The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Mystery death of good neighbour
We’ll all have known characters like the picture of Ean Coutts recalled by neighbours this week.
A likeable fella, wouldn’t hurt a fly. Lived on his own, kept himself to himself but had a smile for everyone.
His garden was immaculate. He’d lend you his lawnmower if you needed it and he never walked past without letting on he’d seen you.
He was fond of a drink, mind. But this is Scotland, that’s not so unusual, is it? And it’s not like he was doing anyone else any harm.
There’ll be one or two of them in most towns and villages. The middle-aged men quietly going about their business, bothering no one but themselves, not making waves, never mind headlines.
Then on Thursday Mr Coutts became front page news, in circumstances no one could have predicted and no one who shared their memories of him with reporters could fathom.
Detectives investigating the discovery of human remains on waste ground in Glenrothes last September announced they had finally succeeded in putting a name to the face that had been created for them by experts at Liverpool John Moore’s University.
Their computer modelled mugshot bore an uncanny resemblance to the 61-year-old former Army cook and it’s thought this reconstruction, along with the presence of an old leg injury – a souvenir of his military service – led to the identification.
How his body came to be lying among the nettles and detritus of an industrial estate, a few miles from his home in the village of Kinglassie, will form the next stage of the investigation.
How a popular neighbour could simply vanish off the face of the earth and not be missed is something people in his community will likely be asking themselves for some time to come.
It’s thought the remains had lain undisturbed for months.
Possibly even since Mr Coutts was last seen in the village more than a year ago.
His absence was noted at the time.
There was talk of him coming into money and giving up his tenancy. But no family members or old friends raised the alarm. No one had reported him missing.
Council workers came and emptied the belongings from his abandoned house on the main street. It was redecorated. New tenants moved in and everyone else, it seems, just moved on.
It’s the kind of sorry tale you expect in a big city, where anonymity and busy lives make strangers of neighbours, but not in places like Kinglassie – a closeknit former mining community where Mr Coutts had lived for 20 years.
Understandably, locals were shocked to suddenly find their sleepy streets the focus of intense police activity.
You don’t expect something like this to happen here, they told reporters.
Nobody suspected there was anything amiss.
It’s possible some are blaming themselves, asking why they didn’t act. But ask yourself what you would do if your friendly neighbourhood loner suddenly stopped showing up in his usual haunts.
Chances are we’d all just shrug and move on. No one wants to stick their nose in where it’s not wanted.
But maybe there’s a place for making a fuss. And maybe the mysterious, pitiful death of Ean Coutts should make us pause and reflect on what it means to be a good neighbour and how we’d want folk to react if we weren’t around.
trouble this columnist, despite a football-daft dad who likes nothing more than freezing his behind off with his grandson while watching St Johnstone hoof a ball about Mcdiarmid Park.
But even I was left staggered by Celtic’s jolly to Dubai this month – within the letter of the law but certainly not its spirit.
By all accounts, their actions have placed the Scottish football season on a sticky wicket (that’s a football metaphor, right?) and half the senior game has already been shut down.
I don’t get it myself but I’m reliably informed getting to a game on a Saturday has benefits beyond the questionable spectacle on the pitch.
It’s a social event, men talk to each other in ways they often don’t otherwise and it gives them a chance to vent at something tangible, instead of daily screaming into the void.
Those worst affected by the loss of football are not the big clubs – more like corporations than traditional gathering places for cloth-capped tomfoolery – but the community teams.
They have spent lockdown delivering charity and cheer. In normal times, they provide football for youngsters, they open their grounds for good causes and they give their time to the elderly and infirm.
My dad probably wouldn’t welcome a trip to millionaire’s playground Dubai but he would give anything to take his seat in the Mcdiarmid stand again.
Red cards all round for the rulebreakers pushing back his return date.