He pressed the X button a couple of times and was transported to Barcelona and the Camp Nou, where he had arranged for the match to be played in snowy conditions because he thought his team of digital Scottish players would be more used to the cold weather.
‘You’d think it would just be called the Camp nowadays,’ he said. ‘It’s not exactly all that nou, is it? It’s been around for years. They should call it the . . . what’s Spanish for old?’
‘It’s Barcelona so it wouldn’t be Spanish. It would be in the Basque language.’ That shut him up for a few seconds and allowed me to ask, ‘Did you ever come across someone called Lafayette Delgado?’
‘Might have. Who’d he play for?’
‘I’m talking about your modelling career. Did you ever meet a woman called Lafayette or maybe you knew her as La-La?’
‘La-La? No, I think I’d have remembered a name like La-La. When it comes to models, I’ve got a good head for names as well as figures.’
Malky’s game kicked off. There would be no talking to him for at least the next ten minutes. I went off in search of Barry Munn’s home number and was about to dial directory enquiries when the phone rang.
‘Malky, will you answer that? If it’s Dad, tell him I’m not in.’
Malky paused the game and with much huffing and puffing picked up the phone, said hello and then without another word handed the receiver to me.
It was Jake Turpie. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.
I took him to be referring to Deek’s defence, in which case not a lot was happening, if you excluded a lot of half-baked theories and the possibility that, thanks to him, I might be facing an attempt to defeat the ends of justice rap.
‘Then I’ve got something that might help,’ he said.
Right about then, I thought Jake butting out and letting me do my job was the only assistance I required from him. ‘Really? Like what?’
‘Like the man who killed Daisy Adams.’
40
I left Malky and his virtual teammates to battle it out with the Auld Enemy in snowy Catalonia. Half an hour later I was strolling with Jake Turpie down a canyon piled high either side with scrap cars, arc-lights casting our shadows huge across the uneven terrain as we stepped around water-filled potholes and over chunks that had fallen from the mountains of rusting metal.
‘I’ve been doing some thinking,’ Jake said – seldom a good sign. ‘I went to see Deek and there was something he said about that guy he killed. The one up at the farm,’ he added, for the avoidance of doubt.
I’d yet to formally take Deek’s side of things from him. Other than tell him to keep his mouth shut during police interrogation, the only communication I’d had with my client had been through his boss. Prison visiting was an over-rated pastime and, if the big man preferred that I deal through the medium of Jake, I was happy not to serve time with an overly large man in an unduly small visit room.
‘I told you not to visit Deek,’ I said.
‘Nobody was listening in to us.’
‘Okay. What did he tell you?’
‘That the dead guy was Russian, or Polish or Lithuanian or something.’
‘And how did he know that?’
‘Because he spoke in a funny language and he looked like a Russian.’
‘Did he have on one of those wee furry hats and a pair of knee-length boots? I must have missed that.’
Jake stopped, one steel toe-capped boot in a puddle, one out. ‘You trying to be smart?’
‘No, I’m trying to stop you making things worse,’ I said, broaching the subject of Jake’s earlier attempt at concocting a defence for Deek Pudney. An alibi that had well and truly deflated long before there had been any chance to float it past a jury. ‘First of all, you tell me Deek wasn’t there, then you tell me he was there, but he was attacked and had to defend himself, now you’re saying he stopped for a chat?’
The headlights of a five-ton diesel forklift rounded the corner coming our way, out-sized front tyres splashing through puddles, gouging deeper ruts in the shale surface. Jake waited for it to trundle by. ‘Maybe I haven’t been totally straight with you.’ He grunted as though telling the truth was painful. ‘You see, there wasn’t just one guy up at the farm. There was two of them.’
‘What?’
‘Aye, well, don’t blame me.’
‘Who should I blame?’
‘Come on. You should know that nobody ever does a hit single-handed. You’re always going to need someone to watch your back.’
‘How long have you known this?’
Jake shrugged, from which I took it that he’d always known.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Deek thought if he said he’d killed this other guy too it wouldn’t look so good.’
‘He killed someone else!’
‘Keep your voice down.’
Where’s the body?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’
‘Then you’re making a very bad job of it.’ I kicked a piece of shale and watched it bounce down the track in front of us until it eventually took a skip and nose-dived into a puddle. ‘Just tell me what Deek is saying happened. Not half of what happened, the whole lot. Everything. Leave nothing out. Just tell me—’
‘All right, all right. Deek goes to chin the Adams woman about the car. He chaps the door. Nothing. He chaps again. He knows she must be in because the motor’s there. He hears screaming inside. He smashes through the back door and there’s a guy in the kitchen with a big knife. He says something to Deek. Deek doesn’t understand what he’s saying. The guy slashes Deek, and ends up dead. The screaming stops. Deek goes to the door leading to the hall. He opens it and someone comes charging through and tries to jook past him. Deek trips him up, but this new guy manages to get to the back door. Deek goes after him. The guy’s too fast. Just by the back door there’s a grape stuck in the ground.
‘A grape? You mean a garden fork?’
‘Aye. Deek chucks it at him. It hits. According to Deek it really hits. But the guy somehow manages to keep going and runs off into the woods. Deek doesn’t know what to do so he comes back here.’
And the rest, as they say, was history; the history of a botched-up, fabricated attempt at an alibi defence using yours truly as a stooge.
‘And so you decided that, to be on the safe side, you’d make up the world’s worst alibi defence involving Marty Sneddon, and rope me in with a visit to the farm?’ I said.
‘Aye, to explain Deek’s fingerprints and that.’
I recalled seeing a garden fork when I’d been up at the farm with Vikki to collect Molly’s belongings. It had been in a plastic production bag and placed into the van the scene of crime officers had been using. If the cops had the garden fork, they’d find the new guy’s blood and Deek’s prints on it. ‘So why are you telling me all this now? Killing the guy in the kitchen, okay, we could possibly work out a defence, but this other guy . . . ’
‘That’s what I’m saying. He’s maybe not dead. They’d have found his body by now if he was, in the woods or down the road or something, but they’ve been searching all over the place up there and nothing’s come up so far, has it?’
Not that I’d heard.
‘So . . . ’ Jake paused to wave furiously at an oncoming low-loader, sending it off in another direction, ‘I’ve been carrying out some investigations of my own.’
If there was one thing more likely to be detrimental to a successful defence than Jake thinking, it was him actually acting on some of those thoughts.
‘Please tell me you haven’t done anything stupid.’
‘It’s all perfectly legal. You know Sammy Veitch the lawyer?’
I knew Sammy Veitch all right. Anyone in Central Scotland who had ever tripped over a paving slab, slipped in a supermarket or been bumped in a car knew slip ‘n’ trip Sammy Veitch. Some of those people hadn’t even known they’d been injured until they’d met Sammy. Jake and Sammy had an arrangement. If
one of Jake’s recovery vehicles was called out to a smash, he’d notify Sammy if there were any injured parties. Ambulance-chaser? Sammy could give an ambulance a five-minute head start and still beat it to A & E. If Sammy got any business as a result of the tip-off, Jake got his share. Sammy had a similar relationship with various members of the emergency services and primary care teams. On this occasion Jake had asked Sammy to use his contacts at the local hospitals to find out if anyone had sought treatment for garden-fork type injuries around the time of Daisy Adams’ murder. There had been one: a man with infected wounds who’d been admitted to the Forth Valley Royal Hospital ten miles away in Falkirk. The history as presented to the triage nurse was that he’d slipped and fallen on a garden rake. Jake had other ideas.
‘It’s got to be the guy that Deek speared. Sammy’s not been able to get a name. All they’d tell him was that the guy was foreign and couldn’t speak English.’
We walked back to Jake’s dilapidated HQ, him stopping every now and again to bark orders at the backshift, me deep in thought. I had to admit that on this occasion Jake’s own thinking had been quite lucid. If we could identify the forkman we would not only have Daisy’s killer, we might also find out why she’d been killed in the first place. With a bit of work Deek could actually have a defence.
41
‘I heard about Tina.’ Grace-Mary dropped the letter she was reading, removed her glasses and let them dangle on the gold chain about her neck.
I could tell she was torn between saying I told you so and sympathising.
‘It’s not over,’ I said.
She grunted. ‘I suppose you’re expecting to come back to work?’
That was the intention. My being responsible for the Munro in Munro & Co., I’d always felt I should have a major say in the running of the business, something Grace-Mary had never fully conceded. ‘Might as well,’ I said, it’ll keep you from sitting twiddling your thumbs and knocking off early. So here’s three things for you to be getting on with: first, someone was admitted to Forth Valley Hospital a few weeks ago with wounds to his back, allegedly caused by a garden rake. He’s foreign, possibly Russian. Find out everything you can about him. Second, make me an appointment with Barry Munn. It doesn’t matter when as long as it’s immediately. And, third . . . ’ I held out my hand to Grace-Mary, ‘my phone please.’
Joanna must have heard my voice. She walked into reception and gave me a hug.
‘Robbie’s come back to work,’ Grace-Mary said, managing to keep the excitement out of her voice.
Joanna released me. ‘If you want more time to try and sort things out, it’s no problem. Everything’s going fine here. Isn’t it, Grace-Mary?’
‘I was thinking that I’d break myself in gently,’ I said. ‘Can you help out for a few more days, Joanna, while I try and figure what to do about Tina and maybe look into Deek Pudney’s case a bit more?’
‘It’s looking into that big eejit’s case that’s landed you in this mess with Tina,’ Grace-Mary said.
Joanna scowled at her and turned to me again. ‘You take your time, Robbie. This thing with Tina . . . it must be terrible for you.’
‘Well, he can’t say I never told him.’ Grace-Mary had decided not to plump for the sympathetic approach. ‘From day one I said it was a trap. How he thought he could—’
‘Okay, I get it,’ I said.
Joanna came in on my side. ‘Give him a break. He was bound to—’
‘Fail?’ my secretary enquired.
‘To find it more difficult to cope with a child than a woman would.’ It was kind of Joanna to say so. In a sexist sort of a way. ‘Listen, Robbie, seriously, if there’s anything I can do to help.’
‘There is,’ Grace-Mary said. She handed Joanna a scrap of paper. ‘There’s a Russian bloke up at Forth Valley Hospital. Fell on a rake or something. Robbie wants you to find out all about him.’
Joanna looked at me. ‘Robbie?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ I said. ‘And Grace-Mary . . . ’ I lifted her handbag from the floor beside the reception desk and fished out my mobile phone. ‘I expect to be sitting across a desk from Barry Munn – today.’
And I was. Somehow Grace-Mary talked Barry into giving me a lunchtime appointment, and at one thirty that same Thursday afternoon I was looking at him across a stack of case files, while he stared back at me through a pair of red-rimmed eyes. By the side of the desk there was a cardboard box, the name of a wine club stencilled on the side.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said, ‘and, yes, I have had one tiny drink. I find a small glass of wine at lunch helps recharge my mental batteries for the afternoon ahead.’
‘You can’t do a proper job and drink at the same time,’ I said.
Barry scoffed at my naiveté. ‘Winston Churchill never made an important decision without a couple of brandies under his belt.’
‘Yes, but he was only fighting World War Two. This is my daughter we’re talking about.’
Barry leaned across the desk at me, arms folded. Whatever he’d been drinking it must have given him Dutch courage because he’d brought his fat face well within slapping range. ‘If we’re going to start . . . ’ He had trouble with the word criticising and downgraded it to blaming folk. ‘It’s you who has made a mess of things. I gave you a shot at getting custody of Tina. It was you who blew it, not me. I can take a horse to water, but I can’t make it drink.’
‘Water?’ I said. ‘You should try drinking it yourself sometime – it’s that stuff that looks like Pinot Grigio.’
Barry leaned back in his big black leather chair. ‘If you want to talk rationally, I’ll listen. If you’ve only come here to give me abuse, I’d rather you just got it out of your system and then left.’ He extricated a file from the bundle and lobbed it on top of the pile on his desk. ‘Go on. There’s your file. Feel free to take it with you and find some other mug to take it on.’
Should I? Who else would I go to? I was a criminal defence solicitor. In the field of family law, I was a man with a fork in a world of soup. How could I find out who was the best family lawyer around? And, if I did find out, how long would I have to wait for an appointment? The good ones were bound to be busy. I bet old Frizzy-hair didn’t do lunchtime appointments.
‘All right then.’ Barry seemed to take my silence and lack of movement as indication enough that he remained instructed. He placed my file on top of the bundle. ‘As you’re aware, the final hearing is fixed three weeks from now. You need to know your options, but before I tell you them I am going to have a very small refreshment just to keep my brain cells ticking over.’ He swivelled in his chair, lifted a wine glass from the windowsill and then reached into the cardboard box to remove a half-full bottle of Spanish red. In what was clearly a well-practised manoeuvre, carried out at speed, he poured himself the largest very small glass of wine I’d ever seen and drank most of it in one go.
‘You’ve got three,’ he said, setting the glass down on a coaster by his phone. ‘Option one: game over. Gran keeps Tina.’ He held up the flat of a hand. ‘Before you say anything, it isn’t so bad. Think about it. This time three months ago you didn’t even know you had a daughter. If it hadn’t been for an unkind twist of fate you never would. You can always keep in touch by post: Christmas and birthday cards, that sort of thing.’ He looked at me expectantly for a moment. ‘Okay. Not option one. Option two: Tina stays with her gran, we set up contact for you once a fortnight to start off with, moving onto weekly if things pan out okay and maybe a weekend stay-over now and again, not to mention a couple of days at either Christmas or New Year. We should also be able to negotiate a week in the summer.’
‘Option three?’
‘I quite liked option two,’ Barry said.
I didn’t.
Option three required another swig of wine. ‘You go balls-out for a full residence order.’
‘Option three it is then,’ I said.
‘Then you’d have to call witnesses. People
who could, honestly, say what a great dad you are. Tina’s a bit young to sway any decisions, though the sheriff would probably speak to her in chambers to take her view on things.’
‘Is that it?’
‘No. You’d have to show that you had the necessary accommodation all set up, if not immediately, certainly in the foreseeable future and you’d also need to convince the sheriff that plans were in place for caring for Tina if you were ever not available for business reasons. That means people who you can rely on for support.’
At mention of my dad and Malky, Barry’s glass became in sudden need of a top-up.
‘Anything else?’ I asked.
‘Yes, the most important thing. A good report from Vikki Stark. She’s an experienced professional and it doesn’t matter who the sheriff is, they’ll attach a lot of weight to whatever she says.’
Was Vikki on my side? Was she even talking to me? She’d seemed quite sympathetic at my dad’s the night before, though not sufficiently so to stop Vera taking Tina away.
‘And,’ Barry took a glug of wine, smacked his lips, ‘it’s going to take more than a bunch of flowers to swing Vikki back in your favour. I’m telling you, Robbie. Let me negotiate a deal. Don’t let this go to proof and have Bert Brechin throw you a couple of hours contact once a month until Tina’s sixteen.’
This was how it worked. Family law, the seamy underbelly of the legal profession. It was the murky pool in which civil lawyers like Barry swam every day. I was a fish out of water, flapping on the bank, gasping for oxygen.
‘Okay, tell me more about option two,’ I said.
42
If I’d learned one thing about Procurators Fiscal over the years, it was their need for regular caffeine stimulation, and that the frequency of these restorative breaks, as well as their length, varied in direct proportion to seniority.
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