.

‘Who is she? Where did this happen?

‘How long has it been going on’, questions which she shouted out?’

‘Not very long’, Davy replied.

‘I ran into Gabriella at Art School where she was an artist’s model whom the students drew for their assignments’.

‘You mean that you got the hots for her there and then’?

‘I suppose I did’, Davy replied, avoiding eye contact. ‘She happens to live on Marigold Street, not far from here. It was last Friday evening that we met up in the park’.

‘You mean Queens Park just up from here’?

‘No’, he replied. ‘Linn Park further out.

‘She was terrified about being seen with a gadjo, the term gypsies have for we European whites. The bulibasha, or chief, of the clan is in the process of making an arranged marriage for her. She’s supposed to be a virgin. So we played safe and headed out to Linn Park’.

‘So, she laughed scornfully, ‘you were afraid of some gypsy minder creeping up on you and beating the shit out of the pair of you, but you couldn’t give a flying fuck about what old Clova here might think about it’.

‘Look Clova’, he said. ‘Its been politics, politics, politics for you ever since you became leader three months ago. We’re no longer seeing that much of each other. Face the facts, it’s true.

‘I’m a young guy, I’ve got a healthy sexual appetite. You know that. It’s a large part of what you like in me. Perhaps the only thing.

‘We’re living in the 21st century for Christ sake, not back in the 1950s’. Suddenly angry, he exclaimed, ‘Its strait-laced monogamy then is it? And we’re not even married’.

‘That’s not the point’, she said. ‘you might at least have said something, told me it’s over rather than me finding out like this.

‘I was beginning to have plans for us. There have been some great marriages in our party that have defied the age gap. I even tentatively raised with Torquil the idea of a quick divorce and you and me getting hitched.

‘The world knows we are partners. you’ve been on the platform of some of my keynote events right from the start of the referendum’.

It then dawned on her for the first time that the chances were high that the world would shortly get to know about these photos.

‘At least you could have kept your dick out of her hole until the referendum was behind us’, she screamed.

‘What an awful mess!’

For the first time she noticed the wine and took a sip. Looking over at an impassive Davy, she flung the rest of the contents in his face. Momentarily stunned, he rolled back on his chair. It fell over and there was a loud thud, then silence.

Clova rose up from her chair and went around the table. She was about to say: get up you…’ when she saw a sight that immediately filled her with remorse and fear, the fear easily predominating.

Davy appeared unconscious and there was a large pool of blood at the back of his head. She picked up his wrist to feel his pulse but there was no life.

When the chair had come crashing down, the back of his head had hit the iron fire place. It was the equivalent of a heavy blow to his skull administered by a sharp instrument.

She had got into such a state that she just stood there motion-less. She thought of phoning the police and saying there had been a terrible accident. But what about the meeting only 45 minutes from now? She was the star event. If she failed to turn up, there would be an avalanche of media speculation.

If she was helping the police with their enquiries, it could ruin the chances of a historic victory for Action Scotland…

Tears started to flow as it dawned on her that she had behaved in an unreasonable manner and there had been some force in what he had said to her before she lost it.

She stroked his left cheek and planted a kiss on his lips.

If at this point she had concluded that she must notify the authorities straight away, some hellish weeks would have ensued, but she would have been able to pick up the threads of her life.

Unfortunately this period of rational detachment proved to be a fleeting one as the name Roy Semple floated into her head. He was a cop and a fellow nationalist. She used to know him and now he was an inspector based somewhere in Glasgow.

She had established a warm but platonic relationship with Roy Semple earlier in his police career. That was when he was supervising the largest concerts in Scotland that drew thousands of young people and which she helped to organize. They had worked on security together and, over drinks, she had quickly realised that he was as fervent a nationalist as she was.

As a policeman he was hardly alone in this regard. One of the first things First Minister Craig McEwan had felt it necessary to do in 2020 was to install a new national police chief whose instructions were to depoliticise the senior ranks and not to ignore hardball tactics from any political quarter but especially SNAP.

Semple was now a middle-ranking officer, possibly on his way to the top. The last time they had met, he had passed on his mobile phone number and said that she should not hesitate to call him whenever necessary.

‘My job is to uphold the law’, she remembered him saying ‘but I’m a patriot too and I will always do my best for Scotland whenever I have to’.

Semple answered when she rang.

‘Clova, so great to hear from you’, he promptly said. ‘It’s a rare night off for me and I was thinking of going to your event at the Cupar Institute. So many people I’ve met have said they intend to go so there is likely to be a huge crush tonight’.

‘Is that where you are already’, he went on? ‘I’m based nearby and it would be a chance to see you in action before the referendum next month’.

‘That would be fantastic Roy’, she replied. ‘But something has come up which means I probably can’t make it’.

Before he had the chance to say anything, she asked: ‘Roy could you come to 51c Albert Drive? it’s where I am right now. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important’.

‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes’, he replied, putting down the phone.

As Semple got his long legs out of the car, he recalled this was practically the quietest street left in Govanhill. As fog started to descent, there was nobody to observe a tall spare man in a dark Ralph Lauren winter coat ascending the stairs.

When Clova greeted him, he saw that she was drawn and red-eyed. She brought him into the kitchen and showed him the body.

‘There was a dreadful accident an hour ago’ she said.

‘Davy and I were arguing. It got heated and I threw the contents of my wine glass at him. It caused him to lean back on his chair. He lost his balance and hit the back of his head on the fire surround. It was a loud thud and I think he must have died on impact. I could certainly feel no pulse’.

‘Oh my god Roy, what’s to be done? I’m not afraid of facing the music but the referendum is only weeks away. If I’m detained for questioning and charged with a serious offence, then it will be devastating for the cause. The Yoons will probably pull off a victory and a big one at that’.[…]