As Fred Johnston had instructed, they made their way back to the entrance, past the closed dressing-room doors, through which the managers’ voices could be heard. They waited there for almost ten minutes before a slim, dark-haired figure made his way towards them, wearing a maroon blazer with a crested badge, a white shirt and club tie. He was led by a uniformed woman officer.
Rose and Pye stepped forward. ‘Mr Lee?’ asked the Chief Inspector. The young man nodded. He was in his mid-twenties, slim and strikingly handsome. The heavy limp with which he walked seemed entirely out of place.
‘DCI Rose and DC Pye. We need to talk to you. Can we go somewhere quiet?’
Jimmy Lee looked around. ‘This place is bedlam. All the function suites will be full. Let’s go across to my office.’
He led the way, slowly, out of the grandstand and across to a small single-storey building which housed the Hearts shop and commercial offices. As he walked, stopping occasionally to acknowledge a fan or return a handshake, the two detectives could see how badly he was handicapped.
Finally they reached the entrance door to the office suite. Lee opened it with a key, and showed them to a small room at the back. ‘In here,’ he said. The room was furnished with a desk and four chairs. Against one wall cardboard cartons marked, ‘Away strips’, were piled almost to the ceiling. In the far corner, stood two metal elbow crutches.
‘D’you still use those?’ asked Sammy Pye, pointing.
‘Most of the time. Not on match days though. I don’t like the punters to see me like that.’ Lee settled awkwardly into the chair behind the desk as the police officers took seats facing them. ‘So what’s this about?’ he asked, in a quiet, articulate voice.
‘Do you know a man named Evan Mulgrew?’ asked Rose.
The former footballer smiled. ‘No, I can’t say I do. Mulgrew isn’t a common name among Jambos. Why?’
‘Because we interviewed Mulgrew today in Peterhead Prison. He made allegations about you, a man named Ricky McCartney and another man named Douglas Terry.’ Briefly but graphically she repeated Mulgrew’s story.
‘Was Mulgrew telling the truth, Mr Lee? Was that what happened to you?’
The young man’s face had gone chalk white. He winced occasionally, as if recalling the agony of his attack. At last he looked across at Rose and Pye. ‘Yes,’ he whispered.
‘Tell us about it,’ the Chief Inspector said, gently.
Lee leaned back in his chair, composing himself. ‘No point keeping my mouth shut now, I suppose,’ he said.
‘It was the life, you see. Players train in the mornings, and unless we’ve got businesses outside football, the rest of the day’s our own.
‘We get bored. You can only go to the movies so often. And anyway, we’re sportsmen. So some of us go to the bookies and play the horses. A few of us get out of control. We think we’re infallible because we’re young and famous, with a few quid in our pockets. But we find out that we’re wrong.
‘I was down a hundred grand.’
Pye whistled. ‘To which bookie?’
‘The John Jackson shop just along the road. The fact is I didn’t really know one end of a horse from another. When it came to winners I couldn’t pick my nose. Eventually, Dougie Terry - he runs all the Jackson shops - came in one day and told me that I was barred, and that he wanted my tab paid off in three months.
‘I told him that if he waited till the end of the season, in six months, I’d ask for a transfer and settle up with him out of my signing on fee. Not that I wanted a transfer, mind. I only ever wanted to be a Jambo. A few months before that Rangers had offered one and a half million for me, but I’d turned them down. Pissed the chairman off no end, I’ll tell you.’ He grinned at the recollection.
‘But Dougie Terry said, no, three months it is.
‘I did the best I could. Every bonus went straight to Terry, but after two and a half months I was still eighty thousand down.’
He paused and took a deep breath. ‘One day, I was leaving the ground after training, and Ricky McCartney stopped me. I knew him from around the betting shop.
‘He said that Terry had sent him to make me an offer.’
Rose held up a hand. ‘He actually said that Terry had sent him?’
‘Yes. He said that Terry’s boss - I don’t know who that is - had been approached by a Malaysian gambling syndicate. The Jambos were drawn in the cup against some non-league team from Melrose. They had got there on merit but the odds on us to win were astronomical. McCartney said that Terry wanted me to make sure that we lost. I was to get our goalie in on the act and we were to fix it. If I did that, my tab was clear.’
‘And if you didn’t?’
‘McCartney made it clear that it wasn’t a request. He said that if I liked being a footballer, I’d better make it work.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘You must know what I did. I never said a word to our goalie, but he had a bad day and let one in in the first half. I got a dead leg early on, and it took me about an hour to run it off. But once I was moving freely it was easy.’ He smiled, sadly. ‘I was quite a player.’
‘You never considered letting the game go?’ she asked. ‘Not even when you were a goal down, and you were injured, and no-one would have known.’
Lee gasped audibly, and looked across at her with genuine shock on his face. ‘I’m a Jambo, Miss Rose. And I’m . . . or was . . . a professional footballer. Ours is the most honest game in the world, and this is one of the oldest and finest clubs in the world.
‘It’s unthinkable that any footballer would try to fix a game. That any Jambo would . . . I just can’t find the words.’
The Chief Inspector nodded. ‘I believe you. But why didn’t you report it to us?’
Lee smiled again, ruefully. ‘Because if I had, the truth about my gambling would have come out, and the fans would never have forgiven me. And because I was scared of Ricky McCartney.’
‘Yet you went ahead and won the game?’
‘Yes. I suppose I thought that I’d get away with it, that I was untouchable, and that after all, Terry would wait for me to get a transfer. I was wrong again.’
‘What happened, Jimmy?’ Maggie rose asked, gently. ‘On the night.’
Lee drew in his breath and furrowed his brow. ‘I was going home after a game. My last game. I still lived with my parents in Wester Hailes. I was nearly there when a guy stopped me and asked for an autograph. The place was deserted as usual. We were just chatting, when I was jumped and dragged off behind the building.
‘There were five of them. Ricky McCartney and four others. I recognised one of them - his name’s Barney something - but not the others. They were all wearing Hibs hats and scarves, and the other three had them over their faces.
‘McCartney said to me, “You made a big mistake, son. Dougie Terry’s boss had to pay off those Malaysians. Now you’re going to pay him off.” Then they set about me.’ He closed his eyes, and leaned back in his chair. He was trembling.
‘McCartney shoved a Hibs cap in my mouth, to stop me screaming. The other three used baseball bats, but he and Barney had big hammers. The three guys concentrated on my legs. McCartney and Barney battered my knees and my ankles with the hammers.
‘I fainted after a while. When I came to, they were gone. And so was I, as a footballer. I nearly lost both legs. I would have, but for an absolutely brilliant orthopaedic surgeon up at the PMR. I’ve got plastic knees and metal braced ankles now, but at least I can walk after a fashion.’
‘Why did you say it was Hibs fans who attacked you?’ asked Pye.
Lee shook his head. ‘I never did. I just said that they were wearing Hibs scarves, which was true. I just didn’t identify McCartney or Barney, that was all.’