The man raised his arm. Suddenly the hammer felt very heavy. If I went for him, I’d be dead before I covered the two metres between us. If I tried to turn and run, the end result would be the same. I was scared, terrified and yet with that fear came the realisation that my death was a price worth paying for my daughter’s life. Better to stay right where I was. It might only be a matter of seconds, but the police were on the way; weren’t they? The longer I stood there, a physical barrier between this man and my daughter, the better Tina’s chances. The pistol pointed straight at me. ‘I only want the kid. Give me her to me and I’ll go.’ The man brought his other hand up to steady his aim. I could still hear Molly crying in the living room, then the sound of scampering feet and the back door opening. I squared myself to the gun and closed my eyes. The next sound I’d hear would be my last, the roar of the gun a millisecond before a bullet tore into my chest.
But it wasn’t. There was another sound. A sickening crack, then the sound of something heavy falling at my feet and a handgun clattering its way across the hard wooden floor towards me. I opened my eyes to see the prone body of a battered Italian face down, and the tall, slim, elegant figure of Estelle Delgado standing on my dad’s welcome mat, a rusty old sand wedge gripped tightly in both hands.
56
I stood up to stretch my back. The bolted down seats of the police interview room were hard and unyielding and I’d been sitting on one across a table from Estelle Delgado for over an hour while the cops worked out what to do with us.
I’d already been interviewed on the immediate events leading up to Lorenc Bizi’s hospitalisation with a serious head wound. Even thinking about it – the gun at my chest, Molly and my daughter running for their lives – made me break out in a sweat. I hadn’t been able to stop my hand from shaking as I’d given my statement, sipping at a plastic cup of scalding coffee.
Estelle was in a very different situation. Yes, she was a witness, but she’d also carried out an assault on a man with a weapon. An attack that was likely to have caused severe injury, permanent disfigurement and endangerment to life. At least, that’s what the indictment would say if one was ever served. But one wouldn’t be. Not when the person Estelle had banjo’d had been about to shoot me and then an old lady and a couple of kids.
To keep the formalities in order, Estelle had been officially detained as a suspect and because of that was entitled to the services of a solicitor. Step forward Robbie Munro. If Dougie Fleming had been there he might have come up with a reason to prevent me, a witness, serving as Estelle’s legal counsel, but the inspector on duty that evening seemed unconcerned. Perhaps, if the facts had been less obvious, she might have objected. As it was, while I’d been filling one policewoman’s notebook with my own account, Vera Reynolds, plied with gallons of sweet tea, had been giving a similar version of events putting everyone but Lorenc Bizi well in the clear.
It was the work of a minute to give Estelle the same advice I’d give any suspect before a police interview: say nothing and sign nothing. When it came to her interview with me, however, I wanted to learn everything there was to know about Lorenc Bizi. Why he’d murdered Daisy Adams and why he’d been prepared to put a bullet in me.
Sitting there with me in that room, Estelle had the look of a woman wrung dry of all emotion. She put up no resistance to my questions, asked none of her own and talked slowly and quietly, as though in a trance.
Estelle Delgado had never forgiven her sister’s treachery in ending the brief but torrid affair with Sir Stephen Pentecost that had led to her eviction from the House of Pentecost. From there she had worked freelance for a pan-European model agency, moving across the continent from one crummy job to another, and it was during those wilderness years that she’d met her future partner.
The handsome Lorenc Bizi had drifted easily in and out of the Naples fashion scene, usually drifting into the scene with drugs, drifting out having sold them, shortly before drifting back in again with some more. It was said he could have been a model himself, if he hadn’t found his true vocation as a drug dealer, a vocation Estelle supported him in after their move to Scotland: Lorenc motivated by the interests of the Neapolitan mafia, Estelle by a raging heroin habit.
For a time, life back in Edinburgh was good. Lorenc was clever. He ran a string of foreign mules who imported the drugs and a team of local dealers who attended to distribution. His stock was always stashed in other people’s houses and his home kept as clean as the money in his bank account, thanks to his amusement arcade laundrette.
The least clever thing Lorenc ever did was to supply Daisy Adams with heroin. Estelle knew that Daisy and La-La were friends and saw no reason to help her sister out, even if there was a profit in it. Lorenc didn’t care. To him a sale was a sale. Then one night Daisy’s ex-con of a husband called the cops, and the resulting drugs raid on the home of one of Lorenc’s dealers was inconveniently timed to coincide with the arrival of a new shipment. It was sheer blind luck on the part of the drug squad. Ten kilos of smack was seized and Lorenc’s business gone with it.
Lorenc had worked with the mob long enough to know that their unwritten terms and conditions stated clearly that drugs duly delivered must be paid for. You dropped the stash down a drain? Pay the money. An eagle swooped down from the sky and carried it off? Pay the money. The cops took it? Pay the money. Lorenc was left owing the best part of a quarter of a million pounds he didn’t have or just wasn’t prepared to hand over. So he disappeared, leaving Estelle to work it off.
‘Lorenc hasn’t been running from the law these last three years,’ Estelle said, joining me to stretch her legs. ‘The cops had nothing on him. The dealer kept quiet, was convicted and got eight years. He’s still inside. Lorenc’s running from the Camorra.’
‘When did you find out about Molly?’ I asked, moving onto Estelle’s relationship, or, rather, non-relationship with her niece.
‘I knew La-La had a kid. I didn’t know or care who the father was. When La-La died I didn’t even go to the funeral. Then, a month or so back, I got a lawyer’s letter saying that I was a relevant person, whatever the hell that is. It said that La-La’s bairn was up for adoption and did I have any objections. I was going to bin the letter until I saw the name of the person wanting to adopt her was Daisy Adams.’
‘So?’ I said.
‘Her address was a farm. Last time I’d heard, Daisy was a junkie living in a women’s refuge. Three years later she owned a farm? I told Lorenc about it next time he phoned me. I thought we could put pressure on her for a few quid, say I’d object to the adoption if she didn’t pay up. Lorenc spoke to his cousin in Naples about it. He knew a lawyer out there who checked and found that the farm was sold in a back-to-back transaction, first to Pentecost Holdings Limited and then onto Daisy for nothing. There was only one possible link between Daisy and the Pentecosts I could think of and that was La-La’s bairn.’
The inspector knocked on the door and asked me if she could have a word. Outside in the corridor I was told that a decision had been made not to charge Estelle, but to use her as a witness against Lorenc Bizi. On that basis my services as a solicitor would no longer be required and they’d like to speak to her as soon as possible.
I asked for a few minutes so I could explain to my client her change of status. In the short time I had left, I discovered that Lorenc’s cousin had done a bit more digging and realised that come Stephen Pentecost’s imminent death Molly would inherit everything.
Estelle resumed her seat, elbows on the table, hands either side of her face, propping up her chin. ‘The first I knew about any inheritance was the night Lorenc arrived at my door injured, stabbed in the back. He told me Daisy was dead and so was his cousin. He stayed the night for the first time in years. We talked and I said I’d tell the social work that I’d be interested in looking after La-La’s bairn. After that I didn’t hear from him for a while.’
‘Her name’s Molly,’ I said.
Estelle sat back, leaning agains
t the hard backrest of the metal chair. ‘The social work weren’t keen. They said that if I cleaned myself up, they’d maybe consider letting me visit Molly at the children’s home. Take things slowly. See how they went from there. I did my best. That day you saw me I’d been off the kit for four days and was feeling like shite. Two weeks later and, hey.’ She threw her arms out to her side and smiled tightly. There certainly was a big difference in her appearance since our first meeting, her face fuller, with more natural colour, hair worn long, no longer a greasy tangle tied with a rubber band but shiny and as black as rocks in a riverbed.
‘You were supposed to be meeting Vikki Stark this afternoon,’ I put to her.
She hesitated before replying. ‘My car broke down . . . I . . . ’
‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘You’d spoken with Vikki. You knew about the party, you knew that Vikki and I would be sitting at the café waiting for you and you phoned my dad and told him I was in hospital. You were clearing the path for Lorenc.’
Estelle turned her head to face the stark, white wall of the interview room. That one gesture told me everything. Lorenc had gone to my dad’s cottage to kill Molly. Daisy Adams had only dabbled in heroin for a while and even with Vikki’s backing, it had still taken years for her to be declared a fit and proper person to adopt a child. Supposing Estelle had got her act together, she must have known how doubtful it was she’d ever be assessed as a suitable parent for a vulnerable wee girl like Molly. At best it would have taken several years. By then Molly’s ancestry would have come to light and her inheritance placed in a trust, well out of Estelle and Lorenc’s grasp.
It didn’t take a finely tuned legal mind to puzzle out the quickest and surest way to Sir Stephen Pentecost’s fortune. On the fashion guru’s death the lion’s share of his estate would have vested in Molly. Upon the wee girl’s death it would fall to her next of kin. Her only living relative: Aunt Estelle.
‘Molly was the target all along,’ I said.
Estelle sat, hands on the table, studying her chewed fingernails.
‘The whole thing was nothing personal. Strictly business,’ I said. ‘Daisy Adams got in the way. Just like I was in the way today.’
Head bowed even lower, hair falling across her face, Estelle began to sob.
‘You did the right thing stopping him,’ I said quietly. ‘Better late than never, but don’t think that there’s anything you can say to the cops now that can save both yourself and him. You try to make up some story to say that he wasn’t involved in Daisy’s murder and I’ll stick you in so fast—’
‘I didn’t want him to do it!’ Estelle screamed, grabbing her hair with both hands and throwing her head forward so that her face almost touched the table. She rocked back and forth. ‘I didn’t want it! I didn’t want it!’ Now the tears came.
There was a knock on the door. It opened. The inspector and another policewoman were standing there. ‘Are you going to be much longer?’ the inspector asked.
‘Just a couple more minutes,’ I said. ‘My client is upset. Do you think she could have a glass of water?’
The inspector looked at her colleague. I closed the door again, walked over to Estelle and stood beside her. ‘No one needs to know about the phone call from the hospital. No one needs to know anything about your involvement. But Lorenc’s going down for what happened tonight and he’s going down for the murder of Daisy Adams too. You need to decide whether you want to help or whether you want to spend the rest of your life in prison.’
I’d asked for two minutes. I’d been allowed one. Without a knock this time the door opened and the two police officers entered, one carrying a ridged white plastic cup of water and a box of paper tissues.
‘The witness is all yours,’ I said.
Estelle composed herself, wiped each eye with the heel of a hand and looked up. She held my stare until it became too uncomfortable, and then turned her head to the wall.
‘Do the right thing,’ I said, as I walked past her out of the door, leaving her in the custody of the two female police officers. ‘For yourself if for nobody else.’
57
Estelle did do the right thing. So did Dame Ursula Pentecost.
One week later, whether it was because Molly was, after all, a reminder of Stephen or whether it was a means to keep the Pentecost fortune intact, the fashion designer came forward and expressed an interest in adopting her late husband’s love child. Under Dame Ursula’s wing and guided by the wrongly maligned, by me at any rate, Zander Skene, there was no telling how far the child’s undoubted aptitude for art might take her.
Although I felt bad about taking the twenty-five grand from Zander, and the manner in which it was taken, I didn’t feel sufficiently bad to give it back to him. He may not have been paying off a hit man as I’d originally thought, but he’d still been trying to deprive Molly of her rightful inheritance. Instead I gave the money to Grace-Mary and told her to find a children’s charity that might find it useful and make an anonymous donation.
Two weeks later Deek Pudney was uprooted from prison, granted immunity and, along with Estelle, planted atop the Prosecution’s witness list in the case of HMA v Lorenc Bizi
The Crown wanted to convict the murderer of Daisy Adams, and, to be sure of that, needed the evidence of the man who had killed Lorenc Bizi’s accomplice in self-defence.
Two weeks five minutes later, I had Jake Turpie sign a disposition transferring title to the office, and to celebrate my promotion from tenant to owner I ordered a new sign to supplement the little brass plate at the front door.
Three weeks later I was sitting at a table in Sandy’s cafe along with my dad, Malky, Grace-Mary and Joanna. The custody hearing had started at nine thirty that day. First thing, Vikki and Tina had gone into Sheriff Brechin’s chambers for a private chat. Hopefully, there’d been no mention of the events of Halloween which I’d later sold to Tina as all being a big scary joke, and with my sincere promise that I would never arrange anything like that ever again. The Sheriff was presented with a copy of Vikki’s final report, which Barry assured me left things fairly evenly balanced.
After that, in open court, the evidence of Vera Reynolds and Tina’s aunt Chloe was taken, followed by my own.
I’d been to court hundreds of times. It was my place of work where daily I haggled and bartered my clients out of, and sometimes into, prison. The place where a favourable plea bargain depended on whether the Fiscal had had a good lunch or a bad headache and an accused’s guilt or innocence, liberty or freedom, hung on the whim of a Sheriff. That morning I’d been forced to stand in the witness box, a stranger in my own land, while the family lawyers asked me questions and I tried to answer them in a way that would persuade the court it was in the best interests of my daughter to remain with her father. It was the most nerve-wracking court appearance of my life.
Shortly after noon, a poker-faced Bert Brechin adjourned for an early lunch. Come two fifteen it would be the turn of my supporting cast. I drove back to Linlithgow to meet with them and carry out a final rehearsal before we all set off for court.
‘Okay, let’s go over this one more time.’ I ignored the groans. ‘Dad, it’s Monday . . . ’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Shut up and listen. Hypothetically, it’s Monday. Grace-Mary has picked Tina up from school at three and brought her back to the office. Now it’s five o’clock and I’ve been held up at court. What do you do?’
My dad sighed hugely. ‘I receive a phone call from Grace-Mary to let me know.’
‘On what?’ My dad dug into his pocket and held up his mobile phone, until now the most immobile, mobile phone on the planet. ‘Which . . . ?’
‘Which I always have on my person with the volume turned full up,’ he said.
‘And?’
‘I come and collect Tina, take her to your place and give her tea.’
‘Good, don’t fluff your lines. Trust me, giving evidence isn’t as easy as you think.’
�
�You don’t need to tell me how to give evidence,’ my dad said. ‘I’m a cop. I’ve been in the witness box hundreds of times.’
‘Yeah, but this time you’re going to be telling the truth.’ I turned from him to my secretary. ‘Grace-Mary. Same scenario, except you can’t get hold of my dad because he’s lost his phone or for some reason can’t make it.’
‘I wait with Tina or I ask Joanna to wait with her until you get back.’
‘If you can’t stay on and Joanna’s not in the office?’
‘I phone her.’
My assistant was next up to bat. ‘Joanna?’
‘Are you keeping me on for my legal or childminding capabilities?’ she asked.
‘Joanna we’ve got forty-five minutes until the hearing restarts.’
‘I wait with Tina or . . . ’ she said, anticipating my next question, ‘if I’m not available I phone Malky.’
My brother was staring out of the big window at a pair of legs walking past on the opposite side of the road.
‘You still got Ellie Swan’s number?’ he asked.
I didn’t. I never had, though I did seem to have acquired the emergency number of a joiner in Bolton. ‘Never mind that,’ I said, giving him a shove. ‘Come on, you’re up.’
‘Is it Friday yet? Cos if it is I’ve already told you I need to be at the radio station for two at the latest.’
‘Would you pay attention, Malky? We’re still on Monday.’
‘It’s going to be a long week,’ I heard my dad mutter.
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