The Clown Prosecutor

By Miller Caldwell

Sam Harvie, son of a circus manager, causes mayhem in court and is eventually dismissed from the Prosecution service. He tries his hand at a variety of jobs, but they all result in a sacking. To recall his youth, he returns to Mediterranean France where the circus had several seasons in the past. There he meets Carole, the English correspondent of Le Figaro, and they fall in love. But can their love be sustained as Sam continues to fall foul in comical ways. He is the victim of an attempted murder and gives evidence in court at a murder charge too.

Sam follows Carole to Paris only to be trapped in a service lift. Will marriage to Carole and a fresh career be the answer? This is a truly hilarious story which will have you laughing page after page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Feb 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781805147282

Miller Caldwell

Miller Caldwell has led a full life where it seems one event has led to another. He confronted Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and brought an African dictator to his knees in tears in Ghana. Miller served the Society of Authors on their committee and was their events manager. He has previously published, amongst others, The Trials of Sally Dunning (Matador), and Penned Poetry for Parkinson's Research (City Stone Publishers), which he was diagnosed with in 2021. Two books, A Lingering Crime and Caught in a Cold War Trap both have Los Angeles film scripts. Miller lives in Dumfries in southwest Scotland.

Book preview

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About the Author

Miller Caldwell is a Scotland-based writer of novels, biographies, self-help and children’s books. He holds a post-graduate degree from the University of London. He has had articles published in health magazines and the Scottish Review.

During a life spent doing humanitarian work in Ghana, Pakistan and Scotland, he has gained remarkable insights into human nature through bringing an African president to tears in West Africa in 2002 and confronting Osama bin Laden near Abbottabad in 2006. He was the local chair of the Scottish Association for the Study of Offending for twelve years. He served on the committee of the Society of Authors in Scotland and was its events manager.

Miller plays a variety of brass, woodwind and keyboard instruments. They provide a break from writing. Married, he has two daughters, and he lives in Dumfries. As he has Parkinson’s disease, the number of books he can write will be determined by his condition.

Copyright © 2024 Miller H Caldwell

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

This book bears no relation to any known, present or past Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service official. Nor does the story have any grounding in any known, past or present clinical psychologist.

Troubador Publlishing Ltd

Unit E2 Airfield Business Park,

Harrison Road, Market Harborough,

Leicestershire LE16 7UL

Tel: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Web: www.troubador.co.uk

ISBN 9781805147282

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Dedicated to Alan and Margaret Nicolson

Contents

Acknowledgements

1  The Clown Procurator Fiscal

2  The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

3  A Sounder of Pigs*

4  Argelès, No, Not Large Eels!

5  An Encounter in the Pyrenees

6  Crash Bang Wallop

7  Back in Court

8  An Attempted Murder

9  From Hospital to Rehab

10  Pots and Pans

11  Sam the Witness

12  Gone

13  Back to Court

14  Paris – Trapped

15  The Meeting

16  Back in Troon

17  The Wedding

18  Paris – Hollywood

Interview with the author

Note to Book Groups

Which Do You Prefer?

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* Collective names for groups of animals are said to date back to medieval times, which may explain why some of these names can be strange, surprising or downright funny to us, such as an ‘unkindness of ravens’. In the spirit of the fanciful language used by our ancestors, more modern terms for animal groups can have a fun twist, like a ‘crash of rhinoceroses’, and a ‘sounder of pigs’.

Acknowledgements

I had always wanted to write a comic novel. Inspiration has come from my badminton friends, whose jokes peppered our evening games, coupled with my own sense of the ridiculous. Both my daughters’ professional work features prominently, and they too inspired the storyline.

I must not forget Georgie, our bizarre border collie, who insists on three walks a day on the banks of the Nith at Dumfries, Mabie Forest or in fact anywhere. Fresh air and thoughts are important ingredients for an author. And to daughters Laura (a clinical psychologist) and Fiona (a procurator fiscal) both of whom appear in this book but not as themselves. To them, well, you know I love you. Most of all my appreciation goes to Jocelyn, the former Miss France, for making everything possible. Without you I cannot imagine.

1

The Clown Procurator Fiscal

Sam Harper’s attire frequently caused disbelief, with his totally unnecessary and unconventional comical appearance. His vertically striped, yellow shirt with a horizontally striped orange V neck jumper made his clothes seem much more than casual. For those who knew his late father, a circus clown, they could make an obvious connection. His shoes were oversized with bulbous toes and his lapel, under his gown, sported a dandelion which spurted water when legal debate stalled, or child witnesses required distraction from the thrust of adult debate. Sam could always lighten the moment. His dress sense irked some Judges, partly because Sam’s attire vied with their own ostentatious outfits. Interesting bowties peaked spotted handkerchiefs in top dark-suited pockets and the occasional snuff box were what Judges frequently brought to the bench. Sam had an eye for the unusual, the bizarre or being the accident-prone opportunist, especially when he appeared in court. He was never out of court. He was a lawyer by training who turned his academic skills to that of being a prosecutor. He was a Scottish procurator fiscal.

These memorable days over many years, however, had ended abruptly. His constant reference to the legal bench as being rooks in black gowns singing from their lofted treetops did little to appease those on the bench, while his legal opponents across the evidence-bearing table were described as children playing games with the appropriateness of toddlerhood. He was an oddball in the legal fraternity indeed and one whose professional days ended after he lavishly blew kisses at the accused. What had been seen was a Marilyn Monroe presidential-type kiss, producing a small cloud of gold dust from his outstretched hand. Either way, it was deemed inappropriate. Then he produced a paper flower from nowhere and planted it into the empty ink pot before him.

The Law Society had dealt with many miscreants legal minds in the past but this case had been a challenge. His circus personality was deemed genuine. But his chosen field of work, in which gravitas was a cherished quality, did not sit easily with this comic prosecutor. The Law Society wrung its hands in indecision at first. Was the court system too formal, in need of a lighter atmosphere, or should the status quo remain as it had done so, since many a decade before? With heavy hearts, a few lumps in their throats and a few watering eyes, they concluded by a majority decision to end Sam’s legal career.

Over the first few days of release from his onerous duties at court, Sam was elated, while others thought he might be depressed. There were longer hours of sleep, long afternoon walks meeting some of his former colleagues and clients from time to time. He sped them on their way with a cheery ‘May the day bring its fortune, the night good sleep and in between some tasty meals’. The more normal and simple greeting of ‘Good morning’ rarely left his lips.

An unexpected lump sum of money arrived in the post, being part of his dismissal settlement from the Procurator Fiscal Service which accompanied a pension of a reasonable amount. The following morning, he lodged the proceeds in his bank account. Then he entered the newsagent’s shop and bought a local paper, and for the first time in his life, with the coins in his pocket, he bought a lottery ticket. He tapped his tabloid newspaper rhythmically on his right leg as he walked home.

Stirring his hot Guatemalan coffee at his kitchen table and with Radio 2 switched on in the background, quietly alternating between chat and music, he leafed through the pages, lingering at the court pages, naturally. He read the paper at a leisurely pace. As he lifted his mug to drain the last slow-moving granules of coffee down his throat, he turned the page. Jobs.

His eyes flitted around the pages like a fly on a windowsill until he settled on one entry. He flattened the paper and drew a black line around the post with his biro beside the ad, seeking a bus driver.

2

The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

The interview for the bus driver’s position took just a little under two hours at the bus garage. Sam felt confident after this initial examination and cut through the bus garage before leaving for home. He breathed in the atmosphere of stale passengers’ clothing, of diesel and of driver’s cigarette smoke, as such a pleasure was banned from the bus journeys. That would be no problem for this non-smoking recruit driver once he was behind the wheel.

A bus driving test was held over two days. Sam careered round plastic cones in the garage forecourt, reversed into marked bus lanes and drove into an oil slick at speed to assess his driving abilities in extremis. His training included a course of ‘interpersonal skills’, as they called it, to defuse arguments on board. A more substantial lesson was explained for drunken passengers on the late-night services. Sam lapped up the new skills and was pleased to be given his first route.

During the first week an experienced driver sat behind Sam in his cockpit, as he described it. He ensured good kerb courtesy when collecting passengers, and his ability to negotiate a narrow part of town was praised. Since the abolishment of town parking attendants, the illegal growth of double yellow line parking on both sides of one narrow town road had been increasing. In jest the instructor told him he wouldn’t mind giving the cars a scrape to show the error of their ways and he laughed. Sam saw it as an instruction and did just that, to oblige. A scraping of a car’s paint was the price the illegal parkers paid that morning. The scratching noise was minimal and the damaging mark on the bus was negligible.

Nevertheless, Sam was driving on his own the following week and drove as happy as Larry in his bus, flashing at drivers he knew, although they never flashed back. He was not surprised as he was largely hidden from view in his new role.

During one of his trips from the housing estate to town he took on a threesome of grey-haired ladies who stuttered aboard, supported by