Dead Man Singing

By Frances Housden

Could a rock-star's first big hit have predicted his death.

Landing the major murder case of rock star Jim Munro was everything ambitious Detective Joni Johns could ask for. Having little patience for a female running the investigation, the remaining band members of We Own the Night, hire private investigator Frankie Buchanan, a long-time fan of the rock group, to help solve the murder.  

In a group of millionaire rockers, who stands to gain from Munro's death?

As the body count mounts, Frankie is forced to collaborate with Joni, the woman responsible for ending his police career. Racing against time Frankie and Joni need to uncover the dark secret, rock-star idol Munro, had kept from his band brothers all these years.  

But will the truth come out too late?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frances Housden
• Release date: Sep 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393699316

Book preview

DEDICATION

I’d like to dedicate this book to my Scots cousins, Ronnie and Neil Dalrymple for their help with research during two recent trips home. And who better? Ronnie has travelled the world drumming in rock bands, and Neil sings like an angel.   

Chapter 1

The first thing that struck D.I. Joni Johns about the crime scene, were the boots?

Last time she’d seen those black motorcycle numbers, she’d been beside Frankie Buchanan at a ‘We Own the Night’ concert. Splashes of light had swum into the audience as she watched Jim Munro stamp and cavort in time with the song he was belting out.

One of those boots lay on its side, while the second was planted in the ground, sole up. A severed foot held the middle ground and opposite, off the edge of the path, someone had vomited. The excitement that had gripped her on the way to the murder scene faded. 

She’d known what she was heading into when she left Dunfermline police station, but after six years as a detective she hadn’t expected to find herself moved, or that her past would come thundering back.

During the drive there, she’d wondered whether coincidences did exist.

That morning at breakfast, she’d heard a single from, ‘We Own the Night’s’ latest album RISK. Frankie Buchanan was a huge fan of the group, and considering she hadn’t laid eyes on her Ex for years, she still remembered what he used to say about risks.

‘Folk get up in the morning, go about their business and wham, they’re in it up to their eyeballs.’

He’d proved that three years ago by getting shot.

It had taken her two of those years to stop thinking of him every day. longer than that, from when she last saw him. Maybe, she should have felt a bit o’ guilt and visited him—she was standing next to him when the gun went off—but what with her father having a stroke and her mother shrivelling into a helpless wee woman, all her free time was taken up. Eventually she decided if she didn’t work her butt off to achieve the rank of detective inspector, her lack of a sex life would be for nothing.

A thought that always earned a wry smile.

Until now, as a DI, nothing much had changed for her. The same crimes ate up the greater part of her day, as they had, as a detective sergeant. Except now, she was in charge.

A good reason to keep the shock of landing her first murder case to herself. She pictured the headlines, THE DEATH OF A ROCK STAR.

What they’d say about her once she was done, there was no knowing, it depended on the result. Make or break. The media were CS Naismith’s responsibility. He was welcome to deal with them.

It was less than half-an-hour since Joni’s superintendent dropped her head first into the investigation of Jim Munro’s murder. Little enough time to consider the ironies of life, what with Jim Munro being a local icon, a big name worldwide—whereas Joni Johns? She was an unknown?

The news had surfaced, arriving before her, and by the number of mobile phones recording her entrance, and her timing. The chief super hadn’t done her a favour. No point in thinking Naismith hadn’t known he’d handed her a hot potato, which meant it was up to her to make sure she didn’t get burned.

Squinting through the windscreen at a lowering sky, heavy with dark clouds, she hoped the forecast rain would keep the media circus away.

PC Bell, a community constable, raced up as she opened the driver’s door, and began grumbling, ‘I’d begun to think naebody was coming.’

If he expected an apology, he was in for a wait. It wasn’t her fault the case had been shuffled around like musical chairs until it landed in her lap at the kid-glove stage. ‘Speak to me? Who discovered the body?’

He appeared taken aback, as if he didn’t expect a female to be so brusque. And as she listened, she soon recognised the problem. ‘It’s not a body in the true sense.’

Not a body? God save her. ‘Start from the beginning.’

‘I was just leaving Townhill, when the call came in. And to tell the truth, I thought someone was playing tricks. I said that to McLeod who was waiting for me, pull the other leg, as if anyone would murder a great bloke like Jimmy Munro, some other toerag maybe but not Jimbo. But I was wrong.’

Good grief, did Bell realise what he’d said? She would have laughed if it wasn’t so sad. It was a wonder McLeod hadn’t landed him one.

‘Which one is McLeod?’ she made a point of asking well aware he was the drummer, a favourite of Frankie’s. ‘Were all yon guys here when you arrived?’

‘No, they arrived about ten minutes after me. McLeod must have called them after he’d dialled 999.’

Joni looked over her shoulder, the rest of her team had caught up with her. It was all go now. ‘Right Bell, send McLeod over here. No one else. And then, tell my team I’ll be with them shortly.’ Her plan didn’t quite fall into place. McDuff, the most senior of her three DCs hurried over and she told him, ‘I don’t want everyone getting in the way and mucking up any footprints before the SOCOs get here. And aye, this lot are ‘We Own the Night’.’

As if they couldn’t see that for themselves. Her first impression had been that she’d dropped into a hard rock fest. Four rockers. Not merely Larry McLeod—if the description mere could be applied to the drummer. Naturally Larry had called the others the minute he’d talked to the police. Now the lot of them were fluttering around like a flock of starlings that no longer made sense with part of the flight missing.

If only, they hadn’t reached Jim Munro’s house before she had.

Joni held out her hand. ‘Mr McLeod?’ An unnecessary question. She’d learned a lot about the group during her relationship with Frankie Buchanan. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Johns,’ she told him, as he took her hand with fingers as tough as leather. The drummer might have been at a gig, or posing for a CD cover—as if he couldn’t afford anything better than torn jeans and a scuffed, leather bomber jacket.

His anger was apparent in the hard grip of his hand and confirmed when he barked, ‘Where the hell have you been?’ his words lashed ramped up by grief and fear. She’d seen it before. ‘I’ve had to hang around here for ages, while wonder boy here treated me like a suspect, and I was the one who called the police.’

PC Bell? She could hardly blame him, murder wasn’t something that popped up on his rounds every day; undoubtedly, he’d discovered enough gumption and used it to upset McLeod. She squared her shoulders, ready to be firm with the rocker, no matter if he could buy and sell Dunfermline twice over. ‘That’s not why I’m here. Show me what you found.’

He did, and that’s when she saw the boots.

She sized up the scene. Beside her McLeod had gone quiet. ‘Was the foot lying out in the open like that, when you found the boots? Take me through what you did when you found them.’

The drummer grimaced. ‘If you must know I was bloody angry with Jimbo. He wouldn’t answer his phone. Some bugger had sabotaged my cars, snipped some wires according to the mechanic, I left him working on them and took a taxi up here, and after what I found here, well need you ask?

‘Yes.’ Her answer sent an angry slash of colour rippling under his skin. His watery blue eyes, rolled as he shook his head, blond curls streaked with silver skimming his shoulders. Signs of age she’d never noticed on their posters. Living the good life obviously had its downside. ‘What was so important you had to take a taxi here?’

‘I was supposed to pick Jimbo up to make sure he got to Gabe’s place. We had all arranged to meet there.’

‘How did you get into the grounds?’ she wondered aloud, remembering she’d seen an opening mechanism on the gates.

‘I have the code to get in, all of us do, but the gate was already open when the taxi pulled up. When I’d come to the conclusion he wanted to avoid facing up to what he’d started, I called the taxi to confront him. Jimbo’s my cousin and I needed a talk with him before the meeting—about business.’ He pushed his hair back from eyes. His hand shook.

Any number of things could come under the heading of business, but she let that go and asked, ‘What had he started?’

‘He wanted to break up the group.’ 

Christ. That put a new slant on Munro’s murder, but the crime scene wasn’t the place for an in-depth interview. First, they had to find the rest of the body. Soon SOCO would be setting up their tent, preparing to dig. ‘Okay, tell me what you did once you arrived?’

His shrug conveyed that she still hadn’t made much of an impression. ‘The front door was deadlocked from inside, so the code didn’t work. I rang the bell, knocked, kicked the damn door when he didn’t let on, then I walked round the back to try the other doors.’ He paled, drew in a breath. ‘That’s when I saw his motorbike boots, you couldn’t miss those steel tipped toes. They were sticking up out the ground. I could see where he—at least I believed it was Jimbo—had been digging. I hunkered down and looked at the boots, saying, What the hell are you playing at pal? Standing up, I grabbed hold of the closest boot and pulled it out. That’s when I realised it was heavy, so I gave the zip a pull and shook it. That’s when his foot fell out.’

He stared her straight in the eye and explained, ‘I knew it was his by the tattoo.’

‘Aye that would be a shock. What next?’ She knew she was being tough on him—so what? She wanted the sound-bite fresh from the rock star’s mouth.

‘I called you lot. Took twenty minutes for yon bluidy PC to arrive. Said, he thought it was someone’s idea of a stunt. Publicity maybe with the new album being released. As if we needed any PR. Changed his mind when I showed him Jimbo’s foot. That vomit beside the path is his. Not that I blame him, scared the shite out of me when I found it. And don’t worry, all I touched was the boot. Telling you that since my fingerprints will be on it.’

In the end Joni let Larry go and kept an eye on him as the group converged, hugging, patting backs and crying, like a football team whose ball had been stolen. That didn’t mean she was finished with them.

Joni could empathise. When she thought she’d lost Frankie—it made no difference. She lost him anyway.

The rockers, they needed a wee while to get their act together. It bothered her that it would take some time to arrange in-depth interviews with the remainder of the group. The ones still living—a miserable thought that, still living. And someone would have to take their fingerprints. They’d love that.

With her immediate boss DCI Penman tied up on another case, her new responsibilities couldn’t have come at worse time and left her without the advantage of a detective sergeant—both suborned by the DCI. It meant she had to make do with her DCs, McDuff, Ross and Gallagher. McDuff stood by as the band continued weeping on each other’s shoulders. He had a few years up on the other two, her as well, but he had a better way with him. His standard uniform of tweed sports jacket and grey trousers that wore a permanent impression of his knees was anything but intimidating. McDuff wasn’t the kind to put himself out to prove he was better than her. Of DC Ross, she was never certain. His ambition for promotion was no secret. At least he appeared to have taken the initiative to organise Bell and the other PCs in the police work required. Not so long ago she’d been in his place, but inspector had been the rank she’d had her eye on.

Leaving ‘We Own the Night’ to McDuff’s tender mercies, she waited for the scene of crime officer Neal Stewart to join her. tender mercies as he organised

Unlike her, Stewart had seen more than a few dead bodies. She had attended post-mortems, mainly suicides or accidental deaths—nothing this gruesome—at least the others had all been in one piece. Stewart acknowledged her with a nod then hunkered down to examine the foot. ‘This is going to take us a wee while if the rest of him has been buried. The grounds bloody soft—all we can do is work our way down, brushing away the dirt particle by particle. Almost makes me hope they’ve only left us the foot. We’ll set up our shelter and pray it doesn’t rain. It wouldn’t do to miss a piece.’

‘What about inside the house, this didn’t happen in the garden?’

‘I’ll put a couple of guys onto opening the house, since I’m told its locked up tight. I’ll get back to you once my guys have been through it,’ he assured her grimly. It was difficult to imagine looking forward to what could be a slaughter house.

She had to be content with that. Just as well since McDuff didn’t seemed to be getting very far. For all she knew, McLeod might be a good actor and his shock a pretence. Seemed his friends thought it was real, reacting by giving McDuff the rough edge of their tongues.

‘Listen up,’ she interrupted. ‘Detective Constable McDuff will take a small statement, from each of you, name, address and your whereabouts between last night and this morning.’ Act or not. McLeod looked a bit worse for the wear.  ‘After he’s done you can all go home. By the looks of him, Mr McLeod needs a sit down and a drink, in that order. We’ll be in touch when forensics have finished with the house and garden.’ At least someone will...probably Major Crimes, she decided and shoved the doubt away.

Jim Munro’s house lay high on the northern edges of Dunfermline, a big property in a moneyed district. During the drive, she’d wondered whether coincidences really did exist. That morning at breakfast she’d listened to the latest single from We Own the Night’s new rock album.

Going down, down, down, six feet deep. Down, down, down, till yer rocking the grave. Now they were examining some of his remains. What risks had he taken to end up dead?

She walked away and next second another car swept through the police vehicles. What the hell did they think this was, a car park?

She didn’t recognise the man climbing out of the silver-grey Porsche, but someone had better have a good reason for letting him past the gate. She wasn’t in a mood to accept excuses. At this rate, they would soon have the media parked on the other side of the gate, and marching up to the doorstep without a by-your-leave. It took her a couple of deep breath to calm down, she could handle the job even if she felt undermanned.

The newcomer dressed well, flash—definitely expensive. Before she had a chance to ask, who the hell he was, the new arrival turned towards her and McDuff, puffed up like a wee linty, and demanded, ‘Who’s in charge here?’ 

His reaction influenced hers, put a raw edge on her nerves that made her stand straighter, ready to pay him in his own coin. ‘I am in charge of this investigation, but more to the point, who are you and how did you get in here. Didn’t you notice the tape? This is a crime scene.’

‘My name is William Maguire. I’m the band’s manager and if something is wrong, I have a right to know what? I had a garbled message from Larry on my phone, saying I needed to get over here.’ He glanced at the rest of the band, taking in their ashen expressions with a supercilious lift of his brows. She didn’t notice any of them rushing to share their sorrow with him, which made her wonder about their afternoon’s meeting.

Likewise, she didn’t wrap the news up in cottonwool. ‘Jim Munro is dead, murdered. So now you know. My DC is checking alibis for last night from the others, you might as well join them.’ His eyes widened as if shocked, but she noticed he didn’t have the same sorrowful gleam rimming his eyes that the others couldn’t hide.

Maguire did react. ‘I live in Edinburgh,’ he blurted, ‘New Town—not Dunfermline.’ as if that damp squib of an explanation excused him. She found him instantly unlikeable. Perhaps it was the way he said, ‘New Town’ as if making quotation marks with his fingers.

It took all Joni’s self-control not to back away when Maguire stepped closer, lips pursed as if a pout wasn’t far behind them and lowered his voice, ‘I had a very close friend staying last night, though I’d rather keep that between us. However, I’m sure he could take the time to pop into an Edinburgh police station and make a statement to that effect. If that should be required?’

He could bet his sweet arse it was required.

Maguire acted as if Edinburgh was a million miles away. She imagined to a snob like him Dunfermline probably felt like Mars. The words ‘New Town’ floated up from her memory. The last time she had been there was the night Frankie took a bullet because of her foolhardiness, and an overeager, rookie armed offender. She never discovered what became of him.

Christ, why did Frankie’s name kept jumping into her brain instead of staying buried. She crushed the memory under a swag of regrets and focused on Maguire. Joni had a habit of calling it as she saw it and the manager would be the one to watch, treat carefully. She’d felt an immediate aversion to the man, not because of his sexual preferences, but the fact that in this day and age he found it necessary to keep it quiet that he was gay?

She left the rest to McDuff, telling him, ‘Find out who else needs to be informed of Munro’s death and make sure they know it’s our job to take care of that, not theirs. And threaten to confiscate their cell phones. I don’t want the means of Munro’s death reaching cyber space before I’m ready.’ Joni wondered if that threat would be enough to keep Maguire from contacting his lawyer. ‘No lawyers either unless they want to confess.’

The front door had been rammed open. She stopped in front of it to step into her white coveralls and bootees, hood up and mask on so she wouldn’t contaminate the scene, and observed Maguire approach the group, while she pulled out latex gloves. As she’d guessed, he removed his mobile from his pocket on the way. McDuff was right on it. Later, she would ask him what he overheard, get her DC’s take on the meeting. Even from this distance she recognised that the other lads set Maguire apart. She saw no touchy feely hugs for Maguire to commiserate their mutual loss. By the looks of things, maybe the blame for the group’s break up landed squarely on their manager’s shoulders, not that she knew much about the music industry. Whatever they had going on; the four remaining members weren’t ready to spill their guts to the polis. All she could do for the moment was let them believe they had got one over on the lassie.

Joni had never come across a house like this before with a roof that soared like sails as if it might take off and fly through the wind-turbines to land on the Forth. Inside, ceilings peppered with downlights sloped up to tall windows that captured all three bridges between their frames.

It just went to show, money didn’t guarantee taste.  How on earth did they replace those LED lights.

To the right, the open living room appeared pristine. Pulling on the latex gloves, she followed the stepping plates up the hall to a bedroom. A shiver ran up her spine as she stopped at the entrance. The air smelled heavy with a metallic taint of copper and death even with wearing the mask. She screwed up her nose

A Jack and Jill bathroom served two bedrooms, none of them the master. This was the place. One of the SOCOs appeared through a door at the back end of the house. ‘Anything?’ she asked, hoping she wasn’t going run into anymore body parts.

‘We’ve marked a few blood spots on the wall just behind you, could be we’ll find some others once it’s dark. The dismembering place is in that bathroom to your left.’ He cocked his head to one side, arching an eyebrow till it came level with the shirred elastic of his hood. ‘Don’t take this as gospel. I haven’t as much experience as Stewart, but this wasn’t done by an amateur. Apart from the puddle of blood sitting on the bottom of the bath, the place is pretty clean. Not easy done.’

‘No more bits lying around?’   

‘Not a one.’

She saw what he meant as soon as she entered the bathroom with its twin basins and oval bath. Joni imagined it must have resembled a dish filled with joints of meat. The scene of crime guy hadn’t been kidding, blood formed a thick puddle on the floor of the bath. Left on show she decided—like a line from a game she played when she was at primary school—you can’t catch me. A darkening taunt compared to the few numbered drops of blood she had passed in the passage. It would be up to the SOCOs and pathologist to discover how it had gone down. And if no one took the case away—her to find out why and who.

She couldn’t remember exactly how tall Munro had been, never having stood next to him in the flesh. The pathologist could work that out once all the parts were laid out on the table. Though why the hell that mattered, she didn’t know.

Taking her thoughts back outside with her, she realised there had been no scuff marks from heels ruffling the carpet and tried to imagine the perpetrator carrying Munro up the passage and bundling him into the bath.

They had to be looking at more than one?

Chapter 2

On evenings when Frankie Buchanan wasn’t working—and there had been a few of those lately—it was his custom to chat over a beer with the regulars at the auld Bruce Tavern. Tonight, was different. Sitting against the back wall, he watched the STV news on the giant flat-screen to the right of the bar and almost spilled his beer when the announcer dropped the bombshell with the tagline—Death of Local Rock-star. It wasn’t what was said that led him to assume Jim Munro hadn’t died of natural causes in his own bed. Frankie immediately translated— the cause of death has yet to be released —into suspicious circumstances.

Mal McEwan’s beer-tainted voice, momentarily snatched Frankie’s attention away from the shocking news. ‘D’ye hear that, Frankie? Wasnae, that yin your favourite?’

Frankie looked up. ‘You’re not wrong, Mal. We Own the Night practically brought me up, at least their music did.’

The scuffed wooden table rocked as Mal steadied himself. ‘Aye, damn shame it’s all over,’ he commiserated. The table gave another wobble as auld guy pushed off and wended his way to the bar. Men with coal-stained scars on the hands like Mal’s didn’t come Frankie’s way as often these days, and he thanked God for it. He didn’t need reminding of his father’s thick knuckled hands, tattooed with coal-dust from his days underground, and the feel of them swiping Frankie around the back of his head. The bar buzzed as if he wasn’t the only one shocked by the news.

These days the pub mainly appealed to the raff and skaff of Dunfermline, but in Frankie’s line of business, he’d found it handy. He associated the place with the times We Own the Night had played there, while ten-year-auld Frankie listened from across the street. For some, the attraction was the pub’s age and history, for him it was the memories. 

The longer he sat there, the more he fretted over which detective had been assigned the case. If they kept it local, surely Chief Superintendent Naismith would choose to keep it under his own thumb. With all the changes in Police Scotland since he left, Frankie couldn’t guarantee that. Like a skelp on the lug, it brought home to him the truth that he’d lost the authority to investigate his idol’s death. That, as much as anything contributed to the burning sensation in his gut.

A surge of bile caught him off-guard. His glass dropped, slopping a puddle of beer onto the scarred table. His life had gone off track and nothing would ever change that. Not the years since he’d been shot. Not his months in hospital

Leaving his half-drunk beer on the table, he stepped into the twilight to walk off his grief for music that had helped him bear the frustrations of his childhood—another part of his life he would never get back.

His flat was situated three floors up, converted from storage rooms in part of the old Co-op buildings. From that height, he had views over the Glen and the Abbey. It’s outlook and the work he put into the flat had been a sop for abandoning the plans he’d had on a sergeant’s wage with vague notions of Joni and him always being together.

Walking through his office to the living room, he opened the antique oak sideboard he’d acquired when his grandmother moved to an aged care home. He’d stowed a bottle of single malt there. Admittedly, with his father as an example, he avoided drinking at home, certainly never on his own. The shite-poor news bulletin on STV had blown that resolution out the window. Every bottle of Glenlivet he purchased was claimed as a business expense, and intended for clients. Too bad...tonight, he felt as bad as those tearful wives whose husbands, and whoever they were shagging, needed investigating. Though, for them a hanky usually did the trick.

With the scent of malt whisky curling round his heart, he had another idea and picked up his cell phone. With any luck, Sergeant Masters would be on desk duty tonight. ‘Hey Jack,’ he greeted him.

‘Is that you, Buchanan? I’d a notion we’d be hearing from you.’ Jack Masters knew him of auld, knew Frankie’s taste in music coincided with his.

‘I just heard it on the news, Jack. Is it true, was Jim Munro murdered?’ He asked the question hopefully, wanting his suspicions to be proved wrong.

‘Aye, Frankie...’ The sergeant sounded down and his pause told Frankie he was looking around. ‘Listen, I can’t say too much, the media are going mad over it, but I remember you and me nattering about their best hits and you were an even bigger fan.’ 

‘You could say that. Did I ever tell you that back in the day I used to hide over in the Glen at night to listen to them play across the road in the Bruce Tavern?’ A bark of dry laughter conveyed his emotion at a confession he’d never made before. ‘My trouble was, you needed to be tall enough to lift your nose over the bar to get inside. At that age, I was a shrimp. No way could I pretend to be sixteen.’

Damn, he found it hard to remember he hadn’t always been six-feet-two.

‘It was a nasty one, Frankie, and that’s all I can tell you for now. Maybe we can catch up?’ Jack sounded hopeful, as if he wouldn’t mind having a wake for their hero.

‘Thanks a million, Jack, I’ll be in touch to ask when I can buy you a beer,’ he finished off, and leaned back in his chair, holding his whisky in both hands, his legs splayed out, feet rucking up the rug, while he mused over why he hadn’t kept up with more of the friends he’d made during his time at Dunfermline police station. As for Joni, well she had dropped him. Not a word. Just a name scratched on a get-well card. How wrong could he get?

His years as a fan of We Own the Night began before he met Joni, and long before he ever saw them in the flesh, so to speak. A long lanky teenager at secondary school on the first occasion he’d scraped up enough to buy tickets to a big concert at the Alhambra. From his perch in the gods, squeezed among bikers and their equally longhaired girlfriends, Frankie had felt nervous watching his idols, yet by the end of the evening he’d been yipping his head off, banging the edge of the balcony keeping time with the drums.

A great evening, yet the smell of the dirt, and the scent of pine needles under his knees were ingrained his memory. In his mind, We Own the Night’s music had had the sound of freedom that he’d listened to from across the road. Music that told him not everyone lived like his family, under the whip hand of a man like his father. All his best memories were accompanied by snatches of song, as if the albums he shuffled through his mind while gradually drifting off to sleep, could catalogue his life.

Two days later Frankie got a call from Larry McLeod, the band’s drummer, and his ire took the opportunity to segue into determination. The rock star had been butchered. Jack Master’s description that it had been bad, hardly covered what had happened.

By God, just let him get a chance to put the bastard away.

It didn’t surprise him that Dunfermline police had already managed to piss off the four remaining members of ‘We Own the Night’.

How would they react when they met one of the Major Crimes team from the Scottish crime campus?

Astonishing, yet agreeable was the discovery that the group wanted to hire a private investigator—him—to keep the polis honest. Only three years out of uniform, the push-me-pull-you of local police, political machinations wasn’t unexpected. That’s why he didn’t blame the group for deciding to take matters into their own hands—his being the next best thing.

Some police considered rock concerts encouraged rioting. They were the ones who didn’t get it. Didn’t get the fans begging for more at the end of a show, but Frankie knew better than to try to change their minds. And aye, he’d witnessed a fair few bloody noses and broken heads. That was when his mother thanked God, Frankie had been too short to get into the Bruce, but the view from Pittencrief Park—the Glen—hadn’t been all that bad. Aye, as Mary Hopkins used to sing, ‘Those were the days.’

LARRY MCLEOD HAD EARNED the name of hard-man amongst fans of ‘We Own the Night’. A name he’d done his best to live up to, even among the others of the group. All well and