The battle cry to transcend grief

On that early October evening last year, it was 5.30 when police telephoned Niall Scott to tell him that his eldest son had been ``assaulted or slashed''. Scott was sitting in his Glasgow home at Newlands, signing hundreds of cheques on behalf of his corporate law firm, and Judith, his wife, had returned not long before from a nursing shift at the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice. Three of their five children were also somewhere in the house, pottering about in the usual Saturday fashion, waiting for their brothers - Edward to arrive back from town, and for Mark to regale them with a resume of his team's performance against Partick Thistle at Parkhead. He was a bright boy, intending to take five Highers and very active in Glasgow Academy sports. ``In fact, because Mark was particularly good with words, sports journalism was what he hoped to do,'' recalls his father.

That day, the weather had been golden but sharp enough to make Niall Scott suggest his son take a jacket to Parkhead. And Mark had agreed, this time pouring no teenage scorn on such parental fussing. It matters so much now that they were at one on this small detail, the father's last protective act for the child in what had been, so far, a most agreeable weekend. After the police-call, he and Judith left immediately for the Royal Infirmary and, as they drove to town, Scott remembers thinking: I've always been a lucky person . . . this is the moment I really need my luck to hold. ``But I was also remembering that where a knife is involved, the consequences are potentially fatal. That risk is there. And when we arrived at the hospital and identified ourselves, a receptionist came from behind the desk, and escorted us to a private room. At that moment I realised we were probably in very deep trouble indeed.''

The following memories are indelible. ``A male nurse entered the room, looking very grave, and Judith asked if she could see our son. He answered that yes, we could see him, and, very anxiously now, she inquired: ``Well, where is he?'' Perhaps the nurse was unsure how much the parents had been told, but he told them only that Mark was in a nearby room. ``So Judith asked: `what's the matter? Is he alive?', and the nurse simply said: no. He was in an impossible situation and I don't blame him for a moment,'' reflects Scott. ``He was asked a direct question and he gave a direct answer, but it was devastating.'' Judith was so convulsed with grief that she began to beat the wall with her fist, lacerating her hand by putting it through a window.

For those so overwhelmed and damaged by loss, can anything transcend the sorrow? A little more than one year on from raw bereavement the Scotts are learning to find some solace in the initiative of Mark's friends who have established a foundation in his memory. The aim: to help young needy people exploit their talents through either community or individual study projects at home or abroad. As word spread of the murder that October night, Glasgow was stunned by the realisation that Mark's death was hideously sectarian. Despite the city's hard-won, improving status, this killing acted like a flashback to vile times: an innocent mindlessly slain because someone detested his club allegiance. How could we have so completely fooled ourselves that something of the barbarous triumphalism of Bosnia or Belfast no longer went walkabout in Glasgow?

The driving motive of the charity, then, is to demonstrate that decent rivalry and tolerance are not mutually exclusive, and to this end the foundation was officially launched last week at a ceilidh in the People's Palace, organised by Mark's pals from a cross-section of the city's schools. The event, attended by his parents and accompanied by Celtic's Tommy Burns and Rangers' John Greig, hauled in #3500, but already the foundation has gathered #10,000 through sponsored climbs and public donations, and by next autumn corporate Glasgow will have shown its generosity at a mega fundraising dinner.

``Really the idea began on the day of Mark's funeral which was both a brilliant and incredibly moving occasion. One of the most graphic images was of his coffin being carried out of church by friends in different coloured school blazers; some from the Academy, of course, others from Loretto, Hutchesons', and St Aloysius.'' A thousand mourners, including Celtic's first-team players, filled St Gabriel's in Merrylee, and the community hall beneath the church, and it seems incredible to Niall Scott now that he didn't realise Gazza and Brian Laudrup were among them.

``Anyway, a few hundred came back to the house, and it was obvious that Mark's pals wanted to keep his memory alive in some active way, not just in their own minds. So, we all got very excited about the prospect of getting different schools to work together on programmes that might benefit the wider community.'' But this chance to salvage some purpose from calamity still hasn't tamed the grief. Scott knows from other parents that many of those in Mark's fraternity have been badly affected by his death, at a very formative stage in their development. His own remaining children - two sets of twins, Edward and Antonia, 15; Nicholas and Virginia, 11 - have shown exceptional resilience, pursuing their sports and seeing their friends as before.

But if there are less tears, the sense of violation is acute: ``What has happened obviously makes you feel more concerned about the rest of the children's movements, but we don't lead our lives as if this terrible thing will happen to us again. Yet it's difficult to explain just how devastating such a death is on a family.'' Even when Niall Scott realised luck had, in fact, deserted him, he seemed like a figure locked within two frames, one confronting reality, the other trapped in disbelief. Today the first frame is dominant, defining a dreadful permanence.

``After a year, you finally have to admit that all the tricks you employ - piling into work and social life - are ceasing to have the effect you wish. What remains horrifying is the rate at which normality was shredded: ``One minute I was driving to the Royal, hoping frantically that my son might just be scarred, and the next I was seeing a vibrant person no longer alive.''

In a way Niall Scott's profession made him peculiarly ill-prepared for murder's irreparable nature. As one of Scotland's leading corporate lawyers, he was used to solving problems, working through them to successful outcomes. ``That's what I'd become used to, learning that hardly any problem was final because, in most cases, there is a means to fight your way out. Other things have gone wrong in my life, of course, but they are easily rationalised as being my own fault.''

Everything about the attack still seems incomprehensible. In daylight, under the eyes of shoppers and returning football fans alike, it had occurred without provocation, and at such ferocious speed that Mark probably never saw his assailant. Walking along London Road towards the town, to catch their home-bound train, Mark and his two friends were approaching Bridgeton Cross, their team colours purposely concealed since they knew they would passing pubs well-known as Rangers strongholds. But, within minutes, a knife wielded masterfully from behind, had slashed Mark's throat to the spine. He staggered forward for 25 yards before collapsing at the kerb, friends and strangers huddled around him, in appalled confusion, a man desperately plugging the pumping wound with a blanket snatched from his baby's pram.

The boys' carefully visible neutrality had been no safeguard. Jason Campbell's bigotry was bred in the marrow, a hatred never placed on hold. And by the time Mark fell, Campbell was almost halfway home, thrashing through crowds, adrenalin making him feel invincible. But within 45 minutes police would be at his mother's door, for not all local witnesses had dematerialised in ugly loyalty or fear. Fifty anonymous calls to the police insisted Campbell was the killer and last March he was sentenced by Lord Sutherland to life imprisonment.

The Scotts didn't attend the trial. Having suffered so grievously from not being able to control the assault, they couldn't bear to expose themselves to another situation where the family was completely powerless. ``We discussed going, but we agreed that staying away was the thing to do. I get no satisfaction from the fact that someone has been convicted, but the thought that my son's killer might have gone free, as if he had done nothing . . . that would have been intolerable.''

Six weeks after Mark's murder, a neighbour's daughter died from a cerebral haemorrhage. ``Like Mark she was 16. Molly Sharp, MS, as Mark was MS, and in other ways they were alike. Both very talented, both with the same colouring, and now both beside each other at the cemetery at Mearns. That tragedy reminded us that we're not alone, and for me, I also find it helpful to think of the young who went from villages throughout Scotland during both wars, many of them dying needlessly.''

Mark was one of those for whom the words ``a gift for life'' might have been crafted. ``He had a bit of devil in him as well as lots of charm, and that made him popular with everyone except the occasional master. But being the eldest of five made him very adaptable, good with younger kids as well as those of his own age.'' In the morning of that final day, Niall Scott had gone to watch Mark and Edward play rugby at Auldhouse, the Hutcheson ground. ``Mark had been having a laugh at his brother's efforts in the way that elder brothers do, but he himself had a great game, scoring a try very, very well.

``So, we were in good spirits on the way home, and he and I had a particularly nice chat. Yes, that last day was a very pleasant one.'' At school they called Mark The Rooster, and his gamesmanship, in football as well as rugby, had been spotted by talent scouts who had invited him for a trial with Clyde. He was delighted by that, but he was dead before he could take up the challenge.

Niall Scott, reared in the Church of Scotland, and Judith, a Catholic, are raising their children ecumenically. As for immortality, tragedy has removed his own previous indifference, and on the weekly visits to the grave, he finds himself having a wee chat with Mark, telling him of Nelson Mandela's wish to travel from this world to the next, with a smile on his face, and keeping his son up to date with all the brave joys and smaller sorrows of their lives.

It was Judith, browsing through C S Lewis, who chose the headstone inscription: Your absence is like the sky, spread over everything. And inside those words there is the hidden sob of something that has happened to our world which is too horrible to grasp.

n Those wishing to support the charity should send donations to the Mark Scott Foundation, 70 Wellington Street, Glasgow G2 6SB.