DON’T MISS

With physical degree shows cancelled this year, a make-do-andmend approach has been adopted by all our art schools. The Glasgow School of Art has said it will support physical shows when it is possible and safe to do so, but in the meantime, feast your eyes on its School of Fine Art Graduate Showcase, which is being added to by students as time goes on. The Showcase is in the ether until the end of 2021. Since I first reviewed it in May, I’ve spotted a few more “names to watch”, whose work has been added into the showcase since it was first launched, including Louise Reynolds and Morven Douglas.

Simon and Schuster UK, priced £14.99 (ebook £4.99).

If you’re a fan of Louise Candlish, you’ll soon be adding The Other Passenger to your favourites list. Set around an unusual commute, The Other Passenger explores the complexities of money and relationships, age and ambition. An unlikely foursome are drawn together in a little pocket of south-east XXLXonXdXoXnX, and in doing so, fully realise the capital’s housing, wage, class and lifestyle divides. Candlish’s first-person narrative plunges you bodily into the story from the get-go, propelled by a mounting sense of dread that swirls like an undercurrent of the meticulously layered plot. The realism of her characters makes this thriller feel more like a true-crime documentary than a work of fiction. The suspense is maddening, and the conclusion refreshing, with plenty of twists to keep you hooked until the last page.

TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH Gilly Macmillan

I then made what turned out to be my most important discovery. During one of George Beattie’s appeals in the 1990s, Bob Beveridge, a retired detective from the Scottish Crime Squad who had been drafted in to help Lanarkshire Police with their house-to-house enquiries at the time, gave a statement to The Herald in which he stated he had interviewed the “strangest person”. He was so worried by what this young man said that he wanted him to be formally interviewed under caution.

THIS “strange” suspect literally “jumped off his sofa” when Beveridge entered the house, pulled up his jumper to show the detective marks on his chest, claimed he always carried a knife as he liked to stab cats, and when asked if he had killed Margaret, replied he “might have done” but couldn’t remember what he did from one day to the next. Beveridge was told to let this man go, however, as Beattie had just been charged with murder.

I tracked Beveridge down and interviewed him formally. He couldn’t remember this suspect’s name, or where he had interviewed him, but he could draw me a map. It corresponded with the houses I had identified when I walked the crime scene and I knew I could put a name to this “strangest person”.

The final part of my research was to track him down, and the 10 minutes I spent on his doorstep was probably the most nerve-jangling of my entire career. When I suggested to him that some people in the town thought he had murdered Margaret, he merely replied, “I don’t know what happened” and closed the door.

I cannot prove guilt or innocence; I cannot be judge and a jury. Nor do I have access to all that I would have wanted to consider. But I have written my book in the hope that those with formal powers will want to walk in my footsteps and re-consider this case. I truly believe we are on the cusp of finally learning what really happened on the night Margaret McLaughlin was murdered. And, if Police Scotland would like me to, I am only too willing to help and make my research available to them.

The personal archaeology around this case has reminded me of a number of things, not least my love for my sisters and their friends. I also know that when I return to Carluke now I am no longer going back to the Scotland of the 1970s.

Above all, I hope the Beattie and McLaughlin families will forgive this further intrusion into their lives, that George gets justice at last and Margaret’s family can take a small measure of comfort in the fact that she has remained in Carluke’s thoughts for nearly half a century.

Signs of Murder: A Small Town in Scotland, a Miscarriage of Justice and the Search for the Truth, by David Wilson, is out now on Sphere, priced £20.