Acid Attack Read online

  My biggest story at The Glaswegian was an undercover sting. A housing official entrusted to distribute European Union beef to poor residents of Anderston was flogging it on the side. Once I’d handed over £100 for an illicit consignment of 1,200 tins, I revealed my identity to the rogue, who promptly did a runner only to be later convicted in court. It was the first and only time I allowed my photo to be published – poker-faced in the back of a Ford Transit, holding aloft contraband meat.

  Another undercover foray was to buy a ‘snuff’ movie from the Barras market, long before Islamist terrorists honed the genre and turned it mainstream. With great anticipation, the VHS tape was slid into the office machine but the grainy footage looked suspiciously like something from a B-movie horror flick.

  I learned that a journalist is nothing without contacts who are willing to share tips and information. It takes years to acquire them. They often take great risks in speaking. Forget chequebook journalism – trust is the only currency that matters.

  One journalistic maxim is that you should never become the story. It’s a rule that I tried to stick to for more than 20 years, but the acid attack put paid to that. It was unsettling and surreal to see my name all over newspapers’ lurid accounts of a botched gangland hit and the more formal reports of Burns’ court appearance. Relatives on holiday in Norway even heard of the attack while listening to BBC Radio 2’s breakfast news. My boss, Gordon Smart, then editor of The Scottish Sun where I worked, was quoted as saying, ‘Russell is a brilliant and fearless reporter.’ His comments would later take on a bitter significance.

  Once it had been on the evening TV news and spread online, it seemed that everybody I have ever known in my entire life got in touch with me. A thoughtful email arrived from Lesley Thomson, who was then the Solicitor General, Scotland’s second most senior prosecutor. Thomson, who I had met professionally on no more than a few occasions, said, ‘I know this won’t stop your investigative work on organised crime groups!’ Another came from Graeme Pearson, a former senior police officer turned Labour MSP, who said, ‘Sorry to hear you were attacked on your doorstep. Looks as though you gave a good account of yourself and I am glad you got an arrest out of it too!’

  Word also reached me from a criminal asking if it would be possible to acquire Burns’ broken false teeth so that they could be worn as a necklace. Was he joking? The teeth were in a police evidence bag, but I was not convinced that a bloody set of dentures would have the same vibe as the shark’s fang worn round Crocodile Dundee’s neck. Another made an apparently serious proposal through a third party to buy me a bottle of Bollinger champagne as a ‘thank you’ on behalf of Burns’s appreciative victims. I politely declined.

  The outpouring of kind words, especially from establishment figures, was disconcerting – much like being a guest at my own funeral. One close friend texted to say he was ‘really proud’ of me, but a few weeks later, deploying the acerbic humour of newspaper hacks, came this fantastic and unforgettable put-down: ‘Just cos you’ve battered a fat junkie before he gets his morning dose of methadone you think you’re chocolate.’

  The wide-eyed and fresh-faced young hack who walked out of the imposing old landmark Daily Record building in 1993 with a spring in his step and a contract in his hands had no idea that, almost a quarter of a century later, he would be making the news and for all the wrong reasons.

  5

  LIZARD’S TAIL

  The torrent of goodwill towards me was humbling and appreciated, but of greater interest regarding the acid attack itself were the tantalising pearls of intelligence about the identity of the postman’s puppet-master.

  William ‘Basil’ Burns is dangerous and amoral, as evidenced by his lengthy, tawdry history and willingness to stab and throw acid into a journalist’s face at a family home. It was clear that a great deal of effort had gone into planning the job – the establishment of my address, the certainty that I was home at the time, a trustworthy getaway driver, the creation of an exit strategy and the acquisition of Royal Mail accoutrements to pass unnoticed all point to a level of sophistication beyond that of a low-IQ thug.

  When North Korean despot Kim Jong-un sent two women to assassinate his half-brother by wiping a nerve agent in his face at a Malaysian airport, they were described as ‘lizard’s tails’. Burns was dressed as a postie and one Pyongyang killer wore a T-shirt with LOL on it, but what they had in common other than memorable outfits and targeting of faces with dangerous substances was that they were expendable assets. Like a lizard losing its tail in a scrape, the arrest of Burns was no more than an inconvenience to his paymaster. He was completely disposable. He may not even realise that prison is full of throwaway Basils, used and discarded just like him. Burns has spent a lifetime demonstrating that he does not possess the inclination or basic skills required to regret, reform, rebuild or make a contribution to society. Common decency is an alien concept. The tragic truth, which he may know deep down, is that he prefers the comfort blanket of incarceration – a self-centred existence of structure and routine, no bills, fully catered for, free clothing and zero pressure to work, adapt, provide or prosper. In prison he enjoys a perverse kudos from the notoriety of his Paisley gang.

  The person or people who wound him up, stuffed a fat wad of Christmas cash into his hand and sent him to my door were confident that his arrest posed no meaningful threat to them. When Burns sat down to be interviewed by the CID, his boss or bosses would have been confident that the only words to pass from his mouth would be: ‘No comment.’ Of that, they were proved entirely correct.

  Winston Churchill once said: ‘You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.’ Having poked and prodded Scotland’s major organised criminals for many years, I have no shortage of them. I did not go seeking them but, in my view, such people are worthwhile enemies to have. I’ve often said that life is not a popularity contest. To borrow another classic quote, supposedly from Oscar Wilde: ‘You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies.’

  Tom Minogue, a retired self-made businessman and blogger from Fife, a man never afraid to ruffle establishment feathers, tweeted this take hours after the acid attack: ‘Russell has taken on Glasgow gangsters, crooked cops, bent politicians, judges, lawyers . . . pretty much everyone. Take your pick!’ I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  Trying to ascertain who had directed the attack was similar to working on any other news story, the unique and jarring difference being that I was the subject of my own enquiries. Burns was the lizard’s tail, but who was the lizard? I had already established, contrary to early clues, that it had not been ordered by the Daniel gang. But who was the man, or men, with the resources – intelligence, guile, cash – to plan such an unusual job? Which gangland thug, or thugs, had been so riled by the truth being written about them that they would resort to an acid attack?

  Trusted contacts got in touch to offer nuggets of intelligence, to be considered and cross-referenced with other information coming in from different sources. Journalists at the newspaper where I worked and friends on other papers were united in disgust. Newspaper journalists often have a quicker and clearer handle on gangland intelligence than the police. They made it their business to go fishing for answers. One excitedly trumpeted to his colleagues: ‘We need to find out who sent Basil Fawlty!’ Another added, rather unhelpfully: ‘Every gangster in Scotland would have chipped in to get you done in.’ No doubt, many of the killers, drug-dealers, paedophiles, money launderers, crooked lawyers and street thugs would have taken some pleasure from what had befallen me. But some criminals I had exposed were horrified, recognising that such a vile attack was unjustifiable.

  Like a breakthrough moment in a major police enquiry, one phone call provided me with at least some of the answers. I was not in the least surprised at the name imparted to me, but one of the reasons offered to justify the attack was a bombshell. The caller told me, ‘It came from Donuts. He already hates you because of the
stories you’ve done about him. But he’s now been telling people that you’re in a relationship with his ex.’

  Frankie ‘Donuts’ Donaldson was a name I knew well and a man I was wary of. He is at the pinnacle of organised crime in Scotland. He is too cunning, cowardly or clever to confront his enemies face to face. He saves his own explosive violence for women. He has accrued a personal fortune estimated at many millions of pounds. His jealous enemies suspect he has thrived due to being far too close to some in the police. He detests any kind of press scrutiny. He has expressed a furious dislike at the attention I have given him over many years. He courts senior members of the legal establishment, including a lawyer nicknamed ‘Big Invoice’ for his love of under-the-table cash. One of his biggest gripes is the publication of his nickname – ‘Donuts’ – supposedly earned as a young hood when he hung around a donut stand in Calton in Glasgow’s east end. Compared with ‘Basil’, ‘Piggy’, ‘Goofy’ and ‘Specky’, I don’t know what he’s complaining about. Most worryingly, he had previously attempted to obtain personal information about me.

  Then came the bombshell. To my astonished disbelief, Donaldson had got it into his head that I was involved romantically with his former partner, Jane Clarke – a woman I have never even met. His theory was fiction. However, I knew and understood why he might have believed it. For around 18 months prior to the acid attack, I had been in a relationship with a woman who lived in the same block of flats as Donaldson’s ex. Glasgow is the biggest city in Scotland but it can feel smaller than a village. It is almost certain that I would have been the subject of surveillance prior to the attack, in order to build up a picture of my appearance, vehicle, associates and routine. There are no shortage of private detectives, some of them ex-police officers with whiffy careers, who will take on such a job, no matter who the target is or who is paying them. The money for their surveillance helps them to overlook the possibility of any ugly consequences. One such private detective offers another sinister service – pinpointing the exact location of anyone’s mobile phone using network providers’ masts. Known as ‘pinging’ a number, the people who pay for this illegal act are often spouses trying to catch a cheating partner. Previously a tool only available to the police and security services, it can now be deployed by any crook with a few quid. Knowing where someone is 24 hours a day can be of great benefit to criminals, who mostly operate in a constant state of twitchy, sleepless paranoia. One Glasgow drug-dealer routinely pings the numbers of his own couriers to ensure they are where they should be and not taking any unauthorised detours.

  Another means of locating people’s movements is through the use of small tracking devices which can be fitted to the underside of vehicles. These tiny transmitters send real-time mapping of a car’s movement to an app on a mobile phone. This service is also offered by some private detectives, but the inexpensive devices can just as easily be bought online.

  In the months prior to the attack, I had spent significant periods of time in the same block of flats where Donaldson’s former partner lived. So, on the safe assumption that I had been targeted – whether by physical surveillance, pinging my mobile or car-tracking tech – it would have been established that I was a frequent and overnight visitor to the immediate environs of Donaldson’s ex. It was a staggering coincidence and a case of two plus two equals five. As far as I was concerned, it was pretty bad luck indeed.

  Other possible motives for the attack remained valid, and more would emerge. I was also yet to learn about the suggested peripheral involvement of other criminals which pointed to an element of collaboration. All this was spinning through my mind during an otherworldly Christmas period which was hectic and intense. Bouncing between medical appointments in hospitals across the city, my phone did not stop ringing and beeping with countless well-meaning people seeking updates and offering assistance. Parcels of food appeared at my front door as did hand-delivered letters of support from people I did not know.

  Security measures were installed at my home. On Christmas Eve – before I learned of Burns’s name – I received two phone calls from a woman asking if I was Mr Burns. It had been a police officer calling to arrange a time to install a black box which would emit a priority 999 call from my home if activated. She had mistakenly read the name of my attacker from her worksheet.

  Ever present was the cold fear of not knowing whether I would lose my sight or be horrifically scarred for life. That terror was kept at bay in large part by the frantic intensity of the medical merry-go-round, the incessant phone calls and my desperate and insatiable quest for answers. I kept my fears hidden from friends and family behind a front of jokey dismissiveness and defiance, but when the lights went out at night, I could not fool myself.

  On the morning of Christmas Eve, just as my attacker appeared in court, I attended the Royal Infirmary’s burns unit where the long-term impact of the sulphuric acid was assessed. The entire right-hand side of my face was a dramatic splatter of red – as if it had been blasted by a shotgun. The nurse, a kind woman who had seen a hell of a lot worse, told me that its appearance would deteriorate before it would improve but it was too early to know what the long-term damage might be. The only treatment was to apply a thick smear of protective Vaseline.

  From there, it was off to a police station, where my various injuries were captured as evidence by a photographer. At the police station, I first met Detective Sergeant Craig Warren, the CID officer in charge of the investigation. Many in the upper echelons of the police establishment regarded me with suspicion or hostility due to the many stories I have written about corruption, dishonesty and incompetence, but Warren seemed bright, open and professional.

  That same busy day I was back at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, where I had been rushed to A&E the previous morning. Another ophthalmologist looked deep into the scarred cornea and made the same kind of ominous noises a plumber or mechanic uses just before you have to write a big cheque. He said that the previous day’s relatively positive diagnosis had been premature. I needed to understand that my eye had suffered a severe traumatic injury and it was in a bad way. More time was needed. Immediately after hearing that news, my mask of defiance slipped during a phone call with one of my bosses in London who I have known since the day I first did work experience on my local newspaper as an eager young schoolboy. Running close to empty, I was too emotional to talk.

  6

  FRANKIE DONUTS

  Frankie Donaldson is a criminal so thin-skinned that he once hired a QC to gag a newspaper from calling him by his nickname of ‘Donuts’. He was laughed out of court and left to pay all legal costs. This anecdote may be amusing and a revealing example of ego and wealth blinding reason, but it would be a foolish mistake to regard Donaldson as a figure of fun. He has spent decades at the dark heart of Scotland’s sophisticated and lucrative criminal underworld which turns over unquantifiable sums – hundreds of millions of pounds each year being a conservative guess.

  While contemporaries ended up in jail or violently killed, Donaldson used his ruthlessness and cunning to stay free and prosper, quietly building an estimated multi-million-pound fortune and an international property portfolio. Not bad, given there is no obvious source for his wealth.

  Over decades, he has instilled genuine fear in his rivals – despite that word becoming almost meaningless through overuse when describing the criminal fraternity. The fear is not imbued through Donaldson’s willingness to personally use guns, knives or fists. He doesn’t do that: that’s how you end up in prison. The fear comes from his deep pockets and his skill in identifying, courting, controlling and using highly dangerous men to do his dirty work – the kind of pliable men who would throw acid in the face of a journalist, for example.

  Donaldson’s dislike of me germinated in 2001 with my reporting of the trial of gangster John ‘Joker’ McCartney, who was accused and cleared of having a 9mm Browning handgun. The police gun seizure foiled a plot to shoot Donaldson, resulting in the headline ‘HITM
AN PLOTTED TO PUT A HOLE IN FRANKIE THE DONUT’. Three years later, McCartney survived being shot in a Glasgow pub, the alleged gunman being a brother of Donaldson’s recently deceased associate Stewart ‘Specky’ Boyd.

  Donaldson craves respect. Journalists who do their jobs properly should never respect such people. The story annoyed Donaldson but what really riled him, apparently, was being called Frankie ‘the Donut’. The ‘hole-in-Donut’ headline was disrespectful. You cannot square that particular circle. There was no cause to dwell on the story or realise its significance at the time, but it sowed the seeds of Donaldson’s hostility towards me.

  Two years after that, my then newspaper, the Sunday Mail, produced an investigation that attempted to measure the financial worth of the country’s wealthiest criminals and it featured Donaldson. The article told that when he was jailed in the 1980s for a drugs offence, he had tried to commit suicide in Barlinnie prison. It also told how he once took out a contract on a former Rangers and Scotland footballer for the alleged indecent assault of a Donaldson relative. Donaldson was incandescent at the revelations, which were written by a colleague and not by me – and yet, perversely, he apparently felt chagrin because the paper’s estimate of his wealth was too small.

  The following year I received a tip-off about a non-fatal shooting. Donaldson and George ‘Goofy’ Docherty had got into an argument with another man in a nightclub. Docherty – of Paisley mob infamy – was Donaldson’s brother-in-law, his favourite henchman and as loyal as a (very dangerous) dog. The next day the man was shot by Docherty in the city’s east end but survived. A short piece duly appeared, explaining that the victim was refusing to co-operate with police. It was three months after that – and out of the blue – that Donaldson came up with the ill-judged wheeze to try and silence the Sunday Mail. He accused the paper, incorrectly, of making up the ‘Donuts’ nickname and demanded that they should be stopped from using it. It was a legal first – a gangster asking a judge to stop people calling him a silly name. It was a court, not a playground.