Free 59 Minutes by Gordon Brown

that
day but I vowed to find out double quick. I ordered Martin and Spencer to the
mansion and told them they had twenty four hours to find the man on the lawn
and bring him to me.
    They left, heads held high - the way they walked
boosting my sense of well being. I would have the bastard in front of me in
less than a day.
    Three days rolled by and my blood pressure rose by the
hour. I ranted and I raved. I screamed and I threatened. I blew a fuse, put in
a new one and blew it again. All to no avail. Dupree had gone to ground and no
one seemed to know who he was or where he had fled.
    The lack of progress was starting to hurt. I had been dissed
in my own home and I seemed powerless to act. That sort of story can gather
legs and kick you in the nuts. I put thirty grand on the man’s head and let it
be known that whoever brought him in would also get a boot up the promotion
tree.
    A week later and I had attained an altogether new
level of apoplexy. All other matters were thrown to the wind as I upped the
ante to fifty grand and a brand new five series Beemer.
    Both Martin and Spencer told me to drop it but that just
made me more determined to track the painter down. I set about it with a
vengeance pulling in favours that should have been left owing. I dedicated 24/7
to the hunt and left Martin and Spencer to run the business.
    A month later I woke up to find the red lettering was
back only this time it was more specific.
    ‘The End. One week.’
    I checked the CCTV cameras that had been installed but
all I got was a grainy black and white picture of someone on the lawn at three
in the morning. I had the fit to end all fits and threw everything I had at
tracking the painter down.
    A week sped away and seven days later I was sitting in
the office when I heard a commotion down stairs. I stood up, just in time to
greet an industrial quantity of police officers as they flooded into the room.
    I was handcuffed and thrown in the back of a police
car and taken to Paddington Green police station. It wasn’t the first time this
had happened but it was the most heavy-handed. I asked for my lawyer as soon as
I could and was left in a holding cell until he arrived. I told him to get me
out and he duly vanished to do my bidding. When, after an hour, he hadn’t
returned I hammered on the cell door demanding to see him again.
    Twenty more minutes of sitting in the cell and he
reappeared - the look on his face was not positive.
    I can still remember his opening words in glorious
Technicolor:
    ‘Someone has dropped you in it. I mean SERIOUSLY
dropped you in it.’
    Sixteen months later I was sentenced to twenty years.
The charges were as deep and wide as the Clyde . The last five years of my life were paraded in front
of the court like an open book. Accounts, photographs, witness statements,
copies of correspondence – you name it - it was thrown at me. It was as if
someone had recorded my every thought and gesture over the last five years.
    My lawyer told me that only someone on the inside
could have done this. I thanked him for that particular pearl of wisdom with a
smack round the head. I had figured that out ten minutes after they started the
questioning.
    When Martin took the witness box, under immunity from
prosecution, I stood up in the court and told him he was dead. The judge held
me in contempt but I was going down big style and didn’t give a fuck.
    Martin poured out damning evidence like a fresh torrent
and by the time he finished I was so screwed my lawyer told me to try and cut a
deal. I refused. It would have meant grassing up on my colleagues and even
under threat of a life sentence I wasn’t going to roll on people.
    I entered prison on the fourth of November nineteen
ninety three. I served fourteen years across five prisons and was released one
year and three days ago.
    By then I had lost everything. Dupree - I had by now
discovered his name - moved into the patch and Martin and Spencer vanished. Some
of my colleagues