Neil, who was new to the job and the beat, had just moved back in with his mum after a couple of years away, assumed at first that Gogsy was a wannabe gangster, trying to make a name for himself. He suspected protection rackets, worried what those old ladies were expected to give back out of their shopping in return for one of Gogsy’s ‘boys’ collecting it for them. He thought this might be the making of him, imagined smashing a profiteering ring, an exclusive, a press award, job invites in Glasgow or even London. His imagination roamed so fast and far that he was almost disappointed when the story revealed itself to be exactly what Gogsy had said it was: the housing association on the make. The photographer got shots of the old ladies, Gogsy grinning with them by their fireplaces. The local council elections were over a year away, but Gogsy was playing the long game.

He’d pulled Neil into his circle; at first, some of the men had been suspicious of him, but Gogsy’s word was like a passport. These were factory workers and union men, most of whom had worked at the car factory until it had been closed down. There was no work for anyone in this town any more, and Gogsy had been clear with them; their anger would only serve them if they used it productively. It was the poll tax had given him purpose, though; a clear enemy, a line of fire. He organized one of the earliest Anti-Poll Tax Unions in the country and started reading groups to discuss basic Marxist texts. He got his ‘boys’ out blockading houses marked for warrant sales so the sheriff’s officers had to get back into their car, drive slowly away past jeering immovable walls of people. Then he turned his eye to the estate, to the work the council weren’t doing. The hardware store donated a couple of tins of paint, after the owner was mown down by Gogsy’s lightning-fast patter, so that the team could get to work tidying up ‘they clatty fences along the Glasgow Road’. Grievances were addressed, civic issues put to rights, and the day Gogsy’s boys filled in the pothole on the high street that had been left there for years went down in local history. There was never any doubt, when the election came around, that even lifelong Tory voters were going to put their crosses in the box by the local boy. And Neil had been there – a useful tool at first, sure, but very quickly a friend and even a believer – reporting on it all. The Daily Duke, some of the boys had started calling the local paper, as Neil’s editor didn’t really seem to notice the number of times his one reporter came to the same source for quotes. So Gogsy’s hands were on his shoulders? It was allowed. And it felt good.