AFRAID THAT HIS SECRET ‘CAMPING ACTIVITIES’
On Sunday, Garside Hospital orderly Michael Shoesmith and his friend Jackie Calf arrived back from their holiday in Scotland, secretly elated but with an elation that would have to be kept strictly to themselves, for they had discovered that they were both homosexual.
Jackie had always suspected that he might be, having never shown any interest in girls, whereas Michael had had two girlfriends but had never been able to fully relate to them, and the relationships had not lasted beyond a month or so.
They had taken the train to Fort William and then the bus into Glen Nevis. A farmer then gave them a lift on his tractor and allowed them to camp on one of his fields. They had little money and lived mostly on spam sandwiches or fried spam or spam mixed with a couple of chopped potatoes and an onion, cooked on a little paraffin stove they had brought. They had brought some beef sausages cadged from Jackie’s mum, but by the time they came to eat them, they had gone off, so they threw them away.
They climbed Ben Nevis, avoiding the easy route past ‘Halfway Lochan’ but rather took the route by Carn Mor Dearg and Carn Mor Dearg Arete to climb the munro from the southeast. They were experienced climbers and had no concerns tackling this harder route. They reached the summit after five hours but could see little; thick fog had descended without warning, strong winds buffeted them, driving needle-sharp, ice-cold rain across the bleak mountaintop as the temperature sank almost to freezing.
Shivering and windswept, they made a perilous descent, and not without difficulty, made their way back to their campsite. Their clothes, inadequate for the conditions, were soaked through, and they were in real danger of hypothermia unless they could get out of the driving wind and rain and into shelter.
They stumbled into their tent and stripped off their wet clothes and began to towel themselves down. Suddenly conscious of their nakedness, Jackie had an erection. Michael stared; they looked at each other, Michael gave a half-nod as though accepting what he was; they fell into each other’s arms, kissed, embraced, and then had sex.
And now they were back in Garside, a town which would show them no mercy should their secret be exposed. Aside from what the law might do since homosexuality was illegal, some of the more vicious local gangs, especially the ‘Wild Ones’ named after the Marlon Brando film, who lived in the prefab estate by the new industrial area, would certainly seek them out and beat them up, just for the hell of it.
On Monday morning, Michael reported for work at the hospital to be told that the police wanted to see him; he was to report at the station ‘for fingerprinting’. Suddenly afraid that his secret ‘camping activities’ had already been found out (although he could not think how) he considered fleeing, going off somewhere where he and Jackie could live in peace – a desert island somewhere would be nice - but he had no money, having spent what little he had on holiday.
With great trepidation, he made his way to the station on Wentmore Street and asked for Sgt Harding as he had been instructed.
Harding and Rawlings questioned him and, to his great relief, discovered that the questions were not related to his homosexual activities in the tent at Glen Nevis but to the murder of Emily Black. He readily gave his fingerprints and, as he had no solid alibi for the night of the murder, he was eliminated as a suspect when the fingerprint result came back. Incidentally, his sister Brenda had for some time wondered if her brother might be queer, but it was a thought she kept to herself.
Jackie Calf was also fingerprinted and eliminated.