Preparing for a criminal trial is a laborious process, yet it has to be carried out in a comparatively short period of time. When a person is committed to prison to await trial, the prosecution in Scotland has 110 days to start the trial. By the eightieth day of his incarceration an indictment must be served specifying the charges, listing the witnesses and productions and stating where and when the trial will take place. Only then do the accused and his legal advisers begin to find out the exact nature of the case they have to meet. Prior to this the independent prosecutor, the Procurator Fiscal, collates the Crown evidence and prepares the case.

The indictment is served on the accused in prison. This is a ceremony attended by no solemnity whatsoever. A prison officer will visit the cell and hand over the document accompanied by the utterance of formal words such as ‘There’s yer indictment. Be lucky’.

The defence have a month to interview the prosecution witnesses, obtain copies of and study the various documentary productions and decide what evidence must be led by the defence to meet the charges.

Each of these stages had been passed through and Jack Morton, as ever, was ahead of schedule. Ten days before the trial, as required by law, the prosecutor and court would be formally advised of the two special defences of alibi. Alibi is a special category of defence which is special only in the sense that the Crown is entitled to receive advance notice of it.

In reality, there are only three defences to any criminal charge – ‘It wisnae me’ – ‘I wisnae there’ – ‘A big boy done it and run away’. There is a hybrid many accused persons seek to use, but in reality it is not a defence in the true sense. It runs, ‘Well, aye, I done it, but I dinnae want tae go to jail for it.’

In relation to each of the charges of murder, Charlie Gallagher was maintaining that he was elsewhere when each of the murders was committed. If the Crown was to establish his guilt, it would not only have to prove it, it would also have to disprove the alibis.

From what he knew so far, Muirhead was not convinced that the prosecution case was particularly strong. Now it appeared that matters were about to take a turn for the worse. The problem with confessions is that jurors tend to take a rather strict view of them. For some reason (a reason which irritates the hell out of defence lawyers) they seem to think that only guilty people confess to crimes.